Chapter 12 - Word of the Wind
Pre note: This chapter is a little more gruesome than the previous, depicting mild scenes of torture and interrogation. This chapter is not essential to the storyline and may be skipped if need be.
Equestrian intelligence agent West Winds had always been a tough cookie. Off duty, she was known to her friends as the pony you could share anything with and the mare you never wanted to sit across from at the poker table. It simply wasn’t in her nature to betray information. Even liquored off her wits, she kept her mouth as tight as a vice when it came to what was said behind closed doors.
It was for this reason that Princess Celestia had specifically seeked her out once the war had started. West Winds had been willing, of course. The pay was good and the chance at excitement was one to rival anything she could have ever amounted to in her life. Sometimes, things were just meant to be. She was meant to be a snoop and a safeguard, to know everything and tell of nothing unless it was at the benefit of Equestria and its ponies.
Training had been long, a whopping three and a half years long, and not a single day of it had been a stroll in the park. For three and a half years, she had undergone random, but almost bi-weekly stress and mental pressure scenarios in order to test her ability to cope in a massive range of situations. On top of this she had received pain endurance training daily, minus Sundays. She had been waterboarded more times than she could count, trained in the best methods to avoid panic and to put aside pain, taught to block magical memory intrusion spells, and even steal memories for herself. She still held almost every academy record for longest time in torture based scenarios, all minus a particular stillness test where said pony is placed within a small, enclosed space and surrounded with sharp objects. Everypony had to have some sort of a minor phobia or intolerance. West Winds’ was the lack of ability to remain still, sadly. Her time there was only two hours.
It was because of this training that West Winds held her head high as she was led by four armed guards to a rather large single story building that took up almost two blocks of the massive Longcoat city. There was no label above the door, nor markings of any sort apart from the emblem of an icy swirl embezzled beside one of the double doors. Obviously, it was government property, and probably a shady branch at that.
They had brought her to their city. Had she not been captured and was still on her reconnaissance mission, to come across this place would have been a dream come true. But this was rather grim. They had not blindfolded her, had not bothered to hide anything from her, which only meant they never intended her to leave. It didn’t matter her training, she was still scared, and she had every right to be.
There were good chances this is where she would die. The thought was cold in her mind, though not panicky. It manifested as a churning in her gut that made her want to cough up butterflies.
She was herded through the doors of the building and down a series of hallways. Left, right, right, left, through a door, then another left. She made a note of it. Finally, they entered a room that could have only been near the back of the building.
It was about as cliche as a capture and interrogation could be. She was set down in a square room with a single rectangular, metal table before her in the perfect middle of the room. The walls were white, and to her direct left a sheet of one-way glass covered most of the smooth surface.
The door bwonged close menacingly, and then she was alone.
Quickly and as discreetly as possible, West Winds swept her eyes over the scene. There were two fluorescents that hung from two inch chains on the roof and that was literally the room’s only trait. They buzzed quite loudly; she took particular note of this. The buzzing was intentional, created by a circuit in a small box on top of each light. There were most likely microphones hidden about to catch any ramblings or self-reassurances she would make to herself, but of course, she wouldn’t utter a peep. They were watching her behind the glass, of this there was a one hundred percent surety in her mind. It was most likely they were studying her body language and reaction to the room as to determine how best to deal with her.
And who said school didn’t pay off?
Her eyes fell on her own reflection in the glass. An unhealthy, scrawny, steel gray mare looked back at her with a tiny smile from the corner of her mouth. There was an enchanted ring clipped and epoxied to the base of her horn to prevent her use of magic. Her short and raggedy auburn mane that shared in tamer resemblance of Shirley Temple’s hung around her ears and swished down the back of her neck. Her hazel eyes flashed. The mare looked scared. Her body language was calm and contrived, but her eyes screamed. Her cutie mark—a pair of scissors cutting a dotted line—was half obscured by her medium length tail. She was usually proud of that mark, but not today.
“They’re going to kill you no matter what,” she said to her reflection. Don’t tell them anything.
It was a full hour—a suspense tactic—before the door opened and in stepped a pine green stallion. He wore thin, square reading glasses—a psychological reassurance in character—and kept his brown mane short and messy, just like her.
He sat down across from her as if they were having casual lunch and gave her a little bow of his head. “Good day,” he said in almost perfect accent.
