Chapters Author's Note
This story is a crossover between Shadowrun and EQG, with elements of FIM mixed in. It will necessarily get very dark, and there will be profanity and violence, but then, if you know Shadowrun at all, you knew that already. Here we go.
Not So Stealth 1.1
“Harmony, in position?” A purple Unicorn glanced around the Matrix, checking out the nearly invisible blue dots that indicated her team. In the physical world, she was a lovely elven maiden in a violet skirt, hands waving around. The AR system moved spellbooks into and out of her vision as what appeared to be a breeze swirled her skirt around her ankles. In the Astral spectrum, it became far more clear that it was a lesser drake gently pushing at her legs.
Across the street, mounted up on a heavy motorcycle sat a human female with ludicrously bright rainbow colored hair that shifted with a though, “Rainbow in place,” she leaned forward on the motorcycle, letting the thrum of the engine pulse against her belly.
Atop the fire escape of the same building sat a pale model, purple hair curling loosely over the cable that led to her cyberdeck interface, “I'm in place darling. Just say the word.” Rarity, the decker, always ready to take a shot at new ICE.
Behind the Unicorn stood a large troll, “Ah'm ready, Twilight.” Applejack was the real muscle of the team. Even if Rainbow's augments allowed her to launch through a plate-steel wall at speed, they didn't do much in the way of sheer strength. Applejack, on the other hand, was a megalith of Amazonian proportions, even before the augments that crackled with electricity behind Twilight.
One last voice entered her ears, emanating from a small blot of color in the back of a converted RV, “Overwatch deployed. Sentries deployed. Let me know when you need fire support.”
“Of course, Fluttershy, Darling.”
“Excellent. Harmony, initiate,” Twilight launched forward, feet dancing around the puddles on the aged pavement. Her astral presence was barely visible, right up until she reached the gate and summoned up the drake around her feet, “Spike, open the gate.”
The drake, Spike, rose nearly fifteen meters into the air, claws lifting the reinforced gate out of the ground and discarding it to the side. Almost immediately, Applejack stomped through the opening, slinging a massive autocannon. She was the distraction. Her part in the plan was to make the lower-level guards panic. To get the HTR team to come in. To bring in the one man they needed to see. Rainbow followed Applejack in, dancing lightly on her toes, slinging a pair of razor-edged blades. Twilight stood in the middle of the gate, arms raised, as she called on the powers of the astral plane to bring in noise. She wanted them to see. She wanted every security guard in the building to know Harmony was there. That only one man could stop them.
“ICE is a bit thick on this one, Twilight. It's pushing back pretty hard at the gates,” Rarity was struggling to push her way into the Host. Obviously they had someone skilled working for them. Twilight sighed, the sound turning into profanity as Rarity added, “Found the Demi. Blueblooded Bastard.”
“Fluttershy, get some support down here. Rarity, jack out!”
In the back of the RV, a pale hand slid down the flank of an Aztechnology Hedgehog, “Angel, go make momma proud. Take your brothers.”
The Hedgehog crawled out the back of the RV, tapping absently on the side of the trailer, which unfurled, revealing a large armored vehicle, loaded up with smaller combat drones. Tank was the name of it, though not the class. It was a converted Lone Star deployment vehicle loaded up with automation and drone-racks. And as the wheels hit the pavement, it showed itself to be much heavier too, cracking the pavement apart as it crawled up past Twilight.
Inside the RV, the pink-haired waif lowered herself into a hammock and closed her eyes, dropping fully into Tank's control center, lips barely moving to whisper out, “Ready. Rarity, may I please have some extra ICE here? If that's alright with you?”
Rarity responded almost immediately, diving into the security system of the APC and layering security on the fly, “Rock the doors, Fluttershy. Wreck them.”
