From Darkness

Operation: Skulking Eagle

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

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

Subject: Shadows

Objective: Find Princess Twilight Sparkle, and bring her back to BLACK HQ to gain entry to the base.

The darkness.

I'm not a morning person by any means, but I have always loved the dark. I guess it kinda makes sense, considering my name is Shadows. I had feet on the ground, and I was making my way up to the base, when Gear Head appeared on my tac-map. His face was fuzzy, due to the frequency jammers that were probably scattered about, but I could hear him.

"Hey? Shadows? You there Shadows?" Gear Head asked

"Yeah, I'm here. What's up?" I replied

"We got a newbie who needs a little guidance. Would you mind helping her out? She's had past experience, but not enough to get her through this."

"Sure, I could use a little backup in this place."

"Great, what's your position?"

"I'm at the concrete docks, approaching the military base from the rear."

"Great, I'll send her your way. She'll be coming out of the water." Gear Head said, as his face fuzzed and the screen went back to the default map setting.

I looked around, to make sure nobody had heard my little conversation, and went up to the water. I hate to admit it, but I was a little excited about meeting this girl. The last time I'd seen a good looking woman was way back before the war started, but then again, that girl was my wife. I stopped thinking about it before my brain wandered dangerous places, and tried to focus on this newbie. I doubt she was old enough for me anyways, I mean, I'm 48 for Pete's sake. I kept looking for her, but to no avail. Finally, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I realized why BLACK had picked tonight. The clouds were thick, and covered the moon completely, Luna would be furious. I heard some rustling up towards the base, and saw somebody trying to cut the fence. I put on my NVG's to get a better look and saw it was a BLACK operative.

"Psst! Hey!" I whispered out to the operative, the operative turned to face me in response. Holy shit, this must be the girl Gear Head was talking about, and damn she was a looker. I approached her, and said, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

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

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

"What other way is there to get in?" She asked

I pointed towards the nearby gate that was bathed in light. I led her to it, and she skeptically followed. Before I could step into the light, she protested, "We'll be lit up like a Christmas tree! Is there any other way to get in?"

I'm sure she couldn't see it, but I had this huge grin on my face. I held up three fingers, and started dropping them, one by one. When I dropped my last finger, Cogs had shut off the lights, just as planned. Cogs, my lead engineer, could do almost anything. Only problem was, that the blackout wouldn't last long before the backups kicked in. The nearby guard yelled, "DAMN SHITTY WIRING!"

"Ladies first." I told her, gesturing towards the gate.

"How kind of you." She replied sarcastically

We dashed into the base and hid under a truck, that's when I got a good look at the girl, as the lights came back on. She had black fur and a black mane and tail that were all soaking wet, which was totally hot. Shoot, I can't be eyeing this girl, I'm on a mission. I quickly ignored my testosterone, and focused on the guards ahead, waiting for an opening. The building we need to get to wasn't too far away, but far away enough that we needed a second to run.

"I'm Rainbow Dash, I'm new to this whole stealth thing."

Really? I couldn't tell, "Well, Rainbow Dash, nice to meet you. My name's Shadows." I still had my attention on the guards

"Shadows...?" she waited for me, as if I needed to complete my name. Great, here we go again.

"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?"

She awkwardly replied, "Well, uh, that's a cool name!"

I decided to cut the conversation short, "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," she was deathly quiet now, "So then how do we communicate?"

I noticed our chance, and ignored her question, "Quickly, follow me." I commanded her, as I jumped out from under the truck. I ran for the building and jolted inside, not even checking to see if she followed me. I stopped as I heard a familiar whirr noise coming from the walls of the hallway in front of me. Rainbow Dash ran through the doorway, and I caught her by the arm. She drew her knife, and stopped dead in her tracks when she realized it was me. She sheathed it and closed the door, silently.

"What the hell? You gave me a heart attack! I nearly stabbed you!" She protested

Ignoring her once more, I reached for the grey 'laser gas' can on my belt, Cogs' custom design. This stuff was made to reveal lasers, and it certainly got the job done. I sprayed the canister in front of me, revealing several rows of red laser beams that crossed like jail cell bars. I don't think I could fit my hand in between them if I wanted to. Dash was clearly astonished, "Well, what now?" she asked.

Wow, she was new to this I guess. I responded by pointing to the ceiling and saying, "The second rule of stealth is that the ceiling is your best friend." I was making these up as I went along. Lucky for me, Rainbow Dash couldn't tell. I jumped up and popped a ceiling tile out of place and climbed into the ceiling, motioning for her to follow. She jumped up and could barely struggle to get in, I had to help her up. When she was finally up, I moved the tile back into place and said, "Rule number three, leave no trail."

