To Mend A Broken Star

Chapters

Prologue- Hawk of Swords
Start of Arc I: Chapter I- Liquid Fire
Chapter II- Hoofprints
Chapter III- Crashing Down
Chapter IV- Backswing
Chapter VI- 'Towelettes?'
Chapter VII- Crematorium
Chapter VIII- Inexplicable Sense
Chapter IX- The First Move
Chapter X- 'What Won't You Break?'
Chapter XI- A World Frozen in Time
Chapter XII- Gears, Halting
Chapter XIII- Flashbang
Chapter XIV- Apocalyptic Accomplices
Chapter XV- Creeping Cold
End of Arc I: Chapter XVI- Protocol
Start of Arc II: Chapter XVII- Bereft of Choice
Chapter XVIII- Assailants
Chapter XIX- Embers of Red
Chapter XX- Brief Respite
Chapter XXII- Charged Clouds
Chapter XXIII- Fortress of Doors
Chapter XXIV- Whirlwinds of Turmoil
Chapter XXV- Threads Long Lost
Chapter XXVI- Quiet Contemplation
Chapter XXVII- Inner Kyoma
Chapter XXVIII- Gleaming Silver
Chapter XXIX- Respite, Broken
Chapter XXX- Diving Into Cold
End of Arc II: Chapter XXXI- The Lights Are On...
Start of Arc III: Chapter XXXII- ... But the Darkness is Home
Chapter XXXIII- Cold Enclosure
Chapter V- 'Diplomacy?'
Chapter XXI- Shifting Shadows

Prologue- Hawk of Swords

Clouds lazily drifted above an expansive grass-covered plain on a lukewarm night, giving spots of darkest grey that blemished a deep navy sky. A full moon hung at its apex, illuminating the area with rays of silver. A lone pegasus with wings as large as her entire body flew over the plain; it was a mare sporting a lilac coat, and a collar with a box-shaped front and a golden bell-like object adorning her neck. A long, untamed blond mane whipped between her wings and across her back as she flew, briefly brushing up against a sword-and-shield sigil that sat upon her hips, also golden in color.

Eyes as green as grass were poised on the ground, and her large wings—which were sporting several long, translucent blades of viridian in place of primary feathers—flapped with all the grace of a swan. Her head darted this way and that, though she never took the time to look into the sky even once. She'd been flying over these plains all night, yet nothing out of the ordinary stuck out at her. The plains sloped into gently cresting hillsides far to the south, before leveling out in a plateau leading to far-off mountain ranges capped with the tell-tale signs of a recent snowstorm. If she were to go north, she'd catch sight of a tall shadow, ending in a sharp point that gleamed in the moon's light. The only other thing to really note was that the fields were as green as could be, and some bulky form hovering off in the distance whose features she really couldn't glean all that well.

She'd scoured north first, all on her lonesome. Her wings really helped her to cross the distance, and there were times she kept them perfectly still just to ride the wind and cross over a dozen extra miles of plain. When she found nothing, she went south, though she stayed from the mountain ranges. Then east, where a small section of forest sat. And, finally, westward as the moon started to descend onto the horizon.

Her mind started to wander. She closed her eyes and started to fly in circles, as a mare's voice filled her thoughts. "Listen, Private Sora, we're gonna boot your little ass out in the Crested Plains for a couple of weeks. Standard patrol, watch for shit that's off, yadda yadda," the pony said. The pegasus snorted at the contempt dripping from that tone, but still her mind continued to go astray. "I don't know what else to tell you, but the higher-ups have been hearing some strange goings-on and all that. Honestly, I don't know what to look for myself."

The pegasus opened and then rolled her eyes, returning to her patrol. "Don't know what to look for, yeah right," she muttered in disdain, her tone soft yet laced in utter rage. "Just punt me here because you couldn't be bothered, why don't you..." Her eyes gravitated to the lone object flying in the distance, narrowing balefully at it. "At least the Plains have free food." Needless to say, her brow furrowed when a shriek from below managed to hit her ears as she was continuing her patrol over a section of plains that sat near the forest. A static hum sounded from her left ear, which had a section of flesh bitten out of it at some point. A small device was tacked to it, clamped firmly on the base with a small microphone angled on a little arm just right so it could catch her voice when she spoke.

A masculine voice that had a prominent pitch in tone rang out from this device, static-filled at first before clearing up. She had to wait for whoever was on the other end to stop sounding garbled first. "Sora, what's your status?" the voice asked after several failed attempts to get through resulted in radio silence.

The mare lifted a hoof to the device and lightly pressed onto it. She spoke in a soft voice, calm and reserved, as she answered the pony on the other end of the device's communications link, "Haven't seen anything yet, Yukito. The plains are—" Words died in her throat as she caught several splashes of black blemishing the green below, all closing in around a splash of silver and grey-teal that tried to move between the black splotches, only to be cut off at every turn. Flashes of light blinked in and out around the grey-teal form, only narrowing the form's chances of escape that much more, and this was followed quickly by another pained, frantic scream.

Well, it looked like she'd found herself a needle in the haystack. At least there was something to break the monotony tonight, and it looked interesting as well, if the flashes of light were any indicator. "Hold that thought, because I do believe I have just found something."

"Very well. Let me know what you find as soon as you are able, Sora," the voice replied before a click came from the device. Sora's hoof dropped, eyes zeroing in on the scene below. She let the tiniest smirk cross her face as she noticed that not one of the figures below had taken the time to look up yet; the black forms were too enamored with their prey, who in turn was still trying desperately to get away from them.

Her wings snapped shut, her body shifted until her muzzle pointed downward, and she dropped down with the grace of a missile. Wind rushed in her ears, between her blades, through her mane and it repeatedly ruffled her feathers as she descended with reckless abandon. The moonlight glistened off her blades and long mane, making her gleam as though she bathed in silver—silver that was just moments away from impacting upon the ground.

Then something strange happened. One of the black forms looked up and shrieked. The others did likewise, and they all spread out from the lone speck of silver—bizarre, given that said lone speck was their prey only moments ago. "The Hawk of Swords has come! The Hawk of Swords has come!" the figures screeched in masculine voices as they left the immediate area either running in various directions or vanishing in flashes of light.

Sora spread her wings and angled herself with front hooves outstretching, and within seconds she landed on the ground with a thud that rocked her body and almost caused her to faceplant. She was quick to regain her senses and composure though, and righted herself just in time with one more flap of her wings. A whimpering reached her ears, and she turned to the source that trembled no more than five feet away.

Green eyes widened as they met with odd irises sporting every color of the rainbow; technicolor eyes that framed a haggard grey-teal face, further accentuated by a messy, long and pale pastel-blue mane that looked more silver in the moonlight. These unusual, prismic eyes held shrunken pupils that were trained on her; the pony's tail rested between the hinds, long enough to curl around both back hooves. "Y-you…" Sora spluttered, finding herself staring at a beaten-up, emaciated unicorn mare with a broken horn who was panting with evident exertion, and one who had seen far better days. A ball of flame engulfing a golden five-pointed star split into glass-like fragments was plastered on her hip, the flames themselves bright red with orange and blue highlights.

The mare in question balked before she sank to her front knees, still trembling with strain and only the barest hint of restraint. "I-I know… y-you…I-I r-remember... you t-took my p-power…" she stammered, and for a second Sora could've sworn a lone torn ear rose from her head before folding sharply back.

Sora stepped forward hesitantly, frowning when the mare made no move to retreat, even though she was now free to do so. "Starbreaker… how are you still alive?" she asked in a disbelieving voice, taking another step forward.

Starbreaker shook and let out a hiss, and Sora paused as her broken horn crackled to life with a blood crimson aura. "What good… is power… if I can't use it?!" she cried with narrowing eyes, and as if to punctuate her point, the aura violently popped before it died altogether.

"Still as unhinged as the last time I ran into her. But entirely powerless now, and somehow still alive and mobile. I'm not sure if this is a curse, or a blessing," Sora thought, taking a few seconds to look Starbreaker over with a critical eye. She took another step after that, and another, this time without pause as the broken horn flared to life once again.

"I'll… I'll annihilate you!" Starbreaker seethed, and without warning she surged towards Sora in a stumbling, yet frantic gallop fueled by such speed she was a blur to the untrained eye. Sora simply reared up on her back legs and waited until her adversary was within reach—which took mere seconds—before thrusting her front hooves into her opponent's barrel, effortlessly knocking the wounded mare back. Despite the shove that sent her skidding with enough force to dig furrows in the soil, Starbreaker simply charged again with an angry cry, only to be grappled by her neck by two forelegs and sent onto the ground flat on her back in one go.

Sora immediately closed in after her, making sure to position herself between Starbreaker's rear legs whilst sitting on her haunches, and lifted one hoof while she grappled her neck with the other hoof. Though after some seconds, she shifted it to pin her opponent by her barrel, if only to avoid choking her on the spot. She turned to look Starbreaker in the eye, and grimaced upon noticing that she completely lacked a left ear, while her right was horizontally ripped in half at some point. "Please stop," she pleaded, only to get smacked across the face by a grey-teal hoof in response.

Starbreaker attempted to slap Sora again, only for bladed wings to snap open, fold forward, and pin her forehooves down with enough force to keep them to the ground and enough space to avoid slicing them. She stared up at Sora, shuddering as her breaths turned a little harried and shallow, front legs locking thanks to the threat of amputation. "Why… won't you… die already?" she hissed, though in a frightened tone that made the utterance come out sounding more like a plea of mercy.

Sora shook her head, looking at Starbreaker with something akin to pity sparkling in her eyes. Her free hoof lifted up to the device on her ear before pressing lightly. "Yukito, send a squad over," she stated.

Starbreaker's trembling started anew. "A-a squad?!" she squawked.

"A squad? What for?" the voice from the device asked.

"I have just found and subdued a wounded Starbreaker—her horn's broken, and she cannot use spells. Make sure the squad's got at least a doctor with them," Sora replied, nodding towards Starbreaker as she spoke.

"S-Starbreaker!? A-as in, the s-same Starbreaker who t-tried to destroy th-the world?! Sh-she's alive?!" the voice from the device snapped in a genuinely surprised tone. "H-how is that even possible!?"

"I haven't the foggiest, Yukito. But once she's in custody, she'll be mine to deal with." Hearing that come from Sora's mouth made Starbreaker light up her broken horn, trying in vain to cast a spell before the aura could die down. She had little success. "Mine alone."

"Considering you were the one to stop her, I suppose I cannot fault you there," the voice from the device replied, producing an audible sigh afterwards. "Very well. I'll send the squad and a few medics over. Do not stray from Starbreaker until they arrive. Keep her detained by whatever means necessary."

"Affirmative," Sora stated tersely, and as soon as she heard a click her hoof strayed from the small device and descended until it met with Starbreaker's cheek. "You're in good hooves. You'll be fine."

"F-fine?!" Starbreaker snapped, eyes narrowing to slits as her breathing became frantic.

Sora nodded again. She craned her neck to glance at her hind quarters when she felt the tell-tale shifting of rear legs that weren't her own. Grey-teal hooves spread wide for some reason, before they lifted and tried to kick at her with the skill of a drunkard who didn't know what they were doing.

"Get off of me!" Starbreaker yelled at the top of her lungs, trying desperately to find purchase.

This time, Sora shook her head. "No can do," she replied in a flat tone. She shifted her hind quarters forward to lessen the chance that one of Starbreaker's back hooves could kick her, and their stomachs lightly brushed up against one another.

In desperation, Starbreaker turned to Sora's too-close-for-comfort hoof and bit down on it like a rabid animal. Sora pulled it back before letting it rest just out of reach. "Get. Off. Of. Me," Starbreaker hissed, turning back to Sora with another failed attempt at a spell coming from her horn.

Sora glanced up when the sounds of multiple hooves hitting grass reached her ears, and she frowned as four of the black figures from before decided to show up again. Under the bright light of the moon, she saw that they were wearing black clothes from head to hoof, covering up any and all features she could have otherwise used to identify them with. "The Hawk's not attacking? Why's she busying herself with that waste of oxygen over there?" one asked.

Another turned to the first and shrugged. "Oh well, you know what they say—two birds, one stone," they replied with a snicker that caused Sora to tense and Starbreaker to gasp sharply.

Several auras flared to life above their heads and her resting hoof rose up to the collar on her neck before pressing onto a button that sat upon its bell-like structure, producing a soft click. "Shield, invert," Sora whispered, just audible enough for Starbreaker to hear. The entire collar gave off a green glow, flaring to life as if it were a horn in its own right while the bell started to rattle and clang violently.

Blasts of power darted from the figures' forms and raced towards the two, only to be blocked and then ricocheted to their owners by a dome of light that suddenly formed around them. Starbreaker watched with widening eyes as the cloaked beings suffered various unpleasant effects due to having their own spells sent straight back on them.

One was burnt to a crisp, and fell to the ground in a heap of ash. Another found themself frozen solid before breaking into several fragments, which all stuck to the ground like warm tongues on frosty metal poles. A third got sliced with blades that had formed from their spell, and for a few seconds blood did not seep until the volley ended, after which they went crumpling to the ground in a heap. As for the last one, they wound up with a cavalcade of flowers spontaneously sprouting from their body like they had become an impromptu plant pot.

Sora dropped her hoof again and turned to look at Starbreaker. She sighed and lifted her free hoof again before trying for the device on her ear. "Change in plans, Yukito. I'm flying her to the base myself," she stated.

"And why's that?" the voice on the other end asked before producing an irritated snort.

"Starbreaker's attracted some strange cloaked ponies. Our current location isn't safe," Sora replied.

"I see. Some medics are on standby, so be sure to see them when you arrive with your charge."

"Can do," Sora replied before dropping her hoof when another click reached her ears. "Listen, Starbreaker, I'm going to ask something very odd of you."

Starbreaker turned to Sora with a scowl on her face. "What?" she hissed.

"Hang on for all it's worth," Sora replied, shifting both of her forelegs to get them under Starbreaker before she grappled her by the withers. Her wings retracted from her adversary's front hooves prior to snapping open and madly flapping, slashing at the ground even as she rose up on her back legs with said adversary being dragged along. "We'll continue our quibble later."

Starbreaker looked towards the cloaked ponies—or, rather, what was left of them. "Fine," she conceded. Her forehooves shifted before they embraced Sora by her midsection, and she was careful to avoid straying too close to the flapping wings. "But I'll still burn you down one of these days."

Sora nodded, rolled her eyes and took to the air, although it was much more awkward thanks to her new charge and the way they were holding each other for dear life. The two lazily ascended into the air, going higher and higher until they reached the lowest-hanging clouds, and for a good hour they flew away from the plain like that. It was about another half-hour after that before Sora saw a dark form flying in the distance, accompanied by the tell-tale noise of powerful flaps and roaring engines. "Bingo," she mused to herself, "Just what I was looking for."

"An airship?" Starbreaker guessed, having also turned to look at the anomaly as soon as she heard the noises it produced.

"Exactly," Sora replied, her sights now set on the distant object. She angled herself slightly, being careful to not let her charge slip in the slightest, before flying to it to investigate. Getting closer, the two found that 'airship' didn't do the object justice; it was more along the lines of 'military plane mixed with space shuttle.'

It was a great greenish-grey thing, with three components which consisted of the hull and the wings. The wings moved like those of Sora's due to ball-like joints, albeit less flexibly and much more forcefully. The hull however had an opened flap at the back, loaded with ponies who clung tightly to the metal to avoid falling out.

One of the ponies within started squawking when she caught sight of the duo. "Sora's landing, colts! Get outta her way!" she shrieked, and instantly the other ponies backpedaled into the hull so fast Sora could've sworn she'd just witnessed an illusion break. Within minutes, Sora and Starbreaker found themselves in the hull of the vessel, and were surrounded on all sides by uniform-wearing ponies who grimaced as the two awkwardly landed on their rear hooves. Starbreaker noted with a shiver that the uniforms were almost identical, with almost all of the ponies sporting pants and plated shirts which hid most of their features.

Silence held, though only after the flap of the ship slammed shut with enough force to send the still-embracing mares to the floor. They exchanged looks and blushed a bit before disentangling themselves from each other's forelegs and stood up on all fours, looking around thereafter to meet with silent faces regarding them with curiosity and worry. Some looked at Starbreaker with nothing short of contempt and derision, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that her horn was broken and out of commission. Starbreaker herself noted that, out of all of them, Sora was the shortest of the entire lot—even she herself stood at least an inch taller than the pegasus in question.

Finally, a white-pelted, young unicorn mare with bright orange eyes who wore an armor-plated uniform spoke up, stepping towards the two and lashing her purple tail. "Sora, what the hell are you doing?" she hissed.

"Detaining this pony," Sora replied flatly. She could've sworn this pony had an air of familiarity about her.

The white-pelted mare's eyes narrowed, and she considered Starbreaker very carefully. "Is this your idea of detaining a highly dangerous mare?" she scoffed.

Sora turned to her and snorted. "Yes—strictly because of circumstance," she answered flatly.

The unicorn assumed a tight frown. "That's not detaining her. That was dancing with her like she was a ragdoll and then landing whilst expecting her to stay put after."

Sora's eyes narrowed slightly. Her tail twitched a bit, and so did her wings. "Have you even looked at said dangerous mare yet?" she asked in a no-nonsense tone which still held its softness of volume, one as leveled and refined as that of the mare she addressed.

"Why shouldn't I? She's standing right there," the unicorn scoffed, raising a hoof to gesture to Starbreaker with it.

Sora's wings twitched again and a tight frown formed on her face. "Have you taken into account Starbreaker's physical condition yet? Or her lack of a functioning horn?" she retorted, her tone slightly miffed.

The unicorn snorted derisively. "Why should I? Such a criminal with a power of apocalyptic proportions should be sent to the front range of the nearest firing squad, pronto." Murmurs immediately erupted from the other ponies, and Sora's face hardened as she heard Starbreaker gulp loudly. "Sham would be ashamed of you, were she with us presently. She'd probably do what you couldn't," the unicorn added, and that feeling of familiarity intensified for Sora, who narrowed her glare a teensy bit. Another scanning of the posture, the coat and tail, and the uniform merely reaffirmed that familiarity—to, what Sora found, was a sickening degree.

"Great, I've run into this whorse—oho, has Sham told me a loooot about you. And she's throwing out unfounded gibberish. Must be in heat again," Sora thought, keeping most of her attention focused on the lone unicorn that had the gall to outright ignore Starbreaker's condition altogether. "Just drop it," she stated in a simple, matter-of-fact tone that managed to silence the murmurs at once.

The unicorn flinched, but she went forward instead of back. "What was that?" she hissed, her face setting into a scowl.

"Just. Drop. It," Sora repeated, making sure to enunciate her words in a firm, level voice. "Starbreaker is mine to deal with. Mine, and mine alone."

"Oh, really?" the unicorn snorted, a hint of a smirk crossing her muzzle as she rolled her eyes.

Sora nodded, and whirled around to gaze at every assembled face before stopping when she saw the unicorn again after going full circle. "Were any of you trying to stop Starbreaker during her little rampage?" As soon as the question left her mouth, silence held the vessel, and within her immediate and peripheral sight, Sora saw half of the gathered ponies flinch backward. "Well?" Still nopony answered, not until after a few minutes passed.

Finally, somepony answered, although in a series of mocking and chilling laughs, causing Sora to turn to the source as soon as she whirled around to glance at everypony else that was present. "I haven't seen you ponies before," Starbreaker spat before pausing to laugh again, turning to Sora with a bit of a grin on her face. Then she turned to the white unicorn and added, "And where were you? I don't think I've tried burning you to ashes yet."

Sora shook her head and turned to the white mare. "Step back. Now." She waited until the mare complied before she turned to Starbreaker. She firmly added, "And you won't burn anything under my watch."

Starbreaker growled, but did nothing more than stare at the white mare with her grin taking on a manic appearance. The mare in question scowled and turned away, but not before lifting a hoof and gesturing to her eyes with it prior to turning it in Sora's direction and back again. Sora responded by spreading a wing and pointed the blades at the mare in kind before folding it shut against her side.

Author's Note

Yes, Starbo has edgy points. I only ponified her, and sadly, I cannot change the edge. I can only cull it with character development. Same applies to Sora.

Don't kill me. I've done worse. Also, thanks to Cyberneticpony for pre-reading and editing. :3

Start of Arc I: Chapter I- Liquid Fire

The ride was long and grueling, if only because the other ponies kept shooting wary glances Sora's way, some snide and others of loathing and contempt. Starbreaker stayed close to her, sneering at the others with a manic grin and letting off some chilling laughs every so often. Sora sighed and carefully draped a wing over her charge, only to garner a wide-eyed expression in return. "Why must you cradle me with your wing? I'm not a foal," Starbreaker grumbled.

Sora kept a neutral expression as she turned to her charge. "To keep the other ponies off of your tail," she replied.

At that, Starbreaker rose a brow. "'Off my tail?' Whatever do you mean by that?" she queried in a sincere voice.

Sora groaned and narrowed her eyes slightly. "At least half of these ponies would jump you and slice your head off, if given the chance," she replied. She turned to the white unicorn, who shot a glare at the two for all it was worth. "Particularly that one," she added with a snort.

Starbreaker turned to the white unicorn and stuck her tongue out in that direction, prior to blowing a raspberry at her for good measure. This only caused the unicorn to scowl in response. "When I get my front hooves on you, you'll be on your knees begging for mercy!" she cried.

Starbreaker snorted and retracted her tongue before turning back to Sora. "Where are we going?" she queried.

Sora turned away, silent for a few seconds. Then she turned back to her charge and her wing slumped a bit. "To the base," she answered tersely.

"The base?" Starbreaker pressed, her grin at last fading. "Is that… where your squad is?"

Sora nodded. "Affirmative," she answered in a low voice. A red-pelted stallion with purple eyes trotted up to the two, and at this Sora turned to him and pressed her wing closer to Starbreaker's body. "What do you need?" she asked.

The stallion smiled at Sora, and though it seemed sweet it came with a malicious spark in his eyes. "Why're you makin' nice with that damned psychopath?" he asked, his tone mostly sincere but packing an angry note that was impossible to miss. "Hell, you're cuddling her right now with your wing!"

Neither of the stallion's points, Sora could hope to deny. "What of it? Do you have a problem?" she asked in a flat voice.

The stallion's smirk widened, and the two mares caught sight of glinting teeth. He turned to the others and gestured to Sora with a hoof. "Hey, fellas, we got a softy here!" he announced, causing everypony else to turn to the duo and burst out into laughter.

Sora's brow twitched, and so did an eye. Her forehooves trembled, and one pulled back before being stopped by another that wasn't hers. Instantly her eyes widened and she turned to Starbreaker, who looked back with the manic grin once more forming on her face. "What are…"

Starbreaker turned to the stallion, ignoring Sora's half-spoken remark. "Softy, you say? She was anything but," she scoffed.

The stallion turned to her, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second before narrowing immediately after. "And how do you know that, Herald of the Crimson Light?" he asked, this time with an amused note in his voice. He knelt forward and crept closer until his muzzle was inches from Starbreaker's. His voice dropped to a whisper as he asked, "Did you fool around with her?"

Starbreaker responded by angling her broken horn to his face and ramming forward, her grin widening as she felt flesh puncture, blood seeping and trickling all the way to her forehead and bridge, before pulling back and turning to stare at the foolish pony. A series of bleeding small cuts, no bigger than the width of a plastic knife, dotted the area between his upper lip and nostrils.

He stared back at her with wide eyes and clenched teeth, still and silent as a grave. Starbreaker returned the expression with her smile, which now seemed more ferocious thanks to the fresh blood adorning her face. Her technicolor eyes narrowed to slits, and all he could see of them were a purplish-crimson. "I may have tried to destroy the world once, but that does not mean I don't know certain adversaries well enough," she spat scathingly.

"You're just a weakling," Starbreaker went on, grinning maniacally as the stallion winced and trembled with each word she spoke, "and weaklings go on picking fights they cannot win. I was like you, before I'd been stopped from torching everything." He could see pure, unfiltered malice swimming in her narrowed eyes, which bore deep into his soul the longer he stared. He felt compelled, strongly, to look away, yet that malice had paralyzed him onto the spot.

Starbreaker continued, her bloodied smile widening and her voice growing colder and crueler with each and every word she uttered, "Only one pony has withstood my fires; nay, she cleaved through them without getting torched once—" Here, she gestured to Sora with a hoof without breaking eye contact, "—and you couldn't even hold up so much as a strand of mane to that, when everypony else I have ran into turned to nothing but ash. I don't think you'd stand in my flames for one second without screaming for dear life."

The stallion stood up and opened his mouth before he screamed as shrilly as a filly, and immediately turned tail and galloped to the other ponies for safety, but they backed away from him and huddled close to the walls. A pregnant silence fell, and all eyes were on Starbreaker at that moment. She kept her eyes on the now-wounded pony, and as if to warn him, her horn flared to life in stark crimson. The aura held for several seconds before violently popping and dying, causing the other ponies who kept their distance to flinch back with frantic whimpers.

But Sora noticed something about Starbreaker as her horn lit up and held the aura again. Sweat started to bead along her charge's brow as orange and blue fire started to swirl around the jagged stump, her grin began violently warbling and her breathing turned shallow again as the blood on her face sizzled and dried under the flames. Tails bristled, and all eyes widened as they fell onto Sora, who merely sat there and stared back. Everypony, even the unicorn who'd scrutinized her earlier, silently begged her to do something by mouthing frantic commands, yet she may as well have been a statue.

Sora winced as the fire continued to build, warping unsteadily as its light grew and took on a crimson hue that cast itself about the hull. It brightened drastically, shrouding her charge's head in a hellish light befitting her moniker, all the while fire continued to dance. Sora's blades twitched, but she still made no move to stop the disconcerting display. How Starbreaker was able to gather this much power with a broken horn was beyond her. It took two minutes for it to stop growing, in turn heating up the hull to levels that made everypony break out into a sweat, and the glow died with a vicious pop and no other ill effects.

Starbreaker slumped and leaned onto her adversary, trembling as a result of the evident strain whilst motes of ember and ash danced around and faded from existence. Upon seeing this, the other ponies uneasily laughed as though they'd heard a bad joke from a long-time friend. "S-Sora was right, colts," one of them piped up with a distinct quiver in his tone. "The horn don't work!"

Sora's nose wrinkled slightly as the others burst out into unified laughter that bordered on being downright hysterical. She made no move to stand, or flex her wings, or do anything else even remotely of the sort. Instead, she silently let Starbreaker rest her head on her shoulder, and barely suppressed a sigh as soon as the vessel became quiet once more.

Nopony else dared to confront them for the rest of the ride, during which Sora simply lost track of time and took to minding her own business. Her eyelids started feeling heavier with every passing minute, and she opened her mouth to yawn widely. She blinked drowsily, and her ears twitched as she heard Starbreaker mumble incoherently. "Must've fallen asleep. Can't blame her," she thought, averting her gaze to find that her charge had indeed closed her eyes and let her breathing take a slow and rhythmic pattern.

Time dragged on, and Sora had just nestled her head between her forelegs when the vessel suddenly shook like it was hit with a boulder. She jerked up and glanced around before sighing as the flap at the back opened, followed immediately by the roar of the engines dying down altogether, giving way to a silence that was short-lived.

Hoofsteps echoed all around as the other ponies trotted to the now-opened backside, their steps harried and their paces brisk. The stallion who had a small portion of his face mutilated paused to kick Starbreaker right under her tail, garnering a strangled yelp as she jolted awake from the assault. "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?" he taunted, trotting away and laughing before Sora could even turn to glare at him.

Sora ignored him and instead turned to her charge. "Did he hurt you?" she queried.

Starbreaker took a few seconds to recover from the shock of effectively being kicked in the nethers before shaking her head. "Just… was never touched there," she replied in a soft voice, her lone ear folding back as a blush spread on her face. She turned to Sora with narrowed eyes and asked, "Can I burn him later?"

Sora donned a small smile. "That's assuming I don't slice his legs off first," she chirped, spreading her wings and standing up. Starbreaker yawned and shook her head as she rose up onto her hooves, flinching a bit when the hairs of her tail touched where she'd been kicked at. "I'm going to check to see if a bruise forms back there later. We got some medics to meet."

Starbreaker nodded and turned to the back of the hull, but she let Sora do likewise and watched as she trotted ahead. She followed once her foe had walked a few paces to the back of the hull, lifting her tail like a flag to avoid agitating her now-aching area any further.

As soon as they disembarked the vessel and found themselves on an expansive runway made of metal, Sora stopped and spread one wing before angling its blades forwards. "Look forward, then up," she commanded. Starbreaker looked ahead and tilted her head up and saw a distant structure that looked as if it was built to reach the sky.

It was crafted like a semi-hollow cube with a dome slapped atop, with a tower erected in its middle to hold it up, and a pole on top of that which jutted out like a lance for good measure. It was entirely steel-grey, and from what she could see of the structure, it was well-built and possibly even bustling with life. Around the whole thing, a circular wall rose up, and seemingly constructed upon it in a slant was what appeared to be a city composed of tall buildings, although they were dwarfed in comparison. "That's the base of the Umbralium Corps," Sora announced, craning her neck to look at her charge. "Hop on my back."

Starbreaker turned back to Sora, a brow raised. "Is it going to be like last time?" she asked warily.

Sora shook her head. "No, because you'll be able to cling to me from behind better. That, and it'll lessen the chances of me cutting you by mistake," she answered.

Starbreaker's brow rose an inch higher. "Are you certain of that?" she pressed, taking a single hesitant step forward.

Sora nodded. "Just hop on," she beckoned. Starbreaker stood still for a few seconds before trotting over as her foe sat on her rump. She tried to climb aboard but found it cumbersome to position herself properly because a bladed wing remained closed, making it nigh-impossible to jostle without accidentally cutting herself in the process.

Starbreaker—after some quick-second attempts that all ended with her face on the pavement, some small lacerations on a back pastern, and a bloody nose—groaned in annoyance. She lifted her head and leveled a glare at Sora. "Your other wing," she mumbled indignantly, raising a hoof to gesture to the anomaly in question.

Sora blinked and turned to her side, only to find that said wing was still closed, dotted with fresh blood to boot. She spread it, and shifted both wings so that they pointed straight outward from her body. Starbreaker nodded and got up, taking a few seconds to rub her now-bleeding snout with a hoof before clambering upon her quarry, and this time she managed to position herself rather snuggly. When the wings flapped after she got settled, she brought her forehooves up to Sora's barrel and held tight, flinching when her adversary stood up shortly afterwards.

After a few more flaps, the two were airborne and ascending fast. Sora made sure to flap as minimally as possible, choosing instead to ride even the smallest updraft that came and went to get closer to the base. Starbreaker looked to her left as she was carried up, seeing vast mountains and forests dot a distant landscape. Turning to the sky past that, she found that the sun was starting to poke out and it cast everything in a bright orange light that gleamed off of the wing-blades like liquid fire.

She watched as the sun continued to rise almost in perfect tandem with Sora's still-climbing altitude. After a few minutes it became too bright for her to look at, and so she turned her attention back to the base. Her eyes widened as she realized that now, it was much closer than before. Sora kept flying, already making a smooth arc over the great wall with such ease that Starbreaker almost found it laughable.

A smile crossed her face, one of manic proportions; though this time it came with an amused, almost joyous sparkle in her eyes. She began to giggle before the sound evolved into a mad cackle, and this went on for a minute before it stopped when her stomach growled with enough force to slightly shake both ends of her body.

Then, Sora spoke up, having felt the rumble on her back. "Hungry, I assume?" she asked.

Starbreaker shrugged, but her stomach growled again. "I need fuel to burn things, so…"

Sora nodded. "Alright. I'll see if I can get you some food," she stated, turning her attention to the small dome-like structure at the top of the hollow cube. Going higher and higher still, hastened by coming and going updrafts, the two flew on for another few minutes until they caught sight of a launch pad big enough to fit three of the winged vessels they rode in on. It protruded out of the dome slightly, with red lights ablaze like a flashing neon sign; Sora angled herself and her wings folded, though they never fully closed as she started to descend down towards the pad rather lazily.

Inching closer and closer, Starbreaker could see that there were some ponies assembled on the pad already, and she pressed her forehooves a little tighter on Sora's barrel as she saw more gleaming blades here and there. "Who are they?" she asked.

"Dunno," Sora replied, eyes narrowing slightly as wind began battering at her face in spite of her slow pace. Getting closer to the pad, she could make out white uniforms and a longcoat of the same color, but their owners' features were a little on the hazy side. She could already spot a silver mane and a pale blue pelt amongst the lot, accompanied by two dots that glinted in the sun's morning rays.

"Sora! I wasn't expecting you to be back already!" the pony with the silver mane called out, sporting a voice distinctly masculine and rather high-pitched in tone. Sora smiled and quickened her descent, outstretching her front hooves as the ponies below immediately took a mile's worth of paces away from the center of the launch pad. Within minutes, she landed smoothly on all four hooves, keeping her wings spread to hold her passenger in place.

A young unicorn stallion with that paradoxically-silver mane, a blue pelt, and the white longcoat trotted to them with small round-rimmed glasses gently bouncing upon the bridge of his muzzle. He smiled fondly at Sora, his baby blue eyes glittering with a mixture of joy and pride. Starbreaker noted there was a scar of some sort on his left cheek, bereft of fur to reveal a suspiciously brown spot where that fur should have been, and that he conspicuously wore a black shirt and pants beneath his longcoat. "For you, this is record time. You'd normally take weeks to get back from a patrol. Did you rush tonight's go-around, perhaps?" he chirped.

Sora used a wing to gesture to the now-distant runways, nodding as she did so. "Went back to the ship to save myself a lot of hassle," she replied. "Oh, and Yukito, before I forget… look who I brought with me."

Yukito's brow rose, and he trotted closer before pausing as Sora simply let her head droop to her barrel so he could see Starbreaker. His smile faded and his eyes went wide upon seeing the dried blood on her face, and he immediately fell silent. He trotted around Sora with his horn glowing a pale blue, using the resulting aura to lower her wing and see Starbreaker's symbol. He gulped loudly. "You weren't kidding. That cutie mark's about sealed it. This is the real deal here," he stated in a tense, low voice.

Sora flapped the wing grappled by the aura to shake it off and make it dissipate. "We'll need to chat about what to do with her, considering she's powerless and all," she responded flatly.

Yukito nodded, briefly turning to the lacerations on Starbreaker's rear pastern. "Well, she is effectively a war criminal…" He sighed and lifted a hoof to adjust his glasses before trotting around to face Sora directly. He waited until she lifted her head up to look at him before he said, "But, as I see it, also a victim."

Sora's brow rose. "Of what?" she queried.

Yukito shook his head rather glumly. "Of both the war… and herself, as it were. I heard your entire quibble with her over the microphone tacked to your ear last night. Frankly, I'm amazed she's still alive and kicking," he replied, turning to one end of the launch pad that was anchored squarely to the dome-like structure. "Let's come inside and further discuss it with the medics."

Sora turned to glance at the other ponies on the launch pad, seeing a few pegasi who still kept their distance. "Those the medics?" she asked.

"No. I just had them on standby, in the event you crash-landed," Yukito replied. He started trotting to the dome structure. "Let's not dally anymore."

Sora nodded and briefly craned her neck as far as she was able to look at Starbreaker. "Any particular preference, food-wise?" she asked.

Starbreaker merely shrugged. "Anything'll do," she answered.

Sora nodded and turned to where Yukito was going before going after him with a slightly-harried pace. She folded her wings as close as she could without cutting into her charge's back legs as she went and the other ponies on the launchpad began to follow after them in brisk trots. As they got closer, they found a wide-open door-like frame leading within, with two ponies stationed on either side, seemingly as guards. One had blue eyes, a matching pelt, and a red mane and the other was pink-bodied with a purple mane and eyes of amber. Both had spread wings which Starbreaker found also sported blades similar to Sora's as they got closer.

The two angled their wings to block Yukito, causing him to stop in his tracks. Sora did likewise, brow furrowing at the two ponies who decided to block the entrance. "What are you doing with that criminal?" the blue-pelted pony asked with eyes set on Starbreaker.

Chapter II- Hoofprints

Sora scoffed at the two guards, eyes narrowing slightly. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it as Yukito beat her to it. "She is being detained," he said in a firm voice.

The two guards exchanged glances, then turned back to Yukito with brows raised. "You sure?" the pink-pelted one queried.

Yukito nodded. "Yes, but her circumstances are… odd. She is in our custody nonetheless, so let us pass…" He lifted a front hoof and gestured to Sora with it. "Or I shall have to involve our Hawk." The guards flinched and lifted their wings out of his way immediately, enabling him to trot inside. Sora went after him, and as she went the two guards shuddered as if she crammed them both into a freezer.

The two ponies—three, counting Starbreaker—found themselves in an expansive, light grey hallway that had glowing blue lines running through the floor, walls and ceiling. At the end was an elevator, which they wasted no time heading towards. Yukito's horn was already glowing when they reached it a little under a minute later, his aura wasting no time in taking hold of a keypad with a built-in screen to one side of the contraption. He hit a quick combination of buttons, seemingly random and yet flawlessly at the same time.

"Hoofprint required," a mechanical voice echoed from the device. He lifted a front hoof up and gently pressed it to the screen, causing green lines to appear onto it and then around the raised limb. "Hoofprint recognized. Access granted," the voice from the device spoke as soon as the green lines dimmed entirely.

The elevator doors opened to reveal what was basically a giant white box with a railing within, and Yukito and Sora stepped inside. It shook before the doors closed behind them, and it slowly descended down thereafter. Yukito turned to Sora with a small frown on his face, silent for a few seconds as they turned to the doors whilst the elevator continued to descend unimpeded. "Perhaps we shouldn't have her tried as a war criminal," he murmured in a tight voice.

Sora turned to him with widening eyes. "Wh-what?" she stammered.

Starbreaker also turned to Yukito, both brows raised to the point they threatened to brush up against the base of her forelock. "You're weird in the head," she stated.

Yukito nodded to Starbreaker, then sighed as he turned back to Sora. "You mentioned cloaked ponies last night, Sora?" he queried.

Sora immediately nodded. "There were a dozen of them when I initially arrived, and only four remained. Those four were… dealt with, to put it lightly," she replied. "The others either ran for the hills, or teleported away. I'm guessing they were all unicorns."

Yukito's face hardened as he turned to Starbreaker. "Were any of those cloaked ponies past acquaintances of yours?" he pressed.

Starbreaker shook her head. "Didn't recognize them at all," she answered.

"They were covered head to hoof in black garments. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of me seeing their features, either," Sora added with a small frown forming on her face. "Let alone Starbreaker, for that matter."

Yukito nodded and his ears folded back. "Listen, Sora… I have a bad feeling about those ponies. And considering they tried to take Starbreaker out of the picture before you arrived, I have reason to believe that they might be part of why she's…" He lifted a hoof and held it next to his head before spinning it in circles.

"Loopy?" Sora guessed, a brow raised.

Yukito nodded again and dropped his hoof. "Ergo, she may not have tried to destroy the world of her own volition. If anything, she seems just a smidgen more sane, now that she's with us," he stated.

Starbreaker lifted a hoof and gestured to Sora with it. "Still burning her one of these days." That comment caused Sora to sigh and roll her eyes before lifting a hoof and spinning it in circles.

"I thought you said you needed fuel," Sora retorted, closing her eyes as she felt her charge flinch.

Yukito's frown deepened as he heard Starbreaker groan in what he could only guess was resignation. "Regardless, we may have a third party—one that may have not only influenced Starbreaker greatly, but may have had a hoof in the Clash of the Sky," he interjected, causing the two mares to look at him with brows still raised.

"... the same Clash I was deployed in two years ago? The same Clash that made me into an ultimate weapon?" Sora questioned in a quiet voice, her eyes widening as she quickly caught on to what Yukito meant.

Yukito nodded again. "Yes. What's even worse is Starbreaker may have been their ultimate weapon; a last resort if you will. They may attempt to kill her again, if only to erase the sole memento of their defeat; a memento that survived when odds weren't in their favor," he stated, his still-pinned ears quivering as he spoke. "And considering she's in our custody as of now, we may have just painted a target right on our cutie marks. I'm not even sure how she survived this long, let alone how she got out of the Clash with all four legs intact."

"... so, you want to protect Starbreaker, because she can't do it herself now…" Sora murmured before trailing off, her own ears folding back at the mere notion. "But we may have signed our own death certificates…"

Yukito nodded for the upteempth time, and glumly at that. "Yes. Which is why I don't want to try Starbreaker as a war criminal. It's a risky proposition, of that I am aware. Instead, we need to guard her—at least until the third party that I suspect to be after her either gives up or is wiped off the face of the planet."

Sora nodded, her frown easing a little. "So... "

Yukito cut her off, "As of now, you have a new operation. And I think you know what it is."

Sora's face hardened a little. "I see."

The elevator stopped with a shake that all three of them felt, and they turned to its doors as they started to slide open with ease. Starbreaker lifted her head up, her lone ear perking to attention as Sora and Yukito began to trot side-by-side. They found themselves in a hallway similar to the last one, except laden with automatically-opening doors on either side that had more ponies in white coats coming and going like bees in a honey-making frenzy. All of these ponies had red crosses on their suits, in addition to hats and a few with masks on their muzzles. Some dragged gurneys behind them, often with a bedraggled patient.

One of the mask-wearing ponies who sported a white pelt with an equally-blanched mane and tail, with grey eyes gleaming in curiosity, took notice of the trio and waved a hoof at them before heading into a room on the left that was about four doors ahead. Not even a few seconds passed before he re-emerged from that same room and gestured them over with a hoof. Sora and Yukito shared glances before trotting over to him, one with a smile budding on his face and the other with a brow raising as they got closer.

He went back into the room, and they briskly followed to find a quaint space with a dresser, a queen-sized bed in place of a gurney, a miniature fridge, a stovetop, a microwave, a waste bin, and a bookshelf in various places. In addition to that, a squat toilet sat in corner of the room, closed off by added walls that had the addition of a showerhead, faucet knobs, and soap bars on smaller alcoves. The door closed behind them, cutting them off from the ongoing bustle outside. The ceiling, walls, and floor glistened with a metallic polish, as did most of the furniture.

Starbreaker glanced around the room, eyes widening as she took in all it had to offer. "Is this…" Words died in her throat as her thoughts halted, and she continued to look about like a foal would to being given a brand new toy which they had no idea on how to operate, albeit one that did not get off her foe's backside. "Is this a patient's room, or a house?"

"Both," a masculine voice she hadn't heard before answered. That utterance caused her to turn to the mask-wearing stallion presently with them. She was certain he grinned under his mask, but if that were the case, then the mask not only hid it well but almost blended in seamlessly with his natural coat. "Yours, specifically," he added nonchalantly, causing Starbreaker's pupils to shrink by a considerable margin.

Sora also turned to the mask-wearing stallion, her eyes likewise widening in addition to a choked squeak coming out of her throat. "B-but isn't s-she—"

The white stallion rose a hoof and waved it dismissively, cutting Sora off with that act alone. As soon as her mouth shut, he replied in a smooth voice, "Yes, being detained, I know. But she's a bit of a special case. This will also be her… cell of sorts." Sora produced another choking sound, as if the oxygen of the very room started trying to strangle her.

Yukito turned to the masked pony, wearing nothing more than a tight-lipped expression as his fellow stallion went on as if oblivious to Sora's croaking, "As such, we need to rehabilitate her, not enact retribution. Influence her to… a more stable set of mind, if you will."

Then, Sora took a glance around the room before her gaze settled back onto the masked pony, eyes still wide as her mind registered the full meaning of his words, and any implications thereof. "And I'll be her bodyguard, right?" she asked in a tight, low voice. "For, at the very least, during the duration of her rehabilitation?"

Yukito turned to Sora and nodded, his lips spreading and curling up into a smile. "Yes. Of course, we need to address—" His grin widened as Starbreaker's stomach gurgled again, loud enough for all three of them to hear. "—another pressing concern first, before the program officially starts," he finished.

Sora's ears twitched. "Food and examination?" she guessed, garnering two nods from Yukito and the masked stallion.

"E-e-examination?" Starbreaker repeated in a voice that all but sounded more like a strangled squeak, her eyes widening to the size of saucers on the spot. When she got a set of three nods, she began to shake and fidget, with her front hooves twiddling across Sora's barrel in a manner that suggested she was debating whether or not to stay or make a run for it.

Sora's wings drooped so low and so fast the blades attached to them clanged on the floor like a collection of wind chimes. It didn't help that her charge was trembling yet again, this time to the point it gave the impression that she wanted out. "It begins," she muttered grudgingly, low enough that Starbreaker could not hear her.

Yukito took in Starbreaker's squirming and sighed. "The examination will be brief; we'll check for broken bones along your ribs and legs and be done with it," he said, yet the utterance only made the sorry bitch release a whine of protest. "We'll have Sora check your legs and ribs, then?" he asked, which immediately got her to stop wriggling on the spot.

"J-just her? W-without watching?" Starbreaker whimpered, her lone ear folding back.

Yukito nodded, and turned to the masked stallion. "Mayhaps we should leave them be, at least for a few minutes," he suggested. "Sora is now Starbreaker's bodyguard, after all. She knows her better than we do." With that, the two stallions trotted out of the room, and the door opened just long enough for them to make their exit. As soon as it closed behind them, the two mares sighed in unison.

"Get off my back so I can get the examination over with," Sora stated, her tone betraying a slight note of annoyance. When Starbreaker hesitated, she added, "I won't prod too much." She felt weight shift upon her back before retracting altogether, accompanied by the sound of four hooves landing on the floor in short order. This was followed by shuffling hooves as her charge half-dragged herself into Sora's immediate line of sight.

The instant Starbreaker stopped moving was the same instant Sora got in very close, lifting a hoof to prod at her charge's legs and ribcage with the scrutiny of a medic and the respecting-of-personal-space of a kitten that wanted to be petted. As she prodded the front left leg, she noticed nothing felt out of place or fractured so she moved on to the ribs on the corresponding side. Yielding the same result, she then moved to the rear left leg and poked it in the pastern to garner a wince.

She stopped when she saw that the pastern in question had lacerations, which had by this point scabbed over. So she moved up that leg and felt for any breaks in bones, of which she found none. "Gonna have to clean the pastern of this one," Sora noted.

Starbreaker craned her neck and nodded. "Want me to turn around, or what?" she queried.

"Not yet. Gotta look under your tail to see if there's bruising or any other damage," Sora answered, her ears folding back as a blush spread on her face. Starbreaker turned away and lifted her tail, shivering as Sora brushed it aside with the probing hoof. A lump formed in her throat and she shuddered as she could have sworn she felt soft exhales of breath back there. Her eyes shut tightly and she grit her teeth before the bizarre feeling of breath assaulting her stopped, made even stranger by the absence of a hoof touching her.

"A slight bruise, but it's nothing major. It should heal in a few days," Sora reported in a low, almost embarrassed tone of voice. Starbreaker let an eye crack open before craning her neck to give Sora an uncertain look.

"Just a bruise?" Starbreaker queried, her voice soft. Sora nodded. She relaxed and let her tail settle back into its proper place before spinning around to allow her adversary to look at her right legs and ribs. Before the prodding hoof could touch her, though, Starbreaker stared Sora dead in the eye with a frown forming on her muzzle. "Can we not speak of what's under my tail ever, ever again?" she groused, the words coming out as more of a growl when her voice briefly rose.

Sora nodded. "Let's not speak of it again," she agreed in a level tone. With that, she set to work checking the remaining limbs with a sort of practiced ease, making sure never to prod too much nor too hard. She did not get to the ribs, however, as she detected a strange bump that jutted out of Starbreaker's right shoulder like something was wedged firmly under her skin. "Did you break your shoulder blade at some point?"

Starbreaker shook her head. "If I did, I'd have felt it by now," she replied sincerely.

Sora frowned. She poked at the odd bump, feeling that it was indeed hard and yet had just enough flexibility to squish like puddy as she pressed against it. Retracting her hoof let the thing reform into a lump. "Did that hurt?"

"Nope. I think it felt… liquidy, tough?" Starbreaker replied, turning to Sora with a slanted brow.

Sora's brow furrowed. "May or may not be a cyst, then. Nothing much I really can do about it—I don't have the tools or medical skills to fix it." She sighed. "Oh well, it seems benign at the moment." With that, she moved onto the ribs and poked them with caution and utmost scrutiny. Her face eased when she found a lack of broken ribs, and she took a few seconds to look at the door.

It was still closed. Sora relaxed a little more and moved on to Starbreaker's rear right leg, turning all of her attention onto it as she began prodding for what would hopefully be the last time that day. Her hoof trailed up and down and sideways upon the limb and she felt another odd bump that jutted out just enough she had to do a double-take simply to confirm it was there. It rested on Starbreaker’s stifle, almost squarely beneath her cutie mark.

Sora applied pressure to the troublesome spot, garnering a yelp and a wince as she felt a tell-tale break. She momentarily retracted and turned left to find Starbreaker sending her a glare. "That hurt!" her foe complained.

"I know," Sora stated flatly. She moved her hoof down the leg, feeling along the gaskin and cannon and hock before finally stopping at the pastern and pulling away. "Got a break in one leg, and to be honest, I am not sure how you're still standing on it. Aside from that, the cuts on your rear left pastern, and the possible cyst, you're good to go," she reported.

Starbreaker slumped a bit, her lone ear folding back. Sora quickly realized that she missed a certain something that would otherwise be presently on Starbreaker's head and cantered over before she stopped when they were neck-to-neck. "Let me see where your left ear was." Starbreaker didn't argue with the command, and lowered her neck before craning it at just the right angle for Sora to start probing again.

What Sora found made her brow furrow once more. What little remained of the once-present ear in question was nothing more than an exposed canal that crusted over with a sickly green, flaky substance. Upon prodding, she got another wince as it almost instantly gushed with fresh fluid as soon as her hoof touched the anomaly. "Well, shit. You got an infection," Sora cursed.

"Meaning…?" Starbreaker trailed off, her frown unseen thanks to the angle at which she let her head hover.

"You're going to be hearing only out of your right ear from here on out, if the medics decide to operate on it. Which is going to be very likely, given how this wound has evidently festered," Sora replied in a grim tone of voice, pulling her hoof away to let Starbreaker retract her head and straighten her neck.

"Do they have artificial things for ears?" Starbreaker asked, turning her head to look at Sora.

Sora returned the look and shook her head. "Aside from hearing aids and metal ears, no," she answered.

"That bad?" Starbreaker pressed, a brow raising.

"That bad," Sora replied with a frown. "Can you hear out of that canal good?"

Starbreaker shook her head. "Haven't been able to in a while. It feels like it's completely filled in."

"Fucking horseapples, now the medics are gonna remove it entirely if they catch wind of this," Sora mentally cursed, but forced herself to do nothing more than outwardly sigh and nod in resignation.

Chapter III- Crashing Down

Sora trotted out into the hall where Yukito and the masked stallion were waiting, and she quickly explained to them what sort of injuries Starbreaker had sustained, broken horn notwithstanding. "I-infected? And she c-can't hear out of it?" Yukito stammered once Sora had finished, his eyes wide and his glasses shifting to sit a little lopsided on his muzzle.

Sora nodded. "It oozes like a damned abscess. Sooner or later, that's gonna need to be fixed," she stated. "But she's not strong enough to handle one surgery, let alone a few consecutive ones handling whatever other problems she has."

The masked stallion nodded. "Yes, she will need at least a few more pounds on her before we can remedy her ailments. We need her alive, and…" He stopped abruptly as something landed in the floor very close by, followed by something breaking and somepony screaming bloody murder. Sora twisted around to the room she left from moments ago, her eyes wide.

"Starbreaker?!" Sora cried, immediately making for the room in a harried gallop. Yukito and the masked pony followed after her as the door opened, wasting not a second to see what was wrong this time.

The trio instantly found Starbreaker on the floor, groaning and clutching her right pastern in her left fetlock. They collectively winced as they looked at the pastern in question, seeing an unnatural bump jutting out from under the fetlock. On top of that, the hoof attached to said pastern split and cracked in three different directions, and in one particular crack that stretched all the way up to meet with flesh, blood was fast welling up.

The masked pony trotted right to Starbreaker and knelt before her, eyes narrowing as he studied the most recent affliction she'd acquired. "How did you manage this?" he asked in as level a voice as he could muster, turning away from the hoof to look at his quarry in the face.

"My… my legs just gave out, and…" Starbreaker squealed as her fetlock connected with the jutting bump in her leg. "Fhaaa…" she hissed, eyes scrunching shut in an instant as pain flared tenfold.

"Gonna take a gander here and assume your atrophy's to blame?" Sora piped up, a hint of worry in her voice. She tried her best to keep a straight face, yet when Starbreaker's eyes snapped open and turned to her in narrow slits, her brow slanted slightly.

"Why I oughta—" Starbreaker stopped short of outright exploding as a blue aura took hold of her body and hefted her effortlessly into the air. She turned to Yukito, finding his horn aglow with the same aura as he used a spell to set her onto the bed belly-side up.

Doing that enabled the group to see very small, very crude scrawlings all across Starbreaker's inner thighs and crotch. Just the sight of it made Yukito blink, turn to Sora, cancel out the glow of his horn with widening eyes, and promptly do a double-take. "Sh-she… ah… what…" he stammered, unable to articulate what he was seeing. Starbreaker took the hint, lifted her tail up to hide her crotch and crossed her rear legs together, though evidently not fast enough.

"Let's… not discuss that," Sora said slowly, turning to Yukito with a frown.

"Who would stamp 'penalized' and 'punishment order #13' on a teat?" the masked stallion queried as he turned to the other two, unaware of a particularly heated and blush-addled glare Starbreaker started sending his way in that moment. "It just seems… off. And not to mention crass beyond all reason. What do they even mean?!"

"Can it!" Starbreaker shouted in a shrill voice, causing the masked pony to turn to her and see her red-faced scowl. She sat up, as if about to lunge, but another blue field grappled her by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the bed with minimal force.

Yukito, horn glowing again, turned to the masked stallion. He gave a heavy, almost tired sigh. "Tsukumi, I don't think it would be particularly wise to… speak of Starbreaker's…" he paused, searching for the right word, "bodily drabbles. If need be, we'll have those surgically removed at a later point in time. For now…" He turned back to Starbreaker and finished in a low voice, "You need to eat something before you go to sleep tonight."

"I'll help her eat since she broke a hoof, but not until she's at least bandaged somewhat," Sora piped up again, turning to Tsukumi as she spoke. "Where're the bandage rolls at?"

Tsukumi sighed, trotted to stand at Starbreaker's side, and mutely lifted a hoof to gesture to the dresser at the side of the bed. Sora nodded and trotted over to it, pulling one drawer open with her mouth once she was close. Inside were some gowns and basic medical supplies; band-aids, rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, squeeze-tubes of antibiotic ointment…

She closed the drawer and opened the one below it, smiling as she found a few gauze rolls all sitting upright and stationed rather tidily into a corner. Swiping one with a raised hoof, Sora nudged the drawer closed with a wing before opening the first one again and fishing out the antibiotic ointment in her mouth, being careful not to bite down too hard. "Hol her 'own," she said through the squeeze-tube.

"On it," Yukito replied, and in an instant Starbreaker found herself almost completely immobilized by a field of blue that washed over her entire body.

"H-hey, s-stop!" Starbreaker shrieked, eyes widening as her right leg was lifted into the air against her will, holding up the busted hoof for all to see. "Wh-what gives?!"

"Sorry, standard procedure for injuries we can't treat right away," Yukito replied, rolling his eyes as Sora whirled around and tottered to Starbreaker on three legs, spreading her wings for balance. "As bad as your hoof had just become, we can't let it swing about and risk more injury."

"He's right," Tsukumi stated as Sora set the gauze roll on the bed next to Starbreaker's head to fumble with the squeeze-tube in her maw. He watched as the tube was opened, pried out of a pair of teeth, held in a fetlock and then lifted up to the raised hoof. In that moment his eyes fell on Sora. "A small amount of that stuff; the bleeding wound there isn't critical," he chastised.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Sora scoffed, applying pressure to the tube. A clear, thin line of gel snaked out of the end of the tube, whereupon it was promptly dabbed on the bleeding cut that ran the vertical length of the hoof in a sparse few droplets. She turned to the gauze roll, only to find it likewise seized in a blue aura and hefted into the air, already unravelling in seconds.

The bandages flew to the hoof and swiftly coiled around it, tightening as the first loop formed. Starbreaker screamed as pain flared anew from the limb, and as another loop of gauze formed her cries rose a good octave higher. Yukito flinched as he continued to work while the screams carried on unhindered, but a hoof from Tsukumi flew to Starbreaker's mouth and wedged itself firmly between her teeth, gagging her on the spot.

She still continued to release screams as the bandages coiled around and around her hoof, although now they were muffled. This carried on for two minutes before the roll stopped in mid-air, approximately half of it still encircling itself. Sora lifted a wing up and very carefully severed the roll in two with a blade, watching as the still-coiled half of the roll flew back while the other newly-cut end was lifted and tucked snuggly under itself.

Tsukumi pried his hoof from Starbreaker's mouth, his ears twitching as she gave him a sidelong glare. "How does your hoof feel now?" he asked, his tone still level.

"Like it got crushed by a machine gun," Starbreaker snapped, still scowling. She jerked when a hoof started prodding at her lower regions, and she turned her sidelong glare onto Sora, who had a hoof still raised mid-prod and clutching the antibiotic tube.

"Good news about the writing… it's only stained the coat. I don't see any ink or whatnot on the skin," Sora stated, turning to Yukito.

Yukito smiled at that. "Oh? So all we have to do is shave her a little?" he asked.

"Sounds about right, if the writings don't just wash off," Sora confirmed with a nod. "But first… we gotta cleanse what's left of her missing ear, bandage her head and feed her."

Starbreaker slumped and let out a groan, and her stomach gave a gurgle in response. "Just get it over with," she complained. "The sooner I get better, the sooner I can torch you all."

"On it, Starbo," Sora replied, with a slight mocking inflection in her tone. Starbreaker shifted to glare at Sora and opened her mouth to utter something else, only to gasp when some sort of transparent mask with a tube attached to some kind of container appeared from a flash of light all at once and the mask clamped itself on her muzzle immediately after.

Then, a hissing sound graced her one ear, and her eyes widened as she spotted an aura turning a little valve on the canister, followed almost immediately by a sickening, pungent smell that flooded her nostrils. It took her only seconds to close her eyes and conk out right after, barely registering her head hitting the pillow as consciousness left her.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Starbreaker awoke sometime later, eyes blinking dazedly as she came to. Her vision refused to focus, and the room around her was so blurry she couldn't make out what was where. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth, numb and drooling with saliva. She tried to groan, and she felt air rushing from her throat, but if she managed one sound then she simply didn't hear it. She wasn't even sure if she did groan at all.

As awry as everything currently was, it did not escape her notice that a purple form with a blond top was in the room with her, moving about in a manner akin to sliding. The features, though, were hazy. Starbreaker blinked a few times, trying to crystallize her sight, and that was when she registered the first few sounds: somepony spoke to her, accompanied by hoofsteps. "... you… fucked… huh?" was all she could make out, however.

Starbreaker tried to reel in her tongue and speak, but only managed a groggy "Hzzbah?" in response before her jaw dropped and the tongue tried to jump ship again.

The moving splotch ambled closer to Starbreaker, almost swaying about in a manner that not only suggested some form of inebriation or perhaps injury, but a manner that made bile start to rise up Starbreaker's throat. "... you… fucked…?" the form tried again, but alas, whoever it was may as well have had a severe speech impediment if this was all the dazed mare could make out.

Reeling in her flapping tongue once more, Starbreaker stared for several seconds before slowly shaking her head. "Arthzznah?" she tried, prior to swallowing before the bile could make it to the top of her throat. That seemed to settle it for the moment, as it trudged back down with an irritated gurgle.

As the form got closer, Starbreaker saw pools of green framed just under the blond mop on the figure's head, and slowly, her sight finally began to clear up. Within seconds she could make out a very familiar face, albeit marred by a frown of concern. "You… okay?" Sora asked a third time. garnering a slow shaking of the head as her answer.

"Can… you hear… me?" Sora quizzed. That time, Starbreaker slowly nodded, realizing her hearing was getting better as well. A purple blotch was lifted and held up to Sora's left, and it took Starbreaker a few moments to register that it was a gesture before turning her head in that direction. She blinked to clear out her vision some more when she saw another splotch with her coat and mane colors, and before long she found a solid reflection staring back at her with widening eyes in a mirror that wasn't there before.

The first thing that registered was that the stump of her horn had somehow gotten shorter, and instead of ending in jagged spikes, ended in a perfectly round shape as flat as tile. Now merely an inch in length, it could barely part her forelock, and the blood on her face had been cleaned. The second was that bandages had covered most of her head; only her horn and a small section of forehead around it, muzzle, and eyes were left exposed. Even her torn ear was bound up. Her broken hoof was left suspended by a rail that was drilled into the ceiling above her bed, further tied by bandages just to stay there. Most curious of all, she'd been draped in a patient's gown.

Starbreaker turned her head back to Sora quick as a whip, mouth fruitlessly working as gibberish tumbled out thanks to her still-numb tongue. "Fhwas isht mreaa—"

Sora shifted a raised hoof and wedged it in Starbreaker's mouth, instantly shutting her up. "Got good news and bad news, so stop rambling and listen, please," she ordered calmly. When she pried her hoof from the mouth, Starbreaker gave a slow nod and clacked her jaws shut. "Bad news, couldn't save your right ear canal, so that… had to be surgically dealt with sooner than we thought. We also had to file down your horn short, because otherwise recovery could be severely jeopardized if we didn't."

Sora gave her charge a moment to let that soak in, seeing her pupils shrink to pinpricks. "The good news is, your horn can and should grow back to full length within a matter of weeks. The writings on your body came off with a basic application of soap and water; no shaving was necessary, and we took the added step of cataloguing those scribbles before they were cleaned, so we'll be keeping an eye out for anymore just like them. We also tube-fed you after surgery, since you were out for the last three days," she stated. Starbreaker shivered. Three days? She'd been out that long? That explained a helluva lot, now that she thought about it. "And you have also gained back a bit of weight, which means health-wise, you're not too far gone yet."

"But," Sora continued, leaning in close until she and Starbreaker were nose to nose, "you're not going to be casting any spells until your horn is fully healed. As it stands, your alicorn—the muscle that makes and produces the magic with which to cast spells—has been compromised by your attempted castings and other, as of yet unidentified external forces. As such, we put a little chip of a special magic-soaking stone juuuust behind your horn as a safety measure while you get better. It's not going to come out until you're more or less out of the woods."

Starbreaker growled and tried her hardest to cast a spell, glancing sideways at the mirror in doing so. She felt a tingle, a fizz, a slight pain… and no aura would conjure from her stump whatsoever. She tried again, but the results were the same. A third time after that, and no luck. It was at that point she noticed a little bump in her forehead, from which a diamond-shaped chip of a black stone protruded out, pulsing with red mana.

It was only thanks to her slightly-parted forelock that she could even see the damned thing. The more she kept attempting to cast, the more the little stone glowed. It took several minutes for her to stop, but that was only because somepony who was once again too close for comfort decided to throw in an additional two bits, free of charge.

"Oh, and you're going to be bedridden for a few weeks yet," Sora stated, her utterance causing Starbreaker to halt her fruitless attempts to cast so much as a spark and freeze in wide-eyed panic. "You have a few fractured leg bones, and some strange substance covering your ribs, which may have protected them from fractures and breaks as a result, on top of that break in your rear right leg. They should heal on their own… save for the break, which was bound in a cast. That bump in your shoulder? Turned out to be a lipoma that needed, and has been, summarily removed."

Starbreaker wiggled the leg in question, but found she could not move it very much. She turned to it to find that it too was raised, bandaged to hell, and hoisted up and anchored on the bar that held her hoof. There was also a second layer of thick blue cloth, tightened around her haunch and jutting rather rudely out from under the blanket. At this, she paled, opened her mouth, managed a horrified croak, and did nothing more. "So I gotta keep everypony else off your ass until you can trot again," Sora added in a tone of finality.

The uncomfortably close pegasus leaned back and ruffled her wings a little. "Since you just woke up and received your news… how are you feeling?" she asked.

Starbreaker gave a snort of annoyance, and a bit of feeling was starting to return to her tongue. Still, she didn't answer with words, figuring that the huff of air was enough of a reply. Sora seemed to sense her unspoken meaning and gave a slow nod in return. "Yeah, I get you. I felt like shit too, after the military modified my wings," she said, turning to look at her blades with a rather… rueful expression? Starbreaker did a double-take, shaking her head and blinking to confirm that she wasn't seeing things. The slanted purple brow, ears folding back and that frown deepening were genuine, and their presence told her all she needed to know.

Chapter IV- Backswing

The following week after Starbreaker had received the news regarding her physical state, Sora dropped by to visit her again. Her visits were daily during that week, but at its end something had changed. Before, Sora came in and out without a shred of cloth on her body sans collar and the small device on her ear. Now, on the tenth day of Starbreaker's official hospitalization, she was dressed in a pale blue outfit with a jutting collar that just barely reached her cheekbones, overlaid on top of a black shirt that hugged her tight. The outfit had long, loose sleeves ending in cuffs that dangled above her forehooves, and it had a large hole cut in the back to allow her wings easy access. She had them folded carefully over her rear end, which was easy to guess why, as Starbreaker could see it past the gleaming blades.

For reasons that Starbreaker could not nor did not want to grasp, she was wearing an embarrassingly short skirt of black on her hindquarters. The garment ended at her tail and fanned out as much as the closed wings would allow to show off her cutie marks and the hips to which they were attached. Thigh highs cupped her rear legs, ending in boots that were dubiously absent on her front hooves. The bell-holding necklace she had was readjusted to hold the collar in place. She had a heated pink blush on her lilac face, one whose meaning escaped her charge, and the device that was on her ear had now been absent.

"What… is with that getup?" Starbreaker asked after a long moment of awkward silence passed.

"Military uniform," Sora replied in a clipped tone, averting her eyes briefly. "Don't ask about the skirt. I had to buck a couple of my…" The next word came out in a venomous, sibilant hiss, "coworkers in the barrels to get them to lay off."

Starbreaker's brows shot up. "I never knew you one for kicking," she mused.

Sora's ears fell back at that. "If I'd have stabbed them with my wings, they'd have put somepony else in charge of you, and that somepony else could have killed you," she muttered bitterly. "Kicking was the next best thing."

Starbreaker's eyes widened, and she would have perked her remaining ear if she were able. "They?" she pressed.

"My commanding officers," Sora elaborated with a shuffle of her wings and a small scraping of her hooves. "You do not want to meet them. Trust me." At that moment the door slid open, and a stallion that Starbreaker wasn't familiar with trotted in with his head high and his gleaming grey eyes affixed squarely on Sora. The sod had a dark brown coat, with a white mane to contrast it, and patches of steel affixed onto his legs and backside that made him look more like a jigsaw puzzle than a pony. Out of his forehead, a horn that was off-grey and gleaming like metal jutted from his head, further offset by an ugly, shoe-shaped black spot that cradled his right eye.

Sora didn't even meet his gaze as he addressed her, "Now why're you kickin' at everypony today? All we did was admire your ass."

Sora snorted and lifted a back, booted hoof. "Get near me again, I will twist you around and stomp between your hinds," she threatened, eyes narrowing coldly. Starbreaker noted that, as her gaze shifted to a slit glare, her eyes averted away from her and to the stallion sporting the black eye.

The stallion, much to Starbreaker's confusion, did not heed Sora's threat. He seemed to not even take it seriously at all, instead opting to snort and guffaw for a few seconds. He edged a little closer to her, and stepped in front of her, hiding the sickening grin that spread on his face from the bedridden charge as a result. His horn crackled and sparked with a metallic groan, followed by an unnatural whirring sound that filled the air. "Oh, and how're you gonna do that when I got the magic, hrrm?" he challenged smugly.

Sora flared her wings in response. However, before she could do anything else, a silver aura that was not there before seized them and flung her bodily out the door, producing a horrible scraping as he angled her wings to the floor whilst she flew from the unexpected assault. The stallion followed after her, and the door shut behind him. A shout of indignance, high-pitched and almost keening, came as soon as the door clicked shut. "Let me go, you cybernetic abomination!" Sora screeched as another unnatural whir hummed in the air, the softness of her voice entirely gone. This change of tone then gave way to another dull thud as she was, Starbreaker could only assume, being flung around the hallway outside her door.

Starbreaker shot up in bed, wide-eyed and in alarm. She wanted to know what the stallion was doing to her adversary, but the wounded hoof and leg sent pain roaring through her nerves the moment she tried to twist out of bed, reminding her that what she wanted to do wasn't a good idea. The stallion howled in laughter, and more thuds filled the hall, almost entirely masking the sound of a third set of hooves that likewise came from beyond the door. The stallion hissed just as sibilantly as Sora did, the very moment the thuds had ceased to be made, "Says the modified pegasus with the freaky blades! Why, I should just break your bones and your hinds here and now!"

Another whir filled the air, almost entirely masking the click of a button in its wake. "Shield, invert!" Sora squalled in that high-pitched keen, only to be superseded by another thud, that time accompanied by a pained scream. "That is not for you to touch!"

"Enough!" a new, masculine voice called out, followed by the sound of another spell being cast. "Takahara, do I have to take this… this flagrant display of unprofessionalism to your commanding officer?!"

"Bite my shiny metal ass, doc! You ain't got no business interrupting two modified ponies in the middle of a round, you au naturale piece of horseshit!" the first stallion cried defensively. "Why don't you go and kill another patient, like you've done countless times before?!"

"I do not kill my patients, you undignified boob!" the third voice yelled angrily. "I try to help them as best as I can, and—"

"Spare me the platitudes, you ass, and go on before I bust your head in!" the first pony yelled shrilly. A low hum filled the air, and a yelp of pain came from him a second later as the crunching of bone filled the area, followed immediately by a dull thud. Then, a brief scuffling filled in the void, followed by the very soft click of a button and then the rattling and clanging of a violently-thrashing bell.

Only when the bell stopped its incessant ringing did somepony speak. "I-is it… gonna hold him if I leave the hall?" Sora managed, her voice soft again as her breathing turned heavy and ragged. Starbreaker noted a prominent shake in her tone that hadn't been there before.

"No, it won't," the third voice sighed ruefully. Another hum filled the air. "But I'll take it from here, Sora. Go… gather your bearings, please," the owner affirmed in a soft, no-nonsense tone which brokered no argument. In the seconds almost immediately after, the door opened and Sora scrambled back into the room, her face pale and wide-eyed, whilst her hooves were flailing as much as they could. She was very flustered, despite blanching.

She turned to poke her head out of the room once she'd actually entered it. "Yukito, please take him to the nearest Major pronto," she uttered in a pleading tone of voice.

"Can do, Sora," Yukito replied. Sora nodded and pulled her head back before turning around to find Starbreaker sitting up and looking at her. Once they made eye contact, the sound of something magically dragging something else filled the hall outside, in perfect tandem with the clip-clop of somepony's hooves. It ended when a loud pop sang through the air, giving way to silence.

"What… just happened?" Starbreaker asked, eyes narrowing as Sora fell to her haunches.

"He… tried grabbing my cutie mark," Sora muttered, frowning ruefully as her gaze averted to the door as though it were responsible. "If this keeps up, I'm gonna ask Yukito to install a hoofprint recognition keypad on your door," she added.

Starbreaker continued to stare at Sora. "Your cutie mark?" she repeated. At Sora's hesitant nod, she uttered an innocent question, "Why's that making you red in the face?"

Sora turned to Starbreaker, pupils shrinking and feathers bristling as she sat there spluttering incoherently at the query. Her face fully turned a healthy beet red, which managed to reach the tips of her ears as she choked and gabled while she fruitlessly tried to manage something relatively coherent. It took her several minutes, but when she did she blurted out, "H-have you not had your cutie mark grabbed?!"

Starbreaker shook her head and shrugged in earnest. "Not by another pony, no, until you found me and decided I needed to be examined," she answered sincerely. Sora spluttered again, and Starbreaker unhelpfully added, "I honestly do not understand what the deal is."

Sora continued to flap her lips madly, staring at Starbreaker with such thick incredulity she could probably cut it with her wings without even a token effort if she were able to. An entire ten minutes passed before she facehoofed and took a few deep breaths to gather her bearings, which had the added benefit of making her blush recede. When hoof parted from face, the very flustered pegasus leveled a firm, almost steely-eyed glare at her bedridden opponent. "Remember how my hoof was between your hinds? How I checked the… the… scribbles down there?" she pressed.

Starbreaker nodded. "How could I forget?" she shot back icily.

Sora's gaze hardened. "Well, you were medically examined… which by itself was necessary, but it was one examination that I had no business partaking in. I'm not a doctor. And… technically speaking, I felt you up, medical examination or not. And feeling somepony up is just a nice way of saying you and I got molested," she hissed uneasily.

"Molested?" Starbreaker queried, letting the word sit on her tongue for a few seconds. Something about it made her stomach twist, and before long it made her head start to hurt. As the headache settled, it dawned on her, and helped explain why Sora was all too eager to trot back into the room after being forcefully dragged out of it. It also made her do a double-take, and her technicolor eyes almost bugged out when she looked at the ludicrously short skirt and spotted a bruise just barely visible behind Sora's forehooves, which she could only see now since her adversary was sitting. Another revelation then hit her like a brick, and it made her pupils shrink. Then, her blood surged through her veins, heating up like magma with a fresh wave of anger.

"He touched you there?!" Starbreaker screamed at the top of her lungs.

