Assassin of Kings and Queens

5,720 years ago

A wizened old earth pony sat before an ebony colt, who shifted under the elder's milky-white gaze.

"I know what you are, and I know what you are not," stated the pony.

"Thou speaks in strange tongues, Prophet," the colt responded. The pony smiled, then convulsed as he coughed violently. Speckles of red fell upon the colt's jet black mane and fur, but he remained still.

"Your parents keep many secrets from you, Blade That Walks in Shadow," the pony wheezed.

"Mind thy tongue of mine elders, and mine name is Ferrum Latet. Don't thee forget it," the colt said through gritted teeth, his cheeks flushed, and his wings widening reflexively.

"You are blinded by your emotions, Blade. Even I can see as much. However, discussing your... situation... was not the reason for your coming here, correct?"

The colt nodded slowly after a minute, his horn horn glowing red as he pulled a roll of parchment, an inkwell, and a white feather from his saddlebags, which lay nearby.

"My guardians, Solaris and Noctis, asked of me to record thine words of prophesy," the colt said.

The pony smiled sadly.

"As you wish."

The pony's eyes began to glow a brilliant white, and he began to speak in a deep, rough voice that was not his own.

"He will fall when his world burns by his will,

When a world of ashes he must till.

He will rise once more among the dead,

When faces of loved are filled with dread.

Together with those of a world of war

They must find a way to close the Door

And one with many faces he must kill."

The pony collapsed, blood slowly oozing out of his mouth. The colt carefully put away his materials, his task complete, then went to check the old pony's pulse.

There was none.

"That was dramatic, even for you, Prophet," Ferrum remarked, bowing his head.

"May thou find peace in the Everlasting Glade."

As the colt strode out of the lean-to, the red in the blood coalesced onto a single strand of hair, permanently staining that part of his mane.

Outside, a young white stallion with stands of blue in his mane stood waiting.

"Did he say anything of interest?" The colt asked, falling into step next to Ferrum.

Ferrum sighed and floated the scroll over to the other foal, who caught it deftly in his bright blue glow.

A couple seconds later, he returned it.

"Sounds dramatic," the white foal remarked.

"Nocturne, if it didn't, the Prophet would have to give up his Gift. By the way, how are we to tell Solaris that the Prophet is dead?"

"Solaris? I believe he'll harbor no hard feelings against you, but I would wait to reveal the results of your task until Noctis leaves with Tia and Luna."

The two foals continued in silence, thunder in the distance foretelling an approaching storm.

Present day

"GET ON YOUR KNEES WITH YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!"

The man sighed as he complied. He was in the middle of a decrepit building, rubble piled in corners of it's various rooms. An officer in a beige trench coat approached the kneeling man, smiling wickedly, pistol pointed an the man's head.

"Jonathan Clark," the officer said," you've led us on one hell of a goose chase. Any last words before we take you back?"

"Yeah," Clark said, looking the officer in the eye.

"Fuck off."

The officer tisked as he got closer, gun still leveled.

"Language," the officer said in an accusatory tone, pulling out a pair of handcuffs.

John Clark lept up and tackled the officer, sending the gun flying off into the darkness. Clark leapt away from the officer, sprinting out of the building... into a squad of police officers, guns all trained on Clark.

John chuckled darkly as he raised his hands once more.

"This day just keeps getting better and better..." he muttered darkly.

The officer he'd tackled strode out the building, sporting a bloody nose, a comically large bump on his head, and an unnaturally wide smile.

"Stand down, Clark. You've been on the run for months, and your superiors are eager to see you again."

One of the police officers, donned in full body armor, went to Clark and handcuffed him.

The officer in the trench coat led Clark to a waiting car and shoved him in the back seat.

After the door was closed, Clark peeked back at the building. In one of the windows of the top floor, John spotted someone watching the scene unfold, then quickly retreat from the window. Clark smiled as he relaxed in the back seat, the car slowly lifting off the cracked asphalt road, angling up towards the crowded skyways.

He needed to rest up if he was going to escape.

In the year 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. As other countries entered the space race, the National Association for Space Exploration and Colonization slowly began to develop. Two hundred years after the Sputnik launch, N.A.S.E.C. rose from the shadows and waged a planet-wide civil war against the world superpowers at the time: China, Russia, France, Britain, Japan, India, Germany, Pakistan, Brazil, and the United States of America. N.A.S.E.C. defeated them all and instigated a plutocracy across the entire planet. In the year 2387, N.A.S.E.C. developed the first slipdrive, a device that allowed almost instantaneous travel through space, opening the vast expanse of space to exploration and colonization.

