Vinyl and Octavia Jump the Shark

Chapters

Chapter One: The Stallion Who Came in from the Cold
Chapter Two: Tactical
Chapter Three: Espionage
Chapter Four: Action
Chapter Five: New Ways to Live
Chapter Six: The Six Million Bit Stallion
Chapter Seven: Get Scratch
Chapter Eight: New Ways to Die

Chapter One: The Stallion Who Came in from the Cold

BANG! Without warning, a door rapidly swung on its hinges until it hit a wall, creating a small dent and threatening to wake up everypony in the neighbourhood. This would have possibly been considered forgivable if the pony who had kicked the door open hadn’t then shouted at the top of her lungs, “WE’RE HOME, BABY!” as she entered the house and dropped the saddlebags she was carrying to the floor.

“Vinyl!” the pony’s companion hissed. “Be a bit more quiet! It’s ten o’clock at night!”

“Oops, sorry, Octavia,” said Vinyl Scratch as she cast a simple illuminating spell to erase the darkness. She quietly closed the door once Octavia was out of the way, saying, “I’m just so excited to be back home. I can’t wait to live out the suburban dream! You’ll be out all day, playing cello or whatever, while I stay at home and cook and clean and generally stay in the kitchen, and then every day at five o’clock you’ll come through with a, ‘Hi honey, I’m –’”

“Wait, shouldn’t I be the traditional housewife now that we’re married?” Octavia asked as she found some fireflies and allowed them to fly up into a light fitting, brightening up the entranceway better than Vinyl’s spell had. “Seeing as how I am the more traditionally feminine?” She dropped her saddlebags beside Vinyl’s. She probably should have unpacked them, but it was late, and she was tired. Instead, she followed Vinyl, who was heading to the kitchen.

“You’d think that, yeah, but do you remember the vow I made at our marriage ceremony?” Vinyl asked. She had gotten herself a can of cider and thoughtfully put on the kettle in anticipation of Octavia wanting a mug of tea.

“I remember a lot of things about our marriage ceremony,” said Octavia. “For example, I was unaware that we had invited any ninjas -”

“Or is it ninja?” Vinyl wondered out loud.

“ – but there they were, at the reception. That was a bit of a surprise.”

“Yeah, it was a bit of a weird one, wasn’t it?” asked Vinyl. “And I don’t think that banishing Ynn-Thopet, The Chaos Who Always Crawls Up To You With A Smile, is really a traditional form of entertainment at a wedding , is it?”

Octavia shuddered, remembering the dark and many-angled god’s unexpected appearance, thanks to a group of raving cultists who had booked one of the church’s wings for use the day of the wedding. “Well, at least the honeymoon made up for it,” she commented as she poured hot water from the kettle into a mug with a teabag already in it. “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather spend a honeymoon with you other than exploring one of Equestria’s deepest and most interesting caverns.”

Vinyl grinned and nodded, recalling the spelunking trip which they had just returned from. “Yeah, I’m definitely going to return there again some time,” she agreed. “I mean, where else in Equestria could it flood but you end up having a great time anyway? That’s the mark of a good holiday destination!”

“Absolutely agreed,” said Octavia as she and Vinyl headed to the lounge room with their drinks. “Perhaps we could make it an annual trip, or – argh!” Entering the lounge room, Octavia literally jumped about a foot into the air – spilling her tea in the process – as she realised that there was a pony standing in the lounge room as though he owned the place.

He was a unicorn with dull grey fur, wearing a heavy coat. He had a short blue mane and tail, both of which had been combed, but in a way which suggested it had been done hastily, with little patience. Octavia also spotted a small scar on his head where none of his mane grew.

“Who in Equestria are you?! What are you doing in our house?” Octavia demanded. She was already angry at this stranger for his apparent infiltration of her house, but to make matters worse, she had spilled some of her tea on herself, wearing her temper slightly more thin.

Vinyl, for her part, whilst surprised, was taking it a lot better than Octavia. “Dad?!” she exclaimed.

“Vinyl!” said the stranger, walking forwards and hugging Octavia’s wife.

Octavia, for her part, merely watched in confusion, unsure what to do about all of this. “What in Equestria…?” she muttered.

“What are you doing here?” Vinyl asked as she and her father broke off their hug. “Shouldn’t you be dead?” She put a hoof to her chin in thought. “Yeah, no, last thing I remember is you definitely dying. Are you a zombie? Or a spirit?”

“I have a great many explanations for you, Vinyl, but the most important thing is that no, I am not and never have been dead,” said Vinyl’s father. “And if the implants do their job, I never will be!” He walked over to Octavia, who was still standing there stunned, and held out a hoof. “You must be Octavia. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said.

“…Yes?” agreed Octavia, weakly shaking his hoof. “I – sorry, could we please backtrack a few steps? You’re…Vinyl’s dad?”

“Yes,” confirmed Vinyl’s father. “My name is Spyglass, and I…” He ran a hoof through his mane, thinking things over for a moment. “I suppose I’d best explain at the start who I am and what I’m doing here. Please, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to Vinyl and Octavia’s couch.

“Woohoo! Exposition!” said Vinyl, following her father’s suggestion.

Octavia scowled, not pleased that a complete stranger was inviting her to sit on her own couch. “Vinyl, who the hay is this?” she asked her wife, choosing to ignore Spyglass for the minute.

“He’s my dad, Octavia!” said Vinyl, practically bouncing on the couch in excitement. It was hard to tell how much of her enthusiasm was thanks to the cider she’d had and how much of it was due to her reunion with her supposed father. “And he’s apparently alive! Hooray!”

“Yes, about that…You’re taking your father’s apparent resurrection very well,” said Octavia, frowning.

Vinyl shrugged. “Eh, dad used to fake his death all the time when I was a kid. Unexpected resurrections by him are pretty par for the course.”

“You…used to fake your death?” Octavia queried Spyglass. “But…why? Vinyl told me you were an explorer, but…”

“Yes, I’m afraid that I have something to admit to both you and to Vinyl,” Spyglass admitted. “Vinyl, I’m sorry, but all of those years when you were growing up and I told you I was an explorer…well, that was only a half-truth. In reality, for almost all of my life, I have been an agent of CHIELD, with the explorer explanation being merely a cover story.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Vinyl. “What a twist!”

“CHIELD?” Octavia repeated. “Celestia’s Highly Intelligent Equine Law-Enforcement Division?” She and Vinyl had encountered agents of CHIELD previously when they had mistakenly been working for a terrorist organisation.

“Precisely,” said Spyglass. “I’ve mostly been a field agent for them, although I’ve also done some desk work from time to time.”

“And when Vinyl says that you’re supposed to be dead…” said Octavia, thinking. Back when she had first met Vinyl, the unicorn had roped her into retrieving a rare flower from the Amarezon Jungle, to be used to cure her supposedly dying father. Octavia had never met Vinyl’s father, and Vinyl had never mentioned the outcome of saving her father, so Octavia had assumed that it had been unsuccessful. Out of respect, Octavia had chosen not to pry, knowing that if Vinyl wanted to talk about it, she would have.

“I was well and truly at death’s door when she brought back the flower from the Amarezon,” said Spyglass, correctly assuming that Octavia knew the context surrounding his supposed death. “And whilst it was successful in saving me from death, my superiors at CHIELD decided to let everyone think that I really had died, and that the flower had failed to save me. It allowed me to move underground, and perform some of the most important missions CHIELD required in years.”

“So all of this time when I assumed you were dead, you were really alive!” exclaimed Vinyl. “Wow! So what are you doing here then?”

“And how did you get inside our house?” Octavia asked.

Agent Spyglass gestured. “I’m a spy. I make my own entrance.”

Following his gesture, Octavia was appalled to see – “The window! Did you have to break it?”

Agent Spyglass shrugged. “What was I supposed to do, open it? Doing that sort of trick in the business will get you caught faster than you can say ‘Life Model Decoy’”.

“Well, it was good timing, dad!” congratulated Vinyl. “How did you know that we would be coming home tonight?”

===============================

Agent Spyglass bounced slightly on his hooves, both to stretch his muscles slightly in anticipation of what he was going to do, and to warm himself up faintly in the cold air. He gave his body a quick shake before patting himself down to check that he had everything he needed. As they should have been, the files he had were still with him, and he wasn’t missing anything.

“Alright Spyglass,” he muttered to himself, “quit your delaying and get the hay in there.” After only the briefest flicker of hesitation, he cantered towards the small, suburban house, and leapt at it. Crashing through a window, he rolled forwards as he landed, both dissipating the energy of his landing and allowing the coat he wore to absorb any of the miniscule glass shards which would now be scattered across the floor. (He wasn’t so successful in avoiding the larger glass shards, and ended up with a nasty piece of glass jutting from his leg, but Spyglass ignored it. If he’d allowed himself to acknowledge pain whenever something hurt him, he never would have been able to stop Yellow Peril back in the day).

“Nailed it,” Spyglass grunted. He picked himself up from the floor and examined his surroundings. It was entirely dark, because of course there were no lights on. “Vinyl? Octavia?” he called out into the darkness after hearing no mares rushing out to find out what had just broken through their window. He was greeted by silence. “Vinyl?” Spyglass called out again. Still nothing.

Spyglass slowly walked from the lounge room to the next room, which was a hallway, and then from there to the next room, which was the kitchen. There was still no sign of either pony, nor of them having been here for at least several weeks. Every now and then, Spyglass would call out one of the two mares’ names, awaiting a reply which never came.

“Have they been captured?” Spyglass wondered to himself. “Or have they – wait a second,” he interrupted as he spotted something nearby. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. Holding up the item – which was a calendar – to his eyes in the darkness, Spyglass quickly scanned it before letting out a sigh.

“Crap. What am I going to do for the next week?”

===============================

“I had good intel,” replied Spyglass cryptically. “But the time for questions has passed. It’s time for me to tell you the reason why I have unexpectedly and dramatically appeared in your lives at this very moment.”

“C’mon, Octavia, pull up a seat!” said Vinyl, patting the couch cushion beside her. “Dad’s going to tell us a story!”

Still not happy with the situation, Octavia reluctantly walked over to Vinyl and joined her on the couch. She should have known that after a month or two off, events would conspire to force her and Vinyl into some grander-than-life adventure. It was never more than a few months – if that – before she and Vinyl moved onto the next adventure, as though there were some sort of destiny that forced the two of them into dangerous and mildly entertaining set pieces. Octavia sighed internally. If there really was some sort of destiny, couldn’t it be a bit more consistent with the frequency in which it forced them out of their mostly-idyllic life?

“I suppose I’d best start at the beginning,” began Spyglass.

“As opposed to the middle,” Vinyl agreed, serious.

“Do you recognise this pony?” asked Spyglass, placing a folder from his overcoat to the table and flipping it open, revealing a photograph.

Vinyl Scratch gasped, as Octavia simultaneously drew in a sharp breath. “The Bartender!” said Vinyl.

“Baron von – wait, who?” Octavia asked, turning to Vinyl.

“You remember, the bartender? At that one bar?” Vinyl explained. Octavia gave her a blank look. “When we went out drinking?”

“…This is a picture of Baron von Darkhoof, the self-proclaimed noble who hindered our progress in acquiring the flower for your father in the Amarezon, and later forcibly shipped us together,” Octavia pointed out, shuddering internally at the memory of being shipped with Vinyl. “How could you not recognise him?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I totally saw him,” Vinyl said, “I was looking in the background.” She pointed a hoof of the photograph. “See? That one guy – or girl actually, that’s kinda ambiguous – has colouring similar to the Bartender. It must be him!”

Octavia squinted. “I… guess? It is somewhat hard to see. What did this bartender look like again?”

“Like that!” Vinyl said, pointing again. “Only much less blurry, and possibly the opposite gender!”

“Well…sure,” said Octavia, “that may be the case, but I suspect that your father gave us this photo because he wanted to show us Baron von Darkhoof.”

“Correct, Octavia,” said Spyglass. “Now, this information has been kept under wraps at CHIELD, but we believe that Baron von Darkhoof is currently in the midst of blackmailing the government.”

“Wait, why aren’t you guys sure of it?” Vinyl asked. “Is his ransom note, like, super illegible or something?”

“I would certainly believe that Baron von Darkhoof has terrible hoofwriting,” Octavia agreed. The two ponies shared a conspiratory nod before listening to what else Spyglass had to say.

“We’ve had a pony on the inside of Darkhoof’s organisation for a while, and in his last communication, he told us that Darkhoof was planning something big. That was several weeks ago, and we haven’t heard anything from him since,” Spyglass exposited. “Either he’s gone native, or he’s been found out.”

“Who is this inside pony?” Octavia asked.

“Stumblefeather,” answered Spyglass and Vinyl at the same time.

“Stumblefeather?!” Octavia exclaimed, looking between the two of them. “That klutzy, incompetent sidekick of Darkhoof’s?”

“He’s played his part well, and is one of our best agents,” confirmed Spyglass. “Or, he was one of our best agents. Or… will be one of our best agents?” Looking to Vinyl, he asked, “But how did you know that he was a double agent? That’s supposed to be top-secret information.”

“Oh, he told me!” Vinyl said cheerfully.

“What?!” Octavia asked. “When?”

“Do you remember when we were fighting Baron von Darkhoof and Stumblefeather in the Amarezon ruins? Just before we found the flower?” Vinyl asked.

“Vaguely,” said the Earth pony.

“I asked him why he was working with Baron von Darkhoof, and whilst you were busy fighting said boss, he explained to me that he was actually a double agent, and that he was sorry that he had to act antagonistic towards us but that it was part of his cover.” It was all said very matter-of-factly, as though Vinyl was describing meeting a friend for coffee.

“And you never thought to tell me?” Octavia asked.

Vinyl shrugged. “I assumed you knew, since you never asked,” she said.

“Unbelievable. I’ll have to talk to him about this lapse in cover if I ever see him again,” growled Spyglass. “Anyway, with no new information from Agent 13 – that’s Stumblefeather – in several weeks, we need somepony to head to Baron von Darkhoof’s last known location, find out what he’s up to and how much danger he currently presents and then, if he presents a valid threat, stop him. Naturally, I’ve volunteered you two for this job.”

“Because we have had experience in dealing with Baron von Darkhoof before, correct?” asked Octavia.

“Because we’re badass?” Vinyl prompted.

Spyglass nodded. “Yes,” he said, not specifying which pony he was answering. “I’d love to send another set of CHIELD agents in, but if Stumblefeather has switched sides, not only would he be anticipating CHIELD agents and would know all of their tactics, it could also indicate corruption further in the organisation. I can’t be too sure of who I can trust with an operation like this.”

“Are you sure?” Octavia asked. “I…I think we’re both ready for this, but…surely you wish for somepony more competent than either of us?”

“Yeah, you know we’ve got criminal records, right?” Vinyl said, eliciting a wince from Octavia. “If our names hadn’t been unexpectedly and conveniently cleared by a mysterious party, then we should still be in jail!”

At that, Spyglass frowned. “A mysterious party?” he questioned, sounding confused. “You two did read the note I left you, didn’t you?”

It was now Vinyl and Octavia’s turn to be confused. “A note?” Octavia asked, not sure what Spyglass was on about now.

“You expected me to learn how to read by now?” Vinyl added.

“The note, explaining that I had investigated the allegations which had led to the two of you being put into jail and cleared your names behind my superiors’ backs,” explained Spyglass. “I left it in that apartment you two rented whilst you were in Manehattan. Didn’t you read it?”

Vinyl and Octavia exchanged blank looks with each other. With neither having an explanation for the other, Vinyl asked, “When was this?” to her father.

“Not too long after the two of you escaped from prison,” Spyglass said. “Did you two hear about those terrorists, COBRA, stealing that rare scroll from the Manehattan library last year? It would have been…maybe a week or two after then?”

Vinyl and Octavia looked at each other again, understanding now what had happened. Unbeknownst to Spyglass, they had been two of the COBRA troopers who had stolen that rare scroll, and had used the spell inscribed upon it to jump through several different points in time. The closest they had been able to get to their original time was roughly a week after initially leaving – Spyglass must have cleared their names and written the note during that week, and they would have missed it in all of the confusion.

“Oh. Well, thank you for that,” said Octavia. “Ever since hearing that our names had been cleared, I was wondering who had done it and what ridiculous escapade it would lead us into next... It’s good to finally know the answer to both of those questions.”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Vinyl. Turning to Octavia, she said, “See, Octavia? Didn’t I tell you my dad was the best? He was callously manipulating our lives from behind the scenes before you even met him!”

Octavia gave Vinyl a look, then turned back to Spyglass. “Anyway, as I was saying, aren’t there any CHIELD agents more competent than either Vinyl or I whom you would rather use for this mission?”

“You two are the most competent ponies I know,” Spyglass said. His voice was as gruff as ever, but there was an undertone of kindness to it. Somehow, Octavia knew that he didn’t make compliments like that often.

“I think that says more about the quality of the current agents at CHIELD than it does us,” Vinyl pointed out to Octavia, nudging her as she said so.

“And besides, if you guys pull off this mission, everyone in the office owes me two hundred bits. Each.”

“What was that?”

Agent Spyglass hastily cleared his throat and took the folder he had placed onto the table back. “Well then, do you both agree? This may be a difficult task, but nevertheless I expect the two of you to blindly agree.”

“Hell yeah!” said Vinyl. “This can basically be Honeymoon 2: Electric Boogaloo. Hey, do you think I could get a note for work saying I can’t come in because I’m too busy saving Equestria?”

Octavia nodded, having made her decision already. She knew that if she attempted to resist, she’d just be drawn in further. And besides, a little action – rather, some excitement; she and Vinyl had gotten plenty of action on their honeymoon – would be quite fun. It had been a while since Vinyl and Octavia had had an adventure like this, and as a result, Octavia felt almost obliged to have one.

“Of course,” Octavia confirmed. “We’ll both undertake the mission.”

“Excellent,” said Spyglass. “Follow me outside. I’ll give you the rest of the briefing on the way.”

Getting up from the couch, Vinyl and Octavia did as Spyglass bade. It was time for them to start their first mission as agents of CHIELD.

Chapter Two: Tactical

Following their exit from the house, Vinyl, Octavia, and Spyglass headed to a small chariot, which soon took to the air thanks to two pegasi flying it. Vinyl and Octavia had both assumed that the briefing would continue on the chariot, but Spyglass was oddly quiet once they were on.

For the next few hours, Vinyl and Octavia were quiet. The wind in the air made it difficult to talk, and the two of them were both tired. Fortunately, the chariot was large enough that both of them could lie down at any point, and there were naturally safeguards in place to prevent anypony falling out, barring unlikely aerial manoeuvres from the pilots. So the two ponies took the opportunity to rest, wondering what the next few hours of their life would bring.

Finally, the time arrived for the chariot to land. Vinyl had long lost track of where they were going, but through the darkness, she had seen that they had been flying over the ocean for at least the past hour. It was hard to guess the time, too, but she estimated it was roughly midnight. It was very dark and cold.

The two pegasi descended upon a small island, probably no larger than ten or so kilometres in diameter, heading along one side and then landing to the rear of the island. The island – it was probably inaccurate to call it so; it looked to Vinyl more like a very large rock – was covered in a light coating of snow as far as the eye could see. The pegasi had landed on a plateau raised higher than the rest of the island. Murmuring thanks to their pilots, Spyglass disembarked and lead Vinyl and Octavia about thirty paces or so away.

“Well? What do you think?” To both Vinyl and Octavia’s disgust, upon arriving at their destination, Agent Spyglass had lit a cigar and begun smoking. In spite of the open area the ponies were in, the smell and smoke of the cigar still permeated the air around them, leading to Vinyl coughing every now and then. “The Omega Zone may not look pretty, but it’s certainly secluded, isn’t it?”

“It’s a tad cold. You could have told us to bring coats, at least,” said Octavia. Vinyl nodded her agreement, shivering slightly as she did so.

“Sorry about that,” apologised Spyglass. “Agent 13’s last transmission mentioned that Baron von Darkhoof was using an abandoned CHIELD research station on this island as his base. Once you get inside there, it should be much warmer.”

“Sounds cool!” said Vinyl. Octavia gave her a look. “What do you want us to do from here, dad? Plant some explosives and destroy all signs that there was ever a rock here? Pilot a giant robot to defeat Baron von Darkhoof’s much lamer robot? Begin our intensive training for a dance-off with Baron von Darkhoof?”

“I like that last one,” said Octavia. “We can finally take those salsa classes we’re always talking about!”

“Good idea!” agreed Vinyl. “Did you pack my dancing shoes?”

Clearing his throat, Spyglass interrupted his daughter and her wife. “Unfortunately for you, Vinyl, your objectives are a bit more…mundane in scope.” He smirked slightly at his daughter’s ideas. Why didn’t it surprise him that they were all so out there? “Heading this way –” he gestured at a slope leading downwards from the plateau they were all on “- is the abandoned research station which Baron von Darkhoof is working out of. I can provide transportation for the two of you to get there, and then there are three things I’ll need you to do once you’re there.”

Vinyl gave a nod of understanding as Spyglass continued. “Your first objective is to discover what’s happened to Agent 13 – Stumblefeather. There could be any number of reasons for him not to have contacted us – he may have simply been unable to, he may have switched sides, he may have been discovered and killed…whatever the reason is, I want you two to find out. Should Stumblefeather have been compromised but is still – miraculously – alive, you two will also need to extract him.”

“What do you think the likelihood of Stumblefeather having switched sides is?” Octavia asked.

Spyglass thought it over for a moment, slowly breathing in the smoke from his cigar as he did so. “Perhaps… forty to sixty percent?” he suggested as he blew out a ring of smoke. “I don’t like that we haven’t heard from him for several weeks now, and Baron von Darkhoof using this place as a base is suspicious. This island is off all official maps, and the research station hasn’t been used for years.” He went silent, and his jaw tightened.

“You think Stumblefeather might have told Baron von Darkhoof that this island was available as a base, dad?” Vinyl asked.

Slowly, Spyglass nodded. “As a CHIELD agent, Agent 13 would have known about this place, and I find it unlikely that the good Baron would have found and taken over it without prior knowledge. As you’ve seen, it’s a pretty lengthy journey out here –and that’s with us temporarily halting weather activities in the area, in anticipation of the trip here. Normally there are vicious storms and heavy snowfall in the area – ponies don’t just find a place like Omega Zone on their own.”

“But…” Octavia bit her lip. “You said that Stumblefeather’s last transmission was what informed you that Baron von Darkhoof was using this base, yes? Surely he would not have told you where Baron von Darkhoof was if he had already betrayed CHIELD at that point!”

Spyglass let out a harsh, gruff laugh. Or it might have been him coughing on his cigar smoke; it was hard to tell. “You’re too optimistic, Octavia,” he chuckled, his voice devoid of humour. “Agent 13 could easily have betrayed us, and the transmission telling us of this base is all part of a trap, or a misdirection. Nothing is certain at this stage… which is why I need you two to find Agent 13 and determine his status.”

“Do you think that’s true?” Octavia asked Vinyl. “Am I too optimistic?”

“Your second objective,” continued Spyglass, denying Vinyl the opportunity to respond to Octavia, “is to discover what Baron von Darkhoof is up to and whether he presents a credible threat to Equestria. Find out what he’s using this complex for, and what his next move will be.”

“Does he have…I dunno, a particular M.O., or something like that that we should anticipate?” asked Vinyl. “I mean, we’ve only met him twice – first time he was after that stupid flower for immortality or something dumb like that, and the second time he was…a pirate? For some reason? Am I remembering that right?”

“All we know is what Agent 13 has told us about Darkhoof,” said Spyglass. “I don’t know what you know about Darkhoof, but according to our dossier on him, he’s basically got delusions of grandeur. He feels like Equestria owes him – like all the other idiots out there – so he’ll do what he can to get personal power.”

“Do you have anything in there about why his name is so uninspired?” Vinyl asked. “Or why his plans are all so dumb?”

“Heh. I’ll make sure we add those to the file once this is all over,” Spyglass said. “Anyway, according to Agent 13, after escaping from the guards who should have captured him after that pirate business, Darkhoof has pretty much been lying low. There’s some bits here and there about him gathering resources and making contacts – apparently he was working for that terrorist organisation, COBRA, for a while –” Vinyl and Octavia shot each other panicked looks, wondering what this meant “- but no major crimes until moving to this base. Still, between 13’s sudden silence and the apparent need for an island this large, I wouldn’t be surprised if Darkhoof is ready to make whatever power play he has.”

“Well, whatever he’s going to do, Octavia and I will stop him from doing it!” exclaimed Vinyl. “Even if he’s planning nothing worse than a tea party!”

“…Wouldn’t we be in the wrong then?” Octavia asked. “After all, bursting in and stopping something innocent such as that without evidence would be fairly immoral.”

“You’re right, Octavia!” said Vinyl. “If Baron von Darkhoof is planning a tea party so big that he needs an entire island to host it, and he’s been planning it for years, it’d be super dumb to stop it when we could just gatecrash it instead!”

Everypony was silent for several moments.

“Anyway, the outcome of your second objective will affect whether or not your third objective is necessary,” continued Spyglass. “I’m sure you can both guess what it is: if you discover that Baron von Darkhoof’s plan presents a viable threat to Equestria, the two of you are to stop him from executing his plan, by any means necessary.” Vinyl thrust a hoof into the air. “Yes, Vinyl?”