Sora flinched at the sheer volume, but managed a nod nonetheless. She got up and raced over before putting her hooves on Starbreaker's shoulders as she started to wildly thrash about in bed. "Let me go, damnit!" Starbreaker yelled, her voice gaining an unnatural, mechanical reverb as she fought with all her might to get out of bed and slip out of Sora's hooves. "Let me run loose so I can make him regret laying his hoof on you!" she cried, her voice only growing more mechanical with each second.

Sora tightened her hold, and flared her wings for balance as she tried to wrestle Starbreaker to her bed. "But they'll kill you if I turn you loose!" she pleaded.

Sadly for her, Starbreaker did not hear Sora's warning. She redoubled her efforts, locked in a stalemate with her adversary as adrenaline shot through her veins. A whirring sound filled the air, and Sora watched with horror as her sclera turned black as pitch. "I will murder that stallion! I will rend his body apart, limb by limb! I will force him to devour his own four hooves! I will feast on his heart before his very eyes! I will burn the remainder of his corpse thereafter, until nothing remains! He will regret ever being born into this wretched world!" she promised darkly, in a voice almost mechanical enough to pass off as outright demonic, her cry echoing viciously about the room in a way that merely amplified Sora's concern.

Starbreaker kept kicking with her good rear leg and thrusting with her good forehoof vehemently. Her irises went blood red entirely, and for a second Sora could've sworn her pupils became tiny slits that almost seemed to glow with an unholy light. Adrenaline shot through Sora's veins in that moment, and without a token effort she finally managed to pin her screaming, fitfully-thrashing charge back to the bed. She clambered atop her again, careful to keep her wings tucked at an angle to avoid severing the supports.

They stared into each other's eyes, one set unblinking, unnatural, wild in every sense of the word and the other frantic and sporting pinprick pupils. "Starbreaker, it's gonna be okay!" Sora pleaded, keeping her hold tight. "Takahara's going to get in some big trouble, and we won't have to deal with him anymore!" She stayed on top, hoping to the powers that be that Starbreaker would, at the very least, hear her and see reason. They were like that, one holding the other down as she flailed nigh-uncontrollably, for a few minutes on end in a stalemate. As the adrenaline rush faded from them both, Starbreaker's thrashing slowed down until her still-free hooves could only swing sluggishly and her breathing turned shallow and sparse.

The door opened, and Sora took the opportunity to hop off and turned to the intruder the second her hooves met the floor. She relaxed when she saw it was only Yukito, who now sported a bruise on his cheek. "The nearest Major's taking the trouble-maker right to the Admiral, and I am grateful that I learned how to teleport," he reported. Turning to Starbreaker, he asked, "Did you have a fit?"

Starbreaker scowled, eyes narrowing coldly. Yukito shivered as her eyes slowly, and with one last whir, reverted back to more or less a normal state, if indeed 'normal' even existed as a concept to Starbreaker. Sora decided to answer for her, "She wanted to kill Takahara, so I had to…" Her gaze averted as she trailed off. "You saw… didn't you?"

Yukito nodded in confirmation. "I told the Admiral to give you a longer skirt… how long ago?" he queried. Sora shrugged in earnest.

"When I was eighteen and on my first mission?" Sora guessed.

Yukito nodded. "Poor bastard must think you'd be self-loathing enough to lift your tail for the first pony to touch you," he muttered under his breath.

"Not willingly," Sora murmured. She sat down again and sighed, raising a hoof to rub the bridge of her muzzle contemplatively. "Admiral didn't say anything, right?" she asked, brow furrowing as she started envisioning a meeting with her own commanding officer in her current getup.

"No… nor has the nearest Major, for that matter," Yukito muttered, frowning. "She just… looked at me strangely."

Sora's hoof parted from her muzzle. "Define 'strangely,'" she requested. Yukito chose not to answer with words, but instead to look at Sora cross-eyed, which looked much more bizarre since his glasses had framed it. "So… like that," she guessed, which garnered her an immediate nod in response.

Yukito uncrossed his eyes and looked at Starbreaker again. "Some part of me would like to knock first, but the sliding doors make that impossible…" he groused.

"Why knock to begin with? Why not just blast the door down?" Starbreaker queried in a sincere tone of voice. Yukito wryly smiled at her and chuckled at the question.

"Well… I'm not exactly a combat specialist. I don't know any explosive-type spells," Yukito answered. His horn sparked and glowed, and light and heat began to build… only to wink out with a pop a few seconds later. "At most, teleportation." He vanished in a flash of light, and Starbreaker gawked as the door slid open again and Yukito trotted right back inside as though nothing interesting had happened.

A piercing sound filled the air, akin to something being picked up and then subsequently used to record nails on a chalkboard. Everypony winced at it before it briefly cut to static, and a masculine voice droned out in a no-nonsense tone, "Private Sora, the Admiral is expecting you in his office." As soon as the feed cut off, Sora's pupils shrank, and she gulped audibly. With her blond tail tucked firmly between her rear legs, she trudged out of the room.

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A lone stallion sat in a small, almost cramped office, a projection screen lit up before him whose light came from behind him, framed by a silvery aura and revealing Takahara and the white unicorn with the purple tail attending to him as he was placed on a gurney. His right fetlock was twisted, to the point the hoof attached to it faced backwards. In addition, there was that bruise on his eye, which the stallion in the office took immediate note of. The mare faced the stallion in the office, as though somehow seeing him through the projection. "He'll be fine, sir," the mare dourly reported, her horn glowing orange in color. "In a matter of weeks."

Takahara wasn't having any of it, however, and he waved his broken hoof erratically as he screamed, "Make that fucking blond-maned bitch pay!"

"At ease," the stallion in the office spoke, with a deep baritone that resonated in an eerie calm. "I have already summoned her. She'll be at my office any minute now, and I will see to it that she is punished."

"Sir, that's not all I wished to share with you," the white unicorn interjected, her tail lashing about. When the stallion in the office lifted a hoof and spun it for her to continue, she elaborated, "She found the Herald of the Crimson Light, alive, crippled, and even crazier than before. She didn't kill her on the spot, oh noooooo, she had to make nice with her while I and my whole damn retinue watched."

"The Herald…" the stallion in the office spat, his calm now laced with an undernote of anger. "Pastely-silver, technicolor eyes?"

"The one and the very same, sir," the white unicorn answered with a nod.

"That bitch is in the medical ward! I saw her with my two own eyes!" Takahara piped up.

"Alright." The stallion in the office carefully considered this information. Whether or not it was true, it had potential to become another reason for punishment in itself. "It seems my session with the delinquent Hawk has just gotten a bit more interesting…" the stallion in the office cooed darkly. A cruel smile spread on the white unicorn's lips, and it was soon matched by Takahara who nodded in confirmation himself. "How many times must she come back here before she learns to be a good soldier for once in her life?"

"Make this session different, sir. Just so it'll stick," the white unicorn advised. A dark chuckle met her ears, and her cruel smile only widened fractionally.

"Very well, Major Trinity, I'll see what I can come up with," the stallion in the office promised.

"What if she doesn't show up at all?" Takahara pointed out.

"Then I'll just have to find her and drag her to my office myself," the office stallion replied before, with a mechanical whir, he cut the projection off and the light that it was conjuring. That done, he placed his hooves onto his desk and observed his office. The only things visible therein to any outside visitor were his mahogany desk, the sable hooves atop it, and a bright light shining onto the door and illuminating a bit of beige carpet before it. The light also revealed twin hooks that jutted from the door's frame, gleaming in the light alongside a rectangular piece of something that hovered just beyond the glow. The rest of the room was shrouded in a thick darkness, one that felt more corporeal than it should have.

His hooves, easily the size of Yukito's head and framed with the black cuffs of a uniform, tapped idly but noisily as he waited. Off to one side, just barely visible in the gloom to his eyes, was a plaque beset in a runic language, hewn of crystal and lined with copper filigree. A ticking noise from an unseen device, perhaps a clock of some sort, sang in the air. Its drone was as monotonous a tone as the tapping of his hooves.

He dared not get up and pace. Dared not grind his teeth as minutes ticked by. Dared not even cease fiddling his hooves, for he knew that all he had to do was wait for as long as the day would allow if it came to that. He was alone for an hour straight like that, idly tapping his hooves with the patience of a saint before the door opened, and Sora shuffled inside. She had a hoof raised to block out the glare of the light as she stepped inside, and the stallion could see she was already shaking at her knees, guessing she'd go weak in the legs entirely before long.

Only as the door slid shut behind her and she had the time to adjust her vision did a pregnant silence fall. The two stared at one another for several minutes on end, with only the tapping and the ticking providing any form of discernable sound in the darkened room. A tense air hung heavily, doing little to the shadow-clad pony and as much as it possibly could to Sora. Before long, the stallion spoke in a low, ominous, intimidating tone of voice that caused Sora's ears to pin back against her head and her knees to shake that much harder, as if she were perhaps strained just by listening to him, "I heard you were causing trouble… as usual. What possessed you to snap Colonel Takahara's fetlock?"

Sora winced, her mouth going dry as the question hit her. She shakily dropped her hoof and tried to stand rigid, staring into the gloom to find piercing eyes, blood red and perhaps mechanical, staring back at her expectantly. The owner was thrice as big as she was, as his eyes seemed to reach just under the light shining onto her height-wise. Perhaps it was a trick of perception, but all the same it made her feel small. "Well? You have permission to speak, you wretch," the stallion hissed sibilantly, eyes narrowing with a soft whir that she didn't miss.

"He…" Sora swallowed a lump in her throat that hadn't been there before, and took a second to gather her bearings. "He… Takahara assaulted me, sir. I attacked in self-defense," she managed, her voice less firm than she'd have liked.

"Assaulted, you say?" the stallion mused, canting his head ever so slightly. "Takahara told me you kicked him earlier this morning."

Sora promptly shook her head, the feathers closest to her withers bristling ever so slightly. "That is not what happened, Admiral," she replied, her voice faltering a little as she realized he caught the bristling.

"Then what explains the bruise the Major showed me on his eye?" the Admiral shot back, his remark eliciting a wince from Sora. His eyes narrowed further, until they were slits that threatened to incinerate her on the spot. "Well?"

Sora's chest tightened, and sweat started to bead her brow. The Admiral pushed something back, and lifted one hoof to beckon her onward. "He… must have punched himself, sir, or had somepony else do it. If you would check the camera feed, you would see it wasn't me who gave him the black eye!" Sora exclaimed defensively, trying to seize control of herself and the situation at hoof. However, the Admiral merely continued to gesture her to get closer, causing the feathers at the joints to bristle. The squeaking of a chair, and the scuffing of hooves on carpet did little to set her at ease. Hesitantly, she came closer to the desk, her own hooves dragging as she went.

"Punched himself? Who would ever have the gall to do that?" the Admiral questioned sincerely, a malicious spark in his eyes as he watched the rattled pegasus edging closer to his desk, "Not even you would do something that inane, and you stopped the Herald of the Crimson Light, for goodness' sake. I doubt he'd have somepony else punch him to set you up for the same reason."

His other hoof trailed below his desk, before a click of what sounded like a button filled the air for all of a second, giving way to a series of clicks that came from the door itself. This series of clicks briefly halted Sora in her tracks, and she chanced a glance to the door to find that a steel bar had protruded from the darkness and onto its frame, sliding into the twin hooks which were affixed to the door with a distinctly larger square-shaped object resting just behind the second hook as part of the bar that simply could not fit through. The door slid as much as it could, but alas could not bypass the larger square-shaped part of the bar, and so was kept firmly shut. "Is that truly so? Did Takahara really assault himself to obtain the black eye? If so, then why?"

Sora turned back and nodded. "Y-yes sir," she stammered, "H-he… he probably didn't want to get reprimanded…" Part of her screamed to unlock the door and to get away from the Admiral, but as he rose from his seat and leaned onto the desk, thrusting his raised hoof down on the wood to support himself, she found herself glued to the spot beneath his cold gaze. A mechanical whir filled the air, and a silvery aura materialized and yanked Sora clean off her hooves before throwing her backside-down onto the desk when she had refused to budge any further by herself. He shifted so they could maintain eye contact and also so that she would not run into his hoof on her way forward, even as he towered over her. His massive hooves lifted slightly and rushed to pin her wings to the wood by their joints.

Sora reached for her bell, but the aura beat her to it and tore it off of her neck and flung it, collar and all, across the room. It hit the door with a thud, and landed onto the floor uselessly. She shrieked as one of her back hooves was lifted up forcibly by the aura, causing her to bend painfully forward. The Admiral scrutinized her boot, unconcerned that as the hoof went higher and higher, her wings came that much closer to being broken in the process, and unknowing that she was biting her lip to stave off tears. Whether he was feeling merciful didn't matter; the Admiral came within just a hair's breadth of compromising his own soldier.

He dropped the hoof a few seconds later, and Sora's rear end landed on the desk with a hard thud. Then he made eye contact with her again, and leaned until they were nose to nose, pressing down on her wings without care. She could've sworn he grinned at her, and at this her heart sank.

"Your boot matches his black eye, down to the curveature of the hoof. Self-defense or not, you committed insubordination," the Admiral said in a cold reprimand. "Not only that, but I've heard you went and started coddling a war criminal…" His voice became crueler, horribly withering and more menacing with each word he spoke. "But… as you have committed some pretty big war crimes yourself, I do suppose that strange minds think alike."

"Y-you ordered me to perform those heinous acts!" Sora squawked. "I would have been punished had I not committed them!"

"That is true…" the Admiral agreed with a slow nod of his head. Sora made to kick, but stopped just short when he pressed harder on her wings, almost breaking them and driving shards of agony through her nerves. "That said… you still need to be… summilarily punished, Private." Another thud rang out, in tandem with a whirring sound, and Sora whimpered as she realized to her growing horror that it was her back hooves which had made the thud. That it was his magic now weighing them down.

Still, alarmed as she was, she looked the Admiral dead in the eye. "N-no," she hissed, lifting her front hooves to her chest. The Admiral chuckled when she glared at him, before snorting as she made to punch him with the only limbs left that he hadn't yet pinned. He was quick to change that, however, and within seconds her forehooves landed above her head and held there with a silvery aura in one last thud of finality.

"Ah-ah, Private. When you're in my domain, I get to call the shots," the Admiral hissed, his tone equal parts gleeful and scorned. Something slid open, and Sora could barely feel it shift beneath her, before a metal object with a cylindrical barrel levitated up out of the gloom and pressed itself to the side of her head. "And you don't want to die now, do you?"

Sora blanched as she took one look at the object he brought out, seeing a trigger, a hammer, and a small revolving chamber. The Admiral took it as a sign of resignation, and used his magic to grasp the plaque before lifting it off and putting it to her neck. He adjusted it to rest under chin, and only then did he press it down on her windpipe, seemingly intent on choking her with it. The runes glowed as he did while she made the first sputtering cough, and white electric currents shot out before they rushed around her body and through her nerves. Lightning painted the room a vivid white, casting aside all shadows as it danced upon her prone form.

She screamed as the electrocution continued for several long, agonizing seconds thereafter, as jolts coursed through her body like white-hot magma. Her fur felt as though it were smoldering; her flesh burned with the force of a thousand suns. Her feathers started blackening at their edges, her blades were still and utterly useless to help her. All the while, the object pressed against her head remained, and the hooves which pinned her by the wings did not even move an inch. The magic on her legs did not yield once, holding her like iron cuffs as her suffering began.

Sora thrashed as much as she could, which only worsened her pain and caused the Admiral to pin the plaque on her neck harder, seemingly intent on cutting off her oxygen supply. She screwed her eyes shut, crying out as current after current ran through unimpeded, and within ten more seconds she could manage no more than a strangled howl that barely sounded equine. At one point, her eyes opened, and they felt as if they were boiling in her sockets the instant her lids had parted. She closed them again, if only to lessen the pain, but not prior to noticing her vision was turning fuzzy and black at the edges. Within seconds, her mouth opened, and her next outburst left her throat in a raspy, hoarse cry, the resulting words barely coherent at this point.

"Please, stop!" she pleaded, simply unable to take anymore before long. The runes faltered, but did not cease their attempt to scorch her inside-out until the Admiral magically lifted it up, causing it to stop with a pop and a fizz. The lightning died shortly after, with a crackle and a hiss. She heard the hammer click as the plaque stopped glowing, and the object against her head pressed itself more firmly than was necessary.

The Admiral leaned closer to Sora, dangling the plaque over her head as her eyes slowly opened and trailed up to it. He saw, plain as day, that her eyes were now dewy and dull, though the fog of pain that clouded them gave way as she frantically sucked in deep breaths to fill her lungs. He did not, however, see a single tear streak her face, and a sense of irritation started to build at that. "Do you wish to die?" he repeated, just as coldly as before.

"N-no… sir," Sora mewled, trembling as the hammer clicked again and both plaque and object retracted.

"Thought as much. I'd hate to have to waste bullets on your delinquent hide. A shame too; you're paradoxically my best and my worst soldier." He lowered the object down back to whence it came, and the plaque followed it. "But, you didn't dirty my precious Vera with your blood, so I suppose that much is alright." His eyes gleamed once again, and Sora shut hers to avoid looking into those crimson orbs any longer.

"And I don't know how you found your little buddy… so we'll just settle this the old-fashioned way: if you give me what you know, I'll turn you loose." When Sora failed to speak and turned her muzzle to the door, his lips twitched. "Seems like you're being quiet, and you're not crying either. Same old typical Sora, as always. I'll have to start… extracting the information from you. Fortunately for us both..."

Sora felt her back legs part with magical aid, and though she fought to keep them closed, quickly found that to be a losing battle. "I've grown tired of the usual methods I've had to use on you in the past, as you've grown resilient to them. We're going to play an old game with a new twist to it..." He trailed off, forcing Sora's back legs wider still, until they could go no farther without causing pain. He paused to glance at his handiwork so far, and something about Sora's helpless state struck a chord with him, though for reasons far less than noble. "And we'll play it until you cry in defeat."

Dread sank in fast, and Sora opened her eyes and looked at the Admiral almost pleadingly. Some part of him found her slanted brow and shrunken pupils adorable, and it was made all the more delicious to him as he saw a spark of recognition in her eyes as she fast realized just what he was about to do. Admittedly, she could have stopped him… if he'd let her. In a last-ditch effort to save herself, Sora muttered incoherently for several seconds until, at last, she managed something somewhat sensible. "I-I'll… I'm… not going to t-tell you… wh-what I know a-about Starbreaker... just… just don't…" she whimpered in a small shred of defiance, hoping with all her might that, perhaps, the Admiral would actually cease and listen for once. For a few seconds, he stared at her rather contemplatively, and the hope within soared.

His braying laughter, however, rang in her ears and shattered that hope into a million pieces a mere second later. "Too late; you've already made your choice when you kicked Takahara. Now, you must bear the consequences upon your withers." Sora tried squirming again, but the aura seized her entirely, rendering her immobile. Only then did he lift his hooves from her wings, and with one frog he cupped her chin. "I don't need you to tell me about her current location anyway, merely just about how you found her… I've received word she's already presently with us, here at the base. I could just waltz into her room and chat with her m'self once I find it."

"Wh-who…" Sora stammered, stopping her squirming for a few seconds to let the Admiral's utterance sink in. "Wh-who… told… you?"

"Oh, I don't know, a little birdie? The tip was anonymous, and the informants said they wanted me to keep it that way since you'd probably hunt them down the second you trot out my office door," the Admiral shot back, "Besides, you have proven time and time again that you can't be trusted. First, Sham… then, Nath… hell, I heard you killed somepony who would've gotten back home, had she lived on your first outing."

Sora's heart stopped in her chest for one beat and drummed harder immediately afterward as she'd came to the realization that somepony had thrown her under the proverbial airship. That she didn't know who made it much worse; it could've been anypony, at this rate. "And I find it quite bizarre," the Admiral continued, "that you know the Herald's name, though since I have heard you've decided to spare her life, I do suppose that's ultimately inevitable. Let's get started, shall we?"

The fact that she now knew that somepony had ratted her out, and made sure to keep their identity hidden on purpose, was just the icing on the cake for her tormentor. Sora's mouth quivered as panic took hold of her once again, but she didn't say anything. She couldn't muster the strength to do so, not when she was pinned, helpless, and had almost been electrocuted to death.

The Admiral took her silence as his cue to get started, and he started with gusto by knocking Sora off of his desk with a backswing of a hoof to the muzzle, making sure to hit just hard enough to bruise. As she fell, he simply canceled his magic and left her to tumble helplessly to the floor with the grace of a sack of potatoes. Then he dragged her behind the desk with no effort on his part, using his teeth to grapple her tail just as she made to scramble up. Once she was behind the mahogany desk, he wasted no time and planted his forehooves onto her—this time, her neck, and he made sure to pin her to the floor by sheer force.

"It's almost miraculous to see just how much you can take. And for a modified pegasus, you sure are tough as a brick, despite being so petite and frail-looking," the Admiral commented, pressing down to limit Sora's air intake. He planted his back hooves on her wings, to keep her from slashing at him as he fell to his haunches. "You should've been a mass of broken bones and torn flesh by now… hell, that little bit of shock therapy should have done you in." He smiled cruelly at his pinned, helpless soldier, who could only stare back with widened eyes. "I wonder… are you as soft within… are you are on the outside?"

Sora frantically shook her head, hoping the nonverbal answer would deter the Admiral. He did not back off; instead, his grin widened, and only then did her punishment truly begin.

Chapter VI- 'Towelettes?'

Sora showered, dried off, and went to sleep in relatively short order. She got up, kicked aside her blankets for the morning routine, threw her uniform on and trotted up the flight of stairs with the rest of the herd as they did the same. The questions flooded the halls, though this time Sora ignored them altogether. Some part of her thought it was useless to even try answering them, though the downside was that her fellow soldiers' mouths kept running two miles a minute. They noticed her silence, and she noticed their rather animated chatter, but there had been a proverbial fence erected, and she stayed on the emptier side of it.

The herd went up the stairs, diverged through the multitude of doors that followed, and Sora had made another beeline to the elevators again. She ignored the dull throbs of pain shooting through her nerves, figuring it was no excuse to worm her way out of whatever Major Trinity had planned for her that involved crates and gags. The sooner she got it over with, the better, and the sooner she could babysit Starbreaker afterward.

Sora did not stop by the medical ward. Rather, she had the elevator take her as far up as it could go, which was the open launch pad. "Just act normal," she told herself as the elevator took her to her destination. A frown crossed her features when she'd realized Major Trinity neglected to tell her where to meet up at, and as Sora wasn't exactly a mind reader, this presented a bit of a problem. What if Trinity wasn't on the launch pad, or worse yet, was in the city herself? Hell, what if she avoided her deliberately, just to send her on a wild goose chase and further ladle on the punishments? Taking the elevator to the launch pad would let her fly around and perform a quick aerial search if such proved to be the case. Some small part of her was grateful to have wings that functioned. As her mind wandered, she thought of Yukito, namely the look on his face as she lied to him.

Bruises, cuts, a swelling and a limp, she could explain away, if all went according to plan and she could chat with Yukito later today as she had yesterday. A possibly-broken wing? Not so much, unless she'd said 'flying accident,' as that was the only remotely-plausible thing she could come up with to even justify such an injury. She assumed a neutral look as the elevator stopped and opened, revealing the launch pad waiting for her. Oddly, Trinity was present and accounted for, and so were a small retinue of fellow pegasi, each twice as tall as her with even larger and nastier blades to match. A few of them had been harnessed to wood carriages reinforced with steel, all of which would have looked decent if not for the extra gaudy addition of hideous puke-green filigree flecked with sparkles. The carriages were filled to the brim with goodies, such that she could see the piles from the few windows therein.

There was an extra carriage, standing by its lonesome at the far edge of the platform, and it was even gaudier than the rest as its wood was painted in black and white stripes which only accentuated the filigree and its sparkles. Its wheels were painted an almost blinding pink in color, and its equally-tacky harness, sporting a garishly neon-rainbow design, was laying down on the pad empty. It's doors were its worst feature, for it sported a horrifically blinding paint of blazing gold, with added decor of gemstones that would have looked far better framing somepony's hairdo. The gems were a myriad of browns, blacks, and silvers—there wasn't a single thing that was complementary about it. Strangely, it rattled a little, as if somepony was trapped inside. Unsure of what to make of that development, she trotted out of the elevator, wings tucked tightly at her sides.

"Aerial delivery in that tacky thing? With something making a ruckus within? Are you kidding me?" she mentally complained, eyes squinting in an effort to keep themselves from going blind as a result of staring at the vehicular monstrosity. "Calm down, Sora. Maybe the bitch stashed the crates in that thing…"

Trinity eyed her as she marched up to the carriage, grinning cruelly as she worked herself into the harness the moment she had reached the vehicle. She only trotted over once the harness had been secured, and her delinquent chanced a glance over her shoulder to see box-like shapes stashed within the ugly carriage. Her horn lit up, and in a burst of light a few straps of cloth materialized next to her. The cloth had gold hooks connecting each strap into a simple web, with a slightly more complex cylindrical shape on the front, and each strip thankfully was a simple grey in color. Its centerpiece, no doubt, was a bright red ball that held four of the straps that formed the cylindrical shape together with the aid of slots and yet more hooks.

Before Sora could even turn her gaze back around, the straps had seized her face. Startled, she shrieked and flapped her wings once, before an orange glow grasped her by the head to force her mouth to stay open and keep still. Once the ball slotted itself between her teeth, she closed her wings and folded her ears as strap by strap secured itself around her skull and muzzle. The work was swift, painless, and professional; this was one of the things Sora simply could not fault Trinity for. Though, she had to dock points for using an actual gag; that, she decided, was unprofessional in itself.

The Major backed off, eyeing her handiwork, the wicked smirk still affixed on her muzzle as she took in how Sora's mouth was now corked shut. She did a quick once-over on the harness, tightening and loosening straps as needed before doing likewise to the tack she had affixed upon Sora's face. Then, she conjured a clipboard with a piece of paper affixed to it in a flash of light and hoofed it over to her now-gagged soldier.

Sora studied it for a long moment, finding herself looking at a list scrawled in impeccable writing. "You're gonna be going quite a ways around the city today, filly," Trinity muttered, garnering a reluctant nod in response. "I'll expect you to deliver all those crates to their destinations, contents and boxes without one scratch on them. Fuck up even once, and… suffice to say, you and I both know what'll happen if you do."

Sora heard the words, understood their meaning, but dared not let her gaze move away from the list that was shoved in front of her. She had to memorize the destinations, after all, and shivered as Trinity went on in a monotonous droll, "You will not acknowledge anypony unless you are delivering a parcel straight to their locales. You will not stab anypony, no matter what they do. They could fucking mount you or break that damned jaw of yours for all I care, and you will not shake them off if they do. Take this punishment in stride, Private." The next two words came out in a sibilant hiss, "That understood?"

Sora nodded, and a lump formed in her throat. She dared not swallow it, instead continuing to memorize the list until Trinity pulled it away. Then orange magic seized her by the mane and tugged, forcing her to look up at her superior. "You will not come back until dusk and that damned carriage is empty. You break a leg or a wing, that's on you," Trinity hissed. She let go. "Now get that perky little ass of yours moving, Private." Sora turned and started to flap her wings, before trotting around to pick up momentum with which to lift the carriage. She did not dally, launching as she completed a lap. She flew, slowly, above the great wall that seperated the city from the base, and scanned carefully for her first destination.

The carriage continued to shake as she descended. Sora figured there was a pack of rats throwing a hissyfit amidst the cargo, but ignored it as she could not address that here and now.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

The ponies who were trotting upon a busy street of the city all wrinkled their noses collectively as a noisy, gaudy, rattling carriage landed smoothly onto the pavement, its pony not even pausing to catch her breath as she broke out into a brisk trot the moment she landed. "It's that rogue bitch," a stallion muttered as Sora closed her wings and went right past him. "Why the hell didn't the Admiral just put some bullets through her head? Why's she still working her tail off for the damned army?"

"Look, her mouth's corked," a mare noted as she reached an intersection and promptly rounded the leftmost corner. "What did she do now?"

"Musta talked back. Who she pissed off, I don't know," another mare chimed in as the carriage wheeled and rattled along past her. "And damn, she has some delicious-looking hips!"

Somepony else audibly did something to the third pony that ended in a sharp, piercing thud. "Fine-looking she may be, I hear she ain't nothing but trouble. I'd feel sorry for whoever decides to even look under her tail," the fourth pony, their voice sounding vaguely mare-like, remarked. "And she'll need to have her mane trimmed. In my opinion, those locks are too long."

"Just… ignore them," Sora mentally muttered with a wary sigh leaving her nostrils. "It's just a bunch of words leaving mouths. Harmless as a house fly…" Still, she picked up the pace a little, well aware of the attention she was already getting. It never sat well with her whenever ponies remarked about things like her rear end, but she comforted herself with the fact that, as long as it was merely spoken words, there was no real damage done. She couldn't have stopped the chatter anyway; the moment she stepped out of line, the chatter would amplify a thousandfold and then promptly descend on her and word would reach Trinity… and all that would end up in something she did not want to think about any longer.

She still had to remain Starbreaker's bodyguard, and as this punishment was fairly simple to carry out, she obeyed so that no harm would come to her charge. Besides, this was the closest place where she could get her needed medical treatment at all. She idly wondered how Yukito was dealing with her now, but shook the thought out of her head to focus on her current task. She eyed the buildings carefully, noting that they were built of highly reflective glass and steel that gleamed so much it would probably blind her if the sun rested at a certain point in the sky, which fortunately it did not for the time being.

Some part of her wondered how ponies could stand to live in such a place, and though she acknowledged that she wasn't the architect behind this madness that called itself a city, she still wanted to find and strangle that bastard one of these days. But, the buildings were so eerily similar that deviations such as signposts, trash cans, and even the ponies going in and out of them were few and far in between. She couldn't be bothered to note coat colors and mane colors; to her, the inhabitants may well have been aliens, or perhaps background noise compacted into a crowd. Which, in all fairness they sort of were in the sense that she didn't really get to know them all that well.

Sora preferred it like that. Poor bastards may as well have tried getting in her way, but fortunately they didn't bother her beyond the occasional crass remark and warning other ponies not to get themselves involved with her, and she did not bother them in turn. The less dallying, the fewer distractions, the better. All in all, this was an ideal arrangement. Her eyes, in her state of ruminating, almost missed a sign ablaze in tasteless neon, yet she halted in her tracks and did a double-take before she could waltz past it.

She studied the sign for a second, and took note of several other features which popped out as she examined them. This building to which this sign was attached had carpeted stairs, an overhang shielding them with small barber poles connected with loose cloth ribbons situated under them and put in a straight line. The sign was shaped oddly, sporting a small windmill at its front that span in front of two pairs of bright red ailerons. A pony dressed in a sharp servant's garb stood at the front of the building, eyes drooped as though he were bored out of his mind. "Bingo," she thought with a nod of approval, "first stop: Red Barrel Suite…" She trotted to the Suite, more specifically the pony waiting in front of it, making sure to not bump into anypony else as she went.

The servant pony looked up and blinked rather languidly as Sora made her way to him. "Oh… it's you," he muttered dismally, nose wrinkling and eyes squinting as he stared at her. "I take it you're the one with the parcels of towelettes?"

"Towelettes?" Sora mentally grumbled incredulously, though nonetheless she nodded her head. The servant pony nodded back and trotted around her, flinging open the carriage door with a hoof and peering inside, which oddly caused the rattling to cease. He stepped inside, rummaged through the cargo, and trotted back out in short order with a stack of small wooden boxes bearing paper labels being balanced precariously atop his backside. He gently kicked the door shut, thankfully leaving nary a scratch or a scruff in his wake. He plopped the cargo he took on the ground, and wrenched open the boxes with his hooves, revealing a whole collection of pearly white towels all folded and stacked neatly.

The servant closed the boxes after the cargo passed his inspection. Turning to Sora, he lifted a hoof and made a series of flicking motions with it. "Ah, yes, the highest quality. Toddle along now, you low-class whorse," he stated, without so much as a grain of appraisal in his voice. Sora nodded again and trotted off, nostrils flaring as she took a deep breath.

"Sticks and stones, sticks and stones…" she mentally muttered, and as she turned down another bend, this time on her right, apathy immediately took hold again. Her wings spread, began flapping, and as she rounded another corner she took to the air, making sure to fly just low enough she could pinpoint the next locale of delivery. Behind her, the cargo wagon started to shake again, which perplexed Sora. She angled her body a little, in turn tilting the carriage, to see if that could get it to stop in the event there was something about to fall apart.

She did not hear the carriage do anything more than rattle. Her brow furrowed, and she righted herself again, wondering if Trinity had given her a faulty wagon on purpose. Honestly, she'd be more surprised if that wasn't the case. Perhaps some cargo was loose and flailing around… which would earn her another trip to a certain office she wanted no part of. But if the cargo was loose, then she'd have felt some manner of reverberation through her harness by now, and that servant pony might have probably noticed it when he took his look-see. She doubted he was even aware of it, but considered that he was possibly only acting like such, and a creeping sense of wrongness took hold as she ruminated on this.

Turning down a couple of more streets, she gave a grimace as more carriage-haulers greeted her. Some, she noted, sported turbine engines instead of bladed wings in front of them, and all of them were compacted into four lines at a cross-intersection above the street that filled the gaps between the buildings tightly. Half of the lines faced the opposite way of the other side; in her case, she was facing forward, while the throng of carriages to her immediate left faced where her tail was pointing. In the center of the throng, letting carriages come and go was a quartet of pegasus ponies who hovered above them, each holding signs in their front hooves and directing the flow of traffic.

"Just great, rush hour…" Sora mentally groaned as she languidly got in line, taking the time to facehoof. Though, traffic moved faster than she'd expected, thanks to the ponies directing it, which let her keep the momentum of her ugly vehicle in check. She chanced a glance down, seeing something similar play out on the ground, again with four ponies directing that flow too. She looked back up and proceeded through the throng as fast as the line would let her move, ears folding back as she got closer to the quartet directing its flow. Still, she meandered on, waiting for when she'd get the signal to go ahead and carry on with her task.

The ponies directing the flow of traffic gave her wary stares as one of them bade her to go on ahead. Sora nodded to them and flew on, content to get as far away from traffic as she could. Going higher than the rest of the carriage-drivers would probably blind her temporarily, as the sun continued to climb the sky and cast more and more of its light on the buildings all around. This was a risk she could not afford, so she simply kept herself in as low a profile as she could manage—easier said than done, given how sorely her vehicle stuck out like a set of natural primaries in these parts.

She glanced down after she rounded another corner on the left, and sighed. She had a feeling today was going to be a long one.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Starbreaker grumbled, watching as Yukito pulled her patient's gown down to her hind legs and carved into her chest with a scalpel. Her impromptu operator had taken to surrounding her with black and blue photos of a ribcage and shoulder blade of somepony who had a casing of… some sort of substance covering said ribcage. It was only thanks to the molding she could even determine what was on the photos; the molding was identical to a set of natural ribs down to the curvature and gap formation, but even then it appeared muzzy.

She didn't feel a thing as he injected anesthesia into her with a myriad of needles held in his magical glow, nor as he pried apart her skin, a very thin layer of fatty tissue with meager bits of muscle and fur to unravel what lay beneath. His brows climbed up his forehead as doing this revealed a layer of blackened metal that hugged her ribcage tightly enough to have been molded in its very shape. He noted it was dented in places, but had yet to puncture.

"... so you're a modified unicorn… guess that explains why your x-rays came out strange," Yukito noted, a curiousness in his tone as he spoke. He promptly closed the cavity and conjured a sewing hook-shaped needle and surgical thread to hold it shut. Looking Starbreaker in the eye as thread after thread was woven into her skin, he queried in a level voice, "How in the hell are you still alive?"

Starbreaker promptly snorted. "Bring out a torch and scald me," she replied. "Go ahead—I dare you."

Yukito's brows went higher, until they reached the base of his horn. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" he queried sincerely.

"Just do it," Starbreaker replied with exasperation in her voice, coupled with an assured nod. "I'll burn you later for it, though." Yukito groaned and lifted a hoof to rub his muzzle as he took the time to conjure a wad of cloth to scrub off what little blood had seeped out during the procedure. When that was done, he made his tools vanish with a nod of reluctance.

"If this harms you, I'll have to perform surgery to address that…" Yukito warned. When Starbreaker nodded back, he groaned and lit up his horn to conjure a very weak ember. "This really isn't one of my best spells…" Carefully, he lowered the tip of his horn onto her chest, just under the spot where he'd made his incision. The flame flickered as it came into contact with fur and flesh, dancing ever so slightly… yet it did not do anything. The fur did not catch so much as one spark, the skin that held it failed to char, and if he had to hazard a guess the metal beneath that did not even melt in the slightest.

Starbreaker, probably due to being numbed for the initial procedure, did not flinch at all. She eyed that tiny spark caressing her fur and smiled, before lifting her good hoof to gently cup it like a mother would her foal. That made the flame burn brighter, and her eyes twinkled in delight as the meager blaze covered just a little more of her fur. "It's… so precious," she muttered appraisingly, watching the spark with interest. "So much… destructive potential." The spark flickered, and she added, "But… by itself, it can't do anything. This little flame… is so helpless…"

Yukito sighed and let his horn dim, figuring he had entertained Starbreaker's passion for fire and her bizarre request long enough. The spark of flame promptly died, and he pulled his head back. Starbreaker, likewise, put down her hoof to let him examine the patch of fur he had tried to torch to no avail. "It's… it shouldn't be…" he muttered, eyes going wide. He turned to the good hoof and lit his horn up again, resummoning that tiny spark and trotting around to trail it up and down her foreleg. Then, he tried her mane, her face, and her neck, all of which yielded the same result. He let the spark die again, making sure to avoid torching her bandages, and took a step back, his mind boggling.

"Y-you should have caught fire, or at the very least, your mane and fur should have shriveled by now…" he muttered, shaking his head as his pupils shrank. "Even a small flame could manage that much… Unless…" He gulped and trotted forward again, steeling himself and taking a deep breath to collect himself. "Do you… remember how you were… modified?"

Starbreaker's smile fell, and her eyes narrowed. "Yes," she sibilantly hissed. "Every. Single. Moment of it."

Yukito frowned. "Could you… tell me what your fur and flesh are made of?" he asked slowly.

Starbreaker lifted her hoof and tapped her chin idly, trying to scrounge from memory. After a few minutes, she shook her head. "Nopony would tell me. Then again, you couldn't ask the ponies who did this if you tried," she muttered grimly.

Yukito's brow furrowed as a mental picture began forming in his head. "You burned them, didn't you?" he asked.

Starbreaker nodded and dropped her hoof, smiling again. "Until they were bones. I crushed the bones with my bare hooves after," she chirped. She gestured to where her cutie mark was under the gown and added, "Here's the funny thing: I didn't know it until the day after, but by then I'd already gotten my mark." Yukito rolled his eyes and conjured the scalpel again. Her smile widened a little more.

"In that case, would you mind terribly if I took samples for testing? You don't know what you're made of that's fireproof, and you killed the ponies who did know, so… I'm afraid I am left with little option," Yukito muttered, suppressing the urge to facehoof.

Starbreaker nodded and extended her hoof. "Go ahead," she replied. Yukito nodded and swiftly cut away a square of fur and flesh on her chest, and made sure to scrape off a few flakes of metal to deposit onto a cloth rag that he conjured prior to summoning the needle and thread to sew that new hole shut. When that was done, he lopped off a few strands of mane and settled those on the rag as well, for good measure.

"Stay there for a few minutes," Yukito instructed. At Starbreaker's nod and groan, he added, "I'll not be long." With that, his horn flared and he vanished in a flash of light, rag and all. She laid back and sighed, lifting her hoof to play with her mane since that was all she could do. Curling it around and around to alleviate her boredom, her mind started to wander.

"That little purple-faced… ooooh, she just makes me mad… first takes my power, then seals it off…" Her eyes flashed red as she thought of Sora. Her hoof started trying to rip her own mane out. "If only I could torch her! Maybe I'll melt those damned teats clean off, and then those blades next! And that bell too…" As she ruminated on how to deal Sora a dose of retribution, each thought decidedly more dangerous and hectic than the last, she failed to notice how much time was flying.

"But… why did she…" It was here her mental ramblings halted, for she struggled to come up with a word with which to describe the moment four cloaked ponies fell over dead. Eventually, she managed to come up with something, though it nowhere near fit what had happened then, "Why did she take me away from… from those ponies, and to a place where she doesn't want anypony else seeing me here? Just what is her deal? Had she gone weird in the head too?"

Continuing to ruminate on Sora's erratic behavior as of late, her mind once again stalled as she tried to conjure words which fit them. Alas, she couldn't, largely because Yukito teleported back into the room with his mane frizzed and his pupils the size of pinpricks. "U-um… I f-found what y-you're made of," he managed, snapping her out of her reverie.

Starbreaker's eyes reverted back to their standard rainbow. "What?" she asked, canting her head.

"... just… this will sound strange…" Yukito took a deep breath to gather himself, and conjured a whole stack of papers in a flash of light. The stack was no thicker than the very tip of his hoof, and he lifted it to his face to start shuffling through it. "Your mane is made of flannel, infused with synthetic, blue fibers of asbestos and real hair. However, it feels entirely real to the touch. Your coat, made of a mixture of regular wool, stone wool and flannel, again infused with more asbestos and real fur. Do you follow?"

Starbreaker shrugged. "I don't see what this has to do with anything…" she admitted earnestly.

"Flannel and both variants of wool are effectively fireproof, and I'd wager that those fabrics have been reinforced by other synthetic materials, since your hide is still very much intact," Yukito replied. "Same with your skin in the fire-retardant aspect, which I found to be… vinyl and silicone, once again infused with the real deal for a much more harder-to-detect feel and, possibly, to keep at least some of your nerve endings intact. The metal in your chest? Mythril and orichalcum alloy; lightweight, durable yet fireproof as well, to protect your most vital of internal organs. How those who augmented you got their hooves on orichalchum, I haven't the foggiest..."

He sighed and made the papers vanish, whereupon he gave Starbreaker a hard, level look. "You are a trotting example of what it means to be immune to fire itself, and I am wondering how I failed to detect all of this sooner. How much of you is augmented, I don't have exact numbers… but you eat and sleep and sustain injuries and… make waste the way any other au naturale pony would, and clearly you maintain higher functions of the brain. I'd safely wager 50/50 easily."

"Make waste?" Starbreaker asked, pupils dilating as confusion took hold. "What are you on about?"

Yukito lifted a hoof and spun it around. "What comes out from under your tail?" he retorted, trying to keep this conversation from growing any more awkward than it already was.

It took Starbreaker but a moment to get what he was insinuating. "... oh," she muttered in understanding.

"Erm, yes. But, this presents a problem. You can't regenerate lost skin and tissue as easily, since you have a lot of augments just to maintain the look of something vaguely natural, no offense personally. And, since you lost an entire ear and a half, I'd wager it is difficult for you to grow back entire portions of skin and tissue because a lot of it is synthetic," Yukito went on, frowning. "While we do have the means to grant you prosthetics and possibly address your little recovery issue, it's strictly a matter of replication. I don't know how you were augmented, nor how much, don't even ask about the ratios needed, so… it's going to require something of a learning process."

Starbreaker perked up at that, blinking a few times and untangling her hoof from her mane. "It's possible?" she asked.

Yukito nodded. "Yes. But I cannot do that now, since Sora has yet to show up," he muttered, ears folding back against his head. "What in hell is keeping her? She should have been here by now…"

"Can I slap her if she comes back hurt again?" Starbreaker hissed, eyes narrowing once again.

Yukito shook his head and proceeded to facehoof. "As you are, no. You'd probably break another hoof doing it, heaven forbid," he muttered. "But… if she does need some sense talked into her at some point, I suppose there will come a time whence you can." He dropped his hoof and added, "Until then, I'll be the one to discuss such things with her, but I'll make sure to do it here so you can chip in. Is that alright?"

Starbreaker nodded and donned a small smile at that. "Very," she tersely replied.

Chapter VII- Crematorium

Sora grumbled through her gag as the day dragged on, with ponies insulting her at every single turn. The ponies she delivered packages to waved her off without one iota of appreciation, but she still carried on with her task despite the lack of respect and the fact that she found herself delivering household goods like canned food and more towelettes. There was naught she could do about the ungrateful pricks she'd found herself mingling with today; she'd been given orders clear as day that did not devolve into unethical behavior—yet—and that was that. She did not bother busying herself with ideas of retribution, opting instead to let those take her when it came time to sleep. The carriage rattled in between drop-offs, until at last its pilot made the penultimate stop and neared the very end of her task.

Her wings ached a little as she made the last delivery, and she flew towards a very peculiar part of the city, one stationed at the westmost side. Here, where there should have been buildings, a giant dome of sorts with a makeshift plateau had been constructed, cast iron black and riddled with red lights that blazed brightly amidst the rays of the setting sun. Very few, if any ponies gathered around it, leaving whole swaths of large road utterly empty. The buildings around it gave this oddball plenty of space, letting entire acres of land alone just so it could sit in their center. Pipes stuck out of the construct, pouring smoke out aplenty.

Looking at it made bile climb up Sora's throat, and for once she was grateful she'd been gagged. It made it so much easier to keep her stomach from running loose, though she'd never tell Trinity that lest she get some bright ideas for another punishment. The sight reminded her of a blackened, charred, slightly flattened boil, ready and waiting to be punctured so its contents could be expunged. The smoke itself reeked strongly of fire. She descended, her stomach gurgling in protest as she came closer to this strange construct and its lonely patch of roads. "Note to self, eat dinner outside the mess hall," Sora mentally grumbled as she pulled herself towards the building in a languid, lazy, ludicrously wide corkscrew maneuver, making sure to avoid the smoke on her way down.

A nauseating smell, one of smoulder, chemicals, fire and rot, tickled her nose as she landed on the streets outside of the bizarre building's suspiciously open doors. Her snout instinctively wrinkled, and started to tinge a shade of green. "Oh no…" A wing spread and curled around awkwardly, trying to shield her nostrils from the foul odor without scratching the pavement in the process. "What do I have to deliver here? Colostomy bags? Please, gods of old, don't let it be that..." she prayed. Hesitantly, she trotted closer to the monstrosity, ears folding back and face turning greener as she approached it. Suffice to say, she could very easily smell why this place had such a wide berth.

She trotted through the doors, the stench growing stronger and stronger with each step. The inside of the building was dimly lit, and it was only thanks to the sun's fleeting rays she could even see what lay within. Walls of black material, a cast iron sort if she had to guess, surrounded her in a half-dome hallway ending some impressive two hundred and forty yards at a set of double doors.

At seemingly random spaces, there were panes of glass, each one revealing various bags of refuse being processed in a myriad of different ways under many flickering lights. The window closest to her had an entire compost heap burning up in searing white-hot flames, while another three trots down had small conveyor belts leading up to a pressing mechanism which would turn the compost into compact cubes.

Sora's stomach did cartwheels as she took in the very dismal, very grotesque sight. She flared her wings and made a beeline for the doors, flapping without taking off just to get there faster and be done with it before her stomach could start shooting bile up her throat and choke her with it. She took very shallow breaths, both to avoid the acrid stench for as long as possible and to keep her already-volatile insides from going on the warpath, and bit down on the gag wedged in her mouth as a precaution.

She crossed a mere forty yards in a brisk trot fueled by flapping, before pain shot through her nerves and her legs were filled with energy. She dared not spring into a gallop, however; she couldn't risk damaging the cargo, regardless of whether or not it actually belonged here. If it was volatile in any way, then there'd simply be no chance in hell she could explain it away to Trinity. Besides, expanding the energy needlessly would only make her stomach turn that much more. And if, indeed, it was dangerous as she suspected… then that would have explained the rattling that nagged her until she descended here.

A horrific chemical reaction was the last thing she needed today, and she did not want it to happen here if she could help it. Her stomach sent a cramp of agreement, momentarily clenching from both ends. Her eyes gravitated to and fro betwixt the myriad of displays surrounding her as she trotted closer to the doors, if only to take her mind off of her own dismal musings. There were more conveyor belts, taking various bits of refuse out to a machine shaped like a spider with a myriad of trap doors—a sorting machine, she guessed. Another housed nothing more than mounds upon mounds of dirt sporting grass shoots, with bright lights blaring overhead. She relaxed a little at the sight, and would have smiled if not for the gag.

Her stomach growled again, now reminding her that she had yet to eat. She continued before the grass could tempt her. "Although… some greenery does sound good for dinner…" she idly noted, her hooves moving on autopilot now. She had to finish her task first, though, and the longer she stalled, the more her stomach would protest… and the more time her superiors had in…

Her legs hastened now, to a near gallop, as she started envisioning the Admiral of all ponies with his hooves wrapped around Starbreaker and harming her in ways best left unthought of. She reached the doors in a matter of minutes, which opened to admit her and her ugly wagon. Beyond was a small room, lined with chutes of varying sizes. These chutes had hatch-doors that were labeled with sheets of paper dangling from their handles, each sized in accordance.

In the middle of the room was a simple cherry desk, on which slept a stallion with his head nestled in his forehooves amidst strewn papers and loose inkpens. Sora noted he wore a simple hat and a blue suit, both of which were rumpled and stain-riddled, and had neither wings nor horn. He had a brown coat and a mane a lighter shade of that hue—here, he was as plain as they came. She trotted up to him and lifted a hoof to nudge him awake, and the stallion yawned and shifted before raising his head and looking at her with bloodshot eyes of a deep amber.

They stared for a long moment before he spoke in a heavily slurred voice, "Th' fuck took ye so long?"

Sora merely shrugged and spread a wing to gesture to her carriage. The stallion's nose wrinkled as he clambered off the desk and released a mighty yawn. "Whatever…" he grumbled, ambling over to the carriage to open it. She felt the doors shift, heard the creaking of hinges as it opened, followed by a low whistle and a grunt. "Gha… this thing's huge… I knew I shouldn't have slept on th' job…" he hissed.

It took the barely-awake lad several minutes, but he managed to pull out a ludicrously huge box and trotted to the desk with it balanced on his back. It was as long as the desk itself, and tilted precariously with each movement. However, before it could tilt and fall, he trotted away from the carriage and slowly lowered himself so it could tilt harmlessly on the floor. She noted it was oddly airtight-looking, with nary a crack to be seen. It wasn't labeled with a strip of paper, either, as far as its contents were concerned. It only had 'cremate' scrawled crudely onto its side.

"Come over here and hold that end for me, will ya?" the stallion asked. Sora nodded and trotted over, sitting on her haunches to lift her forehooves up. She clasped the higher end of the box, and her nose wrinkled as an even stronger stench assailed her sinuses.

Seconds later, her mind registered the stench, and what it possibly meant. "Ah, shit, whatever's in here may've broke already!" she noted, eyes widening in panic. The stallion took his time wiggling out from under the box, and stood up as he turned to her. He lifted a hoof and flicked down, and hesitantly Sora lowered her end of the box.

"Why ya got that look on yer face?" the stallion asked, before he noted Sora's gag. He frowned and trotted to the desk, rummaging through its strewn papers until he procured a blank sheet. After scrabbling for an inkpen, making sure it dispensed its load properly, he beckoned her over.

Sora, sensing what he was wanting her to do, stood up, trotted over, took the inkpen in a fetlock and scribbled something out before letting him read it. Her message was short, concise, and told him all he'd needed to know.

"I'm being punished by the Major for calling her a damned lunatic."

"Th' usual?" the stallion replied, looking from the note and to Sora, who nodded in confirmation. "Eh, can't be helped. Not yer fault she's batty." He trotted back to the box, brow furrowing. "Now what needs disposing this time…" he muttered as his hooves planted themselves on the top of the box, and he started to heave as he worked to uncover the contents. It took him several pulls within several minutes and a few position shifts before his hooves found their mark, but gradually the lid came undone.

Sora shrieked into her gag, wings flaring as the lid came off to reveal a pair of ponies tucked within, bodies shaved of mane, tail, and fur and skin turned blue from asphyxiation. The stallion jumped back with a cry of his own, and both pairs of eyes almost bugged out of their sockets as they beheld the sight. "H-holy… how'd these poor ponies…" the stallion muttered, ears folding back against his head.

Sora cantered over with hesitant steps, fueled by a small part of her mind that wanted to get a closer look and determine what had happened before they were crammed into the box. Her stomach churned, threatening to evacuate its contents one way or the other, and slowly she peered over to find waste deposits and conspicuous crystals jutting from their shoulders. The crystals were dirtied, and had blackened, supported by a metal ring of some sort that kept them anchored to now-decaying flesh.

Both ponies were gagged as she was, and their eyes were wide open, glassy and housing pupils forever shrunken in death. They were positioned in such a way she wasn't able to tell if they were mares or stallions. Aside from the gags, crystals, positioning and waste, as well as the fact they were shaved, nothing really turned up to point to why they'd been stuffed to begin with. She didn't even see any other traces of augmentations either.

Her ears fell back as she realized, with fast-growing horror, that she'd only helped send them along to their very own graves. The worker stallion turned to Sora and asked in a low, quivering voice, "Did th' batty bitch tell ya about this?" Sora merely shook her head in response. Even if she did not have her mouth corked, she wouldn't have been able to say anything, for she had not considered this outcome in the slightest.

The stallion sighed and carefully put the lid back on the box. "Poor bastards…" he mumbled. "They didn't deserve this…" He turned to Sora again. "I'll… take care of this, send these guys off t' their rest. Head back to th' base. Keep an eye out for anything else that's fishy."

Sora nodded, and her face hardened. "And if shit gets bad… like, worse than this," the stallion continued, gesturing to the makeshift coffin with his hoof, "take anypony you can with ye… and run. I think th' army's up t' something if they're sending me corpses. This ain't never happened b'fore."

Sora could do little else but heed him, though she took a moment to bow her head to the now-covered cadavers and shifted her wings so her primaries rested on the floor. It was the very least she could have done for them, though some part of her didn't expect forgiveness from them, even if they could somehow communicate it now. She heard trotting hooves, and felt a hoof come to rest on her withers, prior to turning to the only other living soul in the room.

"T'weren't yer fault they… okay, maybe it was, but only because ye didn't get them out when ye had th' chance. But ye couldn't have known either way that ye'd have been totin' bodies. Their mouths were corked t' hell, and I'd bet bits t' toast that wagon was soundproofed," the worker stallion muttered in a soft voice, seeing a smidgen of guilt swimming in those green eyes. Carefully, he continued, "Somepony done set yer ass up, filly. Who, I'unno. Just keep yer eyes peeled f'r me, okay?" At her nod he dropped his hoof, and turned to set about the very delicate task of sending the dead off. He lifted one end of the box and strained; Sora trotted to the other end and picked it up to help ease his burden. Then, both rose onto their back legs in perfect tandem.

She, inadvertently, killed them, when instead she could have done something to save them. She'd be damned if she didn't bear some responsibility for this… crime upon her withers. Slowly, she and the worker walked upright with the box in their hooves, marching toward a large chute twice as big as the load that sat behind the desk. When they reached it, they angled the box so Sora could use one of her wings to open the chute, revealing a fiery inferno raging beyond. It was there the deceased went towards their final rest…

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Sora scrambled to the medical ward as soon as she returned to the launch pad and got out of her gag and harness. Her mind whirred, tossed right into a frenzy as post-cremation panic settled in. The door opened to admit her, but she didn't relax even as she saw Yukito and Starbreaker having themselves a chat like nothing had happened. She trotted in and sat down, catching both ponies' attention.

"What's wrong now? You look like you've been goosed!" Yukito muttered, watching Sora intently.

"Just… thought the Majors came here and…" Sora stopped and paused to take a breath, seeing that nothing had gone catastrophically wrong in her absence. She shivered, once again envisioning that scenario playing out…

Yukito frowned at that. "Nopony really came here. Not even Tsukumi dropped by," he replied slowly. He approached Sora, face hardening. "Where were you? We've been expecting you for some time now."

Sora stifled a groan at being metaphorically prodded again. "Major Trinity decided to punish me with an all-day task," she muttered. When Yukito's brow rose, she elaborated a little, "I got to play mailmare with the world's ugliest method of vehicular transport." Her stomach lurched, and her entire front quarters went with it. She raced to cover her mouth with a hoof to reign her protesting stomach back in before weakly adding, "And I was gagged all day. Couldn't eat…"

"I didn't know you also needed fuel, Little Miss Soldier!" Starbreaker hissed, frowning deeply in annoyance. "Once I get out of this bed, your wings will melt!"

Sora, having managed to contain her stomach for the time being, stifled another groan into her hoof. "Yukito, are there any cucumbers left?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"Starbreaker ate the last one while you were away," Yukito replied, heaving a heavy sigh.

"Damnit…" Sora grumbled, her eyes gravitating to the miniature fridge. "Is it alright for me to take a peek?"

"I don't see why not," Yukito replied with a roll of his eyes. Sora stood up and eagerly trotted over to the fridge, flinging its door open with a hoof to examine its contents. He turned to her and watched as she pulled out a tray of plastic-wrapped carrots, corn and peas with enthusiasm. She closed the door with a rear hoof and trotted to the microwave before opening that. She set the tray down inside, ripped every scrap of plastic off that she could, closed the door, and turned on the machine, already salivating enough to have a trickle of drool trace its way down her chin.

"Doctor, she's starting to worry me," Starbreaker piped up again, with such utmost sincerity that both Yukito and Sora jumped upon hearing it.

Sora immediately turned to Starbreaker, eyes widening and a hoof racing up to wipe her mouth. "Starbreaker? Worrying? Since when?" she asked incredulously, with a hint of genuine surprise in her tone.

"Well, this is unheard of…" Yukito mumbled, smiling a little nonetheless. "You still want to burn her, right?"

"Yes. Until she is nothing but bones," Starbreaker replied with a snort. She lifted her good hoof and gesticulated wildly at Sora before adding, "But I think she's gone weird in the head!"

Sora lifted her hoof from her mouth and held it to her chest. "Me, weird in the head? Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?" she shot back.

"It doesn't change a thing!" Starbreaker's hoof stilled in an accusatory gesture. "You've gone off your rocker lately!"

Yukito's brow furrowed, and his smile fell into a frown. "Oh, here we go… now they're trying to one-up each other…" he grumbled, and lifted his hoof to smack the bridge of his muzzle. He trotted to them both, horn glowing and aura clamping both their mouths shut before they could escalate their impromptu competition to heights he did not want to witness. "Ladies, I would appreciate it if you stopped your mane-measuring contest at once," he stated firmly.

He turned to Starbreaker first, frown deepening as he spoke, "I understand your concerns, but you really shouldn't be egging her on." Then, he turned to address Sora next, and his face hardened some more, "And, sadly, I agree with Starbreaker: your behavior as of late has been erratic, ever since you found her. Could you enlighten us as to why?"

Sora groaned and waited until the magical hold had been lifted from her mouth before she gave her answer, "The superior assholes who run this place have been giving me hell lately. And I… haven't been able to vent." At this, Yukito's brow rose, but he relented and sighed.

"Bottling your anger… again…" Yukito facehoofed once more, that time running his hoof down the bridge of his muzzle as he did it, though he made sure not to take his glasses with it. His horn dimmed entirely, and Starbreaker's muzzle was freed from his magical grip. "Sora… that isn't healthy. Sooner or later, if you keep bottling it up, you'll explode…"

"Will her guts spray everywhere when she does?" Starbreaker piped up. Yukito shook his head.

"No. I meant metaphorically," Yukito grumbled. "Anyway, one day, should you keep it locked tight… I don't think the results would be very… pretty, or desireable, to put it mildly," he finished awkwardly. "Like with Takahara... "

Sora winced at that, and turned to the microwave as it started loudly blaring. She lifted a hoof and opened it before pulling out the now-steaming tray of vegetables. She carefully set it down to the floor and shifted her legs to lay before it. "So… no screaming… or slashing…" she summed up with a sigh.

"Unless it's in self-defense, as with Takahara," Yukito replied with a nod. "Or, gods of old forbid, you get deployed again and have to kill some ponies."

Sora nodded and stuck her muzzle in the tray. She started eating almost immediately, shifting her forehooves to hold the receptacle in place so she could get every last scrap. Her ears remained perked, signaling that she was still listening and, perhaps, waiting for his lecture to end. Yukito smiled a little and finished, "I'll still be here if you need to talk. Scream and vent all you want, just warn me in advance so I can get earmuffs."

"Mhm," Sora hummed through her food, nodding again to signal that she understood.

"Why do you need earmuffs?" Starbreaker piped up again. Yukito chuckled at that, and turned to her with a grin.

"So I can still hear what she'd be saying, without having my ears damaged by her shrieking," he replied calmly. "You've surely heard how loud she can scream, no?" At Starbreaker's nod, his grin widened. "The earmuffs would be a safety precaution." He turned back to Sora as she stood up, clutching a now-cleaned tray with her teeth. "Do you need to vent?" he asked. Sora shook her head, and trotted over to the waste bin to deposit the tray in it.

"I still need to talk, though," Sora began, wings drooping as she spoke. She turned to Yukito and Starbreaker, her face hardening. "This is going to sound outlandish…" She took a deep breath and told them all that had happened today, from being gagged to discovering dead bodies in the gaudy cargo wagon. She left no detail out, and by the time she finished both pairs of pupils shrank.

"Crystals? In the shoulders?" Yukito muttered, trying to wrap his head around it. Sora nodded fervently. "That is… bizarre. Did they have cutie marks?" That time, Sora shook her head. "Hrm…"

"Did you stay until they were skeletons?" Starbreaker asked again. She got another shaking of the head as her answer.

"Not much of a reason to. I just… flew out afterwards," Sora muttered with a sigh. Her wings bristled a little bit. "And… it's…"

Yukito trotted over and planted a hoof on Sora's withers, looking her straight in the eye. "You need say no more. Would you like to spend the night in my quarters?" he queried.

Sora nodded and smiled a little. "Over the barracks any day," she chirped.

"Are you gonna let him touch you?" Starbreaker piped up once more, and the two turned to look at her with vexed frowns.

Sora heaved another sigh, and her gaze hardened. "In the sense that Takahara touched me… not exactly," she muttered, though it did not escape the notice of her charge when a blush formed on her face. "After all that's happened today, I'm… not exactly keen on it."

"And I wouldn't touch her in that manner anyway. She's a dear friend of mine, Starbreaker, one whose life I have saved at that," Yukito replied, brow slanting. "I merely extended the offer to her so she'd catch a break for the night."

Starbreaker frowned. "Friend?" she parroted, letting the word sit on her tongue. Her brow slanted, and confusion sparked in her eyes as a whir filled the air, which shifted to a bright yellow for a moment. Sora and Yukito both noted the brief change, but opted not to say anything about it. "What's… a friend?"

Sora lifted both her forelegs, shifted to stand on her hind hooves, and promptly facehoofed with both fronts simultaneously. "The rock you must've been living under…" she grumbled in exasperation. "How fucking tall was it?"

Yukito shook his head solemnly. "Must've been as large as the base itself…" he muttered dismally. He turned to Sora and asked, "Want me to fetch Tsukumi before we clock out for the night?"

Sora nodded and dropped back to all fours. "That sounds good," she replied.

Chapter VIII- Inexplicable Sense

Light flashed, and in that moment, Yukito and Sora had vanished from the cell after the former dragged Tsukumi to babysit Starbreaker for the night via a few bouts of teleportation. They reappeared atop the launch pad, whereupon Yukito clambered onto Sora's back as she spread her wings for liftoff. They flew into the city, weaving past buildings as the light of the rising moon shimmered off of the glass and viridian blades. The two took the time to marvel at the sight, as at night the city looked far better in the silvery glow, which complimented the lights shining throughout the streets. The neon blazed in tandem with a myriad of street lights, making the city almost seem to shine with its own prismatic light. This time, Sora did not take the lanes; she flew above all of that.

Ponies looked up as she passed, and some shouted at her, but she ignored them altogether. None of them dared approach her as she soared with speed and grace, weaving her way betwixt buildings aplenty, though she was careful enough to avoid sharp turns. Yukito smiled as the wind tousled his mane and tail, looking at the sky to find that the stars above started to glimmer. A feeling of exhilaration filled his veins, and he commented, "Is this what it's like to fly for you?"

Sora smiled as she turned another few bends, realizing she was getting further away from the base. Exhilaration blossomed in her too, only skyrocketing as she started to accelerate with each twist and turn. The ponies below were starting to see less distinct forms, and more blurs as her speed continued to climb. "When I'm not on a mission, yeah," she answered, relishing the feeling of the wind ruffling her feathers with each flap of her wings.

Yukito continued to look up, though his smile fell as something shot miles and miles above the city. It was silver, glowing almost… "Sora! A shooting star!" he exclaimed. Sora slowed down to safely stop and looked up, seeing the lone streak trail its way across. It didn't fade; instead, curious rings that glimmered a faint rainbow formed as it flew in a twisting circle.

"I don't think shooting stars would do that," Sora remarked, though her smile widened nonetheless at the sight. Another form zipped across the sky, predominately gold with pinkish-red and cornish-blue highlights twisting around it in a tight corkscrew, itself as spectacular as the silver streak and its rings. The two entities met, and performed a small, elegant pirouette that made their tails shimmer radiantly. "Hang tight, Yukito." He heeded her warning, and gripped himself in his magic, which anchored itself to her midsection.

Sora carefully angled her blades in response once Yukito had secured himself, catching the moon and the city's lights, and performed a little dance of her own, twisting and corkscrewing about. She looped and twirled, banked low and climbed high, almost as if the entities above could see her. The entities above changed their movements to match hers in perfect tandem; a rhythm that, had Yukito been able to look for just long enough, was almost too choreographed to have come from practice alone. Something seemed to overtake his companion, but what it was escaped him.

Sora picked up in speed, until her blades were whistling as she spun and danced about, and as the air flowed around her the blades changed pitch with their whistling in a manner that reminded Yukito of somepony singing. She rose a few inches above the city's tallest buildings, wings catching more light, almost glowing now with a radiance all their own. The 'stars' drooped down to match her, but they came no closer than that to meet up. The dance continued, gaining a sense of urgency, growing more complex, forming more maneuvers into its hastening rhythm, becoming more dazzling and frantic as he kept clinging for dear life.

It took a few minutes, but all three slowed into the simpler motions of their aerial displays. Finally, they ceased moving as the dance slowed further when another dome formed and a bell started clanging violently as Sora lifted her hoof and muttered, "Shield, invert." Yukito's heart raced, but he dared not scream and fought to keep himself from losing his lunch; adrenaline filled his veins, and a sense of awe with it as he saw the two forms above languidly circling one another. The entities were now encased in a dome that seemed to refract the moon's light and form a small rainbow around them.

The dance concluded in a sharp retort; the bell ceased ringing, and the two entities charged through the shield's top when it did, shattering it into a million glimmering pieces that shimmered prismatically before they faded from the world. He heard a chorus of voices coming from below; chancing a glance down, he could only see many dots on the streets, and guessed that he wasn't the only pony who saw the display. He smiled as he realized that he didn't just have a front seat; he was, unwittingly, a part of Sora's performance tonight. He looked up and gasped at the sight which greeted him next.

A red entity arrived, followed immediately by some friends: a blue, a purple, a solid gold, and a bright viridian set of 'stars' joined in before performing a dance of their own, though it was short and nowhere near as elegant as that of the first. Sora waved with her wings, and for a second, the forms blazed brighter, almost like stars in their own right. Her wings gleamed in the light, reflecting and refracting in a display of what looked to be shimmering crystal from above. Then, the entities departed, zipping across the sky to parts unknown.

Yukito took a moment to catch his breath. It took him several tries to even take one breath of air that wasn't shallow, and thankfully Sora took her sweet time getting back into the city's maze of roads and buildings. "What was that about?" he asked once his heart slowed down and he was able to collect himself. He hadn't expected to be given a coronary so soon.

"A few acquaintances," Sora answered, smiling fondly as she started flying through the city again.

"Pleasantries?" Yukito guessed. Sora shook her head.

"If we're at different altitudes, that little samba is our equivalent of 'salutations,'" she answered.

"Ah," Yukito muttered with a nod of understanding. "Are you going to dance like that anymore this evening?"

"Maybe," Sora chirped, a hint of deviousness in her voice. "But only if they show up again tonight."

Within an hour after they had caught the 'shooting stars,' which passed without incident and thankfully without anymore aerial dancing on Yukito's behalf, they reached a small building that was dwarfed by the others on the eastmost side of the city. This building was only half the height of a standard building and an eighth that of the base, and with almost all of its lights conspicuously turned off. A sign reading 'Off-duty doctor and professors' quarters' had been affixed crudely to its top, blazing with flickering lights.

Sora banked to land on the pavement before it, and Yukito hopped off before his horn glowed and they vanished in another flare of light. Upon reappearing, they found themselves in a dark room, and for a moment they swayed on their hooves as spots danced in their eyes. They steadied themselves and shook their heads to clear their vision, before a small light started dancing at the tip of Yukito's horn.

The light revealed a meager living room with walls and floor hewn of metal that were decidedly less than polished to perfection, sporting little more than a worn leather couch that wasn't up against a wall but rather put in the center of the room, with a heavily scratched coffee table stationed close to said couch. There were no more than a mere five doors leading to other rooms, each one positioned in a way to form the five points of a standard star if Yukito were of a mind to map it out with chalk.

There were no overhead lights here, much less any cameras to monitor them; instead there were holes in the ceiling where they should have been, lined with frayed wires aplenty that were trapped by clear glass bubbles to keep them from becoming a fire hazard. The walls were barren as far as personal items were concerned, instead riddled with a myriad of papers crudely taped onto them with scientific mumbo-jumbo that Sora couldn't hope to make sense of. There were few barren spots betwixt the papers, and the few barren spots that were there were small and empty save for a faint layer of dust that had built up. There was a small plaque next to the door that faced north which simply bore '#508, Prof. Yukito Swiftcure' in bold copper font.

The doors were shut, similar in build to those of the base, and Sora opted to trot to the couch and lay on it. Yukito chuckled as two of her legs dangled off the side, while one back leg and a front propped themselves on the arms. She angled her wings at something of an awkward position, one flared wide and up to hug the couch's back and top whilst the other laid itself over the coffee table. She hummed as she melted into the couch, which simply molded to her body and position with a supple softness that made it so much better.

"So cozy," Sora purred, letting a dopey grin cross her face and her eyes close in bliss. "It doesn't stab me like my bed in the barracks does every night. If we ever have to run, can we bring this thing?"

"We'd need a carriage to bring it with," Yukito replied with another chuckle. His magic embraced his longcoat and undergarments, which he used to promptly shuck off, revealing a cutie mark of a pair of winged serpents entwining a slender rod with a crystal sphere at its top, with the totality of that mark a relatively warm red in hue. With his clothes gone, Sora could see bits and pieces of him were clearly metallic, though that was only limited to his legs and a small section of his barrel. "Do you think Tsukumi would handle Starbreaker for the night?"

Sora nodded. "She'll be bedridden for a while. One night with her won't do him any harm," she chirped. Her tail swished, and her ears twitched as she heard a door hiss open. Her eyelids cracked, and she turned to Yukito as he approached a door on the rightmost side of the room and started trotting to the second room beyond. "Toilet?" she guessed.

"No, kitchen," Yukito replied as he fully trotted past the open door. "I forgot to check and see if my pantry's stocked before I went to work this morning."

"Ah." Sora nodded and closed her eyes again, relishing the feeling of laying on the couch. She heard something click sharply, followed by multiple creaking hinges, and then the slamming of doors. Yukito started trotting again, the sound getting louder and louder, and a hoof came onto her withers the moment the trotting had stopped. Her eyes opened once more, and gravitated to him. "Stocked?"

"Not as much as I'd have liked, but for now it'll do," Yukito answered with a sigh. "Are you going to spend the night on that, in such a position? It can't be good for your wings."

Sora snickered and waited until Yukito retracted his hoof before she got off of the couch, though not before closing her wings to keep from scratching things. She sighed in contentment, and for a moment, her worries seemed to melt away. Even her own apathy had been swept aside as a sense of calm seeped in. Something about this place just put her at ease, and it helped that Yukito was present—she appreciated his company. She didn't dare question the feeling of calm that settled in, and simply smiled at her companion. "So… how stocked are you?" she asked.

Yukito lifted a hoof and rubbed the back of his head with it. "I'll need to go get groceries in a few days. The pantry's only half-full," he answered, donning an amused yet slightly concerned smile. "Bastards don't pay any of the other troops enough for even the simplest services. We've both been blackballed, at the bare minimum. But then again... when have such things even mattered to them?"

Sora sighed and leaned to Yukito, resting the side of her neck against his and her chin on his shoulder. He returned the gesture. "And the army keeps heaping the shit jobs on me," she muttered. "I'd get either bored out of my mind, or the menial tasks nopony else is gonna do."

"Somepony has to do those menial tasks, sadly," Yukito replied with a shrug of earnest. "You and I work the thankless jobs, helping anypony we can just because we're able to do so."

"Eh, that's true," Sora agreed with a snort. They broke apart and sighed. "Trinity's probably going to bitch again when she sees I'm not in the barracks."

"That's neither here nor there," Yukito stated, smile widening. "I was thinking…"

Sora's ears twitched. "Yes?" she asked.

"When Starbreaker gets her broken front hoof fully recovered… we should move her here. That way, she won't cause much trouble, and I can monitor her progress without risking drawing the army's attention anymore than we already have," Yukito began, watching as Sora's eyes went round at the suggestion. "And, it may in fact take the heat away from her and us. Without her in the base, and in the city with us, the Majors and the Admiral can stop getting their tails tied up over it."