Ten months ago, in June of the year 2403, N.A.S.E.C. developed a prototype for a slipdrive that allowed travel to alternate dimensions. Johnathan Clark, captain of the vessel Black Hawk, had fled with the stolen device after a confrontation with his superiors at N.A.S.E.C., and ended up crash landing a planet later dubbed "Equis." As the only survivor of that fateful accident, John Clark instigated the first recorded contact with ponykind. John Clark ended up battling in a planet-wide war between ponies and griffons, which climaxed in a showdown against a corrupted necromancer. With the help of a Demon named Jerry, John Clark had managed to open a rift in space-time, and banished the necromancer, though the resulting energy flux had sent Clark back to Earth.

That was four months ago. Since then, Clark had led a band of revolutionaries in an attempt to bring down a corrupt N.A.S.E.C., which had been trying to locate the dimension that Clark had visited for unknown reasons. Now, Clark has been captured by the forces he'd been engaged with in a bloody guerrilla war...

John was roughly pulled out of the car. For a moment, Clark admired the N.A.S.E.C. Headquarters Building, located in Washington D.C., the last stand for the old superpowers. The building itself was built to resemble a strand of DNA, a glass double helix that reached into the heavens. Then Clark was shoved through the front doors. He briefly glanced to his left, where a woman in the black stealth armor of the N.A.S.E.C. Special Forces was engaged in a heated discussion with a man in a heavy Juggernaut suit, identifying him as a soldier in N.A.S.E.C.'s Mobile Infantry. The red-haired secretary at the white marble desk looked ill prepared to deal with the argument, especially when the words "missed" and  "anniversary" were the prime topics of discussion.

John smiled as he passed. His team was early. The police officer shoved him into one of the waiting glass elevators and pushed a button near the door. The door sealed shut, and the elevator shot upward.

The two stood in silence as the elevator rose up the double helix. At the thousandth floor, the elevator doors hissed open. Up here, oxygen had to be pumped up using a series of pumps and pipes.

The police officer roughly led Clark to a door, and after knocking three times, entered, shoving John into the room, almost sending him sprawling. Inside was a large, metal, semicircular desk, with thirteen people sitting at it, one for every district of the Earth. Each one had a personal army, each outnumbering Clark's a ten thousand to one.

The man in the center dismissed the officer, who saluted and left the room.

The man smiled.

"Hello, Mr. Clark. Long time, no see."

"Fuck you," Clark snapped.

The man frowned.

"We were hoping you might be more... cooperative. There-"

"There are only so many ways that I can dismiss you," John interrupted," and the rest of your bullshit organization. You have me, if that. What else do you want?"

The man's gaze became level.

"Let me put it this way," he said dangerously. "You stole something very valuable, and it is imperative that we find-"

"Over my dead fucking body," Clark interrupted for the second time.

A woman on the far right smirked.

"That can be arranged," she said as she stood up and pulled out a pistol from a hip-holster.

"Ambassador Davis, put away your firearm and sit down!" The man in the center yelled.

"Now, Clark," the man said, returning his attention to the handcuffed man in front of him," there are no need for such unpleasantness. Surely we can negotiate some-"

"There is nothing to negotiate!" snarled Clark.

The man's eyes narrowed, then he leaned back, smiling.

"Not even the lives of your teammates?"

Clark's eyes narrowed.

"Please, Mr. Clark. Did you really believe that you would be able to escape? Our security guards easily located your men, all of which are now in custody."

"How many?" Clark asked, a smirk slowly spreading across his face.

"I beg your pardon?" asked the man. The other men and women were beginning to look uneasy.

"How many people did you arrest?"

"Eight, of course. The standard number of subordinates in our military organizations."

Clark smiled winningly.

"You missed a couple," he stated matter-of-factly. Then he dived to the floor, the door being blasted open a split second later. On the other side, was the woman in the black stealth armor, wielding a none-too-stealthy shotgun. As she pumped the cocking mechanism, she took a step through the demolished doorway.

"Knock-knock!" she jeered as she leveled the shotgun with the desk. All the N.A.S.E.C. officials dived for cover as the women unleashed a storm of lead into the table.

