Pony by Day, Mercenary by Night

Chapter 5

Early Author’s note

Zeta squad will reach Ponyville soon enough, do you think they should take a stealthy approach and avoid detection?  Leave your responses in the comments

I do not condone drug use

"Alright chaps listen up." Misha said; he closed his eyes in sadness at his latest revelation as he made his way to where he last heard Kad, Farshot, and Fixer.  "I've orders from boss himself, there is a convoy of locals headed this way, we are to salvage whatever else we can from the ship, and then obliterate the rest of it, as in leave no evidence of our existence behind.  As much as it pains me to say it, we’re going to have to erase my ship from existence.”  Misha looked sad as he said the last part.

He opened his eyes to a familiar sight, Farshot, on the ground, in a fetal position, Scorch nearby, breathing rapidly to compensate for lost oxygen, and Kad, with some form of item in his hands, obliterated from impact against Farshot’s helmet.

“Roger.” Said Kad “Executing orders ASAP, currently on standby, waiting for Zetas 042 and 009 to recover from brief bout of infighting.”

“You are aware that you don’t have to address us by our serial numbers right chum?” Responded Misha.

“Sorry 089, but we are on standby, protocol states to address all Zetas on standby with their serial numbers.”

“Honestly Kad, protocol on something like this is unimportant, besides, if you recall, we are soldiers of fortune, and we answer to nobody except our boss, so protocol doesn’t matter.  Why don’t you just ease up and relax?”

Kad, who was standing at attention up until this point slowly began to ease up, and was almost slouching until

“Can’t let you do that, STARFOX!” Yelled Scorch from behind Kad

Kad jumped up, drew his combat knife, and landed on Scorch.  He was about to stab  Scorch with his combat knife, thinking he was an enemy, but then he saw it was Scorch and calmed down.

Kad raised an eyebrow, “Seriously?  You’re making a Starfox 64000 reference?  That was completely off topic and was a sentence fragment that was completely out of context!  You’re going against standard speech protocol.”

“Listen, can we please get back on track?  We have orders to *sniff* destroy my ship.  We have to salvage whatever we can from it though.”

“Hey, hey, LISTEN!” Said Scorch.

Misha began rubbing the temples of his helmet as he responded

“Yes Scorch?”

“Does ‘whatever we can’ include the weed and booze?”

“Of course! The weed serves as a stress reliever and does to a certain extent work as a painkiller, or so Rex says.  Besides, ever since it was legalized its price skyrocketed!  Burning that much weed would be like committing financial suicide, besides, boss wouldn’t like it if we burned all his weed.  If you lay a hand on my ‘booze’, as you so nicely put it, without my consent, I’ll break the offending appendage.”

“Right-o! Gotcha! So, let’s get too it, hey, is Ghost done calming Fixer down yet?”

“…” Came the reply from right behind Scorch

“Bwah! How’d you do that?!” Yelped Scorch

“…”

“Right…, forgot about that.”

“…” Ghost said to Misha

“Really? Good work Ghost, anyways, I assume you heard the orders from Boss?”

“…”

“Alright then, get to work squad!  We simply must remove any traces of our existence lest we be found out.”

30 minutes later

Zeta squad was now proceeding deeper into the forest, the ship they had just left was now little more than ions floating in the air, giving the local area an ionized odor.

“Shit, hey, Misha!  How long do we have to keep walking?”  Farshot asked

“Boss never specified, just keep moving until we’re a good distance off.  I would recommend we make it a whole day walk just to be safe.” Came the reply.

“Hey, Misha, when can we get at the grass you’ve got in the bag?” Asked Scorch

“Preferably not until we reach another location suitable to reestablish another camp in.

Meanwhile in Canterlot

“Blackstar, are you ready yet?”  Asked the Ruler of the Sun

“Yes Princess, ready when you are.” Sev replied

“Then let us make our way to the source of the disturbance” Celestia said as she unfurled her majestic wings.