An imperceptible dip of the head in the hammock responded as the APC picked up speed and roared past Twilight, who had wisely sidestepped. The tires chewed up the distance to the door as Applejack and Rainbow stepped off the driveway and off to either side of the broad staircase leading up to the front doors. The APC hopped the curb with hardly a blip in the speedometer and climbed the stairs like a possessed rocket, arcing into the air at the top. At eighteen tons, it was far from the most elegant leap, but since it landed the nose right on the door-handles at just under one hundred twenty kilometers an hour, it was sufficient to send Tank, and its occupants, through the reinforced glass and into the main courtyard. Immediately, drones launched, fliers, crawlers, and racers shooting off to secure the area.
“Deployed,” Fluttershy whispered, tongue gently sliding across her dry lips as she breathed slowly, “This better be worth it, Twilight.”
The purple-clad adept sighed, “I hope it is, Fiona, I really do.”
“Code Names, Twilight. Shit,” Rainbow barked into the comm-line. Applejack was just behind her, stepping through the broken glass, “Alright fearless leader, where is he?”
“I don't know. I can't sense him any...” She cut off abruptly as a sleek white blade pressed itself against her throat. The monstrous summoned warhorse nearby had Spike pinned to the pavement, and she swallowed carefully, “Brother.”
“Tara. What brings your specific brand of destruction to my workplace?” He was slender, nearly a head taller than her, and garbed in pure white, save the neon-blue crest on his motorcycle helmet. She only knew it was him because of the emblem etched into his blade. The crest of the House of the Setting Sun. The same circular emblem that was embroidered into the back of her coat. And he was positioned just right for her to put an elbow into his stomach.
He didn't go down. Instead, he made a choked laugh, then threw her to the ground, kneeling on her ribs, “Stand down Tara. You've been tagged a criminal, that means I should have taken your head off already.”
She coughed, looked up at him, and spat on his white visor, “I'd rather rot. Rarity?”
The softened whump of an air-rifle made her brother raise his head, just enough that the dart missed his barely armored neck, and instead slammed into his ballistic jacket, bending and snapping off. He sputtered something vile into his helmet, then brought his head down violently, slamming her head into the pavement beneath his helmet. “Tara, I told you to always wear a helmet. Boys, round them u...” A loud explosion rocked the compound as the numerous grenade-drones set off inside the building.
“Good morning Tara. How's your head?” She shook her head slightly, wincing at the echoing sound of her hair scratching across a pillow.
“Gah...What happened Fi?” She tried to sit up, but felt the metallic hand of her largest friend pressing her down.
Fiona shrugged, her long pink hair rippling down her back, “I don't remember. Riley said you got knocked out, and I must've seen red. I blew it, Tara, I'm sorry.
“Anna, what happened?”
“She blew it up. Every drone in the building went up. The building came down. And y'all know how fragile Fiona is. The dump musta roasted something. Charity didn't see anything wrong with her brain when she took ah peek earlier,” The thick drawl echoed out of the troll's mouth, reverberating around the room. Tara nodded, wincing again. The ground had not been nice to her skull apparently.
“Did we get him? Armor?”
“Yuppers,” the squeaky voice of their other heavily augmented friend came out of nowhere, “Charity's got 'im trussed to a chair. You feeling well enough to go see what your BBBFF has been hiding in that brain of his?”
She struggled to sit up, even with Anna's help, but managed to get to her feet and sort-of stagger to the door, “He can't see that he got me. Let him think I've got some skull augments. He'll love that, the idea that his own sister would willingly cripple her power to add an internal shell,” she laughed a little, wincing once more, before focusing her power through the headache, “Spikey, come.” The drake unfurled itself from a skillfully applied ink pattern on her back, stepping down out of her coat and calmly picking her up on his back.
The drake gained color as he carried her down the hall, and into what her dorm-mates called 'The Dungeon'. It was actually Charity's bedroom, decked out with one bed in the corner, for actually sleeping, and all the various accessories she kept around for when she wanted to 'Play' with the boys in the other dorms. Charity was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning slightly forward to accent her chest, her hair draping over just enough to conceal the fact that she was not wearing anything above the waist.
