Phantoms

“Meet Foxtrot-12”
[\ Play Phantom ‘Extraction’ Recording B-362-M-478(E): Untagged]

The thud of his boots hitting the balcony floor below Princess Celestia’s lookout over all of Equestria was muffled slightly as he curled into a ball and rolled with the impact. But stealth wasn’t really at the forefront of Foxtrot-12’s thoughts. He just didn’t want to break his legs.

Landing on his feet –missing a stride as he stumbled for balance – Foxtrot-12’s cloak was nearly thrown off his shoulders. The hood fell back revealing his head, though nothing of his face was given away thanks to a baseball cap and a sandy-coloured keffiyeh pulled up over the bottom of his face. Eyes concealed behind a pair of goggles, he had an ear-muff with a build in communication earpiece covering the right ear with a little mic suspended on an arm hovering in front of his mask.

Revealed under his cloak was a pale shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows for some reprieve from the summer heat, with coyote coloured trousers, the ends covering the tops of his brown hiking boots. Over Foxtrot-12’s knees were a pair of hardened pads riveted into his pants, and covering his abdomen was a sandy-coloured chest rig home to a plethora of pouches wrapping right around his waist.

Straightening up, the human chuckled relieved with an upward glance to the balcony he’d leapt from out of desperation. Avoiding the gaze of one princess was easy, especially with an invisibility cloak. But when Princess Luna had joined the ‘garden party’ gathering on Celestia’s bedroom balcony Foxtrot-12 had grown a little desperate to escape. Desperate enough to risk broken bones. Though, as per usual he’d been lucky.

Shrugging the long liquid-silver cloak draped over his shoulders a little higher, he quickly pulled open the door keeping him out of the palace and slipped inside. He still had to descend several stories to reach extraction on the other side of the Canterlot Gardens. And there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to see if he was lucky enough to survive a hundred foot drop.

Foxtrot-12 liked to walk the fine line between lucky and stupid.

[>> F-fwd >> F-fwd >> F-fwd >>]

Following his nose, the cloaked human moved quietly through the empty palace halls, the soft soles of his super-sneaky boots only squeaking on the polished marble floor every so often. And yes, you did read that correctly. Foxtrot-12 had super-sneaky shoes… and he was following his nose.

Every so often he’d pause and sniff the air through his scarf to follow the faint scent of sizzling hay and baking bread. It was his navigation marker to the exit. Following the scent he’d find his way to the service stairway leading down to the palace kitchens and out the back across the gardens. Simple.

At least, in his mind it was. Execution on the other hand…

Freezing with a light squeak of his shoe-soles on the floor, Foxtrot-12 looked down the hall to see a bunch of shadows cast by an oil lap curl around the corner. Three royal guardsponies at the looks of the silhouettes. Stepping back, Foxtrot-12 turned to search for an escape. Unfortunately his ears caught the sound of marching armour-clad hooves coming up behind him as well. He was boxed in.

“Aw, crap,” was all he could whisper for a moment.

But that didn’t mean the human was screwed. Tugging a handheld device from the pouch strapped to his right thigh, Foxtrot-12 ducked to the side of the hallway. Pressing himself tight against the wall and sliding into a crouch, the human caught the edge of his cloak and pulled it over his head, draping the mercury fabric over himself.

In an instant Foxtrot-12 disappeared… well, sort off.

First he was there, a silver blob of fabric backed up against a wall. Then with an electrical shimmer running over the surface of his cloak, he vanished inch by inch. Part magic, part technology, the light-bending camouflage cloak was covered in micro-reflectors that bent the light around it. As a result Foxtrot-12 appeared to vanish to the casual eye – forgive the oxymoron. He was no more than a shimmer of light easily mistaken for a heat distortion rippling in the air.

Keeping the handheld device against his chest – aimed outward – the human peered like a witness peering through a one way mirror at a criminal line-up. On the outside light was being bent around the cloak, but on the inside it was like looking through smoked glass. It was good enough to clearly see six stark white pegasus ponies in heavy golden armour march past.

Three went one way, three equally stoic creatures marched the other.

