Their assignment consisted of two separate stages. The first would be to escort a transport from one Chaser facility to another by helicopter, which was uneventful and a little more trouble than it was worth; since Vinyl was nearly shot and harassed over the radio the entire way. She wound up extending noise cancelling headphones, which would normally be used for radio contact while under fire or something like that, to play music.

Twilight nudged her shoulder and Vinyl looked over to see the girl pointing to her ears. Vinyl retraced the side Twilight was on so she could hear the girl.

“What are you listening to that has you so spaced out? We are an overwatch escort you know.” Twilight asked lightheartedly.

“I don’t know, some sort of japanese synthetic radio station or something like that. I don’t really feel like dipping into local databases to find out.” Vinyl replied. “And I don’t exactly need my hearing to keep watch, we are in the noisiest thing in the area at the moment.” She continued.

“Fair. We’ll be landing soon, there we’ll travel by rooftop to a known Seeker hideout and gather information. We’ll be running a localized broadcast that blocks the Seekers’ ability to instantly relay information to one another. This helps us with remaining undetected and also stops anything inside from getting help from outside.” Twilight explained.

“What about me? I’m using the same thing they are, we wouldn’t be able to communicate by radio.” Vinyl asked.

“Before we put it up we’ll have a designated one on one frequency we’ll use programmed to bypass the shield. Even if they hack into it, they can only listen. If they listen then they’ll know what we’re doing, so only use it if you need to.” Twilight answered. Their flight continued for around five more minutes before the chopper hovered over the roof of the facility that was their escort’s destination. They hopped out and Twilight waved it off.

“I’ve sent the destination to your HUD, in case we get split up.” Twilight said. Vinyl looked over as the augments in her eyes showed her a heads up display, which she had rarely ever used. She saw Twilight’s lavender eyes glowing slightly, meaning she had a heads up display augment as well.

“Am I to keep your pace or am I to get there as fast as possible?” Vinyl asked.

“If you can go faster than I can while still not sticking out then go for it and do a little reconnaissance.” Twilight replied as she pulled her helmet on, she already had the rest of her SPIKE on. Vinyl nodded and her own mobility systems, which she had decided to just call SPIKE systems for simplicity’s sake, extended out in full and she retrieved her bow from its place as Twilight loaded a silenced long range rifle. They nodded to each other then and launched into the air with a small burst of thrust from jet pads in the boots.

Vinyl sprinted effortlessly across rooftop after rooftop, barely even needing her jump pods to help her. She didn’t use the wings, since they gave off a lot of light, and instead used a sort of grappling cable in her forearms when needed. The map on her HUD showed Twilight halfway to their destination when she got there, about two minutes away, so she activated some of her information gathering augments and examined the hideout.

Her map had blueprints so she knew the general layout of the place. It was one story with three basement floor accessed by stairs. She effortlessly hacked into the building’s less protected databases and was able to update her map with dynamic markers indicating the signatures of the registered Seekers present there. She managed to hack into some of the security camera feed just as Twilight crouched next to her, breathing a bit heavily.

“Good job, you’re faster than most of our best teams.” Twilight said quietly as Vinyl sent the updates and the feed. “Looks like they’re armed, three of them with automatic weapons and the two with just what their augments give them. I need to get to that server room on the surface floor, you think you can handle clearing it?” She continued.

“Most likely. Put that shield up and we should be able to take the two lookouts here at the same time.” Vinyl replied, sliding an arrow out of one of her forearm quivers and notching it. Twilight pressed a series of buttons on a device she retrieved from a pocket and Vinyl suddenly felt very bare as her connections to local databases were completely cut off. The guards seemed to notice as they looked at each other and seemed more alert.

“Take your shot a second after mine, or the other will react to it and you may miss.” Vinyl advised as she drew back. Twilight was unsure about the timing, the distance was quite far for a bow and arrow. Even a powerful metal bow would take at least three seconds for the arrow to hit at this range. She trusted the Seeker, though.

She could hear the metal cable straining, creaking with tension. She took aim on her own target, the two seemingly unarmed men looking like a pair of homeless around a barrel fire, and waited for Vinyl to take her shot. She heard the release of the arrow and waited the second before firing her own shot. The two men had no time to react as one had their head torn off and pinned to the ground by the arrow and the other had blood spray from the shot in his temple.

It would appear that they were both drones, Seeker grunts that weren’t originally human, as their blood was white.

“That kind of reminds me, Vinyl. What color is your blood?” Twilight asked as she packed up her rifle to take up less space in a sort of folded up form.