Sora took a moment to ponder this. On one hoof, he had a point; now that her superiors knew Starbreaker was under the same roof they were, they simply had varying unpleasant reactions to that news. This arrangement would take the heat off everypony involved. However, Starbreaker simply going up and vanishing on them could have potential to become something worse, since they'd likely catch wind about it thanks to the camera feed. There was a very good, very real risk of the Admiral growing suspicious of the whole thing, especially since he'd probably be checking said camera feed a lot more often now.

Still… if it could get the army to maybe calm down, and if they could pull it off without anypony the wiser… this would also give her a chance to stop worrying so much and keep a more attentive eye out for anymore strange goings-on. "I think that's a good idea," Sora replied, wings bristling a little. "We'll just have to figure out a way and a time to do that. We don't know when Star's hoof and leg will get better, so..."

Yukito nodded in understanding. "And remember…" He leaned his neck against hers, and she did likewise. "This is just between us." Sora nodded back and hummed softly.

"Just like what goes on here will also be between us," Sora chirped with a giggle, her face tinting a slight shade of red around her cheeks. Her tail swished, and again they ceased leaning onto each other. She trotted past him, purposely brushing a bit of her tail against his foreleg as she went to the kitchen. "I'll need to get a glass of water or two."

Yukito chuckled and turned to follow her movements. "Alright," he replied. He heard the sound of water running mere seconds after she'd entered the kitchen, followed by the sound of a few gulps, and opted to let Sora have herself a drink, a hoof raising and idly tracing where she had brushed up against him. It took a moment for the water to shut off, only for that to give way to a rustling of garments. When the noise ceased overall, he piped up, "I thought you said you weren't in the mood?"

"I didn't want Starbreaker to toss in her two bits!" Sora retorted from the kitchen, her remark followed by a soft flomp of some sort of collision. "If she has no clue what a friend is, then how the hell would we explain this to her?"

"Touché," Yukito agreed with a chuckle. "Poor filly has a lot to learn."

Sora trotted back into the small living room, sighing as Yukito noted she now wore nothing but the bell on her neck and that her muzzle was a little damp. He also saw that the bruises and cuts she had acquired the past few days had already mended entirely; now, Sora looked like nothing particularly interesting had happened to her. "Threw the uniform in the laundry bin. It needs a washing anyway," she reported, grinning.

"Well, at least you're doing your own laundry," Yukito chirped. Sora snickered at that, and shook her head in mock exasperation.

"Oh, Professor, what would I ever do without you?" she muttered, earning a chuckle in response.

Yukito turned and trotted to another room, this one on the westmost corner, his horn dimming a little as he went. "Let's not focus on that. Besides… your blades could use a bit of polish," he cooed. He trotted inside without lighting his horn up a second time. "That being said… do you still need to vent tonight after that little dance? I think I have just the thing to help you get all that pent-up anger out of your system," he called from the room, his voice rather expectant and inviting. Sora grinned and followed him, tail swishing as she went. She wouldn't miss a chance to vent her anger out, and this was as good an opportunity as any.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Seven streaks trailed above the plains closest to the city, packed tightly into a V-formation and each with distinct features in their tails if one looked closely enough. Suguri was at the lead of this formation, mane flowing and almost shedding light in her wake, horn ablaze and magic producing the rainbow rings that marked her trail. A small smile crossed her muzzle as she thought of the little green glimmers she saw moving about in the city.

She turned to the forms on her left side, seeing a triad of unicorn mares with horns glowing and their magic leaving their own distinctly-colored trails, with turbine engines fitted onto crude wings and smaller, blocky engines affixed onto their backs. One of the mares, sensing she was being stared at, looked back at her expectantly. She was a slender sort with a pale cornish blue coat and an indigo-colored mane that only reached the point betwixt her wings in length. Deep blue eyes framed by glasses glimmered, and a chilled air radiated from her horn. A cutie mark of a medical cross, riddled with icicles, was bared on her hip. "Was that… her?" the mare asked.

Suguri nodded. "No doubt, Kyoko. That was… her," she answered, her smile falling a little. Kyoko offered a weak smile at that. "I'm surprised she had the time to dance tonight."

Kyoko nodded, her smile growing a smidgen. Her eyes gleamed warmly. "Would it be alright if we met with her sometime?" she offered.

Suguri nodded eagerly at that, eyes gleaming with a fondness that Kyoko could not ignore. "We'll still need to figure out what to do regarding the big shot running the Umbralium Corps. The meeting can wait," she stated.

Kyoko's smile fell. "What's the matter?" she replied. "The terms of the truce seemed perfectly normal to me."

Suguri's smile turned into a frown, and she shook her head. "It wasn't that. There was… something off about the place, and the Admiral himself especially," she replied, her voice uneasy and distant to even her own ears. "He said he was sorting papers, but there was nothing of the sort between his front hooves when he said this to me via a projector. I couldn't see much of the room he was in that well, but I seriously doubt he has an inbox within that inky blackness he calls a room. I heard a faint shuffling from that projector too... but I think that may have been his rear hooves..."

Kyoko's brow furrowed in befuddlement. "Do you think… she might know something?" she pressed.

Suguri shook her head again. "That, I seriously doubt. Last I've seen of her, she'd gotten demoted to the bottom rung in the army. And almost nothing reaches the ears of the privates. She was exceptionally pissed about that," she muttered grimly. The air turned colder, and she turned ahead to find that the snow-capped mountains were fast approaching. "Warm up everypony! We don't want icicles on our tails!" she ordered. The formation tightened, and Kyoko's chilled air took on a warmth that made her trail dim.

"Why are they keeping her in the Corps, then?" Kyoko asked as she and the other ponies smoothly flew over a steep mountain, revealing that a myriad of frozen cliffsides and snow-laden moors awaited them, all surrounded by a tight ring of yet more distant mountainsides. One set of these cliffsides formed a canyon, steep and yet filled with snow.

Suguri took a moment to ponder the question as she and her small retinue started flying over the first of several moors. "Perhaps in case of emergency," she replied, brow furrowing as she realized the implications of her own statement. "She's their best in combat, enough that I have seen her stop the world's reckoning with nothing more than her blades and that odd device around her neck."

Kyoko's eyes went round. "When you tried to find Starbreaker and couldn't get there fast enough?" she queried, a note of surprise in her tone.

Suguri nodded. "She basically beat me to that punch," she concluded.

Kyoko's lips twisted into a frown upon hearing that. The fact that Suguri admitted to getting a sense of wrongness only made it deepen. Still, if it was just Suguri who had gotten that peculiar feeling…

Somepony on Kyoko's left groaned. "Admittedly, I too picked up something off about the Corps, though not before we tucked in at their guest wing," a young voice interjected. Kyoko turned to the source, finding a lilac mare small enough to pass for a filly, with a short and tousled purple mane with narrowed eyes to match in color. Her legs were lanky and a bit long, as if she'd had a growth spurt that had been stopped, perhaps due to disease or genetics. Were she and Kyoko standing on solid ground, this mare would have only reached Kyoko's barrel with her head alone. Though whatever the case, she didn't seem terribly bothered by it.

Her turbines were comically too big for her body, and at her side, several strange machines that were ovoid in shape flew alongside her with circular protrusions on their equivalent to ends that crackled with magic. Some of the devices, however, rested on her makeshift wings, perhaps as a sort of counterbalance for her tiny body. All of them had lines spanning only half of their bodies, with hinges resting snugly at the ends of these lines. One of these strange objects, framed in the middle of a circle laden with arcane runes, even made this mare's cutie mark. "And that feeling only grew stronger just before we left," the small mare added.

Suguri turned to the mare in question. "You got it too, Nanako?" she queried, making certain she'd heard that right.

Nanako grimly nodded, her glare easing for a moment. "I couldn't put my hoof nor my bits on it… but the longer I dwelt in those halls, the more my still-intact equine instinct screamed at me to get as far away as I could," she replied. "It's fading now, but…"

"... only as we're heading for home?" Suguri offered. At this, Nanako's face hardened, and she nodded again.

"Yes. What sort of place would radiate that particular vibe?" Nanako queried with utmost sincerity, and at this the group fell silent. It took them several long minutes to ruminate on any forthcoming answers, and they casually passed over the moors in that time.

The answer Nanako got came from somepony at the end of her half of the V-formation, unbidden and yet riddled with a sense of alarm. "It's like working for Shifu all over again… it's like something bad's gonna happen," a small voice uttered. Nanako turned to her left and found a young sandy brown mare looking back at her with wide brown eyes and a paling complexion. Some sort of device, slender like a stick but ending in an ovoid shape, overlapped with a large bell—these two items made her mark.

"You got it too, Saki?" Nanako asked. Saki hastily nodded, her short yellow mane flapping uselessly about with the motion.

Saki swallowed nervously. "It's just… I don't…" she stammered, struggling to vocalize what had been on her mind. Nanako lifted a hoof and waved, and one of the strange devices at her side veered to gently brush up against Saki's shoulder in a reassuring gesture.

"It's okay…" Nanako cooed. "Whatever gave us that… feeling is away from us now."

"I have a hunch it may not remain that way," Kyoko piped up, garnering looks from Nanako and Saki. She crossed her forelegs over her barrel, face hardening into a glare as cold as the snow and ice below them. "The Umbralium Corps could decide to visit us at Aeverafree anytime they'd like; they have airships and pegasi galore."

Nanako deflated, and her brow slanted. "Why would they want to visit?" she asked.

"We dropped by unexpectedly for them. They may be keen to return the favor," Kyoko reasoned, shaking her head. "And they may want to add new terms to the truce, perhaps regarding something we ourselves didn't consider."

Nanako's ears fell back at that. A faint chill ran down her spine, all the way to her tail. "B-but what if it's not about the truce?" she stammered. "Wh-what if they visit because of something else?"

Kyoko's face hardened a little more. She turned away. "I… honestly don't know," she muttered dismally.

Nanako's pupils shrank at that answer, and she turned to look ahead. Silence once again reigned on their flight, and another clawing sense of wrongness welled up within her. She had a sinking suspicion that this feeling, whose origin she could not exactly pinpoint, was spreading throughout the group.

But who it was affecting, and how much in extent, in their little formation was unknown to her. That started making her worry.

There was naught she could do about it, though, since nopony else decided to speak after Kyoko herself admitted to not knowing anything else regarding a potential visit from the Umbralium Corps, much less what to do if and when they dropped by. Even Suguri had fallen deathly quiet; not once had her beating wings produced sound when they should have.

The land below seemed to hold its breath with the formation. No life stirred, no snow kicked up. Not so much as one icicle fell from the canyons. Not so much as one flake danced past them in a descent to join its countless fellows.

Silence held, firmly. Suguri and her retinue were merely subjected to it now.

Chapter IX- The First Move

The Admiral stalked about in a vast room, keeping to the sable on one side of it. Directly opposite of him, a myriad of glowing monochrome screens flared and illuminated a small chair before a massive control panel, and two doors on either side of that panel, albeit barely. These screens were trained upon various hallways and rooms in the base, as well as points within and around the city, each one helpfully labeled with a small plaque bearing the names of the particular locales. Somewhere in the middle of this conglomeration, his red eyes had been trained on one screen depicting a small room with a queen-sized bed in particular.

It wasn't what was in that room; rather, it was who, in this case the mare who laid upon that queen-sized bed with a hoof and a leg affixed to the ceiling. The pony who was with her did not even register to him. "So… yet another reason for insubordination…" he muttered scathingly. "But… at least the Herald cannot actually do anything." He pondered, wondering what to do. On one hoof, Starbreaker could potentially get back to full power before long, and she'd likely wreak some havoc the instant she did. On the other hoof… if that came to pass, then there was a safe bet somepony would go and stop her before the damages became astronomically high.

He didn't even need to bet blades to carriages on who that pony would be, if theoretically Starbreaker decided to cut loose again. As far as he was concerned? He could just kick back and relax and watch that particular fireworks display from the projector in his cozy office. Some small part of him was very, very glad he did not murder Sora given this particular turn of events. Some of that glee worked its way to his muzzle, causing his lips to twitch up in the faintest of smiles.

Still… he acknowledged the mere fact that Starbreaker was in the same building he was, and that made his smile dip just a smidgen. And if things were allowed to progress at their current speed… that, he knew not for certain. There was a slew of possibilities at her particular crossroads, and he considered all of them. She could still be hellbent on burning the world the minute she got out of bed for instance, or she may change behavior-wise. Perhaps she'd become a vegetable, or would be tried for her crimes once she was out of the woods. For better or for worse, or even if she'd actually live long enough to see the end result of her stay for herself… some part of him was eager to find out. And it was admittedly amusing to see her in the medical ward, essentially cooped up with nothing to do...

Another idea began forming in his head. His smile widened as elation filled him. "If you want to babysit her so bad, my little Hawk, then fine… who's to stop you?" he muttered to himself, his grin taking on a cruel cast. "You've already brought her here… and squirreled her away in the medical ward…" He turned away from the lone screen which had caught his interest, and started scanning the rest. A flash of light caught his attention, and he turned to a screen with the launch pad on it. "Hrm?" He peered closer at it without moving from the darkness of the room, and frowned as he saw two ponies take off of the launch pad in a very peculiar formation.

His eyes then gravitated to a myriad of more screens, tracking the duo intently. He picked up on several features, and despite the fact the screens were monochrome he was able to recognize them with but a few glances. "Retiring… outside of the barracks… with that damned Swiftcure..." the Admiral muttered, shaking his head disapprovingly. However, as the two ponies zigged and zagged throughout the city, he sighed in resignation. There was nothing he could do about it, at least not immediately. And besides, even his doctors and the trotting paradox of his own army needed a break every now and then.

That, he decided, was an event he found not worth his time. His eyes gravitated to Starbreaker's room again, brow furrowing when he saw her companion nonchalantly trot out of it. The lights in that room switched off as he left, and the camera shifted to depict a green blot sitting in place of the patient. He turned away again, deciding there was no point in watching her any longer if nopony was going to stay with her for the night.

Besides, he found it boring to watch ponies sleep, especially if the only thing with which to track them was infrared. His horn lit up with a whir, and he vanished in a flash of silver light, only to reappear in his office. He settled in his chair, and closed his eyes. "That Suguri mare…" he muttered, his mind forming her image. "Why in the wide, wide world did Aeverafree make her their leader?" As far as he could tell, Suguri was relatively normal—even in spite of the fact that she had both wings and a horn.

Yet the more he thought of her, the more something started to seem off about her. But what that was, he couldn't place his hoof on it. His brow furrowed as he recalled her eyes, bright like rubies… A whirring sound snapped him out of his stupor, and his eyes opened as the projector lit up. His brow eased as his horn lit up and he cradled its light in his magic, whereupon the screen cleared… to reveal Major Trinity in the mares' barracks, wearing a tight scowl on her face. "Admiral, have you seen Private Sora at all this evening?" she asked, her voice laced with a growl.

The Admiral shook his head. "Cannot say I have, at least in the flesh," he replied smoothly.

Trinity's face hardened. "Where the flying fuck is she?" she growled. "She failed to report to me after I sent her ass out to the city with the ugly wagon!"

The Admiral sighed. "Did you tell her where to meet up at, once she was done with the ugly wagon?" he asked in a low voice. At this, Trinity's mouth snapped shut before she could get another word in edgewise. "I'll take that as a no…" A sable hoof lifted up, and the Admiral let it lightly connect with the bridge of his muzzle, in full display of the projector. "And this is why I'm the pony who gets to punish the delinquent…"

"S-sir, she called me crazy," Trinity uttered, before it registered that her voice had trembled.

The Admiral's hoof drooped and fell onto the desk, slamming it in a sharp retort that made it jostle in place. "And that's no grounds with which to punish her. She could call me a lazy ass with something to compensate for and accuse me of sporting the smallest pair of horseapples on this gods-forsaken world! And I would not give a rat's ass about it, because she knows that at the end of the day I am the one running the Corps," he hissed, lifting that same hoof to wave it dismissively. "Now, if she had perhaps struck you, then that would have been grounds enough."

Trinity winced, as if the Admiral had reached beyond the projector to slap her. "So... " He leaned closer to the light, sizing Trinity up with his red eyes. "Care to tell me what, exactly, did you have Sora do with that wagon?" He smiled as the first of many beads of sweat raced down the side of Trinity's muzzle.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Yukito and Sora fought in a medium-sized room laden with punching bags, dart boards and various dumbbells. Both stood upright, one with front hooves raised and using the metal bits to deflect the wicked wing blades that were thrust his way. Both moved with such speed that their limbs were but blurs to the untrained eye. Light danced upon Yukito's horn to illuminate the room, but past that he did nothing with his magic. Every time a blade trailed lower than his withers, his hooves raced to deter them, each impact making a sharp skitter and retort with sparks flying.

They'd been at this for well over an hour, and though sweat beaded their brows, they showed no signs of stopping nor of tiring out. Both had hard, nigh-expressionless masks, eyes entirely focused and movements choreographed with honed ease. Again and again, Sora's blades were deflected, though this impasse did not deter her. And whilst Yukito stood more or less in one spot, he did not let the blades get the better of him. His stance was simple, yet effective; with half-metallic legs raised, he could easily protect his vital organs with no effort on his part.

One strike to the chest rapidly turned to a mere nicking of his shoulder as his leg caught one primary and redirected it, in turn moving the rest of the wing. A second attempt at his face went wide as he merely tilted his head. The next attempt at his stomach was stopped as a frog came to meet with the very tip of a blade, before the whole wing was once again redirected. "What's the matter?" he teased as he parried another strike that would have connected with his muzzle otherwise. "Holding back?"

Sora smirked. "Not at all," she cooed, and thrust both wings at once, toward his neck. Yukito smiled back and crossed his forelegs over his neck, catching the blades once more. He parted them with ease, metal and blades screeching as he threw them off. She angled her wings, one high and the other low, and made to strike from two sides. They met with forelegs again, and were promptly shrugged off.

She kept at it, over and over, each deflected attack ringing in her ears as Yukito matched her move for move. She changed tactics, making x-strikes and pincer attacks, though this accomplished nothing save for the occasional nicking of fur and skin. This was a fight that seemed destined to last all night, caught in a fierce stalemate and with both sides giving no quarter.

That was, until she realized that there was one part of Yukito that he himself was paying little attention to. Sora decided to throw an oddball and aimed for his exposed hinds. With one strike hitting steel, she made an outward sweep that immediately sent his left hind wide, causing him to tumble clumsily into a punching bag. Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened to ask if he was alright, but Yukito merely sat up on his haunches, leaning onto the bag for support. He nodded with his magic flickering for a moment.

He adjusted his glasses, as the strike had inadvertently sent them lopsided, a small smile on his face. "Don't mind me, I'm just getting warmed up," he chirped, popping his neck with a few rolls of his head. "It's been ages since we last sparred like this."

Sora flapped her wings once as Yukito parted from the punching bag he had landed upon, and stood once again upright. "You're not too shabby yourself," she teased, donning a slight smirk. "Two more rounds?"

Yukito lifted his forelegs to his neck and walked away from the punching bag, tail swishing with an eagerness he couldn't hide. "As ready as I'll ever get." His face hardened again. "Come at me!" he barked. Sora lunged at him, blades going high, the tips almost touching as she made to cleave him in two. But he moved before they could connect, forelegs going high to block the attack with bravado. She pulled back and darted low, aiming for the hinds again. But Yukito seemed to have seen this coming from a mile away; he did not bother to block, instead hopping over the blades daintily and letting them sweep harmlessly past. She swiped again, and he skipped over them with hinds going as wide as possible.

With that second hop, he got right into Sora's face and made to punch her in the muzzle. Her foreleg, however, reached up and caught it in her fetlock mere inches from her snout. She threw his hoof to the side, before socking him with an uppercut to the chin. Yukito stumbled back, swaying a little as he felt his teeth clack rather painfully together. He stopped and shook his head, working his mouth a few times to feel for any loose teeth or upwellings of blood. Luckily, there were none to be had, and he leveled a small smile at his companion. "It seems I am getting a little rusty," he mused, horn glowing brighter.

Sora bade him on with a curling of a hoof. "Bring it," she muttered. Yukito smiled and charged, sidestepping the deadly blades as they tried to cut his legs off again and again. He got in close, one hoof raised and horn angled low, but was stopped when two front legs grappled him by the neck. At the same time, Sora twisted just enough that the horn could only graze her side, and threw Yukito bodily to the floor.

Yukito responded by throwing his back legs up, the strike going wide at first, before they wrapped around Sora's neck. The two promptly disentangled, and Yukito heaved himself up again with a grin. "I didn't know you liked getting hooves-on," he stated.

Sora barely flinched at the remark. "Says the stallion who tried piercing me with his horn," she cut back sharply, blades shifting to tap impatiently upon the floor. She eyed his horn pointedly. "Are you going to do something with that? Because your fisticuffs need a little polish."

Yukito's smile widened. "That is true..." he muttered. His aura brightened a little more, now blazing like a star. "But… as far as combating unicorn magic goes… you could use a bit of polish yourself."

With that, Sora was flipped onto her back before she could react, caught in a field of blue that immobilized her wings and lifted her bodily. She was then shoved away from Yukito, entirely helpless. "H-hey! Th-that's cheating!" she shrieked, legs flailing for a few seconds before she registered the presence of the aura. Something snapped in her, and a mechanical whir filled the air in tandem with the bizarre feeling of an entity shifting about in her eyes. It wasn't painful, but it still gave the strange sensation and the vibe of something inhabiting her eyes, writhing about in ways she couldn't explain.

Yukito's eyes widened when Sora's face went aglow in a soft light of bright green, which itself started flickering from her eyes. "It would seem your ocular augments have kicked in…" he muttered. "It's been a while."

Sora's smirk was slight, and cast in the glow of her augments, seemed almost demonic. She wiggled her wings as much as the field would allow, before another whir filled the air, followed by a pulse of viridian light that spread across her feathers. As the glow reached the blades, it seeped into them, making them radiate in turn. "Indeed it has," she mused softly, righting herself into an upright stance. Her blades began humming, and then vibrating, and as their light blazed brighter Yukito winced as his glow was seemingly dragged into the deadly weapons.

Before long, the aura he'd used to snare her had been absorbed altogether, entirely neutralized by the peculiar phenomenon happening not even two trots away. He dispelled the glow on his horn before the spectacle could affect him, and dropped to all fours. "Well, I do believe you've won the match," he chirped as Sora dropped back to all fours as well and closed her wings. He eyed her for a long moment, during which her blades ceased vibrating and her eyes lost their glow with another series of whirs preceding that. When pitch darkness gripped the room, he lit up his horn to provide light once more, and trotted up to Sora with a pleased grin. "How do you do that?" he asked sincerely.

Sora shrugged. "I… don't know what the modifications do," she muttered, frowning. "Much less… how to voluntarily access this power."

Yukito's smile fell, and his brow rose. "So… it happens on and off?" he translated. Sora nodded fervently, feeling a slight tingle in her wings from the absorbed magic.

"Do you… feel alright?" she asked, looking pointedly at his horn again. Yukito pondered her unspoken meaning for a moment before he nodded and flashed another reassuring smile at her.

"After this? As fresh as a daisy," he replied earnestly. Sora relaxed and leaned against his neck, sighing in relief. Her wings ruffled, and—next thing either of them knew, the blades started glowing again, before they went haywire and started shifting about of their own accord. Yukito pulled back, eyes widening in alarm as another aura built up and encased his companion. Sora was hefted up, this time without his aid, and for several seconds afterward the glow made her spin in place.

Sora started flailing helplessly again, though all this did was make her spin faster. A startled shriek left her mouth, changing in pitch as the world went round and round for her. It took a full minute for the glow to dispel and for the blades to cease vibrating yet again, and when it did she landed on the floor belly-side up and legs splayed, eyes rotating rapidly in their sockets. Yukito frowned and trotted to her again, immediately looking her over to see if she made it out of the ordeal alright. "Um… do you know how to use the magic you absorb…?" he asked, when it became clear to him she was going to need another minute.

Sora barely registered the question, but the moment it clicked was the moment her head dazedly shook. "I'm… glad I can't use the magic I absorb consciously…" she muttered, giving a pained grimace. "Because… I hate the backlash… i-if it's my own magic, then... this doesn't happen..."

Yukito nodded in understanding, and folded his legs to lay at Sora's side. "Are… you numb anywhere?" he tried. He smiled faintly when that garnered him another shake of the head. Slowly, haltingly, she turned onto her side and then onto her stomach, folding her wings with a shudder.

"I… think that… was a draw," she muttered as the world's pirouetting slowed down to an almost manageable tilting that still went too topsy turvy for her senses. She took a deep breath, and leaned against Yukito after he scooted to her and nuzzled the top of her head. She dared not move after that until the whirling ceased entirely, and even then she waited for her companion to move first.

"Now, then… are you still angry at something?" Yukito asked as he rose to stand. Sora shifted and stood as well, though her legs were still a little wobbly after having been sent through an airborne tumble.

She racked her brain for a moment, mentally sifting through all the things and indignities over the last few days that should have made her blood-boiling mad all over again. Yet… all she felt then was a smidgen of guilt, and a minor sense of irritation, with a side of befuddlement as she recalled the coffin she had to drag around. However, she acknowledged that it could have gotten so much worse overall, and was silently thankful it hadn't. At this, she shook her head and turned to flash him a small smile. "Sufficiently vented," she answered. Her tail swished again, though this time lazily, and some strands of it touched his cutie mark.

Yukito nodded, and he smiled back. "Next time, I'm not doing magic," he muttered. Sora didn't dare argue, and did not twitch so much as a feather as one of his forelegs wrapped around her neck. "Has your mind been changed… about that which you didn't want Starbreaker harping on about, perchance?"

That time, Sora nodded. "I'm down," she replied. "But… we'll need to shower first, unless you want to skip that tonight?"

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Trinity whimpered as a door opened, only to be immediately greeted with a blinding light shining upon her. She trotted inside, eyes squinted to minimize the glare. The door slammed shut behind her, and her ears folded back as the Admiral leveled his ever-steely gaze upon her. He didn't even wait for her to adjust to the light; his horn glowed with a whir, and his magic dragged her across the floor before throwing her onto the desk with rear legs facing him. One hoof raced to her horn and pinned it to the wood, threatening to snap it clean off if she dared use it. "Corpses?!" he roared, his composure all but gone. "You had Sora dispose of corpses?!"

"Th-they were already dead, i-in the city! I-I just put them in the carriage!" Trinity gabled, only to scream as the hoof pressed itself more firmly upon her horn. She could feel it straining, and the pain it sent flashing through her nerves made her squirm uncomfortably.

The Admiral's eyes narrowed. "Oh?" His head tilted. "And why did you fail to report this… sooner?" he asked.

Trinity shivered as a second hoof made to cup her chin, and for a few seconds she was silent. "Th-they were m-marked, sir."

"Marked?" The Admiral dropped his second hoof, and his eyes widened for a split-second. "Cutie marked, or otherwise?"

"O-otherwise… they had strange crystals in th-their shoulders," Trinity replied. "Th-their nervous systems w-were going on the f-fritz, and th-they were bald…"

The Admiral retracted his hoof from Trinity's horn, pondering this for a long moment. "Did you… collect a sample of these crystals?" he asked slowly. At Trinity's nod, he motioned with a hoof. "Conjure it, then." Trinity's horn glowed fitfully, and materializing in a flash of light was an odd crystal which had blackened. It had blood on it, dried and flaky, but that wasn't the strangest thing about it. Rather, it was the base to which it had been affixed; a metallic ring, itself affixed to a small cylindrical base whose bottom had been stuck rather crudely onto a miniature maze of twisting prongs and wires. The wires and prongs bent, and all ended in the tiniest globules of decaying flesh.

The Admiral took the object in his magic and studied it, nose wrinkling by the tiniest margin as the stench of rot graced his sinuses. "From where did this emerge?" he queried.

"O-one of the corpses had… two, one i-in each shoulder… I brought it to study…" Trinity muttered, ears folding back.

The Admiral nodded and made the object vanish in a flash of light. "Very well, then…" he muttered. "I shall see if this… crystal is of any use." His eyes narrowed again. "Tomorrow… I'll expect you to be back here at 13:45 sharp. Bring Takahara with you, if his twisted hoof has recovered enough for him to manage a trot." He leaned until they were nose to nose. "Am I perfectly clear?"

Trinity nodded. "Y-yes sir," she stammered. The Admiral pulled back and knocked her off the desk with a hoof, as one would with no more respect for an insect than they did the dirt beneath them. Trinity promptly scrambled to the door and made to leave, but a cough stopped her in her tracks before the door could even open.

"And one more thing," the Admiral hissed, watching as Trinity's tail nervously hiked up for a second before it fell back down. "Do not engage Sora, at all, until I say otherwise. We need her to keep the Herald's crippled ass in line, and the last thing you need to do is pick a bone with her. If you do so anyway… she could cleave you in half. Only I can engage her, because I know how to stop her attacks before she even thinks to make them." He paused as Trinity gave a shaky nod of understanding. "You may go now." With that, she hastily left the room, tail tucked firmly between her hinds as she trotted into the hall.

The Admiral leaned into his chair, tilting his muzzle to the ceiling. A deep, exasperated sigh left his mouth. "Damnit Trinity," he groused, head falling forward again, "you just couldn't resist, could you…" His brow furrowed as he recalled that Starbreaker was also very much present in the base. His head shook, and then dipped so his muzzle connected with his desk. "Just another day, another insubordinate to punish…"

His nose wrinkled again, and he sighed dismally. He lifted his head and his horn lit up with another whir. "If ponies are dying in the city…" he muttered, before he vanished and reappeared in the control room with the myriad of screens. Carefully sweeping through the maze of black and white realtime captures, his brow furrowed as he saw dead ponies lining the alleys and streets. The number was just small enough that the citizens wouldn't notice; only a hoofful of cadavers were present at any one time and place.

Of course, such a thing was inevitable, regardless of his stance on the matter. He could have ruled the world and bodies would still collapse at the end of the day. This was something beyond even his control, so he chose not to focus on that. Instead, he focused on the features the corpses did have in common… which was to say, almost none whatsoever.

But two caught his eye, in the alley next to the off-duty doctors' quarters. Both were shaved of fur and mane and tail, gagged, and implanted with strange crystals to their shoulders. His face hardened, and he took a longer look at these ponies. "Hrm…" His tail swished, and his frown deepened. "I'll need to post a damn notary tomorrow…"

His musings halted as he registered the presence of the bizarre crystal implants that stuck out from the shoulderblades of the most recent ponies to have acquired them. Then, his mind flitted to Sora… and his frown deepened into a scowl. "Maybe… maybe the pidgeon should investigate this… she'd already…"

His head shook, and his mind cut that train of thought off before it could form fully. His eyes darted again, now wandering from screen to screen without purpose, making note of a building here or a pony trotting on the road there. Yet nothing turned up to point to why, much less how, the ponies with the crystals appeared in that alley. Still, he continued to scan the myriad of screens, wondering if and possibly when something would surface.

But, alas, his search proved fruitless. There were simply so many screens to sift through, and even he with his possibly-augmented eyes could not keep track of it all. He'd have liked to, of course, but his head began aching the longer he tried in vain to look at every single screen he could in his hunt.

He promptly teleported back to his office before his mind could dull from the exertion. When he did, he facehoofed and sat down again. "Maybe I'll send Trinity to look into it…" he groused. He grinned cruelly after that. "And… maybe…" His mind started to run wild, but this was something he was alright with.

He had a lot of time to formulate and picture a whole host of scenarios within his head, in that dismal room he called an office. A lot of time he spent turning ideas over, with which to further refine and hone his escapades. He was careful to consider all that he had so far; an unruly soldier, a crippled criminal lodged in the medical ward, a doctor who retired for the night with said unruly soldier, dead bodies with strange crystals, and a truce with Aeverafree. His horn was alight once again, and a square aura filled in a large space upon his desk.

A black and white pattern emerged within his silver glow, and on it, figurines that were initially devoid of color filled that pattern. As his magic molded faces and legs and cutie marks, though, color started to seep into the figurines. One side had figurines resembling Suguri and her retinue, and a few blank-faced pawns. One of said pawns stood apart from the rest, but only a space ahead, and it was distinct in that it even had a face to begin with. It was a small replica of Nanako, down to the wings and the small devices which hovered incessantly at her side.

His side had a few faces of his troops, Trinity amongst them at the back, though none had moved as of yet. Though, his side had three empty squares—squares where a pawn, a bishop, and a knight would normally be—devoid of pieces. The pieces in question were already one or two spaces ahead, and like Nanako's replica they had faces and marks as close to the real deals as possible.

These three pieces—miniature replicas of Yukito, Sora, and Starbreaker huddled together, one with wings half-spread and the other two with miniature horns aglow despite one of them being broken—rested right in the middle of the board. They had been positioned in a way as to form a perfect triangle, one that itself was surrounded on either side; neither wholly of one stance or the other. It was as if they were their own herd, in a way; a third party that declared the middle of the board their own little haven. This herd, just by virtue of existence, had already broken the rules of standard chess... but the Admiral couldn't have cared any less about that.

The pieces of the proverbial chessboard lay at his massive hooves. He was eager to make the first move, and a hoof trailed over to a faceless pawn on his side of the board. "If you think you are truly able to mend a broken star, Sora… be my guest," he muttered darkly. "But I promise you… you will fail…" The pawn he selected shifted, and all the other pieces remained absolutely still.

"Your move, Sora… your move…" the Admiral hissed, as though she were present in the room with him.

Chapter X- 'What Won't You Break?'

Sora and Yukito ambled to the medical ward the following morning, both dressed yet managing to look worse for the wear; neither bothered to groom their manes or coats extensively, and in the former's case her wings were puffed up to hell despite being closed. Their outfits were also wrinkled a fair margin, only further making them seem as though they'd gotten hastily dressed for the day.

And while the device with the microphone had been planted on Sora's ear again, her frayed mane threatened—and almost did, before she brushed it aside with a hoof—to strangle it. Both had a distinct quiver in their hind legs, and a few smudge marks on their faces, though these things were faint enough that only a very attentive pony could have caught either. Another device of some sort rested at Sora's croup, held there by a holster, and it quaked in tandem with the twitch in her hinds.

Still, they reached Starbreaker's room without incident, and with only the cameras watching their every move. Their brows rose as they entered the room, finding that the bar holding a hoof and a leg had been taken down… with a pebble-sized chunk of the ceiling. Starbreaker herself was out of bed, standing on a wobbly three legs with her broken front hoof raised and a gait favoring her good two legs more than her broken set. The bar and said piece of the ceiling were now resting haphazardly at her side and in a tangled part of her mane. Her tail bristled and her eyes narrowed at the vexed looks she received. Silence held for several long moments before Sora slumped on her haunches and heaved a heavy, exasperated sigh.

Sora grumbled and facehoofed at the same time, "First, that hole in the base, then your attempt on the world, then your horn and leg, then your front hoof and now a fraction of the ceiling." Her hoof dropped, and she leveled an annoyed glare at Starbreaker. "What won't you break?" she asked as another, smaller chunk of the ceiling fell out and bounced off the backside of Starbreaker's bandaged head.

Starbreaker shrugged and glared back. "Well excuse me, but it's part of my talent, thank you very much!" she hissed, scandalized. "And once my horn grows back, I'll wedge it somewhere under your tail and turn up the heat until you explode!"

Yukito stifled a groan. His horn lit up and he magically seized Starbreaker by the bar that had been attached to the ceiling before he untied it from her limbs and hair. "No point keeping you in bed if the ceiling has rejected you…" he grumbled as the rod clattered to the floor, and he trotted over to inspect the walkabout patient carefully. "How… did this happen? Metal shouldn't break like that."

Starbreaker's eyes gravitated to where the rod had been affixed. "I just pulled and pulled, and it gave," she answered with another shrug. "I got really… angry, and wanted to trot so much… next thing I know, everything turned red."

Yukito blinked, but sighed. He turned to Sora, who stood up and cantered over. "Do you think we should… show her around the base, then?" he asked warily.

Sora shook her head. "Not until we can confirm she can actually stand and trot for long enough to make the trip," she replied. "The base is… a bit much, as far as the nickel tour goes."

Yukito nodded, seeing that Sora had a point. "Well, if she can get out of bed despite being tied, I'd wager her prognosis is good," he mused.

"So… I can trot?" Starbreaker asked, assuming a small smirk on her muzzle.

"Not without me you don't," Sora cut in sharply, wings bristling for a second. "And besides, you still need to get your weight back in order first."

Starbreaker's smile fell. "I'm not a foal," she grumbled.

"I know that, but try telling that to the rest of the army," Sora stated in a sharp reprimand. Starbreaker did not deflate at this; if anything, her chest puffed as she sucked in air. Before she could shout, though, Yukito magically clamped her muzzle shut.

"Now, now… calm down," Yukito ordered, his voice firm. Starbreaker snorted and lashed her tail from side to side, eyes narrowing at Yukito as he held her muzzle. "Just because you're recovering doesn't mean you're in the clear yet." He looked pointedly at her raised hoof. "Besides, your progress still needs to be monitored, so you cannot stray too far from either of us." He felt a head bob up and down in his magic, and turned to look at her face again. "I take it you understood?" That garnered him a nod, and his magic relinquished its hold.

Sora's ear twitched as the door opened and somepony trotted inside. A feminine voice she wasn't expecting filled the room, making her wings twitch and her tail hike as the owner spoke, "So… you sissies gonna do anything with the bitch, or do I get to put a bullet through her head when all's said and done?" Two ponies whirled around, and all three sets of eyes gravitated to find Major Trinity in the room, riding crop in hoof and leaning in an upright stance against the wall.

Trinity sized the trio up with her eyes, smirking cruelly. She started tapping the crop against her shoulder expectantly, taking note of Sora and Yukito's rather harried looks as well as the bandages on Starbreaker. "You should consider yourselves lucky," she hissed, her voice cold even as an amused glint shimmered in her orange eyes.

"Lucky? About what?" Yukito queried, the hairs on the back of his neck rising to stand on their ends. At this, Trinity's smirk widened.

Trinity was all too happy to answer, "The Admiral's letting you keep that bitch over there alive…" The riding crop stopped tapping and shifted to gesticulate at Starbreaker. "Provided, of course… you lot behave yourselves." At this, Sora gave a wince, and her ears fell back. Trinity picked up on it almost immediately, and her smirk only grew. "You especially, Private. I'd best watch that cutie mark, if I were you. She was yours and yours alone to deal with, if I recall..."

Trinity straightened her posture and walked out of the room on her hinds, her tail lashing as she went. "And I guess the Professor's too, now that he's helping your sorry ass deal with that reprobate! If Sham were here, I'd bet she'd slap you both silly with her front hooves! And then I'd slap her for failing to train your ass properly!" she called as the door closed behind her.

Yukito's eye began to twitch, and his teeth started to grind. "There's a difference between being insane and being a reprobate…" he hissed, ears folding back and legs trembling with restraint. Sora draped a wing over him, more to hold him back in case he decided to bolt, before he took a deep breath and sighed.

"What is with that mare?" Starbreaker piped up. Yukito and Sora turned to her, the latter closing her wing to find that her eyes had shifted to a burning orange hue with another whir.

Yukito shrugged. Sora deflated a little, wings drooping at her sides. "Trinity's… always had it out for me—I don't know what all I did to piss her off in the past, but she just…" Sora trailed off, frowning. Her blades twitched, then landed with a good chunk of her wings upon the floor.

Starbreaker blinked, and with a whir her eyes reverted back to their technicolor hue. "She's wanted to torch you?" she offered.

Sora's head shook. "Wouldn't… quite call it that, but that's one way of putting it," she answered. "I heard she was like that before I came under her scrutiny."

Starbreaker's brows shot up. "From who?" she asked.

Sora's head dropped to hang at her elbows, but not before her eyes grew dull and slanted. "... from my previous military instructor…" she muttered grimly, voice dropping to a small whisper. "She… got a lot of flak from Trinity, too…"

"Well, where is she?" Starbreaker asked, sitting on her haunches with a wince and crossing her front legs. Sora's head shook again, and Starbreaker leaned in close to see what the deal was. However, Sora's mane obscured much of her face, making it difficult for her to gauge her expression. "Why've you gone quiet all of a sudden?"

"... she's… not here anymore…" Sora answered, voice quiet and almost apathetic. But there was something swimming in her apathy that Starbreaker picked up on—its name, however, eluded her. Then… Sora gave a dry, mirthless laugh, one that sounded just the barest bit of hysterical. "She was… almost like a second mother to me, after I'd gotten augmented."

Starbreaker tilted her head as Sora looked up at her, eyes aglow with… regret? She couldn't be sure, for the face that framed those eyes had gone stone cold. Yet… her brow twitched, as did her still-flattened ears, like she wanted to express what was on her mind. But her apathy had won, and so her face barely moved, save for her lips a second after. "But… I don't think she'd have slapped me, were she… here and aware I'd taken you in…" she finished, softly.

Starbreaker frowned at that. "Why wouldn't she slap you?" she queried sincerely.

Sora's gaze averted, briefly. "... that would be an exercise in futility," she answered. "She'd know… that it was my talent to help ponies… to protect them whenever I could." She lifted a hoof and put it on the shoulder of her charge. "Like… like I protected you." The hoof shook, and Sora's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and anger sparked within them for the barest of instants. Her tone took on a scathing, shaky note as she hissed, "And i-if Trinity thinks she can j-just insult my old instructor l-like that… then she'll come to regret it o-one of these days."

Yukito's hoof came to rest on Sora's withers, and he rubbed them in a soothing manner. "Trinity's just trying to get under your coat by insulting her, Sora. There's not a lot you can do about that… unless she acts out of turn," he pointed out. "Even she's not immune to the Admiral's reprimands."

Sora mutely nodded, and lowered her hoof with a deep, shuddering breath. She turned and smiled at Yukito, and her eyes gleamed with fondness. "But that would require she actually trot out of line," she remarked.

Yukito nodded back. "Yes, that's true. But she had you deliver corpses," he replied firmly. "Wouldn't that count as her stepping out of line?"

Sora's eyes went round, and she lifted a hoof to tap her chin, contemplating this for a moment. "I… suppose so," she replied with a shrug. "But only if she killed them, which insofar as I know, she had barely a hoof in."

Yukito nodded, and turned to Starbreaker again, who was now looking at them expectantly. "So… let's begin your preliminaries…" he started, trotting over to the microwave. Sora ambled with him, both sets of eyes trained intently on their charge. "Trot from the end of the bed, to the door and back again."

Starbreaker shrugged. That request sounded almost too laughably easy. But the sooner she got it over with, the sooner she could torch Sora, and so on shaky legs she rose to stand and made the first few steps. Almost immediately, her body tilted, pain once again roared through her leg and hoof, and her knees shook in a threat to give out. She righted herself, though, and pressed on, atrophy and leg fractures be damned! Her legs shook more and more as she neared the door, before finally giving out after she turned and made it halfway back to bed.

With a suffering groan, though, she rose back up with a mighty heave, using her left front knee as further support before she proudly wobbled the rest of the way to the bed. She promptly threw herself on it, shuddering with the effort but smiling at the fact that she had completed the task nonetheless, and without being walked to boot.

"Well then," Yukito chirped, trotting over to Starbreaker, who turned to him to find he now sported a very pleased grin on his face. "It would seem you can manage a small amount of movement. Keep this up, and you'll be spry as a foal in no time at all."

Yukito then stepped aside. "Look at the mirror, please," he instructed. Vexed, Starbreaker turned and did just that, before her eyes went round. Her horn now stood at a good two inches, still flat around the top but with a noticeable case of the shrinks upon that particular plateau. Her good hoof reached up and prodded at it, feeling that—yes!—her eyes did not deceive her. "Fortunately, your horn is still organic, and should finish growing by the end of this month," he chirped. "Which is good; winter's approaching, and you'll need your fire magic to keep warm if we cannot find suitable housing for you."

"As if we'd let her freeze out there," Sora cut in again, a glimmer of amusement in her voice. "I'd take a full round of ammunition from the Admiral's revolver just to keep her in a warm building." Yukito chuckled with a nod, and his magic gripped Starbreaker's cranium before, precariously, it started to unwind the bandages which had been placed there.

"So… how did you manage to survive?" Yukito asked as he continued unwinding the bandages, slowly revealing what lay beneath.

Starbreaker shrugged. "Couldn't use magic… so I had to eat grass and slept in caves," she muttered in reply. Then she stuck her tongue out and made a face, wincing as where her left ear used to be stung once air had touched it. "It tasted terrible."

Yukito and Sora shared a glance at that, then the latter trotted to her charge while the former finished removing the bandages. "You… had to resort to grazing?" Sora queried incredulously.

Starbreaker fervently nodded. "I kept to a forest. There was plenty to go around… and I learned what was and wasn't good to eat," she answered. "And then those cloaked weirdos found me…" Her eyes narrowed, and she winced again as she felt somepony's muzzle come uncomfortably close to the wounded side of her head. "I galloped all day just to get away from them."

"Which… wouldn't be possible, for any normal pony," Yukito cut in, frowning as he saw that the wound was thoroughly stitched shut, although with some bits of pastel-blue mane growing over it. "I take it your augments kicked in?" That garnered him a hasty nod.

"I think that'd explain her atrophy," Sora muttered, waving a hoof at the still-gaunt legs of her charge for emphasis. "She burnt up whatever fat reserves she built quick after grazing for who knows how long, and her muscles just went 'screw this' and shriveled as well." Then, she sat down and crossed her forelegs over her chest. "Had she gone for a full twenty-four hours, she'd have dropped in this state, even if she got away from the cloaked ponies who ganged up on her."

Yukito nodded. "Which I think the augments made possible to occur. But using them like this is… dangerous, even for a flight-or-fight response," he mused. He looked at Sora, frowning. "However, since she is healing, we can safely bet she hasn't pushed herself into the deep red yet."

"She did move very quickly when I ran into her, and then fell asleep on the airship. I'd still wager she needs to take it easy," Sora stated, sighing.

Starbreaker wiggled as a hoof lifted to prod at her healing scars, though she noticed that said scars did not in any way budge. "That still hurts," she groused.

"I know. But it seems the pus that was in the canal has finished draining," Yukito observed with a wry note in his voice, smiling at this. "Now, does it hurt less than it did before the surgery?"

Starbreaker perked up and fervently twitched the remnants of her right ear, lips pursing and eyes going round as she pondered this. She racked her brain for a moment, before shaking her head. "But it doesn't hurt any worse, either," she muttered with a shrug of indifference. "Maybe I'll just torch your ears off, doctor, and a bit of your hooves too, if you keep touching me like this."

Sora and Yukito exchanged matching grins. "I guess that's just how she expresses her gratitude," Sora idly remarked, giggling at the thought.

"Oh well," Yukito chirped with a shrug, "there's a first time for everything." With that, he magically lifted the broken hoof and unwound its bandages, carefully loosening the coils to not agitate the wound anymore. His smile widened as the bandages came off, revealing that the cracks which had littered that hoof had shrunk a considerable margin, and no longer bled. But the fact that the cracks remained was still a cause for concern; they could widen again, for instance, and jeopardize that whole hoof all over again.

However, he wasn't worried about that in the slightest. As long as the hoof was used minimally, there'd be no damage done, save another accidental collapsing. He set it down, and noticed Starbreaker was eying him warily. "How does the hoof feel?" he queried.

That garnered him a shrug. "Like it's there," Starbreaker answered sincerely. "No worse or better."

"Hrm…" Yukito started unravelling the cast on her back leg. "Well, if you can manage to trot on it, I guess your cast is no longer necessary. I'll need to x-ray you again, though, to make sure it's progress is coming along smoothly," he noted.

Sora flexed her wings, and trotted around the bed before making a beeline for the miniature fridge. "Whaddya want for breakfast?" she asked as she opened the door.

Starbreaker paused, even as the cast was parted from her leg. She thought for a moment. "Something… red, if you have it?" she replied.

"Red… red…" Sora muttered as she eyed the fridge's contents. "Carrots and beets sound good? One of those two is red."

"Sounds good," Starbreaker confirmed with a nod. "And I want it steaming! Maybe I'll torch you even less after." At this, Sora smiled as she pulled out a small plastic-wrapped tray of beets and carrots. At least she could say progress was underway—and maybe she could rub this in Trinity's smug face later for speaking ill of her former instructor. But for now, she had a meal to prepare for her charge.

She had just put it in the microwave after shredding its plastic wrapping to pieces when the door opened again, and in strode Tsukumi. "I just finished my daily rounds. How's she holding up?" he asked, looking pointedly at Starbreaker.

"Splendidly, all things considered," Yukito answered as he heard the microwave beeping. "She's well enough to stand and manage a very small trot." Tsukumi's ears perked up at that.

"To trot? But… isn't that dangerous, given her fractures and breaks?" he asked sincerely.

"Me and Sora watched her, and she didn't get a compound fracture," Yukito replied, waving a hoof dismissively. "Besides, she already took down the bar holding up her injured legs and got out of bed before we even arrived." Tsukumi's jaw dropped, and he turned to the ceiling to find that the bar was no longer where it was supposed to be.

"Mhm. But she's resting now, so we're happy," Sora chimed in, eyes glued to the microwave as she waited for it to ding. She failed to notice Tsukumi slumping in place, almost falling to his haunches in wide-eyed dismay.

"B-but she's…" Tsukumi stammered, struggling to articulate what was on his mind.

"It'll be fine," Sora interjected, snorting as the microwave began beeping again. She deftly opened it and checked the food tray, smiling when she saw a hefty amount of steam rising from its contents. "So long as she does it at our discretion, there's no harm done." With that, she plucked the tray from the microwave with a hoof before trotting on three legs to deliver it to Starbreaker. She set it on the pillow, and retracted to watch as her charge took a whiff of the food.

"It smells… strange," Starbreaker remarked, tilting her head at the beets and carrots that greeted her. She did manage a smile, though, as her request for red food had been met.

"That's just because it's been nuked," Sora replied. "But it tastes good. Try it." Starbreaker obliged, picking up a small beet in her teeth. She dragged it in and chewed, slowly, before a savory-sweet taste greeted her tongue. "Hey, Yukito… would it be alright for me to fly Starbreaker around the base once she's done eating?" she asked, while her charge started digging in eagerly.

Yukito pursed his lips, then shook his head. "Give her another few days, and not after she's eaten. She's not quite gotten the strength needed to hold on," he replied firmly.

"I meant via carriage," Sora replied. Yukito shook his head again.

"And my answer is still no," Yukito replied, still firm. "She's just gotten out of bed, Sora, and the last thing either of us need is to traumatize her some more on top of that." Still, some part of him relented, and he added, "After three weeks. At this rate, she should be back in tip-top shape, more or less."

Sora deflated a little, but nodded in defeat. "Alright." She turned to Tsukumi, who was still very much present, very much wide-eyed, and very much slumped to the point it looked like his back would bow at any minute. "You okay?" she asked. All she got was a faint murmur and a shaking of the head.

Yukito turned to Tsukumi and sighed. "I think we may have traumatized him," he muttered dismally. His horn lit up, and he dragged Tsukumi bodily towards the bed. His eyes fell on Sora, and he smiled. "I think you need to go out and stretch your wings for a while. They're… I dunno, a little bit within the realms of disarray, perhaps?" he suggested.

Sora turned back and grinned. "You mind me going to the Hollowed Gorge for a while?" she replied. At this, Yukito's head shook, and Sora's grin widened. "Oh, good, because I'll need to do something over there." At this, she started to trot out of the room. "Keep me posted about Starbreaker if anything at all happens while I'm out. And if Major Trinity comes back, tell her something came up if I don't return at nightfall."

"Will do," Yukito promised with a nod. "And keep warm if you're going to the Gorge! You don't want icicles on your blades again!" he added.

Sora shot him another fond smile. "That I can manage," she cooed.

Chapter XI- A World Frozen in Time

Sora made her way to the launch pad via the elevator, and with haste. Her tail swished one minute, then tucked between her hinds the next as the elevator dragged her up. The moment the doors opened, she bolted out in a gallop, wings spread and beating with enough force to slightly jostle her own uniform. She took off before she reached the edge of the launch pad, and in seconds she was soaring above the city first by a few inches, then by several feet.

Her wings took her higher and higher, and as the air itself started tossing her mane and tail about, it traced its way through the gaps betwixt her primaries, humming a soft tune that was monotonous and flat. Her eyes fixed themselves on the distant mountain peaks, and her heart started to race in her chest as she slowly flew away from the city and and toward the Crested Plains. This was a trip that would be at least several hours, just to get to and back from her destination without the aid of an airship.

She trusted Yukito to keep Starbreaker safe, and that he now had Tsukumi helping him out meant that she did not have much need to be around unless an emergency were to happen. Besides, if he could deflect her blades with practised ease, then he'd very well take on whatever shit the rest of the army tried to give him, short of the Admiral himself. And yet, the farther she got away, the more an ache settled within her chest, tightening its grip with each and every mile she flew.

She made sure not to fly higher than the base's central tower, of course, nor to look directly down at the city. Her flaps were minimal; wings going rigid for as long as possible in between beats to maximize distance and energy conservation. She caught every gale of wind she came across, further traversing yet more stretches of land with ease. Before long, she reached the Crested Plains, and a faint chill rushed down her spine as she continued to fly. Though she crossed miles and miles of land easily, her method of doing so was a slow one.

Her gaze did not falter from the mountains, not even once. Her face hardened into a look of apathy, but she could not suppress even the faintest twitches that betrayed a hint of pain. Her ache remained in place, beating in tandem with her wings and her drumming heart to let her know it would not go away so easily. Still, her apathy made it easier to stave off, and on she flew without incident. The farther she went, the more the small device on her ear buzzed and buzzed with static, and she dared not raise a hoof to touch it and answer whoever may have been trying to contact her.

At approximately noon, with the sun at its pinnacle in the sky, she approached the mountains. She could see their collection of snow-caps clearly, and the ache strengthened when she did. Thick, dark clouds gathered beyond the mountains, crackling with thunder and lightning at the very base of their peaks. The air started to turn dismally cold, but this failed to steer her away. The lightning flashed, yet she did not falter. Sora flew right into the clouds, cleaving a small swath of them away from her with every flap of her wings, barely noticing the device on her ear having fallen silent as she did.

Her eyes gravitated down, wings slashing and clearing away the storm-bound smog to reveal a world of perfect white below her. She glanced about, flying for several minutes and several miles on end before finding a large set of cliffsides carved into the earth long ago, forming a ghastly chasm almost entirely snow-filled yet seemingly hungering for more. "Hard to believe you went by another name, and that you were much smaller than you are now…" Sora muttered, tucking in her wings tightly to bank to the ground. "And now you're full to the brim, ye old Ghastly… how ironic," she noted.

With her target acquired, she descended rapidly, if only to escape the thunderstorm before it could change its mind and smite her with lightning. Halfway down, her wings snapped out, and her fall slowed as she flapped to shed off excess momentum. After that, she corkscrewed the rest of the way rather lazily, and her heart continued to hammer madly about. Taking in deep breaths of the frigid air sent chills across her whole body, yet it failed to slow her heart or chip her resolve.

Continuing to descend, her eyes turned onto the chasm's thin, almost serpentine tail, and her body reacted by tightening the corkscrewing loops inch by inch. "It's almost like nopony was here at all…" Sora muttered as she came closer and closer to that seemingly-small gap in the snowy earth. And oh how she'd hit the nail on the head; here, there was simply no trace of civilization to be found, and the closest was past a mountain range, a forest sequestered to the west of some plains, and said plains, for the old gods' sake. She started to ponder if, perhaps, an apocalypse of some sort had besmirched this part of the world. Glancing about as she came closer to the chasm certainly gave it that sort of vibe; insofar as she knew and could see, nothing but snow and ice had ruled here.

She reached the end of the chasm which pointed back to the base, noting that one fragment of canyon was the most silent of a world which seemed to be frozen in time. The moors and cliffsides were absolutely still, and almost as pale as the snow, and she angled her wings to ride a meager draft of air to keep from kicking up the miles-high snow therein. She trailed from the very tail of this chasm, keeping a low profile and a slow pace to conserve her energy. Here, the silence held firmly, and the only thing which was permitted to break it had been the thunder… if the thunder hadn't gone silent with the rest of this desolate place.

The air grew colder still, yet no fresh snow had fallen. Lightning flashed, but it was unnaturally dim in this desert of unfiltered white. It never struck down, either, instead arching back up into the clouds as though it were warning her of something. For the longest time, there seemed to be no signs of life here. Yet Sora pressed on, eyes scanning to and fro between the halves of the canyon, watching intently for something rather expectantly.

She flew for several miles, wings perfectly still and catching a faint draft for an entire half-hour of grueling cold. She kicked her legs out intermittently, but only to keep them warm and moving, making sure to not touch the snow too soon. At one point, she had to shift her altitude to avoid a mound which would have otherwise smacked her in the face. She also took the time to glance around outside the canyon whilst she reoriented herself, watching for anything out of the ordinary.

Sora was the only soul present, in this world of white—a meager splash of lilac, green and gold in a place so devoid of color. She could hear naught but her own breathing, see naught except the snow, canyon and the clouds, and so spoke not on the absence of life. It was eerily quiet, almost as if the land had been holding its breath upon her arrival. She descended back down, and continued exploring the canyon with intent. More than once, one hoof strayed to her holster, as if expecting something to come at her.

Yet nothing, not even the weather itself, dared approach her. At this, she heaved a silent sigh of relief. She waited for several minutes each time her hoof went to the holster thereafter, but only a dead silence answered to her. It was like flying through a dream that itself was a void; bereft of anything which could alert her senses to its presence. The few things that were in this cold, forsaken part of the world seemed to actively avoid her, or were simply stationary. In a twisted way, it was almost surreal; surely, such a place could not have existed, and yet it did. Somehow, it thrived as well, despite not having a splash of greenery to it. This was a natural phenomenon that few would dare venture into, with only a bell and the clothes on their back.

At first, this canyon was narrow enough that, were Sora not careful, she could touch the walls with her primaries and a little shift to either the left or the right. When this canyon grew wider, almost like a yawning mouth, some hundred miles into her foray, she slowed down and kept fitfully scanning her surroundings. It grew so wide, in fact, that she could have stashed in three soldier barracks with plenty of room to spare in that widening earthen maw. She ascended above it to do another preliminary of the landscape around it.

She found little more than last time—just snow, clouds, and moors all around, although there was something in the distance that had caught her eye. She noticed a dark shape protruding from the moors somewhere on the right of the chasm, and tried to will her eyes to take a closer look. It was tall, distant, almost jutting rigidly up like a lance crossed with a halberd—something protruded from the side of this behemoth, near the top but not quite there all the same.

The entity, seemingly cloaked in a shadow which did not belong in this world of frost, towered mightily—a mountain, perhaps? It certainly looked as if she'd have to fly just to scale it. She blinked once, twice, then thrice to confirm that she was seeing it. She frowned, though, when this specter vanished before her very eyes. Her head shook, her hooves lifted to rub at her eyes, and the strange figure once more appeared. She turned to its left, and found another smaller figure, a mere twentieth the size of the maybe-mountain, faintly gleaming like crystal. One blink later, though, and both were gone.

She descended again, and resumed flying through the chasm, thinking the entities to have been a most bizarre mirage. It was another few minutes after her once-over of the land, in which the Gorge widened until it was less of a canyon and more of a miniature plain betwixt distant cliffsides before she sighed. How big was the Hollowed Gorge? Surely, it could not have been able to grow to a large-enough size that would put even the Corps' base to shame. But it did; such was simply the nature of a canyon filled close to bursting with snow, which ironically enough was slowly but surely eroding it away. Sora made a preliminary sweep of the Gorge's sides, going smoothly from left to right and back again, crossing yet more miles as she zig-zagged for something out of the ordinary.

Thirty minutes after the initial zig-zagging, she had found something out of the ordinary—a cavernous mouth, carved into the side of the chasm, with snow piling into it. If not for some stony protrusions that gave it the rough appearance of a screaming pony up close, and a meager dent in the snow around it, she might not have seen it at all. She angled and flapped to approach the bizarre structure, alighting tenderly on the snow and continually flapping to keep herself from sinking into what would have otherwise been a deathtrap for the unwary.

Upon reaching the mouth, she started to push aside the snow with her hooves, as her wings were currently occupied. Small mounds formed at first, but steadily grew in size until she caught sight of a steep decline of snow, leading into a darkened corridor of stone. She widened the hole, just enough so that she could fit in, and shifted to slide down on her haunches with wings flared. Her blades skittered as they scraped against the stone ceiling on her way down, but otherwise she landed without incident.

Darkness greeted her, thick and impenetrable, though it also had a warmth about it that the outside moors desperately lacked. Something shifted in her eyes again, before her augments kicked in and gave off a soft light that enabled her to see just a little more of her surroundings. She looked down, seeing a trail of fresh-made hoofprints fading into the sable before her. "Did somepony else visit here?" she asked aloud.

The darkness itself did not answer Sora. She shrugged and opted to ignore it as her hooves went to autopilot, and she shifted to stand before trotting rather haltingly inside, leaving her own tracks behind. At first, the stone walls didn't change; all that was for several miles down a winding hallway had nothing but rocks and the occasional stalactite. How long she'd trotted was lost to her; time could not be kept track of here, and at some point—Sora wasn't sure exactly when it had started—her tail twitched in tandem with her hooves, and her wings shivered to help her body keep warm.

But, the hallway split into three paths eventually, forming a crude cross-intersection that was only visible thanks to her augments. Her heart slowed, and she took a breath of damp, slightly less cold air. "It's been one and a quarter years since this place had been discovered… and since I've last visited," she mused, and the ache in her chest grew as she did. "I didn't pay my respects last time. Better late to pay respects… than never at all, though." She hesitated for several minutes, before making up her mind and trotting to the one corridor directly ahead of her.

Here, a good two hundred and forty yards of corridor stretched before her. Her chest sent another cramp of pain through her nerves, and for some reason, she felt something piercing yet distant fall upon her. She took another shuddering breath as she cantered down this corridor, noting that it was lined with torches long since snuffed out. Some had fallen off of the walls, laying uselessly frozen upon the floor. At the corridor's end was a set of rotting wooden doors, barely holding together thanks to a bar affixed onto hooks which had been built into their frames, which took her several minutes to reach.

With shaking hooves, Sora reared up onto her hinds and tenderly moved the bar aside, then dropped down wincing as the doors creaked open fitfully once her wings nudged them apart. Here, a large room greeted her, high enough of ceiling for her to spread her wings at this altitude—but no more than that without her primaries touching it. At her hooves lay a flight of stairs, leading to the middle of the large room. A raised platform had been erected around the edge of the room, one large enough for two ponies to trot on side by side, provided that they were small enough. Sora trotted down the stairs, tail tucking itself between her legs and head lowering to her shoulders as she approached the reason for her visit.

The center of the room, almost crater-like given the presence of the platform, was circular with a flat floor, and sported stalagmites that joined with stalactites to form a natural, crude throne lined with ice and more dead torches. Surrounding that throne were a myriad of broken ovoid devices bearing small wings and cracked lens, framed very carefully and frozen into the shape of a perfect triangle. A device whose wings were equipped with three engines, two of which were turbine, sat in the middle of this triangle, with said wings fragmented and useless. These fragments bore deep scratches and cuts, with one having managed to pierce through the larger engine, which exposed its rusting circuitry. Etched onto that engine, framed by rust no less, was a simple scrawling that Sora could not see unless she were up close.

The tableau of this room sat slumped with hinds slack and fronts holding up much of the weight, frozen forevermore upon that throne. The entity in question was staring at Sora with wide and glassy eyes that had long since gone lifeless, but only as she finished the flight of stairs, for it could not move. It was a unicorn mare… but the carcass could only be barely called that now. Pieces of her body wasted away, or perhaps had been torn off, revealing fragments of a skeletal structure hewn of metallic bars and joints in place of natural bone. Though, whoever had placed her here had angled her body in such a way as to hide most of the damage, having taken care to keep the carcass on her seat in doing so.

What hadn't decayed was coated in a rime of frost thick as Sora's blades, preserving a pale green coat accentuated by a tousled brown mane and vacant eyes matching in hue, framed by a slanted brow. On that mare's chest was a series of very grueling stab wounds, each caked with blood that itself had turned to ice. What parts of her were intact were laden with darkened, brown scars, including a perfectly preserved cutie mark of a triangle formed of lightning bolts.

Yet, most disturbingly of all, a soft and serene smile remained on her face, affixed into a rictus that had flecks of blood surrounding it. Pain had evidently once filled her features, and even caused her to cry tears—tears that had frozen into perfect round droplets upon her cheeks, mere inches from her eyes. But she staved off the pain for just long enough to smile, even though it did not, and could not, save her from her inevitable end.

In fact, she seemed to have embraced that end rather happily, if somewhat mournfully. Sora could see hints of pride still clinging to that smile, and in those dead eyes, but only because her corpse had been so well preserved. However, there was also a hint of a deep, bitter regret etched onto those features, but the mare before her no longer had any other way of expressing herself now.

She was long gone, this lonely unicorn. She was nothing more than a frozen statue now.

Sora had no power to sway the once-living soul before her; that fact was now etched upon her face, itself permanently twisted to an unnerving postmortem expression of bleak resignation. She was unbidden to everything around her; unresponsive to her own prison. She didn't seem to care either way.

Nothing could change that—not even something such as hope.

And here she rested, trapped in a tomb just as cold as her expired body. She was condemned forevermore to this frozen patch of waste; a trophy of sorts, and one who did not receive much respect beyond entombment. She seemed aware of it, too. The fact that she could not express herself in any other way elicited a pang of pity, one that came from deep within Sora's aching chest. Sora edged closer, hooves shaking as she stared deep into those brown eyes.

She stepped over the devices and around the broken pair of mechanical wings, the corpse seemingly regarding her despite being so empty of gaze and stiff of body. Her eyes caught the scrawling from their corners as she trotted round it. 'Here lies Staff Sergeant Sham, former instructor of the Umbralium Corps. A beloved mentor, a dear friend, and a comrade par excellence. May she rest knowing the Clash of the Sky met its end,' it read.

"I-I'm here… Sham…" Sora muttered, voice quivering as she got closer still, turning her full attention onto the corpse sitting upon the throne. "Y-you haven't… changed, huh?"

Sham didn't respond. She was unable to, even if some vestige of her was alive at this point. The ice started reflecting the light of the ocular augments, glistening almost as though it were a shred of life—life that wasn't her own, could never be her own again. Sora came closer, her chest aching as she stepped toward the frozen throne she sat upon, idly noting that the room warmed a little at her approach.

"O-of course you h-haven't, silly me," Sora chided herself, shaking her head as she got close enough to go nose to nose with Sham's body. She smiled softly, yet doing this made the ache in her chest strengthen and tighten its grip. At this, her smile quickly fell as fast as it had come. "I… wish it could've gone differently. B-but… you always told me to ma-make it back alive, d-didn't you?" she asked.

Sora closed her eyes, and her ears fell flat against her head as she precariously nuzzled Sham's frozen cheek. Cold and rigor greeted her, but so did an eerie sense of familiarity that made her stomach twist. She could tell the fur was once silky in texture, but now it was jagged and stiff, almost like sandpaper. "... you could have told the A-Admiral off, too…" she muttered bitterly, feeling tears prickling at her eyes. "C-could have… l-lived…"

She pulled back and opened her eyes, regarding the lifeless look which stared back—a look that had only a trace of who the pony before her once was. "Wh-what did they… do to you…?" Sora asked quietly, as if Sham could answer her now. "Y-you didn't w-want to go back… d-did you?" Silence, and nothing more, replied—for it was the only thing Sham could answer with. In a cruel way, it was almost deafening and surreal—some small part of her expected an answer, yet received no such closure.

A thought crept up, and Sora could not restrain it, trembling as she mentally pictured this face before her. Except, this face was not frozen and instead drenched by rain, illuminated by lightning as her weakening voice was deafened by thunder. The ground shook far below, as the storm roiled on without pause. Countless streaks of brilliant white were dancing all around—and illuminating blood, so much blood everywhere, clashing horribly with the vibrant green. But worst of all were of all were the blades protruding from this mare's backside, the mechanical wings affixed to it doing naught except keep them there. Both were suspended, trapped in a terrible moment stretching forever as the shadows darkened that day...

Yet still, even now, she could hear that frail voice articulating her final command in the back of her mind, hoarse with pain yet equally filled with pride. "Make it back alive," she had said, with a crystal clarity that even the storm could not drown out. With one last nod of reassurance, however futile the gesture seemed, Sham went limp as the lightning illuminated her final smile.

Never again would Sham move. Never again would she laugh. Only death's cold embrace waited for her, and it claimed her long ago.

Sora felt the first tear trail down her cheek as she remembered seeing the light leaving those eyes once those words had left her mouth and her head had dropped, falling into the glassy stare they were now unable to shift from. Sham's eyes caught the light of Sora's augments, and for a moment it seemed, some light of her own returned to her desiccated husk. "I… still miss you, y-you know," she muttered, shaking her head sadly. "Still… love you, like a m-mother… even though y-you're dead now…" A shuddering sigh left her mouth as the tear dropped from her cheek to land quietly upon the floor.

"I-I'm still… in the Corps… I want t-to find out… what made you…" Sora's voice weakened with each word, until she was barely whispering. "I-I won't quit… until I-I know f-for certain…" Her wings trembled as resolve filled her, and warm air stirred ever so slightly, brushing up against the side of Sham's dead face. Liquid condensed on the bottom of her left eye, forming a small droplet that trailed down the rime almost like a tear.

Sora lifted a hoof and gently wiped it away before it could fall. "H-hey… don't cry…" she pleaded, even as she felt another tear forming in her own augmented eyes. "I… I won't let you d-down again." The warm air stopped stirring, but not before another droplet of liquid condensed and fell from Sham's eye. She wiped that away, too.

"Y-Yukito's watching o-over me, so I-I don't get hurt. A-and we're g-getting along sp-splendidly. Y-you were r-right when you s-said we'd be c-cute together. The Corps still doesn't know... what you've done for us both, Sham..." she mused, with a slight hint of happiness in her voice that made her lips twitch in the faintest of smiles. Some small part of her hoped Sham would acknowledge it, at least, even if that was no longer possible now.

Sora leaned in to nuzzle Sham again, before holding her snout to the dead cheek for a moment. She could almost feel cold hooves wrap around her neck, despite knowing that Sham had no way of moving. She started to hear a gurgling, anguished, hollow laugh, but from where she didn't know, much less question how she'd even heard it. Had she produced it herself? Or was it her imagination running wild? As it was, no answers were forthcoming, and yet some part of her preferred it that way.

She pressed her neck against Sham's, and the illusory hold strengthened for but a moment, and that watery laugh grew a smidgen louder. "I-it's… gonna be okay," Sora promised, her voice distant to her own ears. She pulled back and looked in Sham's eyes, and the mirage hooves loosened their grip as the watery laugh gave way to silence. "I-I have to… s-see the others first… I… love you, Sham… and I hope y-you're happier, wherever y-you've flown to now…"

With that, she turned and trotted out of the room. Behind her, liquid condensed one last time, and fell from Sham's eyes in a pair of droplets. If she was still alive, then there would be nothing she could do to stop Sora from finding out what had spurned her on. She was helpless; only able to watch, and silently weep, if indeed some fragment of her soul held on for this long. Sora's form faded into the darkness, taking with her the warm light of her augments.

Sora moved to the chamber on her left, wings drooping as she came upon another large room sporting a throne of frost with holes in the ceiling that were large enough to let light shine through. Like Sham's chamber, this one had a hall of two hundred and forty yards lined with dead torches preceding it, ending in double doors and, subsequently, stairs leading to that throne. Before this one rested another torn pair of mechanical wings, in addition to an axe of crimson and steel with a rather slender shaft and a lance-shaped head. The head alone had a gap between its deadly blades, and was as large as a pony's body from croup to shoulder alone, whilst its shaft was three times as long.

This room, likewise, had a frozen and preserved body, albeit only a hornless head, chest, and front left leg which had been anchored to one of the throne's armrests to keep it upright. The hinds, if there was anything left of them, were coated in a thick blanket of snow, as if the corpse on the throne had been tucked to bed. The whole right leg was simply gone, with only a metallic shoulder blade peeking out of the cavity where it used to be.

The chest sported an unusual, tear-shaped, cracked gem the size of the corpse's muzzle, bright crimson and blackening in the center. Within were a series of small wires, burnt and connected to a small, square, and melted device that Sora didn't know the name of. Pieces of the chest had been torn out, revealing yet more wires hooked into the device, but thankfully there was little beyond that.

The corpse in question was scorched, with what little remaining a soft beige in color, sporting a pink mane and a face twisted in wide-eyed, screaming anguish—one who vied for control, to the bitter end, only to cry out as realization dawned the moment that control slipped. Pale teal eyes stared into the middle distance, and the only visible leg had a silver ring affixed to it. The expression of the corpse made it difficult to ascertain the gender, but the softer cheekbones and slender build of the foreleg and chest told Sora that this one was a mare—just barely.

The air turned colder in this room, and Sora approached the body. She trotted delicately around the broken wings and the odd axe, pausing to read another scrawling on the engine's side paired with the elaborate carving of a small lance: 'Here lies Alte, beloved wife to an unknown stallion. May she rest in peace, knowing she fought for those she loved.' Sora only stopped when she found herself staring into long-dead eyes.

