7 Beta's Team

"I was the first. My designation is Test subject 02: Beta test. It means I'm the first version that can stand on its own.... as it were. I'm not a "finished" product however. I'm not like the rest of my team. I can't download information into or out of my brain. But I learn at an amazing rate. I can read a text book and completely understand the material in a matter of hours at most. I technically have about 5 degrees in engineering, computer science, language, survival, biology - that one kind kicked my ass - and physics. I understand how the world and technology works."

Mac whistled in appreciation. "You're pretty smart then."

"Not enough." Beta said bitterly. "I still got seriously wounded when I escaped." he said, unconsciously rubbing his bandages.

"I should have died the night I escaped. That hunter..." Beta gave a quick, vicious smile as he remember that kill... "his blade struck true... but I struck truer. I have subcutaneous bio mesh armor" he said, thumping his chest with a rock, a light 'tink' sound was made from the metal under Beta's chest.

"That means I'm very hard to hurt, let alone kill. But there is a built-in flaw. That's where I was struck." he finished, rubbing his abdomen again.

"How bad is it?" Mac asked concerned that his friend might up and die on him here and now.

"Well, let's just say I no longer have an appendix. It seems these bandages are healing me." Beta's mind turned to lab life. He needed to tell someone. He had lived his entire life in secret. He NEEDED to tell Mac because he knew Big Macintosh, former Captain of the Secret Guard of Canterlot, would understand.

"I was first woken around physical age 8. I'm not sure how old I actually am. Just that I was about 8 biologically when they decided to wake me up the first time. They examined me all over..." Beta blushed. "They were very thorough. That's when we learned about my... disability. They wanted to be able to quickly and easily program me. But I was very smart and clever so that was seen as a possible advantage. The b-ox, one series... me... were meant to be assassins, so being able to learn and process information fast to be able to change plans on the fly, was seen as absolutely necessary. My genius level intelligence was still as a desirable trait. So they let me live."  Beta said as if this was completely logical thing to do with a child. Mac had a momentary look of horror and indignation that anyone would consider a foal as disposable.

"They started teaching me. They figured out what was "wrong" with me and fixed it in the others. Father was always kind and gentle with me." Beta remembered fondly.

"Who is father?" Mac asked.

"He was the lead scientist. I'm biologically his son. He used his DNA.... um, his seed, to form the human parts of me. Honestly I think he made me defective so I could grow up with his son. His son died before I was 'born'. We would have been the same age. In the end, I think he adopted me because he missed his son so badly." Beta paused, sad. He loved his father. Even accepting the knowledge that he'd started out as a replacement for his son... Michael, he knew his father loved him. That last night was all the proof he would ever need... or get.

"I never lived outside the lab except later when I went on missions. Sometimes I would go back in the tubes... to sleep, after a couple months, sometimes only a couple weeks and wake up slightly, physically older. When I was 11, I stayed out until puberty hit. That was when they woke up Alpha. She's the doctor. Her job was to put us back together in the field. She's a pure vixen furry. She was beautiful and smart..."

"So you got the hots for her?" Mac smiled at Beta.

"Um... We... discovered each other... we played doctor a couple of times..." Beta said blushing. "After she woke up, we were usually awake at the same time. She had a doctorate in several medical fields and one in engineering... all uploaded into her brain. She simply woke up knowing things. They felt she still needed real world experience. They discovered with her that just because you know something, doesn't mean you automatically know how to use it in the real world. So they started showing her HOW to be a doctor and vet. She knew more about us furries, I think, than even the scientists who made us."

"When we, Alpha and I, were around 14, they woke up Gamma, the weasel sniper, and Delta, the tracker and our leader. He was a German shepherd. Serious but also fun to play with..." his voice drifted off. He missed them so much. They were his family... his brothers and sister in arms. Mac understood very well what Beta was going through. Even though he was banned from Canterlot, he still met his old buddies for a cider now and then. He got the feeling Beta's comrades were no longer living.