“State your business,” she said flatly. The Longcoats were trying too hard. They should have sent in a real interrogator and not this guppie. Either they had underestimated her or they were testing her.
He frowned at her, tapping his forehooves together then patting down his mane. “Well...” He began to talk, but West Winds didn’t focus on what he was saying; her eyes were watching the tiny flecks of his brown mane as they fluttered to the tabletop.
“Why did you cut your mane?” she asked firmly, cutting him off mid-sentence.
He blinked a single time. “Excuse me?”
“Well for one, you’ve recently cut your mane because it’s flaking.” West Winds reared up and placed both forehooves atop the table, leaning towards her interrogator. “To add to that, your mane doesn’t naturally stand like that. It used to be long and the ends are flaked because you heated it too soon.” She sat back with a smug expression. “And you smell like odorless hairspray.” She turned her head to the glass. “My point is, I want you to talk to me and stop playing these stupid phycology games.”
The stallion who sat across from her turned his head towards the glass and gave his head a shake. Shrugging, he stood up and left the room without a word, leaving West Winds to look after him and wonder whether she should have taken a more subtle approach.
Her request was answered a second later as a blue mare burst into the room, her long coat bristling. West Winds’ eyes found their way to the Longcoat’s rump and her cutie mark of a snake wound around an upraised and disembodied forehoof.
“How much training have you received?” the mare asked in an equally flat, accented voice, stopping at the other end of the table.
West Winds shrugged. “More than you.”
The blue mare nodded in submission. “So you and I both know that verbal interrogation will provide nothing?” Her gaze hardened. “You send a radio broadcast to your government from deep within our territory using our own broadcasters.”
West Wings cracked a cheeky grin. “Creative, no?”
“Yes, well your plan may have worked better had you used a better encryption.”
“So you broke it?” She swallowed her worry.
The Equestrian mare’s grin widened. “Yes, we did.” The blue mare flicked one ear. “The language you spoke does not exist on record.”
West Winds hid her surprise with a casual twitch of her jaw. She had relayed the message in Zebra just as an extra precaution. The encryption she had been provided with by Celestia herself was supposed to be unbreakable, but the language barrier had been added as a small backup. So it seemed she had come upon a bout of luck that the Longcoats could not identify zebra, nor they knew it existed.
“Because I made it up,” she snapped. “Do you think I’m so stupid as to rely only on an encryption?”
“So what you were sending was important?” The mare’s eyes flashed.
West Winds’ mind surged with panic for a short second. She was getting cocky. She was letting things slip. She had gone through years of training for this and she was botching it because she was getting cocky!
“For all you know I could have been sending a telegram.” She raised her hooves like looking at a little card and closed one eye. “Dear Equestria, this place sucks like a brothel mare and the air is as cold as my grandmother’s snatch, wish you were here.”
“You have a sense of humor.” The mare sat down. “Tell me. You say you are a professional, but you have already revealed that the information you have sent is of top priority. You have made mistake after mistake and you have only been in our custody for thirteen hours.” She bared her teeth. “We will snap you like a twig.”
West Winds felt her heart sinking. The mare was making a point; she had screwed up, big time. She had allowed the message to be snatched by the enemy, she had allowed herself to be captured, she had allowed this mare to read her like a book, and she had let slip enough information to lead the enemy to press her for more. Some sort of a professional she was.
A certain resolve set itself in her mind right then. She would reveal nothing more.
The mare had watched the mental debacle with a small smirk. “You do know the next step if verbal interrogation fails to yield your secrets?”
“Torture,” West Winds answered with a small twitch of her right ear.
The mare nodded. “This can be made easy.” She leveled her gaze. “Because no matter what, agent West Winds, we will break you.”
They knew her name! How had they found out her name? “I will not speak.” Despite the fact that torture did not sound inviting, she held her ground. This was no training exercise; the fate of the war rested upon her shoulders. The info she had sent in the transmission could very well turn the war. The date was soon. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut for long enough.
The blue mare slumped and shook her head. “I like you. I really do.” She gave her hoof a swift tap on the table. “I do not wish for us to be in this war, but what is, is what is. And maybe you and I could be friends under different conditions.” She stood up and turned to face the glass. “Do what you must with her. What she sent is very important to her. Radio in and inform them of the high risk until this is resolved.”