Armor himself was strapped into some sort of chair that looked incredibly uncomfortable, but Tara knew from experience that it was actually really relaxing. Just enough to get the person seated in it to let down their guard. And based on the drool running down her brother's bare chest, he had really let himself go. She stepped carefully onto the floor, navigating around a small pile of accessories before stopping to look. His pale white chest was laced with tiny red lines, Charity's signature, the boys in the dorm called it. “Aaron, wake up,” she prodded him with her boot, then kicked him in the shin, jolting him awake faster than any bugler.
“What the FUCK! Tara! Get me out of here. Your friends are crazy. Do you KNOW what that bitch has been doing to me all night?”
Tara just smiled. She knew exactly what Charity had done, and she knew he would want to keep his secrets that she needed, “Yeah,” she smirked, “Lady Rarity just loooves to play.” A quick glance at her friend, and she continued, “Did she use the whip yet? I always loved that part.”
His face began to contort, either trying to resist the urge to talk, or to erase the mere thought of his sister doing anything like that. “Oh, don't be such a prude, Aaron. I walked in on you and Cadenza more than once. While she was supposed to be watching me, you know,” she moved around behind him, fingertips sliding along the lines on his back. Scars, claw marks. She had the same ones on her back. Delicately applied runes, the mark of a summoner. Her fingers slid up his neck and gently curled around, dancing across Charity's marks, eyes gleaming with every flinch he made. Her lips brushed his ear, breath blowing his loose blue hair away, “You can make it all stop, you know. Just tell me where your boss is hiding Discord. We'll let you go.”
Charity stood and walked over to them, hair sliding out of the way, revealing her chest, pale white with the exception of a heart-shaped pink scar she had carved into her own skin. In either hand, she held a tool. On the right, a wooden paddle, on the left, a carpentry hammer, on her face, a horrifying Cheshire grin. She knew how to take full advantage of the nano-fiber augments laced into her skin. She could even make her scars fade away completely if she wanted to. Tara's tongue flicked out, licking the edge of his ear, “Alright brother, here's how this particular game works. I ask you a question, you answer it. If the answer is satisfactory, you get a bruise. If the answer is unsatisfactory, you get a break.”
He swallowed, “What's the incentive then?” Charity smiled, then the hammer fell on his hand, crushing the bone at the tip of his pinkie.
“I don't break all two hundred and seven bones in your body. One by one.” Her tongue slid out and made a path across her face, the tip adjusting her false eyelashes before dipping back down, revealing a pair of blood-red streaks along the middle, “And if I do break everything, I assure you, that will not be the end of the pain.” Only partially true. The elven maiden was not entirely heartless, she only acted it, “Now, what will end your pain is your safe word. You know what that is, don't you?”
Tara's tongue flicked at his ear again, “It's the location of Discord. That's all. One little location, and you get to walk away.” She stepped back and allowed Charity to come forward and place the tip of the hammer on the second joint of his pinkie. She pressed down lightly as Tara asked, “Where is Discord?”
“He's stubborn, I'll give him that,” Charity licked her arm, tongue lifting away a thin string of blood, “but I think he told us the truth.” She was less excited about the victory, because it was so rare that she got to really play with someone. Tara nodded at her, and pressed her finger to her ear, keying up the comlink channel Harmony used.
“Fluttershy, time to go. How you doing?” She flinched abruptly at a dart of pain in her neck, “Gah...Fuuuuck, I wish I could afford Docwagon...”
--
Fiona sat in the middle of a pile of drones in the middle of her room, long pink hair draped out over them, with one small white spy-fly drone sitting on her hand. “I'm sort-of fine? I mean, Tank had to go and pop the Weasels, and all of Angel Bunny's little kits...You know how that feels?” It was a level of pain that she couldn't even really describe, not entirely emotional either. The physical shock of being dumped out of that many drones at once was actually enough to overload her already frail body, “I...I'm ready whenever you are...”
