An Advanced Warfare

"Shut up..." Ray moaned as his alarm clock awoke him from his peaceful slumber. "Alright! Alright! Fine." He gritted his teeth and got up, still a bit weary. He slammed his hoof on the off button on the alarm. Once again, he forgot to take off his hidden blades and weapons. He looked for them and panicked when he couldn't find them. "Damn. Where could they have gone?" That's when he realized that he was wearing his weapons, due to the clanging of metal against metal. "I'm such an idiot." He deserved a face-hoof and he got one.

His phone beeped, a message from Twilight telling him to reach HQ. "Oh shoot." Ray instantly bolted to the bathroom and splashed some cold water onto his face, erasing any trace of his fatigue. 'Am I late for something? That would be so embarrassing.' he thought as he burst through the front door, actually the first time he's ever gone through the front door. 'Well, there's a first time for everything I guess.'

Grappling hooks were probably the fastest way to go at the moment and HQ isn't too far away but still quite some distance away from Ray's location. He slammed his door shut and shot a hook into the sky, towards the nearest building.

Ray was instantly shot forward and into the sky as he made his way towards Headquarters, ledge by ledge. There were ponies below him still marveling over this fact but some seem to have recognized him. Faint murmurs of a 'flying pony' was heard as he zipped through the city. The stallion's eyebrow rose and he wondered what that was all about.

Now the thing is that when you are flying through the city at a high speed, you can't really allow yourself to get distracted, but this is what just happened to Ray. As he thought about this for just a second, he accidentally slammed into a ledge and it made contact with his waist. The caused him to lose the momentum and crash to the ground which fortunately was not too far of a fall.

The pain coursed over his body as he attempted to get up again, sure that something was broken in his body. He stole a look at his body before shooting into the sky once again. The pain rose to extreme levels as he went up, forcing him to land onto a rooftop, dust everywhere as he collapsed. The stallion let out some weak coughs and pulled out his phone. He pulled up his texting software and quickly shot off a message to Twilight, saying that he may be late.

He hissed as he got up, pain still having it's effect on Ray as he quickly examined his wounds. 'Not too bad, just some scrapes.' The pain was slowly subsiding, but Ray was still having a bit of trouble getting up.

When he was back on his hooves, he tried grappling once again, which still was possible with his injuries but his attempt to roll did not work as well though. During his attempt to roll, he felt an enormous amount of pain in his back and screwed up the roll.

"Is this really going to be the way I get out of commission?" He groaned as he flattened his mane out. Checking his phone, it showed where he was in the world at the moment and it showed that HQ wasn't too far away. 'A few minutes to walk won't kill you...' It showed Equestria on the map, but for the strangest reason, all these unknown places appear on the map. 'When did these places come into place?'

Ray simply shrugged this off and he returned to ground level, which was literally painfully slow. The fact that he fell at the last second did not help either. "Buck this..." he muttered, slightly annoyed with himself.

Walking was now the only thing Ray could do until he got some real medical attention and he was NOT going to some random hospital nor doctor. The fact that he could barely run really put a knife in his potentially good day. During the walking, he was allowed to truly examine the city from ground level, which surprisingly was just as great as a view from the sky.

After a while of walking, he reached HQ which was encircled by some armed ponies. At first this seemed like regular entrance guards if they have not pointed their guns at the stallion. This sudden action made Ray quickly bolt towards the nearest cover, aggravating his injuries in the process.

As the adrenaline coursed through out his body he drew his gun and blindly emptied his clip into the small crowd of guards. 'Has the building been overrun with Atlas? What is this about?'

He reloaded as he heard the click, indicating an empty clip. He spotted another viable cover but when he poked his head out of his cover, a storm of bullets attacked him, causing the stallion to stay in his cover. After a while, the guards thought he was dead and at that moment, he made his move, running towards that cover as loud crackling sounds emitted from the guards' guns.

This caused extreme aggravation to his injuries and he stumbled into the cover instead of a simple slide. He gritted his teeth as he used one hoof to wrap his chest, while using the other hoof to fire at the attackers. Dirt and bricks flew into the air as a grenade exploded near the stallion, causing him to flinch and cover his ears. As he finished another clip, he reloaded, shot a few more shots and found that he had two clips left. Oh no...

He threw a smoke grenade, which would cover his cover swap. While Ray ran through the smoke, he realized that his Eagle Vision was not working at it's finest, as it was so blurry that it was impossible to see anything. When the smoke started to clear, Ray took careful aim and let out three precise shots to the guards, killing three as the last guard started aiming his gun. As Ray pulled the trigger, expecting the bang but received a clicking sound. After this happened, the guard started firing at Ray, Who was hoping that he would run out of ammunition soon. When the guard continued shooting, he obviously failed to check his ammunition which eventually let to his gun going click and the faint sound of a clip falling to the ground was heard.

Ray took this opportunity to lunge out of his cover and the Assassin attempted to draw his hidden blades but heard a small 'chink' as the blade failed to draw. "What?" was the only thing the stallion could say in his moment of confusion. The guard took this moment to kick the stallion in the chest, sending him stumbling back. Ray blocked the next attack and drove his hoof into the guard's face making the guard's head whip to the right. Normally this would have been nothing but it caused extreme pain due to his already injured body.