“Alright.” Sev said ‘Shit, how do I do that?’ He thought. ‘It was easy with birds because I’d just have to think that my wings were my arms, but, these wings are something else entirely! I already have arms, err forelegs.  Maybe I just have to think about moving my back muscles.’

As Sev focused on the muscles in his wing, they slowly unfurled, and Sev viewed them with a look of triumph.

“Impressive” Celestia said, “That is a rather large wingspan.”

“Oh, err thank you Princess.”

“Now, let’s go”

“Right.” ‘shit’

As Sev and Celestia made their way to a nearby balcony, Sev was contemplating on how to use his new appendages

‘They’re wings, so, I should just thing about flapping them’ he thought.

As Sev tried this, his wings slowly began moving, and soon, Sev found that his wings had a rather impressive range of motion.

“Alright Blacktar, let’s fly” Celestia said with a smile

“With pleasure Princess.”

Meanwhile, Rex

Celestia had left the room with Sev to go to a nearby balcony, leaving Rex alone with the Princess of the Night.  The air was thick with tension as Rex broke the silence.

“So, uhh, medical evaluation test?”

Luna glared at him “Thou may have fooled our sister, but we know that thee and thine friend are somehow connected with the events that have transpired as of late.  We are watching thou.”

Rex rolled his eyes as he thought ‘if only she knew.’

“Right princess, anyways, lead on!  Let’s see that examination room!”

“Follow us.”

As Luna and Rex made their way to the examination room, he found himself face to face with her shapely flank.  He quickly blushed and moved to the side so he could not be accused of staring at the royal flank.

Luna made her way into the room without saying a word, and Rex silently followed.  In the room, they were greeted by a unicorn mare who bowed as the princess entered the room.

“Princess, The other doctors and I have prepared the homunculi as you requested.”  She said.

“Thank you Full Heal.” Responded Luna, “Now, let us get this examination under way!”

“Because thou dost not have any credentials, we have prepared this magical homunculus for thou to operate on, if thou art to be a royal doctor, thou must be proficient in the fields of diagnosis and operation, thou must state every problem with the patient, then, thou must either diagnose a proper medication to fix it, or thou must operate on the patient to fix it, the body will change in a few hours to its next form for the next test, this will continue happening until thou complete all the tests, or until thou art unable to continue, in which case thou shall fail the test.  So, get to work.”  Luna said to Rex while pointing at what looked like the unconscious form of a pony.

Rex got to work immediately.  Upon receiving his orders from Luna, he began to poke and prod the body, examining it from every angle.  He took went to a nearby wall and removed a stethoscope and proceeded to check the homunculus’ artificial heartbeat.

“Why dost thou not simply use a diagnosis spell?”  Luna asked, confused that a unicorn was using machines to do what a simple spell could accomplish.

‘Spell, as in magic?’  Rex thought ‘Shit, alright, time to see if any of Boss’ skills in bullshittery rubbed off on me’.

“Well Princess, you see, I was raised by a family that did not use magic.  I am one of the few unicorns in my family.  Blackstar, myself, and seven others were adopted by a rather kind hearted citizen.  We found that we all had something in common, we each were without parents.  So, as time went on, we grew closer to the citizen, Blackstar, I, and the seven others considered each other nothing less than a brother.  We were brothers through thick and thin, we always stuck together.  However, all good things must come to an end, eventually, one of us was ripped from this world prematurely, and eventually we all just left.  So that princess, is why I do not use magic.  I was raised to use equipment because the only thing I had that resembled a father figure was a non-magic user.”  Rex said as he thought of his response on the spot

‘Holy shit, that was some good bullshittery’

“So Princess” Rex continued  “If you’ll excuse me, I must continue this diagnosis, you did say that there was a time limit to this correct?”

Luna only nodded in agreement, she found his story strange, but it was not unheard of, still, eight foals is a rather large amount, whoever adopted them must have been well off.

“Yes, continue, thou dost not have much time left.”  She responded

“Yes, understood.”  Rex said as he continued to examine the ‘patient’.  Now, armed with a stethoscope, he finally finished his diagnosis.