–
The last time Fluttershy had faced Trixie, she had been sunk into a coma for a week after being blasted by the 'Dump' program Trixie's Blueblooded brother-in-law had written up. She couldn't afford to drop this time, and Tara knew that a failure at this stage could cost them much more than just their status. As far as Harmony went, they were all students, the children of Corporate Zombies, and getting caught meant getting criminal records. Criminal records cost their parents too, and Fiona's parents had already cut her allowance to almost nothing after she was exposed. Still, there was a strength behind the pale girl's voice as she made her way down the stairs, atop a stalker drone, “Let's do this.” Her pale blue eyes glinted with a ferocity Tara had only seen a couple of times. The first was when the team had accidentally broken Rule Number One, and made a deal with Lofwyr. Fiona had actually stared him down.
Those blue pools of rage had stared down a dragon, and Won. Now, they were focused on getting Discord back. He was her friend before anyone else had even thought to look twice at the Ork with so many arcane sigils etched into his skin that it was nearly impossible to tell that he had brown skin under it all. Fiona had befriended him after saving him from a pair of security guards when they were children. Her voice sang with barely contained rage, matched by the thrumming of four powerful engines waking up atop the parking garage. “We are leaving. Wheels up in Three.”
Tara focused, summoning Spike to her side, and sliding on the AR glasses that turned her into Twilight. Her finger grazed the button on the side of the goggles, “Applejack, Rainbow, you ready for this?”
Applejack stepped through the doorway, heavy minigun slung over her shoulders, “Yeah, You think the Twit Twins'll be there, Twi?”
Rainbow floated through behind her friend, hand clasping over the troll's shoulder, “I'm certainly counting on it. Maybe they'll even bring that lazy, no good Clock-mage. I've been wanting to bash his face in since he stole a kiss,” she rolled almost sensually onto her back, curling over the troll's shoulder to plant her lips on the underside of Applejack's chin.
__
The Skytruck rose into the sky with a loud huffing sound, taking to the sky-lanes with a gentle groan, an Fluttershy set it on course before letting the dog-brain take over and poking her head out of the hammock, “Tara, when we get there, I need a clear path to run Mister Hammer through...If that's alright with you...” her face was turning a faded pink, almost matching her hair. Fiona was shy, and generally let others take the lead. Fluttershy though, she was an actively malicious tactician. Even Rarity couldn't match the sheer indescribable horrors that Fluttershy would lay out on anyone who got in her way.
Twilight nodded, not because she necessarily wanted to let Fluttershy loose on these people, but because unlike most of the team, Fluttershy was not quite the same person as Fiona. They just shared the body. And right now, for the rest of the flight, it was Fiona in that hammock. Right up until the wheels touched dirt again. She lifted her goggles and leaned across the space between them, gently pressing her lips against the smaller girl's forehead, “Fi, I'm right here, I'll take away the nightmares.” The flashes of death and destruction. Every twisted thought that Fluttershy had, Fiona saw. Every night, Daniel held the crying maiden. Every night, Discord was ready to restrain the monster inside.
“Time's up chummer. Get your ass back in that cell,” the guard laughed as he kicked his charge, a lanky Ork with an almost elven strut, in the back of the leg. He always hated these stupid guard duties. He was a trained Guardsman for Lofwyr's sake. He worshiped a fucking dragon, and got rewarded for it by doing shit jobs like this. He was more than enough to handle one strung-out loser. Especially one who picked an ostentatious name like Discord. Those sorts were generally the kind to get smeared out early, using the big name to try and get power fast, but not having enough power to back the name. He laughed again when the Ork stumbled, before shoving him through the gate into his cell. The door latched securely, and he turned to walk away, to leave the criminal in the cell for the night, when he heard a sound, a clicking of metal. He spun around and glared at the prisoner, who was morosely sitting on the bunk, seemingly focused on the wall across from him.
“What was that noise?” he barked at the prisoner, who just raised his hands and shrugged. He had yet to speak a word during his imprisonment, despite torture. Overseen by the medical technicians of Canterlot Central Asylum, the prisoner had been tortured physically and mentally, all in an effort to draw out what he knew about the rest of his team of shadow-runners. The scum of the street, the Guard had called them. He was just about to turn away when the boy stood and walked up to the bars, “Ready to talk now, scumbag?”