The door slammed open and two stallion Longcoats tromped in. West Winds struggled a little as they jerked her around and then marched her towards the door.
“Do not let her die,” the blue mare said after them. “We need what she knows.”
That was the second to last time West Winds had seen the blue mare from the interrogation room, and as they led her away down the narrow hall to where Celestia didn’t even know, she would have wished she had spoken right then and there. But no, she had started the game, and would stay with it as long as she could.
The days to follow went on like months, although, she wasn’t even sure of the days. With no clocks nor sunlight to see by, time became nothing but a foreign object. Time was punctuated by events, and there were a lot of events.
The Longcoats used different methods of physical interrogation that her academy had trained her on the basis of. It was apparent after two hours of magically assaulting her mind that the memories could not be obtained from her by force, so they started immediately with physical abuse.
It was simple enough. She was shackled to a wall and smacked around by a burly mare who kept asking her questions that resembled, “Tell us what you sent”. That had gone on for maybe an hour, until the mare was tired, and West Winds’ chest and face had gone the color red.
Next they poked needles into her spine. Unlike the burly mare and her iron horseshoes, a stallion in wide-rimmed spectacles performed this. He would strike nerves she didn’t know existed and lean in close and hiss vulgar things in her ear. It was so much worse than what the mare had done. He would poke one way and she would stop feeling her legs, then the other and she’d scream in pain as a migraine ripped her skull in half. Though she refused to budge. Nothing would get her to speak. She had to keep telling herself that they wouldn’t need her anymore if she told them, and then she would die. She contemplated lying about what was said in the message, making it believable, but they were smarter than that; they would use truth spells on her.
Soon the stallion with the needles left her and she was given a break. It must have been at least three or four hours, but for all that it mattered, it might as well have been a minute.
They started to pull her teeth out next. A cute little mare with a white mane and sharp brows performed the task with a very strong horn and a pair of needlenose pliers. She would ask West Winds for the information she wanted, wait four seconds, then pull and ask again. After about four or five of these, the tooth would come out and she was then forced to swallow it upon failing to answer the same question.
West Winds found herself hating her trainers more and more. They had taught her to deal with pain and avoid physiological games. Having one’s teeth pulled out was a whole new kind of pain. The Longcoats were playing no games; they were as blunt and straightforward as a baseball bat. The message was clear: “Tell us or more pain you shall receive.”
It was six teeth later—two molars near the back and the four that had once belonged to her smile now nestled in her stomach—that the needlenose pliers mare shook her head with an amused smile.
West Winds was carried away, in too much agony to carry her own weight.
She was given time to recover, possibly a good half a day. West Winds didn’t really know; the time had been spent in and out of nightmarish sleep.
Next they let the stallions have at her. For anypony this would have been a problem; for West Winds, however, it was too much. She considered herself specifically a mare’s mare, and had stayed that way since birth. Both of them were rather large, quiet. She had cried, tried to ignore it though was purely unable to. When they were done, she might as well have been dead. She had lost everything.
Again, she was left alone, and in that time the pitifulness and sadness transformed into anger. She yelled, shouted, cursed the ponies she knew were listening in on microphones to oblivion. It was all she could do, though nothing helped against the anger. She wanted them all dead, wanted to do nothing more than line up every Longcoat to ever live and slit their throats one by one.
Half of this was Equestria’s fault, for not training her properly, for sending her on this mission. Who in their right mind would trust a mare with such weight on her shoulders? Still, she was sworn to Equestria, and all she had to do was hold out a little longer. A little longer and the war would be over. She’d be saved and the war would be over and every Longcoat would rot in a ditch.
They pulled more teeth, though this time West Winds wasn’t able to count. She passed out after the first one. They weren’t even asking her the questions anymore. They were only hurting. Why did they want to hurt her?
After another long period of confinement in her little room, a stallion came in and told her that she was being taken to the quiet room. She hid from his approach, cowered in a corner. Stallions could no longer be trusted, not after what they’d done to her.
Another one came in and they took her anyways, no matter how much she squirmed and screamed.
The quiet room was the worst.
The. Very. Worst.
Everything seemed pretty ordinary as the door was closed and West Winds was left to sit in the only chair available, bolted down in the center of the room. She’d seen something like it before. Fiberglass wedges covered the walls, specifically designed to absorb sound.