“A nearly black crimson, why do you ask?” Vinyl answered.

“Well synthetic blood is always white, and the blood full augments use is usually black or white. I was curious, we can talk more later though.” Twilight replied. Vinyl nodded and extended the claws and talons on her fingers and feet as they made their way to the street below and towards the building. She pulled the pair of smaller, silenced handguns from her thigh compartments as Twilight unholstered a similar single handgun and a tactical knife. They entered the building and went their separate ways.

Twilight went to the server room, containing one armed Seeker, while Vinyl made her way down to the other two on the floor below.

“Do you want me to check out the last floor, even though there aren’t any of them down there?” Vinyl asked over her radio.

“Clear your targets and wait for me, I’m already uploading.” Twilight replied. They cut the contact then and Vinyl examined the room the two armed Seekers were in. They were alert and from what little she saw they were ready for something to enter where she was. The ceiling was very high, though, higher than their estimated cone of view by the looks of it. She holstered her weapons and looked at the wall of the doorway.

Soundlessly, she grappled up to the ceiling and used her claws and talons to latch onto it. She silently used this method to get into the room undetected and behind their fields of view. She dropped to the ground, landing without stirring up even a spec of dust, and in a flash was behind her opponents. Their startled yelps were cut off as Vinyl’s clawed hands went through the backs of their biometal skulls, covering her and the area in black blood. These ones weren’t drones.

She pulled out her handguns again and noticed Twilight cautiously making her ways down the stairs.

“Any of that yours?” She asked.

“Too dark to be mine.” Vinyl replied as they continued down the stairs to the lowest floor.

“Oh hell yes, I’ve always wanted one of these…” Twilight said with a laugh as they found that it was an underground garage. The only things left in the place were two very strange looking motorcycle-esq vehicles.

“I’ve read about them and even seen a couple of them in the city, but it looks like these ones are weaponized.” Twilight continued as she stepped up to them. Vinyl’s augments were already scanning them and compiling lists of functions and components. She sent them to Twilight as the girl mounted one of them and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened.

“Damn, they’re identity locked…” She sighed. Vinyl smiled and walked up to it. The way these things were activated was you put your arms and legs into the slots and they synched with your augments. For obvious reasons they were almost exclusively used by Seekers, but some of the richer civilians had started using them like they were sports cars.

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked when she mounted it after Twilight got off and put her limbs in their places. With a rather violent twist she pulled a metallic mass of wires out of the right arm slot and the thing started.

“There you are, there was just a bit of blockage. These one’s haven’t been identity locked yet, they have internal locks on them.” Vinyl said, getting off and mounting the second one and repeating the process. “Most people, and Seekers for that matter, don’t know that you can rip the locks out without damaging the system if done right.” She continued. A sort of cockpit extended over her as she turned it around towards the lift that would take them up to the street-level garage.

“Now that is really cool.” Twilight said with a bit of awe as she reviewed the components and functions as she followed VInyl’s lead. “Good lord these things have cannons?” She continued as they went up the lifts, noticing some of the components.

“Energy canons with the power and armor penetrating equivalent of 122mm high explosive anti armor canons. There’s also energy machine guns and very powerful jet thrusters in the rear. All of it is designed to recharge on its own as the engine runs, and the engine runs on fuel or magic.” Vinyl explained.

“Once again, that is really cool.” Twilight repeated as they shot out into the streets. Twilight gave them a route to follow back home and called in their new means of transport.

“You’re going to need another shower. What’d you do, shove your arms into their chests and let all that blood rain down on you?” Twilight asked over the radio, remembering the other girl’s state.

“Skulls, actually… you weren’t exactly sparkling either.” Vinyl replied.

“Wow, you’re pretty brutal. I shot my target in the head and it splattered.” Twilight said, her tone a bit skewed between afraid and impressed.

“There’s a reason I never tried to fight Chasers…” Vinyl said softly. There was a bit of silence as they made their way through the streets of Canterlot.

“We can talk about that later. For now, let’s go get cleaned up.” Twilight broke the radio silence as they pulled into the large garage at the Chaser HQ. Vinyl nodded and dismounted, following Twilight in.

Author's Note

I'm bumping the rating up to mature for this one, turns out I couldn't help myself with the gore. It's nowhere near cupcakes levels, and I don't plan for it to be, but expect anything short of insides falling out for the real violent sections.
and I know I'm going to get a bit of heat for the fast pacing of the mission, but this time it was intentional. I'll get more into the reason I made it so fast in the next chapter.
tell me what you think? And as always, if you're going to leave a dislike the least you can do is let me know why so I can try to improve