“Well, I would say that this pony has multiple fractured ribs, the softness of the region where the sternum should be suggests that it is broken.  There isn’t really anything that can be done to treat fractured ribs aside from giving the pony some pain medication.”

“Well, if thou were proficient in magic, thou wouldst be expected to use a bone-mending spell to heal the homunculus.”

Full Heal looked impressed.  “You got all that in two minutes just from poking and prodding the homunculus?”

“Yeah, so do I get a pass?  Oh, and y'know patients aren't the only things I'm good at poking and prodding”  Rex said while smirking slyly at Full Heal.

Full Heal blushed and looked away and said, “Right! On to the next test!”  A little louder than she intended to.

Hours passed by as Rex diagnosed homunculus after homunculus, treating whatever he could with his lack of magic.  By the time he was up to the last homunculus, the entirety of the royal medical staff had come to watch the ‘unicorn that can’t do magic’.  Everyone of them impressed at the speed and accuracy with which Rex was diagnosing the homunculi.

“Wow, and they say this guy doesn’t have any credentials” Whispered one doctor pony to another in the large crowd that had now formed inside the room.

“This guy is amazing”

“How does he do that?”

Were all rather common sentiments among the crowd.

“Y’think maybe he’s had some form of special training is this stuff?” One stallion asked

“Nonsense!  They don’t teach you how to make all that improvised stuff in the medical schools!”  Came a response

“Yeah, well, he’s getting the job done, and the best part is, that he made sure to sanitize the improvised equipment to prevent any infections, and on top of that, those improvised tools he’s using could easily replace anything we’ve got at the castle!”  Rebutted the first voice.

After another half hour, Luna stepped out of the room and all nearby medical staff immediately bowed.  She was followed by a triumphant looking Rex and a rather flustered looking Full Heal.

“Well Princess, I have to say, this is quite the proposition you’ve made, and I’ll consent to it.” Rex said.

Meanwhile, above the forest

“So Princess” Sev began “Where did you say the scout’s reports said the disturbance came from?”

“Just a few miles west of our current location, I have reason to believe that it may be connected with the aliens that attacked the castle two days ago.”

“Right”

“You seem rather quiet, what happened?  You were rather outgoing before?”

“Oh, sorry Princess” Sev replied “I was just deep in thought.”

‘Well, I guess this is as good a time as any’ Celestia thought to herself as she proceeded to attempt to read Sev’s mind.  However, after finding that she could not hear any of his thoughts, she donned a look of perplexity. ‘Strange’ She thought ‘Luna was right, I can’t read his mind, something is wrong here.’

“Is something the matter Princess?” Sev asked as he noticed that Celestia was staring at him.

Celestia, realizing that she had been staring, quickly looked away apologizing

“Sorry about that, I just remembered something”  She said

‘She wants the dick’ Sev thought to himself ‘Eh, who am I kidding, she doesn’t seem like she’d be into me anyways.’

One hour of awkward silence later

“This is it” Celestia said as they landed in a clearing.  She immediately covered her nose with a wing as she noticed the smell in the air.

“Well Princess” Sev said, following her example and covering his own nose with his wing, there doesn’t appear to be anything here” ‘They covered up their tracks, nicely done’ Sev thought to himself.

Celestia looked at the surrounding clearing and could find no trace of Zeta squad.  She did not notice the smirk on Sev's face as she scoured the area for any trace as to what may have transpired there.

Meanwhile, the rest of Zeta squad

"Oh, hey guys, look at all these cool flowers!"  Scorch said as Zeta squad walked through a patch of blue flowers.

Fixer lightened up, and a smile plastered itself on his face as he reached down to pick one.

End Chapter

Author's note

So yeah, that was it, expect the next chapter to be around Sunday, I make no promises though, and seriously guys, some feedback would be much appreciated.  Sorry for the shortness, I just figured that this would be a good point to leave the chapter hanging.