Holding his breath, Foxtrot-12 flexed a finger over a trigger…

With a silent whir, the handycam held in his hand began to record through the invisibility cloak, taking in and processing the images of armoured ponies marching past in high definition. Foxtrot-12 imagines the audio would be crap and the image would be a little dulled since the camera was recording through the fabric, but once cleaned up a little, the short video of the guards marching past would make for great filler-footage.

When the guardsponies had moved on down the hallway both ways, Foxtrot-12 dropped the edge of his invisibility cloak and stood again. Closing down his handycam, the device was stuffed back into its holster as the human tried to follow his nose to the exit again.

He was stopped again, only this time by a different sound.

“Ooooh~!” came the muffled feminine moan, directly to his left.

Freezing with a cocked eyebrow, Foxtrot-12 was pretty sure he recognised the type of moan, and looking sideways at the closet door it had come from he became all the more sure of what the source was.

Noticing the broom closet was off the latch, Foxtrot-12 gently pushed it open, blinking away multi-coloured spots as the burning light from inside spilled onto the human’s masked face. His goggles smoked over, cutting some of the harshness of the light glowing from a unicorn’s horn.

Pushing the door open a little more Foxtrot-12 swallowed hard as he got a good view of what was going on inside.

A royal guard lay on his back, head pitched back and staring at the ceiling. He was sprawled over carton boxes filled with detergent bottles and upturned buckets serving as a makeshift bed. Straddled on top of him was a mare. Scattered around them a mixture of discarded garb, from shards of golden armour to a light red robe.

The mare perched atop the stallion was facing Foxtrot-12, her eyes closed and mouth hanging open a little. She was a unicorn – possibly the best example of one in Equestria – her horn glowing golden light that filled the cupboard. She had a curvaceous, lean figure not unlike that of the alicorn princesses. Her long blonde mane fell over one side of her face further blocking the human spying on them from view should she open her eyes.

With her head half turned back to her lover laying paralysed beneath her, the mare slowly lifted herself up, slick juices glistening on the guardspony’s meaty shaft still half buried in the unicorn’s snatch. And with an almost tired sigh she dropped down again. As the royal guard was slammed vigorously into her again his hips bucked on automatic, burying the head a little deeper inside the tight mare.

They paused, both twitching for a moment before the mare repeated the laborious motions of slowly lifting herself up along the stallion’s thick shaft to the point of the head popping out; then dropping down to slam him in deep again – trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of groans and thrusts.

With a quiet sigh the human visibly slouched and rolled his eyes behind his goggles. It was all just work-work-work. It never seemed to end in Canterlot palace. And speaking of working…

Reaching down, Foxtrot-12 reached for a device hanging by his side. If his handycam was his secondary weapon, his digital SLR could best be described as his primary.

Holding the camera up to his face, he kept it steady with a grip on the lens and his index finger showing all the trigger-discipline as if he were handling a high powered rifle. Peering through the shutter, he lined up a few shots, the camera held sideways for a portrait, and pressed the shutter to focus and take pictures of the oblivious ponies.

The shutter opened and closed silently several times, quickly recording what the lens was seeing to a high capacity SD-card for future perusing by Foxtrot-12’s employers… or his fellow employees. Whoever got their grubby mitts on it first.

Satisfied a dozen pictures were enough, Foxtrot-12 lowered the camera and slowly backed away, the closet door falling shut again with a whisper-quiet ‘snik.’

[>> F-fwd >> F-fwd >> F-fwd >>]

On a balcony overlooking the royal gardens the duo were alone. One stark white pegasus pony stallion of the Sol Guard and one bat pony mare of the Lunar Guard. The stallion was like any other pegasus of the royal guard. But the mare was something different.

A bat pony, she had a tufted triangular ears and an almost wolfish muzzle filled with pointy looking teeth. Her large amber eyes were divided down the middle by vertical diamond shaped pupils, and she had a pair of black bat-like wings instead of the traditional feathered wings of a regular pegasus. Her dark lavender mane and tail were short and tousled, looking like she’d only just gotten out of bed.

While the Sol Guard was sitting back, resting his forehooves behind him, the Lunar Guard was hunched forward with her head bobbing in the stallion’s crotch.