"H-hey Alte… Sh-Sham told me a lot about you, before… I was thrown into the Clash," she greeted, even though Alte could not respond. She wasn't able to, really; not with her face permanently frozen into her last pained, defeated expression. She shuddered as her mind procured a different image now; hooves grabbing her as light shined brilliantly, razing, scorching all over, followed by a deafening boom and one last scream of agony. That image faded fast, to darkness so thick it felt inescapable.

"I… I'm sorry about wh-what happened…" The air stirred, but the temperature didn't rise nor fall. "I… I want to tell your husband… what happened… but is that p-possible now?" The air stilled, as if pausing at Sora's question. Then it stirred again, and some of the snow around the throne kicked up ever so gently, warming up a little as the snow it tossed around flitted rather haphazardly about.

"I'll… take that as a n-no, then…" Sora guessed. The air once more ceased moving. "I... know... understand, entirely, why you were so frantic to get back... t-to him... I… I hope he finds you… up there, beyond the stars…" She offered a weak, faltering smile to Alte, and sighed. "Maybe… you'll raise a family together, in the sky, a-away from all th-the fighting…" The room warmed a little bit, though externally or if she were imagining it, Sora couldn't tell. "And… y-your foals will be safe… so y-you won't have t-to worry…"

Her smile widened a smidgen more, and she nuzzled Alte, catching sight of a horrible scar that spanned across the whole right side of her face. "P-please, Alte... I'm sure h-he misses you..." The air grew warmer still at the gesture, until Sora felt a cold hoof touch her right cheek, stopping another falling tear midway down its path upon lilac fur. It caressed her for a moment, freezing and wiping away that tear in one motion, and for a mere second Alte's wide grimace shifted to a closed, soft, relieved smile framed with frozen tears. Sora jumped at the sudden change, but stilled as she felt the cold hoof continue to caress her. Had Alte, perhaps, been trying to tell her something even beyond death's door? If so, then what was she trying to say?

She relaxed at the touch, as it carried with it a feeling of peace and reassurance. Whatever the case, she elected to not seek answers. The sad, soft smile on the carcass before her widened ever so slightly, and yet the sorrow in Alte's eyes became more pronounced as it did. The cracked, broken gem glowed fitfully, sparking with a dying glimmer that lasted for only an instant. Had they come to an understanding, perhaps? Sora still didn't know.

"I... I promise I won't make y-your mistake, i-if that's what you're t-trying to convey..." Sora muttered, still smiling as the cold hoof paused to cup her cheek. "I-I swear... on my blades..." Alte's eyes, though long dead, caught the light of Sora's ocular augments, but only faintly as she said that. Afterwards, her scowl came back and a small gust of air rushed past her, and out of the chamber as she pulled back. The air of the room fell still, as did the snow of the throne, and the ice on Alte's body stopped reflecting the light of Sora's eyes.

She turned and trotted into the last chamber, with a hall just as long as the previous two and likewise marked, this one aglow with a flickering light and much larger than the other two combined. Behind the throne of ice, and the corpse that sat within, stood a giant mech taller than even the Admiral, lined with many scorch marks and patches of rust. Its steel had dulled, and its insignia had worn away with time.

It was shaped oddly, and horrifically melted in places to the point Sora wondered how it was still intact. This behemoth was standing on flat-footed hinds with a bulky chest, an empty top and arms shaped like misshapen bulbs. One ended in a four-fingered hand, whilst the other boasted a rusted cannon. Metal bits had been removed, either by rust or that which melted it, revealing circuitry and wiring in such frayed condition that its lonely visitor could not tell what wire went where.

It had a protrusion jutting from the back, betwixt the hinds like a tail, but it was little more than fragmented scrap. She could tell this machine had a different shape, once, but whatever had melted it warped it or possibly ripped away entire chunks to mold an entirely new form that barely held itself together. From the thing's hole-riddled chest was a green lens which the flickering light cast its glow, affixed onto the corpse within the throne. How it was still on, Sora knew not, but its flickering told her that it wouldn't be long before the bulb went out altogether.

The corpse of the room was of a unicorn mare sitting on her hinds, her front legs entirely gone. In place of shoulder blades, where her forelegs would have started, were odd mechanical bits that were melted and warped beyond all possible recognition. Jutting from her back were another pair of broken wings, albeit gold and blue and more feather-like in shape that had been stabbed into the throne to keep her upright. Her body was frightfully pale, so blue it seemed grey, with a short silver-blue mane framing dead navy eyes and odd mechanical horns that jutted from the sides of her head.

Half of this mare's body was burnt black, including one side of her face, which made a horrific scar on her neck stand out that much more starkly. Her muzzle was affixed into a tight, pained frown, and her pupils were forever shrunken in what Sora could only assume was mortification. It was as if she tried to maintain a shred of apathy, but it crumpled away as the last breath had left her body.

She was staring at a broken mare, one without hope nor resolve, devoid of joy and anger, unable to express sorrow and confusion. Only despair was etched onto her face, and she seemed to despise every second of it. One last image formed in her mind's eye as she stared into those vacant eyes; fire and smoke everywhere, some flames blue and others yellowish-orange, ponies screaming out in anguish before blades sliced into their necks to end their suffering.

The blades alone failed to drown out their cries as pieces of a building fell all around, for something else was too eager to do that in their stead. The pandemonium was beset by the horrific cacophony of another pony laughing madly—a sound she had heard on the airship, mere days ago, and it was a sound she thought she'd never hear again outside of her wildest nightmares.

The laughing mad pony was almost squealing in delight as ponies dropped left and right by the dozens, stomping their hooves madly about in a frantic prance that held no rhythm, yet the sound only added to the terrible orchestra. This mare, before her, amongst those caught in the blaze, staring well into the middle distance as she was now when blades slid from her neck and brought about her very swift end.

Sora trotted to the corpse, and eyed a scrawling that had been etched above her head into the rime: 'Here lies Nath, whose fate was taken from her hooves. May she rest knowing she did not spill innocent blood after unwillingly paying the price for power and becoming another ultimate weapon.' Sora lifted a hoof to cup the corpse's cold chin with a frog, and turned to stare into those navy eyes of the broken soul before her.

Warm air brushed up against the corpse's face, causing liquid to condense and trail from her eyes. "I wonder… if y-you can still h-hear me, Nath…" she pondered, her voice taking on a note of pity. She looked, briefly, at Nath's haunches, but they were so scorched she couldn't tell whether or not she had her cutie mark.

Nath failed to reply. Even if she were able to, she'd have been silent since her throat was sliced. The light shining behind her dimmed, briefly. "I… get why you're s-sad," Sora went on, taking note of the condensing liquid, but opting to not do anything about it. She lowered her hoof, which only made the air stir more, in turn causing more liquid to condense and fall from Nath's eyes. "You didn't… want to be augmented, did y-you?"

The light shut off for a whole minute. "I… I found S-Starbreaker…" Sora said, quietly. At this, the light flickered back on and blinked for a few seconds. "And… I-I won't let the a-army do t-to her… wh-what they d-did to you…" The light held steady, and Sora moved to soothingly nuzzle Nath's cheek, as if that could make a difference now. "If… I-I'd have known… what they w-would do to you… when I t-told them off…" She continued to nuzzle Nath as she spoke, voice growing shakier with each word, "th-then maybe I'd… not h-have done th-that. I-I guess it's too l-late now, th-though…"

"At… least you w-won't suffer anymore, a-and s-since I am th-the cause for y-your pain, I-I'll carry that responsibility o-on my withers. I hope… you'll be freer in d-death… than y-you were in life..." With that, she pulled back and tenderly wiped away the liquid droplets that formed on Nath's face with a hoof. For a second, she could've sworn the corpse gave a tiny smile of elation, and she felt a cold muzzle rest on her neck for a mere instant, as Nath's eyes glittered as Alte's and Sham's had. The cold muzzle held against Sora's neck, seemingly intent to return the favor, and it mouthed something against her fur. When it did, she felt the lips and tongue and gums move, forming clear words she could not misconstrue.

"It's not your fault," the illusory muzzle muttered silently, before Nath's smile shifted back to that firm frown and the possibly-imaginary sensation faded in the blink of an eye. Then, the ice on the carcass ceased reflecting light entirely, once again accentuating a vacant look that stared into the middle distance.

Sora made to turn, but the mech slowly moved its cannon with a groan of exertion that gave her pause. Up and down, it waved once, twice, then thrice as the light in its lens violently popped and died, shrouding the room in a gentle darkness. She shed another tear as the air stirred, rushing past her and out of the chamber once the machine stilled. "I guess the battle robot had some life left after all... " Sora noted, looking at the robot. "I-I wonder if i-it had a soul, t-too…" She trotted out of the room, but not before casting one last mournful glance at Nath's body. Nath continued to stare back, unable to do much else, and yet her despairing, ailing expression now had an air of tranquility about it.

She trotted down to the intersection, and down the long hallway again, letting the tears fall freely now, all the while pondering those four little words uttered mutely against her neck. 'It's not your fault' rang in her head, despite being spoken in dead silence, and continued to chime as each step she took wracked her body, and the ache in her chest tightened to the point that pain shot through every fiber of her being. It was her fault; she admitted that much to Nath. How was it anything but, with that confession of guilt?

She bit her lip to keep herself quiet, but the effort crumpled as she felt cold hooves hold her neck again. Even then, her sobs were little more than whispers, with bouts of incomprehensible rambling in between each shuddering hiccup. Her trot slowed to a shambling gait, one that threatened to give out with each step she took, but some part of her held on firmly. She kept walking, making sure to never lean against the walls for support, head bowed low and tears repeatedly streaking her fur and bits of her mane.

She couldn't let anypony know she was crying. She had to keep this secret tucked away in the depths of her soul. The only ponies who'd seen her tears were already dead, and she doubted anypony would come here to interrogate them. At the base, this would be a sign of weakness, one that her superiors had expected to see, yet were denied. Here? Signal via the small device was sporadic, enough to have been effectively locked in radio silence, so she doubted Yukito would be eavesdropping. Here, in this tomb, she could let what she hadn't already vented out of her system. Her apathy had crumpled to shreds, and so could not stop the tears.

She didn't know how long she had cried in that cavern, nor how long the illusionary hooves held her as she shed tears aplenty. Seconds, minutes, hours—she wasn't sure, for all that bottled-up pain clouded her sense of time. But when she left, making sure to wipe her tears and roll up her sleeves to hide the evidence of her crying, she felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted off of her withers. Why the illusionary hooves held her, caressed her, or why that muzzle nuzzled her, she had nary an idea; but it was all a small comfort nonetheless. Perhaps Sham, Alte, and Nath sensed Sora's despair, and tried to help abate it, but could not linger for long. If the old gods permitted them to see her, then they could not be kept waiting.

It wasn't but a few minutes before Sora caught sight of the entrance of the cavern after the cold hooves yielded their grip, and she started to dig another tunnel in the snow. The frozen trio needed to rest now, and in peace within the embrace of the old gods, away from sorrow and strife. Sora idly hoped she had set them more at ease now that she had visited and spoke to them, and took a moment to imagine them sleeping blissfully in an endless plain of viridian. She could at least be respectful and give them that much, now that she'd paid respects, and she did not wish to disturb them any longer than needed. It took her mere minutes to get back to the surface, and when she did she paused to turn to the cavern leading to the tomb to give a final salute to the three slumbering within.

After leaving the chasm that housed the cavern, she once again adhered rigidly to the moors' sacred silence. Soaring high up, she sighed as she turned to fly back the way she came. As her wings beat, the ache that spread throughout her body settled into a dull throb of muted sorrow—one as dull as the moors around her. Her wings stiffened as she caught another draft of air and slowly but surely sailed her way back to the ongoing storm that still held itself in a tense, serene tranquility. Only now, instead of maintaining a steady altitude, she hastily ascended to cross a few hundred miles at least with ease.

She passed by the vague shapes on her way back, and chanced a glance down. She couldn't discern what it was, but the smaller of the two gleamed ever so faintly, like a beacon of ice that had no light to call its own. What was that object? Why was it there? What was its larger companion? Sora ignored these musings; she had a job to get back to, and time was of the essence. In doing so, she missed two tiny dots moving towards that smaller object, and the distinct rattling of carriages being towed along, themselves being followed by a small herd of more tiny dots that started to encircle the two.

A bestial, ethereal, yet mournful howling only spurred Sora to fly away faster. She could've sworn it had called out something in a haunting wail which sent chills down her spine. Something oddly coherent, feminine-sounding… and eerily familiar—familiar enough to make fresh tears form in her eyes, which she hastily wiped away after rolling down one of her sleeves.

"Sooraaa… please make it back… aliiiiiive..." the voice pleaded to no avail, for by that point Sora was but a mere speck of color in the colorless, darkening sky.

Chapter XII- Gears, Halting

Yukito teleported onto the launch pad as the moon started to set to yield its hold of the sky to the rising sun, just in time to see Sora alighting on the pad a mere ten feet away, stiff in the legs and in the wings. She was shivering, red in the face with sleeves rolled up, teeth chattering a little and front hooves a smidgen pale. "Dear stars above, you look like you've flown from windigos and had to wage war with the earth itself. What in the world happened?" he asked.

Sora took a few breaths to gather herself, and stumbled to Yukito in a rather fitful trot, her body chilling up despite the movements. As a result, she almost faceplanted, but caught herself with her blades. "Y-you know a-as well as I-I do that... w-windigos a-aren't real," she hissed, before she sucked in a deep breath to collect herself. "Th… the Crested Plains… got colder…" she muttered, wings almost rattling with how badly she shook. "I-inside?"

Yukito nodded and sighed. "This almost reminds me of when I had to keep everypony else away from you while you went and hibernated for three months after stopping Starbreaker's rampage… oh, that reminds me, she wants to talk to you," he said as he embraced Sora in his magic, before they teleported and reappeared in Starbreaker's much warmer room. Sora had little chance to gather her bearings before then, and once the teleportation ended she managed to stumble in place and slumped rear-first against the farthest wall.

Starbreaker was looking at them expectantly, both brows high and a frown etched on her face. Sora noticed there was now a metallic cone-shaped object affixed where her left ear used to be, and it twitched in tandem with the torn right. In doing so, the object gave a very soft whir. "Where'd you go?" she asked.

"H-Hollowed Gorge," Sora replied, pressing her wings tighter against herself in an attempt to get warmer. She donned a smile. "Y-you got that p-prosthetic?" At Starbreaker's nod, she asked, "C-can you hear out of it?" That garnered a shaking of the head.

"That ear canal's been ruined. We had to close it with the small control rod that lets the prosthetic move," Yukito replied, smiling himself. "But, we were able to connect it to the nerve endings where her eardrum used to be, and it moves as splendidly as any real ear would."

Sora nodded and proceeded to lay on the floor, smiling at the warmth of the room and the little bit of good news she had received. "C-can y-you feel it m-move?" she asked, looking pointedy at Starbreaker, who nodded that time with another twitch of her prosthetic. "Wh-what did you w-want to talk to me a-about?"

"Something about getting the new ear bugged me." Starbreaker took a breath, causing Sora's brow to rise, before she asked, "Can you feel your blades?"

Sora shifted her wings a little and nodded. "Everywhere… except th-the joints where they're affixed t-to," she answered with a shrug. "It's like h-having natural primaries that a-aren't linked to my nerves—n-not exactly phantom limb s-syndrome, but that's the closest thing th-that would describe my wings. I don't h-have my terminal phalanxes, but my b-basal phalanxes are all intact."

Starbreaker tilted her head. "What's that mean in basic equine?" she asked.

"Have you s-seen anything with slim digits o-on l-limbs where hooves would b-be for us?" Sora asked. At Starbreaker's nod, she added, "With c-claws?"

That got another nod. "I saw a big animal once, walking on its hinds to shake a tree in the forest I grazed from," Starbreaker replied, "and it had claws on both fronts and hinds."

At this, Sora promptly re-translated her initial mumbo-jumbo, "My wings h-have fingers about as long a-as my legs, with their claws t-taken out and replaced by th-the blades. Does that make any s-sense to you?" A third nod mutely answered her, and she relaxed a little more.

Yukito trotted to Sora and laid down next to her. "Are you spending the night here?" he asked. Sora fervently nodded and nestled her head between her forelegs. "In the barracks?" That got a snort, a shake of the head, and a slight ruffling of bladed wings.

"I am not s-sleeping in the same r-room as a bunch of d-dead-eyed bitches tonight," Sora scoffed, brow furrowing as her eyes closed.

"Dead-eyed?" Starbreaker parroted, her prosthetic twitching fervently as she struggled to mentally picture what Sora was on about.

"Don't ask…" Yukito stated, his tail swishing a little. "Sora, did you eat anything at all today?"

For a moment, Sora contemplated this, before she promptly lifted her head back up and facehoofed. "I knew I-I was f-forgetting something today…" she grumbled. "Next time I'm o-on patrol, I-I'm packing a l-lunch…" Yukito chuckled as his horn lit up, and he magically flung open the miniature fridge before pulling a medium-sized black bowl with a clear lid out of it. "Wh-what is that?"

"A serving of salad," Yukito answered, levitating the bowl over before removing its lid. He set it in front of Sora, revealing a whole menagerie of greens waiting for her. As with yesterday, Sora wrapped her hooves around it and attacked the bowl's contents face first, crunching the greens with relish.

"She's been like that, hasn't she?" Starbreaker queried, garnering a look from Yukito. When his ears twitched and his brow rose, she elaborated, "Not eating until the sky's black as charred corpses, and then just sticking that muzzle of hers into the food?" That got a shrug.

"Some days she does, some days she doesn't. Depends on how engrossed she gets into whatever tasks the Majors throw onto her withers, or with things she goes off and does with her own two wings," Yukito replied in earnest. "She gets a little… too into her job sometimes."

Starbreaker sighed and leaned back into her bed. "Don't you?" she asked.

"Not enough to slash into patients willy-nilly, and certainly not without reason," Yukito answered, snorting as Sora finished off the salad and pulled out. He turned to her and smiled, seeing that there was now a pretzel sticking out of her mouth. "Oh? It seems you found a surprise," he mused as Sora reeled in the pretzel with a giggle.

"I w-wite pwhetshels," Sora managed through said pretzel as she started chewing it. Upon swallowing it, she delved into the bowl again, before snorting when she found it had been cleaned out… and sighed in defeat before parting from the bowl. "A-any more p-pretzels?"

Yukito shook his head. "No, but you look… a bit dehydrated," he noted, his horn alighting again. The fridge door opened once more, and this time out came a small metal canteen that founds its lid unscrewed even as it was levitated over. Hastily, he thrust the lip of the canteen in Sora's mouth, but not before shaking it a little to confirm that liquid still sloshed within. Her head tilted up with the bottle, and she drank down the contents without batting an eye. Only when the canteen was parted from her mouth did her head drop back down, and she heaved an immense sigh of relief.

"Mm… th-thank you," Sora cooed, before she put her muzzle in the bowl again. She felt her case of chills go down as the liquid and food started to reinvigorate her system, and slowly her body started to warm up. She yawned, prior to closing her eyes and falling asleep with her face still wedged into said bowl almost immediately after. Yukito chuckled and magically pried the bowl from her muzzle, gently so as to not rouse her, then stood up and put the bowl atop the fridge before closing its door.

"I'll be back, with blankets and pillows," Yukito stated, garnering a look from Starbreaker just as he vanished in a flash of light.

"Weirdos, the both of you," Starbreaker hissed before laying back down with a yawn leaving her mouth. "But at least… I'm getting better… thanks to them," she muttered as her eyes slipped shut, and a dream of fire and smoke took her the same time sleep claimed her.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Three weeks passed after that, without incident or without the other army-bound ponies giving Sora so much as a glance each time she passed them throughout the halls. Granted, Sora stayed with Yukito and Starbreaker a lot during that time, and hadn't been summoned to undertake any sort of tasks, which for her was a much welcome change. Of course, Starbreaker would issue threats of torching something off of her body, but Sora cared not for those declarations—they weren't even as effective as Major Trinity's riding crop.

Starbreaker was monitored, almost religiously, by her makeshift bodyguards. Daily, she'd be allowed small trots out of bed, from the door to back or the bathroom if needed, and slowly her gaunt legs strengthened with these trots and the food she was served. Hell, said makeshift bodyguards started sleeping in the room with her, bringing sleeping bags and pillows nightly, which was something that she herself found most bizarre. Halfway through these dragging three weeks, she started to trot on all fours instead of three-fours, and not long after that her legs stopped shooting pain through her nerves in protest.

At the end of that three weeks, after one such trot which spanned several laps around the room and ended at the bed, Yukito scrutinized Starbreaker's horn, which now stood as tall as any proud horn would, down to a now-sharp and lethal point. Wordlessly, he scrutinized the rest of her body thereafter; her stomach had rounded out a little, her ribs were not showing as much as they were when she'd been found, and her legs had put on a bit of bulk and muscle. The scar on her chest was still visible, yet it had shrunk a fair margin, perhaps due to the fur around it growing like a weed.

"So… what's Starbo's prognosis?" Sora piped up, hovering off to the side of the room as Yukito finished the initial check-up. That got Starbreaker to snort in her direction.

"Call me that one more frickin' time, and I will flay your coat off before I torch you!" Starbreaker hissed, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing. "And then, I'll make you into a nice warm blanket!"

Sora promptly flared her wings and strutted over with an exaggerated gait, almost lashing with her tail just from the movement. She leaned towards Starbreaker upon reaching the bed, a small smirk of schadenfreude adorning her muzzle. "I thought you wanted to annihilate me?" she taunted. "Wouldn't preserving my hide, I don't know, count as a reminder of sorts—perhaps, I dunno, me kicking your ass—for you?"

"Maybe, but only so ponies wouldn't stop me once I trot around with your fur on my withers!" Starbreaker countered, returning the small smirk with a wide, manic grin.

Sora tilted her head, and her smirk widened a smidgen. "Perhaps, but you must bear in mind the fact that there's a chance somepony else wouldn't be deterred by that display and would probably rip your head clean off your neck," she replied coolly. She closed her wings and turned to Yukito, who smiled warmly at her.

"I'll burn them before their grubby hooves touch me!" Starbreaker declared, chest puffing out.

Magic briefly clamped their muzzles shut before either could continue their mane-measuring contest. "Well, she's just about good to go, although the only thing left to sort out would be weight," Yukito replied as he started scrutinising the bit of parted forelock that revealed the tiny chip implanted in her forehead, his horn alight. "And, of course, this little rock here…"

Sora's smile fell as Yukito's horn dimmed and the magic let go of her and Starbreaker's muzzles. "But if we remove it, we'll get blown to kingdom come," she pointed out dourly, wings bristling at the thought. Her hoof lifted to her bell, straying just a few centimeters, before falling still. "Unless… we can teach her to adjust?"

Yukito lifted a hoof and adjusted his glasses with it, before shifting to tap his chin idly, eyes gravitating to Sora as he pondered what to do. "Sounds… plausible," he muttered, brow furrowing as gears started to grind in his mind. He turned to Starbreaker, who noticed she was being stared at and turned back to him with the manic grin still etched on her face. "Do you know what it means to adjust?" he asked.

The manic grin dropped faster than Yukito could blink, followed by a shrug of earnest so slight it seemed that Starbreaker hadn't moved at all. She ruminated for a moment, and with a whir her eyes shifted to a bright yellow. "Nope," she confirmed.

"At least she's honest…" Yukito grumbled with an exasperated sigh. He stared into her eyes and asked, "Can you… control that, by the way?"

"Control what?" Starbreaker asked. Yukito silently gestured to the mirror again, and she looked before finding what it was he was referring to. "Oh… a bit," she answered, as with another whir her eyes reverted. "But… it goes on and off, mostly."

"With your mood?" Yukito guessed. That garnered him a nod. "Huh. Never thought ocular augments could do that before…"

"And mine glow in the damn dark," Sora chimed in, frowning.

Yukito smiled, and had to concede Sora's point. "Oh well, I know not how the ocular augments are even made, much less implemented…" he muttered.

"Painfully," Starbreaker hissed, brow furrowing and forelegs crossing over her chest with a snort.

"Hrm… in that case, a glitch had probably occurred during that particular… transplant… because even in ocular augments, rainbow irises are rarer than hen's teeth. Rainbow irises that can shift color… don't get me started on those logistics. Unless, perhaps, the ponies who bestowed you that modification did that on purpose, with its color-changing aspect?" Yukito muttered, pondering this for a moment. He sighed, shaking his head as he decided to change topics when he realized that the color-change aspect had something fishy about it, but whatever the case, Starbreaker wouldn't be so forthcoming with answers if 'painfully' was her response to the prodding. "Have you developed any particular preference, food-wise?" he tried.

Starbreaker uncrossed her forelegs and bit her lip, ears twitching as her mental gears started turning. After a few minutes, her head shook. "Not really," she answered. "I can taste it, but… good or bad hasn't…" she trailed off, mental gears halting in place as she struggled to come up with a word to finish her reply.

"Clicked?" Sora offered after a minute of silence.

Starbreaker nodded. "Yes, that, it hasn't clicked yet," she finished.

"Hrm… guess we'll need to give her more homemade meals…" Yukito muttered, lips twitching like he wanted to frown, but couldn't. "But what would we make…?"

Sora looked up toward the ceiling, as if there had been a smudge on it that only she could detect. "Hrm…" She shrugged, wings ruffling a little with the motion. "Dunno…" She turned to Starbreaker and smiled. "Want that nickel tour?"

Starbreaker turned to Sora and blinked, tilting her head with ears perked to attention. "But wouldn't anypony try harming me if I so much as left this cell?" she pointed out, frowning. Sora flinched, ears falling back at that as she bit her lip in contemplation.

"Well… Major Trinity didn't lay a hoof on you… and the only pony who really did kicked you, so…" Sora contemplated, folded ears twitching as her mind whirred. "If we did it by carriage, not many would even notice unless they looked inside…"

"Would they even allow a carriage in these premises?" Yukito chimed in, which made Sora look at him and purse her lips. "Because I don't think the Admiral would take kindly to the idea of a nickel tour. As he may see it, we'd just be painting new targets for Starbreaker to annihilate if we did that."

Sora sat on her haunches and lifted a hoof to rub the back of her head, mental gears grinding to a screeching halt as she remembered the base had a magical thing called cameras scattered all over the damned place. Her wings dropped, and her blades clattered against the floor as her gears continued to stall, trying to move yet were now rendered unable to do so. "Well, shit…" she muttered, dropping her hoof as her eyes fell onto Yukito. "Would it be possible to, somehow, link our minds together so we can see out of each other's eyes? We could do the nickel tour that way," she sighed, not bothering to hide the desperation from her voice.

Yukito fell to his haunches, frown widening and brow slanting to form a look of utter befuddlement. "Unless we installed a television here and tacked a camera feed to you which would then transmit through that television, making sure the device came with audio and color capabilities, no. Such a spell is beyond even my power, not to mention dangerous and with unnecessary risks involved," he said, firmly. "You'd both drive each other insane, were your minds linked, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's like using your bell to form missiles when you're trying to punch something literally inches from your hooves; much more trouble than it's actually worth."

"Her bell can make missiles?" Starbreaker piped up, garnering dual nods in reply. "I've never seen it do that."

"Only if I command it to, though. It's… similar to my shield; in both cases, they just materialize and do whatever I want," Sora answered, a hoof idly lifting to touch her bell without setting it off as her eyes gravitated to her charge. "I'm just a pegasus; I can't understand whatever unicorn workings went into it to make such a feat possible. Technology, on the other hoof, I'm more familiar with. I can use a standard gun, or hell, even a rifle without breaking a sweat if I have either on hoof and need to do so. I'm just not as good with either of those as I am with my blades," she added. "No offense."

"I wouldn't have expected you to understand unicorn feats anyway. And as a unicorn who barely understands such nonsense, believe me when I say I speak from experience," Starbreaker remarked, lifting both hooves and waving them dismissively.

Sora blinked, and her wings rose. "Wait… you can't understand unicorn feats?" she asked, pupils shrinking as her tone took on a note of disbelief.

Starbreaker nodded and crossed her forelegs again. "Not even a little bit. All I know is I'm modified, I can conjure the Crimson Light whenever I damn well please—or I would if there wasn't a rock attached to my head—and that I'm currently unable to do anything without you two hovering over my cutie mark. I don't understand pegasi either, even less so than myself! I can't just wrap my head around the winged pricks—" Here, she glanced at Sora and glared at her briefly, "—least of all, you. Don't get me started on the..."

"Earth ponies," Yukito chimed in, as his mental gears began grinding again. Starbreaker nodded as he crossed his forelegs and started biting his lip. "Well… hrm…" The gears continued to grind, but sped up as he considered something he'd had mentioned earlier. "Wait, a camera feed… Sora, that's it!" he exclaimed, tail bristling as excitement filled him. "We can just install a television here, and put a mobile camera on you to broadcast it in this room!"

Sora went wide-eyed, and her tail hiked. She quickly understood what Yukito was getting at; this ploy, if they could pull it off, would hit two birds with one stone! "Then… want me to fetch the necessary equipment?" she asked, donning a small yet serene smile. "We could do the nickel tour that way."

Yukito relented, and smiled. "If you do, we'll have another… night in the off-duty building," he cooed. "And perhaps…" Slowly, he turned to Starbreaker, who looked back at him with eyes shifting yellow.

"What?" Starbreaker asked as Sora turned to look at her.

"Say, do you know how to read?" Sora queried, lifting a hoof to gesture to the nearest bookshelf, which itself had started gathering a bit of dust as of late.

"I…" Starbreaker paused and turned to the ceiling, brow furrowing for a moment. Sora stood up and trotted to the bookshelf, randomly selecting a book to pull out with her hoof. She took a few seconds to dust its cover off and turned around, holding it to her barrel as she cantered back to hoof it over. Starbreaker took the book with a hoof, and looked at its title… but whatever it was, it was less a series of letters forming something and more a series of curved lines that became gibberish. There was no way in hell she could translate the gobbledygook even if she put in the effort, and a snowball's chance of her even starting to here and now. "Nope," she answered, hoofing the book back.

Sora nodded with her smile falling and took the book, turning to head to the bookshelf and put the book back in its place. "Guess that explains an awful lot," she muttered dismally.

"It does," Yukito agreed, his voice just as grim. "And furthermore… where would we get our requisite materials?" His tail lashed, but only once. "And when would we be able to get it? What parts of the base would you show her, and wouldn't?"

"I don't know what you're babbling on about," Starbreaker piped up again, brow furrowing and eyes reverting as she turned to Yukito first, then to Sora.

Sora paused, wings bristling as she pondered that question. Again, her mental gears locked into a halt, that time grinding into each other as she struggled to come up with an answer. Several minutes passed before anypony said anything, and when two of the three spoke, it was in perfect tandem. "Ah, shit," Yukito and Sora swore simultaneously, faces going pale.

"What?" Starbreaker asked. Slowly, Yukito and Sora turned to her, gulping audibly. Neither had an answer for her query now. Neither could form one at this point. Their charge started getting the niggling feeling that something was amiss, and opened her mouth once more, only to close it again as the silence gripped her too.

Chapter XIII- Flashbang

"If your bell can make missiles," Starbreaker began, catching Sora and Yukito's attention, "then what else can it do? It glows, for crying out loud!" That broke the two out of their initial stupor, only to toss them right into another as halted mental gears ground in directions that made both tails fray at the docks. Sora lifted her hoof to start tapping at her bell, producing a gentle ringing that sang rather melodically through the air. It flickered with a soft light upon each impact, until Sora dropped her hoof and shrugged.

"I… haven't… tried using it for anything other than combat," Sora muttered, lips pursing momentarily. "I don't even know if I can do anything else with it…"

Starbreaker's ears folded back, with her prosthetic shuddering rather haltingly, and she jolted up again before leveling a steely glare at Sora. "Have you tried?" she asked.

Sora shook her head. "And in the base, well… that would land me in trouble, and you in even hotter water," she muttered dismally.

Starbreaker turned to Yukito, whose ears fell back. "I don't know very many spells, just the mandatory ones every other doctor and professor is required to learn," he stated. When technicolor eyes shifted to a bright orange, and a brow furrowed expectantly, he elaborated, "Minor fire spell to cauterize wounds, teleportation, levitation, illumination and basic conjuring and conversion of objects to and from a thaumic state."

Starbreaker's eyes narrowed, before they shifted from orange to red. "That's it?" she hissed, garnering a reluctant nod in response.

"I can do five of those six spells numerous times and suffer only a mild drain at the end of the day," Yukito replied glumly, frowning. "But if I overtax on teleportation, I could be bedridden for a day at the least. I could also try combining what few spells I know, but that could… exacerbate the issue, if I am already overtaxed to begin with."

"We… could try my bell…" Sora trailed off, wings bristling at the thought. "But…" Her legs trembled, and her eyes darted to the room's camera, which turned back to look at her intently. She became well aware that somepony was probably watching the whole lot now, waiting for them to come to a decision. "One of us will have to… see the Admiral…"

Yukito, sensing Sora's discomfort, stood up and trotted to her before placing a hoof on her withers. "I'll go if he starts throwing one of his hissyfits. If one of us can—" he started, only to be silenced when Sora nuzzled him.

"No. It has to be me," Sora stated firmly, ears folding back at those prospects. "I… I can take whatever he throws at me." She swallowed a forming lump and pulled back, tapping at her bell. The note it produced distorted oddly, less of a melodic clang and more of a sharp retort. "I was augmented to take a thorough beating." The bell began glowing now as she tapped it once more, its note still distorted.

Starbreaker turned and hopped out of bed, eyes shifting to their standard rainbow. "Well, what are you two weirdos waiting for?" she cut in, tail swishing eagerly as she saw the books on the shelf vanish in a blue light. She heard the drawers of the dresser open, and turned to see everything except the patients' gowns vanish in more lights before the drawers shut with the aid of blue magic.

"Well, we can't go until we formulate a cohesive plan," Yukito grumbled with his horn glowing and then dimming, glancing at Starbreaker for a second before shifting to nuzzle Sora in return. "A-are you sure about this? H-he could discharge us both."

Sora nodded. "It won't be the greatest or most thought-out of plans, and I'm not that good of a planner to begin with…" she admitted ruefully, "But at this rate, it's the best we have." She turned to Starbreaker and lifted a hoof to gesture her over. "Stay with us."

"Is this about that nickel tour you promised me?" Starbreaker asked, frowning as she cantered over. Sora nodded and tapped her bell once again.

"Shield," Sora muttered, and with that the bell began to rattle and clang violently, before a translucent dome of light formed over them. It tightened a little, and everypony shifted into a very awkward triangular formation just to accommodate the shield.

"Why not invert?" Starbreaker asked upon seeing the shield linger.

Sora shook her head. "No need to. It'll just keep everypony else from firing at us if they decide to crack out their rifles," she replied bluntly. She and Yukito turned to the door, frowning for a moment. Then Sora sat on her haunches and waved Starbreaker with a hoof again, spreading her wings as much as the shield would allow, but directly forward instead of at her sides to avoid cutting Yukito on accident.

Sensing what Sora was wanting her to do, Starbreaker sighed and clambered on her back again. The shield tightened a little more at this, before Sora carefully closed her wings again and sidled a little closer to Yukito. She could see why Sora did not want to resort to this; it was cramped to the point the miniature fridge seemed more spacious in comparison. "What now?" Starbreaker asked.

Sora and Yukito exchanged mute glances before nodding in tandem. If the Majors, or heaven forbid, the Admiral himself were to yell their ears off over them potentially providing Starbreaker with new targets, then they were simply going to have to deal. Shoulder to shoulder, they made to trot out of the room, but the bell stopped its ringing and the shield simply shattered when they touched the doorframe. "So much for that…" Sora grumbled in exasperation. "Which wing are we gonna hit first, the north wing or the east?"

Yukito shrugged. "I was thinking the west wing, in all honesty," he muttered in reply. Sora nodded and turned to the door.

"West wing it is, then," Sora muttered, proceeding to take point in trotting out of the room and veering to the right side of the hall. Yukito followed after her, ears perked to attention and a slight scent tickling his nose as they approached the elevator. The scent was just a tinge bitter, but he opted to ignore it, instead listening intently for any prying eyes and ears which would doubtless spot and berate them if given the chance.

"Why the west wing?" Starbreaker asked, ears twitching as Sora paused before the elevator doors to fumble with its buttons for a bit.

"Just… hadn't been there in forever," Sora replied with a soft smile. As the doors opened and she trotted inside, Yukito followed after her with his horn aglow.

He magically pressed a few buttons, and leaned to nuzzle Sora again once the doors closed. "Well, at any rate… we should be able to take her to the off-duty building after this," he whispered in her ear, so softly that Starbreaker had no chance of hearing him.

Sora giggled at the thought. "I think we should invest in earplugs," she whispered back, her voice just as hushed. "And a collar like mine, so we can keep the Crimson Light at bay."

"A magic-soaking bell? Hrm, I've never considered that…" Yukito muttered back, pursing his lips contemplatively.

"Are you two conspiring against me?" Starbreaker piped up, garnering dual shakes of the head.

"No, we're just having a bit of small talk," Yukito replied, an innocent grin worming its way onto his face.

Starbreaker huffed and snorted, eyes narrowing. "If I find you two are conspiring…" she started, only for a wing to shift and nudge her with a joint.

"Oh hush," Sora commanded with a sigh. The elevator doors closed, and the elevator rattled a little with an unnerving groan of protest. "Huh? Is the elevator broken?"

"If it is, we're teleporting," Yukito grumbled, his grin fading. He frowned as the elevator shook again, this time with enough force to make him and Sora stagger momentarily. His horn glowed, and he embraced himself, Sora, and Starbreaker in his aura before they vanished in a burst of light, and reappeared in the hallway outside the elevator.

The moment teleportation ended was the same moment a loud screech filled the air, and three sets of ears folded back as they heard that shrill cry. The screech lasted for thirty whole seconds, before culminating in a thud so massive the hallway trembled and its lights flickered. Again they staggered in place, this time with tail hairs sticking out in all directions and whinnies of discontentment leaving their mouths as the crash rang even after it had actually impacted.

Only when silence settled and scuffling legs stilled with the hall did anypony take the time to inhale deeply. "Oooookay," Sora muttered, shifting to sit down to let Starbreaker hop off. "Not going that way…"

"What now, Miss Bright Idea?" Starbreaker snarked, glaring at Sora even as her legs gave out the moment she jumped to the floor. "If that machine went and broke, then I wonder what else is going to eject us, considering the shield didn't hold up against a doorframe!"

Sora sighed, and her blades clattered to the floor when her wings dropped. "Well… we could have Yukito teleport us like crazy, but…" she trailed off, sharing a glance with him.

"But what?" Starbreaker snapped, shifting to stand with her bristled tail lashing.

"It… has a very real risk of mana drain," Yukito answered with a tired sigh. "Looks like we may have to retire early tonight." He lifted a hoof and rubbed his temples. "Air transport after the tour, right? Sora, you'll probably need to get a carriage after all…" Sora nodded with a sigh of resignation, and slowly she and her companions turned to the elevator opposite of the one that had crashed.

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The Admiral grinned almost foalishly as he watched the feed, the chessboard floating right before him. The moment the elevator had crashed, Sora's replica had shifted one space to the side of her little formation, in turn breaking the triangle. However, Yukito and Starbreaker's replicas shifted to reform it. He eyed the cameras intently as Yukito began teleporting his companions left, right, and bloody sideways down several floors until they found themselves staggering into walls at a marked cross-intersection.

He saw, clear as day, the faintest trace of steam building up from the tip of Yukito's horn. That made him chuckle, but the sound died halfway in his throat when Sora stumbled into the poor professor and sent herself and him to the floor. This would have been amusing, if not for the fact their snouts had touched doing it, in plain view of Starbreaker no less. "What in the world…" the Admiral muttered, struggling to make sense of what he was witnessing. Clumsily, Sora clambered off and helped Yukito to his hooves, and they hastily dusted themselves off as Starbreaker started throwing her forehooves up and down in the air.

The two then raced over to calm their charge down. It took several minutes, and a frantic waving of their own hooves before Starbreaker stopped her flailing. After they, he could only assume, came to some sort of understanding did Sora let her charge clamber on to piggyback again, and no sooner than that did she and Yukito trot down the westmost hall. It was a shame the camera feed was silent, for if it weren't he could have gleaned what they had harped on about.

But oh well, he couldn't have everything in the world. The Admiral shrugged, and simply watched the trio with interest, figuring that as long as they kept the Herald calm then they were free to continue… doing whatever it was they were setting out to do. "Interesting… you shift, and Yukito and the Herald just dawdle after you…" he noted, glancing briefly at his board. "This is intriguing…" He waited patiently for Sora to do something else that would, unbeknownst to her, make her replica shift again.

But an hour or two dragged on, and Sora was seemingly content to simply wander the base, sometimes bading Starbreaker to either hop on or jump off and trot at her side, depending on if the halls were filled with personnel and fellow soldiers. Said fellow personnel and soldiers gave them a wide berth every time the trio so much as gave them a single glance their way. The trip through that section of the base ended in an expansive room, black with glowing neon blue lines that made it seem it had a more cuboid shape. After Sora started gesticulating about this room, and possibly rambling on about it for a few moments after, Starbreaker clapped her hooves upon the floor.

Yukito's horn glowed again, and they vanished in a flare of light before reappearing at the cross-intersection. Once again, the trio staggered, though this time not enough to run into and subsequently topple each other. The pieces on the board shifted accordingly, with the replica-herd going right back to the middle. "What in fuck's name are you two doing?" the Admiral found himself asking, both brows raising high as they went to trot down the northernmost hall.

The gaggle weaved through halls aplenty, though the Admiral noted they opted to take stairs wherever they could, and teleport when the only other option to go forward was an elevator. This trip, after another hour, ended in a small lounge with furniture shrouded in white sheets, where the group had ran into Tsukumi. Tsukumi had hoofed the group a few envelopes, all arranged into one neat stack as long as a pony's entire foreleg, which Yukito made vanish in a flash of light. Then, they vanished and reappeared at the intersection again, and the process repeated two more times before they stopped at the barracks, which were at the end of the southmost hall, and a door a few meters from the intersection at the eastmost hall marked with warning labels.

Starbreaker hopped off Sora's back and started pounding at the marked door with her forehooves, scrabbling about for some way to get past it. She pounded and kicked and flailed, but could only manage to slightly dent the door in a few places like a pertinent foal. Apparently, the Herald wanted in on whatever shenanigans were beyond those labels, and the Admiral smirked as his trotting paradox stepped in before the door could be damaged beyond repair.

The smile widened when Yukito did something very unusual in that moment: he conjured two sets of heavy-looking cuffs, complete with chains, and then affixed them to Starbreaker's pasterns. "Ooooh, going to take her to the prison on the northern side of the city, are we?" he mused, chuckling darkly as he watched another bout of leg-flailing transpire on the screen. Starbreaker tried with all of her might to tear the manacles off, and for a few minutes Sora and Yukito were content to just let her flail about. Then, wings and magic seized her, immobilizing her completely before…

The Admiral's brow rose as Sora leaned to Starbreaker's torn right ear and muttered something into it, which in turn got her a very skeptical stare, and not just from him. Yukito seemed perplexed, but his horn dimmed and Sora got off to let Starbreaker clamber to her shackled hooves. Then her bodyguards moved to flank her from either shoulder, and as one they marched down to the intersection before Yukito lit his horn one more time, and smothering himself, Sora and Starbreaker in a burst of light that lasted for far longer than a mere second. The hallways of that intersection illuminated, vividly, and each camera trained on the group in that moment was overcome with blinding white that lasted for a whole minute. The Admiral averted his eyes and lifted a hoof to shield them from this unexpected display, idly wondering how in the seven hells Yukito managed this particular feat.

When the light died, and the cameras recovered, there was nothing more than a scorch mark in the intersection. The group was gone, but the Admiral did not notice this until after he himself recovered from the stupor that came with seeing such a bizarre spell come from one of his own employees.

His mind did cartwheels as he assessed the brand new scorch mark. He blinked, yet this did not dispel what the screens beheld. He considered the scorch mark carefully, noting it had a vague circular shape about it that managed to touch some of the walls. "Swiftcure, what in the blazes did you just do…?" he groused, brow furrowing as the pieces on the board shifted again by outright levitating off of it, hovering above the black and white panels in a flagrant display that may as well have punted the rules of standard chess to the curb at this point.

The Admiral's eyes searched the screens that depicted places inside and out of the base, widening substantially when he noticed a lack of a distinct light that would have signaled Yukito's teleportation ending… assuming, of course, he had teleported to begin with. Several minutes went by, red eyes darting to and fro, but nothing turned up as to where the trio had gone. Figuring that they had somehow weaseled their way into the city, he turned his gaze through multiple screens, keeping an eye out for any scorch marks or bright lights, only to find none whatsoever.

He still kept searching, brow furrowing and pupils shrinking with haste. Alleys were dubiously empty, the streets paradoxically packed to capacity above and on ground, and ponies were going in and out of buildings willy-nilly. Surely, somepony had to have caught something, and yet the civilians moved about the roads seemingly without a care in the world. "Damnit Swiftcure…" he hissed, his head starting to hurt as he struggled to process everything at once.

It wasn't until an entire hour after that bright flash of light ended did he, at last, catch sight of an earth pony stallion with a hat on his head and a carriage harnessed to him stopped at a sidewalk next to the Red Barrel Suite. A door was already opened at that point, opposite of the camera trained on it, and the carriage rattled three times in place before the door shut. The Admiral could not see who had clambered aboard, but he did notice several other ponies stopping on the nearby sidewalk to stare as the pony with the carriage trotted off. Some muttered about something, but what that was, he knew not.

If whoever boarded the carriage were the ponies he was looking for, they were going to get quite the earful when he wrapped his hooves around the necks of the whole lot. He idly considered that they had used the citizens themselves as a cloak through which they could get out, but if that was the case, then why hadn't the populace noticed until now? They would have been very easy to pinpoint, with garbs and a pony most prominent with technicolor eyes. Either that, or the group took shortcuts, if it was indeed them.

"... pulled a fucking fast one on me, didn't you," he muttered as the trio above the board shifted once more. "A clever diversion, I must admit…" A cruel grin wormed its way on his face. "But you can't pull the wool over my eyes, Sora…" His grin widened. "I'll know whether or not you really have gone to the prison, and if you'd gotten into the city at all…"

"And if it's you and yours in that carriage… you can't teleport away from me now. Mana drain is a wonderful thing, when you're not on its receiving end…" he muttered. At that moment, another flash of light burst from the corner of his eye, and he hastily made the chessboard and its pieces vanish before turning to the source. His brow rose when he saw Tsukumi eying him with a flat gaze of disinterest, his facial mask pulled off to reveal a horrifically burnt muzzle and a parchment of slightly yellowed paper floating at his side. "What is it?" the Admiral muttered, frowning at the intrusion. "This had better be worth my time, Professor Tsukumi."

"It is important; to cut a long story short, I found and made a copy of a most peculiar document in what was, once, the quarters of the late Staff Sergeant Sham. I've been meaning to hoof it to you sooner, but… I was otherwise predisposed," Tsukumi replied drolly. "I hoofed the original parchment to Mr. Swiftcure himself not too long ago, but not before I made the aforementioned copy of it."

The Admiral's brow shot up to the base of his horn, but Tsukumi could barely see it shift, shrouded in shadow as he was. "... you mean that miscreant Sham?" he asked slowly, garnering a mute nod from Tsukumi.

"That miscreant," Tsukumi repeated, his inflection not shifting a single note, "who couldn't train our ultimate weapon well enough in the obedience division." He snorted, nostrils flaring and tail swishing. "This paper I hold is something you'll have to read yourself; it's… interesting, to say the least. I think it very well explains Sora's… failure to adhere to orders, and adequately communicate." With that, he levitated the supposed document over to the Admiral, who lit his horn and took it in his magic.

"... did you say Mr. Swiftcure earlier, instead of Professor?" the Admiral muttered, eyes still affixed on Tsukumi, who gave another mute nod. He pondered this for a very long moment, before begrudgingly his eyes shifted to the paper he had been given. "What in the…" His eyes bulged substantially, and he pressed his snout to the paper to make sure his vision wasn't playing a sleight of hoof on him.

The document, however, was no trick—the paper felt smooth yet textured with age, the ink smudges were genuine, while few and far in between, and it crinkled a little around his prodding snout. Hesitantly, he read aloud what the paper bore, just audible enough for Tsukumi to hear, "'This is to certify that then-Major Yukito Swiftcure… born… and summarily augmented, and… then-Major Sora, surname unknown, born and summarily augmented…'" His pupils dilated as he scanned the parchment. "'Signed by Staff Sergeant Sham of the Umbralium Corps, and officiated with all due arrangements with two private witnesses…'" the Admiral muttered, pausing to consider what had just left his mouth. He felt some parts of his tongue drying out, but swallowed and continued to scan the parchment when something very peculiar stuck out.

The parchment's bottom-right corner was marked with a hoofprint at the side of the signature he sighted, and within was scrawled a triad of lightning bolts that formed a triangle. Two more prints flanked it beneath that signature, one with a rod and winged serpents, the other sporting a sword and a shield. His mind whirred, processing what he bore witness to, and comprehension dawned unto him with the same sledgehammer-like force he'd used to slap insubordinate soldiers with. The last few words left his mouth in a strangled croak, as slowly his eyes gravitated to Tsukumi once again, "you found and replicated a marriage certificate that's three years old?"

"Yes," Tsukumi replied, inflection still not shifting. "It would seem the late Sham took great pains in arranging them behind our backs." He snorted again, and his eyes narrowed. "How she was able to pull that during the Clash… is both astounding, and unprecedented." His ear twitched. "But enlightening nonetheless."

"How is this… enlightening?" the Admiral asked, making the document vanish in a flash of light before lifting a hoof and waving it erratically. "I'd hardly call something like this enlightening; it boggles the mind, Professor!" His hoof waved a little more. "Such matters like this are hardly important!" Tsukumi gave a small, but very noticeable smirk that contrasted harshly with the cold gleam in his eyes. Figuring the Admiral had issued a challenge, he cleared his throat and waited until the waving hoof dropped before elaborating.

"It is important—particularly so, in this instance, for it would adequately explain Sora's insubordination. She'd much rather dawdle off with…" Tsukimi's smile faltered as he continued, and his tone turned venomous, "her husband than whatever we assign to her recalcitrant withers, and as a doctor, Yukito would be prone to fussing over her wounds anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if she's already considered having foals." His smile reasserted itself, and widened fractionally as he went on, "Of course, married ponies would wear rings usually, but those two jackasses haven't worn theirs if they have them—either they simply haven't gotten to obtaining them, or they've opted to hide them elsewhere. That, and now they've saddled themselves with the fucking Herald of all ponies..."

Tsukumi trotted right up to the Admiral, gaze never faltering, steps oddly determined and as steady as a board. "In short, her loyalties lie elsewhere, and she has managed to fool us for a long time now. I should have been paying more attention to her behavior as of late, but oh well; now we don't need to do that, since I have finally ascertained the problem." He paused, sniffing loftily. "With all this in mind, sir, are you going to annul it?" he asked simply.

The Admiral contemplated, before shaking his head and scoffing at the thought. "No; if Sham officiated it, there'd be nothing even I could do about it. They're, more or less, of the same rank as well, and that was also the case when they were wed. I manage an army, not a clergy, and Sham is dead. We can't annul it without her, or whoever her private witnesses were, as much as I'd like to," he replied, using the same hoof he waved about to smack and rub the bridge of his muzzle. "Damnit, this really does shed light on an awful lot…"

"Including why we couldn't just end the miserable bitch whilst she hibernated. Yukito and Sora are loyal to each other, and now that I dwell on it, our late Staff Sergeant may have been onto us… which could, if that hunch is true, explain why she arranged those two in the first place. As far as we're concerned, it's a match made in the seven hells," Tsukumi agreed with a sharp nod of his head. "So… what can we do about it?"

The Admiral grinned again, and he dropped his hoof. "Those two are currently escorting the Herald somewhere… and have possibly managed to take her out of the base already," he muttered, eyes glinting now. "Have either of them told you anything?"

Tsukumi's smile dropped, and he shook his head. "No; they simply told me they were showing her around the base," he replied flatly. "They're going to great lengths, it would seem… to what end, I know not. If they're plotting something, they're being unusually secretive about it." The smile returned, however. His expression screamed of a cruelty that he kept restrained. "But then again, they've been married since the Clash, and Sham herself probably had all four hooves in helping mold their erraticism."

The Admiral nodded. "Still a pain in my ass, even dead…" he hissed dismally. "Must've taught Sora a thing or two about being evasive… how did she manage to get our ultimate weapon hitched? That's what confounds me." He stood up and stomped a hoof. "Head to the prison, Tsukumi, and report back when you've swept the whole thing down to its plumbing. I have seen our little insubordinates shackle the Herald, and I want to make damn sure she's either imprisoned or dead before I do anything else. If the Herald truly is loose once again, I will declare a state of emergency and lock down the city and base until she is found and subdued."

Tsukumi nodded and turned away, horn alighting. "What about our lovebirds?" he asked. "When, of course, they're done playing usher…"

"Leave them. I'll deal with that myself," the Admiral replied in a commanding voice. "Thank you, dearly, for your discovery, Professor Tsukumi," he added with utmost sincerity in his voice. "I had long thought Sora had taken to working alone, despite being under my employ, ever since the Clash of the Sky. But it would seem I've been proven wrong."

Tsukumi nodded back. "You're welcome, sir," he replied before vanishing in a flash of light. The Admiral turned back to the screens, and noticed cloaked figures moving about in the alleyways of the city, trying to avoid the cameras by hiding in dark patches and blind spots. They weren't doing a particularly good job of it, considering he was even seeing them to begin with. Oddly, these strangers had everything covered from head to hoof in black garbs. The only other thing he could note that they shared was that every single one of them was noticed by the populace, who strangely enough gave the figures a wide berth every time they so much as trotted on the sidewalk.

"What manner of activity is this…?" the Admiral wondered, eying the cloaked forms carefully. "Staff Sergeant Sham, if you're still somehow toying with me from beyond the grave…"

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Sora, Starbreaker, and Yukito sat within a small, cramped space with only a bit of floor and one seat that rattled incessantly. The room bumped every now and again, the sound of beating hooves and squeaking wheels filling the air. There were two miniscule windows on either side of the group, letting light filter through that slowly turned a fiery orange. Ponies outside stared at them, but as the room moved, they could not peek in to see them.

"I'm amazed the pony driving this thing let us climb in," Starbreaker piped up, garnering nods from Sora and Yukito.

"I know the pony who's driving this carriage," Sora replied with a small smile. "We're acquaintances."

Starbreaker turned to Sora, a brow raised. "How so?" she pressed as the carriage started to slow.

Sora glanced back, still smiling. "He manages the compost site here. He wasn't really fond of the Corps," she stated. It took an hour after that before the carriage ground to a squeaky, shuddering halt.

"We're here!" a stallion from outside called.

Sora hopped out of the seat and trotted to the door of the carriage, then she opened it with a hoof, but she and hers did not clamber out of it. The sun was setting as they found themselves staring at the front of the off-duty doctors' building, with their ride stationed just out of sight of the nearby alleyway cameras. Sora poked her head out and looked around the street, finding that nopony else was present, before she turned to the driver of the carriage, spotting familiar brown hues accentuated by a suit and a hat. "Thank you, Omega," she chirped with a smile and a wave of her hoof.

Omega waved a hoof in return. "Don't mention it," he replied. "Hurry on inside, b'fore anypony notices yer here." Sora nodded, and turned to Yukito as Omega started trotting in place, eager to leave as soon as he could.

"Can you manage another flashbang teleport?" she asked, garnering a shaky nod.

"After this, I'm… going to drop…" Yukito warned, scrunching his eyes as his horn glowed fitfully, sparking and crackling with a power that did not want to budge. It took him several minutes to gather that power, sweat beading his brow the whole time, and when the light seized them to take them elsewhere, it did so in a manner that left a scorch mark that spanned the inner walls of the carriage itself. When they reappeared in the darkened lounge of paper-walled quarters, Yukito's legs gave out and he fell to the floor. Sora moved to lay at his side, nuzzling him. Sluggishly, he returned the gesture with a wheeze, horn red-hot and producing a heavy amount of steam. "I-I don't think… I can t-trot for a fe-few days… n-now."

"Shhh…" Sora muttered, spreading a wing to wrap it around Yukito. "You did very good. Just rest now…" She lifted a hoof to tap her bell, which started ringing out a gentle series of notes. She pondered Starbreaker's suggestion to use the bell for other things, and with Yukito effectively out of commission and Starbreaker herself still chipped, she realized she was going to need another light source soon. "Light… radiate?" she muttered—and to her amazement, the bell responded, giving off a soft green glow that illuminated the room a little, ringing gently all the while. Everypony shifted at this, or in Starbreaker's case, she outright jumped at the sight, chains rattling with the motion.

"It… worked?!" Yukito gasped, eyes going round. "It actually… w-worked?!"

"I… I don't…" Sora turned to Starbreaker and gave a small smile. "I haven't really… considered this before. Thanks." Starbreaker nodded with a grin, and watched as with that, her adversary returned to nuzzling Yukito, and before long his head dropped in his forehooves and his eyes slipped shut.

"Mmm… looks like it… was a good idea after all," Yukito mused, tensing a little as Sora moved to nuzzle behind one of his ears. A smile crossed his face. "N-not with Starbreaker i-in the room…" he stated, though his voice came in a purr nonetheless.

"S-sorry," Sora said, pulling back with a faint blush dusting her cheeks.

Starbreaker watched the exchange, brows raised. She wiggled her manacled hooves, causing the two to look at her, though Yukito merely opened his eyes without raising his head. "Can I rip these off now?" she asked, garnering twin nods. A manic grin crossed her muzzle and she sat on her haunches before lifting her forehooves, straining as she pulled the chains taut. The metal stretched, groaned, strained to hold its links together, yet adrenaline surged in augmented veins, rendering the cuffs' resistance futile. Within a minute, one link snapped in a sharp retort that caused the cuffs themselves to stretch just enough to loosen, and then teal-grey hooves shook them off with ease. She repeated this process with her back hooves, just by standing and spreading them as wide as they could go without toppling over.

Sora gave a low whistle as Starbreaker ripped the second set of manacles off and straightened her posture, eyes wide and brows high. "Damn, girl, you got some serious muscle," she muttered in compliment.

"I did try breaking this miserable world once; what else would you expect if I could trot on three legs after a week of surgery and you two guarding me?" Starbreaker retorted, grin etched firmly on her face, and she made to trot and sit down next to Yukito, who closed his eyes again.

"Touché," Sora muttered with a nod of acknowledgement.

"So, what now?" Starbreaker asked, looking at the two intently, grin warbling in an effort to stay on her muzzle.

Sora stood up, and shifted her forelegs to wrap them around Yukito's barrel before rising to stand on her hinds, pulling him with. "Can you help me lug him to bed, please?" she asked.

Starbreaker's smile fell. "Is he heavy?" she asked. Sora shook her head.

"Just don't want to wreck the furniture with my wings," Sora replied with a frown. Starbreaker nodded, and knelt to wrap her forehooves around his rear pasterns before lifting those off of the floor.

"Sora? C-can w-we spar... later?" Yukito asked, head lolling to one side as Sora turned to the door on the eastmost corner.

"Not until your mana drain works itself out," Sora replied with a giggle, walking backwards towards the door she eyed. Starbreaker followed her, keeping the professor's rear hooves from dragging with her eyes turning yellow.

"You two fight?" Starbreaker queried as they reached the eastmost door in the corner, which hissed open to admit them. Sora gave a shrug.

"Practice-fight, more like," Sora answered as she maneuvered Yukito into the room beyond. The room was about as big as the sparring room, and its choice of decor made Starbreaker's brows rise. At the end rested a queen-sized bed, its blankets clean but wrinkled. On the right side of this bed stood a simple table affixed with large cuffs, each big enough to hold hooves. The table with cuffs had a myriad of scratch marks, and a stool holding up one corner in place of a leg. To the left was a nightstand with a closed drawer, its top devoid of anything save for one picture frame. The only other thing that Starbreaker could notice was that the walls here were dubiously devoid of paper, and they oddly sparkled unlike the main room.

"Practice?" Starbreaker parroted as she and Sora lugged Yukito to, then gently lowered him, onto the bed. Yukito gave a lazy nod at that.

"We… have to stay sharp," he pointed out, donning a small grin. "Thank you, l-ladies…"

"You're welcome," Sora chirped. She pulled the his clothes off slowly, and carefully so they wouldn't snag on anything. He lifted his legs, although shakily, to help with the endeavor. When that was done, and his clothes were wadded up in Sora's forelegs, she pulled the blanket over him with her teeth, right up to his withers. "Would it be fine if I sparred with Starbreaker?"

Yukito gave a lazy nod. "Don't see… why not," he replied with a tired smile. "Just don't go… overboard." The two mares nodded back, and Sora leaned to nuzzle him again before she tucked the mound of clothes between her wings. She and her charge dropped to all fours and gently trotted out of the room after that.

As soon as the door hissed shut behind them, Sora turned to Starbreaker and gestured to the couch. "Sit for a minute. Gotta shuck this uniform and throw Yukito's clothes in the laundry," she muttered.

Starbreaker frowned, and her eyes shifted to their standard technicolor. "Don't want to tear your clothes up?" she asked.

Sora donned a small smile and laughed softly. "Are you kidding? I'd love to shred this outfit any day of the week," she replied. "It's so I can treat serious wounds more immediately, after practice-fights, if regeneration doesn't deal with that fast enough." Starbreaker's ears twitched at that.

"You two… practice… and can get hurt?" Starbreaker muttered, eyes going round as she struggled to grasp the mental image doubtless forming in her head. Sora nodded again, and at this her smile faltered.

Sora's tail swished as she replied, "Yep, because our training is… intense, and you've seen Yukito fuss over my wounds as much as he fussed over you." Sora flexed her wings for emphasis. "I am an ultimate weapon. For me, such practice can't be anything else. And you need to sharpen your skills yourself, fisticuffs in particular."

Starbreaker assumed a maniacal grin and trotted to the couch. "You are right on that," she agreed, tail swishing eagerly. "And we still have a score to settle."

Sora grinned back, and with a whir her eyes began to glow. "You're on," she muttered tersely as she turned to deposit the clothes in the room in the western corner.

Chapter XIV- Apocalyptic Accomplices

Author's Note

Thanks to Samey90 for proofreading this chapter! :D This one's been on the backburner for a while, due to unfortunate circumstances.

Chapter XIV- Apocalyptic Accomplices

A tremor rocked the building as the door hissed open. Sora halted, ears folding back and brow furrowing as the quake came and went. She craned her neck to Starbreaker, who merely shrugged with a wide-eyed look and an utterance of, "It wasn't me, alright?"

"I know it wasn't. I was going to ask if you felt that, too," Sora replied, frowning as another tremor shook the building. A low, ominous drone sang through the air, soft at first before increasing in volume and pitch. The sound lowered in tone, before rising and falling over and over. Her eyes slowly widened as the noise sang in a constant loop, all the while rising in volume until it was blaring through what she guessed was the whole city. "... Oh no…" she muttered, wings stiffening.

Even as the shaking subsided, the noise didn’t relent. Its looping continued, and there was nothing either mare could do to stop it. It took Sora but a few seconds to understand the meaning of its presence. She sighed ruefully. "Somepony activated the emergency siren…"

Sora sluggishly walked into the room she’d initially planned on visiting. The least she could do was deposit Yukito’s clothes, and it gave her an excuse to shed her own.

"The emergency siren?" Starbreaker parroted, raising her voice so Sora could hear her amidst the droning.

"Yeah! Our ruse worked, but now the Corps is freaking out even more!" Sora shouted back. It took her a minute to trot back into the lounge with only her bell on her neck, wings puffed up all over again. "And now we can't move from here at all, possibly for the next few days, because Yukito came close to overheating!"

Starbreaker frowned and crossed her forelegs. "Overheating?" she repeated.

Sora hastily nodded. "His augments go haywire if he overtaxes himself," she replied. "I had to take his clothes off, so he'd cool off faster. You saw how his legs were done up, didn't you?" At the nod of her charge, she finished, "Yeah, they play absolute hell on the rest of him. He can't trot for… probably much of tomorrow, I'm guessing. His augments aren't built to handle that level of overtaxing, and it would be the same if he fought with his hooves for too long, although the overheating would be slower to manifest in that regard."

"But they didn't look like they were overheating," Starbreaker muttered. "Nor did they feel like it."

"They wouldn't to you; Yukito told me you were fireproof," Sora agreed with a nod. "But trust me, he was overheating." She lifted a hoof and gestured to where a horn would be on her forehead, if she had one. "And he's gonna be having a helluva headache when he wakes up, because his alicorn's likewise going to be on the fucking fritz." She dropped her hoof as the tremors started again, and her tail bristled. "Great, is the whole damn city under attack all of a sudden?!"

Starbreaker gave a shrug, before jumping to her hooves, shucking her patient's gown and throwing it on the coffee table in a motion so swift that some parts of her coat and mane frizzled from the sheer friction. "If the city's under attack, I'm going to eat my own horn!" she exclaimed.

"Not before I hoof in my letter of resignation to the Admiral!" Sora hissed, and quickly trotted to the bedroom to see if the ruckus had, in any way, roused Yukito. The door opened, she poked her head inside, and relaxed a little upon finding that he was still asleep. In fact, Yukito was so far off into dreamland his ears didn't even twitch in response to the shaking of the building and the ongoing emergency siren. She pulled herself back into the lounge and watched the door close, before turning to Starbreaker again.

"I think we should wait for the commotion to die before we work on your fisticuffs. Because if the whole city's undergoing a tectonic upheaval—" The building promptly shook again as Sora said this, with enough force to make the both of them stagger, "—then we'll end up breaking our legs on accident before we know it!"

Starbreaker nodded and sat on her haunches, though she assumed a maniacal grin nonetheless. Her pupils shrank, and her irises gleamed with a power that made their rainbow hue turn very pale, to the point they seemed milky and dead. Sora recognized that look of malice, that anger bubbling within her adversary. She recognized that Starbreaker wanted to channel towards an object that garnered its ire, knowing full well that she herself was that object of ire. "Does this mean I can break your legs when the world stops shaking?" she asked, voice laced with a cruel joy and hooves shaking with anticipation.

Sora shifted her head to crack her neck, wings ruffling once more, aware that Starbreaker was probably envisioning caving her face in. "Not if I stop you from breaking them, but you're welcome to try," she snarked. The ground beneath the building decided to have another tectonic upheaval, but one that was barely little more than a slight jostling at this point. She sat down and waited, patiently, for the earth to stop throwing its tantrum before doing anything else. The tantrum kept on, but only took a few minutes before it all turned into weak jostling from down below that ran its course.

The emergency siren, however, still sang with urgency as it was wont to do. Sora crossed her forelegs and snorted, ears folding back in a futile attempt to drown out the cacophonous droning. "I'm almost expecting a damn—" she began, only to stop when the drone suddenly fell silent as the second, unprecedented sound of nails on a chalkboard wailed, followed immediately by a sharp shudder of static.

A no-nonsense masculine voice, one she recognized, boomed loud enough to echo across the city, "Attention citizens and soldiers of the Umbralium Corps, I have just received word that a slight earthquake has finished its course, so do not panic over it. I have also learned that bodies are spontaneously, insofar as I know, appearing within our streets with strange crystals affixed into their shoulders, and we are looking into that matter as we speak." A snort filled the air, briefly, followed by the stomping of a hoof and the unmistakable clicking, and cocking of a gun.

The voice resumed after the sound of metal landing harshly upon wood flooded the city, as the owner briefly paused to gnash his teeth together no less, "However, I bring grave and most troubling news: a war criminal who possesses a power unlike any other has been turned loose without any formal due processes. Up and literally vanished into thin air; upon further investigation, I have gleaned she'd been teleported out. Unfortunately, we cannot ascertain the location of this criminal at this time. Please inform any and all military personnel of where she was last seen, and remain calm."

The voice went on, taking on a scathing note as the owner continued with his dire warning, "We at the Corps are looking for a gray-teal unicorn with a long pastel-blue mane and rainbow eyes. Broken star and flames as a cutie mark." He paused for a few seconds, sighing ruefully, and with enough malice in the sound to chill Sora to her blades. The speaker who issued the warning continued on after a moment of silence, perhaps to collect himself.

What he said next only confirmed Yukito's worst fears, though only Sora could gawk as the announcement carried on, "We are also on the lookout for two personnel who disregarded orders entirely and are accomplices of this criminal; even going so far as to smuggle this criminal from the premises. The accomplices in question: a lilac pegasus with augmented wings and a long blond mane. Green eyes, and sword-and-shield cutie mark. And a blue unicorn with augmented legs, silver mane. Blue eyes and rod-and-serpents cutie mark. Do not engage any of them; the Corps will take care of them, as all three are highly dangerous." With that, another retort of static filled the air, before silence settled in firmly.

"... announcement at this point," Sora finished weakly, though her brain started replaying the whole of the announcement in her mind. But, she had no chance to ruminate on it, as the static cut in again.

That same no-nonsense voice decided to add in an additional two bits, "By the way… Private Sora Swiftcure and Professor Yukito Swiftcure, if you are still within the city with your sorry tails tucked between your hind legs, I have only this to say to you: you're both fired. Discharged, dishonorably, no due process or recognition whatsoever. As of this day forward, your haunches will be marked as nothing more than targets of the highest priority. And when we come to collect your sorry asses, we'll just put you in front of the firing squad and let them have their way with you."

The owner paused with a malevolent snort, and another cocking of the gun. "And that's assuming I'll be merciful enough for that, to even let you both live for long enough to stare down the barrels of every single rifle I can amass, given what you have just pulled today. Your antics have gone beyond the pale to such an extent that I legitimately wonder how long you two were plotting against the Corps."

Sora waited until the announcement concluded for good before throwing her forehooves and her muzzle in the air. "Fantastic! At least it means I don't have to hoof in that resignation letter after all!" she exclaimed, flailing her legs for a moment before her brain caught up to the announcement's second piece and did several subsequent double-takes. Slowly, her face drained of its color, and her hooves dropped to the floor with enough force to jostle her wings. She turned to Starbreaker, eyes widening and pupils shrinking as her mind started to cartwheel sideways. Her expression wailed of ten thousand gnomes fighting for dominance, in turn sending her entire thinking processes straight into disarray.

She took a deep breath of air after several long minutes passed, her chest puffing out and the hairs of her coat standing on end. What left her mouth then came in a strangled shriek, "How did that prick find out I was married?!"

"Hold up, you're married?" Starbreaker asked, standing up and rushing to Sora in a blur of motion so swift the discarded patient's gown fluttered off the coffee table in her wake. The two were nose-to-nose in seconds, and Starbreaker's legs were oddly rigid as she came to a standstill. Curiosity burst in her eyes, which shifted yellow, yet the manic grin was still etched on her muzzle. "I thought you were a loner; a freaky mare!"

Hesitantly, with no other option to take now that the cat was out of the shredded bag, Sora nodded. "I-I'm not… a loner. Y-you know… what m-married is?" she asked.

Starbreaker's grin widened to a disconcerting degree. She nodded in return. "It's when a stallion and a mare love each other very, very much, right?" she chirped, her voice dropping to a low, perplexed monotone.

Sora trembled, wings rattling. "Th-that… is… a very simple w-way to s-see marriage…" she muttered. "But… we…" She took a moment to clear her throat; it was bad enough she was being prodded about this, but the fact that Starbreaker of all ponies was doing said prodding with the craziest grin she'd seen yet only made it that much worse. "M-me and Y-Yukito... haven't h-had much time to spend w-with each other… b-because we w-were both working… and h-had to be d-discrete about our relationship for the last th-three bloody years..."

Starbreaker pressed her snout to Sora's, drilling deep into her soul with her gaze. "Maybe I'll just burn you both at the same time, in each other's hooves so you won't die alone," she cooed darkly, then pulled back with her eyes shifting back to their rainbow. "Eventually."

Sora swallowed a forming lump in her throat and took a deep breath. She glanced around the room, and her eyes fell onto her bell. She took several more deep breaths to gather her nerves; it would be bad for her to lose the marbles now, especially in regards to how rapidly downhill everything just flew as far as her and Yukito's military careers were concerned. Then again, she understood a certain level of discipline was demanded of them in that particular field, but even that did not excuse Trinity and the Admiral's antics as of late. "If it can make light… and conjure missiles…" she muttered, mental gears spinning at a mile a minute now.

Starbreaker's grin fell, and her lips twitched at their corners. "You're going weird in the head again, aren't you?" she queried in an accusatory tone, garnering a shake of the head as an answer.

"No… rather... " Sora trailed off, standing up abruptly and cantering to the coffee table, bell still clanging as she went. She set one hoof on it, and the other on her bell, rearing up a little for support. "Light… convert?" she tried. The bell responded, its cry growing more fervent and violent in tandem with its movements before its light embraced the coffee table like the aura of a unicorn's horn would. With a pop and a flash, the table vanished, and Sora whinnied before pulling back and reorienting herself on her hinds, eyes wide and expression one of dumbfounded disbelief.

"Light… return?" she tried again, and at once the bell responded with another violent clang, before it conjured a ray of light that made the coffee table appear right where it was prior to vanishing. She threw her forehooves into the air. "Okay, this is officially strange!" She gave it some thought and sighed. "I never had to do this with my missiles before…" With that, she turned to Starbreaker and asked, "Is this what it was like when you conjured your bombs and tried knocking me out?"

Starbreaker nodded. "Yes, except with my horn," she replied bluntly. "And I think instead of speaking out loud."