It took less than ten minutes for things to get bad.
She could hear her own heartbeat. She turned her head and the very audible creak of her muscles met her ears. Her hungry stomach gurgled and she swallowed, the sound of her throat working almost deafening in her head. A wave of nausea hit her and she doubled over, gagging. Nothing about this was right.
Waterboarding: she could handle that. Teeth pulling: that too, even if it was life scarring. Anything but the sound of her own fucking heartbeat! She whimpered and the sound penetrated the silence. Her stomach gave another angry growl and she clutched her hooves over it. There was no noise, nothing! It was just her.
She screamed and pounded the door, ears ringing in enervation. “Let me out!” she slurred around missing teeth.
It was hopeless. She backed away from the door, ears folded flat to her head. “Please...” She backed herself into a corner and curled into a ball. They were all watching her no doubt, laughing, the stallions.
She began to count the seconds, hiding her head in the crook of a forehoof. Somewhere around five minutes she started to hear things, other voices. She fumbled the count twice, but at somewhere around ten minutes she could feel them too. They stood all around her, laughing, poking at her, judging.
She exploded to her hooves, swinging out at them with bruised forelegs.
They weren’t there. But their voices were. West Winds bared her teeth and snapped at them, backing herself up into the corner. They wanted to hurt her more. She wouldn’t let them. She’d been trained to take enough abuse for six ponies, but this had gone too far. They had pushed her past her limits.
Eyes going unfocused, she fell to her rump and swallowed. No more. She would do anything, anything to stop the voices.
Then the door opened.
West Winds screamed and threw herself into the corner. It was another one of the stallions here to hurt her. But it wasn’t a stallion. It was the blue mare from the interrogation room. She had been nice; she wouldn’t hurt her.
The mare cracked a warm smile and reared up to spread her forehooves.
West Winds bawled and threw herself into the mare’s embrace. She was so warm, and soft. And West Winds knew, that here, in this mare’s grasp, everything would be alright. It had to be.
“Shhh,” the blue mare hummed softly. “I can make it all go away.”
The words were true; they had to be. If they weren’t she might as well be dead. West Winds’ breath hitched and she sobbed into the mare’s neck.
“On one condition,” the blue mare spouted coldly.
West Winds’ ears perked. “A-anything!” At least the room wasn’t so quiet with the door open.
“Tell me about the broadcast and it will all go away.”
She winced and shook her head. “N-no!” Her eyes widened as a metal device was placed over her head, two magical coils pointed at either temple. “I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” the mare purred, giving West Winds a soft pat on the back. “You don’t have to say anything. Just think, let it be in your mind. You’ll hold your vow.” She tossed a look over her head to a short stallion with glasses that stood just outside the door, a headset slung around his neck as he fidgeted with a few knobs on a glowing device full of magical tubes and coils. He looked up and gave her a nod.
West Winds shook her head again, closing her eyes as a vibrative humming filled her head. “No...”
“This is the wind,” West Winds said in a hushed voice. “Think nothing of it.”
“How’d you get this channel?” a stallion demanded back, though West Winds knew this was the confirmation signal.
Though she spoke in zebra, her own mind did the translation for her, “I have in my possession, knowledge that could severely cripple the Longcoat fleet.”
The channel beeped once. It was a sign of acknowledgement.
She continued. “Starting at zero-hundred hours in precisely fifteen days is a Longcoat Celebration. The most I’ve learned that it has something to do with an authority figure, but it’s big. Their entire military staff will be in attendance and all airships will be docked at...” She read of a series of coordinates. “Number of airships is unknown, but the skies will be unguarded.”
The channel beeped twice, then the stallion came back on. “Terminate this transmission at once or you will be fined by Equestrian law.” He paused. “Keep your head in the clouds.”
West Winds’ heart surged. That was the sign. She would receive a set of coordinates to meet a team to get her out of here. Mission successful.
The transmission paused.
West Winds sat back and grinned. “West Winds,” she cheered quietly under her breath. “Secret spy and savior of Equestria!”
She snapped out of the memory drooling like a dog. The blue mare smirked down at her and removed the device from her head. “Did we get it?” she asked the stallion.
He levitated a brightly-glowing tube of purple light from machine, the air around it fizzling and distorted. “Got it.”