“Even if we have to die to stop him?” she asked.

“Well, I’d like to assume that the two of you are both competent enough to stop Darkhoof without anything as dramatic as that,” said Spyglass, smiling a crooked smile.

“Okay…but what do we do if we have to die?” Vinyl asked. It was hard to tell whether or not she was joking.

“You two will find a way,” said Spyglass, coolly puffing on his cigar as he did so. “You always do.”

We’ll find a way…to die? Vinyl wondered.

“What do you think the odds of Baron von Darkhoof being a threat to Equestria are, anyway?” asked Octavia. Now that Vinyl had reminded her of the potential risks of the mission, she was feeling a little nervous.

Spyglass put a hoof to his mouth, thinking it over. “Well, we haven’t seen Baron von Darkhoof pose a real threat in the past, but then again, considering the resources that can be found in the research station…” He went silent for a few moments, thinking it over. “I would say somewhere between zero to one hundred percent chance?”

“Bloody brilliant,” sighed Octavia. “Well, are those all of our objectives?”

“Yes,” confirmed Spyglass. “Do either of you have any further questions? If not, I’ll give you your transportation to the base and then head off.”

“Do we need to worry about guards, or any opposition in particular?” asked Octavia. “So far you have only mentioned Darkhoof himself, but I would be surprised if it were just he and Stumblefeather in this base.”

“Yeah, we got reports from Agent 13 about that a while back. Baron von Darkhoof hired out a bunch of mercenaries and recruited some of those old COBRA guys – again, he apparently was working for them, or their boss, or something like that,” Spyglass explained.

“Great, so we’ve got to worry about some generic thugs while we’re sneaking around in there,” Vinyl said. She shivered slightly in the cold before adding, “What else?”

“The research facility was cleared out before it was decommissioned, so there’s no threat of any of the pre-existing items that were there being used,” said Spyglass. “But as for what Baron von Darkhoof might have set up in there? No idea. If Agent 13 would contact us we’d probably know, but for now…you two will have to deal with any problems inside the facility on your own.”

“No problems,” said Vinyl smugly, “Octavia and I broke into a casino vault together. Compared to that? This’ll be a cakewalk.” She held out a hoof to Octavia, who bumped it. Simultaneously, both ponies gave out a quiet, “Yeah!”

“You two robbed a casino?” Spyglass asked.

An awkward silence fell over the small group.

“Moving on,” said Octavia hastily, “do you have any floor plans, or design documents for the facility? I would rather not have to search for a map of some kind once we enter the building.”

Pausing for a moment to throw his cigar stub away into the snow– something which Vinyl and Octavia both disapproved of, but knew better than to say anything about – Spyglass reached into his coat and brought out a folder. How he fit so many items into his coat was a mystery which Vinyl and Octavia would never solve. “These will be out of date since Darkhoof moved in, but these should give you something to start working off,” said Spyglass. He knelt down and opened up the folder on the cold snow, presenting an intricate set of design documents.

“The facility was mostly built underground, both to help disguise the building’s true nature to outsiders and to help insulate the island from anything that might go wrong in the lower levels,” explained Spyglass, pointing to a diagram. It showed a full view of the research facility, with five levels going underground. “Now, obviously we don’t know where Baron von Darkhoof is, but –”

“He’s on the bottom level,” said Vinyl and Octavia simultaneously.

“…How in Equestria could you know that?” asked Spyglass, put off by the statement.

“It’s simple,” began Octavia before gesturing to Vinyl to continue.

“Bad guys always have their headquarters on the bottom or top floor of a building,” said Vinyl. With her manner of tone, it was easy to picture a pair of glasses on her muzzle as she continued to lecture and explain. “That way, it’s more of a challenge to get there. Plus, they wouldn’t be one-dimensional antagonists if they didn’t follow something as formulaic as that.”

“…I want to argue against that, but I can’t deny you’re correct,” said Spyglass. “Anyway, as for the rest of the building –”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Vinyl, waving a hoof dismissively. “We know where Baron von Darkhoof is; we’ll work out the rest on the way to him.” Octavia shrugged.

“Vinyl’s fairly correct,” she agreed, “now that we know where Baron von Darkhoof is, the rest should all fall into place. These things usually have a way of working themselves out.”

Spyglass scowled as he put away his folder, although whether it was due to his explanation being cut short or the cold wind that had just started up was unknown. “Any more questions?” he asked. Vinyl raised a hoof. “Yes, Vinyl?”

“Why did we need to land on the island before you gave us the briefing? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to brief us in the air, so we could have begun the mission as soon as we arrived?” Vinyl pointed out.

Spyglass smacked himself on the forehead. “I knew there was something I needed to do while we were in the air!” he said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“A lot of good that does us now,” muttered Octavia under her breath.

“If we’re done with the briefing, follow me back to the chariot,” said Spyglass. “There’s one final bit of wrap-up we need to deal with, and then you two will be on your own.” The three ponies walked across the snow to their transport, shivering all the way. The snow was falling a bit harder now - great for Vinyl and Octavia’s infiltration, but terrible for their health.

The two pegasi who had flown the chariot had been having a coffee break whilst the others were undergoing the briefing, but upon seeing Spyglass heading back, they both stood to attention, alert as ever. Spyglass gave them a brief nod of acknowledgement, then retrieved a cardboard box from the chariot which Vinyl and Octavia conveniently hadn’t noticed whilst they were travelling in it.

“Your transport to the facility is in here,” said Spyglass, lightly throwing the box to the snow. As he spoke, the two pegasi were reattaching the relevant harnesses and straps from the chariot to themselves. “From here, you two are going to be on your own. We’ll be returning here at 1200 hours to pick you two up from what should hopefully be a successful mission.”

“Twelve hundred hours?” Vinyl wondered aloud. “We’re supposed to live on this island for over two weeks?”

“Actually, Vinyl, twelve hundred hours is over a month,” said Octavia.

“I know!” said Vinyl, astonished. “Over two weeks!”

Ignoring Vinyl and Octavia’s comments, Spyglass finished off with, “Goodbye, and good luck.” He turned to the pegasi and seemed about to say something to them, but hesitated. After another moment, he jumped from the chariot to the snow, walked over to Vinyl, and hugged her. “Stay safe, alright?” he said. In spite of the danger the mission posed, and the potential outcome of it should Vinyl and Octavia fail, this was the first time all night that he had a hint of worry in his voice.

“Always, dad,” said Vinyl, a smile upon her face. He kissed her lightly upon the forehead, and then offered a hoof to Octavia, who shook it.

Returning to the chariot, Spyglass gave the two ponies a salute, followed by a command to the pegasi to take off. Vinyl and Octavia stood back to give their wings a bit more room, and then watched as they ascended, disappearing into the snowy night within seconds.

Vinyl and Octavia were now on their own. It was time to begin their mission.

Chapter Three: Espionage

“So, what do you think we should do, Octavia?” Vinyl asked her wife.

Octavia looked up into the sky, viewing how heavy the snowfall was. Silently, she then walked across the plateau to its edge, and looked down the descending slope. Vinyl patiently waited as Octavia walked back across the plateau to her. “Well?” she asked.

“I’ve got an idea of how we should get to the research facility, and from there I think we should scope it out before making our next move,” Octavia suggested. “But before we do that, there is something we need to address.”

Vinyl nodded in approval. “Absolutely; I wanted to see what the facility was like before we end up inevitably bursting through the front door,” she said. “But what do we need to address?”

Octavia took a deep breath. “So, give it to me straight,” she began. “Am I too optimistic?”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t get the opportunity to answer me previously as your father was talking. So, do you think he’s right? Am I too optimistic?” Octavia repeated.

Vinyl put a hoof to her mouth as she thought about it. Then she grinned. “Well, you thought you could live with me back when we barely knew each other, so yeah, I’d say you’re a bit too optimistic,” she laughed.

“Dammit!” exclaimed Octavia, which was not the reaction Vinyl had expected. She stopped her laughing immediately. “You’re supposed to be the silly optimistic one who gets by on good looks and good luck, and I’m supposed to be the gritty, troubled individual who doesn’t follow the rules, but by Celestia do I get results.”

“Uh…okay?” Vinyl said, confused. “Where did this all come from?”

Octavia shrugged. “I got bored on the flight over and started thinking about what our backgrounds would be like were we actually spies.”

“And you cast me as the optimistic one?” Vinyl asked, acting shocked. “As if! Though I’ll admit that you got the good looks part right, my dad died, and then came back to life and turned out to have been lying to me about his death all along! I’m clearly the gritty one!”

“Speaking of, if your father faked his death, what lead you to thinking that he had died in the first place?” asked Octavia. “As his next of kin, surely you would have gotten the chance to see his body or make the funeral arrangements, yes?”

Vinyl shook her head. “Nah, nothing like that. After coming back from the Amarezon, I found a note at home.”

“A letter explaining he had passed away whilst you were gone?” Octavia asked. Even though the two of them knew now that Spyglass had never died, her voice was somewhat softer; the memory of finding out her father had died might still be tender for Vinyl.

“Kinda?” Vinyl said. “The note said – I dunno – something along the lines of, ‘’Sup, Vinyl, I’m dead, don’t worry about it’?”

Octavia was silent for a few moments. “…That was it?” she asked, finding it hard to believe.

Vinyl nodded solemnly. “You can see why I didn’t really want to talk about it,” she said.

“Unbelievable,” said Octavia, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, how about we start our actual mission, and we can work out what type of spies we are by actually being spies?”

“Sounds like a plan!” said Vinyl. “And if I turn out to be the spy that’s working for the evil organisation, don’t blame me!”

Octavia gave Vinyl a look. “What makes you say that?”

“So, what do you think this cardboard box is for?” Vinyl asked, pointing to the package her father had left the two.

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I believe it’s a tool designed to assist us in infiltrating the research facility,” said Octavia, slowly walking around the box as she examined it. “This box is perhaps the perfect tool for it – it’s spacious enough to fit the two of us inside it, yet it is still not enough to draw attention from the guards. We can move around whilst inside it, becoming an invisible force beneath the guards’ noses. Why, we can even place the box on a conveyer belt, or something similar, within the facility, and be transported to different sections without having to worry about locked doors, or getting past guards! Yes, this cardboard box truly is –”

“It’s got stuff in it,” interrupted Vinyl, giving the box a small kick and hearing something shake around inside it.

“Oh,” said Octavia, her enthusiasm deflating slightly. “Well, still, I am sure that whatever is inside this magnificent box will still prove to be somewhat useful. Open it up and let’s see what it is.”

Vinyl’s horn glowed, and she used her innate unicorn magic to open up the top of the box before flipping it upside down. What fell out of the box elicited a gasp from Octavia.

“Two boxes!” she exclaimed excitedly. “This means we can split up! Oh, this is absolutely perfect!” Octavia pranced over to Vinyl and gave her a big hug, followed by a kiss on the cheek. “Which one do you want, beautiful? Isn’t this exciting?! We each get our own box!”

“I’m not even going there,” muttered Vinyl. Without saying another thing, she levitated one of the boxes into the air and flipped it upside down, as she had with the larger box. Something fell out of this box.

“…What the hay is this?” Octavia asked, walking over to the…thing… and hesitantly lifting it into the air. “Why was this ruining the box?”

“It’s a skateboard, Octavia,” explained Vinyl, opening up the other box to find a duplicate skateboard within. “Dad said our transport to the research facility was inside the box, remember?”

“We’re going to…skating board to the facility?” Octavia asked hesitantly. She awkwardly placed a hoof on the skateboard, testing its weight, only to have it sink into the snow. “I’m not so sure,” she said. “I think the boxes are still a better idea.” Returning to the largest box, Octavia lightly pressed its top with her hooves.

“What, we’ll just slide all the way to the building?” Vinyl asked, sceptical. She’d used her telekinesis to clear away some snow and on the rocky surface that was revealed, the skateboard rolled quite well.

“I’d rather trust this box than those death tra-oof!” Octavia had attempted to put her entire weight on the top of the box, broken the cardboard, and fallen through, landing flat on her face. “Okay,” a resigned sigh came from the pair of legs sticking out of the box, “I suppose I can give these ‘skating boards’ a go.”

“Sounds good to me!” Vinyl exclaimed happily. She stood atop her skateboard and gave a small kick against the ground. Her locomotion was shaky, but she seemed to be able to balance herself well enough. “I’ve never tried skating before, but it seems like the sort of cool and hip transportation method that should both get us to the base and make us look extreme as hay at the same time.”

Throwing the box off her, Octavia walked over to her skateboard and hesitantly placed a hoof upon it, sinking it further into the snow. “You are absolutely certain that this is the best way to get down to the building?” she asked hesitantly.

“Hay, I’m sure that dad put them in the boxes for a reason,” said Vinyl.

===============================

Did I remember to take whatever was inside those boxes out of them before giving them to Vinyl and Octavia? wondered Spyglass, currently being flown back to Equestria. I think I did, didn’t I? Oh well; I doubt that they won’t realise the boxes are to be used as a disguise within the building. My daughter may be a bit ditzy at times, but I’m sure that she’s not so stupid that she’d actually use whatever’s in the boxes.

===============================

“Fair enough,” said Octavia. “Let us get this started then.” Picking up her skateboard, she and Vinyl headed back to the plateau’s edge. They left behind the boxes, as they had nothing to do with them and didn’t think that they would. Unbeknownst to Vinyl and Octavia, the boxes would eventually become the home of a snake in several weeks when the weather got warmer and it came out of hibernation.

Looking down the slope, the snow was a lot scarcer. Whilst there were some patches here and there, enough rock was exposed that Vinyl and Octavia could confidently skate down the slope with little risk of hitting a snow bank and crashing into a tree, or more rock. It had definitely been the right move for Spyglass to give them the skateboards for the mission; something which had certainly been planned.

Octavia looked down the receding slope, unsure what to do. The idea of jumping on a thin plank and some small wheels and trusting it to guide her to safety felt…dubious, especially when she hadn’t so much as practiced it before. And what then, at the bottom of this steep and dangerous path, once she had guided herself past all of the obstacles and made it with all of her limbs intact? Time to infiltrate the research facility, just like that? Time to save Equestria from a threat which may or may not be real? Octavia turned to Vinyl.

“Um…you ready?” she asked.

Vinyl grinned at Octavia, a lovely smile which showed off most of her teeth. Octavia never got sick of seeing that smile, whether it was from one of the unicorn’s own terrible jokes or from whatever ridiculous situation the companions were in at the time. “Of course I am; I’m Vinyl Scratch!” said Vinyl. Without any hesitation, she kicked off, fell to the slope, and then immediately began skating down it at high speed, shouting out “Xtreeeeeeeeeemmmmeeeeeee!!!” as she did so.

Biting her tongue to prevent herself from making a snarky comment in Vinyl’s wake, Octavia reluctantly climbed atop her skateboard, adjusted her balance a few times, and then, after a brief moment of hesitation, kicked off, beginning her descent down the slope.

It was like nothing Octavia had ever experienced. Picking up high speed almost immediately, Octavia’s brain released a minute amount of adrenaline in response, sending a euphoric rush throughout her head. The wind forced back Octavia’s carefully groomed mane and tail, chaotically waving them behind her. Octavia found herself controlling the board almost on instinct, turning left and right as necessary to avoid a tree or large rock in her path.

The slope only got more treacherous as Octavia accelerated down it, with brambles and patches of snow appearing in her path every few metres. It was a miracle that she had the agility to dodge them all without ever needing to slow down or brake. Was she refusing to do so due to her lack of control over the skateboard, or was it the sheer, raw thrill of the speed she had achieved that made her not even attempt to decelerate? Octavia soon found herself attempting manoeuvres not out of necessity, but for their own sake – a flip over a rock here, or a quick grind down a fallen branch there.

Part of Octavia’s mind was paying attention to the board and controlling it, easing it into her chosen path, but the rest of her was focusing on the rush of energy she felt from the activity. Octavia had never felt anything like this before: not when playing the cello, not when fighting an assortment of lowlifes and scumbags – hay, not even when kissing Vinyl did she feel as excited and fulfilled as she did at this moment. Octavia had surprised herself – skateboarding was fun.

And yet, as enjoyable as the skateboard ride was, it eventually had to come to an end. The slope eventually flattened out and became snow-covered once more. It was into this snow that Octavia skidded, slowing her skateboard down expertly and leaping from it. She landed directly in front of Vinyl, who had somehow gained a backwards baseball cap on the trip down.

It had been wild. It had been extreme. It had been the most exciting thing Octavia had ever done, and all she wanted to do right now was to climb back up to the top of the slope and do it all again.

“That was fun,” said Octavia to Vinyl.

“I concur,” replied the unicorn.

The two ponies walked off in the direction of the research facility they had each individually spotted during the descent, no words being said between them.

===============================

“Got any ideas, Octavia?” Vinyl asked her partner quietly. The two mares were lying in the snow as flatly as they could, viewing Baron von Darkhoof’s research facility from a distance. Walking there after the skateboard ride had been easy; it was only a few minutes away from where the two of them had arrived. Getting in, on the other hoof?

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Vinyl, but I spot five guards outside,” Octavia said. Thankfully, the darkness helped her coat blend in quite well with her surroundings; any guard who saw her would likely think her to simply be an oddly pony-shaped tree branch. “The one on the balcony checks the position of the four on the ground every few seconds, so he would naturally grow suspicious should one of them disappear due to our interference.

“The front entrance doesn’t appear to have anything special about it to the naked eye, but judging by the brief pause before it automatically opened earlier, I would suspect that some sort of magical field reads the aura of those who approach it and only opens it for those who are allowed into the facility. If one of us approached it? At best the door simply wouldn’t open; at worst an alarm would be raised.”

Vinyl nodded in confirmation. “I’d love to say that I can try to reenchant the field to add us to the ponies allowed inside, but that’s a bit out of my expertise.”

“Perfectly acceptable, Vinyl,” said Octavia. “Now, each of the guards looks to be equipped with a crossbow. It would be nice to assume they are the same type of crossbows that we were given back when we were in COBRA and that they are worse than useless for the guards, but unless we get absolute confirmation of it, I would rather not test that theory. I believe it is accurate to say that those crossbows fire bolts.

“In addition to the crossbows, the guards have other tricks up their sleeves,” continued Octavia, still speaking quietly. “I recognise some of those cutie marks – see that one there? His cutie mark is the Equestrian-wide symbol used to represent black belt level skill in judo. That one over there? That symbol he has for a cutie mark is often associated with the martial art style of capoeira.” Octavia frowned. “Or it could be a bowl of soup. It’s difficult to see at this distance.

“Finally, you see the pony on the balcony’s cutie mark?”

Vinyl squinted, wishing that her glasses had a zoom function. “Is…is that a picture of a pony kicking another pony’s teeth out?” she asked.

Octavia nodded. “Kickboxing. I’m not sure what the others’ cutie marks represent, but judging by the ponies we’ve seen so far they’re probably all related to martial arts.”

“Even the one with a rubber duck for a cutie mark?” Vinyl asked.

“Especially the one with a rubber duck for a cutie mark. I know that you and I have some street smarts and some experience from over the years, but these ponies are in a whole other league compared to us.”

“Yeah,” agreed Vinyl, “the League of Officially Regulated and Sponsored Martial Arts.” Octavia raised an eyebrow quizzically. “It’s a real thing! Look it up!” Vinyl explained with a grin.

Octavia chuckled slightly before continuing. “So, as to whether I have any ideas: you see those crates placed here and there?”

Vinyl nodded. “Yeah, I’m guessing they probably contain items or parts for whatever the hay Darkhoof’s planning. What are you thinking?”

“Do you see how they are slightly larger than either you or I? Now, all this time whilst I have been observing the guards, I have noticed patterns in their patrols around the crates,” Octavia explained. “It appears randomised, but by counting the number of steps each of them take between turning, I have realised that the number of steps correlates to a base-nine encrypted hash key of the Fiboneighcci sequence.”

“…Brilliant,” whispered Vinyl under her breath, observing one guard and doing some calculations in her head simultaneously. “It seems so obvious when you mention it, but if you hadn’t told me…”

“Exactly,” said Octavia. “Now, we have two options. The first is that with our knowledge of the guards’ patrol patterns combined with the cover afforded by the crates, we ambush the guards at certain positions in their patrols, exploiting blind spots and taking them out silently before the others notice anything is amiss. Between the guards’ weapons and personal training, I have no doubt that this will be difficult, with the probability of it going off perfectly being incredibly low. We will need to be undetected the entire time, perhaps even killing our foes should it be necessary to maintain stealth and speed. Even should we succeed, we will still need to find a way in through the front entrance once we have eliminated the guards.”

Vinyl bit her lip. “Sounds risky…but if there’s anypony who can pull it off, it’s us two,” she said, growing excited towards the end of her sentence. “And option two?”

Octavia pointed a hoof. “We enter the base through those air ducts there. Nopony is guarding them.”

Vinyl’s gaze followed Octavia’s hoof. Sure enough, there was a large vent cover in the side of the building which had no visible guards around it, nor looking in its general direction. What’s more, as it was off to the side, Vinyl and Octavia could probably make their way to it without needing to get too close to any of the patrolling guards.

“Oh,” said Vinyl. “Uh, I guess we go for option two?”

Octavia’s mouth twisted for a moment as she thought about it. “…Yes, I think that the safer option does sound like a good idea,” she declared. “Just what I’d expect of a silly, optimistic spy,” Octavia added under her breath.

“What was that?” Vinyl asked.

“Shall we get going?” Octavia suggested. “Even if we give the guards a wide berth, we’ll still have to move slowly so that none of them detect us.”

Vinyl agreed with Octavia, and pressed her body even further into the ground. She was lying stomach-first on the snow with her front and hind legs spread. With minute movements of her front hooves, she slowly pulled herself forwards a small distance. Octavia followed suit, and the two ponies gradually inched their way around the field in front of the research facility and to their destination. If any of the guards were to look, they would see a slightly off-white patch of snow and a pony-shaped branch, quietly making their way around.

As a matter of fact, the guard standing on the balcony of the research facility did see the two ponies almost immediately, and wasn’t fooled by their natural camouflage at all. However, a common hazing ritual amongst the guards in the research facility was to tell new recruits that they needed to crawl around in the snow for several hours in order to grow accustomed to the cold, so it didn’t matter in the end anyway.

Finally, after what felt to Vinyl like an infinite amount of time (but which was actually closer to ten minutes), she and Octavia reached the air vent. “Alright!” she declared happily, getting up. Her coat was cold and wet by now, and she wanted to get inside the facility where she could hopefully warm up. “Now, how do we get in?”

“I don’t suppose your father gave you some sort of spy tool kit whilst I wasn’t looking, did he?” Octavia asked.

“That would have made a lot of sense, huh?” Vinyl asked. “Still,” she said, raising a hoof to feel the edge of the vent cover, “let’s see what we can – hey!” As she was touching the vent cover, it shifted suddenly, and fell forwards. Both ponies winced, but luckily it made no sound as it landed in the snow.

“That was…” began Octavia.

“Convenient?” suggested Vinyl.

“Very,” agreed Octavia. She examined the edges of the vent, before briefly checking the vent cover. “It looks like the screws have been cut through. What if – what if someone did this to help let us in?” she asked. Then, as a new thought occurred to her, she added, “Or what if someone else is trying to sneak in? What if there’s someone else already in there?”

“Wow!” exclaimed Vinyl. “What a twist!” She peered inside the vent. “Do you think it’s safe to go in?” she asked, her voice having a slight echo thanks to the air duct.

“I would rather try my luck with the vent than the guards out the front,” Octavia said, shrugging. She moved Vinyl out of the way and crawled inside the vent, leaving the unicorn to climb in after her and then levitate the vent cover back on.

“It’s a bit of a security leak, isn’t it?” Vinyl asked as the two ponies continued to crawl through the air duct.

“Hmm?”

“You’d think they would have covered up the vent a bit better, or something, wouldn’t you?” Vinyl said. “Why is this air duct even here?”

Octavia waved a hoof dismissively as best as she could in the air duct, which was not very. “They will connect to fans somewhere, I imagine.”

“So you’re saying that we wouldn’t be able to make it this far without the fans?” Vinyl asked. “Because without the fans, this air duct wouldn’t exist.”

“Yes, I suppose that is true,” Octavia confirmed. “If it weren’t for the fans, we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have, nor would any of this exist.”

“Wow!” said Vinyl, in complete awe. “Thanks, fans! We owe you a lot!”

Without a reply from them, Vinyl had no way of knowing whether or not the fans had heard her or not, but she liked to think that they had. Either way, it wouldn’t make her appreciate them any less.

The two ponies crawled along the air duct for a few minutes, keeping quiet now in case any guards down below heard them. Although it was cramped and somewhat claustrophobic, the two ponies kept going on, hoping to find someplace where they could open up the vent and drop down into what would hopefully be an empty room. Every few metres they would stop and listen to see what they could hear around them, whether any guards could hear their crawling or would give up any juicy information.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Vinyl?” Octavia asked quietly during one of these intervals. Her voice was hard for Vinyl to hear, being directed in the opposite direction to Vinyl’s ears and in a reverberant duct.

“Today: Equestria, tomorrow: the world?” Vinyl replied.