Sora reverted to all fours, wings tensing. "Well, now that I know I can pack more than missiles in my bell…" she muttered with a sigh. "Would you be fine with waiting for a bit?"

Starbreaker shrugged and crossed her forelegs, the manic smirk once more making a comeback on her muzzle. "I've been waiting to break your bones for the past month, and grazing for almost two years now after you stopped me the first time. What's a few more hours to me?" she retorted. She cracked her neck. "It'll be nice to have a fight. I need to do more with my hooves anyway."

Sora agreed with a nod. "And you'll be venting your anger, too. Productively at that," she muttered, eyes gravitating to the myriad of papers that dotted the walls.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Yukito slept for a good long, sixteen whole hours before he awoke to the sound of blades clattering and hooves madly stomping about, interspersed by mares shouting at each other. His ears twitched, and he winced as a massive headache pounded about his noggin with the force of ten hooves to the face. It ached and throbbed in tandem with a horrible heat that made his very coat feel as if the room itself were sweltering, and his alicorn feel like molten magma. On top of that, the heat and pain somehow spread to his legs and made them far stiffer than he'd have liked, drilling right into his bones and playing his very nerves and augments like a xylophone. Each little twitch hurt something fierce, but forcing himself to be still was even worse, as that only ensured he did nothing to abate his agony.

He opted to snuggle deeper into the pillow his head was on, when his eyes lazily blinked open and spotted a piece of paper with something scrawled upon its surface crudely taped on the wall in front of him. Strangely, the paper was affixed where the nightstand and photo frame used to be. He stared blankly at it, brain sluggishly registering what it meant, before his hooves twitched. A tired groan left his mouth, dry and raspy as a creaking hinge, as he struggled to read what the paper had bore, which turned muzzy as his vision struggled to focus. It took him some minutes to clear the fog just enough to make out the scrawling.

"Found my bell could convert things to and from a thaumic state, and the Admiral's decided our cutie marks are now big red targets. I packed everything that wasn't nailed down except the bed using the bell, including all of the gauze in our medicine cabinet, my rifle and your research papers so the Admiral doesn't get his hooves on them. Will spar with Starbreaker for a few hours and see how that works out.

-Sora"

Yukito's mental gears spurned with a protest that sent electric shocks of pain and goosebumps skipping across his body, in turn amplifying his already-massive headache. Despite that, he made to sit up, wincing and gritting his teeth to keep himself from crying out. Blades clattered again, and this time he heard Starbreaker shriek, her voice muffled, "Hey! Hooves do not go around my neck!"

Well, at least she wasn't destroying anything, if the stomping of hooves and repeated clattering of blades were an indicator. He flopped back down on the bed, completely exhausted despite having just woken up, lazily listening to the ongoing commotion, waiting for it to calm down. It took another two hours before the stomping and clattering and hollering stopped, and his smile widened when it did. He heard soft hoofbeats as soon as the commotion hushed. The hooves paused when a door hissed open, and then more hoofbeats filled in the void as somepony who was panting with exertion marched right up to him.

Sora swam into view, her coat ruffled and glistening with a heavy sheen of sweat that highlighted a few bruises on her barrel and shoulders. Her bell jingled a little as she came to a stop, and her wings were puffed and haggard. Her mane and tail were frazzled, with some parts sticking out on their ends in a few places. "How… was the sparring?" Yukito asked, shifting to look at her face.

Sora smiled back. "S-swell. Starbreaker's f-fisticuffs need a l-little more polish," she replied. "But she's getting the h-hang of it, and caught me off g-guard a few times." As if on cue, the door hissed open again, and a second beating of hooves filled in the room. Starbreaker trotted into view before halting, next to Sora as she took in some deep breaths to collect herself, her cheeks and legs sporting a myriad of cuts that had scabbed over on top of a few hoof-shaped bruises.

Yukito paused to process the note he had to read at a distance, and the more he absorbed its words and their meaning, the more his smile started to falter. He waited for Sora to finish taking in deep breaths of air and steady herself before his mouth opened and the first thing that came to mind rolled off his tongue. "So… the great dickbag himself has branded us traitors?" he asked. Sora's smile fell, and both she and Starbreaker gave grim nods. At this, Yukito sighed. "I'd expected as much. This will probably… be the greatest bout of insubordination history has seen yet."

"Announced as much to the whole fucking city, fired us both from his office and on top of that, somehow found out we're married," Sora stated bluntly, lifting one hoof and waving it erratically about at some point past the wall before dropping it and pawing at the floor. "I'm not sure if we should leave as soon as you can trot, or stick around and venture back to the base to figure out the how." Her lips twisted into a fast-deepening frown. "I'd take a look, but the city's basically on lockdown until the Admiral and the rest of his lackeys ascertain our location."

Yukito's eyes went wide, and with a wince and a groan he sat up again. "Y-you're kidding, right?" he stammered, fear edging into his voice. That garnered him another glum shaking of the head. "Th-the prick found out?" Two nods replied in mute tandem that time.

"How, I have no clue," Sora replied, wings drooping a little. "And that's what worries me. Sh-Sham made sure to hide the evidence when she was still around, and s-so did we…" She kept pawing at the floor, ears folding back and wings coming close to dropping their blades upon the floor again. "Either we missed something, or somepony went to the nearest mayor and dug through the catalogs thoroughly. Regardless, unless we do something sometime this week, we're pretty much fucked."

Yukito pursed his lips, mental gears kicking into overdrive in spite of his headache. Great. Fantastic. Just what he needed to start his day. Truly, things could only continue to get better before the sun set, if it wasn't setting already! Reluctantly, he shifted his hooves beneath him and made to roll off the bed with a grunt of exertion, almost falling rather ungracefully off of it before catching himself in time. One by one, his hooves shakily took their hold on the floor, and he hauled himself up upon wobbly legs that didn't want to cooperate. He swayed in place for a moment, almost collapsing into Starbreaker, but seized control of his aching muscles in time and forced himself to straighten his posture. Sora carefully draped a wing over him to keep him steady, and through the tarantella playing hell on his nerves, he managed to smile at her. "We sh-should move… wh-when I can gallop," he muttered.

Sora nodded, and turned to Starbreaker, who merely canted her head. "Where?" she replied bluntly.

Sora sighed, realizing her charge had a solid point. It took her several minutes to come up with an answer, but not before she mentally sifted through ways with which to piece together that answer in something Starbreaker could hopefully understand. "Our best chance would be Aeverafree," she sighed, wings finally dropping and letting her blades clatter at those prospects, though she was careful enough to keep one set of blades from cutting Yukito on their way down. "Of course, we'd at least have to trek the Crested Plains and head past the Hollowed Gorge, that much I know… past that, though, we're pretty much lost ducklings." She shivered. "And the area around the Gorge is flat, snow-capped, and empty for miles and miles… shelter's going to be a bitch to find…"

Yukito's smile fell again, and was quickly replaced by a frown. His legs wobbled, and one of his hooves started pawing as he was seeing what she was getting at. "And we'd h-have to remove… the chip for us to have a-any chance of living, i-if… the Corps disables y-your flight somehow..." he groused, eyes gravitating to Starbreaker again. "O-of course…" he trailed off, letting Sora register his unspoken meaning.

"If they do," Sora agreed with a nod. She promptly turned to Starbreaker and donned the sternest, and stoniest glare she could possibly muster. Then she leaned a little, just to let her charge know she was being stared at. Starbreaker turned to stare back, assuming her manic expression in turn. For some impressive ten minutes after, the two merely stared in mute tandem, one turning cold and the other deliberately trying to unnerve her opponent. The room could have turned absolutely frigid on one side and hellishly smouldering on the other; as far as this staring contest was concerned, neither was giving the other any quarter whatsoever.

Yukito was about to open his mouth to call for a halt when, hesitantly at first, Starbreaker fell to her haunches with her ears turning back. Her grin twitched, and her pupils shrank to pinpricks, struggling to hold onto any shred of intimidation, as all the while Sora's face barely shifted in the slightest. Still, the staring contest persisted, but only for another two minutes after that before Starbreaker blinked.

Sora donned a very tiny, very pleased smirk. "If we remove your chip, will you promise to not blast us straight into hell the moment we do?" she asked, voice laced with a rather defensive edge about it as she reached for her bell. "Because, frankly, you've been branded and are already on the same prioritized shitlist me and Yukito have managed to land on. Last thing all of us need is for them to see the smoke and come to douse out the fire."

Starbreaker's smile dropped, her lips contorting into a grimace. She understood, fully well, of what was being asked of her. However, that request conflicted with her still-strong desire to torch Sora and Yukito where they stood. She weighed it as carefully as she could, considering that were she to do said torching the moment the magic-soaking stone in her head was removed, the Corps could just find her almost immediately after and kill her the instant they saw the fire. This ended up making her head hurt within thirty seconds, and all she did was mull it over. Sora's steely gaze did not falter still, which made her growing ache a little more unbearable.

Something within those unblinking green pools shifted, that much she could ascertain, but what it was exactly had been something she couldn't put her hoof on. Sweat started beading her brow as she tried with all of her might to stare back, though Starbreaker found the effort slowly but surely crumbling to dust. She remembered that cold glare, and its familiarity was something she hoped she did not have to sense again. Alas, she eventually nodded, ruefully and begrudgingly conceding Sora's point. "Fine, I won't summon the Crimson Light on your hides, nor will I burn you… just yet," she muttered in defeat, with as much sincerity as she could muster.

Sora nodded and blinked a few times. She sighed, her closed wing drooping again. "This is weirder than that time I confronted a pony spouting about how two ponies in the Clash got screwed up," she muttered.

Yukito turned to Sora, a brow climbing his forehead. "One l-lost her body, th-the other his m-mind?" he asked. Sora nodded.

"I can only hope that pony and the other… they mentioned got their bodies back and their minds together," Sora sighed, ears folding back. "If… they survived the Clash."

"A pretty big if… at this rate," Yukito groused, his own ears folding back, "but currently, neither here nor there." He heaved out a deep exhale, and took in an equally-deep breath of air immediately after with a wince. "Gha… the mana drain is r-really going to town…"

Sora lifted and then rubbed his withers with her wing, careful to avoid cutting him with her blades. "Just don't push yourself," she muttered, and made to speak further when a particularly cataclysmic retort shook the ground and building, in turn causing the trio to stagger. Sora hastily retracted her wing, raising it just high enough to avoid slicing anypony as they all fell onto their barrels. As this new quake shook everything around them with enough force to make the bed jump and rattle, the emergency siren went off again.

"What i-in the world?!" Yukito cried, hooves shifting to cover his ears as his headache amplified into an all-out migraine. The shaking lasted for but a good thirty seconds, yet it felt as though it stretched to an eternity before everything fell still. He grit his teeth as the distinct sound of radio static hummed through the air once again, only to fizz out in a matter of seconds.

The Admiral's garbled voice echoed throughout the city again, this time with a distinct note of urgency, and he was repeatedly cutting out throughout his frantic tirade, "Attention everypony! The co—site has just deto—for reasons yet u—! A thick smog has—and I want all the ci—k shelter immediately! I assure y—ill deal with—as soon as we can! I repeat, the compost—ust deto—and all citizens are advised—ter immediately!"

"Th-the compost site?" Sora stammered, eyes widening.

Yukito frowned and was the first to rise onto his shaky legs. "I-I hope… it w-wasn't the compost s-site. I-if it was, I-I hope Omega m-made it out a-alright," he muttered.

Starbreaker rose onto her hooves next, followed by Sora. They exchanged glances, both frowning deeply as they struggled to process what this new announcement meant. All the while, the emergency siren continued blaring throughout the city, its pitch rising and falling without stopping its shrieking. Silence gripped the trio, firmly, and it took several minutes before anypony could voice what was going through their heads.

"How much… borrowed time do we have, before the Corps starts hunting for us again? How s-soon can we fly out of here...?" Sora muttered, pupils dilating as the question rolled off her tongue. Neither Starbreaker nor Yukito made an attempt to answer, for they had no answer to give or create.

Chapter XV- Creeping Cold

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

End of Arc I: Chapter XVI- Protocol

Sora alighted on the platform, sending snow everywhere with a flap of her wings. She carefully scanned it for any signs of the teleporting visitor, but found nothing more than a half-scattered trail of hoofprints leading only a few feet to the elevator. Strangely, this set of tracks was not only deeper in the gathered snow, easily an entire two inches in, but more clustered together as well. Whoever made them either had problems, or was a heavyset machine. Which begged the question: if it were the latter, then why had it teleported? Was it being piloted, perhaps?

Sora sucked in another cold lungful of air and turned to the elevator, trotting deftly to it. Only the crunching of snow beneath her hooves, and the soft clang of the platform beneath, registered in her ears. The ice continued to spread and cover the base, following after her with its reaching tendrils, bringing with it that unearthly chill she had felt earlier. She reached the elevator and pried its doors open with her hooves, revealing another empty shaft going down. She spread her wings, only to pause and look down to find scorch marks adorning the elevator.

Distantly, she heard ponies shouting, and turned to where the smoke cloud was rising. Lightning danced, illuminating several airborne forms heading back to the base. Sora turned back and jumped down the chute without a second thought; wings tucked tight behind her, spread in such a way to avoid cutting the walls of the shaft as she descended down several doors. Only as one set of doors opened of their own accord a good ten stories down did she flap her wings and ascend back to it, brow furrowed as a familiar hallway stretched out before her. Sora grumbled and alighted in the ever-familiar medical ward, though now the ice crept here from the elevator shaft, and it looked just as empty as the frozen city streets she had trotted through not hours ago… or was it moments?

Sora shivered, hearing a faint but constant sound. It was monotonous, never changing in pitch unlike the siren, and the more she strained to hear it to determine where it was coming from, the longer it pervaded the hall. She turned to a patient's room on the left, close to where she had landed, and pressed an ear to the door to listen.

The sound grew louder as she did. Wrenching the door open with her front hooves as soon as she confirmed it came from behind it, a sight that had her tensing greeted her. On the bed of this room was a patient, one who had the covers pulled over their head. Next to the bed stood a machine that gave a constant, ear-piercing beeeeeeeee as it displayed a flatline on a flickering monitor. This room was otherwise empty; nothing but tile on floor and ceiling, and smooth metal on the walls.

Sora trotted to the machine with a wince. The power went out throughout the city; how the hell was this thing still on? She reached it in mere seconds and pawed around it for a bit, trying to figure out how to turn the blasted thing off. The patient was already dead, insofar as she knew, so there was no reason for the machine to be hooked to them any longer. She paused in her search, however, upon hearing a screech coming from the hall, followed by the door she had forced open slamming shut behind her.

Haltingly, Sora turned to the door and shuffled to it, deliberately muffling her steps with the aid of the machine's incessant droning in case any unexpected visitors dropped by. When she reached the door, she pressed an ear against it and waited. It wasn't long before another set of hooves echoed into the hall, accompanied by a whirring of engines, followed by two more sets near-identical to it.

Silence held outside for a full minute before Sora heard somepony speaking—somepony she quickly came to recognize from the contemptuous tone alone. "Something came from here," a feminine voice muttered. Damn, they arrived faster than she thought.

"Yeah, we have ears, Major Trinity," a masculine voice snarked. A sharp crack rang in the air, and the owner of the voice yelped.

"Don't you fucking mouth off with me the way ex-Private Sora did, Takahara!" Trinity snarled, her volume rising. "We don't need anymore smartasses in our ranks!"

"Major, Colonel, calm yourselves," a third masculine voice spoke in an eerily calm, yet cold tone of voice. "We have to ensure the emergency generators keep running; I have a feeling we're going to need all the backup power we can get." Quietly, he added a few choice words that Sora had to strain to hear, "And then secure our… rebellious weapon afterwards."

"How're we gonna secure the bitch, Professor, if she's gone walkabout?" Trinity snarled, stomping the floor with her hooves. "And that's not even taking into account she's coddling the Herald, for crying out loud!"

"That's not even taking into account the fact she had inside help, too," the Professor snarked in reply, snorting. "But Sora's not the sharpest tool of the shed… she's bound to do something that'll end in her getting caught."

Trinity guffawed. "Oh, like that time she called me insane, then did something that just proved she was the crazy one?" she asked. Sora could hear the smile in her voice.

"Something to that effect," the Professor replied smoothly. "But weapons aren't tailored to be smarter than, let alone able to outshine their masters, after all—you and I both know that."

"So the bitch is dumber than we gave 'er credit for?" Takahara piped up. The sound of three sets of hooves filled the air as the trio marched down the medical ward's hall.

"Yes. As they say, 'stupid is as stupid does.' I almost wonder how Yukito puts up with her—and, admittedly, how much he'd been… dancing with her every time they retired together," the Professor replied bluntly. Sora withered a little under that, but forced herself to keep still as she heard the sound of more doors being wrenched open.

"Oh, please, I'll bet ten bits and my turbines he'd been nuttin' her on a bi-weekly basis, Professor," Takahara snarked. He paused and grunted audibly. "... now that I think about it, maybe that was why that au naturale piece o' horseshit got mad at me," he added in a somewhat surprised tone.

"I'd be mad too, if I had a wife and you touched her flank," the Professor snarked again. "Of course… even I wouldn't be stupid enough to bed a weapon."

"Eh, true enough; wouldn't be stupid enough to let a weapon get hitched, either," Takahara agreed; Sora could almost hear him nodding at this point. Engines whirred to life, the beating of hooves stopped, and gradually what little noise outside of the incessantly-beeping machine faded.

"I may be trotting into a trap… fantastic…" Sora hissed, pulling back from the door and waiting for a full minute before deciding to open it. With caution, she pushed the door open again and poked her head out into the hall, sighing in relief upon finding it empty. The ice was spreading faster, encasing doors to keep them shut. She stepped out of the room, and the door shut on her to trap the dead patient in their bed.

She turned to the still-open elevator door and rattled her wings a little. "Weirder than that one pony spouting about how two others got fucked up, and more… tense than my wedding night…" she muttered in dismay, steeling herself again before trotting to it and making another leap. She descended down several more stories, keeping track with the aid of closed doors marking the individual floors. Her wings snapped out again and flapped only when the door on the very bottom opened, and flew up to the door above it to shed excess momentum.

She descended down and alighted after, wings snapping shut at her sides. A hallway stretched out before her, splitting into a T-intersection after a few feet; both ends were marked with signs. The left had 'training facility,' and the right boasted suspect smudge marks streaked across its surface—inky black, hurriedly-scribbled marks seemingly scrawled with crayon. Sora trotted up to the right sign to investigate, lifting a hoof to prod at this substance. It was gooey in texture, somewhat runny, yet oily—it stuck to her hoof, and she wiped it against the wall.

She winced when a chill greeted her as she rubbed it off, running up her leg and through her augments right to the shoulder. She pulled back, lips pressing into a tight line as she turned to the right hall to find more of that mysterious gunk smeared in one straight line on the floor. Oddly, it came with a set of hoofprints that only appeared on the left side of this stain, tightly-clustered and planted into the floor with enough force to repeatedly crack and smudge it. Stranger still, next to a door at the end of this hall was a pony in soldier's garb, laying against the wall with a slumped form riddled in frost and yet more black gunk. An object with a large muzzle easily the size of Sora's front legs, a grip only half that length, and a trigger big enough for a pair of hooves to easily grab it had been kicked away. It was resting only a foot away from the downed pony.

Sora trotted to it and picked it up with her front hooves. Despite its size, it was surprisingly light, and she found that this object had a hinge near its trigger. Activating it caused the object to fold in on itself, revealing a brightly-glowing bluish-white sphere in its grip, further bolstered by similarly-colored crystals embedded within. A delicate carving that read 'Buster' had been etched smoothly into the handle's interior, but Sora had to strain her eyes just to see it. "Fully charged, standard-grade buster-model rifle with a plasma power core… alright, I'll take it," she muttered, folding the rifle back into its original configuration. She shifted upright to keep her hooves on her prize and walked over to the downed pony.

She winced as she knelt down, only to find a throat that had been ripped open. She stood back up, frowning as she looked at the rest of the soldier. Oddly, despite the injury, no blood had managed to smear the coat or the uniform, much less the actual wound itself. Sora forced herself to press on; the less she dallied, the quicker she could find this 'fragment of truth' that mysterious message spoke of, and the quicker she could haul herself, Yukito, and Starbreaker out after.

She walked through the doors which opened to let her into another hall sporting a smudge trail, keeping her wings angled, the rifle close to her barrel, and her ears twitching for the slightest sound that would indicate danger. "Seems somepony infiltrated just before I did…" she muttered, walking opposite of the hooves made with the trail. Her tail swished as she found another intersection stretching out before her. Cocking the rifle, she slowed her pace to move as quietly as possible, though that didn't exactly stop the thudding her hooves made due to her posture.

She was just about to round the left corner where the smudge and hoofprints ended when she stopped, ears perked and straining the moment she caught a faint shuffling sound. "Don't come any closer!" a distant, masculine voice shouted, somewhat muffled but frantic in tone.

"You… don't… command me…" an echoing voice, even more muffled than the shouting pony, retorted in a tone as icy as it was firm. This was followed by a pained scream that had Sora darting down the left hall at a full sprint, eyes glancing wildly in an attempt to find the source, only to find several closed doors on either side of her. She heard metal groaning, objects jostling, a rifle being cocked, and it all culminated in a door on the far end of the hall being wrenched open by a soldier sporting a smoking stump where his horn used to be.

The soldier, wide-eyed and in panic, stumbled out into the hall before a burst of concentrated light flew from the door and shot clean through his head, forming a black scorch mark on the opposite door without smearing his blood all over the place immediately after. He only had enough consciousness left to stand and croak before keeling over lifelessly, turning in such a way Sora got to see the hole punched into his skull as he landed.

Sora stared at the ghastly sight, holding her rifle tightly as she turned to the room the soldier had fled from. Another rifle was flung from within, and it landed upon the soldier with a metallic clunk. A cold gust of air rushed out of that room after, and the door slammed shut before ice formed to keep it sealed. The zephyr warmed briefly as it passed Sora, but oddly ice still spread with its passing. She decided to turn to the other hall and sprinted to, then down it, feeling the air freezing behind her as the ice crept upon her hocks.

A door at the end of that hall opened up, revealing an elevator stuffed to overflowing with more armed unicorn soldiers. Sora skid to a halt just four doors away from them as they stepped out, and for that one moment, time froze as the group sized her up. When they snapped out of their stupor, they collectively trained the barrels of their rifles on her. Sora lifted her rifle, training her barrel on the pony closest to her.

One stallion sneered. "So the rebel won't take it lyin' on her back?" he asked.

Sora flared her nostrils and snorted. "I take that shit from nopony," she hissed, putting pressure on the trigger, but not enough to fire. "So if you value your lives, I'd suggest dropping the guns."

The stallion who sneered howled in laughter. "You ain't even got your bell! You couldn't take multiple shots now!" he jeered.

Sora nodded in acknowledgement of that fact. "I don't need a bell to kick your asses from now into next year," she retorted, slamming the trigger and firing off a bolt of concentrated bluish-white light. The blast knocked the gun clean out of the leader's hooves, and he yowled before another bolt was sent clean onto his horn. The rest of the soldiers made to fire, but Sora calmly shot the guns out of their hooves with honed ease and lightning quickness, and then their horns before they even had the chance to cast one spell. After that, she simply barreled past them, using her deadly wings to forcibly part the mob out of her way and to the sides of the elevator's doors.

As soon as she was in, she slammed her elbow into the button panel and turned to face her disarmed, discombobulated ex-coworkers. "I'd recommend vacating the premises," she said, using a primary to gesture down the hall when one of the soldiers looked at her. The soldier in question looked, and paled as a writhing, corporeal shadow—suspiciously equine in shape, yet sporting odd protrusions coming out its head and back and somehow ambling upright—marched to the whole sorry lot with the spreading ice on its hocks. Just as the figure got within five feet of everypony, the elevator doors closed, and Sora moved to press her back against the furthest wall.

It didn't take long for the disarmed soldiers to start screaming, and Sora forced herself to tune out that series of gods-awful noises as the elevator shook and started to descend. She looked at the panel and tensed; a button with '44F' under it was aglow, and she groaned. She steeled herself, cocking her gun once more, and waited for the elevator to stop and let her loose. "Not even close to that door… now I understand why Yukito overtaxed himself…" she muttered.

Ice crawled along the elevator's little box, seeping its way into the ceiling. Sora wilted a little; she started to wonder how Yukito and Starbreaker were holding up in the off-duty building now that she up and left them. Briefly, she saw white, and that cold feminine voice echoed in her head again, "They're fine. I checked on them before trotting after you, worrywart."

Sora shook her head, lifting one hoof from the rifle to hit herself on the forehead. Some part of her still believed she was hallucinating, and her gut clenched as the elevator finally stopped and opened to reveal another hall so frost-stricken icicles were growing on the ceiling. She stepped out, tail hiking a little as her raised hoof returned to the rifle, lifting a wing to brush her primaries against an icicle. The icicle held firm, and a chill raced through the blades to steal a bit of the warmth from Sora's wing.

She retracted her wing and stalked down the hall, ears perked again. A cross-intersection stretched out before her, filled to teeming with soldiers who exchanged uneasy glances at Sora's approach. Most had their guns in holsters, and a few pegasi kept their wings tucked tight at their sides. None of them dared approach her until she stopped in the middle of the intersection, augmented eyes scanning for that labeled door. Alas, a set of stairs marked the leftmost hall, and elevators the right and the one dead ahead met her instead.

"You don't have to do this," a mare to her right pleaded, stepping towards Sora with a shaky hoof reaching for her gun. "It doesn't have to be this way…"

Sora turned to the mare, lowering her rifle a little as she weighed the soldier's words. "You're right, it doesn't, and I wish it didn't turn out like this." She heard another soldier cocking their gun, and lifted her rifle again. "I'd appreciate it if you dropped your weapons; the less bloodshed, the better it will be for everypony involved." The soldiers around her shuffled uneasily, exchanging concerned looks as Sora flared her wings and raised her primaries up high before charging them with her innate magic. With one hard flap that connected with the floor and left smouldering scrapes in her wake, the soldiers on either side scattered to get out of the range of her crackling blades. She twisted left, blades poised at either side, their mere presence enough to further scatter the opposition, allowing her clear entry to the flight of stairs.

She lept and flapped to soar down the flight, veering and flapping sharply enough to leave burning dents in her path as she descended several more floors with haste. Down and down she went, turning so sharply she'd embedded her blades deep in the walls before pulling them out and continuing on her way. Each turn filled the flight with the shrieking of burning metal, the whistling of her blades, and another ringing in her ears. She had to angle herself to avoid the railings of the steps, and half-folded her wings to maximize distance.

She heard the dumbfounded soldiers give chase before long, though by the time they'd even started, she was already a half-dozen flights ahead of them and still going. Her eyes scanned the halls she passed on her way down with desperation; some were already frozen, and others left dubiously pristine. She scoured for another cross-intersection hall, but it took her another half-dozen floors before she'd found the end of the flight—and a cross-intersection hall not far from the flight's last step. She steered to alight and landed in the hall just in time to see that upright shadow with the bizarre protrusions appear in a flash of tealish light dead-center, and it veered right almost immediately after, smoke trailing behind its retreating form.

Sora once again stood on her hinds, keeping her wings half-spread as she righted her posture and sprinted to the intersection, seeing more ice creeping behind the specter with its passing. She skid once she reached the junction of the halls, glancing about hastily as she heard the soldiers she'd ditched shouting and stomping—doubtless closing in on her. The hall the upright figure wheeled down ended in a flight of stairs blocked off by a sheet of oddly reflective ice so thick it may as well have been a cube. The elevator to her right was opened, yet pouring out black smoke without a box in sight. That left the hall in front of her, which was riddled with black gunk and ended in a flight of smoking stairs, the smog itself doing its best to flood the rest of the junction.

Sora sprinted down the blackened hall, feeling her hocks turn cold and numb with each step. Her stomach cramped at the chill, but stopped when she reached the flight of stairs. Lifting a hoof to her snout as the smog threatened to suffocate her, she carefully scanned both directions of the stairs. The lower flight caught fire, the flames climbing upon and licking all they touched, while the upper flight was growing icicles that were melting.

She weighed the options, before darting towards the flames. Her wings propelled her onwards, hacking and slashing at the walls and steps and beating furiously to repel the fire. The warmth and smog tried their best to stall her, and though her eyes watered and her feathers began singing at their edges, she did not relent even as the flames built up all around her with each and every set of stairs she descended. She wondered just what had went down for this flight of stairs to catch flame, but shoved the musing to the back of her mind as she delved deeper. The heat around her increased tenfold, almost a smothering embrace that threatened to rend her flesh from her bones and augments.

Her wings kept flapping to disperse the building flames, eyes scanning the roiling smog and dancing tongues for anything resembling a hall. Her lungs filled with smoke and ash and burning metal, and she was coughing in seconds. Still, her stubborn side refused to let her turn back, and she continued to descend—with her inner skeptic calling her a jackass and the fires continuing to lick at her, already shriveling parts of her mane and tail. She darted down three burning flights and ran into the first open door she saw, finding herself skidding into a T-intersection as soon as she got clear of the smog.

She turned to her mane and tail, wilting as she saw their ends ablaze. With one hoof, she caught her mane and angled one set of blades before snipping all of the burning ends in one motion, keeping just enough to reach her elbows. Then she turned to her tail and cut off half its length, leaving behind a burning mess and her tail only dangling past her gaskins. That done, she looked at the hall's ends to find opened elevator shafts—left smoking, right open and yet pristine. She flew to the pristine one, not exactly keen on playing with more fire.

She poked her head in the shaft and glanced up, then down, in case a box was coming. But no box came; she jumped and flew down to a door at the bottom of the shaft, alighting in a cross-intersection hall. Landing on her hooves and cocking her gun, she stalked slowly, trimmed tail swishing as ice formed in the other halls. "If I don't find that fucking door soon, I'm going to just start ripping these damn…" Sora muttered, only to trail off as she stopped at the junction of the intersection and looked around.

Oh, to her right was a door that was marked with warning labels and slight dents. Sora approached it slowly, seeing if it would open by itself, but alas it failed to budge even after she got to it and tapped the barrel of her gun against it. "Oh well; the Admiral's gonna be shilling bits out the ass anyway," she stated in resignation, before checking her blades to see if they were still aglow. That glow had dimmed considerably, nothing more than weak crackles and a lukewarm heat now. "Oh fuck me…" Sora growled, turning to the door and feeling her wing augments writhing as she cancelled out the channeling of her mana. She tapped at the door with the gun again.

No luck still; it wouldn't budge. She heard Starbreaker's voice echo in her head, "Why knock to begin with? Why not just blast the door down?" Sora snickered, cocked the rifle and took aim, pushing the trigger about three-quarters of the way. She started smiling as energy began to build up at the end of its barrel with a crackling power.

"Eh, I have an unlimited charge. That should do nicely in the meantime," she stated with a blaise shrug of her shoulders as the rifle continued to charge. Mentally, Sora started a little countdown, going from thirty as the rifle shuddered in her grip. The gathering sphere grew and grew as she continued to charge it, crackling more fiercely and burning with a concentrated power that sent tremors to her augments through the rifle.

The power continued to build, expanding until the concentrated force was as large as Sora herself, overshadowing her frame with a bluish-white light. Sora closed her eyes and pushed the trigger the rest of the way; the resultant burst of energy caused the entire intersection to quake as the sphere turned into a large laser that proceeded to shred that metal, dented door. It pushed her back to the junction, almost toppling her with its own might, but with the help of her blades she caught the corners leading to the hall behind and held firm as the laser continued to erupt from the rifle.

A full minute passed before Sora no longer registered the force of the blast trying to push her back, and another thirty seconds after that before the light the blast generated died, but not for a lack of trying to blind her through closed eyelids. Her eyes cracked open and beheld the destruction she had wrought; the marked door had all but ceased to exist, a gaping scorch mark and remnants of melted steel the only testaments to its previous fortitude. Beyond that, Sora saw an elevator shaft going down—also blown to absolute hell, and sparking and sputtering wildly. "Oops," Sora muttered, a hint of a smile spreading on her muzzle as she folded her wings and sprinted to the elevator… or what was left of it. Glancing up, then down to confirm there was no box in her way, she frowned when she noticed nothing more than a flat, charcoal black ceiling above her head—either this shaft didn't go up past this point, or she'd welded the bottom of the box directly above her to said shaft.

Stranger still, this one was only a short drop down; just an entire three floors and nothing more. The door on the bottom hadn't been tampered with; it was as pristine as the halls Sora had ignored, untouched by any ice or scorch marks or shady specters. Hell, it was so clean she saw her reflection as she jumped and alighted, right down to her new manecut. Curiosity aroused, Sora approached and tapped at the door with a hoof, and it failed to budge. The elevator shaft shook and trembled with a terrible screech, and Sora shifted to hold the gun's handle with her teeth. Hooves shifting to plant themselves on the door, she strained as the shaft shook again, and fitfully the door opened with a groan of protest.

Sora rushed in, and shifted to put her gun back in her hooves when the door slammed shut behind her. Its echo, and the following crash that shook the surprisingly large, compost-site-sized room she now stood in, did not phase her—for instead, a distressing sight had her full attention. Rows upon rows of clear walls greeted her, formed into ceiling-high boxes barely big enough to hold basic utilities like food, water, beds, and toilets.

A door made of the same clear material was put onto each box, riddled with small holes to enable breathing, and a hoofprint recognition device. Each and every single box was inhabited by a pony. Mare, stallion, young, old, pegasus, earth pony, it made little difference; equines of all possible outcomes were kept here—easily by the dozens, from what Sora saw just then. Two ponies were dragging something towards the back of the room, seemingly unconcerned about the crash that shook the room, but Sora's eyes focused elsewhere.

The nearest ponies in the boxes turned to look at her, a pair of mares with eyes so vacant and sunken they almost seemed dead. One sported a distended stomach so large it was fit to pop; the other, nothing but skin and bones still clinging to life. Beyond the disturbingly skinny mare, a shaved stallion reared on his hinds and tapped at the walls of his prison, silently screaming with eyes equally as devoid of life. "Please let us out," he mouthed repeatedly, yet barely any sound left his prison. He lifted a hoof and gestured erratically down the row in front of Sora with it. "They'll kill us!"

Sora stood frozen in place, her eyes gravitating and zeroing in on to where the shaved stallion was gesturing. Her heart stopped at what she saw; two medics were magically dragging an unconscious Omega towards a great furnace at the end of the room, black as pitch and roaring with a bright fire that seared its grates. Omega himself had some sort of device on his head, circling his skull with three false horns protruding from it, and both his forelegs had been replaced with steel replicas. "It's a shame we couldn't make another," one of the medics dragging him groaned. "I'm starting to think the longevity projects aren't worth it anymore."

"He's an earth pony—the technology we used on Nath isn't compatible with his ilk," the second scoffed. "Perhaps we should tack another prototype onto the Herald's head when we can catch her."

Sora cocked her gun and sprinted towards the medics, who both whipped around at her approach. "Aaaah, if it isn't the hitched bitch herself," one of them cooed, before he found his muzzle meeting with the butt of the rifle. Sora then turned and shot the other medic in his horn, garnering a strangled yelp as he found himself in burning pain. She fired off another round on the first medic, before grabbing Omega by the head and wrenching the false horns off of it, taking with it bits of flesh and exposing bits of snapped wire that had been affixed in his skull. She turned and picked him up carefully, wrapping his forehooves around her barrel and tucking him between her wings.

As soon as she did, she felt him stirring. "Wha… who…" Omega muttered.

"Hang tight, I'm busting your ass out of here," Sora muttered as the medics made to stand. She hastily stabbed them in the necks with her wings, ending them in one fell motion, darting directly out of the fountains of blood they spewed whilst keeping her wings in their jugulars—she tried not to think about the red that started spreading everywhere from the downed medics. She removed her blades as cleanly as possible and sprinted to the massive furnace, then wheeled down another row of clear cages and trapped ponies pounding their walls, begging for release. Sora wanted to stop and help them, or at least put an end to their suffering, but right now she had bigger things to worry about—further compounded by the ice growing from the elevator shaft, spreading everywhere it could take hold. She searched for an elevator that functioned, spreading her wings and taking off with one hoof on her gun and the other on Omega, but only found two stairwells next to the furnace after a single go-around between the rows.

The base quaked ominously as she flew down the stairwell on the right, finding herself in a pitch-black room with a single light swinging above a table some distance away. Sora flew to the table, finding metal cuffs and straps and old bloodstains littering the scene. A retort of static filled the air, and a familiar voice she didn't want to hear dogged her every wingbeat as she started scanning the darkness for a way out. "Oh, there's the missus… in an area she's not authorized to be in, with the compost pony between her little wings. Major Trinity, Colonel Takahara, head to Sector 4K-3B at once, if you're not there already… and subdue the rogue," the Admiral ordered in a blunt voice.

Twin flashes of light, one silver and the other orange, flashed from the stairwells. Shortly after, hoofsteps flooded the pitch-black room. Sora cocked her rifle, hearing faintly the crackle of growing frost encroaching on her location in addition to the beating of hooves. A whirring of turbines joined the fray, and each sound echoed from everywhere at once. The base shook again, as an orange pair of lights started gleaming in the darkness, followed by an orange aura that winked out a second later. "All alone out here, you crazy cunt," Trinity spoke, keeping herself shrouded in the sable, voice echoing in tandem with her hoofsteps. "You just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper…"

"Deeper than you get plowed, that's for sure," Takahara snarked, red eyes alighting for a brief second.

Sora snorted at the remarks, continuing to hover in place. The room turned colder and colder, and the crackling of frost grew louder all the while. She felt contemptuous gazes land on her with scorn and derision, and the darkness itself threatening to swallow her up if she wasn't careful. "My sex life is none of your concern," she hissed.

"Oh, but it is! That au naturale piece o' horseshit saved your ass twice—first time after somepony blew up on you, and second after you stopped the Herald! When'd you get hitched with him and start diddlin'?" Takahara shot back. Sora could feel the coldness radiating off of him, worse than the freezing room itself, and donned her mask of apathy.

"Heh, I can see 'er on top of that doc. Thanks for the mental image, Colonel," Trinity snapped, tone somewhat amused yet cold at the same time. "But in all seriousness… he's got a point. When did you get hitched?"

Sora's face hardened. "That's none of your concern," she repeated bluntly. She saw a flash of orange out of the corner of her left eye, and whirled around to point her rifle in that direction. But neither Trinity nor Takahara came at her, instead keeping to the shadows.

"She's defaultin' into not talkin' again," Takahara hissed. A flash of silver came from the right, and faded before Sora could even turn to point the rifle's barrel in that direction.

"Same old typical Sora," Trinity agreed with an audible stomp of her hooves. "We may have to clip her damn wings to get her to talk."

The base shook again; another flash of orange flared from behind. Sora turned to face it, only to find darkness. Her ocular augments kicked in again, but even they could not help her pinpoint where her current enemies were thanks to the light already overhead. She was half-tempted to demand the two to show themselves, but Omega stirred on her back with another groan, inadvertently reminding her that doing just that would probably end in disaster.

"Too bad that hornless, wingless freak wouldn't spill anything," Takahara hissed. "Just as tight-lipped as the great cunt herself." Another flash of silver had Sora spinning in place, trying to track it, but she still got naught other than pitch-black. The overhead light flickered as the crackling of ice grew louder and louder. "Not even a few rounds of smashing his back doors, or ripping off his forelegs and augmenting his stumps and noggin convinced him to talk!"

Back door breaking? Sora's brow furrowed; the grip on her gun tightened as she realized the implications of such a statement. If they did that to her acquaintance with the intent of making him talk... "You didn't…" she seethed, wings starting to crackle as mana flowed into the blades without restraint.

"Sure did, sweetheart," Trinity answered in smug mockery, tone dripping with amusement. "Too bad we couldn't get a few rounds with the psychopath; I'd bet she'd have been loads of fun." An orange bolt of energy launched past Sora's head, popping behind her in a burst of light.

Sora trembled, resisting the urge to fire lasers everywhere. Her mind concocted an image of Trinity and Takahara doing a whole menagerie of questionable things to Starbreaker, which only got her blood boiling. "Guess we'll just have to settle for the married bitch, until she tells us where the Herald's at now?" Takahara offered, launching a bolt of silver magic past Sora, who turned away to avoid going blind at the resultant explosion.

"Oh no; Admiral's got dibs. We get the seconds," Trinity answered, launching from the darkness to punch Sora at blinding speed, aided by a pair of turbine wings affixed to her back. At the same time, Takahara came in from behind, hooves outstretched and poised to strike the back of Sora's head. Sora ducked and kicked aside the table to let them punch each other and sprinted into the blackness, wings madly beating as she made to find the stairs. Takahara and Trinity cursed as their hooves met with each other's faces, disentangling with new bruises forming as they made to pursue her. "You cheeky cunt! Get back here!" Trinity roared.

"Bite my augmented ass! No way in hell am I staying!" Sora barked, zig-zagging her way to the stairs. Her eyes caught the faintest hint of ice, however, and it wasn't long before she found herself skidding towards the flights. She twisted and flew out of the way when she found walls of ice blocking her path, in turn sending Takahara face-first into one of those walls as he made to grab her. The base shuddered again, and the ice cracked and flaked like glass as Takahara pried himself from it.

Trinity still dogged after Sora, eyes gleaming and horn alighting with gathering power. "Hold still, tramp!" she commanded, launching a bolt of magic after Sora, who twisted out of the way and returned fire with her rifle. She landed on the floor and sprinted as Trinity smashed all four hooves into a wall in a strike meant for her head, then bounced off of it with enough force to leave a sizeable crater in her wake. Sora fired again, striking a turbine's rim, and for a split-second her pursuing opponent tilted as she lost balance.

But Trinity righted herself and simply cranked up her speed, engines howling and roaring as she continued to give chase. "That's a nice buster model you got there, didja diddle it in your spare time?" she taunted, gaining ground until her forehooves were just inches from Sora's muzzle.

Sora fired off another shot, striking Trinity square in her barrel. The Major screamed and backed off, hooves reorienting to clutch the wound. She darted past the fallen table as Takahara came in from the side, horn blazing in silver light and intent gleaming in his eyes. She turned to fire off another round, and hit him right in his false horn. It sputtered and groaned, and Takahara wailed as an explosion of light and dust filled the room, followed shortly by a sharp snap that echoed in the dark arena. She veered for the stairs again, checking to see if Omega was still on board; she heaved a silent sigh of relief to find he was still clinging to her barrel, his own grip tightening as he seemed to finally wake up and realize what was going on.

"F-filly? Wh-where are we?" Omega asked, voice riddled in alarm.

"Right now, we're in hell," Sora replied, making for the dent in the ice as Takahara and Trinity recovered enough to start closing in, horns blazing brightly. The stairs still hadn't been opened; she turned to her enraged once-superiors, hearing their own augments whirring to life and Trinity's flesh writhing with the effort.

Both wore baleful scowls, their amusement now gone. "Oh, you've done it now, you whorse," Takahara spat, voice distorting with a mechanical groan as his magic continued to build.

"Looks like somepony's gonna be losing her fucking legs soon…" Trinity hissed ominously, face aflame in an orange light that looked red in the smog.

Sora opened her mouth to retort, but then closed it when she saw the tell-tale grippings of budding rage forming on her opponents' faces. Now, there'd be no reasoning with them; she'd pushed far too many of their buttons in far too quick a succession, and her stomach cramped a little as they slowly closed in. Back against an icy wall, she cocked her rifle as her passenger shifted his hind legs to wrap awkwardly around her flanks. This wasn't an ideal situation, and sooner or later, somepony was going to fire.

Sora weighed her dwindling options, spreading her wings slowly enough that she hoped they wouldn't draw Trinity or Takahara's attention, and all the while their magic continued to build. Slowly, the glowing horns angled themselves toward one another, and as they crossed, Sora's eyes widened—the power they had individually grew tenfold, engulfing the two in a hellish light. Both Trinity and Takahara spoke in tandem, voices echoing and distorting with their joint power, "You're going to wish the Admiral had killed you when we're done with you!"

Sora's blades quivered, and she briefly considered the idea of absorbing their magic before discarding it and flapping instead. They launched their dual bolt, and Sora only had enough time to get out of its way and scrambled to the other side as a great magical wave of energy pulsed from her adversaries, shattering the ice of the room and forcing her and Omega into a corner, then out of it seconds later. The destructive energy swirled around, Trinity and Takahara turning to her in unison, redirecting it fluidly, damaging everything in its wake with the force of an unlimited charge. The burst was fast approaching, sending rubble and dust everywhere, and all Sora could do was fold her blades in front of herself to take the attack as she was backed against another wall.

A flash of tealish light exploded in the room just as the magic reached fever pitch within mere inches from Sora, and a second wave of similarly-colored power erupted from the darkness before forming a wall of reflective ice in a hexagonal configuration and structure to counteract the dual magics, just before it could even singe a hair on Omega and Sora. It first absorbed that power, the walls turning silver-orange, standing firm and steadfast throughout the ordeal. Then, as the attack stopped, she heard her ex-superiors gasping in confusion. Before they could ask what was going on, the reflective wall glowed and sent the absorbed power straight back to whence it came, and Sora heard—but could not see—Trinity and Takahara screaming in unison, and the base shook at their redirected attack. Then, the chorus of trapped ponies upstairs joined in, howling for exactly one second before ceasing entirely with the Major and Colonel's wailing. "Wh-wha…" Sora stammered, struggling to make sense of what had just happened.

Only when the base stopped shaking did these reflective walls drop, disintegrating into nothingness with one last flickering pulse of power, and Sora walked to the lone light in the room. She stopped, finding that her opponents themselves were back under that stationary light, standing but shaking with exertion and confusion. Both were singed so badly the stench of burnt fur, flesh, and augments hung in the air and fresh smoke wafted from their bodies in places—hell, the two were bleeding profusely at this rate; it was a miracle they were even standing now. But the way they shook told Sora they were but moments away from collapsing; their knees quaked enough they started to slip of their own accord, aided by the falling blood. Their wings were melted and warped, engines barely hanging onto their backs, locking up with feeble sputters before long. "The fuck was that? We weren't standing here a second ago," Takahara grumbled with a wheeze.

Trinity's ears perked, and she turned to the stairs as a set of hoofsteps flooded the room from that direction. A cruel smile spread on her lips in spite of her horrible pain. "I think we have reinforcements," she muttered darkly as the hoofsteps grew louder. Her smile fell, however, when she realized it came in a half-tune; one-two instead of one-two, three-four. "The fuck kinda reinforcements is this?" she hissed, and paled when an upright shadow lurched into the light and kicked aside the fallen table with a mighty swing of a powerful hind leg, sending it crumpling into a wall on impact. The ice was reforming, creeping on its hocks as it lowered that leg in a stomp that cracked the floor, glowing with raw power yet to be channeled. Sora turned to the figure and blanched, though she noticed something different about it.

Now, though, the darkness of the room did not meld to it or even form a corporeal body, but rather accentuated its presence, revealing a translucent form that had shards of highly reflective ice dancing around its body which pulsed with a teal power that kept them levitating. The light above popped and died, and all found themselves under another, more sinister presence. Glowing orbs of an ice blue that acted as eyes were trained on the group as the figure towered over them with its upright stance, brimming in anger and despair, glancing apologetically at Sora for the barest of instants. Three horns, two of them warped and mechanical, shimmered with an ominous but unusually dim light that burned as fiercely as the glare it redirected to Trinity and Takahara.

For a mere second, time froze as the new arrival and the combatants stared at one another.

Omega gaped. "Wh-who…"

Trinity gabbled. "Wh-what the…?!"

Takahara gawked. "Th-the fuck?!"

Sora gasped, eyes widening in recognition. "You're… a windigo…?"

The figure turned to Sora and gave one sharp, mute nod before embracing Trinity and Takahara in its hellish light. "No… more…" the figure mouthed silently, intangible jaws stiff and shuddering with the effort. With one whipping of its distorted head, it sent bursts of tealish magic at Trinity and Takahara, knocking them against a wall. With two stomps of its hooves, the base quaked and quaked until the ceiling started to cave in. It kept thrashing its head, launching bursts of magic everywhere, breaking walls and making reflective ice erupt, which further destroyed the room. Then, just as the stairs collapsed, the figure turned to Sora and Omega before it grabbed them in its magic. "The caged ones… their suffering ends… here…" it mouthed, before it vanished with Sora and Omega in a final flash of light.

"Windigos have infiltrated the Corps?!" the Admiral barked after a retort of static flooded the shaking base. "Initiate Friendship Flame Protocols, pronto, pronto!" Trinity and Takahara exchanged glances as the room around them continued to crumble, and both nodded mutely before they locked horns and vanished in another flash of light to save their own sorry hides.

Start of Arc II: Chapter XVII- Bereft of Choice

Sora and Omega reappeared with their mysterious savior on the launch pad, and Sora turned to the savior in question as, once more, darkness compacted to make its form corporeal. "Th… thanks…" she muttered. The figure smiled at her with a nod, and vanished in another flash of light. She spread her wings and lifted off, making a beeline for the off-duty building. The city's bout of sudden freezing had receded during her stay in the base, and the sky lightened to a more uniform shade of medium grey, though snow was still falling and ice overstayed its welcome.

"F-filly? Wh-what's going on?" Omega stammered, head darting to and fro as he struggled to take in the ghastly sight.

"We're getting out of here, that's what. I'll explain later," Sora replied, flying above buildings to shorten time and maximize distance. As it was, Omega wasn't even in any condition to talk; there was no telling how much blood he lost during his little stay in the base, and there was the matter of his new augments possibly making trotting a bit of a problem for him in the meantime.

Omega kept glancing around as he was airlifted, unable to do much else for the moment. He saw something black in a window of some sort, in a very tall building as Sora started to descend. "F-filly… could ye fly back up a sec?" he asked.

"Huh?" Sora stopped and glanced at him.

"I… wanna make sure my eyes ain't playin' tricks," Omega replied, jerking his head towards the building in question as Sora watched. Sora sighed but obliged, and flew back to that tall building. He looked up at its top and groaned, finding a sign that had frozen over during the unprecedented storm. Within, they peered into a few windows, descending a few floors to find a fully hooded carriage large enough to hold seven bulky stallions, neatly stationed on a display circle complete with fencing to block off any would-be hooves and a crowd of frozen onlookers. It was divided into thirds by way of seats, walls with windows just behind said seats, yet more windows at the front and back, and doors that adorned only the left side. Said doors were all sporting velvet, navy-colored curtains that were inside rather than out in sets of three.

Sora whistled at the sight. "Impressive, but a replica of an old model from five hundred years ago—only rich ponies who want to show off could afford such a thing, and even then as a museum piece since there's not much practicality to them. What about it?" she asked.

"Well… we kinda need a carriage… can't carry me all day," Omega pointed out, frowning. "I'd hate t' do that t' this purdy thing, though…"

Sora's eyes widened, and she gave Omega another look, realization dawning. "You want me… to jack that thing?" she muttered.

"Ain't got much of a choice. Jus' drop me off first… need t' gather my bearings," Omega replied ruefully.

Sora dropped her head and groaned. "Alright, but I'll probably leave behind a mess doing it," she muttered, and flew on, until she found the building she was looking for—oddly, it hadn't been riddled in frost or capped off with snow. Though, she shouldn't have been surprised to find Yukito and Starbreaker already on the roof, looking at her expectantly as she came in for a landing, with the latter wearing her bell and still sporting that magic-soaking chip in her cranium.

Yukito paled upon seeing Omega's current state. "Wh… what the…"

"He had a horn crown on his head… I overheard some medics talking… they tried to pull on him what they did to Nath," Sora replied, shaking her head grimly. "They mentioned something about a 'longevity project.' I don't know what else they could have done to him… frankly, I don't want to know..."

Yukito's brow furrowed, and he trotted over to lift Omega off of Sora's back, being mindful of her blades. His eyes met with Omega's widening ones, and further took in those little wounds on his head where wires still stubbornly poked out. "That's not good…" he muttered.

Sora turned to Starbreaker, who took off the bell and returned it to her. Sora took it with a nod and put it on. "Thanks for watching it. Did anypony come by while I was gone?" she asked.

"Some… shadowy thing that just teleported us here," Yukito answered uneasily. Sora turned to him, eyes widening. "Did… you run into it, by chance?"

Sora nodded glumly and turned to Starbreaker again. "Did the… shadowy thing say anything?" she tried.

Starbreaker shook her head. "Nothing," she replied, glowering. "So what now, Bright Idea?"

Sora shimmied a little to the side, to give Omega some breathing space. "I'll go get a carriage. There's one a few buildings away, in usable condition, and… it probably belongs to a rich pony, with how well it's been preserved," she muttered.

"You're going to steal from the rich now?" Yukito asked, frowning at the thought.

"Well, I could be yoinking a museum piece for all I know. Don't really have any other options, with what how fast everything's already gone to hell in a hoofbasket. Any carriage left in the street is… probably going to need replacing soon, or at the very least extensive repairs," she replied. Flaring her wings again, she paused to turn to Omega as he tried to stand with his new augments. He collapsed mere seconds later.

"Can't… feel front l-legs…" Omega muttered, making to get up again before Yukito planted a hoof on his withers to stop him.

Yukito spoke in a gentle reprimand, "Don't move too much; you'll aggravate your injuries. You need to rest." He turned to Sora, opening his mouth to retort, then closed it when he realized that they couldn't afford to take turns carrying Omega, not when only one of them could fly.

Omega kicked out with his hinds, before Starbreaker rushed to pin him. "N-no! I-I ain't…" He looked up and gawked as Yukito knelt to his eye level.

Voice still gentle, Yukito replied, "Whoever did this to you… they will not lay hoof on you again. You have my word."

Sora turned to the base as one of its bizarre cuboid legs collapsed, sending ice and snow and soot everywhere with a tumultuous crash. The spire on top of the base began to glow in a garish pink color, pulsing in a manner similar to unicorn magic. "Welp, there goes the east wing," she muttered, and with that, she tossed Yukito the gun she'd pilfered and then took off to yoink the black carriage Omega had pointed out to her. Yukito looked up and deftly caught the rifle with his tail, feeling the hairs curling around it to hold it in place. He lowered his hinds to fully lay down, glancing at Starbreaker.

"Let him kick out; he probably has a lot to vent," Yukito muttered. Starbreaker shook her head.

"Saw blood under his tail," Starbreaker said simply, but moved off only to manually flip Omega onto his back with her hooves. Yukito frowned and stood up, trotting to inspect Omega's hinds—his thighs were red with blood, from the dock right down to the gaskins. Stranger still, there'd been something imprinted on his chest, charcoal-black and reeking faintly of burnt flesh and fur. The anomaly read 'punishment order #13,' in looping calligraphy of all things; it looked like it was practically advertising itself. That, and unsightly, bloodied stitches ran between the hinds, zig-zagging crudely over...

Yukito, upon realizing what he was looking at, lurched and almost vomited at the sight before he forced himself to turn away, but reigned in his protesting stomach as horror started clawing at the back of his mind. He took a few minutes to compose himself, then glowered and gently touched the scrawling with a hoof before rubbing it a little; it didn't smudge, and Omega winced before crossing his hinds to hide the stitches. "He's been gelded… and th-this… this scrawling…" He turned to Starbreaker, jaw quivering. "You had it between your hinds. What does it mean?" Starbreaker glanced away, ears folding back as she turned to Omega. "What is it?"

"... can we not speak of it ever again?" Starbreaker replied, voice dripping in venom as she turned to glower at Yukito, prismic eyes pulsing with a power that made them turn pale.

Yukito sighed. He turned to Omega, who looked back at him with ears pinned back. "I agree with Prism over there," he muttered. "J-just… not now…"

Yukito nodded and sat next to Omega, helping him into a sitting position, tail still firmly wrapped around the borrowed gun. "Listen… at some point, you'll have to tell us… at least enough regarding what happened that we can get the big picture. I have… a feeling the Corps won't let us take the time we'd need to recover from all of this," he said, softly.

Omega hesitantly nodded, tail quivering as he saw Yukito's point. He made to speak when he heard the distinct, distant sound of rattling wood, and started to fitfully glance around in an attempt to find out where it was coming from. It picked up in intensity before long, and soon enough a beating of wings began to accompany the noise. Yukito heard it too, and shifted to put the rifle in his front hooves, wincing as his alicorn gave another ache. He glanced around, watching for any more of his fellow ex-coworkers in case they decided to drop by unexpectedly.

But nothing came other than that rattling and flapping. Pink flame started to swirl over the top of the base, and through the sky, dispersing the gathered clouds slowly. Yukito frowned at this. "The Friendship Flame Protocol has been initiated?" he muttered, brow furrowing in confusion.

"The what now?" Starbreaker asked, turning to the spreading fire that was dispelling the clouds.

"The Corps' defense against a bad winter; weather manipulation with magitek," Yukito replied, turning to Starbreaker with a frown. "But initiating Protocol… with a smog… would be disastrous for us—the resultant fumes would strangle us." The rattling of wood grew louder still, and he glanced around before seeing flames roiling at the dome that separated the base from the city, garish-pink and inching closer and closer to the smog. He turned to Omega. "Who or what attacked the compost site?"

Omega quivered, lips pressing into a thin line for a moment. Distantly, down a street, he saw a flash of green and gold. "Ye wouldn't… believe me, doc…" he muttered bitterly.

Yukito's ears fell back at that statement. "I take it the proof of whoever or whatever attacked the compost site has been wiped off the face of the planet?" he guessed. Omega grimly nodded.

"Ain't nothin' left," Omega muttered, his own ears pinned back. "Corps just hauled my ass out and right t' th' base—f're I ever heard th' compost site got sacked." He perked up a little as he saw that flash of green-gold again, this time racing to the rooftop with a rattling object in tow. Yukito and Starbreaker turned to what he was looking at, and both found Sora coming in to land with that black carriage now harnessed to her. Out of the confines of its cage, the group could see it a little more clearly now, and Omega took the time to marvel at the features he'd initially missed.

Much of its main body was further reinforced by steel structuring, decked out in a uniform black paint that was barely scratched up and shining like it was brand-new. The only truly wooden parts, being the doors and wheels, kept rattling even as she came in for a landing. The carriage jumped in place as she alighted, but held firm even as a door at the very front opened of its own accord. The door swung a few times, revealing and concealing a plush seat big enough for three ponies to lay against one another side by side without resorting to leaning against the windows for support, and a smooth carpet within.

Nopony needed a second invitation; Yukito put the rifle's handle in his teeth and stood up to wrap his forelegs around Omega's barrel. Omega nodded and rose on his shaky hinds, barely moving his forelegs and allowing Yukito to escort him to the carriage. Starbreaker cut in to open a door on the end of the carriage, smiling as she saw a decent chunk of floorspace in front of the seat, enough she could set a coffee table and a nightstand inside if she were of a mind to. She hopped in and closed the door behind her, as Yukito manually hefted Omega up just enough he could crawl in to the front seat.

Yukito closed the door and made sure it would stay that way once their newest charge was inside, then made for the middle door. He glanced at Sora. "How bad is it, for them to warrant the Protocol in autumn?" he asked as he opened the door. "Is it worse than just the destruction of the base's east wing?"

"Honestly, there's a lot of factors; I'll tell you the shorthoofed list once we're out of this shitstorm," Sora replied, lifting a hoof to jostle her collar and make sure her bell was secure. The bell barely budged, and the collar did not shift in the slightest. She flapped as Yukito nodded and hopped on, closing the door behind him and tossing the rifle to the very end of the seat. With that, she galloped off the roof and flew; the carriage rattled in protest as she struggled to gather momentum without having done a lap first, though with an ascension of a few feet she was able to steer it properly.

The pink flames started to spread throughout the city, colliding with the smog at first, then engulfing it entirely. The acrid stench that lingered before amplified tenfold, now mixed with the scents of melting ice and ash and boiling water. The flames only glowed brighter as they licked at everything, turning a slow-forming shade of purple within seconds. Sora did not turn her head to look at the flames; she pumped as much strength into her wings as she could, bolstering her speed, and raising her altitude just enough to soar smoothly over the buildings that got in her way.

Every time she caught a gust of wind, her wings stiffened to ride it out. The storm clouds, or what was left of them as the flames decimated their number, started to move after her, crackling with that dimmed lightning. The wind picked up, further spreading both the fire and the clouds, as well as helping Sora get out of the city a little faster. Inside the carriage, Yukito alternated between watching Omega and looking back to where his home once was. His mind stirred, and some doubtful part of him reflected that he could have handled things differently, although he had to admit he hadn't considered that things would even veer this far out of control, for both his group and the Corps themselves.

All the same, this destruction would only be a temporary one. Sure, it was a major setback for the Corps, but with a force large enough to have its own bloody city, repairs would get done and the fumes the fires were creating would be blown away sooner or later, once the worst had passed—and when that worst passed… he tried not to think about that. He and Sora were marked ponies now—there was nothing more they could do about it but turn tail and fly off to greener pastures. Yukito could do little else than heave a sigh at it all—a mournful one, as he wondered just how far off Aeverafree truly was.

But… why Aeverafree, of all places? What compelled his wife to want to head there when things took a downturn for the south? And how were they going to get there, if for some reason Sora couldn't fly all of a sudden? There was so much to consider, the group was pretty much on their own; one incapacitated, one crippled as far as he could tell, and he himself still suffering a killer headache. All in all, things were already going fantastically, catastrophically wrong at this rate, and before long, everything would… "No, don't muse over such things. The worst will pass, it has to," he muttered to both scold and reassure himself. He was silently thankful Sora's bell could do more than conjure shields, and that it helped them pack everything they could beforehoof.

He realized, looking back at the city as it grew more and more distant, that such extensive damage would give him and his makeshift herd a good few weeks' head start at the least, if only to get off the Corps' immediate radar. That, and workplace conditions weren't really all what they seemed; they had a fresh start, now that they'd hit the road… although, there was still the issue of babysitting Starbreaker in the meantime. At least Sora could help keep her in line, he mused to himself with a hint of a smile playing on his lips, and Starbreaker herself was more or less in fit condition; all the more leeway to check up on Omega and help him along.

The carriage tilted as Sora started to descend. He turned to Omega, namely to peer out the window past him. Odd, Sora was making for the Crested Plains of all places… was something going wrong with the harness? The carriage tilted once more, leveling out in altitude. Okay, perhaps she'd had a miscalculation, noticed, and changed accordingly, but Yukito frowned nonetheless. "It's not like her to do that…" he muttered. "Unless… she didn't sleep at all these last several hours?"

He could only wait for the landing, however, before he'd press her for answers. In the meantime, he tapped on the window in front of him with a hoof to get Omega's attention. Omega didn't turn to him, at least until a few minutes later, when Yukito tapped again. "Yeah?" Omega asked—Yukito saw his mouth move, but heard no sound.

"Can you hear me?" he asked. Omega blinked before shaking his head. He turned to Starbreaker and tapped to get her attention, and unlike Omega, she looked right away. "Can you hear me?" he repeated, only to garner another shaking of the head. He sat down and looked at the floor again, wondering just what kind of carriage this was—it wasn't a standard cargo carrier, that much was for certain. Some part of him mused about how the hell they were going to conceal this thing from the Corps, and some childish part of him started spinning some pretty zany ideas—that, in comparison to the heist he'd helped pull, seemed tame.

"I could use a bit of brushing up on the magical front—six spells is but a measly repertoire, especially since I can teleport a lot before collapsing… perhaps illusions would do the trick?" Yukito muttered to himself, tilting his head and putting a pastern under his chin. "I'm going to need a bloody spellbook for that, though…"

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Sora landed just outside the forest on the western edge of the Crested Plains to stop; by now, it was morning, and the clouds had finished dispersing to let the early rays warm the land. The leaves had started falling out of the trees, though, and the autumn chill bit at her. On top of that, she was sore; legs aching something fierce, wings ruffled up and stiff enough to send pain down her spine with the tiniest movements, head throbbing and stomach cramping. Her eyes started to twitch closed in seconds; she struggled to keep them open, head bobbing slowly as she repeatedly snapped herself awake.

She stayed like that for half an hour, just standing there mostly motionless to rest her tired muscles whilst trying to not fall asleep where she stood, when the furthest door of the carriage opened and Starbreaker hopped out. "Why'd you stop?" she asked, trotting up to her adversary with a quizzical look.

"Just… in pain," Sora answered as bluntly as she could, but even she could not hide the crack in her voice that betrayed her exhaustion. Starbreaker frowned and watched as, haltingly, she got out of the harness; it had dug furrows into her fur, having rubbed those spots raw. Once she got out of the harness, she gestured to the forest with a wing, not daring to risk lifting a hoof as she struggled to keep her eyes open. "This… where you…"

Starbreaker cut her off with a sharp nod. "Mhm, until those black-wearing weirdos found me," she confirmed. "Why are you in pain? You weren't like that when we fought hooves-on."

Sora gave another wince. "It… happens if I run around and fight all day; been like that… ever since I hibernated. I just need to rest for a few hours, and I'll be fine," she answered, then gestured to the harness. "Can you… take this thing through the woods?" She pulled back as her foe nodded with an unintelligible grumble of discontent, and watched as she put the harness on. She did so fluidly, seemingly knowing which strap went where, amazingly enough without damaging the structure in the slightest. "Did you… have to be a carriage-mare at one point?" she asked.

Starbreaker nodded with another grumble. "Hated it," was all Sora caught.

Sora nodded in return, deciding to press for answers later, and trudged to the second door to open it with a shaking gait. Before joining Yukito in the lounge, though, she closed the third door with a wing, then plopped down on the seat as soon as she'd hauled herself inside. A moan of exhaustion left her mouth, and she saw Yukito's horn glowing and heard the door closing behind her, though because of how drained she was, it escaped her notice that Yukito winced and that his magic sputtered briefly as the door shut. It wasn't long after that did the carriage start to rattle, jostling as the wheels came into contact with tree roots. She could only guess Starbreaker had started making her way through the forest.

"Sora, you're pale… are you alright?" Yukito asked, frowning in worry.

Sora sluggishly shook her head. "Need… nap…" she replied, thoughts turning muddled as the urge to sleep took residence and demanded to be sated immediately. She forced herself to inch closer to him, though, sitting up once he was in hoof's reach and leaned, curling one wing around him as she rested against him for support. She made sure all of her blades were pointing to the floor when she was done, and her head came to rest on his withers. "And…" She trailed off as Yukito turned to nuzzle her, pausing to nibble on her shoulder when it spasmed briefly. "Not… too much…"

Yukito nodded against her shoulder, and wrapped his forelegs around her barrel. "After all that's happened… I think we're all going to need a nap," he muttered.

Sora's gaze flitted to the curtains in front; Omega peered back with a blush on his face. "Not… that…" she muttered, turning an ear in the direction she looked at. Yukito frowned and pulled back before seeing the ear had moved, and turned to find what Sora had been referring to.

"Oh… oh…" An awkward silence held for a few seconds. "We can't have that now, can we?" Yukito muttered, before his horn glowed once again and his magic took hold of the curtains throughout the carriage once he realized what was probably running through Omega's head in that moment. He then mouthed to Omega in an apologetic manner, "Sorry, can't have you watching," and with one flick, the curtains closed, and darkness shrouded everypony within.

Sora closed her eyes again and hummed appreciatively. "Are you… feeling any… better?" she managed.

"My mana drain's receded a bit, but not much…" Yukito replied, frowning as he returned to nuzzling Sora. "I'm afraid all we can do is… let Omega rest up a bit. We could use the sleep ourselves."

Sora nodded in understanding. She wondered if Starbreaker herself was getting physically drained as their currently-designated carriage-mare, but shrugged off the thought all the same; she at least got some energy back just by staying put at the off-duty building. Before she let sleep knock her out, though, she decided to open her mouth to ramble a bit. "Earlier, I… had stomach cramps," she started.

"Stomach cramps?" Yukito echoed, voice tinged in confusion. Sora didn't open her eyes to study his face, for her own eyelids felt like heavy weights, but still guessed that her husband's eyes were widening nonetheless. "Did you neglect to eat again?"

Sora mulled it over, then glumly nodded. "Couldn't… eat in the base," she replied with a shrug. "Took… a lunch break, during s-sparring… with S-Starbreaker… m-made sure she a-ate, too..." Her wings sank a little, and her hind legs started to numb. Great, her own body was falling asleep on her.

Yukito sighed in relief. "It's probably nothing that we should worry about, then," he stated, tone somewhat factual and more relaxed than anything. "Once we find functioning medical equipment, or get to Aeverafree—"

Sora snorted. "Assuming… we find… equipment along the way," she pointed out. Her forelegs wobbled with strain, and she pressed more of her body against Yukito to compensate. Last thing she needed was to fall to the floor, and sensing this, Yukito scooted her to the back of the seat with his hooves, then manually laid her down. After that, he snuggled up with her, keeping himself between her wings all the while.

"Assuming, of course, we find miracuously-functioning medical equipment before we get to Aeverafree," he conceded with a smile. "But once we do, if we somehow manage that improbable feat, and should the cramps persist for whatever reason, I'll fire it up and run basic conducting to diagnose the issue. That sound good?"

Sora lazily nodded, smiling. "Sounds… good," she muttered. "W-were… you and S-Star… frozen, e-earlier?"

Yukito shook his head again. "Not in the slightest, even after we'd been rudely teleported onto the roof. The air around us was unusually warm," he replied.

Sora nodded, relief washing over her. She muttered, "I… love you." She returned the nuzzles, and it lulled her to sleep faster with a distinct feeling of calmness about it.

Yukito nuzzled in return. "Love you too," he replied. And with that, both drifted off to a quiet sleep, with only the soft rattling of the carriage accompanying them.

Outside, dragging said carriage along through the woods in a slow walk, Starbreaker kept her eyes and sole functioning ear peeled for any signs of life, whether it be from the woodland or from any unprecedented black-garbed ponies. Only the crunching of fallen leaves and twigs answered her, and though the air warmed a little as the sun continued to climb, the lingering chill still held a firm grip. The forest seemed to hold its breath as she trudged through, only moving with her as the wind blew through the branches.

Her prismic eyes darted left and right as such a gust rustled the canopy, and in seconds the forest fell still again. Her tail swished, and her prosthetic ear twitched with a faint whir. She turned her head as much as she could to compensate for her half-deafness, yet still the only sounds she could catch were the crunching and the rattling of the carriage as it bumped against sticks and errant roots. She turned to a felled tree that was growing moss on her right as she was about to pass it, pausing to scrutinize it.

Starbreaker smiled as she caught sight of two deep dents in the timber, the moss only just starting to make a home in them. The trunk had several jutting splinters, teeming with insects that also swarmed the timber. She wheeled around the tree accordingly, dragging the carriage with. Her pace picked up, into a brisk trot that jostled the carriage with more fervor, although not enough to send it crashing. She'd have liked to send it crashing, of course, but that would have led to more trouble than it was worth—even she knew that.

Her prismic eyes caught another felled tree a few feet from the first, and she looked at it. It did not have dents, or moss, but rather a clean trim separating timber from bark—so clean, in fact, she didn't even catch one splinter jutting up. It even had trimmed, leafless branches—at this, she tensed, pausing to listen to her surroundings.

Again, the forest kept quiet. Starbreaker was the only creature who'd dared to move. She kept fitfully glancing around, the hairs on her withers rising to stand on end, that little black chip pulsing with her absorbed power as she tried to cast even a simple spell.

But nothing even made an effort to approach her, or the carriage. Yet Starbreaker could sense, on some innate level, that something was off about these woods. She couldn't afford to take risks; she wasn't at full power, and now she was the one lugging the wounded around. She kept trotting, making a mental note to slap Sora upside the head first chance she got, pace slowing as she grew increasingly wary of her surroundings.

She could feel eyes watching her every move, but from where she couldn't guess. That started to irritate her, and her tail twitched in annoyance. She turned left to trot deeper into the woods, frowning ruefully. At about twenty yards from the cleanly-cut tree, she came upon a small clearing—then stopped and lifted a hoof to shield her eyes as bursts of light erupted all around her without warning.

When Starbreaker lowered her hoof, she glowered. Eight black-garbed weirdos now surrounded her. They started to close in, and a feeling of déjà vu took hold. "Well, well, the Star-Blasting Light's dropped by again…" one of the cloaked ponies muttered in a mocking tone. Even shrouded by his garments, Starbreaker knew he was smiling at her, and in spite of the situation she grinned back. "And she's totin' a fancy ride, too… wonder what's in it…"

Left with little choice in the matter, Starbreaker lifted a hoof and felt around for the stone before she started to scrape it off with as much force as she could muster, using her frog to help facilitate the stone's removal. With a few motions, she'd felt the little stone pop out and fall away, taking with it chunks of her flesh and fur. She barely heard it landing in the grass, barely felt blood trickling down her forehead as she lowered her hoof. "What's in this carriage…" she began, channeling magic into her horn and straightening her legs and neck out—grin widening as a red light started dancing at its tip unrestrained, "is none of your business."

The cloaked ponies stopped their advance, eyes trained on Starbreaker as blue and orange flames began to crackle along her horn. They noticed, for perhaps the first time, her condition and posture, and unanimously started to back off. She paused to search the ground, and found the stone before picking it up in her magic to find bits of blood and muscle clinging to it. She wasted no time making it vanish in a burst of red light. Afterward, she turned to the cloaked ponies and flashed them a manic smirk.

"That said… do you still wish end me, as you have tried the first time?" Starbreaker challenged, hearing a faint sizzle as the little bit of blood on her face dried under her flames. "Because I can assure you... I'm going to hold nothing back now."

