I opened my eyes blearily, but quickly shut them, groaning. Light. Bright, painful light.

"He's awake." A voice I didn't recognize stated gruffly.

As I wondered who just spoke, it all came rushing back. The missile facility, seemingly abandoned. The ambush. Jackson and I got knocked out. We were captured.

A door opened. "Firestar," Tom's voice said, "wake up."

Tom. my blood boiled. I opened my eyes, blinking. After they adjusted, I looked around. The room I was in was small and spartan, uncomfortably akin to an interrogation room.

Then I saw Tom, standing there, armed with nothing but a smug look. My mind blanked. I tried to lunge at him, to wrap my hooves around his throat and squeeze the life out of him, but something held me down. I was strapped onto the table, bound my my hands, feet, arms, and legs.

I couldn't attack physically, so I lashed out verbally. "You piece-of-sh*t ba**ard son of a fu**ing bit**! I'll kill you! You'll rot in Tartaus, you motherfu**ing- AARGH!!"

One of Tom's buddies stuck an active tazer rod onto me. The pain stopped my ranting, and shocked out of my mindless, rage-filled, verbal hazing. I calmed down a bit, though the adrenaline rush still left me breathing hard.

"Well, if there's one respectable thing about you," Tom quipped, "it's your colorful mouth."

"Give me a gun." I replied. "I'm a respectable shot, too."

Tom smirked. "I'll pass."

"Scared?" I tried to goad him.

"Smart." He countered. "I'm not giving you a chance at me." He nodded to one of his friends. "Get what you can, but leave him intact."

When the interrogator grinned, I swear I could feel a chill go down my spine.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The only time I had felt worse pain was when Princess Luna sent me back in time, and that had taken mere seconds. The interrogator knew just the right spots to leave no permanent injury, and he knew how much presure to apply to achieve maximum effect. I was only in there for a half-hour, tops, but I felt like it'd been a century.

Don't ask me how, but I didn't break. They didn't get a thing.

I was eventually half-dragged to a cell. Jackson was there.

Whereas my escorts unceremoniously dumped me onto the floor, Jackson carefully lifted me up onto a rough cot that would serve as my bed.

I felt too weak to do anything, so I just lay there, with Jackson softly singing some kind of lullaby. I still don't know the name of it, or even what language it was in, but it was beautiful. Smooth, soft, comforting, etc.. I doubt I even lasted 20 seconds before I apparently drifted off.

When I woke up, it was dark, and I was alone. One guard stood outside the cell, and Jackson was gone. I started to worry, but then I heard footsteps. Three guards came to my cell, carrying my now-injured friend.

They opened the cell door, and one shoved Jackson inside. Then surprisingly, he followed. Jackson was roughly pinned to the wall.

"You're gonna pay for that one." The guard said. He spit in Jackson's face, and then planted a knee into his groin.

As the guard left, Jackson collpased. Through the pain, I could see a victorious grin on his face.

As he lightly chuckled, I quietly asked him "What the he** did you do?"

"I broke out." He whispered. "The interrogator and I were alone. He turned his back, and I morphed a little. Slipped out of the cuffs. By the time security came in, I'd broken both his arms, and a leg. I heard one mention that the interrogator was the only one they had; it'll be days before a new guy gets here. Now, all they can do is hold us."

I chuckled. "You fu**ing moron! You're terrific!" No interrogations meant time to regain our strength.

I checked him over, but found only a few bruises. "Tomorrow," I whispered, "we can work on how to get out of here. Let's get you up, come on." I carefully lifted him into his cot. "You feeling okay, besides the bruises?"

"Mostly. Nothing that getting back won't fix. You?"

"Now, yeah. When I first got here, I felt like I'd been hit by a stampede, and then trampled by Running-of-the-Leaves participants. Repeatedly."

Jackson laughed. "You and your strange descriptions. How do you come up with them?"

I chuckled. "I don't know; it just comes out." I grinned. "I guess I'm just special, that way."

Jackson grunted, amused. "You're special, alright." He deadpanned, teasing.

I shrugged, playing along. "Eh, having a brain's overrated, anyways."

After he finished chuckling, Jackson said quietly "Go to sleep, before you kill me with laughter."

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The day after, we mentally noted down everything we could. What guard had the keys, where he had them, how many guads there were, how long each shift was, etc.. That night, we discussed the how's.

The next morning, as usual, there were two guards. Their shift changed. Me and Jackson sat around for about 20 minutes, waiting for the newcomers let their guard down.

At one point, I glanced over. Both guards were facing away from us. I nodded to Jackson. We silently got up. Jackson morphed into a very thin version of himself, and stepped right through the bars.