“No,” Octavia said bluntly. “Do you see that vent opening around where my back hooves are?”

“Uhh…” Vinyl had had a very delightful view during her travel through the air duct so far, and she had to tear her eyes away from it to see what Octavia was talking about. “Yeah. You want I should open it up and we can see what’s below?”

“Yes, I haven’t heard any –” Before Octavia could even finish her sentence, the sound of a door swinging open sounded from below the duct the two were in.

“-don’t see what all the fuss about this added security feature is,” echoed a voice from below. “So what if a chariot might have been seen in the sky? Nopony’s gonna land on the island, and even if they do, they wouldn’t stand a chance of getting near us. It’s all a bunch of horseapples!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” followed a second voice. “But what the boss says is what goes. C’mon, let’s go get those new security cards from the first floor.”

“And what if I decide I don’t want a new security card?” replied the first voice. “What if I decide not to in protest of overly complicated and unnecessary security measures?”

“You plan on going down below the ground floor?” asked the second voice. There was a pause. “ZAP! That’s what’ll happen if you don’t want the new security card. Now c’mon, quit wasting time, and let’s go!”

The voice of the first pony continued to grumble as the two voices faded into the distance, followed by the sound of a door shutting. Vinyl and Octavia were silent for a few moments, before Vinyl said, “Convenient information.”

“Yes,” said Octavia. “Almost…too convenient, isn’t it?”

“…Um, no?” Vinyl said in response. “If it’s convenient for us, it’s convenient! What does too convenient even mean?”

That made Octavia hesitate before answering. “Well, I – I mean, the chance of those two guards entering whatever room is below us together, spouting off information relevant to us, and then immediately leaving is rather unlikely, is it not?”

“But it just did happen,” Vinyl countered. “If something’s unlikely, then it might not have a high chance of happening, sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, right? Sometimes life’s just full of little coincidences and conveniences like that.”

“That doesn’t make it realistic,” Octavia said. “It feels like an excuse to hastily get us to the next set piece we need to be at.”

“And what the hay does that matter, as long as we get the job done and have fun doing it?” Vinyl asked.

“Well…” Octavia thought it over for a moment. “What if it’s a trap? What if they were intentionally trying to lead us somewhere?”

“So you think that two guards walking randomly around the research facility, spouting out a few lines to draw us somewhere when they don’t even know we’re in here or that we exist, is more likely than two guards talking about an unenjoyable part of their job?”

Octavia sighed. “Just move back a bit. I’m getting a bloody cramp.” Vinyl complied, and moved back enough that Octavia could reach the vent opening and open it. The two ponies dropped out of the air duct and into what looked like a locker room.

“What does it even matter if it’s unlikely?” Vinyl asked as the two ponies dusted themselves off.

“I studied Classical Literature in university,” Octavia said, with a slight hint of arrogance in her tone. “It’s bad writing is all.”

“It’s not writing at all,” Vinyl pointed out. “It’s our life. And anyway, a few bad writing moments like that in the story – the story of our life, that is – never hurt anypony.”

Octavia wanted to argue the point further with Vinyl, to tell her that rather than making excuses for bad writing, effort should be put in to fix the bad writing in the first place, particularly when it has been noticed in such an obvious manner. But she didn’t want to get into a discussion with Vinyl over such a silly topic, and so instead she gave Vinyl a kiss on the cheek. And then another one a moment later, because she liked kissing Vinyl, and Vinyl in turn liked receiving her kisses.

Resuming a more professional stance, Octavia slowly pushed open the door, and upon seeing that the corridor outside was empty, snuck out with Vinyl. The guards outside had all been wearing uniforms, so there was unfortunately no chance of the two ponies pretending to be guards if they were spotted by their foes.

Octavia was ready to explore the corridor further – there were several doors along it containing who knows what – but a nudge from Vinyl pointed out a staircase heading upwards to the next floor right next to the room they had just been in. They would be able to head up there and find the security cards mentioned by the guards earlier. It was all very convenient.

“Not a word,” said Octavia. Vinyl grinned silently as she lead the way up the stairs and to the first floor. From what the two ponies could see, the first floor was identical to the ground floor: a blank white corridor with some doors and corners, leading off into further directions.

“What now?” Vinyl asked.

Octavia shrugged. “We’ll search around and find out?” she suggested.

The first door they opened lead to a laboratory, which didn’t look as though it had been used since Baron von Darkhoof had moved into the facility.

“Super Soldier Serum: Test #1,941?” Octavia read aloud from a dusty folder sitting on a bench. She flipped it open out of curiosity. “Hay, it says this was successful!” she said excitedly.

“Irrelevant,” said Vinyl. “Next!”

The next door in the corridor lead into a small room, also looking abandoned. There wasn’t much there, aside from a lone filing cabinet. At some unknown point in the past, it had been knocked over, and was spilling its contents to the ground.

“Weapon Plus program: Subject number ten…bonding metal to bone…artificial – no, wait, it says they’re bone – claws…” This time, it was Vinyl who had picked up a folder and was flipping through it.

“Anything interesting in there?” Octavia asked. Vinyl gave a noncommittal shrug.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the inherent concept, but I wouldn’t want it to get overexposed,” she said, tossing the folder back to the ground. “Next room!”

The third door in the corridor lead to a much larger room than the previous two combined. Unlike them, it wasn’t disused, a fact that Vinyl and Octavia realised almost immediately when they realised who the occupant of the room was.

“You!” gasped Octavia.

“Me,” said the occupant smugly.

“That particular pony is here?” Vinyl exclaimed. “Wow! What a twist!”

Chapter Four: Action

“I- I can’t believe it,” Vinyl gasped. “Of all the ponies to find here, in the Omega Zone’s laboratories, it has to be – him!”

“And I can’t believe how repetitive you’re getting,” Octavia grumbled. “Were you eating paint chips again whilst I wasn’t looking?”

“I plead the fifth,” Vinyl said. “But can you blame me for my sudden shock and outrage? It’s my mortal enemy!”

“Mortal enemy? That’s disappointing,” replied the pony to whom she was referring. “I was hoping you’d consider me something more along the lines of…future husband?”

A shudder ran along Vinyl’s spine. “Even if I didn’t love Octavia – hay, even if you were the only other pony in Equestria – I wouldn’t go near you in a million years, Neon Lights.”

“You say that now, but trust me, one evening with me and you’d be changing your tune,” Neon laughed. It was a cold, cocky thing; a laugh to boost Neon’s ego rather than actually finding any humour in the situation. Some of Vinyl’s hairs stood on end in response.

“What the hay are you doing here?” Vinyl asked defensively, trying to change the topic. “Shouldn’t you be in some seedy nightclub, hopelessly trying to buy mares drinks? I know you’re scummy enough that you’d fit right in with the ponies here, but I -” Vinyl stopped, a theory occurring to her. Neon Lights grinned. Vinyl knew that behind his dark glasses, his eyes were twinkling. “Oh, yuck, you’re working for Baron von Darkhoof?”

“Heh, close,” Neon replied. “I’m working with Darkhoof. We all are!”

“What? No we’re not,” Vinyl said. “Octavia and I are here to stop him. Unless…Octavia!” she exclaimed. “You’re the spy working for the evil organisation, not me!”

“What in the hay are you talking about, Vinyl?” Octavia asked.

“That ‘we’ clearly didn’t include you two,” said Neon. “By ‘we’, I of course mean – but wait, what am I saying? You’ll find out soon enough who the members of The Vinyl and Octavia Revenge Squad are!”

The room was silent for a few moments.

“That’s dumb,” said Vinyl bluntly.

“Mm-hmm,” agreed Octavia.

“Darling, I know it’s not our mission, but could we please beat up Neon Lights before we continue looking for the security card we need?” Vinyl asked. “I hadn’t realised it until about thirty seconds ago, but I really need to punch somepony. And by somepony I mean him.”

“Of course,” said Octavia. “I’d be happy to join i-” Her voice trailed off as she actually took in what Neon Lights was doing. There were several cables lying around on the floor, the type typically used as conductors and vectors for magical energy. The floor itself was covered in square panels which roughly made up a grid – pressure pads of some kind, perhaps? Neon Lights noticed Octavia taking it all in and gave a smile that looked suspiciously similar to a leer.

“What’sa matter, babe?” he asked. “Something…catch your eye?”

“Neon Lights,” Octavia asked, her voice shaking slightly, “what are you doing here?”

“Take a guess, babe,” Neon Lights said, silent laughter on his lips even as he finished speaking.

“I…I suspect that you’re setting up some sort of pressure-sensitive bomb, judging by those panels?” Octavia said. “You somehow knew that Vinyl and I were here, so had those guards downstairs lure us up here to this – to your trap. The only problem is that you didn’t anticipate us getting here so swiftly.” Aside to Vinyl, she added, “See? I told you it was too convenient.”

“…There was a trap now?” Neon Lights said blankly, a look of genuine confusion upon his face.

“Actually, I think he’s setting up some sort of dance floor,” Vinyl explained to Octavia. She nudged one of the floor panels with a hoof. “If I’m not mistaken, once this is all set up, each of these will change colour in tune to music played in here.”

“…Oh,” said Octavia. “But why?”

“Showman’s gotta have a show, baby!” said Neon Lights. He trotted up to Octavia and put a hoof on her shoulder, which she immediately brushed off. “Just picture it – myself, dancing in all the best nightclubs in Equestria, picking up all the hottest mares – no fat chicks, of course- and how am I supposed to do that if I don’t practice my moves?”

“Wait…that’s what you’re doing here?” Octavia asked. “You’re setting up a dance floor so you can practice your presumably terrible dance moves?” She frowned. “Shouldn’t you be helping your silly little crew with whatever Baron von Darkhoof’s plan is?”

“Every time you think Neon Lights has hit a new low, he goes and surpasses his previous one,” said Vinyl sadly.

“Please, can you blame me? With a body this good?” Neon Lights asked. He attempted to, and failed, to flex his muscles.

“…I don’t even know who the other members of Baron von Darkhoof’s group are, but I already know that you’re the worst pony of them all,” commented Octavia.

“Neon Lights is definitely worst pony,” Vinyl said, nodding in agreement.

Neon Lights turned his head slightly, as though listening to something. Then, in a flash, he was suddenly before Vinyl through a strange sort of skip, which somehow knocked her to the ground. A blink of an eye later, and he was back where he had been a moment ago.

“Vinyl!” Octavia cried, kneeling down to her wife’s side as she processed what had happened. “Are you okay?”

“Octavia…I –” Vinyl coughed. She weakly reached out a hoof to try and reach Octavia’s face, but she couldn’t muster up the strength to, and faltered. “I’m fine,” Vinyl managed to weakly cough out.

“What?”

“But…his dance moves…” Vinyl coughed again. “They were…surprisingly good…”

“You know it, baby!” said Neon Lights, still grinning in victory. “From the Frozen North to Appleloosa, when they talk about good dancing, they’re talking about me!”

“Celestia’s sake, where are we going with this, Vinyl?” Octavia asked impatiently as she helped Vinyl to her hooves.

“There’s only one thing that we can do, Octavia,” Vinyl said, suddenly chipper again. “I’m going to have to challenge Neon Lights…to a dance-off!”

“Couldn’t we just…you know, leave?” Octavia asked. “And keep looking for that all-important security card?” Even as she finished speaking, Neon Lights connected some of his cables together, and a blinding lightshow erupted from some lights attached to the laboratory’s ceiling. At the same time, a throbbing beat sounded from below the floor panels which, as Vinyl had predicted, changed colour rapidly in accordance with the music. The overall result was that a schizophrenic, senses-deadening show cut off the last few of Octavia’s words.

“WHAT?” Vinyl shouted to Octavia.

“I SAID – OH, NEVER MIND!” Octavia returned. Turning around, she went to head out of the door the two ponies had entered through, only to bump her hoof into an empty wall when she reached for the handle. She shook her head and tried again, only to fail once more. It was hard to see where the door was with the constantly changing lights, she realised, squinting this time to see past them and to the immediate wall. Wait, did we even enter here? she wondered, looking along the wall for the familiar shape of the wall. Maybe it was further along here, and we turned…or maybe it was in the other direction…?

Poor Octavia, thought Vinyl sadly, watching her wife fumble her way along the wall, she’ll never get out of here on her own. Turning to Neon Lights, who was laughing at Octavia, she said, “Alright, Neon, you ready for the fastest dance-off loss in your life?” She didn’t have to worry about Neon hearing her over all of the noise – ponies such as they two had learned to communicate in clubs using cues other than aural.

“I was born ready, baby!” Neon said. “I’ll make you a deal – you win, and I’ll give you that security card you two are looking for.”

“Ooh! Convenient!” said Vinyl. Then she frowned. “What happens if you win?”

“That’s even better for you – you get to go on a date with the one and only Neon Lights, baby!” said Neon.

Vinyl winced. Was it worth the risk, just for the card? Then she grinned, realising what a stupid question that was. She was Vinyl Scratch, he was Neon Lights. Did he even stand a chance? “You’re on!” Vinyl said.

“I was hoping you’d say that, hot stuff,” said Neon Lights. “But before we start, there’s a twist to this little set-up I’ve got going here.” Vinyl gestured for him to continue. “Once I connect these last two cables –” he levitated two cables into the air, but made a point of not letting them touch “- then my extra-elaborate danger routine will begin!”

“Your what now?” asked Vinyl.

“Keep an eye on the colours the panels flash,” Neon explained. “Blue panels are safe. Stepping on a yellow panel will open up a trapdoor to the shark tank. Stepping on an orange panel will open up a trapdoor to the pit of fire. Red panels will open up a trapdoor to the flaming shark tank of fire.”

“What do the purple panels do?” Vinyl asked as a panel near her briefly changed to magenta.

“They transmit light with a shorter wavelength than the other panels, but at a higher frequency,” said Neon Lights. “Any other questions before we start?”

“Why the hay do you have a set-up as elaborate as this for something as simple as practicing dancing?” asked Vinyl. Behind her, Octavia had finished one circuit of the room, and was beginning her next in search of the elusive door.

“That’s simple, filly,” said Neon Lights. “I’ve gotta practice like crazy, because I’m great at everything I do!” He lowered his sunglasses, gave a wink, then raised them back up to cover his eyes. “If you know what I mean.”

“Celestia,” sighed Vinyl. “Let’s get this the hay over with.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Neon Lights, grinning. “Let’s get this party jumping!” With that, he used his telekinesis to connect the last two cables together, triggering his deadly dancefloor.

Originally, the highly competitive and occasionally lethal sport known as underground dancing, often hosted illegally in dance clubs, had only one rule – don’t tell anypony about dance club, because it sounds silly and embarrassing without proper context. As ambitious as the idea of having a sport with only one rule was, the originators eventually realised that they would have to add further rules, ostensibly so that they could determine once and for all what was and wasn’t legal in the sport, but in reality so they could work out what the hay the sport they’d invented actually was.

Due to the somewhat haphazard nature of the sport’s construction, many variants of underground dancing had evolved in the early days of it, each with their own rules and regulations. The most popular one, which Vinyl and Neon Lights had both correctly assumed they would be following, still held to the idea of a simple, all-encompassing rule – dance for longer than your opponent, and you win. The extra hazards given by the floor panels might speed things up, but other than that, this challenge was exactly the same as the many Vinyl had done in the past.

As Neon Lights connected the two cables together, Vinyl’s initial reaction was to leap in the air, it being both a stylish beginning and giving her some precious time to find a blue panel or purple panel to land on. To her luck, the panel directly below her glowed blue, and she landed upon it deftly. From there, Vinyl hopped to the side, landing upon another blue panel, and spinning on it as she waited for it to change. In spite of Neon’s additional twist to the game, Vinyl was fairly confident she could quickly work out the rhythm of the music, which would additionally help her to calculate the pattern the panels were changing in.

Even so, it was taking all of Vinyl’s concentration to both work out where to move next and to do so stylishly. She let out silent thanks to Celestia that Octavia was still wandering around the walls of the room, away from the dangerous panels.

Vinyl’s movement and dances consisted mostly of hops, steps, and jumps in time to the music, as it was a flexible style which both felt natural to her and allowed her to rapidly change her position if needed. For his part, Neon Lights was doing some sort of awkward jumping whilst thrusting his hooves into the air, as if pointing out where the lights were coming from to Vinyl. Vinyl didn’t really understand what constituted it as a dance, but she’d seen enough other ponies doing similar things to know it was an accepted move in underground dancing. Whilst doing this, Neon was constantly attempting to close in on Vinyl, who, savvy to his tricks, was able to do a circuit of the dance floor and stay ahead, dancing all the while.

Even so, somepony had to slip up at some point, and unfortunately, that pony was Vinyl. Planning to leap ahead, Vinyl found that she had made a mistake – the song changed as she was in mid-air, and with it, the panels Vinyl had anticipated would be safe to land on. Shifting her weight as best she could, Vinyl managed to crash to the dance floor just in front of the panels she had originally planned to land on. Unfortunately for Vinyl, the panels she had landed on were in the centre of the dance floor, a spot the unicorn had previously noted to be constantly filled with dangers, and so she immediately leapt back to another set of panels she anticipated would be safe, before the trap doors could open up. But then –

THWACK! Vinyl was immediately kicked in the jaw by Neon Lights, who had seen an opportunity and exploited it with the speed of thought. Whilst intentionally fighting with your opponents was technically against the rules of underground dancing, there were many loopholes that could be abused to get away with it, the most common being to claim that the other pony had accidentally gotten in the way of a particularly dramatic dance move. Vinyl had been hoping to avoid a physical brawl with Neon Lights if possible, but it looked as though that choice was out of her hooves now.

Climbing to her hooves – Vinyl had mercifully landed on the panels she had been aiming to anyway – Vinyl found Neon smirking at her as he switched up to a crotch thrust-based dance.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding in the slightest as though he was, “I didn’t think you’d move back like that.”

“No worries,” replied Vinyl casually, “I just hope I don’t make the same stupid mistake.”

With that, the two continued their dance, both literally and metaphorically. Each would try to get closer to the other to attack them, whilst remaining ahead of the ever-changing lights. It was a game of cat and mouse, each pony circling around the centre of the dancefloor, still the most dangerous area, attempting to hit their foe and then retreat before they could get hurt in return. It was testament to both ponies’ dance skills and sense of rhythmic timing that they were for the most part able to avoid the wrongly-coloured dance panels, and that when they made a mistake were able to correct it before they could fall to an uncertain doom.

As it was, both ponies had nearly reached the fifteen-minute dancing mark without failing. Vinyl, exhausted though she was, felt proud of herself, knowing that she had never lasted this long in previous matches of underground dancing. It was slightly offset by the fact that normal underground dances generally required the participants to be far less cautious in the moves they made, owing to a distinct lack of booby-trapped floor panels, but it was still an achievement to be proud of.

Still, Vinyl had gotten in fewer hits to Neon Lights than he had to her. Whilst Vinyl had a black eye behind her glasses and a ringing headache – not helped by the loud music and flashing lights – Neon was only encumbered by a blood nose. Vinyl hated to admit it, but the chance of her winning this dance off was slipping out of her hooves as each second passed. Neon Lights was unlikely to give her the chance to win solely through endurance, and his crotch-thrusts limited the directions Vinyl could approach him from for physical violence. It was time for Vinyl to end this, before things got too out of hoof.

Although Neon’s crotch thrusts made him too dangerous to approach from the front, and attempting to come at him from the side or behind could take too long, Vinyl had already found a weakness in his dancing tactic. Leaping towards Neon Lights, Vinyl “accidentally” mistimed her leap and landed on a panel whilst it was projecting yellow light. Neon noticed immediately, and spun around, ready to kick her in the face once more as she leapt in his direction for a safe blue panel.

But Vinyl had been expecting that, knowing that if she telegraphed an opening for Neon, he wouldn’t be able to resist taking advantage of it. In his haste to take advantage of Vinyl, Neon Lights hadn’t seen what she was doing next. Rather than leaping to the blue panel between the two, Vinyl rolled to it, thus avoiding Neon’s kick, which had been aimed at an opponent who was descending from the air. Whilst still low to the ground, Vinyl swung her lower body forwards, knocking Neon to the ground from his precariously balanced front two hooves. Neon went crashing to the floor, having neither the reaction time nor the opportunity to rebalance himself. Vinyl followed up her attack with a leaping kick, driving Neon Lights’ head further into the glass panel, before leaping back onto her blue panel.

“Damn you, Vinyl,” muttered Neon as he staggered to his hooves. Vinyl winced. She had hoped that Neon would be knocked out by her attack, or at least weakened by it. Instead, it seemed only to have intensified his anger. Neon’s face was bloodier now: unbeknownst to Vinyl, she had broken his nose with her attack. His glasses had also been shattered, and it looked as though some shards of them were digging into his face. For the first time, Vinyl was seeing Neon Lights project an emotion other than cocky arrogance – now, she sensed only malice coming from him. “Loss of blood! My only weakness!” Neon spat at her. “How did you know?!”

“You want to keep going a few rounds, jerk?” Vinyl asked. She spread her hooves out and tensed her body, ready to leap into or away from trouble at the first sign of it. “Because I can keep this up all day,” she lied. “If you just want to give up now, I’m cool with that, but otherwise? Cut the chit-chat and stop stalling.”

Vinyl realised she had made a mistake in trying to intimidate Neon. Rather than lashing out to her words, he instead calmed down slightly, saying, “Vinyl, baby! You’d know I’d go with you all night if you could stand it, but I’ve gotta give you a break at some point, don’t I?” He chuckled. “And besides, why should I knock you down when you’re already so willing to do it yourself?”

Vinyl frowned, less sure of herself now. “What do you mean by –” Before Vinyl had finished talking, the panel below her split in two, opening up a passage to whatever danger lay below. Vinyl instinctively leapt upwards as she felt herself begin to fall, before the panels had opened up all of the way, but she had already been on a descent, and due to the unexpectedness of it all, hadn’t gotten as much power into her jump as she would have liked. Vinyl was hanging from the edge of the pit with her front hooves only, struggling to get a grip.

Neon Lights’ horn briefly glowed, and with it, the music and lights stopped. The panel wouldn’t be closing up any time soon. “So, what do you say, Vinyl?” Neon Lights asked, slowing making his way to Vinyl’s panel. She was rapidly losing her grip, readjusting it, and then starting the process all over again. “Agree to go out with me, and not only will I save you, but I’ll even let you join the Vinyl and Octavia Revenge Squad.”

“Why the hay would I agree to any of that?” panted Vinyl.

“The former? Because you know that I’m the best you’ll get for the rest of your life,” said Neon. “As for the latter, well, after our initial demonstration in Canterlot of Baron von Darkhoof’s grand plan, we’ll have it all – money, power, whatever we want. Who wouldn’t want that?”

Demonstration in Canterlot? Vinyl wondered, before getting distracted by more physical concerns.

“So, what do you say?” Neon asked, offering a hoof. He flashed a grin at her, which didn’t look as effective as it usually did when his face was covered in blood and tiny shards of glass.

“Sorry, old buddy old pal, but I’m gonna have to say no,” said Vinyl, finally finding something she could get a stronger grip on (the edge of the adjacent panel). “If I said yes, my wife would kill me.”

“Your w-”

Something grey and heavy slammed into Neon Lights, knocking him to the ground as it had in a nightclub oh so long ago. Vinyl couldn’t see what had happened, occupied as she was by climbing to safety, but once she was back on all four hooves, she found Octavia standing a short distance away from a groaning Neon Lights. Neon was lying on his back with a pool of blood around his head. Vinyl trusted Octavia not to have overdone it, but even so, seeing the initial amount of blood made her double-take.

“How are you doing, pretty lady?” Vinyl asked, cracking a grin as though it didn’t physically hurt her to do so.

“I think I’ve gone blind. Or deaf. Possibly both,” said Octavia, walking over so that she and Vinyl were standing right next to the ominous pit of doom. “How you and he manage to put up with that type of thing so often, I have no clue.” She leaned in and gave Vinyl a quick kiss on the lips.

Vinyl made a small movement that might have been a shrug, or possibly a small shiver of delight at Octavia’s kiss. “Being too stupid to know better, I guess?” she said. “I know for a fact that the too stupid bit applies to Neon over there. Speaking of…” Vinyl turned away from Octavia and to Neon, who was no longer lying on the floor where Vinyl had expected him to be. Instead, he was standing directly in Vinyl’s face.

“…Hello?” said a confused Vinyl after a moment.

Silently, Neon Lights pushed Vinyl and Octavia forwards, using a hoof for each, into the still-open floor panel. The two disappeared into the darkness within moments, their shouts of surprise being the only things to indicate that they had ever been there.

“Idiots,” said Neon Lights.

Author's Note

The song Neon Lights starts off playing is Darude - Sandstorm

Chapter Five: New Ways to Live

The first thing Vinyl noticed was the heat.

The island that the CHIELD research station was on – what did her dad call it? The Omega Zone? – had a light snowfall outside, so naturally, the research station was fairly cold. There hadn’t been much in the way of central heating so far – whether because it hadn’t been worth the expenditure for the number of ponies there or because they didn’t care wasn’t apparent – but even if there had been, the room which Vinyl and Octavia were falling into from the chute they’d fallen down would have felt swelteringly hot. The cause of the heat was apparent – as Neon Lights had promised, the two were falling towards a flaming tank of fire, hopefully without the sharks in it as he had claimed.

