Blood and Shadows

Operation: Into the Rabbit Hole

Location: Tuto, Illesia: Site of main Elite military headquarters, suspected to contain vital information.

Date and Time: September 24, 2037. 00:23 Hours.

Subject: Rainbow Dash

Objective: Retrieve any enemy intelligence and vacate the base undetected.

This was a suicide mission from the start. I was in scuba gear, approaching the Naval base, trying to keep an eye out for underwater security, such as mines. Tuto was supposed to be the main military headquarters for the Elites, even BLACK didn't know anything about it. I just hoped that I would be able to pull this off without a scratch but my wits were telling me otherwise. As I kicked my legs to propel myself forward, I tensed up and waited for the first mine to cross my path. It was hard to see in the murky water, the boats kept this water filthy, so I could barely see two feet in front of me. My guts wrenched tighter with each kick, until eventually I had to stop again. My jaw implant crackled as Gear Head's voice came over the radio, "Dash? How you holdin' up?"

To talk into this thing I didn't even have to separate my lips, I could simply try to say the words without opening my mouth and, thanks to the vibration sensing technology, the mic could make out what I was saying and play it back. I caught my breath and replied, "Oh I'm just fine, except for the fact that I'm at least a mile underwater, surrounded by Elite forces, and I'm probably feet away from a mine I can't see! Oh, and did I mention that I'm also on a suicide mission!"

"Calm down Dashie! I-"

"Hey fuck you! Nobody can call me Dashie except my friends!"

"You mean I'm not your friend?"

"Of course you're my friend! Just not the ones I'm referring to..."

"Oh, well we can talk about that later. But right now, I got some good news!"

"What is it?"

"We have an operative who's not too far from your position, he's making his way into the compound on foot, and he's agreed to meet you at a rendezvous point! He's a veteran, so he offered to help you out on this mission."

"I thought that I was the first person to ever come here?" I hummed, as I began to swim forward

"Well that's not exactly true, you're part of a team to be the first to come here."

"You mean there's more people in there from BLACK too?"

"As a matter of fact, there's people retrieving information right now from the base. I have the scans here on my computer."

"Jesus, and here I was thinking I was special!"

"Well don't worry Dash, you're special to me, and I don't see why anybody else should think differently!"

I blushed at the compliment, "Thanks Gears but let's keep things professional, I don't want to die smiling like a college girl."

"When did I say something unprofessional?"

I giggled, that's adorable, he was being serious, not flirtatious.

"Well anyway, get to the docks and up on dry land. I smackin' a marker on your Rig for the meet-up point now. God I love that name."

"Roger roger!" I replied, trying my best to imitate a droid from Star Wars.

As I pulled myself up on the concrete ramp, I wriggled off my scuba gear and I quickly realized why BLACK was sending us in tonight. Thick black clouds had rolled in and totally blocked out Luna's moon. I knew if she was here, and not back at the Wonderbolts base camp, then she'd be throwing a fit. Then again, she'd probably be throwing a fit that her sister never told her she was still alive. I pulled down my NVG's and flicked them on. Wow, why didn't the Wonderbolts use these? Everything looked brighter than daytime, and I could clearly see the guard on patrol behind the fence a few yards away. I stealthily approached the fence and pulled out the electrician's wire cutters. The had long handles and the thing was pretty much entirely coated with rubber. I was about to cut a hole in the electric fence when somebody's voice caught my attention.

"Psst! Hey!" somebody behind me whispered

I turned around and saw a man wearing the same gear as me and wearing a pair of night vision goggles. He approached me and whispered, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Getting into the base! Why?" I silently screamed back

"Because don't you think they'll see a gaping hole in the fence when they inspect it in the morning?"

He had a point, "What other way is there to get in?"

He simply pointed towards a gate shrouded in lights, and led me to it. Before we stepped into the light, I protested, "We'll be lit up like a Christmas Tree! Is there any other way to get in?

He simply held up three fingers, and started a countdown. When his hand turned into a fist, the lights in the base went off.