Meanwhile, I got behind the guard closer to me. I slipped my hands through the bars. A quick chop to the throat stopped any vocalizations. I then grabbed the guard, and held him against the cell door, choking him out. The guard foolishly dropped his gun, scrabbling to get my arms off of his throat.

The other guard had started turning, but Jackson had already normalized. Jackson kicked the barrel of the gun, knocking it out of the guard's hooves, then knifed right at the throat with his hand; a more pointed method than my chop, but with the same result. As the gun clattered to the floor, Jackson followed up with a knee to the stomach, and a twist of the neck.

Jackson casually sauntered up to my victim. A head butt with Jackson's horn leading the way into an eye socket finished him off.

Jackson picked up the keys, and unlcoked the cell door. He shiverd. "A horn can be used for a lot of creative things; stabbing should never be one of the them."

I chuckled. "At least you didn't discover a new kink."

"Don't even put that thought in my head." He replied.

I smirked. Picking on my friends is too easy, sometimes.

We grabbed the guards' weapons and uniforms, and tossed the bodies into our cots, covering and positioning them in a way that made them look like they were us, asleep. It'd buy us at least a few seconds.

I tried to remember anything I'd seen while I was escorted out of my cell. Think, Star! Was there an exit? I couldn't remember seeing any, not that I'd expected to; why would you bring your captive anywhere near where they wanted to go?

We basically just picked a direction and set off. We were in a cellblock, but it was empty. We were the only prisoners. I tried not to think of what that said about how often they captured, instead of just outright executed.

We passed a few hallways, some of which were occupied. The uniforms allowed us to slip by, but I didn't want to chance getting too close; uniforms don't do much, if a guard recognizes you.

We could've gone down any of the hallways; we didn't exactly know where we were going, anyways. Still, we eventually just turned into a random one.

It was initially empty, but when we got about halfway down, a door opened right in front of me.

"-And so I took the gun and shot the bulls-eye. Just like that!" A pair of guards walked out of the room, chatting. They looked like they were heading back to their shift.

However, upon seeing us so close, one's eyes widened. "What the f-!"

I blasted him with a mute spell, and then lifted him off the ground with my magic. Jackson fired a magic bolt of some kind, apparently doing kinetic damage, right into the other guard's eye. I saw brain bits splatter the wall. I finished my own guard by twisting his neck sharply.

Not used to using my magic that much, with that precision, I allowed myself a moment to recover. While I did have a huge mana reserve, that didn't mean I was able to use it all. It's more like a muscle than anything else; you don't use it often, then you can't apply it as much when you do use it. Even with an adrenaline rush, a mostly-ignored muscle is not going function nearly as well as one you use frequently. I can do the average "carry your stuff without your hands" stuff for half the day just fine, but that's about all I can do for any extended period of time.

Eh, call me an idiot; I have more natural power than most unicorns, and I barely use it. I have better wings than some pegasi, and I don't fly much. Sue me.

After the (very) minor magic-induced headache passed, I noticed Jackson had already dragged one of the bodies into the room. Ripping a piece of one's shirt off, I used it to clean up the blood and brain matter on the wall.

After hiding the bodies (and disposing of the mess), Jackson and I continued casually strolling down the hallway, hoping we'd find a map, or an exit sign. Yeah, like we'll just stumble upon the way out. That's likely. Eh, a pony can hope.

Two hallways (and a narrowly-avoided close encounter) later, we found a map. That was the good news. The bad news?

"You're kidding me." Jackson said. "We've got to pass right through multiple highly-populated rooms in order to get to the exit?"

"Well," I replied, "there are always the vents. Unfortunately..." I turned to one such air duct, which was about the size of my head, "... only one of us can fit."

"I'm not leaving you behind." Jackson stated simply.

"I'd have been surprised if you did." I replied. "Welp! Mess Hall and a couple of Barracks, it is! It was nice knowing you."

We walked off. As long as we kept pretending to be deep in a conversation, and avoided getting too close to other guards, we'd be fine. Surprisingly, we actually made it. Well, almost.

An alarm sounded. The PA system yelled out "the prisoners have escaped! They are armed and disguised! Find them!"

I'd reflexively glanced up at the PA as it screamed that out. When I looked down, I saw... every single person in the room staring right at me.

"Oh... sh*t." I said slowly, realizing just how screwed I was. I turned to Jackson. "I don't know what this looks like to you, but to me, this looks like a very good time to RUN LIKE HE**!!!"

And so we did. I was just glad none of them were armed.

PING! Eh heh... scratch that, a few were. Granted, pistols only, but still. More incentive. We didn't even bother shooting back, we just poured all our strength into running like the wind.