"About time, Susan! Where's backup?" Clark said as the two of them raced out of the room, the world leaders already calling in "reinforcements."

"Jackson's covering our exit, and Sergeant Hope went to secure our evac," Susan said as they raced towards the elevators.

"What about the others?"

They stopped at the elevator. Susan refused to meet Clark's gaze.

"He wasn't lying about the arrests."

"We're going after them," Clark stated.

"Clark, that's not-"

"Susan, I'm not leaving them behind. Not this time."

"...Fine."

Susan slammed a fist into the "down" button, then brought a hand up to an earpiece.

"Hope, me, Jackson, and Clark are going after the others."

Susan listened carefully, frowning.

"Copy that. Johnson, signing out."

She turned to Clark.

"Hope says if we're not at the rendezvous point in thirty, she's bailing. She said the LZ is getting too hot."

Clark shrugged.

"We'll make do."

The elevator dinged as it arrived at there level. It opened to reveal David "Nuke" Jackson, his Juggernaut suit all but destroyed, blood and burn marks staining what was left of it. He tossed aside a crumpled mass of metal that looked suspiciously similar to a minigun as he exited.

"This elevator is out of order. We need a Plan B," he stated flatly.

"Plan B went to hell when ten of us got arrested! Same goes for Plans C though Z!" Susan retorted

"Then we improvise," David said as he tossed a couple primed grenades into the elevator, before running off down one of the corridors. Susan and John didn't hesitate to sprint after him, an explosion sounding behind them.

"The fuck happened to the gun?!" asked John as they ran.

"I ran out of bullets," Jackson replied stoically.

David charged towards the glass window at the end of the hallway, arms covering his face protectively.

He burst through in a shower of razor-sharp shards, hurling himself over the side.

John and Susan skidded to a halt at the shattered window.

"The fuck just happened?!" exclaimed Susan as John peered over the edge. John smiled wickedly.

"Clever," he stated as he leaped into the thin air, arms spread wide as he disappeared from view.

"The fuck is wrong with everyone today?!" Susan was standing stock still, having witnessed two of her teammates leap off the thousandth floor.

A Falcon class heli-jet lifted itself into view, twin jet engines lifting it so that it was level with the window.

Clark waved from the open side, Jackson having already taken a place at one of the side-turrets.

She smiled disbelievingly as she leapt aboard.

"Since when could we afford a chopper?" she shouted to Clark as they zoomed down towards the buildings below.

"N.A.S.E.C. was feeling quite generous, so I hear!" He shouted back.

The side-door of the aircraft snapped closed as he continued.

"I hate to ask," Susan shouted to Jackson," but who the hell is flying this bucket?!"

Rainbow Dash sighed heavily, her wings folded neatly against her back, as she trudged towards the train station.

"Go buy tickets, they said. It'll distract you, they said. Stay out of sight, they said. It probably won't rain, they said," she muttered darkly as she headed down the concrete sidewalk, fat raindrops soaking her trench coat and hoofball cap.

Ironbeak had told her to stay grounded, as flying through a storm is both dangerous and suspicious, leaving her no real other option than walking on hoof.

As a Guard patrol neared, she pulled her cap down lower over her face and trudged on, careful not to make eye contact with the ponies as they passed.

"Psst."

Dash nearly had a heart attack. Adrenaline pumping though her veins, she whirled around, intent on confronting the perpetrator.

Other than the quickly retreating patrol of guards, there was no one on the rain-slick road.

"Psst!" The voice came again, this time a bit more urgently.

Turning to a nearby alleyway, Dash spotted a pair of green eyes, shrouded by emerald hair, staring at her.

"What part of 'psst' don't you understand?" Moe asked, sounding slightly irritated..

"The lack of any discernible words, for one," Rainbow snipped back.

Moe chuckled.

"Anyway," he said, letting his voice drop to a low whisper, barely heard over the rain," I've come to give you a snippet of friendly advice."

"Advice?"

"Indubitably," Moe replied.

"No matter what you hear," Moe said," no matter who you meet, DON'T stay in Canterlot Station longer than you need to. It could be bad for your health."

Rainbow raised an eyebrow.

"...Whatever you say, bug," Rainbow Dash muttered as she continued on her trudge to the station, leaving Moe standing in the rain.