She gave me a strange look as I proceeded to crawl along the ceiling, something told me my rules were going in one ear and coming out the other. I crawled through, keeping myself above the wall, because I knew the ceiling would collapse out from under me if I was anywhere else. I just hoped she would catch on and do the same. She did, and kept close behind me as we dodged pipes and wires. At some point, I lifted up a tile to see how far down the hallway we were, we still had a ways to go. We kept crawling, and I finally reached the end of the hallway, and turned to see she was struggling to catch up. When she did, I simply said, "Here we are." and jumped down, she followed. We were right in front of the door that stood at the end of the hallway, and there weren't any more lasers in our way. This wasn't right, it was almost as if this was made just easy enough for us to get through. Either way, I picked the lock with ease and swung the door open, revealing a huge stairwell that led deep underground. A grin crept across my face as I turned to her and said, "Well, into the rabbit hole!"

After descending the flight of stairs for what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached the bottom into a well lit room, made of grey metal. The room was frigid, and stretched out like a long hallway for half of a mile. Doors lined the walls, each one with a bronze plate on it. The one to our left was labeled 001, and the one to our right was labeled 237. Shit, of course they wouldn't tell me how many CTC's there were, I wouldn't have agreed to find the princess if I knew there were 237! I have to look through each one of these until I find her! I made my complaint known, saying, "Wow, I never knew there were this many!"

"This many what?" Dash asked me. Stupid kid.

"You don't know what these are?"

"No, what are they?"

"They're cryogenic time chambers."

"English please."

Before I could slap her, I calmly replied, "Each of these rooms has a frozen person in it."

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

Wow, could you be anymore oblivious? "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?"

Oh, of course she wouldn't know that. She works for BLACK, and they don't tell their field agents jack shit! I know, from personal experience. I told her, "The Elites keep important individuals down here: Kings, Queens, Government Officials-"

"Princesses?" She interrupted

She interrupted me? Now I was mad again, "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?"

Great, now I felt like a jackass, "Well...uh...to look for somebody..."

She didn't seem to notice I had the reason I just yelled at her for, typical soldier. She replied, "Well I guess we better start searching, who are you looking for?"

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

"WHAT?!"

I was caught off guard by her yell and I turned to search for any sign of danger. When I couldn't find any, I asked, "What? What's wrong?"

"TWILIGHT IS IN HERE?"

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

"Well what are we waiting for? Let's get searching!" She quickly ran up to the first chamber.

Hmm, why was she so enthusiastic? I thought BLACK was after intelligence tonight, not prisoners. Did she have her own reasons?

From then on out, I kept an eye on her, just to make sure that she wouldn't do anything crazy when she found Twilight Sparkle. What sort of BLACK operative comes in here looking for a princess? Then again, Gear Head was sending me after her, so they did need her. But BLACK has never been known to send operatives on rescue missions unless the situation is dire. Is it possible that Rainbow Dash knew Twilight Sparkle personally? The chances were one in a million, but I didn't cross it off the list. We kept working our way down the doors, peeking inside and shutting them just as quickly. Cogs tells me about these things all the time, and how dangerous they are. He would always say that it only takes five minutes to freeze you, and five minutes for you to defrost. Cogs has some sort of medicine in development to prevent the side effects and grogginess that normally follow a 'defrosting.' Apparently, he wants to install some at HQ so we can store hostages there. It would cut back on the amount of food we need, and the amount of trouble we go through to take one of those Elites out of their cell. We would be in the medical ward and Spitfire would have a broken nose from where a prisoner punched her, and I would always say "Maybe this is why BLACK doesn't hold prisoners!" It would always get a good laugh, but now it just kinda makes Spitfire irritated, so I stopped.

Me and Dash were at the hundredth-something door, when footsteps came from the stairs. I freaked out, and silent yelled to Rainbow Dash, "Quick! Hide!" She jumped into a CTC and I decided that was the only way we were going to remain undetected. I jumped in one too, and probably should have shut the door more quiet-like, but I don't think they heard.

After a few minutes of waiting for the enemies to walk down the hallway, they finally came within range that I could hear them outside. I instantly recognized the voices.

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

A thick Russian voice 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 knew these two. The German was Dr. Steiner, an Elite scientist who studied the psychological habits of the enemy, in hopes of discovering weaknesses and easier ways to gain information from them. I turned to see that the guy I was laying on had one of Steiner's patented brain simulators on. The helmet placed the wearer in a world where they could solve problems and perform tasks, and Steiner processed the data. The Russian, on the other hand, was known only as Mr. Spetz. I assume his name is derived from the 'Spetsnaz' but I wouldn't know for sure.

