Red and Black 2

The estate the following day was a bustle with a myriad of local guards, crime scene investigation, and the watchful eyes of Shining Armor. Along with them, much to the latter's embarrassment and the former's consternation, were Patient Care and a blue-coated, silver-maned stallion sporting spectacles and crimson serpents entwined around a winged rod for his cutie mark.

Patient didn't know how or why, but the silver-maned stallion had metal patches in his legs and chest, suggesting something somewhere went wrong for him. At his side stood two mares, a blond-maned lilac pegasus with green and oddly shining primaries with a bell collared to her neck and a pastel-maned grey-teal unicorn who glared at each other. Because the pegasus had larger wings than normal, Patient couldn't make out her or the pastel-mare's cutie marks too well. He could see rings on her fetlock and the silver-maned stallion's fetlock as well, matching each other's manes and coat colors perfectly.

"Okay, first I get pulled here by some chimera thing… then I get tasked with beating and murdering ponies who remind me of somepony back home that I would very much love to kick in the face... and now I get to deal with documenting the dead…" the silver-maned stallion muttered to himself.

“Like it or not, you two were the only official medical personnel that were available in the local strike teams,” Shining Armor spoke up, overhearing the silver-maned stallion. “We’ve got a lot of dead here, so be thorough, professional, and most of all: be brisk.”

The silver-maned stallion gestured to the unicorn accompanying him. "And of course, keep her from burning everything to the ground." The mare in question huffed, before peering over the stallion's shoulder to grin wickedly at Patient. Patient stared into her eyes, and frowned when he realized it was like staring into two whole color wheels that turned evil. Her eyes screamed of the standard red-and-black ill intent, but they did not seem to be of the menace's design. This made him wonder what the story behind such odd oculars was.

“Anything you can tell us about who we’re dealing with in terms of importance? Word on the grape vine says it’s something we outta be worried about,” Patient asked, turning towards Shining.

“This was once the estate of a mister Earl Silver Bar,” Shining looked at the three ponies before him. "And once this is sorted, the estate will go to the Crown until Celestia can figure out what to do with it."

Patient tried hard to hide an expression of shock, for it was naught a few days ago when he had had an argument with the aforementioned stallion. The new trio, however, seemed less interested in that and more interested in either glaring at each other, or showing that disinterest to Shining himself.

“Oh,” was all Patient could utter, blowing the lid on his obscuration of shock.

"The same bastard who told me to de-wing my own wife last week, when we tried delivering our report of the ongoings of the alicorn infestation that was cleared out of Las Pegasus?" the silver-maned stallion huffed.

“Whatever your personal grievances with him were, they must be put aside for the time being so we can ascertain the situation accurately,” Shining spoke calmly, making eye contact with him and Patient.

The silver-maned stallion sighed. "Very well…" He nudged the pegasus mare gently with his shoulder, for some reason steering clear of her primaries.

The pegasus turned to Shining and eased her expression into one of the most apathetic looks Patient had yet seen on a pony. "Avoid property damage?" she asked.

Shining nodded. “You’ll just have to see for yourself. If there’s any more questions, ask them now.”

The prismic-eyed unicorn raised a hoof. "Do we get to burn the bodies when we're done documenting them?" she asked, still wearing her wicked smirk as Shining turned to her. Patient started to wonder if she was a burn ward pony, or just a pyromaniac in general.

Shining sucked in a breath and pursed his lips. "We'll see," he said bluntly. He turned to the pegasus. "Keep her in line, as usual."

The pegasus nodded back and turned to the prismic-eyed unicorn once again. "If you behave, we'll let you eat more roasted star silk spiders," she said. That made the unicorn mare begin prancing in place, teeth glinting as she began to salivate at the thought.

That comment didn’t even phase Patient, as being since exposed to so much crazy from the red and black menace and the other strike teams caused his questioning side to get up, grab a cold one, and trot on its lonesome all the way to Las Pegasus. He turned to the silver-maned stallion and asked, "So how bad was Las Pegasus?"

The silver-maned stallion turned to him and frowned. Somehow, his baby blue eyes spoke of so much before accounting for the red and black menace. "A few shapeshifting alicorns who were, surprisingly enough, not even changelings in the slightest. They kept growing bat wings, feathers, butterfly wings… a few turned into partial objects with heads and legs fused to benches and the like… when I told the Special Task Force about it a few roads down before being summoned here, I swear to the old gods that Rekka had a coronary and several conniptions."

That managed to twist Rekka's longer-than-shit ponytail into a knot? Patient began to wonder what about those details managed to elicit the reaction.