Chapter XVIII- Assailants

The cloaked ponies shared glances, then looked at Starbreaker as her horn continued to crackle with an ominous pyre that distorted the very air around it. She stared back, tail swishing with an eagerness she couldn't hide. Her manic smirk, appearing demonic under her own light, widened as her eyes shifted to a blood red. Her sclera blackened, and her eyes narrowed, issuing an unspoken challenge to the whole lot. Her mane and tail waved wildly in the red glow, despite the lack of a breeze, and the carriage rattled with her power. Besides that, though, she didn't move at all.

The cloaked ponies didn't budge, either. The standoff was tense, one side slowly realizing that the lone unicorn who'd just ripped something out of her skull was not going to back down anytime soon; said lone unicorn grinning unnervingly as she waited for any tell-tale movement that would signal somepony making the first move. Legs shuddered, just barely concealed by black garments; as chills raced from one cloaked pony to the next, that demonic gaze flicked to them, sizing up the opposition. All the while, their opponent's mane and tail seemed to writhe and spark fitfully, before her magic embraced them and made them start glowing with flickering lights that made the long locks look like pale fire itself, something that was unnatural in every sense of the word.

Then, slowly, Starbreaker put just one hoof forward to see what the cloaked weirdos would do. They did not move an inch. She tilted her head a little, ears twitching. Still, the cloaked ponies did not shift in the slightest. Her flames popped and receded, leaving just her red light as the only visible indicator that she was still casting any spells. Finally, one stupid but brave soul charged forward, his horn glowing.

As soon as he'd moved, however, Starbreaker's horn became wreathed in fire—and so did the cloaked pony. He made to scream, but crimson magic rushed over to clamp his clothed muzzle shut, and held him up as he flailed his legs in a desperate hope of putting out the fire. His magic raced around before sputtering, trying in vain to cancel the flames. The garments burnt off, revealing a unicorn who oddly wasn't augmented in any way that she could see, though any augments wouldn't have made much difference at this point. His fur fell off, the flesh beneath blackened as the fires consumed him.

Starbreaker turned to the rest of the cloaked ponies, who all took a step back. "Do you wish to join him? I can arrange that, if you'd like," she offered, smile widening fractionally. His comrades, wincing and choking on the smell of burning flesh, flared their horns and disappeared in flashes of light.

Starbreaker trotted to the lone soul left, staring into his wide and pleading eyes with her own augmented ones. She watched impassively as he burned, waiting for the life to which he clung so desperately to leave his eyes. It didn't take long for them to start glazing over, and with a huff she dropped him on the ground, dimming her aura just enough to let him lash out as he liked. His horn sparked and ceased glowing, and he slumped over with nothing more than a wheeze, legs kicking out in one last feeble attempt to douse the flames. His efforts only granted him more pain, and each breath burned the insides of his body as he inadvertently inhaled the smog his own sizzling flesh produced. He managed to gurgle out, "You… abomination…" with one final surge of adrenaline-fueled strength that made her aura weaken further around his muzzle. It came out in a hoarse voice, before his limbs shuddered haltingly and went stiff.

Only as the unicorn stopped moving entirely did Starbreaker fully release him, lift a hoof to roll him on his back, and study his smouldering remains. She watched as the last of the light left his eyes. She put a hoof to his chest after that, then applied pressure—slowly, to ascertain if he'd been augmented within. The crunching of bones reached her ear once she forced her hoof down far enough, and she pulled back to trot around him, her flames receding away from him entirely, leaving a charred husk behind. "At least those cloaked freaks will leave me alone now," she muttered contemptuously, her mane and tail ceasing movement a second later once her magic fully dissipated from the locks.

The carriage started to rattle again as she went deeper into the woods. Her eyes reverted, and her horn took another moment to dim entirely as she trotted at a brisk pace again. Once she was clear of the burnt carcass, she veered left and once more went to glancing this way and that for anymore signs of trouble. However, nothing came at her now—the forest had seen the warning she issued, it seemed, and so decided to not provoke her anymore.

Which was good for Starbreaker. After the weirdness of the past few hours, she'd needed some time to herself. Although she hated that she had to play driver, everypony else was in the carriage, leaving her to her own thoughts. And now that she could defend herself whenever the need arose, she found it almost… laughable that a tiny rock implanted in her head was what kept her from casting. To be fair, though, she hadn't expected the Corps to even have such rocks in their possession—which made it even more ridiculous.

Then again, she hadn't expected her mortal enemy to suddenly run herself ragged, either. Starbreaker shrugged at this, but she still couldn't help but wonder why Sora had gone weird in the head—all she knew was that she could see that weirdness of mind from the very second they met on the Plains all those weeks ago.

Another tree caught her eye, fallen and hollowed out and directly in her path. Starbreaker stopped, snapping out of her stupor; she peered at it, then paused to sniff the air. A scent of rotten wood permeated the air now, and as she stared at the tree, she noticed yet more irregularities with it. No moss, for starters, hollow and yet holding together with a distinct bow along its whole fraying length. Not even one insect was present to skitter along its surface.

She huffed, horn glowing with a dimmed light. Her magic embraced the fallen trunk and hefted it up with laughable ease, though it collapsed in on itself as it was parted from the ground. Slowly, Starbreaker twisted it in on itself from the sides, smirking as the brittle, rotting wood snapped without an iota of resistance. Within the course of thirty seconds, her magic had reduced the trunk to a pile of floating splinters, which she then made vanish in a flash of light. After that, she simply carried on; the air grew colder around her, but thanks to her various fibers and synthetic materials that made her fireproof, Starbreaker didn't even notice the chill at all.

The carriage continued to rattle with her every step, but there wasn't much she could do about it. As she passed another fallen tree and into a second clearing, she turned to the carriage to find Omega peering out at her from in front of the curtains, frantically mouthing something and bashing his snout against the window. Perplexed, Starbreaker stopped, undid the harness, then trotted around to magically open his door. "What?" she asked.

Omega flopped on the floor where he was, twisting to look at her with his hinds scrabbling to lift his bottom up in the air. Starbreaker had to admit, it was sort of amusing to see him do that. "C-can ye help me a bit?" he asked, ears folding back. "Gotta… use th' bathroom…"

Starbreaker rolled her eyes, but nodded and magically yanked him out of the carriage. She trotted to some bushes, magically dragging the carriage behind her as she parked him behind a tree. She turned away, lifting one hoof to her torn ear and covering it as a few… distinct sounds filled the air, broken only by Omega grunting and sighing. When he was done, he banged his head against the tree, just enough that Starbreaker could hear it. She pried her hoof out of her ear and magically lifted him up, but only enough he could stand on his hinds. He moved his augmented fronts… clumsily, for lack of a better word; if not for the crimson aura holding him, he'd have more than likely collapsed straight away.

"Thanks. I… don't think I'll get used t' my new legs…" Omega muttered. Starbreaker nodded, and slowly dragged him back to the carriage, keeping him at ground level and letting him flail his legs everywhere with the grace of wet noodles. He couldn't get his footing; every time he even thought he'd had it, one or both front hooves would slip on the twigs and leaves, which resulted in more flailing. Hell, once he reached the carriage with aid, he ended up slamming the door to his seat open on what Starbreaker presumed had been an accident.

She lifted him up and threw him onto the seat. She stared at his haunch, where of all things a wooden and metal crate rested proudly. "Is that your cutie mark?" she asked.

"Yep," Omega confirmed with a nod. "Talent's toting th' heavy shit… or as heavy as my body could take…" He sighed. "Gon' be a while f're I can do that again." Starbreaker nodded, and made to speak further when the rustling of a bush, followed by frantic stomping, filled the clearing. She tensed immediately afterward, glancing around fitfully as the hairs on her withers stood on end again. "What is it?" Omega asked, frowning as Starbreaker span in place all of a sudden, scanning the forest for any signs of trouble.

But nothing came at them or the carriage. Starbreaker turned to Omega and answered, tail bristling as she spoke, "Cloaked weirdos tried surrounding me earlier. They might come back." With that, she shut the door before Omega could get another word in edgewise, then hopped back into the harness to get it strapped on her. When that was done, she glanced around again—that time, catching a flash of red that, against all logic, shifted bright blue darting off to her right. Immediately, Starbreaker wheeled in that direction, trotting briskly as the blur of color vanished as fast as it had appeared.

Bizarrely, it came and went with that stomping, and oddly enough another rattling and a rustling of… feathers? Fur? Whatever it was, it had just made itself a target—and that flash of red all but announced its presence. Starbreaker started to follow it, her own carriage rattling as she weaved her way between the trees. Her eyes darted to the ground, and she smiled again as she caught distinct tracks in the ground—scraping gashes ending in half-dome shapes, some deep enough to uproot small saplings. They were accompanied by tell-tale wheel ruts that neatly lined the fresh prints—the trail may as well have screamed 'something just went through this way,' and there was simply no way Starbreaker could have missed it unless she'd been blinded first.

Though tense, Starbreaker found herself getting giddy at the prospect of yet more trouble. She wondered what kind of creature could make such tracks, tail swishing eagerly as she gave chase. She cared not for the tracks as she passed them, smudging them with her own hooves, for she knew they would lead her to her newest quarry all the same. They weaved erratically between the trees, sometimes splitting in half whenever a root or two got in the way, with said roots scratched up in the wake of the creature that had passed through.

Starbreaker didn't mind jostling the carriage a little more than was necessary; her adversary was too tired to do much else at the moment, so she picked up her pace in her pursuit. Clouds gathered overhead, causing what little light that was already filtering through the canopy to fade out, and the air only grew colder as she trotted on past a clearing overgrown with weeds as the tracks led her deeper into the woods.

She giggled, the sound carrying through the branches thanks to the wind. Her quarry would have their reckoning soon enough.

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Sora slept lightly but soundly in the carriage, even as it rattled when Starbreaker decided she was going to go on a little hunt. She grumbled, mouth dry and muscles tingling with a fading soreness as her augments went to work healing her wounds, but she knew she had a few more hours yet before she could charge headlong into another fray. Conversely, Yukito slept heavily; he barely stirred at all when the ride got bumpy.

In tranquility, they slept in their embrace. Occasionally, they'd mumble about something or other, and shift around to ease sore muscles, but other than that they barely moved. After a few hours, Sora woke up first—even as the carriage started picking up more speed, and rattling more feverishly as a result. She made to get to the door, only to stop as a pair of half-metallic forelegs wrapped around her flanks and croup.

Yukito nestled into her neck. "Ngh… so… ruffled…" he muttered.

Sora blushed at the remark, but didn't say anything in response to it. Some part of her didn't want to rouse him if he was dreaming, and she smiled as he nuzzled her. She nuzzled back, garnering a sleepy chuckle. She pulled away after a few seconds, wondering if he was waking up, only to find his eyes still shut in a tight but otherwise peaceful expression. She rubbed the wing draped over him against his side, earning another chuckle as her secondary feathers fluffed up thanks to his fur. "S-stop… they're s-so soft…" Yukito muttered, wiggling a little as the feathers continued to caress him. Within seconds, he simply chuckled so much it woke him up, and lazily his eyes blinked open. "Wh-what time… is it?" he asked.

Sora shrugged. "Was going to look, but then realized you were still asleep," she replied, voice raspy as she spoke. Yukito managed a nod, before his brain caught up to the fact that he held her in his legs, and with great reluctance he let go and sat up. Sora sat up with him, slowly and carefully tucking her wings in, angling her blades towards the back window to cause the least damage.

Yukito alighted his horn and used his magic to wrench the door curtains apart, that time without a wince or even the slightest hint of reluctance. It took him a moment to register that his alicorn wasn't shooting daggers through his nerves anymore. "I don't know about… you, but I'm not aching anymore," he chirped. Then, he and Sora peered out of the window to try to look at the sky, only to find a dense canopy of orange leaves and twigs blocking their view. They stared out for twenty minutes, yet no matter how hard and how much they stared, the canopy barely changed. After that twenty minutes, the two engaged in a conversation.

"The forest looked so small from above," Sora muttered, frowning. "Is it seriously bigger on the inside than I gave it credit for?"

"More than likely, considering the amount of healthy trees I'm seeing," Yukito replied in earnest, before hearing the clunk of metal on carpet. He turned to the borrowed gun, which was now jumping in place thanks to the carriage's rattling, and seized it in his magic before making it vanish. "Forgot I left that there…"

Sora turned and smiled at her husband. "At least nopony pulled the trigger while we were asleep… unless you already fired using a different trigger?" she quipped, garnering a hearty laugh as Yukito turned back to her.

"Sora, please... I'm not a somnophiliac," Yukito snorted with an air of exasperation in his tone, trying and failing to contain the starting throes of a chucklefit. Sora laughed and nuzzled him, wings ruffling a little as her chest shook.

"I-I know you're not," she muttered in earnest. "It's just that… I-I couldn't resist."

Yukito chuckled again and rubbed the back of her head with a hoof. "I wouldn't have been able to resist, either, if we were sparring again," he muttered with an air of joyful reminisce; Sora giggled some more, recalling their previous sparring session.

"You… aha, you dweeb," Sora muttered in mock-exasperation.

"But if I'm a dweeb, then what does that make you?" Yukito fired back, amusement glittering in his eyes. The two shared a hearty laugh, and parted to look outside the window again to find a clearing passing them by. They saw just enough of the sky, which was heavily clouded, to determine that there was a chance it could storm tonight. "Hrm… should we seek shelter?"

Sora nodded. "Would need to be big enough to cover the ride, though," she replied. "I'm not sure if the wood has been treated to be waterproof."

"Well, as far as I can tell… these individual seats keep sound in," Yukito muttered with a shrug. "So we don't know what other surprises it has."

Sora nodded again, seeing his point. "True, true," she said. The carriage picked up in speed, rattling with the force of a stampede, and her brow furrowed. "What is Starbreaker doing?"

Yukito frowned and alighted his horn, grasping the curtains of the carriage that hadn't yet been opened. He flung them wide, and turned to look out the front of the carriage, finding Starbreaker harnessed and sent into a maddened gallop. Her head whipped left and right, but only in brief intervals that lasted mere seconds; her long mane made it difficult for them to ascertain her mood. "Just what possessed her all of a sudden?" Yukito muttered.

Sora looked to Omega, who twisted back and mouthed frantically at them in a manner that suggested he was shouting—mouth wide, pupils pinpricks, ears folded back. She studied his flailing gums for several seconds before piecing together what he was saying: "Said something about cloaked weirdos. Don't know what th' hell she harped on about."

"Cloaked…?" Yukito muttered, garnering a nod from Omega. At that point, Sora's mind clicked the pieces together. Had Starbreaker ran into more of them? Was that why she was galloping now? Up ahead, barely in front of their designated carriage-mare, she caught a flash of bright, neon blue that betrayed the faintest hint of red veering right. The carriage tilted to the side as Starbreaker twisted after it, with enough force to knock everypony within to the floor before a red glow forcibly re-oriented it back on its wheels. Sora shrieked as the carriage continued to jostle violently, and she forced herself to stab the floor with her wings just to keep from tumbling into and repeatedly crashing into Yukito.

All that did, however, was send the rest of her jostling up and down with the carriage as it veered and tilted with the force of a boulder. On top of that, even though she was anchored to the floor, she couldn't keep herself from sliding upon it thanks to how ludicrously sharp her blades were. Yukito's horn flared, and his magic raced to keep her and himself on the floor as, for a few seconds on end, the rattling stopped even as the carriage continued to move and gravity tilted inexplicably.

He chanced a glance outside the window and paled upon seeing a blue and orange blur shoot past Starbreaker—smashing what seemed to be a metal-enhanced hoof into her face. Worse, the carriage had been flipped upside-down, and her along with it. "We're being attacked?!" he squawked, eyes widening as Omega landed on his section of the ceiling first. Then, the rest of the carriage landed with a horrible screech as it skid across the forest floor, only stopping when its butt connected solidly with a tree—it was only thanks to his magic that he and Sora didn't collide into a window or the ceiling themselves, but even that could not stop the whiplash that rocked them. Yukito glanced to ascertain the damage with a groan; frowning as he saw a slight crack in the window, but nothing more.

"The glass… is reinforced…" he muttered, before the carriage shook from the front as something crashed into that window. He turned to find Starbreaker now pressed up against it, out of the harness and her back to the glass. In front of her, however, there was a clearing, and a bluish form retreating into the trees, and a large wad of dirt held together with ice at the side of the clearing. Slowly, Starbreaker rose to stand, turning to look into the window as she did so.

Sora gawked upon seeing the stone no longer embedded in her head, but rather the hole where it used to be. On top of that, however, something stuck out from beneath her horn, embedded with enough force to make blood trickle down her face, and a series of nasty, bleeding gashes stretching in three thin lines across her breastbone to end at her left shoulder. Starbreaker lifted a hoof and wrapped her fetlock around the offending object before wrenching it out, revealing two things: one, being a dubious grey area with a suspect metallic gleam where the wounds were, and two, the object in question being some sort of long blade. It had no handle, no fletching, or even protrusions jutting from its sides; it was simply a long, thin, sharp blade ending in a tapered point that had dented.

Then, Starbreaker's horn alighted, and her magic seized the carriage before lifting it and flipping it right-side up, sending Omega back to the floor in the process. When that was done, she trotted to the second door and threw it open, having sensed two pairs of eyes on her. "What the hell happened?" Yukito muttered, eyes gravitating to the mysterious blade that had tried and failed to make Starbreaker's skull its new home.

Starbreaker responded by lifting Sora in her magic and yanking her out, then parking her at the side of the carriage. "I found weirdos hauling something," Starbreaker replied, nostrils flaring. "Two of them. I tried following them, and they threw… that thing at me." She lifted a hoof and gestured to the frozen mound of dirt for emphasis, then took hold of the single blade in her magic to wave it erratically. "And this hit me a second later."

Sora's brow furrowed. "So that's why the carriage… flipped?" she asked.

Starbreaker nodded. She trotted to the front, and Sora followed her to find that the harness, miraculously, made it out of the ordeal intact. They looked to the top of the carriage, which was a bit scratched up but otherwise looking alright. Starbreaker turned to the harness, evidently to get herself strapped in it again, only to be stopped by a bladed wing. "I had to, alright?" she muttered.

"It wasn't that… although you could have woken me up to tell me you were going to remove the stone, unless you were attacked and had to wait until after," Sora started, frowning deeply at this turn of events. "Which, as far as I can tell, is what I'll assume to have happened. I was about to ask… what did your attackers look like?"

Starbreaker glowered at the question, ears turning back. "I found a few cloaked weirdos, but they left me alone. These… ponies, I think, weren't like them at all; they moved too fast without teleporting—all I can say is both had horns, one was short, and one had strange metal legs," she answered.

"Like what Omega has?" Sora asked, garnering a nod.

"Yes, but with claws…" Starbreaker replied, alighting her horn and willing her magic to put the straps back on. "And the metal only went up to here, on all legs," she added, using the stray blade to gesture at an elbow and gaskin for emphasis. Sora's expression darkened at what little had been relayed to her, but she had to admit some intel on the assailants was better than none.

"So… what do you want me to do?" Sora asked, donning her mask of apathy again.

Starbreaker turned and smiled at her, just finishing strapping herself in for another go. "Just help me watch for the bastards in case they need to be burned. You can fly, remember?" she stated rhetorically. Sora internally facehoofed, but spread her wings and flapped a few times to alight on the roof of the carriage. She caught a glimpse of blue magic shutting the opened door, and then a burst of light shining from a window before another flash had her shutting her eyes briefly.

When she opened her eyes, Yukito sat on the roof with her, borrowed rifle in hoof. He moved to climb on Sora's back, and with a sigh of reluctance she drooped her wings to allow him onboard. Once he finished jostling into position, he turned to Starbreaker. "Very well, we'll cover you from above. But don't charge headlong into danger like that again; we still have to treat Omega when the threat passes," he grumbled.

Starbreaker heard his comment and nodded. "Can do," she replied simply, before making her borrowed blade vanish in a flash of crimson light. Sora flapped and started to fly above the carriage, groaning in tandem with her husband at the prospect of yet more trouble. A few miles ahead, they noticed, was a blurred, fast-fading figure racing to the nearest of the mountains that separated the Crested Plains from the Hollowed Gorge.

"They're going straight ahead, whoever they are," Sora barked, donning a no-nonsense tone. "May as well start charging!" Starbreaker reared up for a bit before she started charging through the forest in a mad gallop, and with a bit of reluctance Sora flew after her, making sure to keep her speed roughly matched with her nemesis so as to not go ahead nor too far behind her.

Distantly, she and Yukito heard a stallion shouting. "Damnit, Tsih, we're going as fast as we can! Yes, we know we gotta lose the damned Star-Blasting Light! Just keep your fucking frogs still!" he yelled with enough volume to echo across the forest, even through the sound of beating hooves and flapping wings. Whoever he was, she had to give credit where it was due: that stallion had one good set of lungs to be able to manage that feat.

"Tsih…?" Sora muttered, frowning as she realized the name sounded… off. It wasn't one she was even the least bit familiar with, though she could've sworn she'd heard it somewhere before. The where, when, and how eluded her, however—that section of memory where it should have been relegated to had simply gone blank. "Who in the hell would name their foal Tsih?"

Chapter XIX- Embers of Red

Sora's eyes zeroed in on the distant form—as she and Yukito drew closer and closer to it while Starbreaker rushed through the forest. She heard the rifle being cocked, hoping the imminent confrontation wouldn't turn deadly as, with a blue flash of light, the miles-away figure just... melted into thin air. Nothing more than that flash of light left any trace as testament to their existence. She shook her head, blinking her eyes to confirm what she had just seen, then lifting both hooves to rub at them as the stretch of open skies ahead suddenly became dubiously empty.

Her eyes, though augmented, did not deceive her. Starbreaker's attackers, presuming it was indeed them, had up and vanished. "Great, now we've got magicians to contend with," she muttered dismally.

Yukito nodded. "It's bad enough the Corps and those cloaked ponies I keep hearing about are on our tails," he agreed. "Still… a good a chance as any to find suitable shelter."

Sora nodded. She started scanning the forest below, watching for any clearings or signs of foul play. Yukito lit up his horn and teleported off to reappear atop the carriage, then used his magic to forcibly slow the still-charging Starbreaker down. The carriage screeched as its wheels were gripped in magic, and Starbreaker herself reared up with hinds skidding and fronts poised to block an incoming tree, whinnying in alarm.

Once fully stopped, mere inches from the tree that would've otherwise been toppled, Starbreaker craned her neck to glare at Yukito. "What was that for?!" she growled.

"Your attackers have flown to the mountains, and possibly over them with some sort of spell or technology that made them vanish! We can't find them!" Yukito replied, brow furrowing. "We'll have to stop for the night; we're burning enough energy as it is."

Starbreaker huffed, lashing her tail. "Why can't you just teleport to them, and bring them back here?!" she barked.

"Because, at this point, I don't know where they've gone!" Yukito replied, lifting and then waving both front hooves and the borrowed rifle erratically in the air.

Starbreaker glowered, and snorted from flared nostrils. She moved to stand on all fours, scraping the ground with a hoof. "Fine…" she hissed. She looked up and found Sora starting to fly in wide, loose circles above the forest; it was only thanks to her gleaming blades she could spot her through the canopy. "What is Bright Idea doing?"

"Scouting the area for shelter," Yukito replied nonchalantly. "We should wait here until she comes back." He waited for the tell-tale sound of whistling blades and flapping wings, and hopped down to land on his hinds after five minutes passed without a sign nor sound to indicate her return. Taking a moment to reorient himself to make sure he didn't fire the gun on accident, he strode over to Starbreaker with a groan of irritation. "So… is this the woodland you've grazed in, before things took a downturn?"

Starbreaker nodded. "There should be a cave nearby…" She turned to scan the surrounding woodland, before her eyes fell on the slightly-busted carriage. "But I doubt Bright Idea can see it from above."

Yukito frowned. "Are you suggesting it's hidden?" he queried. That got a nod. "How so?"

Starbreaker turned to him and pursed her lips for a moment. "It's… under a very… strange tree," she muttered. "Stayed green when it got very cold."

Yukito's frown deepened. "Can this cavern fit our carriage?" he asked.

Starbreaker nodded again. "You'd need to teleport it inside, though," she answered.

Yukito groaned; the information was more vague than he'd have liked. The forest was full of trees, and any number of them could still harbor green leaves all the way into early winter. Adding to that the fact he knew exactly nil on where the cavern even was, just that they had to teleport the carriage into it… he had to resist the urge to drop the rifle and facehoof. Then he registered the hole where the little black stone used to be, and turned to her again. "Where is the sablestone fragment?" he asked.

"The what?" Starbreaker replied, turning to Yukito with a frown. Yukito lifted one hoof from the rifle and gestured behind his horn, and it took several seconds for Starbreaker to understand what he'd asked. "Oh, that thing…" she muttered, and willed her horn to glow before conjuring the hunk of sablestone in a flash of light. "Why?"

"Because… we may still need it yet," Yukito replied glumly. "Just not for you, since you've circumvented it." His face hardened, and Starbreaker found another steely glare being leveled at her. "There's… something you should know, by the way."

Starbreaker's ears turned back. "What?" she asked.

"You… overheard everything that happened that first week in? When Sora was assaulted?" Yukito asked. Starbreaker took a moment to scrounge from memory, then nodded. "Listen… I haven't killed any patients… but I'd gained a bit of notoriety in the Corps."

"Notoriety? What's that?" Starbreaker asked, tilting her head a little. Yukito internally facehoofed, and outwardly sighed.

"Basically, most of the few ponies in the Corps who like me at this rate… are already long gone. Only… Omega and Sora are left," Yukito replied, face hardening and darkening as he said that.

"And what about your other patients?" Starbreaker asked, the question blunt and yet holding a distinct air of both innocence and contempt with it. Yukito gave a slight flinch at that, in addition to a meager hiking of his tail.

"... quite simply, until you came along, I had no other patients to treat…" Yukito replied, his ears folding back. "The Corps wouldn't… let me treat anypony else once they started their ultimate weapons programs… and almost all of their ultimate weapons, before Sora, simply died within days of being deployed..."

Starbreaker frowned at that, tail swishing. "And why not?" she asked.

Yukito turned away, pursing his lips for a few seconds as he heard, at long last, the distinct whistling of blades. "... because I was… instrumental to them—it was only thanks to my efforts that Sora survived…" he muttered. "Why the Corps turned around and let me treat you, I'll never know…" He looked up as he heard branches stirring and breaking, and the whistling hushed as Sora tumbled through the canopy to land on the carriage's roof clumsily—hooves spread, wings lopsided, and twigs poking out of her mane. "Find anything?" he asked.

Sora turned and shook her head. "Nothing," she reported, hopping down from the carriage to land at its side with both wings jutting right up to avoid scratching it. "Not so much as hide or hair of our mystery assailants. Much less viable shelter. Most I found was a single green tree at the foot of the mountains." She awkwardly folded her wings, and wilted a little. "Our best bet is to reach the mountains before sundown at this rate, and camp out there."

Yukito nodded, and gave a groan of resignation. "We'll need plenty of firewood tonight…" he muttered. He turned to Starbreaker again, just in time to see her make the sablestone fragment vanish in another burst of light, and used the rifle to gesture to the surrounding grass shoots that poked through the fallen leaves. "And… grazing rations…"

"So… you want me to help you find what's good to eat here, and what isn't?" Starbreaker asked, realization slowly dawning as she turned to the shoots of grass the rifle was pointing at.

"I'm a medic, not a gardener," Yukito replied with a tired nod. "And at the rate the weather's progressing, we won't have much left to graze on before long."

"Much less accounting for the food I got from what was our pantry," Sora added with a sigh. She turned to the carriage and trotted to the first door to open it with a hoof, finding Omega on the floor of his section. "How are you holding up?"

"Like shit," Omega replied, kicking out with his hinds with augmented fronts barely moving. "I don't think I'll ever get used t' being… rewired, f'r lack of a better word…"

Sora gave a sympathetic wince at that. "I know that feeling all too well…" she muttered dismally. "You hungry?"

Omega shook his head. "Got… my muzzle stuffed at th' base. Don't ask with what," he muttered, turning a little green in the face at the mention. Sora gave another wince, imagining some very… questionable things going into his mouth. Part of her wanted to immediately abort that disturbing picture, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"Well… let us know when you're hungry, and we'll gather extra food in the meantime," Sora stated with a sigh. Omega nodded in understanding, and moved to rest his head in between his augmented forelegs. She gently closed the door and turned to Yukito, frowning. "You heard all of that?"

"Clear as crystal," Yukito replied with a nod, tail swishing. "Truth be told, I'd rather not ask about what was forced in his mouth." He turned to the surrounding wilderness and resisted the urge to bash the rifle against his face, but his tail twitched when he heard the sound of leaves rustling. "And if need be… we may well have to kill some wildlife just to eat dinner."

Starbreaker smiled at Yukito, eyes glinting crimson. "Now you're talking!" she cried, horn starting to crackle as excitement coursed through her body. Her tail and hooves twitched with only a meager hint of restraint as, slowly, Sora and Yukito turned to her in unison.

"You… eat meat?" Sora asked slowly, pupils shrinking in bewilderment. Starbreaker eagerly nodded, smile growing.

"Only because I had to; not much to graze on when it got really cold," Starbreaker replied, still twitching in place.

"Ponies eating meat is practically unheard of nowadays... guess that explains her aggression," Yukito muttered with a tired sigh. "Looks like we'd better start the hunt for timber and food." And with that, he cocked his rifle and took point, walking deeper into the forest. Starbreaker trundled along behind him with the carriage rattling, and Sora moved to walk behind it to watch for anymore surprise attacks.

As they trotted, though, the forest grew uncomfortably still and quiet. The few clouds overhead slowly, but surely, grew in both number and size, darkening as they did.

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It began to snow that night, the flakes landing with a very faint crackle on the fallen leaves and twigs that dotted the forest floor and the grass that made the Crested Plains. All fauna slowly, surely shriveled under the freezing might of the incoming storm, thunder crackling and rumbling above as the party and their stolen museum piece stumbled their way out of the forest in a bid to reach the mountains. Resting atop the carriage, arranged into a triangular formation and held in place by crimson magic, were a good dozen fallen trees, each rotting away and moss-covered with a few fallen twigs and leaves thrown on top for good measure. Insects skittered across the whole mass, ranging from beetles to spiders to grubs that the crimson magic prevented from getting away.

The sun had already set, taking with it the last of its warmth for the day. Sora shivered, wings rattling and crackling with warmth as her mana-pumped blades started to generate light and heat. Breath clouded in front of her face, and her bell delicately jingled as she continued to follow the carriage, watching for any fallen trees that might have considered jumping ship. Starbreaker marched on, undeterred by the cold thanks to her augments doubling as insulation, one eye on the stack of trees and the other looking dead ahead. Yukito had slowed a little, the cold getting past his augments, and in response he lit up his horn and conjured weak embers to both warm himself and to light the way.

Yukito waved his borrowed gun at his side and stopped when the party was only a mere fifty feet from the woods. He shivered, turning to Starbreaker with teeth chattering. "D-do you kn-know where th-the cave you m-mentioned is?" he asked, turning a slightly darker shade of blue as the cold started to get to him. At Starbreaker's nod, he dispelled his own embers, only to replace it with building light. "I-I'll get in the c-carriage then." With that, he vanished in a flash of light, and reappeared in the middle section of the museum piece with another burst of magic.

"Weirdo," Starbreaker muttered under her breath, and she continued to trot towards the mountains. She frowned when Sora trotted faster, around the carriage, and came in to go shoulder-to-shoulder with her. "What?" she asked.

"How are you holding up?" Sora asked, her blades tapping their tips together as she trotted.

"Still want to annihilate you," Starbreaker replied, fire starting to swirl along the length of her horn. "Why would you want to help me? I can only destroy everything I come in contact with if I wanted."

Sora sighed, seeing Starbreaker's rather tragic point. "I… had a suspicion the Corps might try to use you the second you were given the all-clear," she muttered. "Seeing you alive, when that shouldn't have been possible… just sparked something in me."

"Use me? For what?" Starbreaker pressed, eyes narrowing at the thought.

"I don't know, attempted world domination?" Sora shrugged, sighing again. "You're basically a trotting powerhouse of immense potential—potential that could be used for… horrible things. I couldn't… leave you to the wolves, as it were. And Yukito saw that too, and he and I came to the conclusion that you'd be better off elsewhere, still in our care. I mean, if you can get out of bed on three legs after a mere week into your treatment... then what else could you do in the meantime? What could possibly hold you back even then?"

"And how would you know?" Starbreaker shot back, the question causing Sora to tense for a moment.

"... I speak from experience," Sora mumbled in reply. "That's all ponies with immense potential are ever born for, when war rages—they go to the front lines, either snapping or turning dead inside. And… I guess you could say I have reached my breaking point, even though the Clash is already over."

Starbreaker's frown eased at that. "So you're becoming less weird in the head?" she translated.

Sora nodded. "Or more weird in the head, if you bothered to ask anypony else before torching them," she stated. "If not for Yukito… I'd have probably wanted to destroy everything by now. Or I could still be hibernating—both of which are neither here, nor there, yet are equally… terrifying."

Starbreaker smiled. "That's part of your talent, isn't it? Destroying things?" she asked.

Sora shook her head, a wry smile coming onto her face. "Not really, but I can destroy if I need to," she answered, smile falling a second later. "I just don't find enjoyment in destruction, and in most situations, I'd really rather not."

Starbreaker nodded, smile receding as she started to see Sora's point. "But what happens when you want to destroy something?" she asked.

A ghost of a wry smirk returned on Sora's face. "Well… the things I want to destroy usually end up in chunks," she replied in earnest. "And they're few, far in between, and otherwise not worth my time."

Starbreaker's smirk fell again. "Feh. Now you're just going back and forth—still being weird in that damned head of yours, and it's driving me nuts! I might torch you sooner, just to get it out of your skull!" she declared with a surprising amount of sincerity, which caused Sora to look at her with both brows raised.

"You want to purge my particular brand of crazy?" Sora translated, eyes widening at what her ears had just heard.

"Yes!" Starbreaker said emphatically, nodding with her horn alighting in fire once again. Her eyes narrowed and flashed orange as she added, "And I'd gladly do it here and now, if you didn't carry that stupid bell of yours!"

Sora simply rolled her eyes at that declaration. "I could just cut your horn off if you tried yanking my bell," she muttered, spreading the wing opposite from Starbreaker to wave its blades for emphasis. "Bone's easier to cut through than solid metal, and your horn's not augmented in the least." She closed her wing, watching as Starbreaker shrunk back a little and dimmed her horn with a wince.

Starbreaker snorted, but said nothing more on the matter, and turned to the mountains up ahead with ears pinned back. She scanned the foot of the mountains carefully, as even in the low light of the gathered storm clouds, she knew they had to find shelter before it could get any dimmer. One of these days, preferably when everything wasn't going to the seven hells in a hoofbasket, she made a mental note to remind herself to punch Sora in her muzzle.

Sora looked towards the sky, blinking as she saw the clouds give way for the briefest of moments. The moon, bright and full, glowed with a crimson light that sent its rays down onto the land. The snowflakes these rays touched shimmered with its glow as they danced past, almost like burning ash that didn't break apart as the wind carried them. She ceased channeling mana into her blades, staring at the red moon as she continued to trot at Starbreaker's side. In front of the moon, three silhouettes darted across the clouds, all floating with what looked to be rigidly-stiff wings.

Two of the silhouettes, one upright and the other on all fours, paused for a second—the third, going ahead of them, stopped to wave them over with a limb. The other two took notice and followed, vanishing into the cold darkness of the gathered storm clouds. Just a second after they left, the clouds closed again, shrouding the red moon and absorbing its light. Sora frowned, wondering what they were doing up there, where she could not see their features from ground level. Still… she couldn't dwell on it for a second longer.

She turned to Starbreaker again, finding that she was also looking skyward. "Have you ever… seen a red moon before?" she asked, hoping it wasn't just her imagination going wild again.

Starbreaker turned back to her and shook her head, and oddly, a small smile was on her muzzle. "I wonder… if I can make the moon turn red one of these days," she muttered. Sora smiled, internally giggling at that absurd thought, deciding she'd tell Starbreaker that was impossible at a later time.

So she settled on the more logical answer, "It only goes red by itself whenever the planet aligns with it. I guess we lucked out seeing it."

Starbreaker's smile didn't fall; instead, it widened. "Oh? And how often does that happen?" she asked.

"Every few years or so," Sora answered with a shrug. "But most ponies won't see it." She turned ahead to scan the foot of the mountains, and spotted a distant pine tree standing tall and proud between the feet of two mountains, branches a-waving in a passing breeze like a neon sign.

Starbreaker turned to it as well, giggling and pausing to clap her forehooves on the ground repeatedly. The ground split and cracked a little at her stomping, and the dying grass crunched at her enthusiasm. "That's it! Right there!" she cried, and surged forward to get to that lone pine tree. Sora rolled her eyes and sighed, and galloped after her to investigate why this tree had sparked this reaction from her. Behind them, the clouds parted again, and the blood moon shined its light on the distant base and city of the Umbralium Corps as the flames of its Protocol finally died in a burst of smog. That smog rose gradually, tinted red, and so did a few airships that whirred to life with a distant, terrible roar.

Chapter XX- Brief Respite

As she and her galloping charge neared the pine tree between the feet of the mountains, Sora could've sworn she heard distant singing echoing about the Crested Plains, the voices ethereal and the words just faint enough to be considered garbled. She dared not make out the words, but noted the echoing singers sounded oddly tranquil, all things considered—almost like they didn't have a care in the world. Even as she pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind and galloped on, she couldn't ignore her musings—unless, of course, she was hallucinating. Though she made a mental note to consult Yukito later; hopefully, he wasn't already going as stir-crazy as she was.

But Sora couldn't rest on her scant few laurels now, and her stomach started to cramp and twist as her runaway charge skid to a halt in front of the lone pine tree. She slowed her pace to a trot, coming around the stopped carriage and making a beeline to the tree to see what was up. Her brow furrowed as Starbreaker used her magic to part its branches and launched a small ball of fire between them, being surprisingly careful to not let the tree catch so much as a spark as what lay behind it was illuminated in crimson-blue.

Sora whistled as she beheld a hidden cavern right behind it, a rocky outcrop formed over its mouth as sturdy as could be—as though somepony turned it into the entrance of an elaborate house. Said outcrop also kept the moonlight out, yet did little to stop the small fireball from probing its underside. "That's… really fantastic, actually," Sora muttered in appraisal, eying the cavern with nothing short of awe.

Starbreaker smiled and giggled, but the snickering died halfway when a burst of light erupted from the carriage, followed by Yukito reappearing at Sora's side. "So this is why you stopped…" he muttered, and trotted to the tree to duck under its branches, the outcrop, and the fireball in one fluid motion. Horn alighting, he strode right inside to see what he was dealing with, hoofsteps echoing and fading as he plunged into the unknown with caution.

Starbreaker turned to Sora, smile fading. "Why's he just trotting in?" she asked.

Sora shrugged. "Getting a visual of the area to safely teleport us inside, I'm guessing," she replied in earnest. "Can't teleport into something and just expect everything to be alright unless you know what you're setting hoof into."

"So you're saying he might turn the carriage upside-down otherwise?" Starbreaker asked, eyes widening as she started to contemplate the ramifications of Yukito's enter-first-teleport-second approach. Sora nodded, idly wondering how she came to that rather inane train of thought. But, at least she could say her adversary was slowly but surely wising up.

Whether that wising up was good or bad… well, Sora couldn't say, really. All the same, it still concerned her on some level that Starbreaker had grown… fixated on things other than death and destruction, but that was one thing she could chalk up to unfortunate circumstance. She turned to the distant base, looking at it with mixed feelings. On one hoof, it was ran by a bunch of asshats she thought had no business running it to begin with—and why had they kept those ponies in what amounted to transparent cells? She remembered the visibly pregnant mare and dead-eyed stallion, an icy chill trickling down her spine right to her augments.

What were those two ponies in particular doing there to begin with? And why had they experimented on Omega—were the Corps trying to yet again make another ultimate weapon? The air around her turned substantially colder as she entertained that horribly morbid thought. Some part of her internally muttered that she didn't want to know what would happen to the poor foal that would be born in that transparent, isolated box.

On the other hoof, though, it was the same place where she'd regularly get food and bed—only one of which was guaranteed out here in the wilderness, thanks to her yoinking a carriage, but even that wouldn't last—sooner or later, her and Starbreaker's antics would trash it beyond repair. She knew in her heart of hearts she was diving headfirst into what many ponies would rightfully call a fool's journey—only taken because she held onto a distant hope that, maybe, things could change for possibly the better. It only became clear to her earlier that day that change… would have to be substantial for the Corps before she could ever return to it.

Assuming she could even make it out of her self-imposed journey alive, of course, considering she was already seeing distant airships hovering about the rising cloud of tinted smog with military-grade caution. Also assuming on a rather grand and generous scale that they'd take her back even after its leadership changed hooves—which she doubted with a particularly strong air of resignation.

She'd just have to grin and bear her woes now. She turned to the cavern as she heard the sound of returning hoofsteps, and sighed as Yukito emerged again. "It'll do for the night, but we're leaving as soon as we are able," he reported, donning a glum frown. He teleported in another flash of light, returning to sitting within the carriage. Then, his aura lanced around the vehicle, the wood stacked on top of it, and Starbreaker all at once before they vanished in another burst that itself was succeeded by a dim third that erupted from within the cavern.

Sora fluffed her wings and trotted past the tree, doing her best to not get caught in its branches whilst at the same time avoiding severing so much as a needle on its trunk. She'd have time to reflect on her decisions later, when she and her makeshift herd had enough time to lay low and slip under the Corps' radar. After avoiding becoming tangled by the tree, she ducked under the outcrop and let her ocular augments whir to life, letting her see into the darkness, albeit minimally.

A steep slope greeted her, heading right down to a flat floor after about forty yards, squeezing onto itself with the aid of tooth-like stalactites. Sora ducked again and angled her hooves to start traversing the entrance, digging her frogs in for what little traction she could get from solid stone. She angled her wings to the floor, blades scraping and rattling against the stone, but never leaving anything more than minor scratches that could be mistaken as the markings of a wild beast to any casual observers with the dumb luck to come across this cave.

She kept her head low to avoid the stalagtites as she passed under them, warily watching for any that might drop onto her. Yet no stalactite broke formation, even as she reached the floor of the cavern to behold a large enough space for three carriages, where the de-harnessed Starbreaker set to work on moving the wood off the top of their ride. To one wall, a pile of twigs sat, mixed with the bleached bones of no more than ten animals, and apart from this and a small, shrivelled bed made of dried twigs and moss, the cavern was pretty barren.

Starbreaker found a rather large beetle scuttling amongst the assorted timber and picked it up with her magic. She span it around for a moment, seeing if it was any danger whatsoever, but all the beetle did was snap open its elytra and flap its wings with legs kicking for dear life. It also flailed its head, which boasted a single horn only a measly quarter-length of a grown pegasus's secondary feather, buzzing in a feeble attempt to escape.

"Holy hell, that's an elephant beetle!" Sora muttered, trotting over to inspect the struggling insect. She lifted a hoof under its legs, and it clutched onto her pastern right away, tugging again and again against the magic holding it. "And he's got some mighty tusks for one, too." The crimson magic let go of the hapless insect, who promptly launched off of Sora's pastern and right into her face. Sora squawked and ducked for cover, letting the beetle fly out overhead as fast as its wings could carry it.

"Feh, I don't like their taste. Too euch," Starbreaker remarked, sticking her tongue out as her face twisted in disgust. "I'd rather eat rabbits, but they're hard to catch."

"I'd stick to squash and brussel sprouts," Sora muttered, straightening her posture as the middle door of the carriage flew open with the aid of blue magic. Yukito stumbled out a moment later, left hoof firmly on his temple, rubbing feverishly. "You alright?"

Yukito nodded, and used his magic to wrench open the first door on the carriage. "Not sure how Omega's holding up," he muttered, trotting over to inspect the sorry sap within the first seat. Then, carefully, he lifted Omega in his magic and pulled him out, wincing as Starbreaker lifted one of the felled trees with her magic and started grinding it into splinters with her front hooves. Omega, dozing peacefully even as he was levitated, barely stirred with tail between his hinds and augmented fronts dangling as though they had weights tied to them. His cranial wounds, from which wires poked out, had started to bleed however, and Yukito waved Sora over with a hoof.

Sora frowned as she cantered over to investigate, a hoof slowly reaching up to her bell as Yukito shook Omega awake with some of his magic grasping his withers. Omega stirred, snorting as his eyes opened. "Hunh? Is it dinner time yet?" Omega asked, voice somewhat slurred from sleep.

"No, time for your checkup," Yukito replied with a sigh. He helped Omega sit up on his haunches to better scan his injuries. "You're bleeding, which tells me you might have suffered a concussion."

Sora put a hoof to her bell and looked at the floor in front of Omega's forelegs. "Light, return gauze," she muttered, and the bell jingled and glowed fitfully before it expelled a burst of light that coalesced into a solid gauze roll that landed on its side. Yukito scooped up the roll in his magic, unwound it, and started to wrap it around Omega's skull.

Omega wilted a little as he mentally caught up to Yukito's suspicion of him having a concussion. Then he registered that the gauze going round and round his head came from a bell, and he turned to Sora with a vexed frown. "Whatever happened t' missiles, filly?" he asked.

Sora shrugged. "Well… haven't had a chance to restock on the damn things since the Clash ended and the need for missiles plummeted to the sum of nil, but found my bell can hold all manner of other stuff in the meantime," she answered. "And frankly, I don't want what I've already stored in my bell to become incendiary exponents. We're in hot water anyway, and I don't need to leave missile-sized craters everywhere I go."

Omega nodded and winced as the bandages tightened on his head, just enough to stay on and cover the wires poking from it. "Fair enough," he conceded. He averted his gaze to Yukito, who stuck his tongue out of the corner of his lips in concentration as he started to tie the gauze into a knot, using the end he'd already dispensed and half of the remaining roll as an anchor. As soon as the knot was completed, Sora lifted a wing and snipped the roll an inch from the tie-off point, and she watched as Yukito made the remains of the roll vanish before carefully studying the applied bandages.

"We'll have to wait a while to remove those exposed wires… you may well have to keep the bandage on your head just to keep the birds from trying to eat them," Yukito muttered with a shudder that shook him hard enough to make his tail-hairs stand on end for a few fleeting seconds. With a foul aftertaste in his mouth with that declaration, he had to keep himself from retching as he added, "I'd imagine having wires removed from one's brain, still conscious, wouldn't be too pleasant."

Omega wilted, tail shivering. "Having th' wires go in was even worse, doc," he replied bitterly, ears turning back. "I feel like I'm… scrambled, y'know?"

Yukito's brow furrowed. What he'd just heard didn't bode particularly well in regards to what he'd just finished tying up in bandages. "Do you suffer from memory loss? Emotional impairment?" he asked, a cautious edge in his voice that wasn't there before. Omega shook his head.

"Nope, just… I wish I could forget what th' Corps did to me, if that makes sense," Omega muttered dismally, tail drooping. "Like… having ten thousand needles stuck wh-where…" His voice cracked as he went on, before stopping with a shiver. Yukito lifted a hoof to pat his withers, having a hunch as to where these 'ten thousand needles' wound up in.

The three jumped when they heard the very distinct crackle of something erupting into flame, and twisted to look at Starbreaker, who had formed a makeshift firepit out of the dried moss-leaf bed. She was casually throwing bits of torn bark into it with her magic, while with a hoof she held a twig that got impaled through a very large, very unfortunate spider's head. The blue-red flames popped and sizzled as they were fueled by torn-up trees, and warmth started to spread in the cavern.

The impaled spider flailed its legs as it was slowly toasted alive, once-regal blue color slowly fading into a toasty hue matching Omega's coat. Stranger still, most of the rest of the timber pile was intact, complete with insects hustling to beat a hasty retreat. Starbreaker turned to the three and waved, grinning a small, serene, distinctly out of place smile. "I found a tasty morsel!" Starbreaker chirped, her chipper tone unnerving Sora a little.

Omega turned a shade or two of healthy green upon seeing the spider. "I-is that… a st-starsilk spider?" he asked, before lurching with Sora and Yukito as Starbreaker pulled the spider out of the fire and took out a healthy chunk of its abdomen in one rather crunchy bite.

"It was a starsilk spider…" Sora grumbled, cheeks puffing out as she tried to reign in her protesting stomach.

"Looks like we have ourselves a pony who has a bad case of Diomedis Defectus…" Yukito mumbled, his legs shaking a little at the sight. "This… will take getting some used to…" He turned away, and so did Sora, both looking to Omega as Starbreaker continued to munch on the poor spider.

"She's not gonna eat u-us, is she?" Omega muttered, eyes wide in dawning horror. Sora shook her head, lifted a hoof, and put it on his shoulder.

"No…" Sora swallowed her protesting stomach before continuing in a low whisper, "I'm not going to let our possibly-Diomedian nightmare eat you."

Starbreaker, despite being half-deaf, turned to the three and snickered. "I won't eat you—ponies taste horrible to me. Especially doctors," she stated rather unhelpfully before taking off one of the spider's legs to munch on it. "Worse than beetles."

Sora shivered at that resultant mental imagery, though she internally heaved a sigh of relief at the same time. Being eaten post-mortem was a pretty horrible way to go, and she was glad Starbreaker was sane enough—that is, if she were at some point even sane to begin with—to understand that. Although… her comment about doctors still concerned her. She eyed Omega as Yukito magically lifted him up to put him back in the carriage. "Need a blanket? I brought a couple," she offered, hoping to the old gods she could change the subject before the Diomedian nightmare she was now stuck with could insert two more bits into the conversation.

"And brain bleach," Omega answered, slumping as he was plopped on the seat as though he could somehow sink into it. Sora nodded, put her hoof to the bell, muttered something that was drowned out by the sound of wood snapping as Starbreaker chucked yet more wood into her inferno, and waited for her bell to jingle. It didn't take long to respond to whatever she'd commanded it to do.

In seconds it rang and spat out another burst of light that caused no less than two dozen blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags to appear at her hooves, all rolled up tightly onto each other in neat little bundles of two apiece. Some had nasty slash marks on them, a few running so deep it was a miracle those stacks they'd afflicted were even standing to begin with. Omega's eyes widened, and he gave a low whistle. "Geez, how much did you stack?"

"Enough to smother the Admiral in a pillow fort," Sora replied, making a sweeping gesture with her hoof at the array of rolled-up bundles. "Pick your poison." Omega just shrugged his withers.

"A sleeping bag sounds good," Omega muttered. "Don't want t' wrestle a blanket." Yukito seized a rolled-up sleeping bag in his magic, unfurled it, and promptly levitated it over to wrap Omega in it back hooves first. Omega let him pull the sleeping bag across his body, as he wasn't really in a position to do anything about it at the moment, and smiled as its soothing and silky smooth texture. After it came to stop at his neck, he found a pillow being nestled under his chin, a little firm and thick, but he didn't mind since it kept his head out from between his forelegs. "Thanks doc," he chirped.

Sora nodded. "You're welcome," Yukito replied, smiling faintly as he lifted two more bundles of blankets and pillows, one being double the mass of the other. Sora made the rest vanish with the aid of her bell, which jingled incessantly until the rest was swallowed up in magical light it promptly absorbed. "I'm glad I took the spares from the Corps."

Omega perked up at that. "Wait, th' Corps had spares?" he echoed.

Yukito nodded again. "It always does, mostly in the events of emergency patients. I took just enough they probably wouldn't think anything of it," he answered. "Only… five pillows and three blankets, in fact; the rest, I'd already gathered over the years with what few bits I had left after paying my bills, in the event I'd find myself homeless."

"Double that, ever since I married him," Sora added with a wry smirk. "On account of blades."

Omega nodded and nestled into the pillow. It'd make sense these two would be prepared for such a possibility, and he was internally grateful they were able to scrounge up what little they could get their hooves on. "Do either o' you think you'd be homeless if th' Corps only found out you two were married?" he asked sincerely.

Sora wilted at that. "Well… I had the misfortune of overhearing a few ponies who called me dumb on the basis of my being an ultimate weapon, and that they wouldn't have let Sham get me hitched if they'd known before then…" She shivered, then steeled herself. "But that's neither here nor there."

"Eh, true, but it still makes me wonder," Omega conceded with another shrug. He closed his eyes and smiled. Yukito gently closed his door and sighed, turning to the middle seat to lay out the roll of blankets and pillows he'd selected.

"Did either of you see the blood moon?" Yukito asked, turning to Sora first. His ears twitched when he noticed he could only hear the crackle of flames, and that the sound of chewing crunchy meat had stopped altogether. Sora nodded.

"Yeah, and… things dancing in front of it," Sora muttered, frowning. "You think it's a bad sign?"

Yukito grimly nodded. "For whom, though, I can't exactly say," he muttered in reply. "But I didn't think I'd ever see one so soon, after the Clash…"

Starbreaker giggled, and when the two turned to her, she tossed the stick that once held a skewered, cooked spider on it over her withers. She then turned to the timber pile and made the whole thing vanish, leaves and all, in a burst of crimson light. "But it looked like it could set the skies ablaze…" she muttered with a faint note of appraisal. Her prosthetic ear twitched, and her lips twisted into a smile. "You think those blowhards who run the army saw it?"

"Considering all that has happened, they probably did… but might be more concerned with where we've gone," Sora answered with a shrug. "They'd think nothing of a blood moon."

Yukito nodded and swished his tail a little, barely moving it from side to side. "That reminds me… the shadow who'd teleported me and Starbreaker on the roof didn't even say anything," he muttered, causing Sora to turn to him with both brows raised high. "It had a mouth, the mouth moved, yet… it was deathly silent. And when Starbreaker tried to touch it to see what was wrong, her hoof went straight through it."

Sora took a moment to absorb all of that and mentally picture it. "Did you… figure out what it tried telling you?" she asked. Yukito shook his head.

"Not one ounce of coherent mouthing; it was struggling with just moving its jaws. And it was rattling off in near-blackness before we'd been whisked up a few floors," Yukito answered with a frown. "Stranger still, it was upright—all the time. Even sat on its haunches in the posture."

Sora shivered, figuring which specter he was talking about. "It… came to me in the base. But all I could see was its glowing eyes and… it had three horns," she muttered. "And it looked really, really pissed off. Like, firing magic everywhere kind of pissed. At what… I don't even know—all I know is, I was there to witness its rampage."

Yukito approached Sora and nuzzled her. She nuzzled back, and winced as another stomach cramp ran its course. "Are you alright?" he asked, pulling away to scrutinize her closely.

Starbreaker, having also caught the wince, trotted over with a frown. "What is it now?" she groaned.

"Just stomach cramps. I'm fine," Sora muttered, ears folding back and a blush spreading on her face as her stomach gurgled. She put a hoof to her bell. "I'll pull out some dinner…"

Yukito lifted a hoof and clutched Sora's raised pastern, stopping her just as she started to mutter to her bell. Perplexed, she looked at him and found a confused glint in his eyes. "Not tonight," he said bluntly. His ears twitched haltingly, as though straining. Slowly, Sora's ears rotated about before freezing as they folded upon her head—that was when she heard it, a series of distant and terrible roars that had drowned out the singing she'd heard earlier. "The hunt's already begun… we'll have to travel fast and eat light, especially you."

Hearing that made Sora wilt, but at the same time, she had to concede his point—especially since she was the only one who could fly, and if those distant growls came from where she thought they did… And that wasn't even touching the issue of rationing everything out; there were four mouths to feed, and sooner or later, food was going to run out altogether. Unless Starbreaker got the bright idea to cannibalize them, but then where would she end up after reducing their bodies to bones?

Sora had to stop herself from gagging at that terrible image. She hoped Starbreaker wouldn't resort to such underhoofed methods when it came time to sleep. But she pushed that aside for now, as the distant roaring echoed in the cavern from outside—louder than before.

And, without a doubt, closer than before. Her stomach twisted once more, and her instinct screamed at her to leave. But she couldn't, at least not yet; nor could the others, for that matter. For in their haste to find shelter, they had unwittingly trapped themselves for their pursuers to find.

That was assuming, of course, the Corps started to hunt them down this night.

Chapter XXII- Charged Clouds

Things had gone eerily silent in the hours that had passed. The snow piled up and up until it swallowed the entrance of the cavern, some sloping down into its throat in a manner resembling creeping tendrils. The four slept in their stolen vehicle, oblivious to the distant roaring that had long since faded outside. The shadows continued to writhe and slither, wrapping around the carriage—such was the shadows' nature, for there was no light with which to dispel them.

The first to awaken, ironically enough, was Yukito. His eyes slowly opened, and he could see his surroundings after a few seconds of letting them adjust to the darkness. His horn glowed and he opened the carriage door with just a little push of magic, to let fresh air in to gauge the outside situation. He inhaled deeply, and shivered as a faint chill touched his snout from beyond the door. At his side, her mane disheveled from a lack of brushing even in spite of the manecut, Sora stirred with a small grumble.

Yukito was tempted to get in some more sleep, his body aching a little as it begged him to do just that. But the situation was turning more and more dire—and somepony had to be up to start keeping watch sooner or later. With great reluctance, and a titanic yawn, he shifted to get out of the covers and off the seat to stretch his legs, but not before gently nuzzling Sora. He shuffled out to not rouse his sleeping wife; she was going to need all the energy she could get to fly their ride over the Hollowed Gorge, and…

He paused upon stepping out of the carriage, frowning. "I… should pay Sham a visit," he muttered dismally. "I at least… owe her that much." He sighed and turned to Omega's door and opened it with a flicker of magic, being careful to keep quiet. He walked over and peeked in, frown easing as he saw Omega sleeping with a small smile and eyes serenely closed. His ears twitched, but other than that, the newly-augmented stallion didn't stir. Yukito closed his door and trotted over to Starbreaker's cab and opened her door to check on her.

Starbreaker, however, was sitting up and looking at him as soon as he poked his head in. Her tail lashed, hopelessly tangled to the point it looked more like a feather duster as it moved, and her eyes turned a shade of purple. Had Yukito not known her eyes were augmented beforehoof, he'd have expected them to be bloodshot by now. "Trouble sleeping?" he asked.

Starbreaker shook her head. "Just felt this thing moving and got up," she answered.

"Oh, alright," Yukito muttered, sighing internally in relief. At least she wouldn't be cranky for the day—all the better for the rest of the group, he wagered. "Why… are your eyes purple?" he questioned.

Starbreaker glowered and wilted a little, ears drooping and shoulders sagging. She maintained eye contact, however, and simply shook her head mutely. "When will we get out of this cave?" she muttered.

Yukito let his ears twitch, idly scraping a hoof against the ground. "As soon as Sora wakes up," he answered. He wanted to press Starbreaker for more answers, but resisted the urge, as that would have lead to her potentially evading the original question again. That, and he didn't fancy another outburst at all; best to leave that slumbering beast alone. "Stay here. I'll take a look outside," he ordered. At Star's nod, he pulled his head back and trotted to the entrance of the cavern without bothering to make himself quiet. As he went, he lit up his horn to cast another light and—what the?

A shadow slid out of his light's radius, instead of dissipating into nothing. It shifted from side to side as it sank into the rest of the darkness, too fluid to be artificial, yet too corporeal to have been his imagination. Yukito's brow furrowed, and his mouth hung ajar at the sight. He trotted to the odd occurrence, which tried to hide in the dwindling sable before being cornered. Yet when he had it cornered, it just vanished into thin air, and a gust of wind rushed past his mane the instant it was gone.

Yukito shook his head and trotted back to the entrance of the cavern, going up that slope with his mind being sent into a tizzy at the anomaly. His ears twitched, and as the last bits of sleep-fog were cast aside, he found his speed picking up bit by bit, though he was careful to avoid going into a gallop. His steps echoed as he went, tumbling over each other as he didn't bother to keep any one rhythm—here in the wilds, there was no need to. All he had to do, really, was make sure his frogs could get some traction so he wouldn't slip off the slanted entrance and find himself back on square one.

He grumbled as the entrance's overhang came into view, and with it, the snow that had plugged it up. For a moment, he simply stared at it before letting his magic extend outwards to it. Whole clumps of snow the length of one foreleg were pried out and cast away; he made a mental note to teleport instead of risking a slide down once he was done digging. Compared to the teleport heist at the base—or hell, his sparring session with Sora—digging furrows into the clogged entrance was a cakewalk, helped by the snow collapsing on itself as he worked. And neither were very taxing; his horn didn't even start steaming as, with a bothersome ten minutes, he dug his way out from the overhang.

Outside, past the pine tree, he found the sky above still overcast with clouds—and suspiciously empty besides. His brow furrowed further, digging wrinkles into his snout as he waited for something—an airship, a lone pegasus, maybe a unicorn with turbines—to waltz overhead. But the skies didn't answer; they barely stirred, almost holding a collective breath. Stranger still, what little activity he could see around the base had slowed considerably; the smoke long since stopped rising, and only one or two distant forms hovered incessantly around it.

For most, this was an idyllic scene of tranquility. For him, anything but.

Everything about what he was seeing, in regards to the base itself and the silence of the skies, had an air of wrongness wafting around it. Whatever the case, there was no way in the seven hells he'd stick around any longer than needed. Yukito sighed, nose crinkling some more as his horn glowed.

Wordlessly, he teleported back into the cavern, almost immediately casting his light the moment he'd emerged from the burst to find the carriage sitting right where he'd left it. It jostled a little, and the middle door opened before Sora stumbled out, eyes dazed and distant for a few seconds as she trotted to him. "What's going on…" she croaked, ocular augments whirring to life with a small delay to let them glow. Heavens above, even glowing, her eyes were almost glazed with sleep.

"Nothing but telecoms static outside," Yukito replied, brow furrowing a little more. "Make yourself something to eat; Star's awake, and we'll have to do another check-up on Omega before we leave."

Sora nodded. "May as well give… a light breakfast to everypony," she muttered, a hoof rising to her bell. Clicking the button to activate it, she gave a weary sigh. "Light, return… three cans of... " The next word rolled off her tongue in a way that made her wince and retch just uttering it, "Olives…"

The bell rang and horked up three bursts of light in short order, which materialized into metal pastern-length tins that didn't have labels. She held one down with a foreleg and spread one wing to angle its blades just under the can's rim, activating more augments. She took a few seconds patiently waiting for the blades to crackle and glow before even trying to slice through the top of the container.

As she worked to open the cans as cleanly as she could, Yukito trotted over to the carriage and flung the other two doors open with a flick of his horn. Starbreaker jumped out straight away, and Omega perked up with a yawn. "Doc, what time is it?" Omega asked, licking his lips as he saw one opened can get moved aside.

"Daytime," Yukito replied, gently grasping Omega with his magic. Unravelling his blankets and pulling him out, he set him steadily on all four legs outside his cab. He did a quick once-over, making sure the bandages wouldn't come off or that his new legs would bend out of place.

Starbreaker trotted over to Sora as Yukito continued with his examination, ears perked as she saw another opened can get set to the side. "Food?" she guessed.

Sora nodded, but the motion was sluggish. She opened the last can and hoofed it to her charge personally. "It's not much… but we'll have to make do," she muttered.

Starbreaker took the can with a hoof, and lit up her horn to pluck an olive out of it. She popped it in her mouth and chewed, letting it sit every few seconds as she contemplated its flavor. As she did this, Yukito finished the check-up, escorted Omega over and gave him a can of his own. Afterwards, he took half the olives out of the third can to pop in his own mouth one at a time. Sora took the half-empty can and lifted it hesitantly to her oddly-twitching muzzle.

"Don't fancy olives?" Omega guessed, before Yukito picked up the can he got for him and held it to his mouth. He took a few olives, watching as Sora nodded with a wince and her muzzle scrunching up.

"I-I… I just don't know what it is about them…" Sora muttered before tilting her head and the can once her lips made contact with the rim. In one fell swoop she downed the remainder, chewing just enough to let them enter the hatch with ease. Afterwards, she dropped the can and winced again, ears flattening against her head. "Only s-saving grace? They're sm-small," she croaked, shaking as though she'd swallowed solid ice. With that, the group commenced eating in silence, dread gnawing its way through their souls as the olives were devoured.

Sora, having finished her meager meal first already, started to fidget instead. Her wings twitched, her tail hiked and dropped in its best impression of a flag yet, and her ears would constantly rotate back and forth. Her apathetic mask started cracking as the aftertaste of canned olives—euch—lingered in her mouth, and before long her expression started giving way to alternating frowns.

One was small and tight with lips firmly pressed together framed by furrowing brows, the other wide and almost gaping with brows racing to scale her forehead. Her fur began to crawl as butterflies woke up in the pit of her stomach and did a little get-together with their new and mushy playmates. Augments writhed here and there, of their own accord, making whole parts of her body squirm in ways that would have made internal parasites envious. And through it all she found herself looking at a point past the cavern wall.

But, with this particular dread and bout of waking up came a small respite, in that her stomach cramps had stopped. Though even that was minor enough for her to wedge it in the 'dailies done' section of her mental archive. She mentally relayed everything she had seen past that labeled door that she had destroyed, shivering at those vacant looks she had received… Then there was the operating room, and Omega being dragged to a blazing furnace… or perhaps to a cell, she didn't know, but still…

The Corps was hiding something—something big, by the size of that chamber alone. She decided there and then that, if she ever somehow had foals at some point in her questionably bleak future, then she wasn't going to enlighten them on that chamber's existence. Nope. Not happening. No force in the universe would make her do it. She shook her head, shelving those unsavory thoughts in the 'let's not discuss this ever again' section of her brain, one labeled 'even under life-threatening circumstances.'

She took a deep breath through her nostrils—briefly strengthening the aftertaste of olives; she was going to have to wash that out sooner or later—and closed her eyes. She had to clear her head and focus on the immediate. She forced her wings to stop fidgeting and lowered her tail. Another deep breath followed her first lengthy exhale of the day. Tense muscles and augments relaxed, ever so slightly. Her flesh stopped squirming, and the butterflies in her stomach calmed down. Easy does it…

A voice cut through her self-imposed mental fog. "Sora? Anypony home?" Sora opened her eyes and turned to the source, finding Yukito looking at her rather intently. He had finished off his olives, and sported a tight frown on his muzzle. "You spaced out for a second there…"

Sora gave another lengthy exhale and nodded. "Just… trying to figure out what to do," she muttered apologetically. She chanced a glance at the cans Omega and Starbreaker had, and found both—plus her and Yukito's shared can—empty and floating in red magic with their severed tops. Then she turned to Starbreaker to find her horn glowing. "And you can keep those," she added as an aside.

Starbreaker grinned wickedly, eyes widening and sparkling in delight. Her magic grew brighter, and her aura started to flicker and pop wildly around the cans before erupting in blue and red flames. In seconds, the metal super-heated to a white-hot mass of molten mush that tried to escape the magical hold, but wasn't strong enough to do so. A burst of more light exploded next to it, summoning forth the blade that tried to strike at her brain yesterday. It too join the melted cans, likewise heating and twisting upon itself into something unrecognizable.

Sora winced at the growing temperature and cautiously lifted one set of blades from her side, but no further than a few inches. She watched the bundle of artificial magma as it all coalesced into a spherical shape with tiny, almost unnoticed protrusions marking its ends. The roiling fires around it shaped it further, smoothed out its surface, almost polished it. Then the pyre dimmed, tongues growing weaker and feebler until they died altogether. Starbreaker clapped her forehooves together, giggling with that childish look still firmly etched on her face as the heated metal began to cool in her magic.

When it finished solidifying a half-minute afterwards, it spun lazily in her aura's hold. Red power coursed the circumference of the object, giving stark contrast to an otherwise cast iron black surface. The bumps at the ends connected these lines of power seamlessly, themselves crimson and shimmering with light that pulsed intermittently. With each pulse came a tiny beep, beep that could only be heard due to the group's collective silence.

"She… transmogrified… cans and a blade into…" Yukito trailed off, paling at the impressive yet awful sight. He stood up, tail rising on end. "When did you—"

Starbreaker turned her wicked, triumphant smirk towards him, doing nothing more to silence him on the spot. She levitated the object next to her head, scrutinizing it out of the corner of her eye. "About… two months after I got my cutie mark," she admitted with a shrug of earnest.

She held up a hoof to compare it to the object, eyes darting between both before finding her newest contribution to the world was slightly smaller than her own limb. Her childish glee melted, and with its passing her face contorted into a neutral expression. "Feh. It'll do." With that, she made the anomaly vanish in a flash of light and dropped her hoof. "And no, I won't blow you lot up with it."

Yukito sat down with a snort, though internally he'd just realized his heart was trying to make a pilgrimage out his throat. Great, the Star-Blasting Light now had another weapon at her disposal. Whoo boy. He turned to Omega, whose ears had rotated fully back on his head. "D-doc, I don't wanna b-become shrapnel…" Omega whimpered.

Yukito patted Omega on the withers reassuringly. Starbreaker turned to him, eyes narrowing whilst her brows climbed up her forehead. "Me, turn you to shrapnel?" she said in a scandalized tone, shaking her head with the question. "I'd just leave a black smudge where you're standing—you're not augmented enough for shrapnel."

Omega wilted at that scathing statement. Sora just shook her head and tapped her blades against the ground with enough force to make them clang, but not enough to leave indents. "Well, that explains an awful lot," she muttered, tone just the barest tinge of dismayed. Standing up and pulling her extended wing back, she glanced at everypony else. "You guys ready?"

Yukito and Omega both nodded. Starbreaker did likewise. With no further words they returned to the carriage and closed the doors behind themselves, with Omega and Yukito sharing a cab. The latter also made the blankets and such vanish in flashes of light; no use having them out when they wouldn't get used. Sora trotted to get herself harnessed in while they got settled.

She applied the harness and tightened the straps as needed, making sure her wings wouldn't be the least bit obstructed, and continued to inhale and exhale deeply. She even double-checked the straps, just to be on the safe side once she secured the last one in place. When that was done, she set off for the entrance with a flap and a gallop, before Yukito's magic embraced her and the construct from within.

The carriage, its passengers, and Sora all vanished in a burst of light before reappearing in the Crested Plains a mile away from the cavern. Hitting the snow-covered ground without missing a beat, Sora began flapping and galloping in wide circles to build momentum, keeping her eyes focused on the mountains that separated the Plains from the Gorge. When she had gathered enough momentum, she began to flap her wings with all her might until she began to soar, sending snow everywhere as she launched off. Up and up in a slow spiral she went, partly to gain altitude and vantage points as well as to kick-start her augments for the journey she was about to take.

Her gut twisted as she began to reach the mountain peaks, though not in a cramp—that would have indicated the straps were on too tightly or that she'd eaten too little. No, it was a subtle roiling of her muscles, one that sent harmless shocks through her system—one roiling she knew all too well, whose message she could not misunderstand. But, she would have to shelve it sooner or later, and so she did—it was just another distraction at first.

Sora's ears twitched as she heard the distant crackle of thunder. She found another storm roiling behind the mountains, building in mass and momentum of its own, bursting with lightning here and there that never left the clouds. The lightning was of the dimmed sort, if she had to guess. That just affirmed what her gut was telling her, and she snorted ruefully. "Of course, it just has to be storming when I'm dragging with me a giant lightning rod…" she hissed.

Still, she had little say in the matter, for even an ultimate weapon could only do so much with the four hooves that Mother Nature gave them. Sora flew right into the storm, eyes narrowing when she noticed the clouds were darker than usual. The lightning danced between the clouds furiously, jumping in great leaps and bounds that illuminated the gaps of its expansive home. It seemed far brighter than normal, but Sora supposed that was because she wasn't looking at it from ground level.

She looked down as a gap opened beneath her hooves, and she scanned it carefully before finding the tail-end of the Hollowed Gorge over the course of a few minutes. Strange, it wasn't supposed to be greying around the edges... was it? Slowly, she descended as before, but not in a corkscrew, nor risking the folding of her wings. Now that she looked at it without the clouds getting in her way, the Gorge itself seemed a tinge darker too. Less full of snow as well; it appeared deeper, and wider, hungering for more snow that wouldn't fall.

Slowly, a morbid thought crept into the back of Sora's mind, and it would not go away even as she noticed it had taken residence. "Has… Sham… been disturbed…?" she muttered, shivering from both those implications and the outside cold pelting her harder than before. Her eyes widened at the possibility; dear gods of old, if somepony had disturbed her dearest friend or her tomb-mates…

Alarm took hold, and lit a fire throughout her soul. Something else had intruded upon the dwelling of snow and ice, casting its shadow here. Sora glanced around on instinct, scanning the surrounding moors as far as she could possibly see.

Nothing stirred except for the carriage behind her as her wings guided it along. The intracloud lightning did not strike down. Bizarrely, snow finally began to drift from the roiling storm, first in flecks, before it became a freezing torrent that stung her from every angle. Sora continued to descend in spite of it, this time letting her blades come to life with her augments to help resist the onslaught. That gut feeling grew stronger, twisting her innards in less subtle ways as she flew to the chasm as fast as she was able.

She continued glancing this way and that, even as she reached the chasm's tail. Flying above it rather than in it, she winced as she felt snow sticking to her feathers and mane as she once again followed the rest of the chasm. Through the torrent of whirling, fierce white that she was convinced had been angered, that widening maw was the only thing that pointed the way.

She was grateful she could still see it. The snow within the Gorge was kicking up now, dancing in hellish flurries and unusual dervishes, building and tearing down mounds as they pleased. The few icicles she could make out broke with her passing, impaling and burying themselves in the uncaring white. The thunder steadily grew louder and louder, until its very passing was enough to shake earth and sky with a single clap.