We turned a corner, and I shoulder-bashed the door in front of me open. Somehow, we'd gotten ourselves into the base's garage.

As we both scrambled for the nearest Humvee look-alike, I asked Jackson "You know how to hot-wire?"

"Eh, kind of!" He replied, yanking the door open. "I'll figure it out. Get on the turret!"

I got in, checked that it was loaded - breathed a sigh of relief when I found it was - and rotated it towards the doorway we'd just come through.

Not a moment too soon. The first three guys that scrambled through all went wide-eyed, and then went wide-open to the floor, with a few new holes to breathe through. Their buddies wisely decided to stay behind the door, blind-firing. I instinctively ducked as one got too close, and pinged off the shield the turret was mounted on.

"Jackson, hurry up!" I shouted, trying to be heard over the gunfire.

"Keep your shirt on, I'm trying! Almost there!"

A few seconds later, I was greeted with an exuberant shout of "Got it!" accompanied by an engine starting up. "Hold on to something!" Jackson yelled back.

I tightened my grip on the handlebars of the turret as Jackson floored the accelerator. We bashed right through the small bar blocking the path outside. I barely moved. This thing must be built like a fu**ing tank! Any normal car would probably have just severely dented its whole front, and probably thrown me right off.

Then, I had to put all my concentration on firing. Dozens of fully-armed CJ soldiers were sprinting around outside, some alone, some in clusters. All of them started shooting.

Luckily, being in a vehicle driving at 50+ MPH really throws off their accuracy. Unluckily, it did the same to mine. I probably hit one guy for every 10-15 rounds I shot.

We caught a small break as I managed to hit an explosive barrel sitting next to a parked truck, blowing them both up... setting off a chain reaction of huge explosions as the half a dozen other trucks sitting in a line near the first one also went up.

Why do I get the feeling this would be a perfect movie scene? I thought as explosions went everywhere, dramatically. Seriously, what the he**? This is like one of those movies with the huge robots that can transform into whatever they scan. Oh yeah, the sheer amount of explosions from them was because of the director. Something to do with water... a bay, I think?

... And that's when things took a turn for the 'we're fu**ing screwed.' A bona-fide tank rolled out of a nearby garage.

"Jackson, step on it! They've got a tank!"

"What? Fu**! ...Argh! This thing won't go much faster!"

"It'd better, or- Jink right!" I saw the tank's barrel aim directly at us.

I nearly flipped over the whole turret when Jackson made what was probably almost a 90-degree turn, managing to catch myself only because he then did the same to the left, in order to re-orient us.

I glanced in front of us. A small bridge, barely large enough for two Humvees to go side-by-side, was the only way across a huge gap, which looked akin to a canyon, of some sort. Despite the gap being at least 100 meters, I couldn't see the bottom, which meant that it was a very deep canyon.

The tank's round blasted a hole right in the center of the bridge. It also apparently, took out a central support beam; the bridge suddenly sagged right where the blast was. I saw said support beam fall, impacting directly against another beam. The process repeated, and suddenly the bridge was no longer a viable option for anything but walking, and even then, you'd have to feel pretty adventurous.

"Sh*t!" Jackson exclaimed. We were coming in too fast, from too close, to brake. He tried to yank us to a side, but the wheels skidded. We ended up perching on the edge, half off, half on, for a second. And then our turning momentum sent us over the edge.

"Fuuuuu**!" Jackson yelled out as we fell. I held on for dear life, and I could only guess he was doing the same.

We hit a rock shelf after only a few feet. The heavy impact jarred me, but I held on tight. The Humvee kept turning in midair, gravity helping its momentum along. We did a complete 180 before we hit the next shelf, much further down. The impact was hard enough for me to lose my grip, and I tumbled into the Humvee. I scrambled for a handhold, and just barely managed to grip the door handle, thanking the stars that Jackson had decided to lock it, before we hit yet another rock shelf. I hit my head on the roof, and for a second I thought the sensation of gravity attempting to pull me down to the back of the Humvee, rather than the floor, was just my dizziness. As my eyes glimpsed outside, though, I realized we were actually flipping.

And then we were upside-down. I thanked the stars that I hadn't fallen to the back when it, alone, landed on the next shelf, completely crushing the roof.

Following gravity, my head turned up, towards the front of the Humvee. Quite a distance below, I saw the ground. There was no rock shelf to - painfully - cushion our fall to a survivable speed. We were going to die, just like that; crushed by our Humvee by being inside it when it landed at a high-impact speed.

Jackson, however, had other plans. "Jump!" He yelled. "Right before we hit the ground, jump!" He unlocked the doors. His opened. Mine was damaged, and stuck. Thinking quickly, I scrambled for the turret. Climbing on top of it, standing on the shield, I braced myself.