The room itself was much fairly large, so as to be able to contain the rounded tank, which had a diameter of around twenty metres. Whatever this room had been before Neon Lights converted it for his side project – Vinyl assumed that Neon Lights had been the one to add the tank; if it was CHIELD-related that raised more questions than she wanted to think about – wasn’t apparent.

Vinyl and Octavia both landed in the tank a few seconds after initially falling into the room, each creating a large SPLASSSSSHHHH!! as they landed. The impact surprised Vinyl, as did the fact that she was falling into water. Landing in water was much harder than Vinyl recalled; it completely knocked what little air she had in her lungs out. After a few stunned moments, Vinyl’s instincts kicked in, and she started awkwardly thrashing her way to the surface, correctly guessing the direction she had fallen from. Vinyl had her eyes closed – she hated opening her eyes underwater – and as she swam, she hoped that she wasn’t going to surface in a fiery inferno.

All was well, though, and before her lungs gave out, Vinyl had broken the surface of the tank, moments after Octavia did the same. Gasping, Vinyl had a look around her, attempting to get her bearings. Although the two were in water, the fire they had seen from the air wasn’t an illusion or any sort of similar trickery: patches of oil floated every few metres, and they were each on fire. Around the two, it was hard to breathe; the fire may not have been affecting the heat of the water much, but it was very much affecting the air quality.

“Vinyl!” choked out Octavia, seeing her wife surface next to her.

“Oc-Octavia!” replied Vinyl similarly. The two had surfaced next to each other – Vinyl could feel small distortions in the water’s current as Octavia treaded water – and Vinyl very much wanted to hug Octavia, but it was too impractical at the moment. “What do we do? The tank’s on fire!”

“There’s no sense in trying to make our way to the perimeter,” said Octavia, briefly pointing a hoof. Surrounding the edge of the tank was a large mesh-wire fence – impossible to climb over. “We’re going to have to see whether there’s any way to get out of here through the tank.”

Vinyl briefly dipped her head under the water before replying to Octavia – it was getting much too hot and dry for her liking. “Is that even likely?” she asked. She flicked her head to the side as she talked in an attempt to get her mane out of her eyes.

Octavia sighed. “Do we have a choice?” she said. Before Vinyl could reply to the rhetorical question, Octavia added, “Take a deep breath and let us have a better look around. We shall see what we can find.”

Vinyl did as her wife bade, and then ducked her head under the water once more. This time, she opened her eyes. It was something she hated having to do, sure, but it was a necessity to finding a way out of the deadly trap the two were in. Vinyl’s iconic purple glasses had fallen off at some point whilst the two ponies were falling through the air, so she didn’t have to worry about them affecting her visibility.

Kicking her way through the water, Vinyl looked out for an exit, as Octavia had requested. Whatever the hay that looked like. What was Octavia expecting her to find? Some giant neon lights – Vinyl shuddered internally – pointing to a convenient way out? Still, she had better try. Vinyl turned her head to the right, hoping that the convenient sign existed and was there, and then immediately bumped into a shark.

It was a pretty dumb thing to do.

Looking to see what she had bumped into, it took Vinyl a moment to realise that the thing was something else underwater, as opposed to a structural part of the tank. Vinyl frowned, the shark appearing blurred and indistinct through the water. Why had Octavia emphasised the importance of finding an exit, only to then gently swim through the water? And when did Octavia become so elongated and fish-like?

Squinting slightly, Vinyl finally noticed what she had actually crashed into. Her fear immediately kicked into overdrive, and she kicked upwards rapidly whilst also attempting not to aggravate the shark – just as long as she got away from it, she would be happy.

For its part, the shark was wondering what the hay had just bumped into it and then left. Sharks have a blind spot in front of their nose, and this one had been wandering fairly aimlessly around the tank before something white and fluffy crashed into it. Still, with nothing in its way anymore, the shark was happy to continue aimlessly swimming through the tank, until it detected the scent of blood or found something worth eating.

Vinyl’s head broke the surface once more. Her heart was beating furiously, and she was gasping for air, her fear having quickly used up her oxygen. She kicked back slightly, certain that if she stayed in the same spot, a shark would emerge from the depths and eat one of her delicious, tantalising legs. (Vinyl wasn’t entirely sure what the word tantalising meant, but she was pretty sure that if it was something appealing, it applied to her legs). Vinyl moved around constantly, barely even noticing the fires any more. The fire was a mundane, knowable danger; one that could be avoided by being smart and paying attention. But the sharks, to Vinyl, were deadly monsters that could strike from anywhere, at any time, without warning. Each ripple in the water, or bubble that floated to the surface, caused Vinyl to flinch.

Vinyl managed to find her way to one of the walls of the tank, and breathed a sigh of relief. There were fewer directions for the sharks to attack her from now, and she was even lucky to be relatively distant from the nearest fire. Now, Vinyl just needed Octavia to break the surface, and – hang on a moment, how long had the Earth pony been underwater for now? It had to be at least a minute, surely? Could Octavia hold her breath that long?

“Octavia!” called out Vinyl, hoping for a response. None came. “Octavia!” Vinyl repeated. “Where are you?!” There was still nothing. No beautiful head breaking the surface of the water, nor slowly paddling over from behind a fire which had previously masked its presence. With each second that passed without a sign of Octavia, the possibility of her drowning – or worse, being eaten by sharks – increased, a fact which Vinyl realised and then immediately attempted to ignore.

Vinyl had been attempting to stay calm since surfacing, but with no sign of Octavia anywhere, she was starting to get tense. “Okay, okay…” Vinyl muttered to herself. “This is fine. This is cool, it’s all fine. Just stick your head in the water, see her swimming towards you, then surface. Easy-peasy.” Before she could second-guess herself, Vinyl stuck her head beneath the surface, hoping to see her wife nearby.

Wherever Octavia – or possibly, her lifeless body – was, it wasn’t anywhere visible to Vinyl. There were, however, three sharks swimming nearby. One of them turned to her, unintentionally flashing the unicorn a toothy grin.

For Vinyl, it was the final straw. Her panic rose once more, higher than before. The unicorn found herself attempting to grip the fence around the tank, attempting to rip it open with her telekinesis, anything to create an exit and get out of there. How the hay did she get into this situation?! She was going to die in the Omega Zone, wasn’t she?

Vinyl flinched as she heard the sound of something breaking the surface of the water. “Don’t eat me!” squealed Vinyl instinctively, now throwing herself at the fence in the hopes that she could somehow magically grip it with her hooves. “I’m stringy!”

“Vinyl? What are you talking about? And what are you doing over there?”

After splashing down into the water, Vinyl turned around to see one of the best sights of her life – Octavia, as wet as anything, with her head sticking out of the water, over where Vinyl had initially risen.

“Octavia!” Vinyl cried, breaking several freestyle speed records as she made her way over to Octavia. “I was – I thought you – I – I-” She coughed and choked, unable to continue as the heat got the better of her.

“It’s alright, I’m fine,” said Octavia, feeling slightly confused but nevertheless pleased to see that her mere presence was cheering up her wife. “I think I’ve found an exit – how about you? Did you find anything?”

“Just the promise of an untimely and early death,” said Vinyl darkly.

Octavia raised an eyebrow but said nothing in response to the odd comment. Instead, she said, “How long can you hold your breath? I found a drain cover of sorts that I think might lead somewhere, but it’s on the bottom of the tank. I can hold mine for about two minutes…”

Nowhere near that long, thought Vinyl. “I think I’m pretty similar,” she lied. “What do we need to do?”

“The cover doesn’t look too heavy – at least, not for me – but I can’t get a hold of it when it’s in the floor of the tank as it is now,” Octavia explained. “If you can get an edge up with your telekinesis, I should be able to get it the rest of the way, and then we can see where it leads.” She wiped some of the sweat from her forehead – the fires felt like they were hotter than before. “Take a deep breath, then follow me.”

“Wait!” Vinyl exclaimed. “We need to – there’s sharks down there.” Octavia nodded, evidently having seen them herself. And dealt with them a lot better than I did, thought Vinyl bitterly. “What should we do about them?”

Octavia shrugged as best she could whilst treading water, which wasn’t very. “Avoid them? Unless they smell blood, I don’t think they’ll pay too much attention to us.” Vinyl opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it. The sharks were just something she would have to not think about – just pretend that they weren’t better swimmers than her, with sharp, multiple rows of teeth…

“Ready?” Octavia asked.

“Yeah,” said Vinyl. As ready as I’ll ever be. Both ponies took deep breaths, and then descended below the surface.

As Octavia had said, the drain cover was on the bottom of the tank, so both ponies headed directly down. Once more, Vinyl desperately wanted to close her eyes – both because the water hurt her eyes and so she wouldn’t see any of the sharks on the way down – but resisted the urge to do so. How did Octavia manage to do it?

Soon enough, the ponies had reached the bottom of the tank, and sure enough, as Octavia had said, there was a drain cover. Vinyl looked around as best she could in the water – surely it wasn’t this easy? Surely the sharks had noticed them, or the drain cover was sealed with cement, or something similar? But no, the sharks were swimming around as aimlessly as ever, and Vinyl was able to surround the drain cover with her telekinetic field as easily as if she were preparing to levitate a coin into the air.

Lifting the drain cover, however – that was another matter entirely. The entire thing wasn’t too thick, but it was relatively large, and with several hundred litres of water on top of it, lifting it was hardly a walk in the park. The drain cover didn’t look like it was moving, aside from slight budges now and then which didn’t amount to anything. Vinyl was straining, and it showed. She wanted to resurface, get another breath of air, and then try again, but doing that felt like admitting that she had screwed up and made a mistake.

Brute force wasn’t working. Perhaps finesse would. Vinyl closed her eyes, focusing on the feel of the drain cover in her telekinetic field. Gently at first, but increasing rapidly, she applied force to a tiny section of the drain cover close to her. She focused all of her attention and concentration on that tiny spot, willing her magic to translate that concentration into physical force. It wasn’t easy – her head was throbbing, her lungs felt like they were about to burst, and her heart was rapidly pounding inside her chest. But she had to make it work – she must.

Vinyl opened her eyes to see how she was doing, and to her surprise, the drain cover was lifted open enough for Octavia to put a hoof under it and continue the job. Reinvigorated by her progress, Vinyl let out a final mental push to the field, and with Octavia’s assistance, was able to finally lift the drain cover off. Octavia briefly winced as she did so.

It was a good thing that they had done so, as Vinyl had just been forced to let out the air she’d been holding in her lungs all of this time. She was about to enter the drain, but Octavia interrupted her with a hoof, and pointed upwards, towards the surface. Get some air first. Vinyl’s weak lung capacity hadn’t escaped Octavia, and who knew how long the tunnel the drain opened to would go for?

Vinyl wanted to go to the surface, she really wanted to. But just as Octavia had noticed her letting out a breath, so too had she noticed something about Octavia, something the Earth pony herself probably hadn’t noticed. She pointed to Octavia’s hoof, the one aimed upwards.

A small, brownish-red liquid was floating from an open cut on Octavia’s hoof, and dissipating into the water.

A moment later, a shark swam down, attracted by the blood. Vinyl leapt forwards as best she could whilst underwater – she needed to get Octavia down, punch the shark, whatever she could – but she was too slow. She wanted to scream as she watched, helplessly, as the shark bit into her wife, but her lungs were empty. Octavia certainly screamed, the instinct overriding her inclination to hold her breath. It didn’t sound like a scream, of course, underwater as it was, but that didn’t matter one bit to Vinyl, or Octavia for that matter. Octavia was in pain, and she couldn’t stop it. Vinyl reached out a hoof, wanting – praying – that Octavia would reach out and grab it–

and she did, kicking off and not only grabbing Vinyl’s hoof, but managing to somehow direct the two of them into the drain they had intended to swim into. There was a current in it which helped to push the two of them along it, but Vinyl barely noticed. Her head was throbbing, and her vision was full of black spots. What little cognitive function she had didn’t care about how they were getting out of this situation, just that they were somehow heading somewhere she could help Octavia.

Fortunately for the two ponies, the pipe they were travelling through was short, and better yet, the water that flowed from it fell directly from the pipe into another drain via the magic of gravity. The downside to this was that as unprepared for this as they were, the duo emerged from the pipe, fell a few metres through the air, and then both crashed heavily on top of another drain cover which the water was going through. It hurt, and wasn’t the optimal condition for an oxygen-deprived unicorn and wounded Earth pony to be in, but at least they had done it.

They had escaped from the tank.

For a few moments, Vinyl just lay there on her side, breathing in precious oxygen. The black spots were clearing, and she was no longer feeling light-headed- no, wait, make that feeling less light-headed, Vinyl realised, as she attempted to stand up only to immediately collapse back down to the ground, a wave of dizziness overtaking her. Still, a little thing like possible loss of cognitive abilities wasn’t much to dissuade Vinyl, and so she forced herself upwards again, this time pressing a hoof against a nearby wall to maintain her balance.

“Octavia,” Vinyl croaked, “are you alright?” She took a few cautious steps forwards, closer to the other mare. Octavia had landed face-first to the ground, and was attempting to stand up.

“I’m – I’m alright,” Octavia said, shakily accepting the hoof that Vinyl offered her. “The wound hurts like blazes, but I don’t think it’s too deep. The shark mostly took me by surprise.” Her voice trailed off at the end, and for a few moments she merely stared at nothing, before blinking and shaking her head slightly. “Although I may not be up to much physical activity for a short while.”

“Heh. Join the club,” said Vinyl. The two of them were in some sort of warehouse area, with a shallow pool of water nearby, leading out into a system of caves. What was in those caves was unknown, but judging by the distance the two ponies had fallen from their previous level, they were underneath the Omega Zone. Possibly small boats, or maybe submarines, surreptitiously docked nearby to deliver goods. There were some large crates about the concrete floor, and if the two ponies listened carefully, they could hear the hoofsteps of patrolling guards.

“How did you get the cut?” Vinyl asked quietly as the two ponies carefully moved around, Vinyl looking around for guards as they did so. “I didn’t notice it earlier, and I don’t think the sharks did, either.”

“I think it was the grate,” said Octavia, equally quiet. “I felt a sharp bit of pain as I lifted it, but dismissed it. There must have been a jagged outcrop, or something similar, which created the wound. How are you feeling?”

“Still a little light-headed,” admitted Vinyl, “but it’s mostly gone now. Though if we’d stayed underwater for a bit longer…” She didn’t finish the thought, but it was obvious to both ponies what she was hinting at.

The two ponies fell silent for the next few minutes, not wishing to do anything to attract undue attention as they slowly, cautiously, crept around the room. But unfortunately for the duo, luck was not with them today – edging around a crate to avoid one guard, and heading towards what Vinyl felt confident was an exit, the two ponies stumbled right into the path of another patrolling guard.

“What the -?” the guard exclaimed, before his training took over and he shot a bolt at Vinyl. But the unicorn was too quick, and she had already started galloping away, past another crate and out of sight, with Octavia right on her tail. Vinyl turned a corner, confident that she and Octavia could make it to the door behind the guard as he entered the maze of crates to look for them, but…

“Aha!”

…Vinyl had led herself and Octavia right into another guard. She wanted to dash towards the exit – it was so close! – and almost made a move for it, but the guard was in-between her and it. For a moment Vinyl stood there, agonising over the decision – go for the door, or duck back into the crates? – and for a moment it looked as though that split moment of hesitation was going to cost Vinyl.

Fortunately, Vinyl’s companion was no idiot, as before the guard had time to act on his opportunity, Octavia had grabbed Vinyl’s hoof – “This way!” – and pulled the two of them towards a closer door.

Reacting from there, Vinyl activated her magic, targeted the doorknob, and opened the door.

Or that was what she had tried to do. Rather than smoothly depressing, the door handle started to turn, and then stopped. Simultaneously, the magical field it had been surrounded in dissipated.

Vinyl started. That wasn’t what she had intended to do. A bolt whizzed past her shoulder and stuck into the door, as she tried to comprehend what went wrong. Whether the bolt had missed her or was a warning shot, Vinyl was unsure. Either way, she didn’t want to stick around for the next shot. Activating her magic once more, Vinyl targeted the door knob and was successful in opening the door this time. She and Octavia ducked inside and slammed the door behind them, Vinyl thinking to lock it after they did so. Once she had done that, Octavia barricaded the door using a desk beside it right away.

The two ponies stood there for a few moments, leaning against the desk to reinforce it. They heard a few more bolts hit the door, and what felt like somepony attempt to kick the door open, but it remained closed. Not that that stopped the two ponies from staying where they were.

“I think this is the part,” Vinyl finally said, “where we turn around to find out that the room we’ve just ducked into to escape a bunch of guards is full of an even larger group of guards, who are standing there watching us silently.”

Neither she nor Octavia moved from their position.

“Well?” Vinyl asked. “Aren’t you going to check?”

“If I do that, won’t they make their presence known?” Octavia pointed out. “It makes more sense for us to stay here against the door.”

“Good point,” said Vinyl.

Two seconds passed.

“Right, I’m bored,” said Vinyl, and relaxed. Examining the room the two were holed up in, Vinyl was pleased to see that her prediction was wrong, and the room the two had actually decided to hole up in was a small office. There was nothing fancy about it; aside from the desk helping to keep the door shut, there wasn’t much else in it. Just a chair, knocked over and lying on its side, a filing cabinet which presumably contained out-of-date documents, and –

“Hey Octavia!” said Vinyl, sitting down in such a manner that the area immediately behind her couldn’t be seen, “do you want me to show you the cool thing I found, or the really cool thing I found?”

“I would have thought that the answer to that question was obvious: the really cool thing,” said Octavia. Looking away from the door to Vinyl, she reluctantly stopped leaning against the desk, and, after a moment of watching the door to ensure that nothing happened, sat down. “Well? What is it?”

“Check it out!” said Vinyl, levitating a piece of paper from behind her. “I found a map!”

“Excellent!” said Octavia, plucking it out of the air. “We’ve fallen down quite a bit from the first floor, so hopefully we shouldn’t be too far from…” Her voice trailed off as she actually examined the map.

“…Octavia?” Vinyl asked, realising that her wife’s silence wasn’t due to deep concentration, but being stunned. “Octavia, is everything alright?”

“I…think so?” Octavia replied after a moment of hesitation. “Vinyl, am I reading this right?” She turned the map over and showed it to the unicorn. “We are here, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” said Vinyl. “We were in this laboratory here with Neon Lights, on the first floor,” she began, tracing a path with her hoof, “we fell through to the tank in this big room below it here, on the ground floor, and then we fell through that to this warehouse, here on the second fl-”. Vinyl stopped, realising the same thing Octavia had. She retraced the path with her hoof another few times and came to the same conclusion each time. “But that’s – how in the -?”

“Maybe CHIELD performed experiments in this building involving non-Euclidean space?” Octavia suggested.

“Whatever,” said Vinyl, grabbing the map and throwing it over her shoulder, “that was useless. Wanna see the other cool thing I found?” Without waiting for a reply, she revealed it. “Ta-da! It’s a first-aid kit!” She grinned slyly. “How do you feel about playing doctor?”

“Seeing as how we’re currently barricaded within a small office with a group of guards outside attempting to break it, I’m going to assume you mean in the strictly medical sense,” Octavia replied. As though to emphasise her point, there was a thud against the door as the guards made another attempt to break in. “In which case, yes, that sounds fantastic!”

“Bah!” said Vinyl jokingly. “If right now isn’t romantic enough for you to get it on with me, then when is?!” As she spoke, Octavia turned her back to Vinyl, revealing the wound the shark had given her. Vinyl gave a low whistle. Octavia had been half-right – the wound wasn’t too deep, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t bleeding. The shark’s teeth had torn a rough gash into Octavia’s back, exposing raw flesh to the open air. If Octavia had been Vinyl’s worst enemy, she would have nevertheless respected the Earth pony for managing to walk – hay, for managing to gallop – with a wound like that and failing to complain.

Opening up the medical kit, Vinyl was pleased to see that even with her limited medical knowledge and skill, there was enough in there for her to assist Octavia. Levitating a bottle of disinfectant into the air, alongside some cotton wool, Vinyl said, “Okay, I’m going to clean the wound first. I’ll try to do this best I can, but it’ll probably sting a bit.” She had a quick look at the bottle of disinfectant. NEW! EXTRA PAINFUL VARIANT! “Or, um, maybe a lot?”

“It’s okay,” said Octavia. “The sooner you get it done, the better.” She lay down on her stomach and gritted her teeth in anticipation.

“Okay. Okay,” muttered Vinyl to herself. She dabbed some cotton wool into the disinfectant. “Okay,” she repeated before cautiously levitating the cotton wool to Octavia’s back. Octavia let in a sharp gasp and flinched slightly. “You alright?” Vinyl asked.

“F-fine,” said Octavia. “It just took me by surprise a bit.”

“Oh. Right,” said Vinyl, before continuing to apply the disinfectant as best she could. It was a tricky thing – she wanted to apply it to Octavia’s wound as best she could, but she also had to be careful not to get any cotton wool stuck in the wound. Vinyl was also acutely aware of how much pain she was unintentionally causing Octavia and was trying her best to reduce it, even though the grey mare hid it well.

For the next few minutes, Vinyl applied the disinfectant, unaware that in attempting to stop Octavia’s wound from getting infected, she had applied more than twice the disinfectant she needed to. The two were silent during the entire process, aside from the odd intake of air from Octavia, which was regularly followed up by a “Sorry,” from Vinyl each time.

After Vinyl was convinced that Octavia’s wound wasn’t going to get infected, she reached into the first aid kit for the next item she needed. “So…I, um, think I’m just going to put a pad or two over the wound to absorb the bleeding and keep it from being exposed, and then wrap it all up with some bandages. Unless you’ve got any better ideas?”

“No, that sounds fine to me,” said Octavia.

“Cool,” said Vinyl. “I guess that means the painful bit’s over – a-at least, I think it is,” she hastily added, scanning the bandages to make sure that they weren’t also a painful variant.

“I’m sure that you shall do your best regardless,” said Octavia. “I’m ready when you are, by the way.”

“Sure. Just trying to find out where the other damn end of this bandage is…” Vinyl muttered to herself. “There.” Vinyl placed some gauze on Octavia’s back over her wound, attempting to keep it as symmetrical as possible so that she could wrap it all up neatly. After confirming that they wouldn’t fall off easily, she started wrapping around Octavia, going around from her stomach to her back and circling again.

Vinyl was concentrating on doing a good job, and had expected Octavia to stay patiently quiet as she had during the disinfectant process, so she was surprised when Octavia suddenly commented, “You seem fairly at ease with this. Did you ever have to do this at home? To your father?”

The question took Vinyl aback slightly, and she paused in her task as she contemplated it. “Dad…? Nah, not that I can ever think of.” She resumed wrapping the bandages around Octavia. “I mean, sometimes I noticed that he’d gained some new injuries when he got home, but it didn’t really mean anything, y’know? He always said he got them while he was exploring some new locale, and I… I guess that’s true, in a sense.”

Octavia heard the bitterness in her lover’s voice. “Does it…disturb you?” she asked, treading carefully. “Knowing now what he was doing all of those years?”

Vinyl paused, and took a deep breath. She seemed to be thinking how to word her response carefully. “Octavia,” she finally said, “Octavia, let me tell you a story.”

“There was once a very young, and very small filly. She was very enthusiastic, and very excited by new things, and was very happy with the life she had. She grew up only having a father to love her, but that didn’t bother her – she loved him very much and didn’t see the need for another parent in her life.”

“What happened to that filly’s mother?” Octavia asked, gently.

“She was killed by a falling chandelier at the opera,” said Vinyl casually.

“What?!” Octavia exclaimed. “But she – I mean, you – I thought –”

“Octavia?” interrupted Vinyl. “I’m telling the story now. Please save your questions for the end.”

“R-right,” said Octavia, wondering why she had never heard any of this from Vinyl before. Perhaps the appearance of her father was causing her to open up more than she previously had. “Please, continue.”

“So like I said, this filly, she grew up with just her dad loving her,” said Vinyl. “Unfortunately, while she loved her dad and he loved her, there was a catch – he was often gone from her home, and so that filly had to learn to grow up fast. Being alone often, at a young age like that? The filly quickly stopped taking many things seriously, and became very light-hearted. It was her shield against the world, her way to cope with things. So what if her dad wasn’t home the night he said he would be and it was boiled cockroaches for dinner again? It’s all just a big joke, right? It can’t hurt you if it never meant anything in the first place.”

Octavia was still facing the door, with her back exposed to Vinyl, so she couldn’t see the unicorn’s expression, but she could picture it – a downcast look, not wishing to reveal herself to the world. A single, solitary tear rolling down her cheek, perhaps?

“Anyway, many years passed, and the filly grew older, still as light-hearted and jokey as ever. Not a single pony realised how much she was hurting on the inside, how much she just wanted somepony to hug her and tell her, ‘It’s alright – you may feel alone, but you’re not. You have plenty of ponies who love you, even if they can’t always show it.’ She felt that constantly, but never more than the day she turned seventeen.” Vinyl cleared her throat slightly, and then continued.