Mr. Spetz and Dr. Steiner don't have a history of working together, so they must have recently come together for something big. Probably on account that they planned on removing all the prisoners from Cryogenic sleep for interrogation. My tac-map automatically kicked up a countdown timer on my display, and I noticed it had about thirty seconds left.

Then Mr. Spetz said something that caught my attention, "It's too late to discuss this now, besides, we have an eavesdropper." The door flung open, and a huge brown fur covered fist came in and landed on my chest. I felt a rib crack, but I don't think anything broke. The other hand flew in and pulled me out of the chamber, as I gasped for air. I struggled relentlessly as he slammed me up against the wall. Spetz smiled and said, "Well well well, if it isn't my old friend! Good to see you!"

The two looked as evil as always. Spetz was in his camo pants and Steiner was wearing a full bio suit. They both had brown fur and black manes, their completely white eyes looked deep into my soul. Damn, who know people without pupils could scare the shit out of you so much? I'd killed hundreds of Elites, but their eyes always got me scared for some reason. Either way, the Russian had this huge grin on his face, and I couldn't let that stand. I spat on his face and said, "You filthy piece of shit, you'll never keep Equestria from its rightful owners!"

Spetz was about to crush me, when Rainbow Dash burst out of the CTC she was in and landed a shot right between Steiner's eyes with her M4. She took aim at Spetz and I and was about to shoot until Spetz hurled me at the BLACK operative. I flew past her and slammed into the wall, breaking the rib that was originally cracked, and then some. I rolled over in agony and tried to force myself up, but found that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I saw Spetz pick up Rainbow Dash with one hand, and hold her in the air.

Spetz, with that classic evil villain grin on his face, lifted Dash up by her neck, and growled, "What do you think you are doing little girl?"

Rainbow Dash's voice was raspy when she replied, "I was going for a stroll and thought I'd drop by and say hello!"

I would have burst out laughing if my ribs didn't complain when I tried, I think I may have a punctured lung.

Spetz gave a deep, hearty laugh and replied, "You are funny! I wish I could keep you here for shits and giggles, but I'm assuming there are more, correct?"

Rainbow Dash spat on him and said, "Fuck you!"

I would have wanted to give her a high-five if the behemoth's face didn't instantly turn sour at the comment. The monster roared, "I AM VLADIMIR BISCOFF MIRSCHEETIN THE FOURTH! HOW DARE YOU SPIT ON ME!"

Okay, two questions popped in my head at that comment. The first, why did he flip out when Dash spat on him? I had done it so many times before and he never flipped a lid! Second, why did his name sound so familiar? This was the first time I had heard his real name, and Mirscheetin was ringing bells all across my brain.

Vladimir's grip tightened around Dash's neck, and she began to choke. I reached for my sidearm, to find that it fell out of my holster. I looked around me as best I could from my position on the floor, and tried to find it. I couldn't find the gun, it was nowhere to be seen, or it was out of view from my now blurry vision. This was it, Rainbow Dash was gonna get strangled and then Spetz- I mean, Vladimir, was gonna come over here and step on my skull. There was no way I was gonna get out of this one.

Just then, when everything seemed like it was falling apart, and Dash's struggle started to fail, as life left her body, a foot appeared at the corner of my vision. Suddenly, an ear piercing bang! rang throughout the hallway, and Dash fell to the floor, quickly followed by Mirscheetin's lifeless body. Rainbow Dash turned to look at her savior, and I looked as best I could. Of course, it was princess Twilight Sparkle. She was holding my gun, this was too good to be true.

"Let's get the fuck out of here!" Twilight yelled.

The rest of our journey was a blur. The two girls scooped me up and carried me out of the base, alarms and sirens going off. Somehow, we managed to evade the scouts looking for the intruders, until the heat died down. We took a getaway boat, and ended up in a chopper somehow. In the chopper, were about six other BLACK operatives, not including Rainbow Dash. They patched me up and went all googly eyed over Twilight. Personally, I didn't see why they weren't all over Rainbow Dash. Sure, Twilight was a princess and all, but she wasn't that good looking. Dash really had it going, and if I was about twenty years younger, I'd be on her like white on rice.

Somehow, she managed to get to sleep, and fretful expressions consumed her face. Many different times, a tear might even escape her eye. I knew what she was going through, she was dreaming about an attack of some sort. Even if it wasn't the day the Elites invaded, it was obviously painful for her to remember, and being in a dream made it seem real. I used to get those dreams, but not anymore. Because now, now I have a goal. A goal that I know will be reached.

I'm going to take part in freeing Equestria, one way or another. We will have our homes back, and I can live peacefully once more. Just...without her...