“What was Rekka doing out there to begin with?" Patient asked curiously.

"He wanted to chat with the other strike teams, seeing if any were in the streets at the early hour. Mine was the first his team ran into," the silver-maned stallion replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "The others with him were more… calm with their reactions."

"We need to see his world, and he needs to see ours sometime," the pegasus spoke with a ruffle of her wings. Patient noticed her primaries clicked and clacked like hoofsteps, oddly metallic and… wrong. Something about those primaries started to not sit right with him.

"No, we don't need to give him another heart attack, Sora," the silver-maned stallion muttered, shaking his head. "We all have enough on our plates as it is."

Sora nodded and turned back to Shining. "No further questions," she said.

Shining nodded, and turned to her companions. Both shook their heads, so he turned to Patient. "And you?"

The response from Patient was concise. “Nope.”

“Alright, give your findings to the guards here when you’re done.” Shining nodded and turned, briskly trotting away.

"Does that mean we have to deal with that pony who keeps wanting to touch us?" the prismic-eyed unicorn asked, garnering a rueful sigh and reluctant nod from Sora.

"If he makes contact, you have my permission to… percussively persuade him," Sora said.

The silver-maned stallion shook his head. "If we do that, though, we're going to have to make another report to Shiny-Biny over that guard's… lack of discipline," he said. "On top of the paperwork that would inevitably involve our response to it."

“And I thought I caused enough trouble around here…” Patient muttered to himself, before clearing his throat as Shining Armor proceeded to vanish from sight around the corner of the manse.

The throat-clearing caused the silver-maned stallion to turn to Patient. "And what sort of trouble have you gotten up to?" he asked.

“That’s a very long story and I’m honestly not too proud of it,” the nurse responded.

The silver-maned stallion sighed. "Just like the rest of the strike teams," he muttered under his breath. "Then again, I'm in the same boat…"

“Were I to judge books by their covers, I’d almost believe you,” Patient snorted.

That made the silver-maned stallion bark out a laugh, one that caused most of the guards in the yard to look at him. "That's the first time I've heard that from somepony who wasn't a stuck-up noble-born curmudgeon!" he said, grinning as though his frogs were undergoing tickle torture. "At least I can count on you to be honest with me, as I am with you." With that, he trotted into the manse, with the two mares falling in step behind him as he went. Strange, the prismic-eyed unicorn had a fragmented star wreathed in flames as her mark...

When was the last time he saw a mark that glaringly obvious, he wondered?

“Well, let’s get to work, then. I’ve got a couple days worth of leave coming up tomorrow and I’d rather not spend it trying to document more of this mess,” Patient stated to the group as he followed them into the mansion.

Within, guards were already hustling about, some with quills and paper on standby and others seeming to search for things. A few had sick buckets ready, with some having already been filled with emergency digestional contents having been evacuated before they arrived. That didn't bolster Patient or the strange trio in front of him with any shred of confidence; if anything, that was a clear warning sign to prepare their anuses.

Inside of the foyer, the four could see a multitude of guards patrolling the hallways, all wearing medical grade booties on their hooves as to not leave anything behind as they marched, as well as various local police investigators taking pictures and documenting notes while moving from room to room, setting little evidence markers as they worked.

Sora wrinkled her nose. "Well, now I have to avoid more ponies… great…" she grumbled.

“Let’s see what we’ve got…” the silver maned pony spoke as he walked into an ajar door that one police pony had walked out of.

The other three followed suit, finding a grisly scene of one of the mansion’s guards cleft in twain, his upper half crucified on the far wall of the room from the door. The guard’s innards were spilling on to the floor beneath him in a puddle of viscera and blood; the scene stunk to high heaven, as they apparently were sitting there for at least a day. The lower half was in bits and pieces, strewn across the floor of the desks the room had lining the walls. The method of crucifixion was done with railway spikes driven through the guard’s hooves.

“What in the name of the gods?” Patient furrowed his nose at the smell. Despite being used to the smells of burned and gangrenous flesh, as per his job, the smell of full-body rot always got to him, as it reminded him of the war.

“Oh, quit being a crybaby. You’ll get used to it soon enough,” the silver maned stallion chortled, taking another step into the room to view the scene in its entirety.

Peeking his head in, Patient could also see that bits and pieces of other ponies had been nailed to the walls using railway spikes as well, as errant, rotting limbs and scraps of maid’s outfits were torn off their respective bodies and pinned to the plaster.