“School that day was fairly ordinary for the filly – she was the class clown and drew enough attention to herself, so most ponies knew that it was her birthday. It was as hollow as the year before, of course – so what if somepony says ‘Happy birthday’ to you in the hall? That doesn’t make the day automatically amazing. That doesn’t fix the many problems that make up your life.

“But she had expected all of that. That wasn’t the disappointing part of her birthday – it was after school, when she got home, that was. Her dad had promised her he’d be there for his birthday, as he did every year. And every year, he always made it – except this one.

“The filly couldn’t take it anymore. She dropped her saddlebag on the doorstep and ran back into the city, back into Manehattan, to confront him about it. She didn’t care that she should have been home, making a cockroach cake for her birthday – she just wanted to see her dad.

“It took her over four hours, looking for the building he was supposed to be at. She’d been there once or twice, but that was when she was younger. She barely remembered it now, but that didn’t matter – she had to find her dad. And then, at last, when she thought she’d never find it and she would have to return home, she spotted it. Bursting through the front door of the lawyer’s office –”

“Wait, lawyer’s office?” Octavia interrupted. “But I thought that you had thought your father was –”

“- she was surprised to find it abandoned,” Vinyl continued, ignoring Octavia. “It was strange – there should have been some ponies working late at this time. But it was completely empty. Looking around, the filly found only one piece of evidence – at her father’s desk, a dagger, twisted and blood-stained, lay there. There was no clue as to who may have put it there, nor, mysteriously, that anypony had ever worked at that desk,” Vinyl finished proudly. She sat back down on the carpet.

“…Vinyl?” Octavia asked.

“Yes, beautiful?”

“What the bloody hay was the point of that?” Octavia asked.

“I said I’d tell you a story, didn’t I?” Vinyl asked. “It’s one that I’ve been jotting down ideas for – I’m thinking of making it a sort of horror-noir story? Most of that’s just the backstory – I think I’ll start it out at the young filly’s birthday and reveal the other stuff later. What did you think?” At some point during the story, Vinyl had stopping wrapping Octavia’s bandages as she had continued to get more and more engrossed in her story, but with it over now, she went back to bandaging Octavia up.

“I think that you’re an idiot,” said Octavia.

“Is that all?” Vinyl asked, mischievously.

“I also think that I love you,” added the Earth pony. Vinyl grinned. “And that you’re avoiding my original question.” The grin disappeared. “Vinyl…does your father lying to you about what he was doing for many years hurt you? Please be honest.”

“I…” Vinyl stopped wrapping again. This time there was a larger gap before she answered. “Maybe…? Being an explorer, being a CHIELD agent – what’s the difference? He could’ve died doing either, right?”

“That’s true,” Octavia said, glad to see that with some thought from the initial revelation, Vinyl didn’t appear to be agonising over it. “And between the two, CHIELD agent is probably the nicer occupation to risk one’s life in – with that, he was saving Equestria… well, if not daily, then certainly periodically.”

“Yeah,” agreed Vinyl. “…But at the same time, if he had been an explorer, then he wouldn’t have faked his death, would he?”

Octavia turned to face Vinyl, concern for her wife welling up in her chest. “Vinyl? What do you mean by that?”

“Well, it’s just that…” Vinyl paused, trying to work out how to explain her thoughts coherently. The bandages were completely forgotten by this stage; not that either pony cared. “Dad’s spent the past few years pretending to be dead so that he could do some more missions for CHIELD, yeah? What…what was so important about those missions that only he could do them? Why couldn’t he have just…just lived, and quit CHIELD? Don’t tell me that they couldn’t have gotten some other pony to do whatever his missions were; that’s ridiculous.”

“Well, maybe he…” Octavia faltered. Thinking it over, it was odd that Spyglass had chosen to go and do more missions for CHIELD after cheating death rather than spend his remaining time with his daughter and whomever else was important to him. “Maybe he’s a very dutiful patriot?” Octavia suggested weakly.

“That’s the best I could come up with,” Vinyl agreed, “but…why does that make it his job? He’d been in CHIELD for years earlier; why couldn’t he just move on? Quit the job, end his series of missions, and just…stop living that life. Find a new way to live, one that didn’t revolve around his job. There’s nothing wrong with ending something when it’s appropriate.”

“Vinyl, I’m sure his life didn’t revolve around his job,” said Octavia. Sensing it was needed, Octavia gave Vinyl a hug, which the unicorn hesitantly returned. (She didn’t realised that she’d accidentally touched Octavia’s still-unbandaged back with a hoof, making Octavia bite her tongue to stop herself from flinching and ruining the moment).

“I…I’d like to believe that,” said Vinyl quietly. “You’re probably right, and I’m just being my usual dumb self, but…I still wish that he had just quit at some point. What, did he think there was a prize for doing the most missions for CHIELD or something?” Feeling a little better, Vinyl exited the hug, and resumed bandaging up Octavia’s back.

“Perhaps he was just glad to help ponies by working for CHIELD?” Octavia suggested. “Making other ponies happy is a good motivation to continue, and even if they were unaware of his missions, I’m sure that he would have been happy to go on.”

“Yeah, but…he doesn’t need to do that anymore,” Vinyl said. “He can finish it all, quit CHIELD now. Other ponies can do his job; there’s probably lots of other ponies in CHIELD who are agents as good as – if not better – than Dad. It’s just…dumb to continue for the sake of continuing. I mean, do you think we’ll continue on like this just because we’re doing this one mission? Vinyl and Octavia, agents of CHIELD?”

Octavia chuckled. “No, that would be quite silly,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I – can I tell you something odd?”

“Sure,” said Vinyl. She tied a knot in the bandages, then added, “The bandages are done, by the way. There was also some balm or something that supposedly helps heal cuts faster that I stuck on – dunno if it’ll work but here’s hoping it does.” With her job done, she walked over to a wall and sat down, her back leaning against the wall. She had recovered from the shark tank’s effects on her by now, but she felt emotionally drained nevertheless.

“Thank you,” said Octavia. After a quick test to ensure that the bandages wouldn’t fall off, Octavia went over by Vinyl and laid her head upon Vinyl’s chest. The unicorn began stroking Octavia’s mane softly once she had done so.

“So?” Vinyl asked after a few moments of the two ponies basking in the pleasant situation. “What’s this odd thing you wanna tell me?”

“I’m…I’m somewhat sick of these never-ending adventures we always seem to get caught up in,” Octavia admitted. “At first, when it was just every so often, they were actually nice – they were a welcome break from mundane life. But...now, they just come out of nowhere and interrupt us just as we’re settling down from the previous adventure. And you have to admit, the quality of our adventures is diminishing with each new one.”

Vinyl nodded in agreement. “Yeah, the old days were a lot more fun – remember when we used to just do silly things like move in together and fight ninjas?...Or is it ninja?”

“Fighting ninja was never fun, Vinyl,” said Octavia, deadpan.

“Details, details,” said Vinyl dismissively, waving a hoof. “But yeah…I’ve kinda been thinking something similar myself. I think our honeymoon might have been the most free time we’ve had in ages, and that was barely a few weeks! I’m…I’m kinda ready to end this stage of our life, and just…find a new way to live.” Vinyl frowned. “Is that a thing? Like a mid-life crisis, but it’s a wacky adventure stage of life?”

Octavia snickered. “If it is, I think we may hold the record for it occupying the largest amount of time in our lives,” she said. “But how will we –”

A loud bang from the door interrupted Octavia, and she flinched instinctively. After a moment she realised that the guards hadn’t broken through the door yet, but it had still taken her by surprise – she had briefly forgotten about the guards.

Clearing her throat and getting up, Octavia continued. “So, if we do this…new way to live… what will we do? Ignore the call to adventure whenever it comes?”

“The hay do I know, Octavia?” Vinyl asked, affectionately tapping her wife on the head. “If we didn’t have any adventure in our lives, what would the point of it be? We’ll just…I dunno, focus on our music. Get normal jobs. Investigate supernatural mysteries. Do whatever it is regular ponies do.”

“I think that one of those isn’t what normal ponies do,” Octavia laughed. “But I’ll forgive you for it if you let me kiss you.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other –”

BANG! This time, whatever the guards had been trying to do to open the door worked – the desk leaning against it went flying across the room and crashed into a far wall, whilst the door itself was reduced to splinters. Vinyl and Octavia saw none of this, of course – they were too busy coughing from all of the dust thrown into the air and wondering why their ears were ringing so much.

When the dust finally cleared, Vinyl and Octavia found four guards standing before them, with each pointing a crossbow to one of the duo. Neither Vinyl nor Octavia were sure what to do – if it had just been one guard, or even two, they could have taken them out, but four? Making a move to attack one of them would just open oneself up to an attack from another.

“Well, captain?” asked one of the guards. “What now?”

“What do you think?” the guard with the most complex uniform replied. “Kill them."

“Wow,” exclaimed Vinyl, “what a twist!”

Chapter Six: The Six Million Bit Stallion

“Wait!” said Octavia, holding a hoof up slowly. She glared at Vinyl for not taking the situation more seriously before continuing. “You can’t kill us,” she said, thinking quickly.

Two of the guards hesitated, but another merely cocked his crossbow. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “Why not?” The crossbow was aimed directly at Octavia, ready to fire at an instant’s notice.

“Because…”

===============================

“…killing is wrong,” said Octavia, rather lamely. She looked at Vinyl for follow-up, but the unicorn was silent. She did, however, raise her eyebrows questioningly at Octavia. At least my last words were memorable, her look seemed to say.

To Octavia’s surprise, however, the guard lowered his crossbow. “Judo Strike?” he asked the captain hesitantly. “Is she right? Is killing wrong?”

“I don’t know, to be honest,” the captain said. “Let’s look it up!” From somewhere in his uniform he obtained a small book. “Let’s see,” he said, flipping through the pages for a few moments. “Killing: wrong,” he read out. “Huh. How about that!”

“Are you sure?” another guard asked. “I could have sworn that it was right. That’s what the boss said.”

“He did, but according to the book it’s wrong,” said the captain. “And you know the squad’s motto: When in doubt, go by The Big Book of Black and White Morality. I think we need to go back to quarters and have a serious think about what we’ve been doing with our lives.” With a tip of his cap to Vinyl and Octavia and an apology, he and the rest of the guards left the room.

“Well,” said Octavia, somewhat stunned, “that went rather well.”

“Damn straight!” agreed Vinyl. “Now get over here and start kissing me!”

“With pleasure!” said Octavia. Then she frowned. “No, wait, this would never work.”

===============================

“…Vinyl is pregnant!” Octavia declared.

“With Octavia’s baby!” said Vinyl, nodding enthusiastically.

“You wouldn’t kill a pregnant mare, would you?” Octavia asked. “Or leave her a widow trying to raise a child on her own?”

There was a moment of contemplation, and then several crossbow bolts shot through the air, directly into the two mares. They, and Vinyl’s unborn child, died instantly.

“Who are Vinyl and Octavia?” asked one of the guards.

===============================

“…if you do, our heartbeats will stop, thus activating the micro-bombs embedded within our skulls,” Octavia explained.

“The entire island would be destroyed so completely that there’d be nothing to show it even existed,” Vinyl added. “All life would be scorched to ashes without warning, obliterating it completely.”

“Wha – seriously?!” the guard aiming his crossbow asked. He quickly pointed it elsewhere.

“What do we do then?” another guard asked. “We can’t kill them – can we capture them?”

“If we get out the tear gas, we can – hey, wait a second! If they’re micro-bombs, they can’t be powerful enough to destroy the whole island!” a third guard realised. “They’re bluffing!”

“Wait- !”

A volley of crossbow bolts shot through the air. Yet another stupid death.

===============================

“…if you do, our heartbeats will stop, thus activating the macro-bombs embedded within our skulls,” Octavia explained.

The guard aiming his crossbow scoffed. “Please. If you had macro-bombs embedded in your heads, we’d be able to see the shape of them. We’re not idiots, you know.”

“And besides,” added another guard, “if your micro-bomb idea didn’t work in the previous scenario, what makes you think a macro-bomb would?”

“It made you hesitate last time!” said Octavia defensively. “I thought that if we –”

A volley of crossbow bolts shot through the air.

===============================

“…we’re more valuable to your boss alive?” Octavia suggested. She flinched, ready to be shot by crossbow bolts, but to her surprise, the pain never came. The guard was looking at her, waiting to see what she’d say next.

“I mean… wouldn’t he like to know how we got here?” Octavia said, choosing her words carefully. “The Omega Zone is hardly an easy location to get to…doesn’t he want to know why we’re here?”

“Of course, you could just go ahead and kill us,” Vinyl added. Octavia wanted to berate her, but then Vinyl continued with, “Then there’d be no way of telling how many other ponies are here, or whether any more will be arriving later. I’m sure Darkhoof will be fine with that.”

The guard, already hesitant, lowered his crossbow. “I think they’ve got a point, guys,” he said. “We’d better knock them out and take them to – hay! You did it!” he said to Octavia. “You managed to come up with a scenario in your head where we didn’t kill you guys!”

“Three cheers for Octavia!” said another guard.

“Please, no need for praise,” said Octavia, secretly wishing for more praise. “All that it took was some quick thinking, and –”

“No time for that!” said another guard. “Stop thinking of these scenarios and go talk to the real versions of us!”

“Don’t forget to kiss meeeeeeee…” said Vinyl, her voice fading away.

===============================

Octavia shook her head slightly, hoping that her rapid brainstorming hadn’t been for naught.

“Well?” asked the guard. “Any last words?”

Octavia held her breath. Was this going to work? “Surely we’re more valuable to your boss alive?” she tentatively said.

The guard hesitated. Octavia could hardly believe it, but she continued.

“I mean, wouldn’t he like to know how we got here?” Octavia said. “The Omega Zone is hardly an easy location to get to…doesn’t he want to know why we’re here?”

The guard scoffed. “Sorry, but our orders are to shoot on sight,” he said, not sounding very sympathetic.

Crap, thought Octavia. This didn’t go as I-

“Well, you could go ahead and kill us,” said Vinyl, unexpectedly. Everypony was silent, waiting to hear what she had to say next.

Everypony continued to wait.

“Well?” said one of the guards, finally.

“Well what?” asked Vinyl.

“Well, what’s next? Why shouldn’t we go ahead and kill you?” To emphasise the threat, he aimed his own crossbow at Vinyl.

“Hmm?” asked Vinyl. “Oh, I dunno; I didn’t really have anything else to follow that up with,” she admitted. “Maybe ask Octavia for ideas? She’s real smart; I bet she’s thought of some.”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” said Octavia. “Surely we’re more valuable to your boss alive?”

“Alright, that’s it,” growled the guard pointing his crossbow at Octavia, “now I really am going to-”

“Wait a minute,” said the captain. Everypony looked at him, surprised at the interruption. Had Octavia’s logic convinced him?

“What is it, captain?” grunted one of the guards. “Are we shooting them, or not? We’ve wasted enough time already.”

“Yeah, what’s wrong now?” asked another. “My trigger hoof is getting itchy.”

“You’re both acting too hastily,” said the captain. “She’s got a good point. How did they get here? What are they doing here?” Trotting over, he snatched the crossbow from the leg of the guard pointing it at Octavia. “Try to think before acting, you idiot,” he said, smacking the guard on the head.

“So wait, we – ” began Vinyl before being given a stern look from the captain.

“You two will lie down on the ground and allow us to take you to the boss if you don’t want bolts in your skulls,” said the captain. “But don’t think of this as a reprieve – if anything, you should be more worried. Our leader can do much, much worse than kill you.”

Vinyl was smart enough to do as he said, and lay down on the ground, Octavia following suit. “Smart choice,” grunted the captain as one of the guards brought over bags to cover the ponies’ heads. “And don’t even think of trying any magic or your friend will be dead before you can say ‘hoofball’”.

“Wait, what does hoofball have to do with – argh!” Vinyl was cut off as a bag was thrown over her head. A nudge to the ribs instructed her to stand up once more, and soon, she was being blindly led by the guards.

For several minutes, there was no talk. The guards seemed professional enough to not speak in front of the prisoners, and Vinyl wasn’t sure what she should say to Octavia. But then –

“Psst! Vinyl!”

“Bag?!” Vinyl gasped. “You can talk?”

“Vinyl, it’s me.”

“Oh, right. That makes sense, Octavia,” said Vinyl quietly. Wherever the two were – it felt like they were going down stairs– she could feel Octavia next to her as she walked. If the guards noticed them talking, they didn’t say anything about it.

“Do you think that if we feel the time is right, you would be able to telekinetically remove these bags and we can escape for the moment?” Octavia asked. “I believe that if we were able to stay out of sight from the guards for, say, ninety seconds or so, they will probably give up the chase and resume their usual patrol.”

“Uhh, yeah, so about that,” Vinyl began awkwardly, “I um, wouldn’t really count on my magic at the moment.” She waited for a reply from Octavia, but didn’t hear one. Perhaps the Earth pony had instinctively nodded. “When I tried to open the door – the door to the office – my magic…it kinda, I dunno…slipped. It was like it just…turned itself off.”

“That doesn’t sound like a major reason to be concerned,” said Octavia. It felt like the two of them were walking down a corridor now. “In the heat of the moment, your concentration must have slipped, and –”

“But it’s never happened before!” Vinyl insisted. “I know what magic feels like when I release it, and this wasn’t the same, even if it had been from surprise. It was like…it was like my body just didn’t want to do magic anymore.”

Octavia scoffed. “How in Equestria would that happen?” she asked. Now, it felt as though they were travelling down a water slide; their voices echoing as they talked to each other.

“I know it sounds stupid, but I was thinking about it, and I…” Vinyl bit her lip. Was she really about to say what she was? Octavia would probably laugh at her and tell her that she was wrong, but still… “Octavia, I just about blacked out while we were in that big tank. Do you…do you think that I could have gotten some minor brain damage? And it’s affecting my ability to cast magic?”

Octavia was silent, and for several moments, there was nothing but the sound of rushing water echoing around the two, with a distant, “wheeeeeee!” from a guard somewhere up ahead reflecting back. Finally, Octavia answered, saying, “So, you think you have brain damage?”

“Yes.”

“So, nothing new then?”

Both ponies laughed at that; Vinyl surprised at herself for being able to appreciate the joke. Before their chuckles had subsided, Octavia added, “But honestly, I don’t think it’s something to worry about. If your magic is acting up, we can get it looked at when we’re back home, whether it’s because of brain damage or not.”

“What about while we’re here?” Vinyl asked. “What if I can’t do magic at some critical point and it screws things up, or – or kills –”

“Don’t be silly,” said Octavia with an optimism which filled Vinyl with warmth. “We haven’t screwed anything up irreparably yet, and I doubt that you can’t adapt to having weaker magic. Though I won’t deny that it wouldn’t have hurt if we could have found some way to jump over or otherwise avoid the shark tank.”

“Jumped the sharks?” Vinyl repeated. By now, the two ponies were climbing up some sort of ladder, and she had to project her voice upwards. “I mean, we kinda did? Metaphorically? We escaped them, at least.”

“That’s dumb,” said Octavia. “You’re dumb.” After a moment, she added, “I love you.”

Beneath her bag, Vinyl grinned, feeling a lot more positive thanks to Octavia. Who the hay cared if her magic was a little screwy? They were Vinyl and Octavia, dammit – they were going to get out of this, no matter who was in their path.

“Alright, ladies,” said one of the guards. Vinyl bumped into the guard in front of her, and realised that they had reached their destination. “Time to meet the boss.” With that, the bag was removed from Vinyl’s head, and what she saw made her gasp.

The ponies had been lead to a dimly-lit room, reminiscent of a basement. The fireflies in the lamp of it must have been exhausted, as they flickered every few seconds. Standing in the shadows before Vinyl and Octavia was somepony vaguely familiar to both Vinyl and Octavia, but that wasn’t what had made Vinyl gasp.

Strapped to a chair before the mysterious pony was Stumblefeather, his coat as dark a blue as the last time Vinyl and Octavia had encountered him. How long ago was that – three, four years? From somewhere on his body a trail of blood lead to a drain on the floor. It was impossible to tell how much he had lost, but judging by the dazed look on his blindfolded face, it was more than enough.

They were Vinyl and Octavia, dammit, and they were not going to get out of this.

“Have fun, ladies,” said one of the guards with a mock bow as he left the room, the lock audibly clicking behind him as he closed it.

“So. It’s you two,” said the mysterious pony in the shadows. His voice had a strange, mechanical tone to it, and there was something strange about the way he looked. It was hard to see more than a vague silhouette, between the shadows and the flickering fireflies, but even just from that Vinyl and Octavia could see that whilst he fit the basic definition of a pony shape, there were strange anomalies here and there which they instinctively found off-putting. “You know, when that idiot Neon Lights said that we should name ourselves The Vinyl and Octavia Revenge Squad, I thought it was stupid, even if Darkhoof’s plan would lead to us indirectly getting revenge on you. But this? This is priceless.”

“Darkhoof’s – then you’re not him?” Octavia asked, fearing what the response would be. “You’re not the boss?”

“Ha!” The stranger threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a good one. Well, I am the leader of the guards, but to you two, I am somepony much more important. But enough talk: my appearance should refresh your memories.” With that, the pony turned around and stepped out of the shadows.

Half a metallic skull, with pistons and gears whirring within. A mechanical leg, all of the axles and joints visible. A glowing red eye, visible even had the room been pitch-black. Whomever this pony was, he was –

“A terminator!” exclaimed Octavia.

“A what?” asked Vinyl.

“Well, he’s going to terminate us – or at least try to – so therefore he’s a terminator,” Octavia explained. She looked to the cyborg. “You are going to attempt to terminate us, aren’t you?”

“A termina – is that all you have to say?!” the cyborg erupted. “No, ‘Wow, it’s Second Round,’ or, ‘Oh crap, Second Round!’. I’d even have settled for, ‘Hey, it’s Second Round! Let’s see how we can ruin his life this time!’”

Vinyl and Octavia looked to each other in confusion, then to Second Round. “Sorry, have we met?” Octavia asked, offering a hoof. “My name is Octavia – pleased to meet you.”

“Argh!” screamed Second Round. “Why do you mock me so?! You know perfectly well who I am – the stallion whose life you keep ruining!”

Vinyl shrugged in response. “Maybe a description of some kind…?” she suggested.

“Second Round! The stallion whom you two torment repeatedly!” Seeing no reaction from the two ponies, he sighed quietly before adding, “Former bartender of The Grey Mare!”

“Oh!” said Vinyl. “I think I had a drink there once. How’s it holding up these days?”

“How would I know?” snarled The Bartender. “That bar – my former bar, I should say – hasn’t been a part of my life for years! As to be expected, it’s all thanks to you two!”

”Sorry, what did we do, exactly?” Octavia asked. Looking to Vinyl, she asked, “What did you do to this stallion, Vinyl?”

“Nothing!” claimed Vinyl.

“How could you not remember it – the two of you destroyed my priceless bottle of Moonshine!” The Bartender roared. “That was the beginning of the path of ruin you two were determined to place me on!”

“We wrecked a bottle of something?” asked Vinyl.

“I went into a bar?” Octavia added.

“Afterwards, I tried tracking you down – all I wanted was some replacement bits for it! I even would have been glad to wait for them to be paid off in instalments!” The Bartender continued. “Tracking you two down led me to Baron von Darkhoof and his plot to drown you two at sea – surely you recall that?”

“Oh yeah, that was fun!” said Vinyl.

“Our first kiss…” said Octavia, a dreamy look on her face.

“Your first – that’s what comes to mind?!” The Bartender exploded. “Not how you wrecked my body and left me in this – this mockery of flesh?!”

“Hey, now that I’m pretty sure we would have remembered! We didn’t even encounter you on Darkhoof’s ship!” Vinyl protested. Leaning to Octavia, she whispered, “We didn’t encounter him on Darkhoof’s ship, right?” Octavia nodded in confirmation.

The Bartender scoffed. “Yes you did! After we briefly fought, you two escaped the ship and called the Coast Guard on we pirates – and in my haste to escape, I leaped overboard!”

“I fell off that boat briefly too,” said Octavia, frowning. “What makes you doing it so special?”

“We were in shark-infested waters by the time the Coast Guard arrived!” The Bartender shouted. “It was a miracle that I survived the experience and was able to be saved through this experimental treatment!”

“I fail to see how it is our fault that you jumped off the boat,” commented Octavia.

“With this body, do you think ponies treated me like normal?!” continued The Bartender. “No! Of course not! I tried to get over my grudge, I tried to be grateful for the fact that I was alive, but society spat in my face!

“So when I heard that you two had been imprisoned aboard The Fort, I used my last few bits to bribe a guard to let me onboard! I planned to enact my vengeance upon you two, but then –”

“Ooh, let me guess!” Vinyl said, putting a hoof up excitedly. “We escaped from prison before you could find us!”

“The very same!” agreed The Bartender. “The guards found me and thought I was an escaped inmate from the solitary block, and locked me up there!” He paused briefly. When he spoke again, his voice was soft for the first time since he had revealed his body. “How long I spent in there…it might have been months, or – or even years? I’m not sure any more…Being surrounded by all of that darkness, it – it did something…” The Bartender’s cybernetic eye’s glow changed to that of a neon green, and he looked away for a moment.