"We started out training around then too. I had already been training in martial arts for a couple years?" Beta said with a question. With all that sleep time, it was understandable how difficult it was for him to know how long he was doing anything. Mac felt sorry for Beta's suffering. He was robbed of most of his childhood, but at least not completely.

"Alpha and I had some fun around the facility. We'd play jokes and tricks on the doctors and staff and scientists. But then Dobsin took over. The government wanted faster results. So when I was ... 14? Everyone was kept awake... except Omega. He was woken up only a couple times. His body was more complex than anyone else's... He had extra enhancements... so he had to sleep more. He was part bear, part horse, part... I don't know. He wasn't the smartest, but he had a good heart." Beta remembered the young Omega. Slow witted but a good furson overall.

"The first mission they sent us on was to eliminate a tin pot dictator in Africa. He was a warlord that had conquered an area around a mine the military wanted, but could not go in there officially... so they sent us. I guess they thought it would be easy..."

***the adventures of Team Beta...The Freak Force Four!***

"When they planned us, they only thought of us as your standard grunt. Kind of mindless but capable. They never expected our animal instincts for survival to kick in. Somehow, in me, that manifested in a very sneaky ruthlessness. I... I tried to leave as many alive as I could. My Ninjitsu Sensei told me to be fast, quiet, and unseen. That a true shinobi accomplishes his task with only one death... his mark's. I did my best to only eliminate the target..."

"But that's not always possible" Mac interrupted, seeing the sadness on Beta's face. Beta nodded and continued.

"I was always to be the front man. Gamma would cover me at a distance, sniping off anyone who got too close to me or would alert to what have you. Delta was base protector and second sniper. He was trained with a very, very large sword that could cleave through several men at once. Much like a buster sword... I know... you don't know what that is." Beta finished, waving his paw.

"Anyway, I went in first, I was almost to the dictator when I kicked something and a guard spotted me. Gamma shot him before he could alert the other guards, but then it was like the fates were working against us. One thing after another began to go wrong. Gamma would shoot a guard, and then, when he fell, that would alert ANOTHER guard who Delta would have to shoot. THAT would alert yet another guard, and so on. " Mac couldn't help but laugh, and gave Beta a 'been there, done that' look. Beta smiled and nodded

"I gave up and started taking out guards as I went along myself. I finally found the mark. He was... big. I mean you're a tiny little pony, Mac, compared to this guy. He fit WARLORD in every way. He was massive, well built, and strong! He was also a lot faster than I expected. I managed to keep out of his grip, but only barely at times. I had to slowly kill him, swiping at him with my kunai, um knives, and claws" he said looking at his paws

"I would run around him at high speed, jumping in when I had a clear shot. But somehow he managed to evade even being a mark for the snipers. It was as though he knew where we'd be looking. After a few minutes it was clear he DID know where we'd be, as our the base camp was attacked. They got to find out that the doctor was also trained in self-defense." Beta smiled "and she was vicious"

Mac froze... it was her. Beta's doctor vixen... it was her...

"Delta's blade also got its first taste of blood, and it liked it. Throughout both melees', Gamma managed to keep taking out soldiers. His lithe body allowed him to get away with his sniper rifle and a backup pistol, which he had to use quite a few times to take out goons who would come after him. He found a place in a tree that was even better than his location on the ground and kept firing."

"It was around that time that fast as I am, I was finally caught by the warlord. He started to crush my small frame. I was only about 15 at the time. I saw the glint of Gamma's scope and the direction he was waving. I leaned my head as far right as I could, and a moment later there was a flash and an explosion of blood, bone and brain matter. The job was done. The monster's body was determined to kill me and it took several moments before I was able to break its grip." Beta shivered. He still had nightmares about that first mission.

"As the warlord's body slumped, finally, on the ground, I began setting up the explosives. I knew that this place had to blow. That was the second part of our mission. I had to trust my comrades could fend off those soldiers attacking them. After putting too much explosives around the propane tank and a couple other places - which took no more than a minute to do with my speed, I raced to my friends. I set traps so that if they were found too soon, and they tried to remove them, they'd go off."