“It seems as though this poor fellow was torn in half, as though by sheer brute force,” silver mane concluded, even though it was pretty damn obvious to Patient already. It almost sounded like he was trying to rub Patient's snout in it. “Note the stretching around the skin and the raggedness and stretched elastic-like look of the organs.” With that, one of his compatriots, the prism-eyed mare took out a notepad from the ether, and gave it and a pen brought forth the same way to Sora, who then began to jot down what was seen and said. Something caught his eye, however—the makeshift stakes didn't look quite right on their impalement spots, and it didn't take him much to discern why.

“Hey, take a closer look at the railway spikes. It looks like they were heated up before they were driven,” Patient spoke up, gesturing to the burned flesh around the entry points in the limbs hanging from the walls, as well as burn marks on the plaster.

The lilac pegasus knelt down to take a closer look at the bits of the guard’s lower half that were strewn everywhere. Her wings made that strange clicking sound as her primaries tapped one another. A particularly intact piece of colon and large intestine caught her eye, and she peered closer to discern why.

“Looks like he was gangraped too. Seminal fluid in the bowels,” she spoke, continuing to write. "How the rapists thought we'd miss this is beyond me, considering… well…" She lifted a hoof to gesture about the room before going back to writing.

An audible wretch could be heard from outside the door as one unfortunate guard overhearing the conversation galloped off to find a sick bucket.

“And I thought you were handling it pretty badly,” silver mane said, smirking at Patient as he continued to look around the room.

“Trust me, the shit these creatures pull off hardly ever gets old,” the nurse chuckled in response. “But my biggest question is how they tore the poor guy in half. All of the ones I’ve encountered have been extremely sickly and weak, so how would they be able to physically tear a pony in half?”

Sora stood up and looked Patient in the eye. "Tools, and a lot of time—several hours, at least." She turned about, and spotted a desk with scuff marks on it, as well as something blood-covered glinting off of it. "Like that."

Patient winced at the thought, oddly enough. He could kill a hundred of the multi-colored monsters in worse ways and feel nothing but relief, but this was a normal pony, he was one of “our guys”, and these awful creatures put this one through an ungodly hell before putting his misery to a slow, messy end. The old fire of rage in Patient was breathed with life anew. Such a fire has been burning for too long, he felt, but still new things to hate kindled its embers all the same.

“Ah, the trusty ol’ wrack!” Silver mane walked up to it, examining the mechanisms that were crudely attached to the table. “...and a makeshift one, too. I’d expect them to be somewhat less cunning.”

“They did have airships, you know,” Patient shrugged.

"Last I heard, those things were stolen, then returned in pieces, save the one having to be cleaned out," Sora replied, turning to her male companion. "Yukito, I'm wondering when you and Neon here—" She gestured to Patient as she said that, "—are going to start butting heads and bickering."

Yukito made an 'oh' face and turned to Patient, grin widening now. “That’s right. Aren’t you the one who got into several arguments in Celestia’s court? The one who actually argued with poor mister Earl Bar before his untimely demise?”

“Wouldn’t have to if they didn’t—” Patient began, but was cut off by Yukito.

“If I understand the situation correctly, Earl Bar here wasn’t the one who started the argument; your heckling did.” Yukito’s words cut like a scalpel, because they were true. “That other noble you argued with, Cyril, was it? While he might have had it coming, you did your town—and your ideology—little service with your belligerence.”

Patient wanted to get in Yukito’s face and smack him around like the sissy bitch he seemed to be, but he knew his words to be true and couldn’t say or do anything because that would make it worse. He simply cracked his neck and put on a stoic expression as he simply seethed internally, thinking violent thoughts.

The prismic-eyed mare grinned. "Looks like he wants to burn the world," she said, eyes glinting oddly. "Just like I want to do sometimes." That was said in a dreamy tone that snapped Patient out of his reverie.

Something in Patient clicked, he didn’t know what, but he then blurted out: “Looks like I’ve gotta go to the burn ward myself, for a change.”

Unfortunately, the prismic-eyed unicorn's grin widened. "The burn ward's boring… why not everything beyond it?" she asked rather challengingly, before being smacked upside the head by a hoof as Sora came over to persuade her back into line. Oddly, the noise produced sounded… more metallic than should have been possible, like a bell wrapped in cloth strung up in a clock tower, only downsized to a pony's skull.

"You keep talking like that, you won't get your dessert tonight," Sora chided whilst her wings made that odd noise once again, causing the other mare to turn to her with a pouting frown. "No 'buts,' Star Breaker. Your teats. Calm them." Star wilted, but shut her mouth in an instant.

“So...what’s with that odd sound your wings keep making?” Patient asked, changing the subject.

Sora turned to him and seemed to contemplate the question for a bit. "... my primaries are blades," she said after a moment.