Vinyl and Octavia glanced at each other, unsure what to do. Before they could make a decision, however, The Bartender was looking back at them, his eye red once more.

“But never mind all of that,” he said, “the guards have brought you two to me, and now I can begin my revenge in earnest. I gave up hope that I would experience this catharsis, but now that the opportunity is here, I can’t say I’m disappointed.” He stared contemplatively at his cyborg hoof. “You know, they say there’s six million bits of machinery inside me now…But I won’t need even six to destroy you two!”

“There’s just one problem with that,” said Octavia, smiling unexpectedly.

“Your guards may have brought us to you, but they forgot to tie us up!” said Vinyl, grinning broadly. “In other words: en garde, Bartender!”

“Second Round! The name is – oof!” The Bartender was cut off by Vinyl running up to him, kicking him in the face, and then rolling to the side before he could react.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Vinyl cheekily. “So tell me, The Bartender, how this sounds: We beat you up, grab Stumblefeather, then continue the rest of our mission?”

“Over my dead body!” growled The Bartender. “I’d rather die than let you two escape without getting revenge!” He moved towards Vinyl and reared onto his hind legs, intending to stomp her with his front two hooves, but the canny unicorn took advantage of the situation and used a small amount of telekinesis to give him a push so that he fell backwards.

The Bartender picked himself up, this time making a move for Octavia. “Why?!” he shouted as he attempted to punch her with a hoof. “Why are you two always showing up to ruin everything?!” A small blade retracted from his cybernetic leg, and he swung his leg sideways at Octavia, attempting to slash her with it. “What are you going to do this time?!” On the second swing, he managed to catch her with the blade, nicking her leg enough for her to stumble to the ground. “Rip out my cybernetic parts?” Turning to Vinyl, who had been attempting to sneak up behind him, The Bartender charged forwards, strong enough to resist her weakened telekinesis. “Throw me off the island, and into the freezing waters of the ocean?” He slammed into Vinyl, knocking her to the ground. “Or will you just stop our plans on the eve of their completion?”

“Eve of their completion?” Octavia asked. She had gotten to her hooves – the cut was bleeding, but not as badly as it might have been – and went to take a swing at The Bartender, but he grabbed her hoof and threw her back into the ground. As she pulled herself back up, she coughed, “Are you saying –” before being kicked in the head by The Bartender, ending her speech.

“Please! You think I would give away our plans to you?!” The Bartender asked. “You think that I would risk you stopping them?!” He turned to Vinyl, who had picked herself up, and whose horn was glowing slightly. “Why do that, when I can instead kill you two?!”

Although she was in pain, Vinyl nevertheless grinned. “Bring it, baby!”

The Bartender grinned in turn. “If you insist!” He swung his cybernetic hoof out dramatically, as if trying to point to something. Then, when it was pointed straight at Vinyl, some gears and levers clicked within it, and a claw shot out of it, flying towards Vinyl with a cable trailing behind it.

Vinyl hadn’t been expecting a grappling claw exactly, but she had been anticipating The Bartender’s next attack, which was why she had prepared her telekinesis beforehoof. She mentally extended out her telekinesis, ready to grab the claw in it and then throw it aside…

…but as had happened previously, Vinyl’s telekinesis simply stopped, as though Vinyl herself had mentally stopped the spell.

“What?!” Vinyl gasped as she realised the sensation of casting magic was gone.

“Ha!” laughed the Bartender as his claw reached Vinyl. It grabbed a clawful of Vinyl’s flesh, digging into the skin slightly, and then with a mental command from The Bartender, it retracted, bringing Vinyl to his outstretched hoof. “Vengeance is mine!”

“Vinyl…” Octavia groaned weakly from the floor. She tried to stand up, but it was so hard with her head spinning as it currently was… She could see Vinyl’s horn flickering blue every few seconds as The Bartender repeatedly hit her, but it seemed as though no matter how much effort Vinyl mustered, she simply couldn’t reactivate her telekinesis.

“And now,” declared The Bartender, “for the coup de grâce!” Effortlessly, he lifted up the drain cover in the centre of the room, the one that Stumblefeather’s blood had been silently draining into the entire time, and threw it aside. He slammed Vinyl Scratch’s body to the ground beside it, and then kicked it into the now-exposed hole. Vinyl showed no signs of resistance as gravity dragged her down into the unknown darkness.“No!” Octavia had found the strength within her to stand up, even though her body was in pain.

“That was for ruining my life,” sneered The Bartender. “And now that she’s dead, I –”

Everything turned red for Octavia.

And then, everything was back to normal, Octavia finding herself panting for some reason. What had happened just then? Where had The Bartender disappeared to? Dazed, Octavia looked at her hooves, which were aching a bit.

They were covered in blood.

Looking past her hooves, Octavia saw what had happened to The Bartender – he was lying on the ground, with the cybernetics that had been in his head missing, somehow ripped out and cast aside. No, realised Octavia, not lying there. The Bartender was dead.

Octavia felt weak, and allowed herself to fall to her haunches. Had…had she done that? She hadn’t intended to…or had she? She didn’t mean to do it, but when The Bartender said that he had killed Vinyl, she –

Vinyl. Octavia closed her eyes, as though that would wipe away the event that had happened scant minutes ago. She was…gone. Just like that. Was it better or worse that she had seen it happen? Hesitantly, Octavia got up and walked to the hole in floor, consciously avoiding the corpse of The Bartender as she did so. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet, but it wasn’t her priority right now. Vinyl was.

Octavia looked into the hole, hoping that Vinyl would miraculously be standing in some water, calling up and asking for a hoof, or hanging off something or…just…something that would mean her wife was alive. But of course, the universe couldn’t grant Octavia that. Looking into the hole, all that Octavia could see was darkness. Where did this hole lead? What was it even there for? Octavia had no idea where she was in the Omega Zone; she could have been on the top floor, the basement, or even some place not on the map she had seen what felt like weeks ago.

“Urghhh…” A groan interrupted Octavia’s speculation. Looking over to the source of it, Octavia saw Stumblefeather; she had completely forgotten about him. Octavia grimaced, and looked from him to the hole in the floor. She stared at it for a while. Between Stumblefeather and the hole, Octavia knew which one she would rather go to.

Octavia sighed. She was being stupid, she knew. Why should her emotions – her dulled, stupid emotions which she didn’t want to exist anymore – factor into the remainder of the mission? After a moment more of contemplation, Octavia walked over to Stumblefeather.

“Don’t worry, Stumblefeather,” Octavia said dully, “I’ll have you out of there in a moment.” Thankfully, he was only tied up with ropes, so all Octavia would have to do would be untie them.

“Wha – who is that?” Stumblefeather asked. “Help! Somepony’s trying to kidnap me!”

“You can drop the act,” said Octavia, “I already know that you’re a double agent.”

“A…double agent?” Stumblefeather asked, his voice sounding slightly less shaky than it normally did. Then, with a slightly deeper voice, he said, “Ah, yes, you’ve heard about my working for CHIELD then? Good timing; I don’t think I could have feigned unconsciousness for much longer.”

“Yes, perfect timing,” Octavia answered as she finished untying the final knot. A moment later, Stumblefeather was out of the chair he had been bound up in, stretching his legs and giving his wings a quick flap or two.

Stumblefeather gave a sharp intake of air as he took off his blindfold and surveyed the scene. “Well…crap,” he said. It felt odd to Octavia’s ears to hear him say it – she hadn’t seen the pegasus for years, true, but she’d had a certain mental image of him in the few times she had thought of him. Knowing now that that mental image had all been based on a cover…it was as though she was meeting Stumblefeather for the first time.

In response to Stumblefeather, Octavia nodded. “Yes,” she answered dumbly. She took a few steps forwards, ahead of Stumblefeather, to once more stare into the hole in the floor.

As such, Octavia was taken completely by surprise when Stumblefeather hit her over the head, knocking her out instantly.

===============================

Below the Omega Zone, a pony was struggling against the rapid currents of the water she was in. She was grateful that the water hadn’t been too far to fall into, nor had it been shallow.

Finally, in her flailing and struggling, she managed to find a rock to hold onto, and pulled herself up onto it. She blinked a few times to adjust to the darkness. Looking around, she could see that she was in some sort of underground cavern. She had no idea where she was aside from that, but she did know what her next move was – if she could move upwards, she could return to the Omega Zone.

“Alright, sucker – you’ve taken your best shot!” Vinyl Scratch declared. “Now it’s my turn!”

Author's Note

Whilst I was describing The Bartender's initial appearance, the music I was listening to randomly shuffled to The Cyborg Fights, which I found quite amusing and appropriate.

Chapter Seven: Get Scratch

One of the myriad guards at the Omega Zone, this one named Bone Breaker, pushed open a door and entered a break room. Whilst that wasn’t the original purpose of this room, the Omega Zone was desolate enough that the guards could more or less use whichever rooms they wanted for whatever purposes they required, and within the first few hours of being stationed at the Omega Zone, the guards in the area Bone Breaker was patrolling had, unspoken, unanimously agreed that this particular room was to be a break room.

Bone Breaker pulled up a chair to one of the tables, sat down, and then immediately kicked it back, so that he was leaning backwards in the chair. He didn’t have any particular reason to relax in this manner, but he enjoyed doing so for at least a few hours each day. This was easily the easiest job he’d had in the last few years – walk around the corridors for a bit, make sure that nopony who wasn’t supposed to be there was there, rinse and repeat every few hours – and Bone Breaker liked to revel in his idleness. Might as well make the most of it, he figured, before he ended up back in some stupid organisation like COBRA, which, like most of the guards here, he had been in prior to this job.

Yes, life was pretty easy for Bone Breaker at the moment, and he liked it that way. If it hadn’t been for that report a little over an hour ago mentioning that some intruders had been captured, he would have doubted that there was even a need for the patrols. Hearing the news had inspired him to work extra hard on his patrol for about five minutes, before deciding that until an intruder’s presence affected him, there was no need to put in more effort than necessary, right?

Bone Breaker smirked to himself. And to think, some guards actually –

BANG! From a connecting room – the one the guards used as an impromptu pantry – something fell over, the sound interrupting Bone Breaker’s train of thought. At the same time, from the corner of his eye, Bone Breaker thought he saw something blue flash past in the same direction the sound came from, but when he looked, all was as it should be.

“Hello?” Bone Breaker called out, before realising what a stupid thing that was to ask. He was the only pony in here, of course. All that had happened was that something had fallen over.

For a brief moment, Bone Breaker debated pretending that he hadn’t heard anything, but his curiosity got the better of him. Getting out of his chair, Bone Breaker made his way over to the pantry, to find –

Nothing. The food supplies were ramshackle and unorganised even at the best of times, but from his brief glance over the pile, Bone Breaker couldn’t immediately see anything out of place, or that had fallen. That’s weird… he thought. He stared at it for another few seconds, and, still unable to work out what happened, internally shrugged, dismissing it.

Turning around, Bone Breaker walked right into a unicorn holding a box above her head with both hooves.

“What the- ?”

“Finishing move,” declared the unicorn, “Heaven’s Collapse!” With that, she slammed the box down to Bone Breaker’s head, knocking him out immediately. She stood there for a moment, ready to try something else if he was faking it, before relaxing.

“Alright,” Vinyl said cheerfully to herself, “one down, a billion to go!”

===============================

Slowly, Octavia opened her eyes. What had happened to her? Her head was throbbing, there was something cutting tightly into her hooves, and she had a horrible feeling that there was something important that had happened and that she had forgotten…

Blinking cautiously, Octavia realised that she recognised where she was – the interrogation room where she had…Octavia swallowed, not wanting to finish that thought. The floor had been cleared of The Bartender’s…remains… at least, which helped.

In addition to recognising the room, Octavia had also noticed that she was tied up. From the feel of things, something was keeping her front hooves tied together, whilst a rope bound her to the chair she was sitting in. She briefly struggled against them before conceding that she wasn’t going to break them any time soon.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” said a pony from somewhere outside of Octavia’s field of view. For a brief moment Octavia wondered who it was and where she had heard their voice before, before the pony stepped into her field of view, revealing himself.

“Stumblefeather.” Octavia said it as though it was a curse word, as for all intents and purposes, it was.

“Hello, Octavia,” said Stumblefeather, slyly smiling. He had completely dropped any pretense of his previous persona, speaking confidently and clearly. “How are you feeling?”

“Why did you do it?” Octavia asked, ignoring the question. “What made you betray CHIELD?”

Stumblefeather considered the question for a moment before shrugging. “Better incentive. Better rewards, working for the other side. Try working as a double agent for twelve years and seeing how loyal you feel at the end of it all. Disregard that suggestion, of course; you won’t have the opportunity to do so.”

A shiver ran down Octavia’s spine. “That means that you intend to interrogate me and then kill me, I presume?” she asked. “Because you might as well skip the questions and move straight to the murder. You should know that I’m not a CHIELD agent; I don’t have any information that would matter to you.” If she was being honest with herself, Octavia wasn’t sure how she felt about Stumblefeather killing her, but it felt like the sort of line a spy should say. And besides, it was better to admit now that she didn’t have any information than to endure torture for nothing.

“Well, that’s an interesting proposition now, isn’t it?” said Stumblefeather. He pulled a chair up from a corner and sat backwards on it, resting his front hooves on the back of it and facing Octavia. “But I can see right through you – you want me to kill you so that there’s no chance of you leaking what CHIELD have learned about me.”

“Um…no, actually,” said Octavia.

Stumblefeather chuckled. “Please. I’ve dropped my act – you can drop yours. You and Vinyl Scratch managed to sneak past some of the toughest guards and mercenaries in all of Equestria. Some of them are even former COBRA members!”

“That’s not saying much,” muttered Octavia.

“You two successfully escaped from Neon Lights, and then even managed to trick the guards into taking you here –right to Second Round and I!”

“Well, it wasn’t quite like –”

“The only thing you haven’t seen through is that I engineered that scenario with Second Round in an attempt to lure any infiltrators to our position so that Second Round could take care of them, and even then, you improvised quite nicely!” congratulated Stumblefeather.

“Please don’t remind me,” said Octavia, looking away.

“So as I said – drop the act, stop pretending to be an innocent musician who’s been caught up in all of this by accident, and tell me what you know,” said Stumblefeather. “It could always be worse, you know – why, if Neon Light was alive and here –”

“Wait,” interrupted Octavia. “Neon Lights is dead?”

“Oh, you weren’t aware?” asked Stumblefeather. “Baron von Darkhoof killed him when he reported the results of his encounter with you and Vinyl Scratch. The good baron doesn’t like it when a situation doesn’t end as cleanly as it should have.”

Stumblefeather continued talking, but Octavia wasn’t listening. In both of her and Vinyl’s previous encounters with Baron von Darkhoof, he hadn’t shown such ruthlessness. He had hinted at it, and certainly didn’t seem above violence nor murder, but to flat-out kill Neon Lights…? That was interesting. With that in mind, how legitimate a threat to Equestria was Baron von Darkhoof’s plan?

That being said, whilst Octavia certainly didn’t condone murder (she made a point of avoiding looking at the stains on the floor as she thought of this), if she had to make a list of ponies in Equestria to be murdered, Neon Lights would certainly be near the top of that list.

“…rather an ironic way to go, wasn’t it?” Octavia heard Stumblefeather say as she ended her train of thoughts and returned to reality. “I never realised that whipped cream could – but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.” He gave Octavia what could have been a smile, although it looked more like a leer. “We’re here to talk about you, aren’t we?”

“I’ve already told you I don’t have anything to say to you,” Octavia reminded Stumblefeather. “What’s the worst you’ll do to me?”

“If that’s the case,” Stumblefeather said as he reached down below his chair and picked up something which gleamed in the dim light, “then,” he continued, “I start using this.” He held the object out to Octavia, allowing her to see it more clearly. It was a knife.

“Ah,” said Octavia.

===============================

“Sir! I have returned with the report you requested, sir!” stated the guard as he entered the office. He saluted with a hoof. The room was quite small, although not so small that the two wouldn’t be able to walk around it comfortably if they so desired. Thankfully, it had enough height for the two ponies to not have to worry about hitting their heads on the air duct that ran along the ceiling.

“Very good, Armoured Fortress; at ease,” replied the guard captain. He had been looking at a map of his floor of the Omega Zone, but he moved away from it and to the newly arrived guard. “Now, what news do you have to report?”

“It’s as you suspected, sir,” said Armoured Fortress, allowing himself to relax. “I checked the rest of the floor and couldn’t find any sign of Silver Blade, Bone Breaker, Banana Cupcakes, or Confirmed Kill.”

“Hmm,” grunted the captain. He had a look at the map on the table he had been viewing prior, and after a moment of hesitation, swept it to the floor. “No, it’s bloody useless,” he muttered to himself, lost in thought.

Armoured Fortress hesitated a moment, and then asked, “Sir? If I may be permitted to ask a question?”

“Of course, Armoured Fortress,” said the captain. “What is it?”

“What exactly do you suspect has happened?” Armoured Fortress asked. “Because, well, the rest of us have been talking, and there are, um, rumours…”

The captain sighed. He had seen this had been coming. “Take a seat, Fortress,” he said, gesturing. “This may take a while.” Going over to the liquor cabinet in the room, he poured himself and Armoured Fortress each a glass of whiskey, ignoring Armoured Fortress’s cries that his body couldn’t tolerate alcohol.

“Now,” said the captain after a hearty sip of his drink, “have you ever heard of the legend of the Wailing Mare?”

“No, sir,” answered Armoured Fortress.

“Hmm. Well, as the legend goes, there were two mares who were exploring the Omega Zone – nopony knows why, although most agree that they were looking for something there – and whilst exploring it, one of them tripped, fell off the island, and drowned in the ocean.”

“That’s horrible, sir,” said Armoured Fortress.

“I rather thought it was quite clumsy myself. Drink up, that stuff isn’t cheap,” reminded the captain. “Anyway, they say that although that mare drowned, her story wasn’t over – she returned to our physical plane of existence as a ghost, and now haunts the Omega Zone, killing everypony she meets until she finds the lover she left behind such a long time ago. As she traverses these cold and empty corridors, the Wailing Mare screams out all sorts of babble, the meaning of which is known only to her – hence the name.

“Armoured Fortress, I have something to confess to you,” said the captain. “I believe that the legend of the Wailing Mare is true, and that we are all being haunted by her ghost.” He took a larger swig of his drink before continuing. “Do you think that there could be some truth to the legend, or am I just an old, senile captain, chasing ghosts?”

“Well, I can’t say it’s implausible, sir,” replied Armoured Fortress. “But why haven’t I heard of this legend before?”

“Probably because it’s only about ten minutes or so old,” said the captain. “Nevertheless, what do you think?”

“It does match up with what we know so far – why everypony is disappearing, and why we can’t find whatever is doing it,” said Armoured Fortress. He looked at his drink, debating having some out of politeness, but deciding against it. “But, well...there’s another rumour going around, one that the men have been talking about lately.”

“Yes?” asked the captain. “Yes, what is this rumour?”

“Well, some of the guards, they’re saying…they’re saying that we’ve all got a hit placed on our heads, sir,” said Armoured Fortress reluctantly.

“A hit?” repeated the captain. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

“Well, they- they say that the guards disappearing all matches the M.O. of one of the greatest spies in CHIELD’s history – Silent Takedown,” said Armoured Fortress. “He was a legendary spy back in the day who could not only spot the needle in the proverbial haystack from over a kilometre away, but could then shoot it accurately, each and every time. His stealth skills were said to be legendary, too – give him the layout of a building, and you wouldn’t be able to find him if he covered himself in bright lights and played an airhorn with each step.” As Armoured Fortress finished, he decided that it was worth trying the whiskey; at least a small amount.

“That does sound rather deadly!” exclaimed the captain, ignoring Armoured Fortress’s spluttering and coughing. “But why would this Silent Takedown want to get rid of us? How would he even have heard of us, and made his way here?!”

“This is just speculation, sir –” Armoured Fortress paused to cough heavily once more “- but they say that…well, that Silent Takedown had some sort of time manipulation magic,” explained Armoured Fortress. “Some say he could rewind time briefly, so that if he messed up he could try again, whilst others say that he could flat out travel through time at will. I’m not sure why he would want to get rid of us, but if these time manipulation powers were real, that would explain some of the latter.” Armoured Fortress went over to a water cooler and poured himself a glass of water as he finished.

“Well! That’s not as interesting as my story, but it’s certainly – spirits of the air!” exclaimed the captain, jumping slightly as what sounded like a loud banging noise sounded somewhere right outside the door. “Did you hear that?”

“Th-the banging, sir?” asked Armoured Fortress.

“The Wailing Mare and/or Silent Takedown have come for us!” wailed the captain. “Oh, if I’d only known that this was going to be my last night alive – I would have been a much crueler captain whilst I had the chance!”

Knowing that it was fairly fruitless, but feeling the need to have some sort of minute control of the situation, Armoured Fortress walked over to the door and locked it.

“Armoured Fortress! You’re a genius!” exclaimed the captain. “The Wailing Mare can’t get us now – ghosts can’t go through doors without an invitation!”

Armoured Fortress debated arguing the point, but he thought the better of it, and instead said, “And if it’s Silent Takedown, sir?”

“Well, the door’s locked, isn’t it?” pointed out the captain. “Silent Takedown won’t be able to get through the door, and there are no other ways into –”

The captain was interrupted by another BANG! as the air vent cover above him was loudly kicked out and landed to the floor. As he and Armoured Fortress both looked to see what was happening, a white unicorn dropped out of the air duct and landed onto the captain, knocking him out immediately. As Armoured Fortress stood there, gaping in surprise, she took advantage, and grabbed his head with her hooves before slamming it into the ground, similarly taking him out.

“Alright!” said Vinyl. “That makes number seventeen thousand, nine-hundred and thirty-one!” She pulled out a notebook and quill, made a mark in it, and then frowned. “Wait, no, that’s number six.”

Vinyl looked around the room, wondering where she was now. She had been travelling through the air ducts, which had the advantage of avoiding the guards, but the downside of her having even less idea of where she was in the building than she might have otherwise.

After a cursory scan, Vinyl at first thought that this room didn’t have anything which would help her in finding Octavia or taking out more guards, but then she spotted what the captain had been examining earlier and grinned.

“Whiskey!”

===============================

“…and so I think that if my parents had shown more affection towards each other when I was growing up, maybe that would have helped?” Octavia suggested. “I even might have realised that I was a lesbian sooner if I had seen more romance between them, so I would have realised how apathetic I am towards male-female romantic relationships…but I suppose that that is just idle speculation.”

“Very good, Octavia! See how much progress we’re making in our session?” asked Stumblefeather. “There’s just one problem: I didn’t ask you to tell me about your childhood.”

“Didn’t you ask me to tell you anything that might be important, no matter how minor, in case it turns out to be relevant in some way I’m not aware of?” Octavia asked.

“Well, yes, but I meant anything CHIELD might have said to you,” Stumblefeather said. “Something like, ‘If you fail this mission, it’ll be a real freeze to clean it up’, or along those lines. Even if you don’t have any idea about what CHIELD know about me, as you’ve already claimed, I want to know what contingency plans CHIELD has in place for if you and Vinyl Scratch fail your mission – well, rather, if CHIELD realise that you’ve failed your mission.”

“A real freeze?” Octavia repeated. “You realise that’s not a figure of speech, yes?”

“That was an example!” growled Stumblefeather. He seemed about to follow up on that, but thought the better of it, and took a deep breath instead. Changing tactics, he asked, “How did you and Vinyl Scratch get inside the Omega Zone? Surely CHIELD would have given you some gadgets of some sort.”

“Of course,” said Octavia.

“Excellent! What were they?”

“Skating boards, naturally.”

Stumblefeather resisted the urge to stab himself in the eye with his knife, and end this torture. But in spite of Octavia’s ridiculous answer, she seemed to be sincere, so he reluctantly continued.

“You…skateboarded into the Omega Zone?” Stumblefeather asked.

“Well, not into it, exactly,” Octavia said. “We skating boarded down from the plateau we landed on down to the main building, then snuck in through a vent cover that had been conveniently left open. You might want to get that looked at, by the way.”

“There’s an open vent – oh, wait, that,” said Stumblefeather. Speaking more to himself, he added, “I had almost forgotten about that, but it looks like it has paid off in the end after all.”

“Wait, how do you know about the vent? It was cut open,” Octavia said, frowning. “Why have you still left it broken? Unless…wait, do not tell me that you were the one who cut open the vent?”

Stumblefeather smirked by way of response.

“But…why?” Octavia asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Stumblefeather said. “So that you two would could break in.”

===============================

“Wow! What a twist!” exclaimed Vinyl. She pushed a lever in front of her, hesitantly at first, but more confidently as she saw its effect. “Who would have thought that this robot was so easy to control – and whilst really drunk, to boot?”

By way of response, the mercenary she had coerced into leading her to the robot cowered. Although he and Vinyl were theoretically safe inside the robot’s cockpit, which was protected by a magical force field, he wasn’t willing to place all of his faith in it.

“Yeah! Take that, desk!” declared Vinyl as she swung one of the bipedal robot’s arms at a desk and threw it into a wall. “And you too, desk!” she added, hitting another desk. “You want me to stop, huh? Well, maybe I will if you tell me where – where–” Vinyl paused in her rampage for a moment, then looked to her reluctant sidekick. “Death’s Head, who am I looking for again?” she asked.