"DAMN SHITTY WIRING!" The guard yelled

"Ladies first." The man told me

"How kind of you." I replied sarcastically

We ran into the base and took shelter under a truck, moments before the lights came back on. I looked over to the man who helped me, his face was pretty well hidden under the goggles, but I could see he had some grey around his chin. I decided to introduce myself, "I'm Rainbow Dash, I'm new to this whole stealth thing." I whispered

"Well Rainbow Dash, nice to meet you. My name's Shadows." He whispered back, not facing me but still focusing on the guards down the road.

"Shadows...?" I asked, stopping the sentence there, asking him to finish his name

"That's it, Shadows. That's my name."

"Do you mean, Shadow?"

"No damn it! Shadows, it has an 's,' why is that so hard for everybody to grasp?"

"Well, uh, that's a cool name!"

"Rainbow Dash, I know that you're new to this so I'll cut you a break. But the first rule of sneaking around is to shut-up. If you talk then you can give your position away."

"Oh okay then," I replied, even quieter, "So then how do we communicate?"

"Quickly, follow me." he said, completely ignoring my question. He jumped out from under the truck and sprinted for a small building. Totally fazed, I gathered my senses and followed suit. I hoped that nobody would see me, and luck was on my side. I came in the building and was about to run down a hall after Shadows when an arm reached out and held me back. I quickly reached for knife and was about to stab my captor, when I realized it was Shadows. I sheathed my knife and closed the door behind us as silently as possible. I faced him, as he stood motionless, facing the hallway in front of us, "What the hell? You gave me a heart attack! I nearly stabbed you!"

He reached for a canister on his belt and sprayed something in front of him. As his spray spread around the hallway, red lasers revealed themselves. The lasers formed jail cell bars, and were close enough together that you could not fit a hand in between them. I was astonished, "Well, what now?"

He pointed to the ceiling and faced me, "The second rule of stealth is that the ceiling is your best friend."

He jumped up and popped a ceiling tile out of place, then he climbed in the ceiling over the wall. He motioned for me to follow. When I jumped up and had finally pulled myself in the ceiling, Shadows put the ceiling tile back in place, "Rule number three, leave no trail." He simply started crawling along the ceiling, just above the wall though, I'd assume he'd fall through anywhere else. We made our way through pipes and wires, until eventually he turned right and lifted up a ceiling tile, "Here we are." He jumped down and I followed. We were right in front of the door at the end of the hallway. He picked the lock and opened it to a stairwell that went down underground. He looked at me with a grin on his face, "Well, into the rabbit hole!"

We descended down stairs for what seemed like hours. I checked my map for our location, but it was just fuzzy at this depth. Finally, we reached the bottom to an extremely cold room, with fog flowing out from the many doors that lined the walls. The room was probably half a mile long and doors with bronze plates lined the walls. Each door had a different number, the first  door to our left had '001' on it, the last door to our right had '237' on it.

"Wow, I never knew there were this many!" Shadows said

"This many what?" I asked

"You don't know what these are?"

"No, what are they?"

"They're cryogenic time chambers."

"English please."

"Each of these rooms has a frozen person in it."

"Oh, and why do they have this down here?"

"Don't you feel how naturally cold it is down here? It's perfect for these!"

"No, I mean why do the Elites need frozen people?"

"The Elites keep important individuals down here: Kings, Queens, Government Officials-"

"Princesses?" Dash asked hopefully

"It's possible, but if you're asking about somebody in particular then I wish you luck in finding them! You have over two hundred chambers to look in!"

"Well then why did we come down here?"

"Well...uh...to look for somebody..."

"Well I guess we better start searching, who are we looking for?"

"Funny you should ask! We're looking for princess Twilight Sparkle, she might be-"

"WHAT?!"

I caught Shadows off guard, "What? What's wrong?"

"TWILIGHT IS IN HERE?"

"Shhh! Keep your voice down! Yes! She might be here, we're not sure yet!"

"Well what are we waiting for! Let's get searching!" I said, approaching the first chamber

We looked through the chambers for hours, every once in a while, Gear Head would call us up and say somebody found some valuable intel or something that I didn't really care about. There was a silent siege of intelligence going on above us, and all I could think about was seeing Twilight again. We opened every door, peeked inside, then closed it. We were about to reach the hundredth-something door when we heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Shadows looked at me worriedly, "Quick! Hide!" he silently screamed. I jumped in the next chamber and shut the door, I can only assume he did the same.