Sora reoriented herself as the air ceased vibrating. Panic starting to run circles in her dizzied brain, she began to wonder what had disturbed this quiet place to elicit this reaction from the storm—and how. Her wings beat faster to counteract the cold and the howling winds, blades sizzling and vaporizing any and all flakes they touched, though it was never enough to even dent the onslaught.

But no shadows came at her, even through this storm.

None at all. It was just as lifeless as before, otherwise.

And that worried her. Sora's hooves fidgeted as she considered, perhaps, the object of the storm's ire was still here—still making quite a ruckus. But all she had to go by that assumption was the howling, snow-filled winds and the unnaturally loud—unnaturally loud for this place at any rate—thunder.

Onward she went, as slowly beneath her the Gorge widened, almost threatening to eat her and the carriage up were she not careful. She did her best to avoid looking directly down, sensing that natural, silent threat for what it was. Lightning flashed overhead, striking down at a point to her immediate left—hard enough to hit ground, leaving behind an even louder crack of thunder. Sora shuddered as she turned just briefly enough to see that bolt fade away.

She turned back ahead, frowning deeply, legs starting to kick out to keep warm. But she did that minimally; too much, and the carriage would jostle, forcing her to reorient. The angry skies above continued to darken, almost as though they were under some sort of curse. Distantly, just barely making itself heard throughout the pandemonium, she could hear the faint roar of an engine.

At this, she emitted a silent gasp and folded her forelegs to her chest immediately. She knew—memorized—that dreadful sound. Even with her adamantite-electrum blades, how the hell would she take its source on, with no rockets and a carriage strapped to her? She shook her head; reigning in her fear and steeling herself.

"No. Avoid confrontation. Vanish… vanish within this snow," Sora muttered to herself, both chastising and comforting. "Maybe the windigos have caused it… if they have any reason to. Perhaps they're trying to deter the airship, if it's an airship or windigos at all…"

Sora smiled faintly at that thought. The storm would help greatly with hiding; she'd just need to avoid freezing out here in the meantime. Easy enough, once she found shelter… at that, her smile fell. "Would Sham be okay… with us using the tomb as shelter?" she questioned, shoulders sagging.

Oddly, as that left her mouth, the storm around Sora waned; the torrent slowed just enough she could see each and every individual fleck dance by. The lightning dimmed again; thunder hushing up as the winds shifted gears to half-speed. The Gorge… nay, the whole landscape around it seemed to consider her question. The roar of the maybe-airship was still distant, but its own chorus was steadily rising in volume to fill in the thunder's sudden, conspicuous absence.

Perhaps its object of ire had passed, Sora mused. Perhaps the surrounding moors would return to their calm but eerie silence; its own sense of normalcy, in these forsaken parts.

That hope was not meant to be, however.

The storm picked up again, full-swing as the notion entered her mind. This time, the winds blew feverishly to Sora's right as the chasm widened with its toothy precipices bared. Lightning flashed, striking down next to the chasm's edge—and just a mere inch from the carriage's hind wheels on top of that! Sora turned with the wind and sped off in that direction without a second invitation. Her eyes went wide and her panic finally seized the helm.

Sweet merciful gods of old, that was far too close! "Okay, okay," Sora muttered, staring to hyperventilate, "it didn't hit the carriage… didn't hit anypony in it…"

The carriage began to rattle. Sora spared a glance over her shoulder, finding the curtains thrown wide open and Starbreaker pacing about in her cab with her tail on its end and her eyes turned blue again. Omega was babbling a mile a minute, leaning onto Yukito backside-first and kicking his hinds out frantically. Yukito himself had his mane sticking out in places, pupils shrunk, glasses lopsided and complexion pale. She couldn't really blame them for freaking out either; most anypony would, with a near-miss that close in regards to tantruming weather.

Sora turned back ahead to see where she was going as the storm let up on its flurry of snow once again; in doing so, she made a mental note to look out for this sort of agitated weather before making anymore risky forrays. The tall specter of the maybe-mountain and its itty-bitty companion came into view within seconds, still very much cloaked in shadow. She angled her wings a little, just enough to catch more wind—wind that seemed to be guiding her somewhere, she noted.

A massive shadow came in from her right, and Sora could barely see it from the corner of her eye. Lightning struck it to no avail, instead casting its frame in blinding, hellish white as it approached. Whirring engines, gargantuan turbines kicking up snow all around even though they were in mid-air, distinctly rectangular and rounded on its edges…!

Sora swooped low to the ground, but not low enough to start galloping. The mechanical behemoth turned to start chasing the carriage, wings opening topside to reveal two glowing objects that took the shape of massive black cubes housing four holes each. Each hole had a single giant, conical object sticking out. She glanced over her shoulder as the cubes fired—"Rockets?!" she shrieked, moving to ascend up to dodge the volley.

But the rockets shifted course as she did, homing in with erratic movements. Yet before they could connect, Starbreaker flung the back window open and outward. She planted her forehooves against its back to keep herself steady, and launched bolts of flame to counter. Six of the rockets exploded on impact, yet the last two managed to dodge the attack and continued giving chase. Though they too were knocked out of the sky when Yukito teleported to Starbreaker's lounge, poked his head out, summoned the borrowed rifle and let loose a well-timed laser volley.

"We'll cover you, Sora! Just get us to safety!" Yukito cried, his voice barely audible amidst the explosions.

"There won't be any safety for you miserable lot!" a voice droned from the airship, one garbled and distorted to the point nopony of the fleeing group could place an identity upon the speaker. More sections were already opening up on the wings' topsides to reveal more launchers filled with rockets coming up and ready to fire.

Sora's ears turned back as her muzzle turned frontwards. The tall shadow was getting larger. Starbreaker made the now-useless scraps of rockets vanish in bursts of light before they could hit the ground, charging up another pyre around her horn. "You're gonna run out of magic, Herald! You're gonna run out and I'll laugh as the Admiral tears your legs off!" the voice of whom Sora assumed was the ship's pilot jeered. Sixteen rockets launched out of their hubs, but instead of homing in they spiraled around and around until they completely formed a circle intent on hitting the carriage simultaneously.

Starbreaker responded by whipping head and horn in a fluid circle, almost hitting Yukito with her mane in the process. Her magic set to work, mimicking her motion—forming outside the fast-converging rockets in a burning effigy of an eight-point star. Its center was hollow at first, arms alternating red and blue as embers crackled between its peaks, before it compressed itself onto the rockets. The magical force pulled them sharply back from the carriage in one fluid motion. With one more push of the magic, the rockets exploded at once, creating a smog cloud that the airship then tore through without trouble.

The airship's wings retracted their launchers and closed topsides with a crackle of blinding lights… and then opened bottomside to reveal massive guns similar to the Buster models in build that were as long as five ponies standing in single file. But these guns were more reinforced on their tops to hold them in position—and already charging their own volley. Yukito made the borrowed gun vanish, contemplating what to do as the larger guns turned unanimously in his direction. He waited until the guns were about to let loose, then seized the carriage and Sora in his magic and teleported just as the cannons fired.

The whole lot appeared directly above ground again, and Sora found herself shaking her head to get her bearings together. She didn't question what had happened as she saw the lasers sailing overhead, and instead pumped more energy into beating her wings harder to get away that much faster. Lightning struck the airship again, doing nothing to deter it or its pilot as it slowed its pace, the latter probably confused as to what had just happened.

Then the airship changed course to match the carriage's altitude. "Sneaky trick, you weapon-coddler! No wonder the Admiral's got you on the top rung of his shitlist!" the pilot commended, with a distinct air of condemning glee in their voice. "He's gonna enjoy putting a fucking bullet into your head, like he should have done long ago!"

"The Admiral can suck my horseapples!" Yukito shouted, turning to Starbreaker and nodding. Starbreaker grinned and launched another flame-burst at the airship, but her expression fell as the flames dispersed harmlessly on its surface. The airship prepared its retort of lasers, taking aim once again as Starbreaker simply charged another pyre wordlessly. Lasers and fire launched at the same time, meeting in a collision crash course that the fire wound up losing. Though, Starbreaker thought fast and summoned one of the damaged rockets to take the hit and spare the carriage from more abuse after launching her fire.

She made the rocket vanish again to allow her and Yukito to see what the airship would throw at them next. For a few seconds that Sora used to gain a bit of distance from the pursuing construct, the pilot had fallen deathly silent. "So now the Herald's playing defense? Fine by me! I'll just shred you both all the same!" the pilot declared boldly, wings opening topside once again to reveal that the giant launchers had their rocket stocks replenished.

"I don't have time for this…" Sora grumbled, turning her muzzle to the airship as one hoof came up to hold her bell. She waited until the airship was about to fire, then pressed the button and cried, "Shield, invert!" The bell rang and responded, conjuring a spherical shield around the carriage before said shield disappeared—and promptly surrounded the airship, expanding to accommodate the menace's size. The lasers bounced off and hit the airship harmlessly, the rockets exploded against the barrier with enough force to break it and let the airship pass through the resulting smog cloud.

Lightning struck again, this time hitting the airship's left turbine with enough force to throw it off-balance. Its right wing swung sharply up into the air, causing its struck left to dig new furrows into the snow and send the substance in question everywhere. As it struggled to pry its wing up, Sora took the chance to turn around and fly past its underside, making sure she and her vehicle had several feet of distance as the cannons locked on. Once behind its tail, hoof went to bell again and she muttered, "Light, return rifle!" The bell responded, clanging and spitting out a burst of light that materialized into a gun similar in build to the Buster, but half its length. Before the gun had the chance to fall, Sora rushed to clasp it in both fetlocks and hold it to her chest.

In the carriage, Yukito closed the open window and teleported with Starbreaker to the front cab, and threw open the frontmost window so they could hang to the window frame's edge and retaliate as needed. Sora waved her rifle above her head. "Take it!" she cried, and Yukito grasped it in his magic before pulling it into the cab—as the cannons readied another payload. The airship reoriented with a mighty, snow-tossing heave, left turbine stuttering erratically as the snow caught therein was mercilessly knocked out.

Then the larger vessel turned to fly backwards with a powdery flourish, cannons turning again to face where the rockets were going to be launched. It was still tilted on its left wing, however; no doubt the effect of having been sent through an unexpected plunge. "Aaaaaaaaaand there she is, flyin' around stark naked in a frozen hellhole!" the pilot jeered, rockets shuddering as if they were resisting the urge to charge forward.

"You're only so full of yourself because you're sequestered in an arms factory!" Sora retorted, suppressing a wince from a budding ache that began hammering through the nerves of her wings.

The pilot chuckled darkly, the sound coming through whatever telecoms communications their vessel possessed. "And all you have is your bell," they smugly retorted. Sora noted that the maybe-mountain grew larger still—though how many yards, exactly, was lost to her. Ideas span in her head; if it were solid, maybe…

But she shelved the budding thought, letting it stew in a dark corner as her hoof went to her bell again. "Shield!" she cried with a push of a button, and the bell responded as a volley of more lasers and rockets fired away and homed in. A shield formed around the carriage, taking the faster lasers without issue, but warping and cracking with the onslaught of fire and shrapnel that came from colliding with said lasers' slower companions.

Just as the shield broke, Yukito made Sora's rifle vanish in a flash of magic—before doing likewise to the rest of the carriage and Sora herself. The pilot, unable to see the tell-tale signs of a teleport through the smog, much less hear it through the sounds of a shield failing, waited for the smog to clear for a few seconds. That was, before whirling the airship around to face the shadow in the distance when the cannons automatically turned there first. "Just an endless bundle of tricks, ain't ya?!" they cried, a hint of exasperation working its way into their otherwise cocky tone.

Yukito closed the front window before he teleported himself and Starbreaker to the rear cab and opened its back window. He wasted no time in planting his pasterns onto its frame's edge to hang tight. "You seem like a one-trick pony yourself!" he snapped back, hiding whatever panic he may have held behind that fierce declaration. He watched as the rocket launchers retreated into their sections of the wings' topsides with a series of bright lights, before re-emerging with another fresh volley about to fire. He turned to Starbreaker and muttered just loud enough for her to hear, "Maybe we can make it crash if we focus on the wings."

Starbreaker grinned wickedly, eyes flashing red as more flames roiled around her horn. Her magic seized the launchers and jilted the rockets, making both wings shake as the flying bombs tried to leave, but suddenly couldn't. The cannons found themselves twisted backwards as yet more magic took hold of them, shuddering in futile resistance. Yukito had to give credit where it was due; that about shut down the one-trick pony's airship. He found himself glad that Starbreaker needed no convincing to attempt to stop this thing.

The rockets exploded in their launchers right as blue flames flew at and touched their heads, all at once with enough force to jilt the things into place, with smoking bits of shrapnel acting as the only testament to their previous existence. One unfortunate launcher ended up being blown clean off the left wing from the unprecedented explosions alone, tumbling clumsily backwards and subsequently taking a one-way ticket to the frozen wastes below. The cannons misfired at the disturbance, pitting and scorching the land beneath in several places with their redirected aim.

The airship tilted dangerously left at first, before swiveling on its right in its best to compensate for the sudden jerk the loss of a launcher had created. Its wings' edges began smoking; bits of shrapnel managed to get lodged into the turbines, making them hiss and sputter as they tried to dislodge the offending bits of heated metal. Still, in spite of the setback, it pressed on, its pilot seemingly hellbent on knocking Sora and her menagerie of dissatisfied dissidents out of the air.

"That all ya got, ya blue-titted freaks?!" the pilot shouted as another hatch opened topside between the wings. The hatch was still for a moment, before glowing and revealing a much bigger cannon that swung forth on one arm, easily half the length of the vessel carrying it. It was supported by a bulky base, oddly conical in shape with a massive sphere acting as its swivel. It started charging a white light along its barrel that crackled with electricity. Ominous red lines started glowing along its base as it charged its payload.

Yukito's eyelid twitched as the larger cannon gathered more and more power. "Oh good, like that barbarian wasn't compensating for something already," he muttered with distaste and disdain.

Lightning struck the newest gun, but all it did was end up making its light expand that much more rapidly. The pilot started cackling maniacally, pounding what may or may not have been their back hooves that gave a nasty feedback loop through the telecoms of the vessel.

"Gh-gh-ghaaahaha! This'll fry you all up nice and crispy, and your augments won't be able to do shit to stop it!" the pilot cried, continuing to devolve into their maddened mirth as the massive cannon rattled with a power it could barely contain. "I am so glad all the ammo and the whole damn arsenal can be thaumically converted! Gyaahahaha!"

"What if I wedge a missile into the thing?" Starbreaker muttered, looking at Yukito with her eyes widening.

Yukito shuddered, but steeled himself. "It's either that, or worse-than-electrocution. Have at," he replied grimly.

Starbreaker nodded and conjured the missile remnants she'd used to deflect the earlier laser volley. Without warning, she launched it back at the ship that had fired it, right towards the barrel of the massive gun. But its building light melted it to nothing more than useless slag point-first, just shredding through the torn missile to cast aside whatever warped-beyond-recognition remnants could fly away. A few bits of molten mush landed on the airship without further incident; the rest descended to the planet in the form of superheated, but solidified ore. At this, she gnashed her teeth, ears turning back as the large gun kept shuddering with a force that kept charging.

"There goes that plan…" Yukito grumbled, brow furrowing as his mental gears started turning. If nopony acted soon… then certain worse-than-death was inevitable. As it was, he and his companions were just prolonging that inevitability.

"Sayonara!" Sora cried suddenly. Before Yukito could ruminate on what to do and why his wife had shouted that, the carriage jerked to a hard left as Sora changed course violently. In fact, the shift was violent enough it effortlessly broke his hoofhold, and the whiplash caused both Yukito and Starbreaker to tumble shoulder-first onto the seat. This disrupted the latter's concentration, and her magical hold on the lower cannons broke before she could register the fact.

Both rushed up and looked out the open window, eyes wide as they found themselves looking at a rocky surface to one side that they could've sworn wasn't there before. The airship wasn't as lucky, nor as quick as Sora however; damaged as it was, the only thing it could do was meet with that surface head-on. Its cannons jerked in different directions and fired off before the wings to which they were attached rammed into the rockface as the cockpit found itself ground to shrapnel. When the center of the behemoth followed suit, its central gun jilted up and fired a tower-sized electrified beam into the sky. The beam dispersed in a second, and lightning started striking on the crumbling construct with impunity immediately after.

As the rocky surface grew further and further away, it shook in a tumultuous crash as the airship just crumpled. The lightning only stopped striking it when the vehicle exploded spectacularly against its own impact point. The whole structure rumbled, pieces of massive stone dislodging here and there as the the smouldering wreckage simply started to tumble on with the resultant avalanche.

Yukito looked up, finding a sharp peak overlooking the grisly scene, with something else jutting some dozen meters or so below it. Along the side where the laser grazed this mighty and immobile behemoth, the structure had been charred to a blackened crisp. The impact point of the airship hadn't done much better, especially thanks to the lightning strikes preceding the fireworks display. The ruined airship crashed one final time at the foot of the behemoth, sending snow everywhere without further movement. And there it sat; burning and roiling away with enough flames that Yukito sincerely doubted the pilot would make it out of that wreckage alive.

Quietly, Yukito closed the window with his magic and heaved a sigh of relief, adrenaline wearing off as a chill sank into his body—a chill that more than likely came from outside. "Brr… that was… not on my list of things to do…" he muttered.

Starbreaker giggled and clapped her forehooves again. "Oh well; at least it's burning now," she chirped in delight.

Yukito nodded in agreement. "I'd rather that than chasing us," he said earnestly. He teleported with Starbreaker to the front cab and opened the frontmost window. "Where to now?" he asked.

Sora wordlessly pointed at a gleaming structure in the distance. "It may be shelter," she answered. With that, she started lowering herself to the ground at a much slower pace, conserving what energy she had after the run-in with the airship and its mad pilot. The structure reflected the light off of any and all lightning bolts that struck near it, in doing so almost acting as a beacon of sorts.

Shelter or not, it would very well have to do out here.

Chapter XXIII- Fortress of Doors

Of all the possible things that could have been buried in and around the Hollowed Gorge, a giant sparkling castle was not one item that any in their right mind would expect to make that endless list. Yet there stood such a construct, a construct of somepony with a ludicrously wild imagination and far too many resources on their hooves. Sora, after rubbing her eyes to make certain they were working correctly, decided to patrol around it once to see it in its entirety.

The structure gleamed in a manner that suggested it was carved of crystals, half-tree in design with a myriad of branches woven together to hold up the upper echelons and such. The trunk had two massive double doors built in and two smaller windows at either side, with snow-covered steps that paled in comparison. Atop this massive, priceless treasure stood a multi-point star whose arms stretched to varying and erratic lengths; a jewel of sorts in its makeshift crown.

To one side stood a pair of balconies well above ground level, defiant to the test of time and the ongoing storm around them, though both were covered in a blanket of snow nonetheless. Another balcony sat on the upper echelons, right on the roof of one next to the massive, oddly-shaped star. But whatever beauty it once had, long ago, was now lost—the whole structure was monochrome grey and riddled with ice that did its best to hold everything together.

Sora opted to ignore the doors entirely, instead alighting and coming to a stop on the upper balcony. She gave it another quick scan; aside from the snow itself, and herself and the carriage, it was dubiously empty.

In front of her was a door frame leading inside, just large enough for her and the vehicle to fit through, fitted with dulled curtains that somehow kept themselves whole against all the odds. She turned to her left as Yukito teleported next to her with Omega draped across his back. "You know anything about this?" Sora asked.

Yukito and Omega shook their heads in tandem. "Th' teachers never talked a word about this in th' history books," Omega muttered.

"Or any book, as far as I could recall during my school years," Yukito added with a frown. He took a few steps toward the door frame, then stopped to scrutinize it. "I'm surprised this thing is still standing, all things considered."

"Given that everything else had to be torn down and rebuilt throughout the whole Clash insofar as I know, it's quite suspicious," Sora agreed, ears folding back at that speculation. "Maybe it's protected somehow?" Given the surrounding landscape and its odd weather patterns, that wasn't particularly implausible.

"Either that, or just forgotten," Yukito replied with a slight shrug of his withers. With that, he stepped inside, and Sora began to trot after him. With the howling storm behind them, free to do whatever it very well wanted, the three found themselves in an expansive hall lined with green-tinted doors frozen shut. As this place had no lights to call its own, at least of the electrical sort, Yukito simply charged an illumination spell to allow unhindered sight. A good hundred or so yards off, another open door frame stood, further beckoning them onwards. They took its unspoken invitation and found a spiraling sloped staircase leading downwards as well as upward. It was built with a landing pad of sorts to let them stand on, pausing as they found it bore an anomaly most peculiar.

Scratch marks spanned the slopes going down, light enough to have been brushed aside as mere circumstance, but long enough to have spanned entire steps in sets of four. The marks shimmered a little differently than the rest of the stairwell; less dull, light reflecting off of their grooves, indicative that these were at least fresh enough to be a few hours old. Whatever made them either could not retract the limbs that were responsible for the markings, or was in a hurry to flee the cold outside.

Starbreaker opened the front cab's entrance-exit and jumped out, using her magic to close the frontmost window at the same time. After kicking the door shut and trotting over to see why everypony else had stopped, she wrinkled her nose. "Is something… here?" she asked.

Sora shook her head. "Don't really know. It probably vacated the premises by now," she replied with an uneasy shuffle of her wings. She willed her augments to stop, and so her blades ceased glowing—no use causing further destruction; she'd already had enough for the day. Then, she shifted a hoof to start unstrapping the harness, unclasping the network of burden strap by strap.

"You think it's magically resistant?" Yukito asked suddenly, turning to the carriage as Sora moved to get out of its hold.

With another shuffling of her wings, Sora pursed her lips for a moment. "Dunno. But it would be bothersome to drag it everywhere," she muttered, turning to the vehicle once she had gotten out of the straps. With a hoof rising to her bell, she clicked and muttered, "Light, convert," and waited for a response. The bell jingled, the chiming almost hushed as it embraced the carriage in light and made it disappear.

"Okay… that's awfully convenient," Sora remarked with a sigh of resignation. She turned back to the stairs with nothing more than her brows wedging themselves together.

"At least it ain't cold," Omega piped up as Sora turned to face the stairs again.

"True enough," Sora agreed. She trotted down the steps, slow enough to let Yukito and Starbreaker fall into line behind her. In silence they strode down the scuffed and spiraling flight, the only sounds reaching their ears being their own hoofsteps and the bell's jingling. Here, the thunder did not reach them, though it did not escape the herd's collective notice that it should have by now. The further they went, the more pronounced the silence became—within minutes, and no end in sight to the stairs, the darkness was able to dull even the steady noise of marching hooves.

Though, at that point, they started to notice an odd form of torches pattering the walls, lining the path. These were hewn of the same crystal-like substance that made up the castle's mighty trunk, with rhomboid chunks that flickered with dying glimmers as Yukito passed them. "Thaumatically charged?" he muttered as they passed a particular torch that sputtered wildly before dying with little more than a pop.

"Might not be that way for much longer," Sora sighed, blades rattling a little as another torch just ahead started to glow and falter at the same time. In a way, she could sympathize with these torches, just trying their best to hold out for another day—but it seemed that whatever drove them so simply wasn't there anymore. It was admirable, yet sad in equal measure—the structure seemed to have been signaling for help, yet she knew not how to fix something like this. Nor did she know for how long it had made these signals to begin with.

Magic or not, the castle was more than likely dying, but still holding strong in spite of it. Worse, to its visitors, it may well have been consigned to the pits of oblivion.

Sora shuddered; a green crystal flickered with a glow that was steadily fading as the group passed it. It did not die until she turned her eyes upon it from halfway across the flight. A mental image of Sham's face, framed by blood, surfaced in her mind as the crystal just… darkened to an unsightly black then and there.

Sora turned back to the stairs, wings rattling again. She took a shaky breath, one that didn't go unnoticed by the other three behind her. "Something the matter?" Yukito asked.

"Just… winding down from the flight," Sora muttered uneasily. "I'll be fine."

"Alright…" Yukito said, deciding not to press for further answers. He perked up as he caught sight of a floor that marked the end of the flight, leading to a pair of golden doors thrown conspicuously wide open. Sora saw it too and picked up her pace, though she made sure to keep her hooves from going too fast in her haste to get to them.

"Does she always make that sound when she gets out of a fight?" Starbreaker asked, causing Omega to turn his head towards her.

Omega shrugged as best as he could, without threatening whatever hoofhold he had on Yukito's back. "Can't say. First I heard it," he answered sincerely. "That was th' first battle I got out of alive."

"A battle you couldn't partake in," Yukito noted with a sigh. Feeling Omega turning his head back to him, he added, "Of course, not everypony's cut out for combat, and you're still wounded—insofar as I am concerned, you have an excuse." He frowned when he reached the doors, noticing Sora had stopped at them, head bobbing up and down as she scanned the frames. "No offense."

"None taken. And…" Omega looked at the doors at the same time Yukito did, eyes going round. Deep gashes spanned the length of these doors from top to bottom, large enough to have fit a pair of hooves into since these were so tightly grouped together. "Is a bear hibernatin' here?"

"If that's the case, it's… chosen a very odd place to do so," Sora muttered with a tired sigh. "I pity the bear, either way." She trotted forward, into another hall with the others once again following after her, with yet more scratches in the floor almost leading the way.

"Well, at least this castle is a strategic hibernation spot," Yukito pointed out, sporting a small smile on his muzzle in spite of the absurdity of his statement.

Sora nodded fervently, ears perked to attention. "This place does have its share of benefits," she agreed, a wry twist in her words. She spread a wing carefully as she walked, gesturing to the hall's ceiling. "No cameras to track our every single move, no busybody higher-ups to wedge gags and orders down our throats, no flip-flopping on important issues like said higher-ups…" Her wing closed, and her hooves started to trot a little faster, drumming out an upbeat tune upon the floor. "Only issue's food, really—but we'll work something out once our current stock runs dry."

"And it's away from all those other weirdos that aren't the higher-ups," Starbreaker added, a small but demented giggle worming its way past her lips with the statement.

Sora snorted at the remark, but opted not to give it the honor of a retort—after all, it had its own valid point. Instead, she kept her focus largely forward, sighing rather wistfully. "My first attempt to leave the base failed… I wonder what Mom and Dad think of me now, wherever they're at," she muttered.

At that, Starbreaker trotted around Yukito to level a skeptical glare upon her nemesis. For a moment, her gears ground to a screeching halt at what she had just heard, before rebooting and then processing the implications. "... so, the other soldiers…" she trailed off.

Sora nodded, a thin frown working its way onto her muzzle. "Caged me like a bird, chewed me out to the seven hells and back, and tried to keep me buried in that cage," she muttered grimly, nose wrinkling at the thought. "I didn't notice the higher-ups were watching that day… until it was too late."

Yukito trotted up to Sora's side, and smiled at Starbreaker. "Of course, the other soldiers never took me into account. All I had to do was knock their cage guard out and pilfer his keys," he chirped.

Starbreaker blinked, eyes widening at that admission. That was one of the last things she'd expected him to spill in as casual a manner as she ate meat. "That's how you got…" Her eyes darted, shifting colors, searching for words which eluded her. "Your notoriety?" she finished when her eyes turned back to Yukito.

Yukito nodded. "Most of it, in fact; the rest stemming from the ultimate weapons' projects. That, it turned out, could not have had better timing—an hour later, you showed up and tore a hole into the base," he added wryly.

That made Starbreaker's blood boil, just an eentsy bit. Her eyes narrowed into a glare, though she couldn't hold it for long—it melted away as soon as it had formed. "And even now, you still want to help," she concluded.

Yukito nodded and proceeded to take point. "I've just decided to stop helping the wrong ponies, as they have not only pushed me too far well before the Clash ended, but have renewed my anger. Nor do I want to have a family in their districts. For there, my sins would fall upon any foals I could conceive. It's a fate I wouldn't wish on any," he answered, ears turning back just the slightest inch at that notion.

Starbreaker frowned, tail lashing again as her brain brewed up a picture of an entire army punishing a foal or two. That only made her blood boil some more, until she was convinced that molten lava was going through her veins. "Of course, that would mean they'd have to know about any foals to begin with, and you haven't had any," she muttered darkly and sincerely. Sora's frown deepened when she caught no iota of malice from the statement, and her mind concocted an image of that one mare in the clear cells.

"Exactly," Yukito agreed with a somber nod.

Starbreaker turned to Sora and huffed as they trotted through an open door frame whose doors were torn off. They moved down a curved hall, yet more claw marks leading them on. "No wonder you two are married—you're weirdos of equal measure," she scoffed.

Sora rolled her eyes and snorted, idly noting that these halls had dulled columns that barely held any color between yet more closed doors, all topped with a strange heart-shaped object. Some flashed orange as they trotted past, others opted for an off-cyan sheen, though all in all they tended to go for a pale pink as the light-spell hit them. Around the doors was carved an elaborately etched mural of swirling clouds and countless stars, each as dulled by time as the trunk's outermost wall. Once, long ago, it would have been beautiful to stand in front of and stare at, but now the mural was almost blackened beyond recognition.

Oddly, the clouds boasted strokes of white lightning and whirlwinds of snow that weren't carved in as deeply, yet seemed to have been painted on. As the herd came upon a curved T-intersection and forked left, the stars gradually vanished from the piece, one by one, until all that was left were angry storm clouds spewing out their cold and blinding vitriol. Was that a recent addition to this hall-spanning, forgotten art? Or had it always been there, unbeknownst to all but them?

Sora turned ahead, hearing a door creaking open. Not a double either, but one of the standalones from the left side. Out stumbled a unicorn foal with a feather-topped boulder cutie mark, no taller than her shoulders, and this one had a midnight blue coat that was almost black. Her legs, fading from blue to white past the gaskins and elbows, ended in unshorn fetlocks whose fur trailed behind her hooves in flowing mats as she moved. Embedded in her chest, glimmering like its own light, was a tear-shaped gem of crimson. Sora's eyes widened as the filly with her short, messy indigo mane and golden irises turned to look at her.

Silence held for a few seconds, and so did the staring contest, before Yukito broke both in one fell swoop. "Who… are you? And what are you doing here?"

The filly turned to him, looked him up and down, and lit up her horn and the gem in a pair of twin blue auras before the latter flashed red. She then took one glance at Starbreaker before her ears fell flat against her skull and her pupils shrank. "Nanora!" she shrieked as cyan light flooded the hall with enough power to make the group snap their eyes shut in unison. She blazed past them in a flurry of motion, the sound of retreating hooves reaching their ears as the light died. Sora opened her eyes first and glanced around, trying to see where the wayward foal had galloped off to.

But it was of little use; she was already gone. Only a swinging door was left in her wake. Sora's stomach clenched; her memory stirred, quickly filling in the blanks. The giant boulder near the carriage in the clearing, and the burst of light miles away all suddenly made sense.

That foal—she'd seen her before. In the sky, once, held by mechanical wings…

And if she was all the way out here, in one piece no less, than that meant… something horrible had happened—horrible enough for her to necessitate hiding.

Her ears twitched; she heard another door opening from behind, with enough force to leave an echoing slam. Yukito turned and galloped in that direction; without any further words, Sora and Starbreaker followed. Whether the foal was hostile or not mattered little; they couldn't leave her to chance out here.

In the wilds, with shelter or without, these vanishing acts could very well be her last. Sora had to find her—and fast.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

The foal, cloaked in a light-refracting aura that made her invisible, sped down several halls as fast as her four hooves could carry her. Having run into the Star-Blasting Light was bad enough, but said Light having company to back her up? That was a tangle she wanted no part of.

All she knew was that she had to get help, fast, and then leave even faster. This place was of no use, now that danger unparalleled had come to roost. And the more she dallied, the closer that danger would come on her heels. Worse, the faster she galloped, the louder her hooves became—not to mention the increased risk of tripping on her own long sock-fur.

But as long as she got her help and then vacated the premises, it would be all worth it—and her cloak helped her to that end. Her mouth firmly shut, she pressed on, wheeling down another curved hall that led to a spiraling staircase ending in a floor a dozen feet below. But rather than run down it, she simply jumped the railing and ran under the flight, throwing open another door with her magic and closing it behind her heels as she blazed into the hall beyond.

"Pigyaaa! How many halls are there in this place?!" the filly muttered to herself through clenched teeth, her cloak faltering as she spoke. As her aura struggled to reinforce itself, she bounded down another hall after barreling through a single door, heart shooting up her throat a thousand beats a second.

Distantly, with the exact measurements lost to her, she heard a door slam open from behind. A worried whinny made its way past her lips, even though the only hooves she had heard were her own. She jerked left, turning on the tips of her hooves, before spotting a set of columns that had flat capitals instead of those heart-posts. Her cloak stabilized; resolve asserted itself as she eyed a door just up ahead.

But she skid to a halt when barging through it revealed another hall waiting for her, one with columns that were topped with hearts. Her legs ached with strain, her breathing already labored—and she was close to pulling her mane out. Her head darted, eyes quickly scanning the area for something—anything—that could point her to salvation.

Another door slammed open in the distance. Time was slipping away from her.

The foal veered right on her hocks upon spotting scuffs and gashes in the crystals. She felt her flesh writhing as she started to gallop again; her legs doubled in speed, her bounds became greater, and from sight she had vanished completely.

But, try as hard as she might, she couldn't vanish from sound. For in her burst of speed, she started to leave little craters in the floor behind her with each leap. Doubtless, the ears of her pursuers would catch on first—and then they'd find her chaotic trail. The filly smirked nonetheless, and turned to the row of columns behind her as she skid to a scratch-marked door. Her magic seized hold of the support beams, front to tail, and with an effort so great that her cloak completely gave way, she pulled.

The columns broke from the walls, and were all sent crashing to the floor in a shockwave that shook the hall. Doors flung themselves open from the controlled disaster's final crash; with the settling dust shrouding her, she lept to the doorframe behind and turned to start running again. Her blood started to boil in her veins, but not through anger—through fear and exertion.

Her little body was only further exacerbating it. Adrenaline, however, had ways to override such complications for a time. But if she went on for too long, then not even her cloak would save her were her pursuers to find her.

But she punted those concerns aside as she threw open another door and paused to take stock of where she was. A T-intersection stretched before her, formed of three flights of stairs leading to an indoor balcony and a door-lined hall leading to a massive foyer. The filly perked her ears, and rotated them before poking her head out onto the central flight of stairs.

Across the balcony on the other side, the unexpected arrivals skid to a halt and glanced around. The filly pulled her head back before they could spot her, taking stock of the situation and lifting a hoof to activate her cloaking device again. "Urg, great, that stupid Blasting Fuse of the World's End is with the Windchime of a Hundred Missiles and a Thousand Impalements?" she mouthed, eyes narrowing and nose wrinkling at the thought. "Rhyaa, this is much worse. Last thing I needed. The Thousand Impalements already knocked me into a mountain once…" She heaved a silent sigh when she heard hooves galloping away; the menagerie started looking in the wrong places.

"I wonder why those stallions are with them, though," the filly silently added as an aside before taking slow, cautious steps onto the central staircase. She walked calmly to the foyer, seeing the balcony stretching around the whole construct—and the herd veering from a door to another one opposite the room. She took a good look at the stallions as they stormed past, and brow and snout met with much wrinkling disdain. "... so they got wounded. And a medic, down to the cutie mark. Fantastic," the filly grumbled—keeping that lodged in her thoughts, lest her cloak fritz and give her away.

The group vanished in a door behind her without ever noticing her.

The filly's tail lashed. She turned to a door on her right and trotted to it, noticing it was marked with a mural of a tree carved around it in oddly rigid branches that stood upright. Wordlessly, with a hoof, she gently opened it and found yet another hallway marked with columns ending in flat capitals—swearing she'd find the architect to this madness and crush them beneath a column, because at this point she was starting to fume.

She trotted down it anyway, heading straight for its end. Opening that led to a spiral staircase.

Ugh. The filly gnashed her teeth, and was about to utter a dark promise when she saw more scratch marks. After them she went, galloping up the stairs and busting into a short hall with one blue-tinted door standing amongst the green-tinted ones as soon as she reached the flight's end. She smirked and rushed right to the odd one out, and flung it open before relaxing at what she saw.

Six green doors on either side, flat capital columns between them, and another blue-tinted door just ahead. She rushed to the second odd one out in a burst of speed and flung it open to find a round table surrounded by seven chairs, six of which were oddly marked with strange symbols. Aside from that, there was nothing of importance—unless one counted the conspicuous wooden wagon, a beaten-up two-wheeler box model with nothing more than reaches and a host of metal boxes stationed awkwardly against a closed door with wheels facing out. And the half-mechanical pegasus stallion sporting a metal-made horn idling about on the table. His ocean blue eyes were turned to her as her cloak gave way, and his mechanical horn and a chest-gem like hers sparked simultaneously in surprise.

The filly studied him for a moment; disheveled and short dust-hued mane with a forelock obstructing the base of his horn, denim blue coat, tornado-and-chakram cutie mark were the most equine features this stallion had. Not among—the. His sole article of clothing, a big red muffler affixed to neck and long enough to be trailing down well past his back, helped to offset his more… unusual features.

For past all of that, though, he was as much machine as ponies could come—metal legs starting where front elbow and gaskin normally began, ending in wicked jointed talons and a pair of opposable digits on his front. One bundle of those talons was clutching tightly to a thin and long knife with its blade pointing down. But there was little doubt about it; the filly had found salvation, strange as he was. She tried to avoid looking at one of his ears and hinds, both a sunset orange in color that may have, once, belonged to another pony entirely.

"Tsih? What's going on?" the stallion asked in a voice laced with a distinct mechanical undertone. The undertone sounded more feminine than it should have, and its reverb distorted his rather high-pitched organic voice somewhat.

"Mira, th-th-the… the Herald… she… she's here," Tsih answered, legs shaking.

Mira's eyes widened; he jumped to his mockery of hooves in a heartbeat, standing a head and a half taller than even the Herald herself thanks to his unnaturally long legs. The blade clattered against the table as he seemed to forget it was still in his grasp. "Already? How? She has no—"

"It's worse than… than that," Tsih cut in, gem sparking fitfully as her tail moved between her hinds. "She h-has reinforcements. The… Windchime's here too!"

Mira's pupils shrank, and his wings spread open on the spot. Natural primaries trembled for the barest of instants, and claws began to tap nervously. The resultant drumming created a constant pinging sound that echoed through the room; metal on crystal should have made another noise, Tsih noted. "You mean… that Windchime?" Mira hesitantly asked. "The same one who kicked all our employers' asses before…"

Tsih nodded feverishly. "Long blond mane and everything," she reported grimly, without any trace of exasperation. Then again, her panic slipped in her trembling tone, and could have passed off as such. "If we don't leave, we're fucked. And that's not accounting for the Sableshrouds—"

Mira's mechanical horn sparked silver, and the aura lanced out a bit before returning to and dying upon the artificial spire. The gesture was enough to cut Tsih off. "We do not speak of the Sableshrouds." His eyes narrowed dangerously low, and his magic made the blade clutched in claw vanish in a burst. He leapt from the table and trotted to the wagon, taking a moment to faceclaw without scratching his face off. "Get in. The weather may turn favorable for us yet."

Tsih galloped over to the wagon and jumped in as Mira turned around and clasped it reaches in his magic. He steered the wagon behind him and ran out the door Tsih barged in from, the blue-tinted one after that, the flight of stairs that were beyond, and then to the third that was still swinging open. His wings were already flapping when he got to the foyer, and he was making for the front doors as though his legs were melting.

But, just before he could reach it, a sudden obstacle appeared right in front of it. He noticed the burst of light first and skid to a screeching halt, digging new furrows into the crystal and propelling his wings backwards to stop himself from tumbling forward. The screaming of the crystals made his ears ache; they folded back in an attempt to drown the noise before it left with his stopping. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he found four ponies looking intently at him—one of which grinned at him maniacally.

"It's them!" Starbreaker announced, pointing a hoof proudly at him. "The ones who attacked me!"

Mira turned tail and galloped to the central staircase up back. Nope, nope, nope, he was not going to have his hide scorched today! Wings still madly beating, he allowed himself a small smirk in spite of his panic and how badly the situation took a turn for the worse for. The castle had many outs, and the newcomers could only block one at a time if they set their minds to it.

But instead, they opted to gallop after him as he took to the air. Fast though the Windchime was, even with a carriage in his magical grasp, Mira was faster—he had more strength in his legs to propel himself onwards, more natural wingparts to work with, and he didn't have to be physically dragging his cargo around with a network of straps anchored to his body. His horn gave off a brilliant light as he ascended the stairs—before time seemed to move in slow motion as a burst of speed carried him to the leftmost stairs in a heartbeat. In doing so, he was briefly distorting the air around him and his wagon before he was gone from the foyer entirely.

The herd behind him was slow enough he heard one of them faceplant against a door that slammed shut at his passing. That made Mira snicker, but with his magic giving him a speed boost, the sound that made its way through that air vacuum sounded slowed and distorted to his own mismatched ears. He weaved down several halls and up several stairs within relatively short order—without bothering to keep track of how many and where he was going.

Only as he darted through an open bedroom and stopped in a library did his magic stop, and with it, so did he. The landing was less than graceful; furniture and old dusty tomes flying about as he alighted and skid to a halt on the floor, knocking over a table that had managed to stop him completely with his barrel. As the tempest of paper and torn blankets around him settled down, he folded his wings and took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

Tsih poked her head out of the wagon. "Mira? Why'd you stop?" she asked.

Mira turned to her and sighed. "Chances are, the friggin' Blasting Fuse and her herd are gonna keep chasing us," he answered. "Why she has a herd, or why she ain't fuckin' dead yet, we don't know…" His brow furrowed in bafflement. "Can you cloak again? We'll have to do more than let them see us a third time."

Tsih nodded, and moved a hoof to her gem. With a click, and a flicker of gem and horn, her magic set to work and made them vanish again. Once that was done, Mira started flapping his wings, this time shifting onto his hinds to grip the reaches with his front claws. He began to jog around the room to build momentum, well aware that he was furiously scraping at the floor in doing so. Every second on ground, no matter what form, would draw attention—so he took great care in avoiding the strewn furniture and books.

It just wouldn't do to draw that much more attention to himself and Tsih. Experience had taught him plenty—in some ways, more than anypony could ever, would ever dare to dream of. His augments could only get him so far, particularly when trouble decided to wedge its snout where the sun didn't shine.

As he ruminated on where to go—how, when, for what purpose—he became airborne and darted out the library's back door with nothing more than a burst of magic to wedge it open. He found another hall, brow furrowing as he flew down to it, noting it was marked with columns sporting diamond-beset capitals. At the very least, the things seemed to mark what part of the castle he was in.

As he flew, doors opened and closed, remaining in the former position just long enough for him to see what was in them. Closet, closet, heart-column hall, bedroom, closet… balloon-column hall, closet, closet—wait, what? Mira doubled back a couple of doors and poked his head into a hall to look at its columns. Three ovoid shapes per column, anchored by thin strands of streamer-like crystal that should most definitely not have had the strength to hold them to begin with…

Okay, yeah, definitely balloons. Mira frowned, closing the others doors of the previous hall with his magic. "... haven't balloons been retired long ago?" he wondered, keeping that consigned to his thoughts as he flew down the hall all the same, making sure to close the last door behind him and the wagon.

Echoing faintly throughout the castle, just barely enough to be heard past his beating wings and a new orchestra of opening doors, Mira could hear blades scraping against crystal. He could hear repeated pops, stopping after three consecutive ones to let the scraping fill in the void. Stomping hooves completed the distant cacophony, hard enough to be complimented by breaking and smashing crystal.

All of it, absolutely all of it, was enough to make the hairs along his entire back stand on end. That terrible combination of noises was the stuff of nightmares for even the most battle-hardened of souls. Worse was the knowledge of who was making all that distant racket; had he not seen the herd with his own two eyes, he'd have thought he were still asleep by now.

The racket edged just the barest sliver of louder—closer—for a second. He wheeled down another diamond-marked hall in short order, taking care to close every door in his wake. His mind took out an old, dusty reel of memories—and he heard blades clanging. Missiles exploding. Saw, heard, felt blue and red flames licking at him from every angle. Saw Tsih suffering much the same as everything went to hell around them.

That fire housed an all-consuming fear, and it was enough to terrify Tsih. Enough to terrify him.

They had to leave—before the fires could touch them again. And so Mira shook his head to focus on that one task, paying careful and particular heed to the distant orchestra of madness. In this labyrinth of halls, it was the one thing above all else to watch for.

Any exit, if he could find one, would be a distant second. Any chance of understanding why the Herald and Windchime just had to come here? He'd have better luck making snowballs in the seven hells than to come to an understanding with those two whackos.

Chapter XXIV- Whirlwinds of Turmoil

Mira stopped flying only after he had climbed no less than three floors.

Another damnable hall stretched out before him as his flying ground to a halt, although this was one he had come to recognize—by the mural adorning the walls, by its distinct curvature, and the…

Huh, one of the doors was left swinging open. He poked his head in the open frame, found a bedroom with nothing particularly noteworthy, and then closed it in short order. After that, he perked his ears and listened carefully.

The racket was coming from below now, though he had to strain his ears to hear it. At this, his tense shoulders eased, and a long exhale left his mouth. He let go of the reaches, in doing so disabling Tsih's invisibility cloak, and slowly dropped to all fours as his brain started to take stock of the situation.

Long story in a nutshell, he was plain and simply screwed. Either he and Tsih could head out into the unknown, run into more danger out there in the form of one of the universe's favorite games called 'Let's Expose Ourselves to the Elements' and see how long they could last out there. Or, they could go back downstairs and explain themselves to the Herald, Windchime, and the strange stallions they kept for company. Or, they could keep hiding in this blasted maze, and let certain death drag them to the seven hells tail-first from a myriad of other factors including 'freezing one's ass off,' 'starvation' and 'dehydration.'

Low options in both number and desirability, and dwindling time to contemplate them. Mira's brow wrinkled, and he spread his wings before curling them to rub and bash the tips of his primaries against his temples. He turned to Tsih, feathers still firmly on face and pressing so deeply they'd probably leave indents come tomorrow, assuming he lived to see it. "Do you know… why they're here?" he asked, careful to keep his voice low in case his ears started to deceive him, though he did let his irritation leak out nonetheless.

Tsih shook her head. "Just that they're here," she answered. "And they have a wounded stallion."

Silence held for a few seconds. Mira's primaries eased off his face.

"And a medic," Tsih added with a frown. "Winged serpents cutie mark."

Mira donned a frown considerably deeper than that of his companion's. Primaries returned to temple-rubbing in swift order. "Lovely," he hissed. "Anything else that's gonna fuck us over?"

Tsih's face contorted a little, her brows trying to erect a bridge between each other. Alas, the effort was for naught, seeing as how big a mountain suddenly formed in their path. Her mute head shake was, unfortunately, all the answer he needed—that meant a fourth problem could come in and blindside them at any moment. And by the time it did come to blindside them, Mira wagered, it would be far too late to run away and fix it another day.

The game of 'Let's Expose Ourselves to the Elements' seemed really tempting right now. At the very least, there was plenty of ground for Mira to dig his own grave in; only issue was finding a suitable location to lay his head down on. That, and one clawed hoof was already in that grave as far as he was concerned; he just needed to find out how deep that hole went.

He turned to look down the hall, studying the mural again. His tail lashed irritably, and he rose to spread his wings and clasp the reaches again. Tsih cloaked once more, and down the hall Mira sped, being mindful of the curvature to keep the wheels from hitting a column as he passed. His brow furrowed as he used the scratch marks to retrace his way up the castle, noticing that only his hooves and the squeaking wheels began to fill in more and more of the silence.

He paused at the scratched double doors at the end of the second hall after passing through the open frame of the first without issue, largely because a chorus of thunder rumbled through the castle with enough force to slam both shut in his face. Simultaneously. He began entertaining the thought that, somehow, the castle wanted to make him stay here. Another peal of thunder shook the doors, ensuring they were lodged shut.

He blinked in bewilderment, frown tugging at one corner as his magic wrenched the doors apart and closed them behind the wagon as he passed with it. He slowly flew up the winding stairs, partly to keep the wagon steady and partly to not touch the stairs as much as circumstances would allow, making sure to avoid the sputtering torches with great care.

A torch leapt out at him with another roll of thunder, missing his muzzle by mere inches. Mira pulled back and halted in mid-air, eyes gravitating to the torch as it clunked down the first ten steps of the flight before rolling towards the doors and dying. His magic grasped the torch and hefted it back to its resting place, and he continued on his way once that was done. He found himself at the topmost balcony without further incident, and that was where things started to go wrong for him. The storm outside picked up, blurring everything five feet around the castle, and lightning was striking everywhere beyond that radius with feverish abandon.

He turned skyward, and saw the clouds had turned charcoal black, intracloud lightning dancing across their forms as much as it was striking the ground itself. That effectively ruled out flying too high up. He turned back to the ground, and saw snow dancing around in another thick cloud that was almost fog-like. Great, he couldn't stray too close to that either—which left the as-risky vantage point roughly level with the balcony itself, presently the clearest of his possible paths.

Mira took a deep breath of frigid air, one whose chills raced down all four of his augmented legs with an unspoken warning—'leave, and you will die.' He steeled his nerves, staring out at the storm with as fierce a glare as he could muster; were it physical in force, time would have probably stopped. The storm opted to increase the tempo of its howling winds, but beyond that, it did little else. Had it, perhaps, responded to him directly? Or was it just undergoing the start of a bad winter?

He scanned the roiling landscape, looking for the area least scorched by lightning when he caught sight of a floating shadow that held onto something, accompanied by… moving, flickering lights? It seemed short compared to the object it carried, and against all logic, remained perfectly still even as the gales beat at it. It was close enough that he could see the snow stuck to the object… but not to its carrier. Curious.

Mira turned to Tsih, alighting temporarily to gesture to the oddly stiff figure in the distance with a primary. She disabled the cloaking device, and followed the wingtip's gesture right down to what her companion had discovered. "What the…" she grumbled as soon as she caught sight of the distant form.

"Yeah. You think there might be others like it?" Mira asked, brow furrowing as the anomaly continued to float idly by, seemingly without a care. He blinked again. The figure still hovered in the distance.

"I don't think so," Tsih muttered, ears flattening against her head. Well, that ruled out hallucination, at least. "Maybe we should—"

A bestial, mournful wailing sang in the air, feminine in tone but faint enough to have almost been drowned out completely by the storm surrounding the castle. It took Mira and Tsih a few seconds to realize that somepony—neither were sure who exactly—had called to them from from far away. "Turn back…"

Tsih's ears perked right up again. Mira's twitched, then rotated as thunder clapped through the sky once more. "... it's not just us, is it…" Mira grumbled, seeing Tsih shaking her head out of the corner of his eye.

"Turn back…" the faint-sounding pony warned once more, a note of urgency in its—her?—tone.

Mira's face hardened. He began to flap once more instead, eyes affixed firmly on the distant form. He launched off the balcony, flying within seconds, even as the wind attempted to freeze his feathers off. He clenched his teeth as he flew towards the figure, noting that though lightning was sailing overhead and all around feverishly, it never once neared him and Tsih as he approached that odd entity.

As he drew closer, the flickering lights hovering around the figure turned onto him unanimously. One brightened, then dimmed, and Mira paused again as a laser flew past him, narrowly missing the wagon and his right wing. "Turn back…" the faint voice repeated once again, the urgency growing in its tone.

The laser impacted the castle behind him. Mira pressed on despite the apparent warning shot, nose wrinkling at the echoing words, getting closer and closer to the figure that still refused to move. He clasped the reaches magically, freeing up his front claws in case he needed to use them as the figure's features started to crystalize. First, a short but flowing mane became visible, although it emanated as much shadow as its owner, and appeared tangled. Then, a suspiciously short body formed beneath that mane, and lastly, a foreleg holding up its long object.

Mira's ears flattened as he saw piercing orbs of teal boring into his soul. The figure's orbs were almost unnatural lights by themselves—burning like fire, cold as the landscape around them, yet not casting any relief upon the face shrouded in corporeal darkness. A silver ring of similar light was anchored to the object-carrying leg—the only leg, in fact, that this shadow even possessed. Mira shook his head to make certain he wasn't seeing anything again—and when his head stopped, he found a massive, frost-laden, and crimson-tipped axe pointed right at his snout.

Past the figure were several round and flat drones, all of them two-faced—one had a crackling, glowing tesla coil's central conductor rod pointed at him, and the others had flickering, cross-shaped broken lens from which unnatural blue light shined onto the weapon—and him by extension. All were decorated with dark magenta, floating and yet weighed down by rust and extensive damage that did not get to their circuitry if their functioning was anything to go by. The armed figure tilted its head, and Mira's eyes widened as a silver, glowing array flickered around the entire right orb in a hideous web almost like scarring.

"I said… to turn back," it hissed in that echoing voice, orbs narrowing slightly in what Mira could only assume was displeasure. The rest of the drones turned their teslas onto him, and each started to charge up a fresh volley whose collective power gathered in seconds.

Mira promptly launched himself downward, dragging the wagon with in time to avoid a laser barrage. Tsih shrieked as the still-floating figure turned her baleful glare to track their movements. "Mira… is that who I think it is?!" she cried as the axe span round, the leg holding it bending unnaturally just to facilitate the motion.

"We're not even sure," Mira replied, jerking to the side as the drones fired at him once again. The lasers only missed him by the width of his ears, and the wagon by its still-spinning wheels as he conjured a pair of knives. "Probably one of the Sableshrouds mimicking her!"

"I'm not sure that's a Sableshroud!" Tsih retorted as the floating figure twisted down and launched after the wagon with the aid of nothing more than sheer force of will, the drones following behind her as she readied the axe again. "That's, like, half a pony! Even Sableshroulds would get new legs to stay whole!"

"Return to the castle…" the shadow hissed once more, gaining speed with the beating wind and raising the axe high to strike at the wagon, against all logic. Mira twisted around, magically yanked Tsih onto his back before she could protest, and made the wagon vanish in a burst of silver light right as the weapon made to connect. It missed, barely, and Mira swiveled around to face the shadow mid-air. He forced himself to ignore the howling winds, the baying thunder, and took another deep breath of frigid air to collect his nerves.

The thing, whatever she was, lunged at him with the axe yet again. Mira stopped the blade with both claws as the gap came level with his horn. "Do you even know what entered that palace?!" he cried, forcing himself to stare into the shadow's orbs. A chill of dread, and odd familiarity, swept down his spine and back up.

The shadow nodded once, and the drones came up to encircle them both with the motion. "I am… aware," she replied bluntly. "I have not been... idle as of late…" Her orbs narrowed further, staring into Mira's eyes with something akin to mild annoyance.

Mira warily eyed the drones as they flipped to shine their light unto him. "What are you?" he asked, turning back to the shadow that, by all accounts, should not have been yet was. Tsih regarded the shade with a snort, sensing an air of both wrongness and warmth about her.

The shadow snorted back. The light of the drones flickered once more. Silence held for a few moments, before the thunder overhead broke it. "You… do not… know me?" she asked, tone softening as her orbs widened in comprehension.

Mira shook his head. The shadow faltered further, and the axe began to slip in his claws. "What are you?" he repeated. "Not who."

The shadow's orbs narrowed once more, and she pressed her axe with more force that made Mira's claws shriek as they scraped its frosted surface. She contemplated the question, for but a moment. "... if you must know… I am but a shell of… what I was," she answered. "But not of who."

Mira huffed and pushed on the axe, throwing it to the side where its head met with one of the drones. The drone didn't break further from the strike—odd, he noted, though the ice might have contributed somewhat to that, as it broke in the drone's stead. It was sent spinning back a few feet, tumbling around and around until it managed to reorient its tesla at him. The shadow span swiftly, trailing the axe and herself with the motion, and with that flourish spheres of air crackled to life in globes of stable electricity that shot from the drones. Mira flew back, narrowly missing being both sliced and singed, and frowned as the globes turned to home in on him.

Tsih scowled. "That's… that's not…" she grumbled, watching the globes with pupils shrinking.

Mira's horn glowed in a pulse, and he traded the knives for a hoof-sized black cube with a crystal button that he clutched tightly in a claw. Immediately upon pushing the button, it sparked with magic and formed four diamond-shaped blades glowing with plasma and power. The thing was half as large as one of his wings, and the blades formed tapered, wickedly sharp points reminiscent of a four-pointed star.Wordlessly, he continued to backpedal mid-air, spinning the glaive and using the howling winds to help accelerate it as he moved.

Some of the winds began to spin along with the glaive, coalescing into a grey cylinder as the spheres moved to home in. The teslas fired once more, though their lasers went wide and sailed off into the snow. Mira watched, still backing off and letting his summoned weapon generate enough movement to take care of the rest, pulling his claws out and replacing them with his magic. The glaive twirled faster and faster, until its pointed bits became a dizzying blur that would have made his eyes spin and go blind if he looked at it for longer than a second.

The wind it collected and generated did likewise, for that matter, and gravity started to shift around it accordingly. Mira added more fuel to it by beating his wings to send some more energy into it, right as the globes of lightning made to touch the weapon. The moment they did hit the glaive, their fate was sealed; it dragged the sparks into its axis, turning fast enough that its blades almost seemed stationary despite its motion.

A small smirk crossed his face as bits of snow, lightning, and the distant shadow were all swept up in a horizontal tornado that lanced out almost instantly, reaching all the way and stopping just shy of the crown jewel of the castle. Around and around the drones, the axe, and their owner went, drawn into a shrieking vortex that then sent them into each other over and over. It lasted for mere seconds, yet it was more than enough to dent the teslas and bust the lights to non-functionality on the drones. Though even then, their unnatural blazes still burned fiercely.

The winds relented as Mira made the glaive vanish, but even as they did the shadow and her weapon still whirled through the air for a few seconds longer as gravity started to gather its bearings. Mira rushed forward with another flap and seized the shadow by her neck the moment she was within reach, then let go and kicked her in the chest with his sturdy hinds to send her plummeting below. Drones and axe went with, and for a moment, she was swallowed up by the whirling snow-devils.

Mira waited, smirking triumphantly and crossing his forelegs over his chest. It did not fade when the shadow rushed up at him from below, body and axe spinning with another flourish of snow and an elegance that suggested it had years of practice. As she raced to meet him, Tsih noticed that massive boulders of ice were forming along behind the shade, and pried herself off his back to levitate at his side.

With a wordless nod between them, both pulled back, the axe's blade grazing against an augmented front leg and slipping entirely over Tsih's horn. The shadow turned to face them as her attack ceased, a thin line appearing on her muzzle to complete an irritated scowl. "Listen to me!" she barked, her command echoing across the frozen landscape with a formidable fury that shook with enough force, even the thunder overhead fell silent. A front right leg started forming on her shoulder, made entirely with and glistening of ice, with shadowy tendrils within reminiscent of wiring encapsulated in the mass. She pointed it accusingly at the stubborn pair in lieu of her axe the instant it had finished forming. "It's not just you and Tsih that are in peril! Stop being so selfish and consider the situation!"

The frozen boulders lifted up behind the shade, each with a drone and burning fire trapped within. Mira raised a brow as Tsih reared her forelegs up, gem and horn crackling with a strange unison between them. "We already have considered the situation, thank you kindly," he snorted.

The shade's scowl deepened. The web on the right side of her face pulsed with latent power. "Then you two leave me no choice," she snapped, swinging her axe at them once again. The strike went wide as both backed off, but she slashed again after putting her new and frozen leg onto the shaft to put more strength into it. That time, it managed to cut into Mira's shoulder and Tsih's front legs, drawing blood that froze almost instantly with the weapon's passing.

Tsih grit her teeth, turning to focus on the ice-boulders as they started to home in. She smiled and darted below Mira and the shade, eyes affixed onto the drones within as they shifted to follow her. She took notice that the shade herself went after Mira, wildly swinging her axe with reckless abandon, getting deflected by augmented forelegs and kicked in the chest over and over for her troubles.

But she ignored that, and goaded the boulders into following her just above those snow-devils. She snickered wickedly. "Self-levitation really comes in handy some days…" Tsih mused, eyes glinting as the massive, sluggish projectiles came closer and closer. Within moments, she was completely encircled by them, at least from a horizontal standpoint. "I just wished more ponies practiced it…"

The drones within the boulders flared up, fire burning brighter and brighter until they shined refracting light in all possible directions. Tsih squinted her eyes, and turned up as she heard steel clanging overhead. Mira started to retaliate with his glaive, blocking the axe with one claw and bashing the weapon into the shade's face with the other. Despite the whaling, though, the shade seemed unfazed in the least, and kept trying to block it with her shadowy foreleg to no avail.

The boulders drew closer still. Tsih's magic lanced out at them, right as they touched her legs and muzzle and tail. She pushed them back with a wave of her horn, though the boulders shook as their lights burned fiercely, trying to scour her fur from her body. In fact, they lashed out with tendrils of their own at her, frozen yet snaking with glowing light at such speeds she could barely react in time. She levitated up, but one tendril seized her by a hind pastern and pulled her back down into the encirclement.

Tsih pumped more magic outwards, shoving the boulders back before they could crush her again. They sent out more tendrils, ensnaring her fronts and other hind with a cold, cruel efficiency. Her legs began to burn at the sensation, and yet ice grew upon them simultaneously—all while gravity began to shift around her. "Pigya!" she shrieked, looking up again as Mira broke his close-quarters range from the shade.

It was time for her to make her move, and she only had seconds to do it. Tsih's horn crackled and sparked as she span with the boulders in tow, pushing herself up and up as much as her magic and encirclement would allow, shaking her legs wildly as she felt flesh writhing and augments activating. The ice flaked away, but the burning did not stop, and one pair of boulders started pushing towards her to grind her body against its companions.

The shade lunged at Mira once more, unaware she was about to be interrupted. Tsih pushed back once more against the boulders, this time by splaying her legs as she would after a harsh landing against the ground. Hooves met ice, almost froze on contact, and legs stretched as wide as they could. Two boulders shot off, sent careening through the air as the shade kept charging forward with a furious cry. One missed her entirely, but another hit her axe and sent her into a barrel roll that made her veer wildly and dangerously close to the snow-devils.

Tsih wasn't finished; she moved her legs and kicked another boulder at the shadow, breaking the tendrils on her fronts and hinds with the motion. Her magic seized the rest and anchored them by thin, fraying strings of power as she watched the shadow dodging the third strike clumsily and with legs and axe flailing. Another boulder was sent back at her, and she crossed weapon and leg in front of her face to take the blow.

The shade was sent careening further away, her iced leg breaking apart entirely with the strike. The last two boulders were launched in unison, with a flourish of Tsih's front legs that made the burning wane. The shadow didn't have time to react; she was sent head-first into the snow as the boulders moved to crush and grind her between them.

Mira and Tsih reunited, and the latter moved to rest on the back of the former again. Another minute after that, the shadow and her drones came screaming at them from below, axe once more raised for another strike. But Mira was quicker; he waited until she came in range, shifted away just enough to avoid having a wing amputated, and clasped the shadow's neck with his claws as he made his glaive vanish once again.

Then, he flew back to the castle as the shadow flailed about, trying to strike at him repeatedly with her axe. Tsih deflected with her magic every time the head came near them, though that wasn't as much of a problem for them thanks to its rather generously elongated shaft. Within a few minutes after the shadow had been ensnared in metal claws, she got to see Mira personally pin her backside to the castle's crown jewel with enough strength to crack the crystal for years to come. The drones, no longer bound in boulders but still levitating and burning in spite of the odds, flew with her and embedded themselves in the crystal around her, creating a half-dozen smaller craters that kept them out of commission for the moment.

The shadow smirked with a thin line of white on her muzzle, and her scowl eased even as she once more lifted her axe to try and swat the pair away. Tsih simply flashed her horn and held it back before its mighty head could reach either of them, and she pinned it to the crown jewel for good measure. Well, at least that ruled out incorporeality; this beast was as solid as they came. Which meant she could be hurt, seemingly crippled as she was. Though, Tsih still wondered if he was burning just touching her; her legs still stung from all that had happened today.

Mira parted, then raised one clawed hoof and balled it into a tight, metal fist as his face hardened into a glare. "You wanted us to return here… knowing damn well what's found her way inside," he spat, fist trembling with the restrained urge to pound the shadow's face into the crystal. "Why?"

The shadow, in spite of having the tables turned on her, kept her smirk. "The situation… is far more dire than you believe," she answered, orbs glinting with a cryptic spark that Mira didn't miss.

That managed to withhold his raised fist, for now. Still, Mira kept the shadow pinned. "Stop speaking in tongues!" he barked.

The shadow shook her head. "Windigos… they feed on the remainder of life that still clings to the world," she said. "Except I and… a small cadre of like-minded others. We do not feed—we have no need."

Mira's brow furrowed at that. "Translation?" he asked.

The windigo obliged, her smirk falling as she did, "The Herald… is in as much peril as you. So is… the Windchime." Her orbs narrowed again. "Once they and the Guardians are gone… the world will become devoid of life."

Mira glanced below, at all the swirling white as the grim statement made him drop his fist and release his hold on the windigo. Then he considered what he had just heard. That walking, talking harbinger, the Blasting Fuse of the World's End, as screwed as he? Some day this was turning out to be. He glanced back to the windigo and sighed. "Fine. The fuck you want us to do?" he grumbled. He saw her open her mouth and snapped, "Besides returning back inside and potentially getting our tails burnt off?"

The windigo frowned, muzzle scrunching for a moment. "The scourge that makes the windigos feed… stop him," she answered. "But make haste to safety first… even now, the cold grows… and this castle is no longer… a sanctuary." She pried the axe out of Tsih's magical grip, and used it to gesture to the distant, fallen airship. Both the ponies looking at her turned to it, though they had to squint to see through the cloud of swirling snow to locate it.

Mira sighed, but allowed himself a tiny smirk at that. Tsih, seeing the smirk, did likewise as a hoof moved to her gem. "Even those searchlights couldn't find me when we had out sparring sessions, back during the Clash's hayday…" she muttered, just as Mira closed his wings and turned his muzzle to plummet. Tsih kept eye contact with the figure, and for a fraction of a second, she could've sworn time slowed down as the shadow's identity—her mannerisms, choice of weapons, even the reason for the ring of flame on the one leg she had remaining—all dawned onto her.

She even saw a flickering, gem-like object on the shadow's chest, burning with a cold but faltering light, though it soon was swallowed by the rest of the darkness making its owner's form. It all made sense to her now—even the shadow's plea for them to return to the strange palace, though there was a chance things could heat up and they'd become ash before they could do anything about it. That, and if that didn't happen, there was a slimmer chance that the Windchime would chop their legs off.

If the windigo was telling them to meet up with those crazies, Tsih supposed that she and Mira hadn't much choice left in the matter—fireworks or not. Still, she wasted no time cloaking herself and her companion, though only after one last batch of words left her mouth in a final parting taunt just as the blanket of flying snow swallowed her head. "Could they, Alte, if that is really you? Or are you a hollow being just copying her?"

And as Mira turned to fling open the double doors with his claws, Tsih could've sworn that Alte—or rather, the thing that had her axe and was possibly just a hollow being mimicking her—had smirked at her nonetheless. She turned to the foyer as Mira landed inside, magically closing the doors behind them and perked her ears to listen for trouble.

Far up above, though she couldn't tell how many floors, she heard the sound of crystal breaking. Again, and again. It was steadily growing louder too, accompanied by several voices shrieking…? After a few seconds, the castle shook, and she reluctantly looked up. The ceiling started to crack with a groan and a cry, and she slowly raised her hoof to tap at the back of Mira's neck.

Mira instead looked up, just as dumbstruck by what she was seeing. The ceiling caved, split, and gave way with the aid of several chunks of rubble and the last pony both of them wanted to see right now. There was only enough time for them to scramble out of the underside of the shadows of the mess, but just that—a few solid chunks of stray debris managed to clock both of them on the backsides of their heads even with the cloak up. And when those chunks hit, the world began to spin as the cloak collapsed along with Mira's legs. Both were sent into a sprawl upon the floor, consciousness fleeing to greener pastures as they landed with a unanimous thud. The last thing both Mira and Tsih heard was the flapping of oddly-whistling wings.

Chapter XXV- Threads Long Lost

Mira's consciousness returned after an indeterminate amount of time had passed, and with it came one of the most excruciating headaches he could ever recall having. It didn't quite reach 'hangover' status, but it was certainly one of the runner-ups for that particular category. Even as the back of his skull throbbed with demands to tear his brain apart and reassemble it, he refused to open his eyes, instead scrunching them for a second and then relaxing. That made the throbbing wane a little, just enough for him to consider it manageable, and he started letting the sense of touch take over for the time being. He began with his wings, slowly moving them and unfo—wait a minute…

He felt cloth weighing his wings down. Strange. He tried moving them again; at his sides, they could go up and down easily enough. He tried to spread them, and that was where problems began to arise—the cloth he felt moved with them, tightening if he tried spreading them to even half-mast. His brow slanted a little in worry at this development, yet still his lids remained firmly shut. His ears twitched, slowly rotating until they perked upright. With them, he ascertained the situation; he heard two pairs of hushed breaths near him, and he could feel more cloth tickling the back of his mane and his cut shoulder.

But he shelved that sensation; echoing hoofsteps and hushed voices managed to pierce through the fog of pain, with a clarity he couldn't ignore if his life depended on it. "Starbreaker actually thought that was a good idea…" a masculine voice grumbled.

A feminine speaker piped up with a snort, "Then again, besides transmogrifying Omega, what doesn't she think of as 'a good idea?'"

Mira's ears pinned back against his head upon hearing that voice. His heart began pounding in both directions, unsure of which end of his body to exit out of first. His head began to ache harder, as a third speaker tossed in his two bits, "Surprised Prism's actually gotten th' concept of 'bad ideas.' But that's jus' me."

With a groan and great reluctance, Mira forced his eyes open, blinking to get the fog out of them. He swiveled his head left the second the fog cleared, finding himself in a room with seven chairs and a round table… and himself sitting in one of said chairs. Huh, the damn things were marked and… he found a trio of strange red, round things above his head.

Mira scowled upon seeing the furniture all around was crystal, and there wasn't a lot of it to go around. That meant he was back at square one. In another chair marked with a six-pointed star of all things that stood opposite of him from the table, he found the dread harbinger herself, tied up in blankets and with a rather bandaged head slumped. He dared not relax even as he registered that she was out cold for the moment.

Next to him, in a chair marked with balloons to the left sat Tsih, in much the same state as the harbinger with some added bandages on her wounded fronts. Her ears twitched; she was about to wake up sometime soon. Hopefully. Mira turned to look at his own body to figure out what was going wrong this time, and he found bandages and shredded blankets anchoring his wings onto themselves. Worse, when he turned back to the table, he heard the sound of doors flying open. The resultant thud and echo made his head hurt even worse, and though he didn't want to do so, he looked towards it to see if he could dispel any lingering doubts about today's bout of insanity.

Great, it was the other three bozos who had decided to accompany the harbinger, and the Windchime was carrying one of them. And all three turned to regard him as he studied them in turn. Fantastic; that meant he now had to face the music. "Oh good, you're awake," Yukito grumbled, frowning. "Sincere apologies, in regards to the ceiling. That… was not our fault."

Mira huffed from flared nostrils. "Of course," he hissed, lifting a claw to rub his temples in an effort to dull the headache. The claws were cold to the touch, but their temperature did nothing to make the throbbing even stop.

"But I feel the need to ask… why did you attack Starbreaker? Assuming that wasn't your knife that tried to get into her skull," Yukito mused, trotting over to Mira to give him a checkup. Mira pursed his lips, and felt the barest trickle of sweat beading down his neck as he tried to think up an excuse to get himself out of this mess.

"We were in th' carriage in case ya didn't notice, asshat," Omega piped up, tail lashing irritably as he donned a scowl.

Sora shook her head and rolled her eyes emphatically as Omega glared at Mira for all it was worth. "I don't think either he or the foal noticed," she muttered. "Or particularly cared."

Yukito magically seized Mira's raised claw and pulled it as far as it could go to scrutinize it. Mira scowled, eyes narrowing and turning at the unsolicited limb-grabbing. "Dude, the fuck?" he grumbled.

"Don't mind him too much; you're not going under the knife," Sora piped up, trotting over to stand opposite of Yukito in case Mira tried anything. Though, the worse-for-wear stallion shut his trap as she moved and reared up onto an armrest so they were snout to snout when he faced her. Her oddly calm expression and quiet voice did nothing to dull or sheathe the dangerous edge within her tone. "Unless you wish to be dismembered?" She spread her wings at half-mast, making sure the blades stuck out just enough that they were visible. "That can be arranged."

"No thank you," Mira muttered in a faltering voice, the robotic undertone more prominent for a moment. He turned back to Yukito as he dropped the raised leg and sighed.

"No damage, but that's a pretty peculiar augment if I've seen one," Yukito noted, looking at the claws for a second before turning his attention to Sora. "This the pony who mused about two others becoming… screwed up, as it were?"

Sora nodded, turning to the claws, then to the haunches. "I don't recall claws, severed legs, a false horn, or one haunch that's different from the other being fixtures of our last encounter, though," she replied, eyeballing the orange haunch that boasted strange knives bursting forth from some sort of star-shaped explosion for a mark. She turned back to Mira's face and noticed the mismatched ear. "Lemme guess: the ponies who fucked you up the first time weren't exactly content with the results?"

Mira could only nod to that, ears folding back. "And found… pieces of our other body intact," he grumbled. "Went under the knife again, woke up with two different cutie marks. As if they didn't fuck us hard enough already."