The Ork's snaggletooth looked like it was moving, unnerving him a little, and the guard stepped back. He knew that sometimes prisoners would try to swipe the keys off a guard's belt, and was proud to say that none of his prisoners had ever done so successfully, “Aht, not today. You're going to stay right there and get tortured until you give us the information we want.” He scoffed and turned around, nearly slamming his nose into a bare brown chest covered in scars and tattoos. Familiar ones, like the ones on the prisoner. He turned his head part-way around to look in the cell, and saw the Ork, looking smugly at him. Back around, the one he had almost plowed into. Same person. Same tattoos, same scars, same face. A quick flick of his eyelid opened the AR overlay in his cybereye, and he scanned both. Identical SIN, identical status. He stepped back and spun to the one outside the cell, who had started transforming.
Before the unnerved guard, the Ork prisoner tranformed into a hideous monster that looked like the spare parts bin at the 'Body Shoppe', with grotesque limbs sticking out at painful to look at angles. The creature stepped forward, pushing the guard back against the bars, where he realized he had made a mistake.
“Fuckin' stim-head. You should know ostentatious means we burn out quickly, or,” that hiss was definitely not natural, “We get Good. I got Good. That's why I'm here. I'm here to gather something for my dear Fluttershy.” Daniel was far and above whatever tier this guard was at, and he knew it. His teeth ground against each-other as the patterns on his wrists started heating up and glowing. One glowing hand reached through the bars and grabbed the guard's arm, the heat shimmering in the air without burning, “Now, listen to my voice.”
“No. I'm trained to resist mind control, and I have augments that protect my mind from incursion.”
“Ooh, a big word guard. Very well, mister 'Trained-to-resist', here. Have a little push,” the guard stumbled forward, almost collapsing on the floor as his arm slipped from Discord's grasp, “Now, let's try that again. Listen to my voice.”
“Yes sir. What is it you require? Food, water, a softer pillow?”
“I would like you to go to the evidence locker. You will go inside, gather the artifacts labeled Fiona Hawke. You will bring them to me. Then you will go down town and shoot yourself in the head.”
“I am sorry, this unit is restricted from committing those criminal actions. Please hold while you are incarcerated for attempting to...” the voice cut off as Discord grabbed the guard's throat and crushed it in his hand, tossing him aside like a sack of feed.
“I fucking hate when they do that. Hey, Trixie, I know you're watching. Talk to me.”
The guard made a gargling noise like his crushed throat was attempting to work, and Discord frowned at it, “I crushed the larynx. You can't use that meat-puppet anymore,” a small rolling drone scooted into the room and stopped very far outside his reach, “Ah, there you are. That toy's a little small for you isn't it, Beatrix?”
The drone made a coughing sound, “You bastard. Do you know how much it costs to train security guards? Now I have more work to do, and I can't even send in Sentry to watch you because you're too high priority for him to risk. Fucker...”
“Oh, so you're still getting rutted by Orange Lightning then? Tell me, has he gotten past the three second mark yet?”
“What the hell does that matter?”
“Cause and effect, dear Beatrix. You perform the horizontal tango with a wage-zombie, you become a data-slave. A corporate whore,” he leaned casually against the wall of his cell, “Tell me then, if you're so satisfied with him, why do you watch me every time I step into the 'fresher?”
A sputtering sound emanated from the drone, and it spun to wheel away, “Hey, Trixie, before you leave, could I get a favor from you?” It stopped, almost like the drone was debating listening to his question, “Could you go tell your little orange toy that Discord's coming for him? That I'm going to cut off his dangly little fiddly-bits and shove them down his throat with a fork?”
“Why would you do that to Flash?”
“Because he hurt Fluttershy. Because I think it's only fair to get equal vengeance for my maiden,” anyone watching Discord on the astral plane would have noticed that his aura was glowing like a beacon, blindingly bright and focused. Trixie didn't see any of that.