“Your – your wife?” he suggested hesitantly.

“Yeah!” agreed Vinyl, pumping a hoof into the air in excitement. She gave Death’s Head what she thought was a friendly pat on the back, but was actually a heavy blow, and then took a swig of raw whiskey from the bottle she had been carrying around with her. “Let’s do this, guys! The three of us can save Octavia!”

“B-but there’s only two of us,” pointed out Death’s Head, an observation which got him a whiskey bottle to the head in response.

“DON’T FORGET WHISKEY!!” shouted Vinyl at him. She took another swig, then returned to the robot’s controls. “Now, let’s go save Octavia!” She was about to swing the arms of the robot wildly once more, but something stopped her.

Looking out the robot’s glass screen, Vinyl could see another robot standing in front of them, looking nearly identical to hers.

“You fool!” came a tinny voice from the other robot. “How do you expect to save your wife when you can’t even save yourself?”

“Gasp!” gasped Vinyl. “How did he hear what I was saying from inside this robot when he’s out there?”

“Prepare to meet your match, as between the two of us, I have the superior robotic model,” said the opposing voice. “For you see, my model has a secret weapon that yours doesn’t!”

“What is it?!” Vinyl asked. “Tell me!”

“My robot…is painted red!”

“Sweet Celestia, he’s right!” said Vinyl, only noticing this fact for the first time. “But if that’s the case…how can I defeat that robot with this pitiful, colourless thing?!”

===============================

“You - you wanted Vinyl and I to break in?” Octavia spluttered. “So you’re still with CHIELD?!” She started struggling against her bonds again. “Then get me out of here! We can try and find out what happened to Vinyl – where she went after falling into the hole – and then we can - we can stop Baron von Darkhoof!”

“You might be reading into this a bit much,” said Stumblefeather. “I opened the vent cover, yes, but I didn’t do it specifically for you two – it was for whomever CHIELD sent to the Omega Zone once they decided to act on my information about Baron von Darkhoof using the island as a base.”

“Just because I’m not a CHIELD agent, doesn’t mean that we can’t work together!” Octavia insisted. She jumped in the chair a little, trying to rotate it around so that Stumblefeather could untie her.

“On the contrary, I am still what you would consider to be an enemy,” said Stumblefeather, making no move to get up and help. “Therefore, I shall do no such thing.”

“But- then what do you mean about opening the vent cover?” Octavia asked. “Whose side are you on?”

This, for some reason, prompted Stumblefeather to get up, although to Octavia’s dismay, it still wasn’t to untie her. He turned so that to Octavia, he was in profile.

“Tell me, Octavia, what do you see?” Stumblefeather asked.

“Umm…” Octavia didn’t quite understand the question. “A…pegasus? One with a blue coat and a brown mane?” Stumblefeather didn’t say anything. “A…friendly ally who’s working as a double agent and isn’t sure whether he can reveal his cover? A…oh, your cutie mark – it’s a broken vase?”

“So what does that make my special talent?”

“Breaking things? Being clumsy?” Octavia suggested. Stumblefeather snorted. “Pottery? Did you used to be a potter?”

“My cutie mark has a much more…abstract meaning than any of those,” said Stumblefeather, returning to his seat as he said so. “My cutie mark represents my talent for breaking and destroying all around me; that it is not safe to leave important things where I can access them. Of course, the alternative interpretation you considered also assists in that; if ponies think that I’m a clumsy, harmless pony, then that can only be beneficial to me.”

“Wait, other ponies consider potters to be clumsy?” Octavia asked.

“And that, Octavia, is where my true allegiance lies: to nopony, except myself,” Stumblefeather continued. “In this endeavor, I’m merely using everyone whilst appearing completely trustworthy to both CHIELD and Baron von Darkhoof. But in the end, I’ll be the only one left standing - just as my cutie mark dictates.” He let out what might have been a sigh of relief. “You know, I’ve never actually told anyone what my cutie mark really means. It feels good to get that off my chest!”

“So…wait, I understand how you’re with Baron von Darkhoof and how you’ll gain…whatever it is you gain when whatever his plan is comes to fruition,” Octavia said, thinking it out, “but what did you plan to get by letting CHIELD agents into the Omega Zone?”

“The plan was for them – or rather, you – to take care of Baron von Darkhoof and the rest of our merry little gang, whilst I pretended to still be working for CHIELD,” said Stumblefeather. “That would then allow me to sweep in afterwards and complete Darkhoof’s plan myself after taking out the CHIELD agents, leaving everypony out of the picture except for myself.”

“Well then, I’m sorry to inform you, but it looks like your plan has failed,” Octavia said smugly. “Vinyl – Vinyl and I haven’t managed to stop Baron von Darkhoof, as I’m sure you’re aware. You’ll have to take him on all by yourself.”

“A feat I might almost be willing to try, were it not for the former leader of COBRA, Serpent Superior, guarding Darkhoof at all times,” said Stumblefeather. “And unfortunately for me, he is already suspicious of me due to my past history with CHIELD.”

“Serpent Superior is in your little gang, too?” Octavia asked. She shook her head sadly. “Who’s next? Natural Twenty?”

===============================

“I still do not see why we need any more members of our group, Neon Lights,” said Stumblefeather. “We’ve got enough as it is, and we are set to take over the Omega Zone in a matter of weeks – why introduce another pony into the mix and overcomplicate my perfectly workable plan?”

“Because you can bet that those two mares will somehow find out about us, and ruin everything!” growled Neon Lights. For once, his sunglasses were appropriate, as the weather had been bright and sunny the entire way to the Canterlot suburb the two ponies now found themselves in. “And even if they don’t, who knows? This guy might have a hot sister!” Without giving Stumblefeather the opportunity to interrupt, Neon Lights reached out and pressed the doorbell to the house the two were standing before.

The two ponies stood there awkwardly for about a minute before the door opened, revealing a unicorn with a frizzy mane. “Hello?” he asked. “How may I help you?”

“Hey! This isn’t my house!” said Stumblefeather, switching to his more dazed and clumsy persona.

“Ignore him,” said Neon, flashing Stumblefeather a quick glare behind his sunglasses. “You’re Natural Twenty, yeah? We’re here to make you an offer – do you want to get revenge on Octavia and Vinyl Scratch?”

“Revenge?” Natural Twenty asked. “On those two? Whatever for?”

Neon Lights faltered. “W-well, they beat you in some kinda game, didn’t they? Don’t you want to play another game with them, and beat them at that?”

“A game? Well, I suppose that I haven’t seen them for a while…” Natural Twenty put a hoof to his chin in thought. “Which system would we be using? Pony Tales: Aspirations of Harmony? Ogres and Oubliettes? Draconequus: The Warping?”

“Er…” Neon Lights looked to Stumblefeather for help, who glared at him in turn. “It’s…real life?” Neon Lights answered awkwardly.

“Ah, it’s a LARP then!” Natural Twenty said excitedly. “Sounds like fun! Just pass my Persuasion Check DC and I’ll be there!” He held out a small object to Neon Lights, who stared at it, unsure what to do. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Neon Lights hesitantly picked up the object, as though it was going to bite him. Looking at it, he realised that it was a twenty-sided die. So what was he supposed to do with it? Natural Twenty was looking at him expectantly, and when he looked to Stumblefeather for help, the pegasus made a small gesture with his head. I…roll it? Feeling a bit foolish, Neon Lights did so, kneeling down and lightly rolling the die along the asphalt. It came to a stop at Natural Twenty’s hooves.

“Hmm. A one,” commented Natural Twenty, looking at it.

“…Is that good?” Neon Lights asked after realising that he wasn’t going to receive another response from Natural Twenty.

“Not only do you not convince me, but I also think that you two are hoodlums attempting to con me into helping some dastardly scheme of yours to kill Vinyl and Octavia,” said Natural Twenty, levitating the die from the ground as he did so. “If you don’t leave within the next minute, I’ll call the guards on you.” He slammed the door in their faces…only to open it a moment later, cheerfully add, “Give Vinyl and Octavia my best!” and then slam it again.

For the third time, Neon Lights looked to Stumblefeather for assistance. The pegasus shrugged. “It was your idea.”

===============================

“…Of course not,” said Stumblefeather. “I’ve never even heard of that unicorn.”

“Well, nevertheless,” began Octavia, “if your plan was to have Vinyl and I eliminate your allies, why did you knock me out and tie me up? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to pretend to still be working with CHIELD and to then ally with myself – and Vinyl, after we found her from wherever she’s ended up – to stop the others?”

Stumblefeather scowled for the first time. “I saw that you had been sent rather than a real CHIELD agent and panicked; I thought they might have suspected something and sent you two rather than regular agents. Hence why I decided to see what you, and thus they, knew. So sue me; I made a mistake in trying to take over Baron von Darkhoof’s grand plan.”

“You keep mentioning that plan of his, but I still have no idea what it is,” Octavia said. “Do you care to explain?”

Stumblefeather threw back his head and laughed. “And – and what makes you think I’ll just share that information with you?” he asked in-between laughs. “Did you forget who is interrogating who, here?”

Octavia shrugged as best she could whilst tied up. “Well, you’ve told me pretty much everything else at this point,” she pointed out. “I thought it may be worth a shot.” That stopped Stumblefeather’s laughter.

“…You may have a point there,” said Stumblefeather, unable to come up with a rebuttal.

===============================

“Hit me.”

Complying with Vinyl’s request, the dealer took a card from the top of the deck and slid it over to Vinyl, ensuring that the face of it was never exposed to anypony along the way. Vinyl casually lifted the card up, raised an eyebrow at what she saw, and then put it down again.

Crap. That’s not going to be much of a help, the unicorn thought. She looked around the table. By this late stage, most of the players had been eliminated. Whilst that should be cause for celebration, all it really meant was that the remaining players – three, excluding Vinyl – were tougher than the rest, and that Vinyl would need the devil’s luck if she wanted to win the game. As it was, all three were looking at Vinyl expectantly now, trying to gauge how useful the card she’d been dealt was based on her reaction.

Vinyl took another look at her cards. It was easy to see the strategy she should use, but whether or not it worked would depend entirely upon what she said next, and who to. She had an alternate strategy, of course, one which was much safer, but that would likely weaken her in the long run, and make the entire game a waste of time.

Screw it, thought Vinyl, I’ve got to make a decision. Might as well go with my gut. “Deadly Shot,” she said, turning to the pegasus on her left.

“Yes, Vinyl?” the pegasus asked.

Vinyl took one last look at her cards to confirm what she was going to do. “Do you have any Black Lotuses?” she asked.

“What?”

“Black Lotus. Do you have any of them?” Vinyl held her breath. Had she chosen the wrong pony to ask?

“That’s…that’s not a legal card,” said Deadly Shot. A few ponies nodded in agreement.

“Really?” Vinyl asked, surprised. She held up the card to everypony to confirm that she had it. “Then where the hay did this come from?”

Some murmurs filled the room as each pony came up with their own theory. “Probably slipped in by accident,” said Deadly Shot.

“Oh,” said Vinyl. “I was wondering why the back of it was different to all the other cards.” Using her telekinesis, she tore the card into scrap and threw it away. “No reason to keep that useless thing then! Deadly Shot, in that case, do you have any…” - Vinyl took another look at her cards - “…sevens?”

Deadly Shot looked at his own cards, and then snapped his teeth in irritation. “Yes,” he growled, reluctantly passing two cards over to Vinyl.

“Alright!” said Vinyl. She placed Deadly Shot’s cards with two of her own, spreading them out so that everypony could see them clearly. “That’s a full house, everypony! And you all know what that means!”

In unison, every pony except for Vinyl begrudgingly said, “You sunk my battleship!”, and then took away a small figurine from the miniature battlefields each had before them.

“Cool. Now, before my turn ends, I’ll activate this trap card,” said Vinyl, revealing another of her cards, “which will let me roll the dice one more time…” Vinyl did so, shaking them a few times before rolling them out of habit. “And that’s double eights! Which means I pass Go, which means I get two hundred bits!” Everypony sighed as the dealer passed Vinyl over some fake money. “And now it’s your turn, Deadly Shot,” Vinyl said, passing over the dice to the pegasus.

“Thanks,” grunted Deadly Shot.

“No worries!” said Vinyl. “By the way, what are we playing again?”

===============================

“So, how about it?” Octavia asked. “Ready to let me in on the big plan of Baron von Darkhoof?”

Stumblefeather thought it over for a moment. “…Let’s say I do,” he said slowly. “Let’s say I tell you what he’s planning: every little detail, where everything is, and how he could be stopped. What then?”

Where was Stumblefeather going with this? “Well, seeing as how you seem to have an idea of how Darkhoof could be stopped, I’d probably add a few extra ideas of mine to whatever you have planned, and then I’d suggest you untie me. We could then work as a team, and stop Baron von Darkhoof.”

“Right,” said Stumblefeather, savouring the word. He had previously placed his knife on the ground, but as he spoke, he picked it up, and idly began playing with it in his hooves; turning and twisting it over and over again. “I take you down to the lowest basement, we take care of Darkhoof and Serpent Superior…and then what? There’s nopony to activate the plan, so we can just dismantle it all to stop anypony else from trying the same thing, right?”

“Exactly!” said Octavia. “Or, um, maybe?” she said, backtracking quickly. “I suppose we could always just go our separate ways at that point, or, um, work out what to do after we’ve assessed the –”

“Or,” interrupted Stumblefeather, silencing Octavia immediately, “I could just kill you now.”

Octavia tried pushing against her bonds once more. Was she absolutely sure that she couldn’t break them? “U-um, why would you do that?” she asked. “Sure-surely you’d need some help to fight Serpent Superior a-and Darkhoof?” The ropes tying her to the chair weren’t giving at all, and whatever was keeping Octavia’s hooves together felt even stronger.

“Heh.” Stumblefeather got up from his chair and walked over to Octavia. He was still holding the knife, but much less playfully than prior. “If you were anypony else, I’d probably just go with my original plan of using you. But you… I’ll admit it, I can see you outsmarting me, and taking me out before I do you.” He placed the tip of the knife against Octavia’s throat. “I think I’d rather take you out of the picture whilst I have the upper hoof.”

===============================

“You’ll have to – hup! – do better than that to catch me!” panted Vinyl, galloping forwards as fast as she could and diving into a room.

“Run all you wish,” said her pursuer, a large pony encased completely in black armour, “for it matters not. I will catch you in the end.” He slowly stepped into the room Vinyl had entered and turned his head from side to side, looking for her. As with many rooms in the Omega Zone, it was a laboratory, but unlike most of them, it seemed to be in use – several tables had test tubes filled with brightly coloured liquids on top of them.

“Give up now, and I will make your death painless,” said the armour-clad pony, finding no sign of Vinyl from his cursory check. He withdrew a large claymore from a sheath. “The blessed blade Deitlaon will make sure of that.”

“No chance, Ebony Knight!” said Vinyl, dropping down on the pony from somewhere above. “I can’t die until after I’ve found my wife – and maybe not even then!” From her position on the Ebony Knight’s back, Vinyl punched him with her hooves a few times, eliciting small ting!s from the armour. “Um, can I try my dramatic entrance again?” Vinyl asked. “I feel like it might work a bit better if I actually do some damage to you.”

Without a word, the Ebony Knight twisted his back so that Vinyl fell off, and then, faster than his bulk would imply, spun around and kicked her, sending her flying across the room.

“You have intruded upon the domain of my master with intent to cause harm,” said the Knight as he slowly advanced towards Vinyl. “I have offered you the chance to peacefully leave, yet you did not take it. Your fate is – what?!” he exclaimed. “Nooooo!!”

“Huh?” Vinyl asked, dazedly. What had set the Ebony Knight off? She was lying next to the table which she had knocked over when he had kicked her, spilling the chemicals upon it to the floor. “What – what’s wrong?” she asked, getting to her hooves.

“I’ve knocked over the antipentathemol diocide!” the Ebony Knight said, pointing his sword to the spilled chemicals.

“Ha! You should take a lesson from me – think before you act!” Vinyl said boastfully. “Now that you’ve knocked over the – the green stuff, your days are numbered! Uh…what does that stuff even do?”

“The antipentathemol diocide will break down into glucose now that it’s exposed to air,” the Ebony Knight said. “The floors will soon be all sticky, and I will be the one who has to clean it up!”

“Oh, um…okay then…” said Vinyl, slightly perplexed. “I guess that means that - Secret Vinyl Surprise Attack!” she suddenly declared, surrounding the Ebony Knight’s helmet with her telekinesis and attempting to remove it. Yet no matter how hard she tried, Vinyl couldn’t get it to move one bit.

“Don’t waste your strength,” said the Ebony Knight. “My armour has been blessed by Celestia herself, making it impervious to all harm or removal. You would have better luck trying to raise the sun.” He swung his hoof, the one holding the sword, at Vinyl, hitting her with the flat of the blade and knocking her into another table.

“You had no chance the moment you tried to face my might,” said the Ebony Knight, once more slowly making his way over to Vinyl. “However, I praise you with this – you are certainly more confident than most I face.” He pointed his gigantic sword at Vinyl, the tip to her throat. “In another world, you might have been a worthy opponent.”

“H-hey!” Vinyl protested. “Don’t I get any last words?”

The Ebony Knight considered that. “Very well,” he said, “out of respect for you, I grant you this chance to make peace with your death. But make these words qui- what?! Nooooo!!” This time, the Ebony Knight flat out dropped his sword and fell to the ground, grasping his head with his hooves.

“…Sorry?” Vinyl said, getting up and walking to the Ebony Knight’s side.

“The ethenyl ethanoate!” exclaimed the Ebony Knight. It took Vinyl a moment to realise what he was talking about, before realising that more chemicals have been spilled. “It’s ruined! How am I supposed to paint my action figures now?!”

“Well, um…it’s not that bad, buddy,” said Vinyl, uncomfortably patting the Ebony Knight on the shoulder plate. “There’s always more ethy eaten-eight, right?”

“Silence!” said the Ebony Knight, hitting Vinyl with a hoof hard enough to send her flying across the room, crashing her into yet another table. “My personal life does not matter in this duel of ours!”

“This is a duel?” coughed Vinyl as she picked herself up. “Feels a bit one-sided to me…”

“Do not presume to sympathise with me or know me as you would yourself,” continued the Ebony Knight. With each step he took towards Vinyl, his massive bulk shook the nearby tables, causing small ripples in the chemicals atop each. “All that matters is our fight. I do not wish to kill you, and so I have given you the opportunity to leave this island. I have offered you a painless death. I have given you the chance to make peace with your imminent death.”

“All these offers, but you can’t just let me do what I need to before leaving the island?” Vinyl asked, half-jokingly. She looked around for a way to escape the juggernaut bearing down upon her, but with all of the tables in the way, she couldn’t see a way out.

“I am not the one who has made this more difficult for you,” said the Ebony Knight, drawing back his sword in preparation of a swing. “I am merely – what?! Nooooo!!”

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake,” sighed Vinyl. “What is it this time?”

“My cordial!” shouted the Ebony Knight, pointing to the bright red liquid which had been spilled. “I was going to drink that in celebration of defeating you!”

“Y’know, given that I just randomly ran into this room, you sure do know a lot about all the different chemicals in here,” commented Vinyl. Then a thought occurred to her.Hey, if this is how much he’s stressing out over some of the chemicals getting spilled, what’ll happen if I spill all of them?

“Wh- what are you doing?!” the Ebony Knight asked in horror as Vinyl levitated test tube racks up, one at a time, and threw them to the ground. “Don’t just drop – th-that one is particularly – be careful! You might –”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Vinyl. “Looks like I found your weakness, huh?” She only had a few test tubes left, but that didn’t matter – she could use them to delay the Ebony Knight for long enough for her to get away, at least temporarily.

“So, what’s so important about these two?” Vinyl asked, throwing two test tubes to the floor together. “Let me guess – one’s a new cleaning product and the other is your favourite brand of mouthwash?

“N-no!” said the Ebony Knight, dropping his sword and taking a few steps backwards. “Those were semianaperidoctic acid and explorubeicidium!”

Something in the Ebony Knight’s tone made Vinyl take a few steps back from the spilled chemicals herself. “Wh-what does that mean?” Vinyl asked. She took another step back, just to be sure.

“If they’re mixed together- which you’ve just done – they’ll explode!” said the Ebony Knight.

“Wh-”

BOOOOOOMMM!!!!!!

===============================

“No!” shouted Octavia. She may have been tied to the chair, but her hind legs were still free, and so she raised them up and kicked Stumblefeather in the stomach, knocking him back. “Come any closer and you’ll regret it,” snarled Octavia to Stumblefeather as the pegasus began advancing on her once more.

Stumblefeather shook his head condescendingly. “How?” he asked. “You’ll glare at me and I’ll have a heart attack?”

“I’ll kick your damn skull off,” spat Octavia. “Just – just stay there, or else.”

“Whilst you’re tied up? I believe that,” said Stumblefeather. “Of course, you don’t seem to have realised that you have something of a mobility problem which I myself lack…but really, why so hostile?” Stumblefeather had circled around behind Octavia. The Earth pony was sure that it was going to end there and then, but he continued his circuit around Octavia, his knife never leaving his hoof. “After all, I’m going to reunite you with your beloved Vinyl Scratch.”

“Like hay you will!” said Octavia. “Vinyl’s just fine, and – and once I’ve stopped you, she and I will stop Darkhoof together! When you decided to turn your back on CHIELD, you bet on the wrong horses!”

“I’ll give you this, you’re making me question why I’m going to kill you,” said Stumblefeather, his voice once again coming from behind Octavia. “The entertainment value of your denial towards Vinyl dying is almost worth keeping you alive for. You just can’t comprehend it, can you? She was thrown down that hole, which leads straight to the ocean. If the fall didn’t kill her, the current would have dashed her to bits against the rocks.”

“Vinyl’s. Not. Dead,” said Octavia between gritted teeth.

“Yes. Yes, she is,” said Stumblefeather. He was standing before Octavia once more, perfectly still. He passed his knife from one hoof to the other, then seemed to think better of it, and switched it back. “And you’re about to join her.”

BOOOOOOMMM!!!!!!

Is this really what death is like? Octavia wondered. Lots of falling concrete, noise, and chaos? Octavia did her best to shield herself from the debris coming down around her, closing her eyes and ducking her head. It wasn’t what she’d pictured at all, especially since Stumblefeather had slit her throat.

Or…had he? Her throat didn’t hurt at all, and it still felt as though she was tied up with rope. As the noise quietened, Octavia realised that whatever had happened, it wasn’t thanks to Stumblefeather. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to find that she was still in the same room as before. Judging by the partially missing ceiling and the large amount of rubble that had suddenly appeared, something had caused an explosion a floor above, which had in turn caused some structural collapse. It was a miracle that Octavia hadn’t been underneath a part of the ceiling which had broken.

“Urgh…W-wow, this outdoes destroying that elevator by heaps!”

Octavia’s heart skipped a beat. She knew that voice.

“Vinyl!” she called out. There was plenty of dust in the air, so she couldn’t see the other mare, but she knew that voice well enough to know that she hadn’t been mistaken.

“Huh? Octavia?” There was the sound of crumbling shards of concrete tumbling down one another, and then there she was – Vinyl galloping out of the dust towards – “Octavia!”

“Vinyl!” Octavia repeated. The dust had her eyes tearing up, but even if it hadn’t been doing so, her eyes would probably be watering just as badly.

“Oh man, talk about lucky, huh?” Vinyl said as she reached Octavia. She gave her wife a quick hug, then went behind her chair and began to undo her ropes. “How are you doing, beautiful?”

“Vinyl, I – fantastic, now that you’re here,” said Octavia. “How about you? What happened?”

Vinyl finished untying the ropes, loosened them, then helped Octavia out of the chair. She gave Octavia a grin as she did so. “Long story, but guess who just blew up one of the Omega Zone’s labs? Vinyl Scratch, baby!”

“Oh, Vinyl,” said Octavia, as she half-hugged, half-collapsed into Vinyl, “never ever change.”

“I’ll drink to that!” laughed Vinyl. She released Octavia from their hug, but allowed her to rest her head on her shoulder. “But what are you still doing here in this lame room? I expected to find you beating up Baron von Darkhoof with one hoof tied behind your back or something, not for you to be hanging around in this lame-o place.”

“It was Stumblefeather,” said Octavia darkly. “It turns out that he has been working against CHIELD for some time, and so he tried interrogating me to find out whether or not they had worked it out.”

“Stumblefeather, huh?” said Vinyl. She shook her head slowly. “Pity. He seemed sincere enough when he told me he was working for CHIELD back in the Amarezon – wait, where is he now? Is he coming back?”

Octavia pointed a hoof. She had noticed it earlier – where Stumblefeather had been was a large chunk of concrete, some blood leaking out from below it. Vinyl drew a sharp breath. “Nasty,” she muttered.

“So what about you, Vinyl?” Octavia asked. “How did you survive that fall?”

“Oh, that! That’s a long story, so I’ll start at the end and work my way back to the start!” said Vinyl happily. “So there I was, fighting the Ebony Knight, right?”

“Who?”