Her mouth was stretched open to take his girth in, jaw seemingly unhinged like a snake gulping down a prize. And while we’re on the subject of gulping, with her eyes pleasantly shut she slowly dragged her glistening lips up and down along the shaft. How she managed none could say, but her tongue slipped out from behind her bottom lip, the soft surface cradling and raking along the bottom of the stallion’s meat.

She would lift her head a little until she just had the flared head captured tightly in her lips, cheeks hollowing as she suckled with her tongue swirling all the way around. Then she would deftly slide her lips and tongue down the shaft until she gagged lightly with the head constricting into the back of her throat. All the while she somehow neglected to pause for a breather, or to swallow for that matter, pools of her warm, slick saliva drooling into the stallion’s lap.

Her relentless bobbing continued at a stealthy rhythm – up to the tip, swirl the tongue, then back down and deep-throat the stallion as best as she could. Right up until the point she felt him twitch in her mouth. That first twitch drew a smile across her muzzle despite how full her mouth was.

A second twitch followed by a swelling – pulling up the bat pony mare let the saliva drenched head pop from her lips before she seductively swirled her tongue over the top. The stallion was groaning, clenching his teeth as his partner ran her tongue up and down the swelling shaft, letting his soaked meat slide across the side of her face as she practically worshipped the thing.

With the final twitch and swell there was a sudden explosion rom the stallion’s flared tip. A gushing geyser of pearl white that caused the bat pony to flinch. But she didn’t pull away completely. Suddenly realising what was happening she seemed to embrace it, tipping her head back with narrowed eyes and her mouth open as far as it would go.

Thick ropes of white ooze strung themselves across her face. Several large drops met their mark along the roof of her mouth and across her tongue. Stray shots trailed white tracks over her nose, across her muzzle and her right eyelid. Several pearls finally dappled the bat pony’s fizzy mane as she closed her mouth into a satisfied grin, gulping loudly.

Foxtrot-12 could only blink in his stunned state, the sight causing a twitch in his pants. That was both interesting and worrying.

Sitting in a tree adjacent to the ‘private’ balcony where the night and day guardsponies were enjoying each other’s company, Foxtrot-12’s daze through the sniper-like magnification on his handycam didn’t last much longer. A twitter caught the human’s attention and averting his gaze from the bat pony facial of gooey proportions, Foxtrot-12 saw a small blue bird in a nearby nest.

“Hello, birdy,” Foxtrot-12 chirped in a friendly whisper as he turned his camera to record the bird hopping about the nest.

However at the glint of the lens, the blue-feathered avian let out a screech easily associated with a war-cry before the momma-bird straight up charged. Leaping from the nest, she slammed right into the human’s face, proceeding the violently peck at his goggles.

“Holy, shit!” Foxtrot-12 cursed as he rocked backwards, losing his balance. “Not the face. Not the face!”

Momma-bird hovered on the spot as the human intruder slipped out of the tree completely and hit the ground far below with a sickening thud.

“Ack...! My organs…”

[>> F-fwd >> F-fwd >> F-fwd >>]

Climbing to his feet, Foxtrot-12 found himself on the razor’s edge. A little literally. On one side of the palace garden wall upon which he was perched were the royal Canterlot gardens leading back to the palace. To the other side the whole word seemed to drop away for eternity down the mountainside against which Canterlot was slapped.

Looking from the long climb down the mountainside that served as his extraction route, Foxtrot-12 turned his gaze once more back to the Canterlot palace. It was an awesome sight.

Framed by the mountain’s peak under a glistening sky smeared with the watercolours of an aurora borealis rippling one way and another like a lazy ocean lapping the shore, the palace looked abandoned but inhabited at the same time. From this range Foxtrot-12 couldn’t quite see any solid signs of life, but at the same time he was told the place was alive with activity thanks to the lights burning in the windows flashing like fairy-lights.

With a grin the human steadied his stance and levelled his SLR camera to take a snap. Satisfied he had a nice panorama shot with a quick scroll back through the gallery of pictures he’d taken that evening; Foxtrot-12 figured the day wasn’t a complete artistic waste. He had at least a gigabyte of smut and useless stock footage loading his cameras.

But he had one nice picture for his portfolio.

[\ End Recording]