“Like a cyborg, almost?” Patient asked cautiously.

Sora nodded. "All three of us are, to varying degrees," she answered. "There's… three more of our strike team also like that, but they're elsewhere in Canterlot at the moment." Her wings clicked once more. "My wings aren't… fully cybernetic, but just enough to maintain efficiency."

She pointed to Star Breaker—Patient was wondering who in the fuck would name their foal that, as it sounded like something one of the menace would boast amongst their ranks—and added, "She's got mythril-orichalcum alloys running along most of her skull and ribcage, as well as varying degrees on her legs. You can't stab her in the heart with an ordinary blade." She thunked Star's chest, producing the same noise that came from the slap to her head to prove her point. "Not that she'd actively allow it anyway."

“Who would allow someone to shank them?” Patient asked.

Sora grinned, but only barely. "I think we're starting to come to an understanding." Her smile faded, though, when distant shouting skipped its way across the whole damn manse to reach all of their ears.

"Godfuckingdamnit, Flash Sentry! Your breath stinks of booze and your armor's on backwards! Why'd you think it was a good idea to show the fuck up?!" some guard roared, his voice loud enough to rattle the door to the room they were investigating. A wave of groans followed the damning question, and Patient turned to see that his cyborg coworkers were looking up to the ceiling with firm frowns and narrowed eyes. Was that their way of praying, wherever the fuck they came from? Or were they simply preparing for a true shitshow to begin?

“Am I about to see some shit?” Patient asked again, a grin slowly forming on his face. “Should I get popcorn, maybe a few beers?”

Sora shook her head. "I don't think that would be advisable…" she muttered.

Yukito didn't even look Patient in the eye as he brought his snout back to ground level. "I've heard of your drunk escapades… practically everypony else in the strike teams have, at this rate…" he muttered. "But at least you're not as bad as Flash Sentry whenever he drowns his sorrows…"

Patient’s grin furrowed into an uncomfortable frown as he had tried really hard to forget about what he’s heard, regarding him and alcohol. But no, Yukito had to open his cuntmunching fuckhole once again: "Trust me, you haven't ruined karaoke and dancing at the same time… and Shining had to pay for the damages out of pocket."

"Flash! Stop! That's tampering with evidence!!" the bitching pony roared, his voice once more passing over half the manse as if to taunt the group.

Sora's head shook, eyes still fixed to the ceiling. "... does anypony want to cast bets on how much he's intoxicated?" she asked.

“His B.A.C. is probably at least 0.3,” Yukito sighed. “Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s higher.”

"Will he catch fire if I burn everything but his mane and tail?" Star wondered, tilting her head.

Sora lowered her head. "As much as I'd love that, I highly doubt it," she grumbled. "Let's go oversee the insanity… get that report of his antics out of the way…" She looked around the room one more time, to see if there was anything they had missed. Besides what had already been noted, though, nothing in particular stuck out.

The trio left the room, and after a moment, Patient Care followed them. Nodding to some passing guards, they trotted through the foyer and up the stairs leading to the first floor, and both mares groaned upon seeing that the source of the shouting match was apparently closer than they thought.

There, drunk off his plot with his eyes spinning in opposite ways within his sockets, was an orange stallion with a blue mane. His backplate was on backwards, his breastplate was strapped on inside-out and upside-down, his shoes were dangling from his wingtips and his helmet was tied to his ass. He swayed on his hooves as he smooched a fellow guard on the lips, and for a moment the latter just stood there stunned.

Within that same moment, said orange stallion was flung halfway down the hallway due to a swift, furious punch to the face that bruised around his eye and sent his armor askew. With the landing against a door that had just swung open, his shoes flew off and so did his breastplate, leaving his legs to dangle uselessly for a moment before gravity reasserted her presence and tossed him unceremoniously to the floor. What was really funny, was that the door swung back closed only after the bastard was peeled off of it, almost as if it were sentient.

Sora's wings sagged as Patient tried his best, and failed miserably, to stifle his giggles with a hoof. "Oh boy, he's already feeling it… my urge to kill is rising…" Her ears fell flat as Yukito tossed his head back to howl in laughter at the sight, as if the act of one guard being launched across the hall was amusing to him.

“I swear to the gods, if these guys didn’t have Shining, they’d be a fuckin’ joke…” Yukito cackled loudly. "Almost like the ponies we were affiliated with back home!"

Star Breaker turned to Patient, frowning. "These two married whackos are weird in the head…" she said, a surprising flash of clarity housed in her eyes as the words left her mouth. Patient could only nod in agreement to that, even as he noted the irony of the comment coming from a mare who, herself, seemed weird in the head.