"It's a good thing I'm so fast, I was barely out of the compound when the first explosion went off, which triggered the next one via radio, and so on. My tail and a good portion of my hind fur got burned." he said, rubbing the old, long since-healed wound. That one also gave him nightmares."

"I got up the hill in no time, ignoring my pain. Burned fur is better than burned skin any day anyway. I arrived just as some grunt was going to take off Alpha's head with a machete. She was on the ground, looking up in horror, panic, and fear, her own melee weapon broken at her feet. He was about to bring his blade down upon her, and that's when I struck. From her perspective he just waited. His arm high in the air behind him, ready to lay waste to the beautiful vixen before him, when his arm fell off, followed by his head. He collapsed into piles of bloody meat a moment later."

"No one harms my mate!" I vaguely recall saying. I'm not sure where it came from. But seeing Alpha in danger like that drove me into what we came to call the madness. Our eyes go completely black and everything about us increases including our vicious, ruthlessness... it's like some kind of super adrenaline, but worse. We become killing monsters, only avoiding those we know or care about.

Beta paused for a few minutes, collecting himself. He hated this aspect of himself. He wanted to be... human. Not a monster. He liked his body, but he wanted to be more in control of himself if not his body.

"I then looked down at her. Her smile of relief seeing me alive after the explosion filled me with a happiness I never understood. A moment later someone tried to strike her down again. I was past him in a flash. A moment later, he too was falling to the ground in pieces. My claws and clothes were now soaked in blood. Speaking to Alpha, I told her "I'll protect you until hell itself surrenders to me" and I was off, killing the rest of our attackers." Beta shook his head. He cared for Alpha but he never understood these strong feelings of protectiveness he had.

"Half an hour later, we were at the extraction point. When we called on the radio to be picked up, we requested extra clothing as ours were kind of bloody. They seemed surprised that we were calling for extraction. We had to repeat the code sequence several times before they sent someone to get us."

Mac whistled in appreciation and admiration. "You guys had some long odds."

"Yeah, but we survived. We discovered much later that it had been considered a suicide mission. We weren't expected to survive. They didn't actually have a bird in the air to pick us up at the appropriate time. We had to hide several times from patrols looking for us."

"We collected a few more weapons. We were picked up with more gear and ammunition than we left with. We left the place booby trapped of course. 10 minutes after extraction we heard a very loud BOOM... someone had found the weapons cache we had trapped."

"Watching Alpha working was always amusing. Her bed side manner was utter crap in the field but damned if she didn't keep us alive and in good health." Beta said with a respectful, broad smile. Mac was glad to see positive memories for the boy.

"So after our first mission, they started to let the team stay awake most of the time. We started living like people. They had a device that would help us heal after missions. We all had nannites implanted in us to speed the healing process along." Beta said, again rubbing his abdomen, where his nannite farm no longer was.

"Nanny what?" Mac said. "I told you boy..." Beta laughed.

"Sorry. They're tiny, little um... bugs that live in the body that heal you and keep you healthy. It's what the hunter hit. That alone isn't enough to kill me, but he did some additional... um... surgery on the way in and out of my abdomen. It really is a miracle I'm not dead, you know."

"Beta..." Mac said, coming closer to him. "You're safe here now. You know that right?" Beta looked into Big Mac's eyes.

"I wish I was certain. I..." Beta faltered for words. His uncertainty was taking over again. Mac reared upon his hind legs and gave Beta a strong hug.

"I'll protect you little bunny." Beta wrapped his arms around Mac and broke down crying. He knew Mac would do everything in his power to protect him. Beta had never had someone watching his back like Mac. Sure his team... his family looked out for each other but this... this was different.

As Mac held the trembling bunny fox in his hooves, he decided it was time he stopped holding back. He cared for this being too much not to.

They never made it to the farm that day. Instead they spent the day discovering.