The Assassin delivered a kick which should have slammed into the guard's temple but as he did this, his hoof went weak and unbalanced, causing him to be unbalanced. This was a small error but the guard took advantage of this and grabbed the leg to slam Ray onto the ground. Pain coursed throughout his body as he struggled to avoid the guard's flurry of punches to the head.

One of the punches were careless and the Assassin made sure that this opportunity was not wasted, quickly twisting the hoof and kicked the attacker off. He did a spin, delivering a potent blow to the stomach and a back-hoof to the cheek. After this, he delivered a devastating blow to the nose as he bent his hoof, doing what should have been an elbow as a human.

The guard stumbled back and carelessly swiped at the Assassin but he ducked under this and he picked up his victim then smashed the guard into the ground, leaving the guard breathless. A quick blow to the neck was needed as the kick destroyed the guard's windpipe.

Ray took in a few gulps of breath as he struggled to regain his breath. When he recovered, he quickly reloaded his gun, giving him one last clip to use. He checked the machinery of the hidden blades and found pebbles making the gears stuck. 'How is this even possible? Both my hidden blades stuck by some pebbles? That's next to impossible...'

He took a small but sturdy stick and took a moment to push the rocks out of the gears. 'There we go.' He examined the door that was used to enter HQ. 'Seems sturdy, but it wouldn't hurt to try kicking it down now would it?'

Ray took a step back and bucked the door as hard as possible which led to a loud crash, signaling that the door flew back into the vast room. 'Could there be more to my artificial leg than I know about?' he thought as he stepped into the dimly lit room. The minute he passed the entrance he was hit in the head with a baseball bat. He fell to the ground but he wasn't down yet.

The baseball bat went down towards the Assassin's head but he quickly rolled out of the way and got back on his hooves. 'You want to fight? Let's fight.' he thought as he spun, kicking the attacker right in the nose, sending him stumbling into a wall. Ray jumped onto him and delivered a quick punch to the temple, knocking him out as another attacker emerged from the darkness, nearly cutting Ray with his knife as he attacked. The stallion blocked the blow and ducked under the knife as he twisted the attacker's hoof.

Ray used one of his hooves to push the hoof with the knife to the ground and quickly broke his assailant's hoof. Before he could scream in pain, Ray delivered a kick to the temple, knocking him out. He quickly executed a backflip to evade another knife. As he landed, a mare stepped out of the darkness and used a hoof-held taser, zapping Ray in the neck. As the pony with the knife lunged, he rolled to the right, while shooting a hidden blade into the stallion with the knife and using the taser against the mare, electrocuting her till she went unconscious. Another pony emerged as Ray quickly threw this pony over his back and onto the ground. He was about to drive his hidden blades into the mare's neck if he had not identified her. "Twilight, don't do that to me!" he exclaimed, helping her up.

"Sorry Ray, but I wasn't sure if it was really you." she said, breathless from the impact. He simply gave her an amused expression, "Really? You can't tell it was really me? Same outfit, probably the only outfit in Equestria. But let's get back on the issue at hand here. What's going on?"

Twilight gave him a strange look when he said hand but she simply shrugged and replied, "There's been some soldiers in the Sentinel Task Force attacking us from inside HQ and some other buildings, but we were not able to identify them. We've already lost over half our data and we can't win a war with dysfunctional vehicles. We suspect that it's Atlas but many of our own soldiers have been attacking us. Over 89% of Sentinel soldiers started attacking us."

Ray's eyebrows furrowed at the word 'we'. "Who is 'we' exactly? Who are you working with at this moment?"

"Ray, I'd like you to meet Captain 'Alpha' Gideon and First Lieutenant Jack 'Badger-Two' Mitchell. Currently these are the only ponies I know at the moment who hasn't betrayed Sentinel yet. They've been loyal to Sentinel ever since they were rank Private all the way to their current ranks." she answered, addressing to two ponies who stepped out from the dark. "Power has also been running low for some reason, causing most systems to shut down automatically, which one of them is connection to anything. So is our radar, maps, radio, etc. We're fighting a blind war right now. Currently Fluttershy, Applejack and Pinkie Pie have been missing for some time since the blackout which we think made this happen."

"So you're the stallion Twilight's been talking about? Good to have you on board mate. As the pretty mare there said, we do have no connection to radio, so we have no connection to any of our soldiers. We currently rely on these earpieces," Gideon stated, giving an earpiece to Ray. "Which broadcast on a whole different channel, so we can communicate from nearly anywhere in Equestria." Ray put in the earpiece and it surprisingly was pretty comfortable.

Ray tried finding his friends using his telepathic connection but he just heard a scrambling sound which made it impossible to hear anything. 'Are they dead? Would this happen if they are dead?'

"Right, so you appear low on soldiers, I currently know a former Atlas soldier who ran from the corporation, and is now laying low, trying to keep a low profile. She viewed some classified files which motivated her to run. She gave me a serial code, AD1034, I'm not sure what it was but I tried to find out what it was. No luck." Ray lied, the file was not clear, it had just some unrecognizable mechanics in it. It seemed like a blueprint though.

Mitchell perked up at the number and asked, "Mare? So we have a former Atlas soldier with valuable intel... we'll see."

"Right so what's happening now is that the Sentinel Task Force is crumbling and we are the only ones who have a shot at stopping this at the moment? Are you all sure?" Ray asked. 'Will this really be how Sentinel falls?'