Sloppily, the orange stallion struggled to stand up, only to get up again and stumble directly into the group and grasp a foreleg around Patient's withers. By Celestia's sunscorched teats, his breath stank with the stench to curl ears and make testicles shrivel! Just taking a whiff was enough to make Patient swear off of booze for the next week and turn green in the face at the same time.

“Ssssho… who’s got another bottle of…” the inebriated pegasus belched loudly before noticing the finer details of the group. “Whooaaa...wait a minute, who are you two?” He obviously was referring to Sora and Star. Both mares stepped away from him, one taking a withering glare onto her face and the other just shaking her head like 'nope, you shitheads deal with this assclown.'

“Why don’t you go back to the barracks and drink some water?” Patient, in a strangely kind way, asked the stallion, holding out his hoof to block his advance towards the mares. Unfortunately for them all, the dickass stumbled out of his reach, swaying on his hooves as his helmet bobbed from side to side. Then he trotted… well, shuffled and lilted, to Star Breaker, grinning stupidly as he seemed to hyperfocus on her all of a sudden.

“Like, seriously,” Yukito butted in, standing in front of the guard to get his attention. This only served to have the guard basically fall into Yukito and shove him out of the way as he continued his short march up to Star Breaker. He sighed and conjured a clipboard and pen to start writing on something; Patient looked over his shoulder to find that he was writing something in officialese.

In other words, the language of "fuck you dickbag, I can use the law to yeet your ass."

Turned out, the group had no need of the law yeeting his ass, because as soon as the guard walked past Star Breaker, he turned his head and gave a wink, slapping her on the rear hard enough to make it jiggle. There was a brief pause, just long enough for Patient to dare think, "At least she does have firm asscheeks!" before silence temporarily took hold.

What followed afterwards was one of the most immensely powerful kicks to the ass anypony had ever seen. So powerful, in fact, that the guard was flung out of the window at the end of the hallway, flew over the yard, and landed face first into the street below. What's even more, it happened so swiftly that the only sign Star Breaker had moved was her mane and tail settling as she straightened from the kick.

Patient's jaw hit the floor. Sora turned to him and nodded. "This happens every single fucking time that idiot approaches us. I'm not sure if it's because he's drunk, or in spite of it," she said bluntly. She turned to the window and scowled as a wavering, warbling, airborne figure lurched towards the new opening. "Great, he's coming back for thirds…"

Sure enough, the same dumbass who'd been firmly yeeted twice now stumbled back in as if he owned the place, snout crooked and bleeding but otherwise sporting that same stupid smile he was wearing before, minus a few teeth. Somehow, Patient got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, these cyborgs were restraining themselves.

From around the corner, Shining Armor stormed down the hallway up to the group as the drunk guard stumbled his way back up as well.

“I wasn’t gone for thirty minutes and you fuckin’ ponies…” Shining began, stopping just as he noticed the drunk stallion slovenly prop himself up against the wall, trying and failing miserably to make himself seem sober before his C.O.

“Flash Sentry, if you don’t get back down to the barracks this instant, I’ll have you scrubbing gods-damn toilets for a month before I court-marshall you!” Shining barked angrily, escorting the orange stallion out of the mansion with the aid of his magic. Flash gave Star Breaker one final wink before he was forcibly yanked around the corner.

"So that's his name…" Sora muttered, glowering at where Flash Sentry had been taken to. "Now I know what to carve into his ass if he tries that shit again…"

"Why's it always me he slaps? Why can't it be you?" Star Breaker complained, turning to glare at Sora. She shrugged and shook her head at the same time, her glare still not easing.

They heard the sound of a shoed hoof hitting metal, and turned to the only other guard in the hallway. His head shook, his eyes were screwed shut, and his mouth twisted in a pained grimace that could only come from reluctant sympathy.

“He likes to think he’s a straight vodka kind of guy, but he ain’t,” the guard said as he shook his head again.

"He certainly ain't hot shit either!" somepony shouted from the stairwell. "Likes to fondle any mare that he thinks ain't taken!"

"Next thing you know, he'll be frozen solid and broken in pieces! I'm surprised Starby hasn't burned him alive yet!" the first called, causing a scoff to come from the second pony at the stairwell.

"Starby?!" the stairwell guard called.

"Dumbfuck actually managed to touch her and everything!" the first clarified. "I'm amazed his skull's still intact!"

“What in the actual fuck is going on?” Patient asked, turning to each of the cyborgs present as he questioned his present reality. All he got as an answer was a series of mute shrugs and head shakes that screamed, 'yeah, we don't know either.'