"Make sure you put most of your strength into going up!" Jackson exclaimed rapidly. "Cancel out your inertia from the fall!"

There is no way in he** this is going to work. Not like Wolfhound's goal seemed like that, originally, either. If I live through this, I will officially declare Jackson a genius.

I waited until my eyes told me the Humvee was less than 10 feet from the ground before I let my legs straighten out, sending me into the most dangerous jump of my entire life. I didn't even bother using my wings. Trying to get myself to fly at this height would just sprain them; I had enough trouble getting them to work first-try on the ground.

... I won't claim I didn't scream my a** off on the way down, but I wouldn't say I'd deny it, either. As I fell, my mind decided to actually work right, and recalled a spell I'd learned as a Grade School kid, back when I was a slight parkour enthusiast. The spell cushioned your fall, a little. It was only meant to stop you from hurting yourself when you jumped off something a couple feet higher than you thought it was. This was a whole lot more than couple feet, but it was worth a shot. Targeting both myself and Jackson, I let it off.

It worked, but it sure didn't feel like it. As I landed, I transferred my momentum into a roll, but it still hurt like he**. Have you ever fallen on a stick? Try falling on a group of them from 15 feet up.

"...Ooww..." I barely choked out, sprawled on the ground. Every inch hurt, and I felt like I couldn't move. He**, I could barely breathe. I was just fine with laying here for a few years, go away. I'll get up when the world stops enjoying my suffering, physical or otherwise.

After what felt like an eternity - code for about 30 seconds - the pain dimmed. My breath returned, and I could move again. Which also meant I could inflict even more pain upon my person.

Two excruciating minutes later, I'd worked myself to my feet, and I was now leaning on a nearby tree. I heard footsteps, and pulled out my pistol, expecting to have to fight for my life while the pain - now more of a dull ache - from the fall partied throughout every inch of my body. I was happily surprised when Jackson hobbled into view, looking the other way, towards the wrecked Humvee.

I put the pistol away and called out "over here."

Jackson and I walked up to each other. Wordlessly, we both started chuckling, which soon dissolved into outright laughter, venting our nerves and adrenaline.

"I can't believe that really fu**ing worked!" I gasped.

"Me neither." Jackson replied. "At least, as well as did; I was expecting us to have to find our way home with a broken leg, maybe a dislocated arm or two."

"I cushioned us. An old spell I learned as a kid."

"I felt it.... Now, how do we get out of here? I seriously hope you don't think we can fix that wreck." He thumbed in the direction of the Humvee, now more like a pile of scrap metal than anything else.

"Nah. We'd need a whole lot of duct tape, for that." I quipped. Thinking for a few seconds, I told him "Take off the uniform."

"Wait, what?"

"Take off the uniform. If they find pieces of them in the fire, they'll think we died." I replied.

"... What fire?"

"Got any string?"

"Firestar, what the he** are you trying to do?"

"Trust me. Now, do you have any string?"

"Um, no. The first-aid kit in the Humvee might have some gauze, though. Hopefully it's long enough for whatever you need."

"Eh, just a few feet, I think." I said, nonchalantly.

Jackson blinked. "... A few feet? I doubt it."

"I suppose I could rip my jumpsuit up, a little. Tie some cloth in." I said, enjoying a chuckle at Jackson's raised eyebrow and completely confused look.

Eventually, I had a makeshift string made of gauze and jumpsuit cloth. I tied one end around my pistol's trigger, and used another string to secure the gun from moving, making sure it was aimed at the Humvee's engine. We placed one uniform in the driver's seat, and tossed the other in the back.

Standing a safe distance away, I yanked the string. The already-heavily damaged engine couldn't take the heat and power of being shot, once again, and exploded. Flames licked away at everything inside, burning the uniforms, seats, and now-empty first-aid box, along with everything else inside the Humvee.

"You do realize that, if they check, they'll see the uniforms are empty?" Jackson stated.

"Not if they just use binoculars. The second they see two uniforms inside the flames, not moving, they'll assume we're wearing them, and have already died. It's a risk, but it could buy us some time."

Jackson shrugged, and pointed at a nearby mountain. "I recognize that one; I studied Equestrian geography, a few years before all this happened. There's another Changeling hive hidden deep inside the mountain, which is why I was interested in it. Friendly, of course. Most hives are. Besides my own, of course. Anyways, whence we get to the mountain, I can figure out where we are."

"Well, then let's move before they check on our bodies and find us standing around, chatting." I said, patting him on the back. "You did a good job, back there. We both did, but you, especially."

And with that, we started hiking.

Author's Note

Heh, it gets interesting trying to reference stuff in the real world without just outright saying what it is.