"Dash? Dash are you in one of those chambers?" Gear Head asked me over the radio

"Yeah," I hummed, "but somebody's just outside so shush!"

"Don't stay in there too long Dash! It only takes about five minutes of cryogenic fog exposure to put you under sedation!"

"Hey, I took ten years of Spanish class, and all I remember is how to correctly pronounce the word 'tortilla'" I hummed into the mic, "so could you repeat that in English please?"

He sighed, "It means that if you stay in there for five minutes, you'll be as unconscious as the person you're laying on."

Who was I laying on? I turned around to look, it was Twilight! Of course something would go wrong when I actually found my friend. I heard voices outside the chamber now, one had a heavy Russian accent, and the other was German.

"Now now," the German said, "I assure you, this is completely safe. The chambers are designed to hold prisoners for over a millenia!"

The Russian responded, "That may be true, but how long does it take for them to recover from sleep for interrogation?"

"That's the beautiful part! Only five minutes!"

"FIVE MINUTES? That means at least ten minutes total for each prisoner! And that's not counting interrogation time!"

"Well then, I see we have reached an impasse!"

I checked my tac-map, as it had vibrated. Gear Head had pushed a countdown clock on my display, and it was already at thirty seconds.

The Russian continued, "It's too late to discuss this now, besides, we have an eavesdropper." I heard a door open, and then I heard Shadows struggling against what sounded like a behemoth, "Well well well, if it isn't my old friend! Good to see you!"

I heard Shadows spit, "You filthy piece of shit, you'll never keep Equestria from it's rightful owners!"

My tac-map vibrated, five seconds. Now or never. I burst out of the chamber, and drew my M4. I shot the German, he was wearing a full body haz-mat suit, and was about to shoot the Russian when he hurled Shadows at me. I dodged and I could hear Shadows grunt as he slammed the wall. I quickly regained my balance and trained my gun on the Russian Elite before me. He was already at full charge, and grabbed me by my neck. I had a good look at him now. He looked like an Elite that ate too much fiber and benched eight-hundred pounds every morning. He was about two feet taller than the average Elite, which put him at about five feet taller than me. He hoisted me up as though he was lifting a roll of toilet paper rather than an entire person. He looked at me and growled, "What do you think you are doing little girl?"

"I was going for a stroll and thought I'd drop in and say hello!"

He tightened his grip around my throat as he laughed, "You are funny! I wish I could keep you here for shits and giggles, but I'm assuming there are more, correct?"

I spat on him, "Fuck you!"

His smile turned sour, and he roared at me, "I AM VLADIMIR BISCOFF MIRSCHEETIN THE FOURTH! HOW DARE YOU SPIT ON ME!" He tightened his grip around my throat and I could no longer breath. I hung there, hopelessly pounding at his huge fist, as I tried to gasp for air. His mouth slowly grew into an evil smile as darkness creeped around the corners of my vision. Suddenly, an ear piercing crack sounded throughout the room, and Vladimir's grip was relinquished. I fell to the floor, gasping for breath, and looked at my 'host'. He was on the floor with a hole in his forehead. I looked over and saw Twilight standing and holding Shadows's gun, "Let's get the fuck outta here!" She yelled.

We scooped up Shadows and dashed for the exit, alarms were sounding and choppers were rolling in, nothing ever goes as planned. We ran into the nearby woods and watched as guards searched for us. Flashlight beams went all around the base and eventually the search left the base and they traveled along the main roads. A boat was waiting for us and we took it all the way back to the Equestrian Republic. A chopper met us with about six other people on it, they patched Shadows up and everyone was going googly-eyed over Twilight. I admit, I was kinda jealous, but she was a princess, and I was just a soldier, so I kinda saw that coming. We traveled by air back to BLACK, and at some point I dozed off, letting my mind wander back to the good ol' days in boot camp. I remember when the Elites attacked us there, it was totally unexpected and we weren't ready at all. That was the day me and Soarin became inseparable.