West Winds rubbed her forehoof across her snout, blood smearing her coat from both nostrils. What had they just done? What had she done? Had they seen her memory!?
The blue mare flicked her tail. “She is no longer needed. Take her to solitary, basic rations. She does not leave.”
West Winds could only scream out in rage and fear as she was dragged away. It wasn’t right. She had never been cut out for this. She had failed.
She had failed Equestria.
The evacuation of West Winds had initially been arranged to take place two days before the attack in order to confirm her intelligence prior to the operation, but a misfiling in paperwork had assigned a team that did not exist to the operation. West Winds was never picked up. Even with lack of intel, Celestia had given the go-ahead in desperation.
Five days after West Winds’ unknown breach of silence, Equestria’s aerial fleet carried out the first ever attack on Longcoat territory, led by the undefeated Commander Slipstream. They were supposed to have come across a field of docked airships, but instead they had met an army.
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FINALLY! Gosh, that took forever.
every academy record for longest time
Half if this was Equestria’s fault
1. For the longest time.
2. Of.
Well, seems like Equestria needs to really, really, REALLY need to pick up their A game for this. Because sometimes one mistake can lead into a monumental disaster. Poor West Winds though... If I'm judging this right then West Winds has been in captivity for about 7 days already, including the 5 before the attack.
This does bring to bear though, what even caused the war in the first place? As far as your story has currently shown, no provocation at all was given as many a pony were slaughtered with an aerial bombardment one day. I do hope this gets revealed soon. Any by soon I mean in any chapter in this story. Who knows how long they stayed in (possible but most likely) isolation with no contact with any other race, save for the ponies.
This actually makes me think of a military dictatorship rule, attack first and ask questions later. Ahh, but speculations these are so they may hold no weight to this or they might. And here I go rambling on again, I'd better stop here.
3192717 Nono, I like your rambling
And I do plan to reveal it, but considering Equestria themselves does not know, there's no relevance until Slips and the others find it out.
And yeah, that error. That was me missing the O key and hitting I.
...Damn.
Typo.
3192717
Think cold war if America decided to set aside military spending and innovation altogether a few years before hand. Russia would be long coats "liberating" the land full of resources from "greedy rich people" and Equestria would be America with outdated and undermanned military branches.
Equestria has warm, fertile, and generally wealthy lands and these Long coats have cold, snowy, but coal and probably mineral rich mountains. You can't eat coal and minerals but you can make very nice war machines.
3236132 Staaaahp reading my mind!
Really though, I'm not trying to compare Equestria to America at all, or the Longcoats to Russia I mean that's be like comparing a Cadillac to a Gremlin (US is the gremlin of course.)
You're right on track everywhere else though.
3238757
Oddly enough, that comment sent me checking through your information to see if you were Russian. Thinking about it, it wasn't really a big pro Russian comment but it just struck me as one.
not the it would have mattered, it just sounded odd and peaked my curiosity. Also, my OC's talent just happens to be manipulation. You have to be on top of things if you ever hope to guide them correctly in that manner. So I kinda have to keep reading your mind. That being said, I really need to actually write out those tale I have of him rather than just letting the full fledged outlines collect dust on my hard drive.
Also, Papaya for breakfast.
3256985 Thank you! That really means a lot to me!
3257087 No problem, mate. This reminds me of the Leviathan series. Except that the Zeppelins aren't made with bioengineering an ecosystem into a whale.
3257286 hehe, yeah, I always thought that was pretty weird that they turned whales into airships.
3258232 Weird schmeird. It kinda makes sense, in a way. Think about it. Whales are usually considered to be long, wide, and tall. The greatest in each case, really, when talking about animals living on earth in this day and age. Also, changing them from being an oxygen/carbon monoxide breather into an oxygen/hydrogen breather is an interesting concept as well, as it continuously generates its own fuel or whatever. I would totally be a Darwinist over a Clanker, if only because machines are loud as fuck.
You might want to set this story to "mature" with a gore tag. It's got some fairly gruesome scenes in it.
Good read anyways. Looking forward to future chapters.
4212832 Mmm... I don't know if I'd go mature, and even if there's gore, he has an author's note at the beginning of the chapter saying it's not a necessary chapter for the plot.
Though a teen, gore reading would be welcome enough, since this was really not much worse than the torture/interrogation scenes in black oops toot.