“The Ebony Knight – some guy in black armour who seemed to think that there was some kinda unstoppable destiny that meant he had to kill me as long as I was on the island,” Vinyl explained. “It’s kinda ironic though – he’s probably one of the deadliest enemies either of us have fought, but in the end, he was done in by the simplest of attacks: a gigantic explosion.”

“I’m still alive, Vinyl Scratch,” came an echoing, metallic voice from below the rubble.

“Argh!” shouted Vinyl, jumping into the air. “Quick, Octavia, let’s get out of here!” Galloping out of the room, it was all Octavia could do to follow Vinyl. They ran down several stairs and through several corridors as fast as they could. For some mysterious reason, they never ran into any guards – or rather, they never ran into any conscious guards. That worried Octavia. Had Vinyl noticed? What did it mean? Octavia would be reluctant to admit it should she be pressed on it, but her first thought was that there must have been a ghost haunting the Omega Zone, for surely only a ghost could take out so many guards so efficiently.

Finally the two came to a stop, leaning against a pair of large, metallic doors. “That,” panted Octavia, “was more running than I expected.” She hung her head low and allowed her tongue to hang out as she took a few heavenly breaths.

“Yeah, it was,” said Vinyl, moving a bit closer to Octavia. “But maybe I was just trying to get you alone?”

That made Octavia smile. Classic Vinyl. “I won’t object to a bit of kissing for a moment or two,” she said. “But!” she added as Vinyl went in for the kill, “I quickly need to tell you something important first. Remember what The Bartender said? Baron von Darkhoof’s plans are on the eve of their completion.”

“Uh huh,” said Vinyl, focusing entirely on Octavia’s lips.

“And Stumblefeather let slip that there’s something in the lowest basement – I’m not sure whether it’s something that could stop the plan itself or something else, but I think that should be our next destination,” said Octavia.

“Are you just saying that because that’s where we are right now?” Vinyl asked, grinning cheekily.

“Wait, it is?” Octavia asked.

“Indeed it is!” came a nasally new voice.

Octavia’s head whipped towards the new voice. She shouldn’t have been surprised, between the voice and what Stumblefeather had said before. She would recognise that face – well, mask – anywhere.

“Serpent Superior,” she said.

“Commander!” exclaimed Vinyl.

Serpent Superior cocked a crossbow attached to his front hoof and aimed it at the two. “You two have done some damage around here,” he said. “I hope you enjoyed it, because this is the end of the line. I’m your opponent now!”

Chapter Eight: New Ways to Die

“Yes,” continued Serpent Superior, “it is I, Serpent Superior, second of the Vinyl and Octavia Revenge – ”

“Second?” interrupted Vinyl. “Dude, we’ve fought, like, everyone except for you and Baron von Darkhoof. You’re sure as hay not the second member of your group.” She put a hoof to her mouth in thought. “Wait – unless there are more members we don’t know about. Are the demolishing crew that destroyed Octavia’s old house in that room behind you?” Vinyl craned her neck, trying to look into the room in spite of the doors still being closed.

“That’s second as in, ‘second-in-command’,” sneered Serpent Superior in his nasally voice. “Not that it will matter to you two – in but a few moments, you will both be dead by my hoof!”

Octavia couldn’t help but snicker. “You, kill us? Your optimism is impressive, sir, but we all know that your crossbow only shoots –”

Serpent Superior twisted his hoof, the mechanism required to fire his crossbow, and then almost immediately afterwards, there was a loud noise from somewhere behind Octavia and a force that threw her and Vinyl forwards to the ground. Octavia shakily picked herself up and looked at where it had come from. There were scorch marks on the ground.

Serpent Superior must have fired some sort of explosive from his crossbow – not too strong, or else he would be at risk of injury himself at such short range, but strong enough to stagger Vinyl and Octavia. Octavia briefly winced. She hadn’t sustained too much damage during her interrogation with Stumblefeather, but the fight with the Bartender and the shark tank had left her in far from top condition. Too many more explosives like that, particularly any which actually landed on her, would reopen her wounds.

Of course, it wasn’t as though Octavia would likely get a say in the matter – Serpent Superior had already loaded another bolt into his crossbow and was aiming it at Octavia. She flinched, ready for the new wave of pain that would wash through her body –

only for Serpent Superior’s shot to go wild as Vinyl telekinetically forced his hoof upwards, firing the bolt directly into the ceiling. “C’mon!” Vinyl shouted to Octavia, grabbing the stunned mare and guiding her down the corridor a few metres and around a corner. She was just in time – as the two rounded the corner, Octavia heard the sound of a third crossbow bolt exploding.

“How the hay did Serpent Superior get so powerful?” gasped Octavia, leaning against the wall as she said so.

“I know!” said Vinyl. “He was always so… so…”

“Weak?” suggested Octavia. She ducked her head around the corner, only to immediately pull it back to avoid another crossbow bolt. She gestured for Vinyl to keep heading down the corridor.

“Yeah!” agreed Vinyl. “I mean, it’s not like we ever actually saw him in combat, aside from that time I kicked his flank during combat training, when he was surely holding back, but I’m sure he must have been terrible at fighting before this!” She turned down another corridor, with Octavia following. From the looks of things, the area they were would have been a large open area were it not for the concrete pillars breaking the area into a grid system every few metres.

“Well, regardless, it looks as though we have escaped him for the moment,” said Octavia. Every now and then the two mares heard another shot as Serpent Superior fired blindly, probably hoping to get lucky and catch them in the blast. “As tempting as it is to sneak past him and head back to the door he was guarding, I feel that with doors that size we may not be able to get them open before he would return.”

Vinyl nodded. “Yeah. My magic’s a bit better, but I wouldn’t want to put it up to any big tasks right now,” she said. “So I guess that means we’ve got to take him down before we can get to that room and find out what it is Darkhoof’s got in there.” Vinyl frowned. “I bet after all of this build up, it’s something really disappointing.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Octavia. She shifted around to the other side of the column she was pressed up against – the last shot from Serpent Superior had been a bit closer than she would have liked. “I’ve got an idea for how we can take out Serpent Superior.”

“Me too!” said Vinyl excitedly. “I gallop up towards him, somehow dodging all of those bolts of his, then take him out with one punch!”

If it weren’t for the echoing sound of the explosions, the room would have gone very quiet for a few long moments.

“…Or, alternatively, you could distract Serpent Superior, and then when he’s going after you, I’ll take him out from behind,” Octavia suggested.

“Hey, that’s even better!” said Vinyl. “You ready?”

“I – what, you want to do it now?” Octavia asked.

“Any reason not to?” Vinyl asked.

Octavia thought about it. “I suppose not,” she conceded.

“Alright!” said Vinyl. She let out a loud whistle and stepped away from the concrete column she had been leaning against. “Hey! Hey, boss!” she called out, taking a few steps into the open, or at least as open a space as there was in the grid of supports. “You ready to come out and play?”

“Vinyl Scratch!” came Serpent Superior’s voice. From the sound of it, it was somewhere in the opposite direction to the room he had been guarding. Octavia frowned – she hadn’t expected him to move through the room that quickly. “I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t think you were this stupid!”

“Aw, c’mon, sir!” Vinyl replied, slowly walking forwards. She was checking each row of the room’s grid carefully as she moved into it, but there was no obvious sign of where Serpent Superior might be. “You should know me by now – unexpectedly intelligent when the situation calls for it, stupid and hilarious the other ninety percent of – crap!” She leapt back, just in time to avoid the crossbow bolt that Serpent Superior had fired from behind cover.

“What’s the matter?” Serpent Superior jeered. “Not as clever as you thought you were?”

“Still clever enough to take you down, boss,” muttered Vinyl. Serpent Superior may have nearly hit her, but he had revealed his position in the process. Even if he moved from it, Vinyl had a good sense of where he was now. She gestured for Octavia to follow her, and then started to move in.

“So, what’s your story?” Vinyl asked. “From the sounds of it, Neon Lights and the Bartender –”

“Who?” muttered Serpent Superior.

“- were both in on this for revenge, while Stumblefeather was just trying to use you all to do his dirty work,” Vinyl said. “What do you get out of this?”

“The dissolution of hierarchy!” shouted Serpent Superior against his better judgement. “Baron von Darkhoof has agreed that once we have successfully blackmailed all of the major cities of Equestria , we will then proceed with our threats anyway, causing chaos in Equestria. Social structures will be broken down as thousands of ponies die, allowing a better system to rise in its place!” He fired off two shots at where Vinyl’s voice had come from to compensate for talking for so long, though of course Vinyl had already moved by then.

“Really starting to feel locked out of the loop regarding this big plan,” Vinyl muttered to herself. “And Darkhoof is cool with this?” she called out.

“He intends to use his newfound wealth from the blackmailing to take control of a few cities; the ones which will be the most vulnerable,” Serpent Superior replied. “I can’t say I approve, but we’ve agreed to respect each other’s goals once this is all over.”

Vinyl said nothing. She was fairly sure that she was on the opposite side of the pillar Serpent Superior was against at the moment, and saying anything would give away the element of surprise she had. Still, the implications of what Serpent Superior was saying were astounding. What was Baron von Darkhoof’s secret weapon, that it could supposedly make good on a threat to kill ponies all across Equestria, and at the same time from the sound of things? Had Darkhoof made a deal with some dragons? Was it some sort of counterpart magic to the Elements of Harmony? Yet another of the innumerable ancient threats that seemed to have been awakening in the last few years?

Whatever. Vinyl would find out soon enough. She moved closer to the edge of the support, ready to leap out and take care of Serpent Superior. Her silence would have betrayed that she was close to him, and he was surely expecting something – Vinyl couldn’t even hear him breathing. He wouldn’t know what side Vinyl would attack him from though, and that would be what gave Vinyl the advantage.

Vinyl tensed herself, counted to two in her head, then leapt around the corner. “I’ve got bad news for you, boss,” she said. “The game’s – ah, crap! He’s not there.”

“I’d applaud your effort, but then again, if it really was worthy of praise, you wouldn’t have screwed up so badly,” sneered Serpent Superior from behind Vinyl. She heard a click – no doubt that was him loading in another of his explosive bolts. “Any final words?”

“Uhh…I love anarchy and therefore you shouldn’t kill me?” Vinyl suggested.

CRACK!

“Crack!?” Vinyl questioned. “That’s a weird thing to say in response to somepony’s last words.”

“You know, if I had one piece of advice to give to aspiring bad guys,” said Octavia, “it would be that you should just shut up and take somepony out if they’ve been opposing you. It may sound cool to give a dramatic speech before you kill them, but when it is inevitably foiled, it retroactively looks anticlimactic.”

“Octavia!” said Vinyl cheerfully. She spun around and stepped on the unconscious body of Serpent Superior as she hugged and then kissed her wife. “You know that I loved you to infinity and back already, but saving my life like that makes me love you to infinity another time!”

Octavia smiled. “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, but infinity is…well, infinite. You can’t go any higher than it once you’ve reached it.”

“Exactly! I can’t love you any more than I already do!” said Vinyl, grinning. “But I manage to anyway!” She gestured to the unconscious body of Serpent Superior. “What should we do with this guy?”

“I would say that we can tie him up for now, but, well…I don’t suppose you have any ropes with you?” Octavia asked.

“Nope!” Vinyl replied cheerfully. “But if you want, we can methodically and gradually tear out my mane and tail, weave the hairs together – ”

“That’s a no; got it,” confirmed Octavia. She nudged Serpent Superior with a hoof awkwardly. “I…suppose we’ll just have to leave him here then?” she said.

“Of course! No way in hay that I’m carrying him around!” growled Vinyl. A sober expression came over her face. “I mean…” She sucked in a breath before continuing. “There’s always the option of, um, killing –”

“No,” said Octavia immediately. “There may be dangerous ponies about, but unless we have no other option, we’re not going to intentionally kill anypony.”

“Phew,” said Vinyl, letting out the breath as she did so, “I was hoping you’d say that. Leave him here unconscious it is then! Without his crossbow, of course,” she added, levitating it from Serpent Superior’s body and attaching it to her own arm. She raised her hoof and looked down the scope of the crossbow, aiming it at Octavia. “Hay Octavia – how do I look?”

“Hot,” said Octavia.

“And now?” asked Vinyl, holding the hoof beside her head and trying to look serious.

“Hot,” repeated Octavia.

“You always know what to say to make me happy,” said Vinyl, grinning. She lowered the hoof. “What say we go stop this loser Baron von Darkhoof?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Octavia.

===============================

“Well, that was much easier than I expected,” said Octavia.

“Yeah!” agreed Vinyl. “What was?”

“Opening these doors,” said Octavia, gesturing to the two large, metallic doors which had been closed when the two mares were confronted by Serpent Superior. “But enough procrastinating; let’s head inside.”

Inside, it was fairly dim. Although there were fireflies lighting the room, it was quite a large room, and so they couldn’t cover everything. At first glance, it seemed to be just like the rest of this level of the Omega Zone – concrete walls and floors, with some metallic structures here and there - albeit bigger. There were also some stairs leading to a catwalk.

“Hmm,” said Octavia, her voice echoing slightly throughout the room. “This seems…dull. Where do you suppose Baron von Darkhoof’s ultimate weapon is? Whatever it is, I was expecting something bigger.”

“Uh, Octavia?” said Vinyl, who had wandered off in a different direction. “You might want to come and look at this.”

“What is it?” Octavia asked, heading over to Vinyl, who was pointing at something. At a set of somethings, as it turned out.

Each of the objects was squat, roughly rectangular-shaped, and made out of metal. They were set a few metres from each other, with Octavia counting eight of them in total. The reason for this was soon apparent; as Octavia got closer to them, she realised that whatever the objects were, each of them was in the centre of some sort of circle on the ground, filled with glyphs and other arcane symbols she didn’t understand.

Octavia was staring at the items for several moments, wondering what they reminded her of when it hit her, and she remembered. She had once seen an item very similar to the eight before her when she was working for COBRA and unknowingly helping them to perform an attack on Canterlot.

They were bombs.

“A bomb!” Vinyl suddenly shouted, causing Octavia to jump in the air in fright.

“What was that for?” Octavia asked, trying to calm her breathing.

“Sorry, I, uh, realised what they were and panicked a bit,” said Vinyl.

“Eight bombs…” said Octavia, staring at them. “So this must be what Darkhoof has planned. If they’re anything like the one COBRA was using, they’ll amplify the magical potential of ponies, essentially overloading their bodies and killing them…The original bomb was designed to just take out Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, but I suppose that these have been modified to kill most ponies caught within the blast range.” She turned to Vinyl. “But if that’s the case, then how does Darkhoof plan to deliver the bombs? Even if he used an airship or something similar, after one city was hit, the others would be prepared, and able to stop him.”

Vinyl pointed a hoof to the circles the bombs were each sitting in. “See those circles?” she asked. “My magical runes are a bit rusty, but if I’m right, these are teleportation circles. Each circle would be pointed at a different city, and once they’re activated, the bomb will be taken right to the centre of each.”

“I –” Octavia’s voice died, thinking this over. It all made sense. Darkhoof could blackmail the various cities of Equestria – and who was to say that he hadn’t already? – and then teleport the bombs directly into the city. Nopony would suspect what was coming, and even if one city was fortunate enough to be able to disarm one of the bombs, or have magical defences to prevent items teleporting in, it was unlikely that that would apply to all of them. “I- Vinyl, I – I think that we –” Octavia cleared her throat. “I think that we may not be able to stop this.”

“Ah, just the expression I was hoping to hear!” A voice echoed out from the catwalk, causing both Vinyl and Octavia to look up at it. Just as they had expected, it was coming from the mastermind of the whole thing – Baron von Darkhoof. “It has taken me three encounters with you, but finally, now, in the fourth, I have defeated you two once and for all!”

“Were you just standing up there waiting for a dramatic moment to reveal yourself?” Vinyl asked.

“Three encounters?” Octavia added. “You are even more stupid than the last time we saw you,” she commented. “This is our third encounter with you now.”

Baron von Darkhoof grinned smugly. “It’s you who is the fool, Octavia, if you’ve never even worked it out. Did it never occur to you?”

“Did what never occur to us?” Vinyl prodded.

“The money disappearing from COBRA all of a sudden, when Destroyer’s funds had previously been plenty to keep the organisation afloat,” said Darkhoof. He leisurely pulled a feather from one of his green wings as he continued. “So strange, that the source of the funding should have his funds run dry, leading to the rest of the organisation attempting a robbery, and being destroyed in the process.”

“Wait a minute,” Octavia asked, frowning. “You’re not seriously suggesting that you were -?”

“Tomax and Xamot, embezzling money?” Vinyl said. “But how? They were two ponies!”

Baron von Darkhoof frowned. “Try again.”

Vinyl gasped. “Octavia! I just realised something!”

“Yes?” Octavia asked expectantly.

“While we were at COBRA, there was one member of the higher ups whose face we never saw… a pony who would be in position to steal money from Destroyer’s company without raising any suspicions…and who we know for a fact got away from COBRA after the failed heist!”

“Good grief, you’ve got it!” Octavia gasped. “That was very clever of you, Baron von Darkhoof! Or should I say… Serpent Superior?!”

The room went silent.

“Uh, Octavia? I meant Darkhoof must have been Destroyer himself,” Vinyl said quietly to her wife. Octavia blushed, and her ears drooped slightly.

“Oh. Right,” she said sheepishly. “So…wait, Baron von Darkhoof – that whole time that we were in COBRA, you were right there, under our muzzles as Destroyer?”

“And more than that,” said Baron von Darkhoof. “Do you remember when you two had to go to court, and faced a demonic prosecutor?”

“Wait a minute…you’re not seriously suggesting that you were also…?”

“Yes!” shouted Baron von Darkhoof with glee. “I was one of the civilians watching the process in the courtroom! I was in the third row from the back, and you never suspected a thing!”

“Oh,” said Vinyl, deflating slightly. “I, um, don’t think anyone really cares about that one.”

“Hang on a moment, let’s rewind,” said Octavia. “You say that you were Destroyer – if that was the case, then why didn’t you take the opportunity to kill us? For that matter, why did you put on that disguise in the first place?”

Baron von Darkhoof laughed. It was a deep laugh, echoing throughout the room loudly. “Why – why would I want to do that?” he asked between laughs. “After my attempt at forcibly shipping you two failed, I did the smart thing – I saw that revenge was a game for idiots, and so I focused on my own plans. And look where it got me – I managed to steal money from a terrorist organisation without getting found out, set them up to get caught and profited from that, and then used all of that money to set all of this up! The only mistake I made was getting greedy and trying to kill you two after that casino business – and even then, all that happened was that I got some injuries.

“But why didn’t I simply stick with COBRA, and reap the rewards from there, I see you asking?” Baron von Darkhoof continued.

“Hmm?” Octavia asked, forcing her gaze from Vinyl’s lips and to Baron von Darkhoof, still dramatically soliloquising from the catwalk. “Oh, um, yes! That thing! Absolutely!”

“You see, I’ve learned the benefit of foresight,” continued Baron von Darkhoof, barely registering Octavia’s response. “Anypony could see that COBRA were going to get caught by CHIELD sooner or later – and even if they weren’t, anarchy is not what I desire. What I desire is the power which is mine by birthright, and so I joined them solely to leech off their resources. What would be an endgoal for another pony is a mere stepping stone in the master plan of Baron von Darkhoof! And look where it’s gotten me!”

“An overacting leader who uses everypony below him?” Vinyl asked.

“Hey!” snapped Baron von Darkhoof. “I love all of my subordinates greatly and equally!”

===============================

EARLIER THAT DAY

“I don’t care for Neon Lights,” said Baron von Darkhoof to himself, apropos of nothing.

===============================

“The correct answer to my question was that it has lead me to this undefeatable plan,” said Baron von Darkhoof, lightly stepping off from the catwalk and gliding down to the floor as he spoke. “What do I care if you two attack me right now? You can’t stop the bombs from exploding – I doubt you have the skills to disarm all eight of them – and if you stop them from being sent to each city the runes are enchanted to send them to, you’ll just get caught in the explosion yourselves, since these bombs are each powerful enough to destroy this entire island! Truly, I am the greatest of all your foes! Blah blah blah, I’m super great, blah blah blah…”

Octavia had stopped focusing on Baron von Darkhoof, and was trying to think of a way out of the situation. Although she would never admit it to Baron von Darkhoof, he was right – the previous time Vinyl and Octavia had disarmed a bomb, it had been through a stroke of luck, so it certainly wasn’t something she wanted to try again.

What choices were there? If she and Vinyl could somehow contact Spyglass, he could have possibly sent in some more experienced CHIELD agents to take care of the bombs, but Darkhoof would just send the bombs through beforehoof. And besides, she and Vinyl would have to find some way to avoid all of the guards in the Omega Zone whilst waiting, so it was hardly foolproof. Alternatively, could she and Vinyl force Baron von Darkhoof to disarm the bombs himself? It might be worth a shot, but he was just as likely to have not built in a disarming mechanism to them. He certainly wouldn’t have seen the need for one.

Octavia didn’t want Darkhoof’s plan to succeed, naturally, so if there was a way to disable the teleportation circles, that would be enough. The problem, of course, was what Darkhoof had said – each bomb was powerful enough to destroy the island on its own, preventing Vinyl and Octavia from escaping the blast. Disabling the teleportation circles would almost be a perfect solution, if it weren’t for –

Octavia’s train of thought suddenly stopped. A new thought had occurred to her, and it was a dangerous one at that. “Vinyl,” she said quietly.

“Yeah?” asked the unicorn. Darkhoof was still ranting on in the background, not having noticed that his audience was no longer a captive one.

“I’ve got an idea,” began Octavia, “of how we can stop Darkhoof.” She took a breath, preparing herself. “Fire one of the bolts from Serpent Superior’s crossbow to one of the bombs.”

“You reckon that’ll disarm it?” Vinyl asked, scratching her head in confusion.

“No,” said Octavia. “The opposite, in fact. It should cause it to detonate, causing a chain reaction with the rest of the bombs. The entire island and the bombs will all be destroyed, preventing Baron von Darkhoof from completing his plan.”

“Cool,” said Vinyl. She paused. “You, uh, know that my magic isn’t strong enough to cast the time travel spell and get us out of this, right?”

“Yes,” said Octavia.

“Oh. Right,” said Vinyl. She fidgeted for a moment before adding, “Um –”

“I’m not going to ask you to do anything you don’t want to do,” said Octavia. She glanced at Baron von Darkhoof confirming that he was still ranting and raving, rather than paying attention to the two mares. “And I am open to alternative suggestions. But if you have none, let me ask you this: is it worth letting many innocent, unsuspecting ponies die to save our own skins?”

“Hmm,” said Vinyl, thinking it over. “No. No, not really, not when you put it like that.” She grinned unexpectedly. “Though I’ve gotta say, I kinda did think we’d make it through all this.”

“Let me guess,” said Octavia, unable to hide a smile of her own, “because we’re both badasses who take no prisoners, or something along those lines?”

“Nope!” said Vinyl. “Because we met those cool future versions of ourselves! What’s up with that?”

Octavia shrugged. “Who knows with time travel? Perhaps they were from some point in which our timeline split, and they were never sent to the Omega Zone. Or perhaps they refused to come here, and the Omega Zone incident was stopped by CHIELD agents.”

“Heh. I guess,” said Vinyl. She levitated Serpent Superior’s crossbow from her leg and gave it a twirl in mid-air. “You ready?” she asked.

“Not really, no,” Octavia said. “But being with you makes me feel as though I am.”

“Oh, you!” said Vinyl. “You know exactly what to say to get my heart all a-flutter.” She turned to Baron von Darkhoof, who hadn’t noticed any of the discussion. “Hay, Darkhoof!” Vinyl shouted. “Got some bad news for you, buddy – we’ve worked out a way to stop your stupid plan!” She pointed the crossbow at the nearest bomb. “Got any last words?”

That got Baron von Darkhoof’s attention, and snapped him out of his self-absorbed soliloquy. It took him a moment to realise what Vinyl was doing. “Ha!” he scoffed. “Please – trying to get me to surrender with a bluff like that won’t work,” he said. “I know you two well enough to know that you won’t really fire it.”

Vinyl’s grin widened. “Look at this idiot, Octavia,” she said, “he doesn’t know us at all.” She telekinetically squeezed the trigger of the crossbow, simultaneously grabbing Octavia and pulling her closer. “Come here, you –”

There was a bright white flash.

THE END

Author's Note

Well, that's that then.

When I first started writing this "series" (quotes because it was originally intended to be a one-off story) I certainly didn't think I would end it this way. It was a weird choice to make, but I prefer it this way to the original planned ending (Vinyl and Octavia stop Baron von Darkhoof and then go on to become CHIELD agents - yeah, that's totally a definitive way to end the series).

That being said, whilst Vinyl and Octavia are definitely and absolutely dead, and this has been intended to be the final story for a while now, I'm not going to make any promises. I have no intention of continuing the series at time of writing, but who knows what the future will bring? Don't get your hopes up if you are expecting a sequel, but at the same time, don't completely dismiss the idea. (And besides, what sort of author would I be if I didn't have an out already planned for bringing Vinyl and Octavia back...?)

It's been a fun journey. Thanks to everyone who upvoted, downvoted, favourited, or best of all, commented on any of these stories. I hope you've enjoyed reading these as much as I have writing them.