Sora lifted a hoof and ran it along the bridge of her snout. That last statement was one she found herself silently hoping wasn't in the most literal sense possible. "Next thing you know, we're gonna find a walking puzzle box of an augmented pony one of these days," she hissed in discontent. She parted hoof from face and, after looking at Omega to make sure he wouldn't slip off, turned to Mira once again with nose wrinkling. "Listen, we just want directions; we'll let you go once you fork over what you know. We set aside all that's happened in the past and go our separate ways. Deal?"

Mira's brows tried to build a bridge to no avail, and furrowed with frustration instead. "Where?" he asked. The windigo's warning rang in his head again, and some small part of him wanted to at least inform his current—at this rate, the most he could call her was an acquaintance—about it. He made a mental note to not anger her in the future, lest his legs get sliced off.

Sora studied Mira's expression for a moment longer, then pulled back with wings fully folding at her sides again as she reverted to all fours. "Aeverafree," she answered. Mira's ears perked for a second, and blood and color drained from his face shortly after.

His pupils shrank and his eyes went wide. His tied wings shuddered with the urge to leave at the earliest window of opportunity, though that rather level stare kept him rooted to the chair. "Wh-why there? Haven't you heard of its laws?" he asked.

Sora did nothing but stare at him for another few and rather unnerving seconds. "Painfully little," she admitted. Her eyes narrowed just a smidgen. "I'm not very politically informed. Enlighten me…"

Mira swallowed a lump that wasn't there before. He saw Omega jostling to get his hind legs beneath those bladed wings and forced his nerves to collect themselves before his entire body could go onto the fritz. "Well… and this is something we haven't personally seen, so we took it with a grain of salt when we first heard it," he began, shifting in his seat to get a little more comfortable. "Any convicts who are tried and found guilty there, whether they're native-born or immigrant, will end up de-augmented ninety-nine percent of the time."

Sora took an unconscious step back, brows raising. "Excuse me?" she asked, ears twitching.

Mira nodded. "That's just what we heard," he repeated. "The remainder? Either died before they could get de-augmented, or had some pretty fucking good reasons to keep their metal bits intact and managed to get by with lesser sentences doing so." His ears rotated back once more. "So if you're going there… as a word of warning, lie your fucking ass off if you can manage it. Especially since, y'know…" He jerked his horn towards Starbreaker for emphasis, frown tightening.

Sora's brow furrowed. "Strange… I've heard nothing about that…" she grumbled. She turned to Omega for a moment. "Want a chair to sit in?"

Omega nodded. "Things look comfy," he answered.

Sora nodded back and turned to Mira. "Hold that thought for a minute." Mira watched as Sora trotted around the still-out Tsih and moved to align her rear with the chair past her, which itself was marked by a triad of diamonds. Then she shifted to sit, but did not quite manage it to let Omega slide off with ease. Once he was seated, and leaned into the back of the chair just to stay upright, Sora trotted back and returned to her staring contest with Mira. "I'll bear that in mind. Now then; you have directions?" she asked, a hint of worry worming its way into her tone.

Mira frowned and shook his head. "Honestly, we don't even know where we're at," he answered.

Sora internally facehoofed, and externally sighed. The day just couldn't get any better. "In that case, I'd avoid going north from here if I were you," she warned. Turning to the table and raising a hoof to her bell, she muttered, "Light, return research papers." The bell rang, glowed, and summoned forth the papers to let them collapse onto the table in an untidy, dusty triad of stacks.

Mira whistled at the sight. "Why should we avoid going north?" he asked, a hint of curiosity aroused somewhere in his tone. Sora simply turned to Yukito and waved a hoof at the papers, and he nodded and turned to start magically sorting and dusting off the whole lot of it.

"Well… to cut a long story short, we're wanted criminals now," Yukito replied dryly, shuffling the papers to knock the layers of dust onto the floor where it couldn't make anypony sneeze. He lifted up a particular parchment stack, one with illustrations on wing joints and showed that to Mira.

Mira studied the papers, lifting a claw to tenderly flip through them. He found more illustrations, some detailing blades, the body of a pegasus, and how those two things went together… "... how did you get your hooves on this shit?" he muttered.

"Stashed them in my quarters, but not before having the cameras removed when nopony was looking," Yukito answered with a mild, almost apathetic shrug of his shoulders. He pulled the stack away once Mira got through with it, and showed him another stack detailing false horns and the like.

As with the stack before, Mira leafed through it with a claw. His expression gradually soured, bit by bit as he found more and more illustrations that detailed how artificial horns went onto a pony's skull, how much metal plating was required to keep the two bonded, and so forth. He even saw illustrations of a crown of horns, similarly applied to their singular cousins on a pony's head. "... these are… these are blueprints…" he muttered as the realization hit him. He turned to Yukito, scowling. "Blueprints for turning ponies into weapons." His tail lashed, and were Sora not presently standing next to him, he'd have lunged onto Yukito and started bashing the back of his head into the table with his own claws.

Yukito nodded. "I was… tasked with making weapons out of ponies, and keeping the blueprints on hoof," he said, scowling in return. "Without these," he began, making the papers vanish in several bursts of light with a flick of his horn, "my… former employers will have to start all over from scratch. I think I'll burn the papers one of these days, once the danger passes."

Mira stood up in the chair, wings flared as far as they could go with the cloth still holding them for all it was worth. Yukito merely shifted his snout to maintain eye contact, and even then he did not waver slightly. "Y-you… you made…" Mira sputtered, lifting a claw just slightly enough to gesture to Sora with it.

A mute nod answered him. "But, she was the first of whom got anesthesia prior to that surgery," Yukito added.

Mira's brow twitched. He leaned over a little, just enough that he could tackle Yukito if the urge decided to drop by. For the moment, he continued restraining his claws, scowl deepening further. "The first… why?" he muttered.

Yukito's expression failed to shift, though Mira could see a fire burning to life in his eyes. "I simply smuggled it in to the operating room, under the pretense of a pre-surgical tool-cleaning liquid," he said.

Mira's brow twitched again, and his horn crackled once with a sputter. "Did you make…" A claw lifted, and he curled all but one artificial digit onto the hoof. He used the odd one out to gesture at Starbreaker, who began shifting in her seat.

Yukito shook his head that time. "At most, her artificial ear," he answered. "Never met her in the flesh before then." His own scowl deepened. "And though I made the blueprints for the horn crowns, I have never once applied them myself. The last two ponies, one being the first… was not augmented with my hooves."

Mira's claw unfurled and dropped in short order. It hit the cushion and crystal with a muffled clang. "What else haven't you done, you fucking murderer?" he spat.

Yukito turned away and trotted to a chair marked with a triad of butterflies. He sat in it with a weary sigh and rested his pasterns on the table. "I wasn't able to prevent them from dying," he muttered. "Nor the first who had received the crown of horns…" He closed his eyes as Sora trotted over to nuzzle him. "I won't deny that there is blood on my hooves and all over my cutie mark—what good would it do?" Mira's eyes went wider and rounder as he returned the nuzzle without further hesitation.

In fact, Mira's brain almost short-circuited at this bizarre sight. A stallion who augmented the Windchime herself, nuzzling her as she did him? Some part of him registered that as rather unnerving, given the circumstances. "Doesn't…" He couldn't finish the question before he reminded himself that these two had admitted they were on the run already. So he had to amend the query before the rest of it could fly off his tongue. "Wouldn't that have been a bit creepy, if you still had your jobs?"

Yukito shrugged and pulled from the nuzzling. "Not 'creepy' so much as 'completely, totally unacceptable.' But, Sora's then-commanding officer disregarded decorum entirely and saw fit to have us… married," he said, without even a faint hint of disgust. "Things were… hectic back then."

Mira sighed and watched as Sora trotted to sit in the last chair, one sporting a cloud and a rather prismatic lightning bolt. "I take it things were cold between you two?" he asked.

Yukito shook his head, and turned to Starbreaker as she groaned and rubbed the back of her head with a hoof. "Well, she was being deployed left and right, and I had to fix augments everywhere they broke," he muttered. "And hello sleepyhead," he greeted. "Are you not going to break floors and ceilings from several floors above ground anymore?"

Starbreaker grunted and turned to glare at him, but said nothing. She continued rubbing her head, and turned to glare at Mira. Mira glared back and sat his haunches down again, before remembering the cloth on his own head and raising a claw to feel for it. Yukito turned to him and piped up, "You were, ah, bleeding a little after the ceiling broke. So was your companion. I wrapped you both up."

Mira nodded, and set his claw down as Tsih finally moved her muzzle. "Auuuuuu… where'd the mechanical duckies go?" she muttered, eyes opening to reveal a pained glaze that was upon them.

Omega piped up, and waved a hind hoof in lieu of a front as best he could. "Some days I wonder th' same thing when I wake up," he grumbled. "And now I think th' duckies are between my ears."

Sora was about to make a retort to that, going so far as to take the needed breath for it, when the whole castle rumbled with another peal of thunder. The room began to glow with the barest trickles of magic, each vein sprouting from the ceiling to crawl along the walls, columns, then the floor and up the chairs and table. The gathered lot began looking around as the doors of the room slammed shut and stayed that way with another passing rumble, and slowly the accumulating magic began pulsing with faint traces of a power long lost.

Yukito was the first to turn to the nearest door, horn glowing and magic trying to wrench the thing open. Alas, the door stayed firmly shut; it did not even rattle with his tugging. Starbreaker, getting some idea of what was going on, alighted her horn to try and wrench the veins of magic from the door—but her aura merely disintegrated on contact with those veins. She tried again to yield the same result, before conjuring her little bomb and alighting one of its beeping lights in that door's direction and focusing some power into it. When enough crimson light had gathered around the beeping nub, it fired off in a thin but red-hot laser that streaked up and down the door's surface—it damaged the crystal, but merely forced the magical veins to take those new indents as a detour.

Mira and Tsih focused their magic on the opposite door as Starbreaker screamed and made her bomb vanish, but as with the harbinger, their magic simply ceased to be around the strange phenomenon that had them all trapped. Sora made to rise, but the veins of magic snapped out and anchored her to the seat in taut lines that even her wings could not cut. "Wh-what the?!" she barked as more veins sprung up on everypony else and tied them in place too. It even wrapped itself around four horns, and whenever they cast, the auras could do nothing but wink out.

"A trap?!" Tsih screamed, kicking out with her hinds as much as the bonds would allow her to. The table's surface began to glow six different colors, and the light lifted up to form translucent but present equine shapes. Then, more colors formed and rose up, making manes and tails that wafted in an unseen breeze.

As the equine shapes on the table grew more and more defined, each one facing a pony in a chair, Sora peered a little closer as three spread wings and two alighted crackling horns also formed as a sort of cherry on the top. "I don't think this is a trap… we'd have been attacked by now if it was…" she muttered, though that was a thought that sent shivers up and down her augments. She noticed that the not-quite-there pony facing her, a rainbow-maned pegasus, had several bruises lining her body. The bruises, though, did not make her stern, tooth-grinding expression falter in the least.

"If anypony has found this castle… Tartarus, if the Castle of Friendship is still standing after all this…" the rainbow pegasus growled in a raspy voice, feathers trembling as she spoke through labored breath, "then please… hear us out."

Sora's eyes widened, and started glowing with a faint whir. She leaned a little to see Yukito shrugging his shoulders at her through… whatever the table was currently presenting them with. She had no choice but to oblige the six, illusion or not. The rainbow pegasus continued, her voice distraught, "Something bad is happening. We're at war with ponies on the other side of the planet. We're surrounded everywhere." There was a sound of ground shaking, one that did not send itself through the crystal of the room as it did coming from the table itself; whatever it was had distorted the image of the standing six briefly.

"They think we done attacked them," an orange earth pony hissed, facing Mira with an expression so stern and dirt-dusted it seemed to have been carved of the earth itself. "But they attacked us first! Took Spike away from us! Foalnapped all of our Princesses!"

"Except me," the sole alicorn of the group hissed, facing Starbreaker with nothing short of contempt and anger alight in her eyes. For a moment her image faltered, and her violet coat briefly turned off-white as her mane and tail went aflame. "I'm not going to go down without a fight." Her wings fluttered, scattering ashes, before her body returned to its sense of normal. "We'll do what it takes to save Equestria…"

"If you are seeing this…" a white unicorn said, facing Omega with hooves steady and horn crackling. She closed her eyes briefly, letting a tired sigh come forth as the collected image shook and faltered again. "Do not let Harmony die, even in the midst of this war."

"If Harmony dies… the windigos and other nasty creatures will attack us all… or what's left after all this," a pink earth pony warned, facing Tsih with her tail twitching erratically. "And we'll all… be in Tartarus." A tear left her eye, and trailed down her cheek at the prospect. "But if—" The six on the table shook and distorted once more, this time nearly vanishing altogether before stabilizing. "—but if the windigos come, and Harmony hasn't died already… stay safe."

The last pony, a yellow pegasus looking at Yukito with an expression and a set of legs that threatened to falter and buckle, sucked in a deep breath to collect her nerves. Her words were quiet, almost drowned out by another crash of thunder, "We'll find and free the other Princesses. We have to. It's the only way the war will stop…"

The alicorn nodded, face hardening. "I'll failsafe the palace if it's the last thing I do." Her face softened, and a tear slipped down her cheek. "Forgive me, Spike… I'm sorry I wasn't able to save you…"

The rainbow pegasus reared up and stomped her front hooves, nostrils flaring. "We'll make those plotheads sorry they took Spike! That'll be the last mistake they'll make if I have anything to say about it!" she screamed, maintaining her angry glare even as she, too, shed a tear.

The alicorn nodded, stern expression returning. "This is our last message… to whomever finds it. If we don't make it out… we've failed Equestria. Please… don't falter like we have; find safety, and build Harmony there. Then free the Princesses, if we are unable to."

A seventh pony, also translucent, spontaneously appeared in a burst of light, between all of the group's turned backsides. She had a glowing horn, and a wide-eyed look of paling dread marred her pinkish but blood-splattered face that did not shift even as the six turned towards her. Sora frowned; the expression reminded her of Alte's frozen face. "T-Twilight, they've managed to start cranking out really strong soldiers!" the new arrival sputtered, hooves pounding nervously on the floor in a frantic little dance.

The alicorn's face contorted in horror first. She was swiftly followed by the other five. "Starlight, what do you mean?" she asked, the collective image swimming again with another passing shake.

Starlight's jaw clenched for a moment. "Battlemages, and pegasi carving everything up with wings turned to blades!" she forced out, ears rotating back. "They… they skewered Sunburst!"

The alicorn frowned, and the six turned to the chairs once again, contemplating what they had just heard. "If anypony finds this, who is such a battlemage or pegasus… I promise you… you're going to have Tartarus itself to answer to when you decide to lay down in your graves," she said darkly. "Unless you're willing to atone for what you have done…" With that, the seven shook again, and faded from the world with the threads of magic as her horn finally winked out.

For a long moment, the sitting six stayed there, stunned at what they had seen. Even Starbreaker had been unable to move a muscle, much less alight her horn after the threads of strange magic had gone. It took a great effort for everypony to even look at each other with a level gaze, sharing wary glances that betrayed all concern and confusion. Seconds stretched to eternity as one looked at the next, then to the pony opposite of them, and back again.

Then, when his eyes met with Sora's, Mira spoke up, "The hell were those ponies babbling about?" Sora could do nothing but mutely stare back, forcing herself to deactivate her ocular augments with sheer will. As much as she wished to answer his question, she could not bring herself to do so—for she had none to give.

Chapter XXVI- Quiet Contemplation

Everypony parted from their borrowed chairs and landed smoothly on their hooves for the most part; Starbreaker shook off the blankets that clung to her and made them vanish with a flick of her horn, and so did Mira and Tsih. Omega leaned forward, ended up slamming his chin on the table, and landed on the floor in a way that made his fronts go between his hinds with a distinct screech of steel on crystal. He flailed his forelegs for a bit, trying to gain some sort of footing, before Yukito trotted over and magically lifted him up. "You're gaining feeling in your new legs faster than I thought," he observed with a tired sigh. "But given the way you're basically kicking everywhere, I'm going to generously assume the ponies who put you under the needles had no clue what they were doing."

"As far as research blueprints go, especially for weaponized ponies, wouldn't your ex-employers keep that shit in digital copies or something?" Mira asked through clenched teeth, a brow arched as Yukito helped stabilize Omega. "Under, y'know, tightly-guarded vaults or something?"

Yukito shook his head. "No; they always kept such things on paper—makes sweeping it all under the rug and then denying it ever happened that much easier… or would, had I not pilfered a meager chunk of it," he retorted firmly. "Once digitized, always digitized—databases never do forget any details, not even any previous results of… researchers and scientists born before I was, were the results stored in that fashion."

Mira took a moment to process all of that, and his wings rattled against his sides when he did. "So you three fucking clowns were cooped up in a place with a bajillion eyeballs everywhere, that may already be denying its fair share of war crimes?" he asked.

Sora nodded grimly at that. "Had to have the cameras removed from his quarters when he started stashing the papers there, and it also had another bonus for us…" And here, she turned and mouthed to Mira in lieu of speaking, "and that was, we could consummate our bond under everypony's noses."

Mira rolled his eyes and mouthed back at Sora with all the sarcasm he could muster, "Of fucking course." Tsih, having turned around and caught his smack-talk, trotted over to one of his gaskins and turned her rear to him. Once aligned, she lashed out with a swift buck of her hind hooves that made him slip on the crystal, crash against the table, and wobble to one side. She used her magic to make him land on his face, before he could even start up a retort or force his legs to straighten out.

"It's not like our conditions of living were much better," Tsih spat, brow furrowing. Mira mutely nodded and got up with a wordless grunt once her magic let go, tail lashing and scowl reasserting itself on his face as he ruffled his wings. "You had to disable both of our self-destruct mechanisms so they could be removed, all before either of us could be deployed when the Clash was still happening!"

Yukito turned to the duo, brows drawing together at what he'd heard. Then he sighed with ears drooping, and shook his head in a manner that suggested something had just clicked for him. "Oh, right, your side had an entire kamikaze brigade…" he muttered ruefully. He turned to Sora and nodded to her, and she moved over to secure Omega with a front leg and a wing, letting Yukito release his magical hold. He trotted to the pair, pausing briefly as Tsih jumped on the table, and frowned at them both. "Would you mind letting me… see these mechanisms in question, if you still have them?"

Mira shrugged. Tsih shook her head. "Well, we did a little tinkering after we returned to our pens with our asses handed to us on a silver platter, but nothing too major post-mechanism-shifting," Mira muttered, rolling his eyes again. "Don't see why not." His horn flashed, and he conjured two tiny black cubes, oddly whole yet hooked to wires that had been severed, in his magic. He very tenderly set them on the table, and watched as Yukito moved to study them.

That was when he noticed two tiny pegs, one on each cube, sticking out an inch to end in odd circular disks. In addition, there was a slight indent around the base of the pegs, which alighted his curiosity. Though, he turned away to look at Mira and Tsih again, both of whom reached up with a hoof and a claw to their chest-gems.

Both pressed onto them, and the gems sank with a click before unfolding out with the aid of well-hidden hinges when the raised limbs parted from their surfaces. This revealed a network of more wires going every which-way, all burrowing into flesh and anchoring onto strange, glowing crystals. Tsih had one crystal that pulsed with teal power, and Mira had two that were interlinked with still more wires that burned with orange and indigo lights. The cavities, however riddled with wires they were, otherwise seemed strangely normal—fur hugged their bases snugly, there wasn't much in the way of scarring save along the outer rims of the overall attachment, and there wasn't any discoloration.

Stranger still, the crystals danced a centimeter away from the strands of hair, levitating of their own accord—were they still enclosed proper, they would not have touched the coverings of their enclosures either. They let Yukito peer at these particular arrays for a moment longer, and then to the backsides of the coverings to find what looked like tinted glass lining the inner curvature. He noticed an indent in both, circular and about the width of his hoof tip—or his pupil, were he being generous.

When they felt that their checkup was over, Mira and Tsih used claw and hoof to manually close up the hatches. "Those are… mana boosters…" Yukito mumbled, eyes widening in morbid fascination as he pulled back to look Mira in the face.

Mira nodded. He used a claw to gesture to the black cubes. "And those, the self-destruct mechanisms. We'd rather be amplified than in pieces," he said dryly. "And the cubes are probably inert, but we wouldn't push the buttons if we were you." He saw Starbreaker eyeing them out of the corner of his eye, and made them vanish as she started to trot around the table.

Yukito turned to where the self-destruct mechanisms had been resting. It didn't take him but a second to piece together what that indent in the backside of the coverings was for. He turned to Mira again, looking him straight in the eye. "Are you two able to wedge your mechanisms open with magic?" he asked.

Mira nodded, and with a flash of his horn he did just that to expose his twin boosters once again. Another spark, and the hatch closed with a click. "Only way to safely get rid of exploding devices," he said simply. "But not everypony we knew was lucky enough to have them implanted in an openable covering on the chest." He trotted around Yukito, steps clanging in his wake.

Then he sniffed the air as Starbreaker made a beeline for the door, noting a faint and bitter scent that wasn't there before. It took him a moment to place the smell, and his face heated up a little. So he turned to Sora and asked her a question to get his mind off the aroma, "So, how bad did things get on your side of the fence?"

Sora snorted and shook her head that time, angling her head to keep Mira from seeing her roll her eyes emphatically. "Oh, it was fun," she muttered sarcastically, lashing her tail irritably. She sighed and lifted a hoof to her bell, but did not press on it just then. She turned to Mira, brow furrowing. "Want a carriage, or no?"

Starbreaker turned and charged at Mira before anypony could answer. She moved with enough speed to crack the crystal floor in her wake, and reared up on her hinds to solidly deck him on the snout once she was in range. Mira was sent skidding back a few inches with a sharp crack and a yelp, scraping into the floor with his claws and fanning out his wings just to remain upright from the surprise assault. "And that was for trying to stab me!" she barked, grinning at him as she reverted to all fours.

Mira grunted again, lifting a claw to wipe at his now-bleeding snout. He winced at the touch, and prodded carefully to find a few cracks beneath his skin. Lovely, his nose was likely fractured—it seemed the universe decided to single him out today for its sick pranks. So he pulled up the tail-end of his muffler and wrapped it around his muzzle with his magic, not too tightly but not too loosely either. He made sure to leave his mouth uncovered, and his nostrils concealed; if that scent was what he thought it was, he couldn't let it tease him a moment longer.

It took a few seconds for the wrapping to finish. Then he nodded and turned to Sora as she disentangled from Omega to let Yukito magically support him again. "Yeah, a carriage sounds good," Mira said with a wince that ran from neck to tail and made his wings tense with its passing. He watched as Sora kept hoof to bell as, strangely, Yukito trotted around Omega and leaned to her ear to mutter something in it.

Once Yukito pulled away, Sora muttered a command with a click of a button, "Light, return…" Mira perked up as the bell rang, glowed with light, and spat out a carriage with a burst of what may well have been magic. She turned to Tsih first, and asked as her hoof dropped from her bell, "You two coming with us, or going alone?"

Tsih wilted at both prospects, tail flagging for a moment before shifting between her hinds. "If we go alone, the Sableshrouds will get us…" she muttered.

Sora's wings sagged a little. "The who now?" she asked, one corner of her lip dipping further than the other, giving way to a lopsided frown. The query made Mira spread and fan his wings, and he lifted a claw to adjust the muffler around neck and snout.

"The… last few survivors of our side, after they grouped up and decided unanimously to go 'fuck it.' We're… not on good terms with them," Mira answered uneasily, sighing with a breath that made his whole posture sag a little. "And… we don't wanna run into them again."

Sora's mental gears ground for a moment, and she found herself unable to turn away from Mira as they whirred to life. Mira could've sworn he heard them being greased up for the job, and sagged a little further. "By chance… do you mean fully-clothed unicorns in all black?" Sora asked.

Mira winced, and slammed his wings shut with his eyes going round. His posture straightened immediately. "Y-you ran into them?" he countered.

Sora's mental gears screeched to a halt just to process what left Mira's mouth. Then they ground again, when things began to add up. She pointed a hoof at Starbreaker. "She did, actually. I simply saved her tail from them," she replied.

Mira lifted a claw and slammed it on the bridge of his snout, careful to avoid accidentally shucking the muffler off in the process of sliding it down his face. "For fuck's sake… they're getting bolder…" he grumbled in dismay, dropping his claw and letting it clang on the floor with enough force to add a new crater to it. Not caring that he exacerbated the castle's growing laundry list of damages, he lashed his tail and trotted to the carriage with as much disdain as he could muster. "Looks like you clowns need somepony who knows how to deal with the Sableshrouds… and if we don't miss our guess, one of you's gone into heat; that by itself is bad..."

"I kinda already dealt with the bunch that I found, but whatever," Sora snarked under her breath with another roll of her eyes.

"Am not in heat," Starbreaker grumbled, mouth barely moving and voice barely rising above a faint whisper of discontent.

Tsih stiffened, pupils shrinking and mouth going slack at what Mira was doing. "B-but Mira!" she stammered, tail puffing out in alarm. "We'd be putting them in danger too, and then there's…"

Mira turned to Tsih and alighted his horn. He magically lifted her off the table and dragged her to his side to look her in the eye with a hardening face even as she flailed her legs wildly. "We're already in hot water," he said firmly, spreading a wing to pry open the frontmost carriage door. "And it'd be just us two against them, if we parted here and now. We have no choice; we'll have to form a herd…" He winced as 'herd' rolled off his tongue and hopped in, and began levitating Tsih in when Yukito cleared his throat to garner their attention.

"Excuse my forwardness; does this castle, by chance, have a library?" Yukito asked.

Mira shrugged his shoulders. "Why?" he retorted.

Yukito's horn flickered for a moment. "I'd like to brush up on my magic, as it were; if this place had a final message from who I assume were its previous occupants, then it could have much more than that," he answered.

Mira shook his head again. "Nope. Didn't find one, much less with magic tomes. We can't stay here to check anyway; this place is too big for all six of us to scrounge through, and is now probably on the radars of the Sableshrouds and whatever sent that crashed airship that somehow landed nearby."

Sora wilted a little more, blades clanging upon the floor. "Y-you saw… that vessel?" she asked.

Mira gave another nod. "Had to look really damn hard to find it through the snowstorm, but yeah, we saw it," he said blithely. With that, he finished dragging Tsih in and parked her next to him, following that with shutting the door before she could complain any further or make an escape attempt.

Yukito rolled his eyes and opened the back carriage door before magically hauling Omega into the compartment to then lay him on the seat. Starbreaker jumped in after him, and moved to the other side of the cab to keep a fair amount of distance from him. "Tap the window if either of you need something," Yukito said. When he got two nods, he closed the door and trotted to Sora. They exchanged another nuzzle, both sighing in resignation.

"I'll follow the rest of the Gorge's trail, after… we make a stop to…" Sora trailed off, closing her eyes as she pulled back.

"Alright." Yukito nodded as her eyes opened again. "I'll let you know if anything strange has happened, once we make a camp." Receiving another nuzzle that he returned, he gave a small smile in spite of the situation. "Just don't overexert, alright?"

"Alright," Sora replied with a smile of her own. With that, Yukito teleported into the central cab without bothering with opening its door, leaving Sora to harness herself in for another trip in the surrounding frozen wastes.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

On her way out of the doors of the foyer, Sora found an anomaly on the snow-shrouded steps. Where before they were left alone, now they had a few new accessories to dot the flight that were not there when she had arrived—badly damaged drones, and a large crimson axe that had more frost on its surface. For a moment, she stared at the discarded weapons, wondering where in the seven hells they came from. She turned with a brow raised when Yukito teleported out of the carriage to look at them himself, with a wince as the cold stung him upon emerging from the burst of light.

"Whose… are these?" Yukito asked, turning to study the axe first.

Sora turned to the drones and jostled her mind before an image of that blinding light surfaced. She smothered the thought—the memory quickly, right as she started to hear that blood curdling shriek. Hesitantly, she lifted a hoof to the axe, and let the tip barely graze the elongated handle. Yet, despite being coated with frost, a chill did not race up her leg—instead, the expected cold was paradoxically warm. She pulled back, donning a slanted frown as she contemplated this strange sensation that she couldn't place a name to.

Yukito, unsure of what the deal was, decided to touch the axe's shaft himself. That same, inexplicable warmth ran up his leg on contact. He glanced at the drones, and noticed they were arrayed in a circle; three on the left and three on the right, with ice formed between them. The snowflakes slid off the ice, and it pulsed with a soft white light that curved and looped into a message.

"Take my weapons, for I have no need of them any longer. They'd do so much more in your hooves now."

Sora looked at the axe, eyes slanting with a glimmer of confusion. Almost breathlessly, with her voice drowned by the winds that whipped at her cropped mane and tail, she asked, "Are… you sure?"

A peal of thunder shook the skies, briefly. The winds slowed down, the lightning waned as strikes from sky to ground lessened in number, and silence reigned. Sora's eyes began to moisten as she stared at the axe for a moment longer; here, the weather itself was enough of an answer. Her face hardened to keep the tears at bay as she quietly muttered, "Alright." She lifted a hoof to her bell, only for it to be stopped halfway up when Yukito barred it with one of his own.

She looked at him, and he returned the glance in kind. "Sora, what's going on?" he asked.

Sora lowered her hoof, confusion flashing in her eyes for a moment. "... windigos…" she muttered.

Yukito's ears twitched, and started to fold. "Do you know what's…" A mute headshake from her was enough to silence his question before he could finish it. With a nod, he turned to the weapons and flashed his horn, grasping them in his magic before making them vanish. Then he teleported back in the carriage, and Sora trotted down the stairs to gallop away from the castle and fly off in the Gorge's direction. She had barely noticed the ice cracking with a final pulse of power at her passing, and decided to not let her mind linger on it any longer.

Inside the cabs, Mira and Tsih both looked at him from their window. Yukito stared back, frowning slightly. "She gave you…" Tsih mouthed, her lips quivering as the words parted from her tongue. Mira gently wrapped one of his wings around her as Yukito gave a single nod in response. "Why?" Tsih asked, ears flattening against her head.

"Whoever 'she' is, she… thought that they'd get more done in my hooves," Yukito answered.

"She didn't want them anymore," Mira translated, his muzzle lowering as the words left his mouth. His eyes gleamed with a bitterness he couldn't hide, and his wing tightened around Tsih as she moved to wrap her front legs around one of his own.

"But why didn't she want them…?" Tsih asked, turning to Mira.

Mira shook his head, and looked at her as his own expression tightened. "We… I don't know," he answered.

"B-but those are hers! She should…" Tsih began, her hold on Mira's leg loosening as words started to fail her.

"She left them for us to find," Mira pointed out. "... which means she's going to…"

"She can't!" Tsih barked, lifting a hoof to punch Mira in the gaskin. The throw was weak; he barely flinched. "Alte can't! She… she…"

"Everypony she loved has already moved to the stars without her," Mira said firmly, yet bitterly. He closed his eyes and let his other wing wrap around his companion. "We can't stop her from going to them… just like I couldn't..." And that was enough to make tears fall from Tsih's eyes. She gave a scream of dismay, muzzle and eyes scrunching tight as she threw herself to Mira's barrel.

Yukito watched, mouth tightening into a thin line. A twinge of dismay started to tug at the corners of his mind, amplifying as Tsih started to weep. Questions he had long ago learned to stop asking sprung forth in his head, tumbling onto themselves and each other until they gained coherency. How badly had the Clash screwed these two ponies over—former enemies pitted against his ex-employers? How badly had the Clash screwed over other ponies? A child, a mere child and a walking, talking mishmash of body parts who many would likely attempt to kill on sight just because of events beyond his control?

How badly had the ultimate weapons' projects damaged those subjected to them? To their families? Yukito looked past Mira and Tsih, and found Sora flying dutifully towards the Gorge—and he wilted when the answer to that last question came unbidden. "Outcast. That's the best a pony like her could ask for," some part of his mind hissed in displeasure. "At worst… they tumble over the edge…" The twinge of dismay strengthened further as his mind continued to go on. "I have kept one from going over that edge… at the cost of several more…"

His withers sagged a little. "And yet… I've failed those others who were drafted into the program…" he muttered, chest tightening a little. "Perhaps they are right when they call me a murderer…" He turned to look at the floor of the cab, ears finally turning flat against his head. "Failing to save them is just the same as murder, isn't it…"

The words of the castle's last occupants echoed in his head. "Do not let Harmony die, even in the midst..." That drew a bitter, mirthless chuckle from him, one that tightened his chest further with its passing.

"I do not know what Harmony is…" Yukito admitted, turning to look at Mira and Tsih as they continued to embrace one another. "How can I keep that which I know nothing about alive, if it even is alive at this rate?"

It was then the castle's last occupants echoed in his head again, "Don't falter like we have." For a long moment, he contemplated that bit of wisdom. There was blood on his hooves and cutie mark. He was tangled in a relationship that probably raised some eyebrows and left a few heads scratching against hooves back at the base. He was, now, directly involved with Starbreaker. And now also involved with her attackers, all sitting with Omega in the same stolen vehicle awaiting for Sora to take them to their destination.

Yukito's face hardened as he took all of this in, and his ears swiveled up. "Don't really have much of a choice, since I have come this far already… I won't falter," he said in finality. That did little to ease the dismay still gnawing at him, though, much less for the tightness in his chest.

The castle's occupants chimed in his head again, "Unless you're willing to atone for what you have done…"

"I suppose I have to start somewhere…" Yukito ruefully agreed. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath to clear out the dismay. He exhaled slowly, and opened his eyes to find a massive tear in the earth and snow, growing closer and closer as Sora neared it. He donned a small smile and nodded to himself. He knew where to start atoning, and with whom. But that could wait; he couldn't fly, she was currently doing just that, and to even take that step was going to be a long process for them both—how long, he knew not. Recovery processes were finicky things to deal with; one of life's many little wars, and a little war that could not be delayed any longer than necessary.

The carriage rattled as Sora turned to start flying alongside the Gorge while her husband reflected on his musings, her flight smooth and her wings still beating strong. Yukito turned to Mira and Tsih again once the carriage stopped rattling, still clutching each other tightly. Without warning he teleported over to them, garnering twin looks when they found him suddenly sitting next to them. Gently, Yukito brushed aside one of Mira's wings and put a hoof on Tsih's back before he rubbed consolingly. Her tear-stained expression faltered, and her eyes widened at the touch. "You're not alone; you still have somepony you trust," he said, softly.

"I-I don't…" Tsih grumbled, eyes narrowing a little. "I don't have anypony to trust…"

Yukito nodded. "You do; you're clinging to his leg as we speak," he retorted. "You haven't lost everything." Tsih could not make a retort for that; she winced again and wilted before returning to nestle on Mira's barrel with a weak whimper.

"I don't trust you…" Tsih muttered. Mira sighed and looked at Yukito with a souring frown.

Mira lifted a claw and, carefully, brushed Yukito's hoof from Tsih's withers without scratching either. "We don't know what you're trying to pull… or if you're being honest with us," he hissed, though the uncertain gleam in his eyes told the sudden visitor that there were other things on his mind at present. "But…" Mira hesitated, mouth pressing into a thin and tight line. "We have to ask… why? Why did you abandon your employers for one weapon, and a crazy bitch?"

Yukito lowered his hoof, eyes widening at the bluntness of the question. He sighed and straightened his posture, his response firm but flat, "Because there was nothing left for me under my ex-employers' horseshoes anymore. Had they found out about my marriage sooner, they'd have taken me to the firing squads."

Mira nodded once in understanding. "But you were still useful to them," he muttered. "In some capacity."

"Not much anymore," Yukito replied, shaking his head ruefully. "I think they'd have killed me by the year's end anyway had I stayed, even if they hadn't found out my marital status. Along with Starbreaker, if she didn't prove useful to them in some way, just to make a statement."

Mira took a moment to observe Yukito's rather ramrod posture. Something about his calm but very off mannerisms clicked in his partially-mangled head, especially once he took into account the stolen research papers he considered repurposing for kindling. "You've been bitter for a while," he guessed.

That garnered a slight nod. "Can't say I don't have any reservations of my own," Yukito said simply. He turned to the frontmost window, and watched as Sora angled her wings to catch a gust of snow-bundled wind. "I've never really agreed with augmenting ponies against their will, especially for a war as long and dragged out and nonsensical as the Clash was. It just… it was needlessly cruel and absurdly silly; just killed more soldiers for some grand and impossible cause of making 'the best, most obedient and deadliest soldier.' The end results… speak for themselves, really."

Mira sighed. "Makes sense," he agreed with some resignation in his voice. He too turned to the window and watched as Sora started to descend. "We're making camp out here?"

Yukito shook his head. "No," he said as the carriage began to rattle at the shift in altitude. "Just a stop… to visit a dear friend of mine."

Mira's muzzle scrunched a little. "... buried here?" he asked.

"More entombed, but yes," Yukito replied simply. "Once we stop, I won't be but a few minutes."

Mira closed his eyes again. "... can you pay a visit to Alte?" he asked.

Yukito turned to him, brows raised. "Excuse me?"

"We found an… an old friend of ours during our first foray here… frozen, and…" Mira paused as Tsih sniffled and squirmed against his barrel. He rubbed her gently with a claw. "We… we gave her something. Sitting at the base of the… the thing she now rests on. Can you make sure it's still there?"

Yukito pursed his lips for a moment. "I suppose it couldn't hurt," he answered. "What am I looking for?"

"A small urn with a silver ring. You can't miss it," Mira answered, keeping his eyes closed.

"Alright. I can do that much," Yukito answered with another nod. He just had to wait for the carriage to land first, and then do what he needed to do. As he turned away to watch for the moment when the wheels would hit the ground, he noticed a peculiar patch of stone jutting out from the side of the chasm, only visible because the carriage had been turned to it and the chasm by extension. The snow had since receded enough that he could well see the foot of the anomaly, enough to become a suitable landing point.

He did have a dear friend to visit, after all. And reflecting on everything now, this would probably be the last time he could wrangle in such a drop-in on such short notice, for a long time to come.

Chapter XXVII- Inner Kyoma

Yukito teleported out once the carriage landed at the cavern's entrance, and with a nod to Sora, he wordlessly started his trek into the darkened hall with horn alighted. His steps were brisk, and darkness made an attempt to cradle him as he trotted deeper into that corridor. His chest tightened further; even the knowledge of what he was trotting towards did nothing to ease him. With each step, each echo bouncing between the walls, he found his ears rotating back of their own accord as the air thickened uncomfortably.

The darkness, too, thickened with the frigid air. Slowly, as he neared his destination and the path that forked into three, his light dimmed sliver by sliver. How long it took him to get there, he couldn't guess; what he promised to take mere minutes doing instead felt as though they stretched to eternity. Yet, when he reached that fork with light barely spreading across a mere inch-wide radius, his ears twitched as he heard a faint creak of aged wood. A tiny burst of warmth tickled his neck as it moved with the groaning, splintering sound.

He calmed his nerves with a deep breath, and trotted down the central path. The discarded torches gleamed with frost at his passing, though their reflection was as weak as his glow; so dim, he had to look harder than usual to notice them. One fell from a wall with a cry of thunder from outside, its frost shattering on impact even as it bounced and rolled to brush up against his fetlock. Carefully, he lifted the torch and touched its end with his horn before alighting a tiny spark of flame.

The torch failed to light. He tried to light it again with another, slightly larger spark of fire, yet it failed to catch even a tiny ember. He shook it out, and even lifted a leg to strike at it with a metal patch before trying once more, but he had no luck. It was just as dead as the rest of this place. Still, he trotted on to the doors with it in his magical grip after dropping his hoof, noticing that the doors themselves had frozen and fractured over time, and were opened some while ago. They barely held together now, swaying uselessly on a hinge each, letting his light touch the desolate room beyond without even a token effort to block it.

Into the room, then down the stairs he strode, head lowering to be eye level with Sham's frozen carcass as he reached the bottom of the flight. She did not change, nor did the broken devices that surrounded her throne and fractured wings of rusting steel that he had to carefully step around. Her eyes, though long dead, gleamed with a tiny fragment of light as Yukito came near. The air warmed, but it was as faint as the fragment of life that still seemed to resonate in her—the chill from outside still held strong, still made him shudder with each step until they were nose to nose. "They… they found out," he muttered tersely. On that matter, he needn't say much more.

The air barely stirred, brushing up against his cheek and Sham's left eye. Liquid condensed, but not enough to form another falling tear. The glimmer in her eyes waned, but stubbornly remained. "... you haven't much time left…" Yukito guessed, and the air stirred some more to allow more liquid to condense on the frozen right eye. It formed another tear that hadn't enough weight to fall yet. His throat tightened, and his magic flickered to a weaker dim. The torch almost slipped out, but he seized it with his left hoof before it could fall, and sat on his haunches to lift the other.

He cupped her right cheek with that free hoof, and felt receding warmth. The glow in her eyes, whether it came from within or without, weakened just the same; it was now about the size of a pupil and fading fast. If she could somehow hear him, some part of him mused, then it wouldn't be long before she had that taken from her too. "Let's keep it brief then," he said. "I'm… I'm sorry I couldn't save you…"

The air stirred a little more, and the right tear condensed and grew until it fell. It brushed up against his hoof and trailed down his pastern to fall onto the floor with a tiny, silent landing. Another built up on her left eye with a faint gust of air. "I'll do what I can… not just for Sora's sake… but for the sake of everypony who's suffered because of us," he added, noting the glow was still fading. Time dwindled for Sham, and he couldn't waste another second. "I… took the papers they had me make… they won't be able to use them again. I swear… on your drones that I will...."

The left tear fell, after more liquid condensed to join with it. He took a deep breath to keep his emotions at bay, and his face hardened a little as resolve filled him. "I intend… to.. to atone for what they made me do, somehow…" he finished, and maintained eye contact as his raised hooves trembled. His magic faltered, almost bathing the room in darkness before he seized control of his nerves to strengthen the glow. It did nothing for Sham's fading light, except illuminate its fleeting sparks that much more.

"Sleep well, old friend…" he said softly. He sat there until that light faded entirely, and those brown pools returned to their dull, vacant stare with the passing of a faint and mirthless laugh that echoed around the tomb one last time. Yukito kept his hoof on her cheek for longer than that, until one last tear trailed from her frozen eye to touch his pastern. Gently, he wiped the tear away and parted before standing up and nuzzling her. He closed his eyes, holding his snout to her cheek, the absence of warmth and light finally registering to his senses, carving a pit into his soul.

The spark of life was now gone in its entirety, and in its place was a sense of cold and numbness, both assailing him in equal measure. And somewhere in the pits of his soul, he knew Sham was gone, too, and he'd barely said goodbye to her. Another part of him didn't want to believe—still didn't, after all this time—didn't dare think she was now heading for the stars.

He opened his eyes and forced himself to pull back. Her coat, once vibrant green despite all that had happened, was now as dull as could be, and growing duller still. So was her mane, and her scarring. Even her cutie mark started to grey from the center outwards, until she was as lifeless and devoid of color as her artificial bones within a matter of seconds.

Time, finally, caught up to her carcass. She was going to take her long-overdue rest, well and truly. Even he hadn't the power to change that. And that part of him that wanted to believe otherwise cried out in dismay—a dismay so horrid and strong, that the rest of him isolated it in those depths of his soul where even the bleakest of resignations stayed far away from.

Yet still, his soul and body trembled in sync at the hollow that was left, right where Sham once was in his life. His mind was already coming to terms with this, but his heart tightened in a desperate plea for her to return that went unanswered. No matter how much he yearned for some sliver of a chance that Sham could come back, his worst of fears had already been confirmed before his very eyes.

She could not return anymore. There was no place for her here.

Yukito turned away and levitated the torch so he'd have both fronts free for the stairs, when one of the frozen drones at the triangle's top broke from formation and fell to the floor at its side. Its thud was soft enough it could have been mistaken for the impact of a hoof, were he not presently staring in its direction. Slowly, he trotted to it, and paused to look at the pitiful object. Through ice and layers of rust, he noted he could still see the faintest hint of metallic pink in patches that were not yet eaten away. Its cracked screen was in as bad a shape, with a massive black patch in the center that signified some sort of internal rot.

Tenderly, and again with his magic, he picked up the drone to inspect it further. The ice flaked away as it was lifted up, alongside bits of rust and ill-furnished paint. Its tiny arms swung and hung limply behind it, and its head lolled back almost as though it were a fresh corpse held in his pastern. It was barely the size of his frog; more doll-like than any robot had a right to be. He held it to his chest, and found it had that same warmth which had just left one of his very few, and dear friends mere moments ago. A second after contact, the screen blipped and flickered to life with a weak, green glow that went out when he parted it from his body.

He moved it to his chest again, and the screen came back to life with a faint crackle on contact. Yukito nodded to himself and made the drone vanish in a burst of light. He teleported to the hall without a word, and turned around to close the splintering doors as gently as he was able before applying its plank of wood. It held as he slid it into place, and he trotted down the hall to make for the right fork.

Down that hall, and straight along the stairs he went, and he kept going until he was snout to snout with Nath. She seemed distant as ever, and sported a glow in her eyes that flickered weakly to begin with, which steadily faded as he sat and made eye contact. The air stirred here too, warmth fleeting even as liquid condensed on her face as well. There were odd cracks in the ice around her crown of horns, but she didn't seem to notice nor care.

"I'm sorry, Nath. I'm sorry for not being there to save you in your… your time of need," Yukito said simply. He leaned over to nuzzle her, and felt that dying warmth touch his snout. "They won't successfully replicate the horn crowns… I've taken those papers… I understand if that's not enough to give you closure, though…" he muttered against her cheek.

For a moment, he was silent even as Nath's spark continued to die. "I'll work to earn your forgiveness, and that of the dozens of others I have failed… I promise you on that," he said before pulling back slowly to not agitate the cracks along her head. He regarded her pitiful expression as that tiny glimmer in her dull eyes wavered with each growing second. A tear condensed further, and trailed down her face to traverse the edge. It stopped, only to hang just on the underside of her chin, waiting for more tears to join it on its final journey.

Yukito lifted a hoof to her chin, upturned his frog, and gently wiped it away before it could get the chance to leap. "They won't use anymore crowns to steal ponies' free will. The Corps will have to vaporize my dead body first," he said firmly, but softly. "And it will be a long while yet before they can do that. So long as I trot this world, they won't ever have that opportunity." He moved to stand, but the ice along the crown fractured on its own with nothing more than a gust of warm air and another distant clap of thunder, and he stopped himself short as they whirred to life with a faint teal pulse of power.

Then, taking clusters of frozen mane and split wiring with it, the crown slipped off and landed upon the floor in pieces of broken frost and rusted metal with that power receding. The whirring stopped, and Yukito turned to the damaged crown as those pieces stilled in a final, brief rattle that echoed around the tomb. He turned back to Nath as the glow in her eyes faltered even more. "A-are you sure?" he asked, eyes widening at the sheer oddity of the crown seemingly moving on its own.

He felt something touch his neck; a warmth turning to cold that moved up and down once. Then it pulled back, the air stirring as it did, before it stopped when the flicker in Nath's eyes finally died. Yukito watched as she, too, lost color and warmth and his soul felt her presence begin to leave. "I'll take care of the crown," he said reassuringly, voice faltering a little. "Sleep well, Nath."

It wasn't much longer after that final utterance before the cold replaced all warmth in the room, and a tear that formed on Nath's face condensed, fell, and froze halfway down. It glistened weakly in Yukito's light, with no life to call its own, for there was no more life in its owner to give it. It would sit there, possibly for years to come, before it could ever finish its lonely trail. And this final testament of all her regrets probably never would finish its journey, for her flame had flickered out.

There was no longer a place for Nath here, either, of that he was certain. Yukito silently wagered that she went to claim her freedom amongst the stars, joining up with Sham and countless others who made that journey before them. She had left him her crown with her departure, the still-screeching part of his soul howled. And so he gently levitated it and the strands of mane and wiring it snagged up to scrutinize the fragments before bringing them to his chest. A faint trace of warmth still remained, but it warred with the coldness of the metal, creating patches of alternating temperatures that made his body shudder with an unpleasant chill.

He held the fragments to his chest for several long seconds, and closed his eyes as another hollow born of anguish had carved itself into his soul to join a myriad of older hollows. His heart of hearts screamed, yearning for the guilt and pain and dismay to just stop, but he hardly paid it any heed—for he knew there was no stopping that torrent of emotions. That torrent could only be contained. He had to be strong. He had a responsibility to shoulder. He was at the point of no return now.

The only comfort he could take was that Nath's suffering had reached its end long ago, but it did not dull that pain which lingered for so long already. It did not erase what he had done, and failed to do in the past—the evidence was right there, in his magical grasp, temperature still shifting erratically against his chest. It was in fragments; pieces of a whole construct that was evidence and tantamount to the suffering of a pony he failed to save.

A construct he, himself, had made blueprints for. A construct that would've been used for war, if it ever got the chance to see that use. But never again would those blueprints be used for such ill-boding purpose. He'd see to it himself that this atrocity would not be repeated, if it was the last thing he'd do.

Never again would anypony suffer as Nath had. This madness would end once horn crowns ceased existing. That, too, was something he could arrange.

He'd carry this to his own grave, if he had to.

He made the fragments of the crown vanish, and cast Nath one final look as the chamber shook with another passing of thunder. Her body stared into the middle distance, and would continue to do so for some time yet. She had become a statue, encased forever in ice, now the color of snow and charred stone. He turned to the foot of her throne and aligned the end of the torch with it before he began to chip away at the frost little by little. Delicately, he etched tiny lines that slowly grew in length and number; a small corner here, a burst there…

He did not stop until an image of some sort of beam bouncing between glass fragments had been formed on the throne. "Nopony should have their cutie mark forgotten…" Yukito said, well aware he was now the only living soul that was present in this tomb. Tenderly, he lifted a hoof to dust off the bits of snow from the mural that had formed with his carving, and studied it as it glistened in his light. He then turned away with a silent nod of saddened satisfaction and teleported to the doors to close them from outside, before he trotted to the forking paths and paused.

He studied that last path, though with his light as weak as it was, he couldn't see much save for a faint glow marking the hall's end. A hint of dread sparked in him, and he sighed through his nostrils to make sure it didn't spread. He stared at that distant light, legs reluctant to move.

For a moment, he let his mind drift as he started to make for the last chamber. Yet his thoughts did not gain coherency; they tumbled over each other, from one thing to the next. Everything, the weight of everything, crashed onto him and rolled around his hooves as he trotted, though the sheer enormity of it was something he had to set aside for the moment. He had to check and see if there was something here, and he had to be swift; there was no telling what the Corps was currently doing. He had no intention of staying to find out what that was.

When he reached the room and proceeded down the stairs, he spotted Alte; she had already greyed, and the room was already cold. Yukito dispelled his light once he finished the flight of stairs without letting go of the torch, and turned to the broken turbines which held her epitaph. Reading it confirmed that he was where he had to make his last stop, and once he was done with that he trotted forward until he stood nose to nose with the carcass, studying her agonized face.

For another moment, he imagined the horrible amount of pain Alte must have been in when her body became this mangled, and his soul shivered three seconds before his body followed suit. He turned to her damaged self-destruct mechanism and shuddered at the wounds its activation tore through her chest. If it had done this and kept her somewhat intact, that meant either she got a faulty mechanism, or it had been made that way to inflict this horrific agony on purpose.

He shivered again as his mind attempted to recreate her dying screams, using the wounds and anguished expression as a template to work with. It was little wonder Mira and Tsih had somehow reworked their wiring to accept mana boosters, if this was how the kamikaze soldiers went out—he found himself making a mental note to ask the pair about it at a later time. Turning his attention to the foot of her throne and spotting the pile of snow that formed around it, he silently lifted away entire clumps with his magic before uncovering bald patches on the floor, as well as a distinct lack of hind legs on Alte's behalf.

One of those bald patches had a small but hardy metal urn that gleamed in the light from above. It was as big as his pastern and decorated with a faded star mural on its lid, soft blue with hints of navy to compliment a tarnished and warped silver ring sitting snugly around its base. On it was carved an inscription paired with a picture of a constellation, so small and carefully etched onto the surface that Yukito had to tilt his head to see it.

'In this urn rests the ashes of Sirius, Alte's husband. May he rest in peace with his beloved,' it read.

Yukito stared at the urn for a moment, before he gently lifted it and its ring up off the floor with his magic to turn them both around once. As he did, he found another carving in the damaged ring, but through its grime and mangled state he had to peer even closer to make it out.

'Now, into the depths of eternity, I pledge myself to my beloved,' it simply said.

Yukito finished spinning it around and paused to stare at the ring's carving again. His soul shuddered with empathy and sympathy at the horribly-twisted meaning of that simple scrawling. Such phrases… were nothing more than things that got in the way of the soldiers' efficiency, as far as the warhawks were concerned, particularly those who kept sending more of their own troops to die during the Clash's worst days. Such phrases were but ill omens in that time, well-meaning yet horribly tragic.

And these married ponies had paid the ultimate price for it. It was a price Yukito himself narrowly avoided having to answer for, though now it hung over his own head, waiting to strike. That same omen that had visited Alte and Sirius was now focused on him and his group, and though the Clash of the Sky had long since passed, that mattered little to the powers that the old gods had commanded. He would have to watch over his withers, just to keep that omen at bay.

For now, though, it seemed content to let him pay his respects to this deceased couple. Yukito wasn't sure whether that was a mercy, or a cruelty in this case. He was careful to not question it, aloud or mentally.

He aligned the carvings on ring and urn so they both faced him, slowly enough to not jostle the lid and stir the ashes within, and studied them one last time. Whoever had made this for Sirius put a lot of care into it; that care was only matched by how well he had been entombed. A care that was reserved only for close family and friends… and, in a way, a final respect for the ashes that were, once, a living and breathing pony.

Carefully, he set the urn at Alte's side, on the armrest in the crook of her last leg, and replaced the snow right where he found it. The urn and ring adhered instantly, and ice spread on their surfaces to secure them in place, and it was then the mural lost whatever bits of color it still had left to turn a very dark grey that could've been mistaken for black. Part of him dared ponder what Sirius had done to wind up in an urn, but he caged and isolated the thought before it could finish forming—all that mattered to Yukito was that Sirius and his wife were side by side, even in death.

So few ponies could ever attain such an honor, especially posthumously. Alte was one of the lucky ones. And though he could tell that both had already gone onto their journey, he still told the pair quietly, "Rest well, you two. May you find the happiness you were meant to have in life within the cosmos." He turned and trotted to the broken wings, noticing an indent left in the ground that he had walked past and failed to notice before. Then he spotted the little carving of some lance-like object on the turbine before he conjured the oversized axe. He aligned the head with the gash in the stone, carefully enough to keep the two separate.

The size of the gash was a match for the length of the head. Yukito moved the axe to compare it to the carving; sans size, both were identical. He turned to read the epitaph accompanying the lance-carving once again before it all added up.

This was Mira's old friend. This was her axe he now carried.

And if she had no need of it anymore…

He made the axe vanish with a mute nod. It would be a disgrace to return it here and now. "I'll take care of it, and the drones if they belonged to you," he said, turning to Alte and Sirius with a final nod of respect their way.

Silence reigned in the tomb now. So did the cold, from the moment they were enshrined here, and into the depths of a dark eternity. Given the circumstances, neither could have asked for anything better.

They wouldn't be able to ask anymore; they left what remained of their physical bodies to the ravages of time now. But, they were together again…

So few were as lucky as they.

He teleported to the outside of the doors to close off the final tomb from the rest of the world. He turned to the torch he still carried once that job was done, and saw in its lifelessness the holes which had wounded his soul—the wounds that would never heal. The wounds that never could heal until he had set this whole mess right, one way or another; the wounds that would now, and always, have with them the sheer weight of all his consequences no matter what he'd done.

He saw his own weaknesses within the splinters, his failures in its decaying state, his sins and the spilt blood wrought of his own blueprints resonating where the flame should have been, and his anguish in its uniform shade of faded brown. For a moment, he saw himself in that torch, without bias or anypony else to point out what little good he had done.

He saw himself, as he was—the wool was no longer over his eyes anymore. He, too, was broken in some manner; his augments only accentuated that fact. The torch acted as a glassless mirror, upon which he reflected and scrutinized himself for several long minutes, before he made it vanish as his expression hardened.

"No," he told himself in a firm self-chastisement. "I will become better than that." With that, he teleported one more time and reappeared near the still-waiting carriage. Without any further words, and another nod to Sora, he opened the frontmost door and jumped in with a hoof grasping the handle to close it behind him.

Tsih had laid on the seat, eyes closed and head nestled between her forelegs. She didn't stir at the noise, much less the carriage rattling as Sora reoriented to take off again. Mira, however, sat on the floor and was wide awake, looking at Yukito intently. "Urn still there?" he asked, garnering a blunt nod for an answer. He sighed and ruffled his wings. As the carriage took off, and as Sora flew it along the Gorge, silence held for several minutes.

Both stallions could see that the other had something on his mind. What that was, neither said a word of it; instead, they mourned in their own little way. It was mutual; both had lost ponies dear to them. All they had left of those ponies were memories to reminisce on.

Memories weren't enough to heal the gaping hollows in their souls, though. They never were. Even as former enemies on opposite sides of a war ended scarcely two years ago, both Mira and Yukito understood that fact, and had no choice but to take it for what it was. Between them, it didn't make anything better nor worse; so they continued to silently mourn.

Yukito turned to the frontmost window, ruminating on his promises and watching as the Gorge's edge sailed by to one side. Then, it dipped lower and lower as Sora continued to beat her wings. He broke the silence, "She's gaining altitude."

Mira nodded, and turned to the window. "So she is," he observed mirthlessly. He noticed her wings were flapping a little faster than usual, especially for those of such a size. "She's troubled."

Yukito could only nod to that. "Has been for a while," he agreed. "Even before we got married, she was… keeping reservations to herself."

"So, uh…" Mira pursed his lips, and they quivered as he struggled to put thoughts into words. "This is gonna sound weird, but… you two fight from time to time?"

Yukito turned to Mira, brows arched. He took a moment to put his dismay back in that special section of his soul before answering, "... yes, why?"

"Huh. Was curious, since you… uh, you've been, um…" Mira turned away, ears flattening as he closed his mouth to stop stumbling over his tongue. "Just forget we said anything." Yukito nodded and turned to the backside window, and found Omega and Starbreaker asleep on opposite ends of their seat. Both had ears twitching every few seconds, but past that they were peaceful—faces serene, legs not moving anymore than an inch or so, and tails as still as the snow outside.

He turned back to the frontmost window and sighed to himself. He watched as the lightning up above dimmed further and further until the sky was black as coal without any streaks of electricity to contrast it. "The storm's waning," he mused.

Mira nodded again, and a thought struck him. "We wonder… do windigos mourn their dead, the way we mourn ours?" he asked. Yukito didn't make a retort to that, for he had none to give. He'd have to wait for another landing to make camp for the night, making a mental note to tell Sora about the crown and drone at a later time.

But his mental gears ground to a stop when the drone and broken crown crossed his mind as that isolated part of his soul asked in a scathing tone, "What are you going to tell her, you numbnut? That you robbed from the dead?" For the second time in a row, he'd been blindsided by questions that wouldn't have sounded anymore innocent than if they came from Tsih.

Once more, he was dumbstruck. So little in his life had even given him any knowledge on how to answer the question; as the carriage rattled, the question warred with the rest of him, and so went without answer.

Chapter XXVIII- Gleaming Silver

There was a price to pay for everything—and life always found ways to collect that toll.

Yukito knew this, and had already paid his toll; his career and safety were but the first to jump out that window. Those were inconsequential to him, with how heavy his particular sins had weighed and how long they went without atonement. Winter didn't come; it was already here, and a regular supply of food was sure to jump out that same window due to the fact there were now six mouths to feed and a slowly dwindling supply to account for that.

He'd just have to make do, and keep the toll from climbing that much higher. Going about that, though, was another matter entirely, and one he had to set aside for the time being.

The small herd still had yet to cross the frozen wastes even as a cold night graced them, but as the sky cleared and the moonlight cast its sickly glow onto the land, they were at least able to get to the very end of the Hollowed Gorge thanks to its one-pony driver. The stolen carriage landed with a bounce and a swerve as Sora struggled to stay on her legs; she shook with strain as she forced her body to reorient merely to steady the vehicle, with snow clinging to her mane and coat as it was sent everywhere else in the process. Another bounce set the wheels right, and with that the vehicle's shaking ceased for the moment.

"S-Sora?!" Yukito squawked as she stumbled a few more bodylengths prior to stopping with a skid that made her swerve on all four hooves. His eyes widened as she swayed with legs spreading, trying to accommodate her posture to stop herself from falling.

Mira took one look at her as her wings sagged first, and his eyes narrowed into thin slits that glimmered with the faintest trace of exasperation. "Three… two…" he counted, a claw tapping as he spoke. "One…" She moved a front hoof up to a strap once the skidding stopped, and promptly collapsed before she could even start to get out of the harness, wings folding up to shield her exposed body as best they could. "And she's down," he snarked, magically closing the front curtains the instant she fell.

Yukito teleported out at her side as she flailed her legs to get her hooves back under her. Her mane clung to her back and forehead, and her teeth chattered with enough speed to shake her snout. Without a word, he magically undid the harness's straps all at once, seized Sora the instant she was freed, and teleported to the central cab with her before conjuring a thick quilt and wrapping her in it. "That does it; we're removing that harness from the reaches first thing tomorrow," he grumbled, watching as Sora flopped to the floor of the cab with her hooves holding the quilt shut.

Sora said nothing; even in the dim light she was pale, and her teeth chattered far too much for her to speak. She shivered as Yukito moved to lay at her side, her breathing ragged as he conjured another quilt to lay on top the first layer. "You packed what few clothes we had, I assume?" he asked, garnering a wobbling nod and the shifting of quilts as his answer. He nodded in return and moved a bit closer, using his magic to pull the second quilt somewhat over his own body, watching his wife intently.

Ten minutes of staring passed after he snuggled up, and the only sign her health was stabilizing was the gradual ceasing of the jittery gums. "Do you still feel cold?" he asked.

Sora gave another nod, less shaky that time. "D-down t-t-to th-the au-augments," she stammered out, voice weak and tight with strain.

Yukito shifted closer, and lowered his head so they were cheek to cheek before turning to look her in the eye. In a gentle tone, with a softened expression of mild disapproval, he started a reprimand, "As much as I love you, even I think icicles on your blades are unnecessary. You're staying in this vehicle until you get better."

"B-b-but h-h-how will w-w-we—" Sora was silenced when a blue-furred hoof was lifted to her lips and pressed itself gently on her snout.

"We'll just have to convince our new passengers to agree on shouldering that burden in the meantime, if that's what you're wondering," Yukito replied, expression not shifting in the slightest. Upon uttering that, he heard a tap-tap-tap coming from one of the windows and turned to it when a light started illuminating the vehicle from behind him. He found Mira staring at him, claw on glass and horn glowing with a light that highlighted the frown which still seemed hellbent on clinging to his face.

"She's still freezing her ass off?" he asked rhetorically. Yukito nodded in affirmation, and claw parted from glass to land on a muffler-tied snout. "Good thing you have blankets," he grumbled. With that, he dispelled his light and sank into his seat with claws lifting to draw the curtains shut.

Yukito turned back to Sora, and shifted his head to rest at her covered neck. He held back the urge to roll his eyes. "Of course, it might take… a bit of work to convince them," he sighed. Before he could make another remark, Sora spread a wing out and loosened her hold on the quilts at the same time, enveloping him and pulling him closer to her still-shaking body.

"L-l-later," Sora said, moving her head to nestle between Yukito's forelegs as she shifted the rest of her body to tuck both quilts in under one side. "N-n-need… n-need warmth…"

Yukito nodded and lifted a foreleg to wrap it around her withers. He tucked in the other side of the quilts with the aid of Sora's spread wing, and ruffled her mane with a hoof to gauge her temperature and help her warm up. Her mane was still on the chilly side, though that was to be expected, but her scalp was warmer, and so was the wing that cradled him. "Once you get better, if the need should arise, you can use my old labcoat for added insulation," he offered.

Sora perked up a little, ears twitching and eyes widening at that. "R-really?" she asked.

Yukito chuckled with a smile. "And my old pants; a skirt's not very good protection against the elements," he added, retracting his hoof. He nuzzled her, and she returned the gesture with a shaky, exasperated giggle. "But for now… you need to focus on recovering." He reapplied his hoof for a moment and tightened his hold as he did, just a little and enough for her to notice that shift in pressure.

Sora sighed and swished her tail under the quilts, mentally kicking herself for even getting cold outside to start with, and without clothes to boot. "O-okay," she answered, smiling as she closed her eyes and reflected on her most recent mistake. The carriage shook briefly, and twice with a few seconds' pauses between the tremors, but other than that she didn't notice much as she started to drift off.

Yukito shook Sora with some of his magic, and sighed as she jerked a little and looked at him. He pulled his leg back again. "We'll need to ascertain our food stock tomorrow. If we have any on hoof, you're getting soup," he said. Sora nodded and closed her eyes again, sighing in contentment.

"I-I'm surprised," Sora sleepily muttered, still smiling even as those words left her mouth.

Yukito twitched his ears, barely catching that statement. "Hrm?"

"That… th-that Starbo's—" She snickered at that cutesy little nickname, and she raised a hoof to her muzzle in a futile attempt to stifle her chuckles, "—able t-to c-cooperate."

A dry laugh left Yukito's mouth, soft and wheezing and nothing short of amused. "Then again, we've gotten through to her, at least a little bit," he stated with a smile. His face hardened a little as Sora shifted to lay down again, and he found himself mentally shelving his joy and physically frowning. "Also, dear… and this is going to sound strange coming from me…"

Sora twitched her ears and lazily nodded. "A-all ears," she said.

What Yukito said next had her jerking her head to look him in the eye in a heartbeat. "I want to fight alongside you from here on out. I do not want to stay behind the front lines anymore," he began in a firm voice. The quilts rustled as Sora looked at her husband strangely, pupils shrinking and blades rattling at the absurd notion.

"B-but you're not—" Sora started, but a blue-furred snout booped hers and silenced her on the spot.

"I'm painfully aware of my own shortcomings," Yukito said, his voice not faltering in the slightest. "But I have two guns, an oversized axe, and teleportation. Granted, I'm not terribly proficient in any of the weapons, and I can only teleport so much in a given day, but that's where practice would come in." For a few seconds, they held eye contact, and she saw the resolve burning in his baby blue pools. "If all six of us… are to make it through this, then I'll have to gain that proficiency as soon as I am able."

Sora winced, and for a moment, a mental image of her own husband faltering in combat and then being seized upon swam in her head. She smothered it upon also seeing that he did not have an ounce of hesitation within his mannerisms; he'd have flinched by now otherwise. Then she remembered the scrapes she had suffered days before, and a faint itch rumbled in her hind hocks with the memory.

"You d-don't want to see m-me hurt anymore," she guessed. That earned her another dry chuckle, one that was oddly mirthless.

"But you also heal faster than most ponies still alive today, for the old gods' sake! I don't have that luxury; besides, I am sick to the back molars of not being able to do more to help," he replied, still firm in tone, but his voice was now laced with restrained anger. He lifted his forelegs and grasped one of her hooves with a fetlock as the other went to caress her withers. "And I have also had it with ponies taking advantage of you one way or another, and being expected to sit idly by while…" He trembled and grit his teeth for a moment, and forced his expression to soften as he trailed off.

Sora winced once more. The fetlock soothingly rubbed her pastern, and the calming sensation that created warred with the lingering anger she still saw making claim to his features. "What I'm saying is… let me protect you as much as I can, Sora," Yukito said in a tone that did not broker any argument. "As a husband should be able to."

"It's his duty to," that small part of Sora's conscious chimed in. She was careful to keep that from leaving her lips.

"But he was ordered to augment you," another part of her snarked.

"Just about anypony would do that with a gun on the back of their head," the first part of her conscious retorted.

"And why do you care about him?" the second half asked, venom dripping from its tone.

"Let. The past. Go. It's the only way out of this mess," the first half replied bluntly.

"Fine, fine… don't be surprised if this bites you in the ass later," the second half grumbled. With a hesitant nod, and the mental back-and-forth shelved for the moment, she said, "But… w-we're not gonna be able to sp-spar much anymore out here. We'll have to stay hidden, f-for one…"

Of course. Yukito mentally slapped himself for letting that little bit of fun slip up until now. Then again, his wife nearly froze her feathers off out there, and they still had to account for Omega and their fireproof safety hazard on top of a foal and her friend's mishmash of parts. "We'll worry about such details tomorrow. I'll discuss it with the others while you get your rest."

A ghost of a smirk crossed Sora's muzzle, but with the really close proximity, he couldn't see it. Yukito didn't need to, really; he felt the corners twitching up and up against his own snout. "A-alright," she said, and shifted to lay down as ease took hold of her. It helped her drift off to sleep as she closed her eyes, but not before she said a simple, "Good night."

"Good night to you too," Yukito replied, laying down with hooves still clutching his beloved.

Tonight, they were safe. Tonight, the details of the more inconsequential things could be shelved for another day. But only for tonight—for even as they dozed, they remained aware that the clock had started ticking long ago.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Mira grumbled as the carriage rattled twice, snout aching with the passing tremors. He wasn't sure what was going on, nor did he care, and he just wanted to lay down and take it easy for the night. But some part of him stirred listlessly, drumming against his skull until he sat up and turned to the front window. He heard a faint shifting, one of fur and cloth, and looked at Tsih. In the darkness of the shut curtains, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust before he could see her shifting to lay on her side, hooves outstretched and face tightened.

He turned to the window again, and reached over to part the curtains with his claw, just enough to see what the frozen wastes had to offer. The storm's winds had long since stopped, and the snow was as still as could be. Clouds parted, revealing the stars glistening around a full moon that slowly sank into the mountain-studded horizon. Above it, miles and miles away, he saw four shooting stars streak and fade across the sky in quick succession.

His sleep-deprived brain processed the fact that they had color moments later. Pink, green, grey and blue, in that order. As light, for the first time in forever, graced the wastes, he turned to Tsih once more.

She kicked her legs out, and curled her front hooves to her barrel soon after. Her face tightened a little more, and she grit her teeth. A soft whimper left her mouth, but not much else followed. Mira wanted to cradle her with his wings, but that would rouse her. And after today's events, she would more than likely need some time to herself.

No child should go through such a thing, Mira mused. But Tsih was going through it. He was unable to change it. All he could do was help her any way he could.

Sleep tended to help. He'd let her have it, nightmares be damned.

He looked at the expanse of cosmos where the shooting stars had, briefly, been. "Just like when we found her the first time…" he mumbled bitterly, ears turning back against his head. "In that cold cave…" Slowly, a claw raised itself up, and tenderly touched the glass in a futile attempt to reach for the skies.

The barrier could let him look out and kept the cold away, but that was the extent of its mercy. It could not shield him from the pain that settled within and tightened itself upon his heart.

"Alte… Sirius…" The claw slowly slid down the glass without scratching it, matching the moon as it continued to sink into the beyond. "We'll… we'll watch Tsih for you… she's… she's gonna be fine…" he muttered to the empty air in a faltering tone of uncertainty, eyes stinging as tears began to form. In the faint reflection of the glass, he saw Tsih stirring again, curling up her hinds and head towards her stomach.

"What did… they do to… deserve that…" Tsih grumbled in a weak voice, with a frailty on the edge of breaking. Whatever dream she was having had kept her eyes firmly shut, even as tears streaked her face. "No… don't go… don't leave me alone… I don't wanna be alone anymore..."

Mira's face tightened, and his lips quivered as his claw continued to drop in tandem with the moon. His eyes went to ground level, but not before a tear parted from one of them. Wordlessly, he flashed his horn and conjured a tattered blanket, and silently drew it over Tsih's curled form. She shuddered for a moment, but then stilled under the cloth with another whimper. The five words he dared not speak echoed in his head with two distinct voices, both carrying the same weight of a burning and irrefutable truth between them.

Alte and Sirius are gone.

The stray tear continued descending, then brushed up against his muffler, and was absorbed by the cloth. Further still, the raised claw sank, as if the moon itself drew it onwards. Distantly, along the ground, he noted another form coming up to the carriage, though it was far enough away that he could not make out anything beyond that. He ignored it, and spared another glance at the star-studded sky instead.

The claw, finally, dropped from the glass and hit the carpet with a soft thud. Tsih did not wake from the sound; she whimpered as more tears fell from her clenched eyes. The cushion and the blanket started to absorb her tears, but not the streaks they left behind on her face. Mira could do naught but stare at her reflection as she tried desperately to hide from the world.

The distant figure crept closer, but still remained at that point past Mira's immediate attention. He asked, aloud and in a tiny voice that let the robotic undertone fully subsume the organic, "Brother… what would you do?"

The reflection stirred. It replied back in the masculine, organic tone that echoed in Mira's head all on its lonesome, and the answer it gave was simple, "Live. Live for Tsih's sake. We're all she has left."

Mira narrowed his eyes slightly, and two more tears fell before they ran into the muffler. "You're not gonna go away too, are you…?" he asked, again in the fraught, robotic undertone.

'Brother' was silent for a moment. A long, tense moment that may have stretched to eternity. "You have my body, and parts of yours," he answered through the reflection. "I may have to, one day…"

Mira's face soured, and if they could his ears would have rotated even farther back than they had now. "And what if you do?" he asked.

'Brother' fell silent again. The reflection turned away for a few seconds, while Mira hadn't so much as averted his eyes. "I don't know," he said when the reflection glanced back. "And I hope neither of us have to find out."

"I don't… want you to go…" Mira muttered, forming tears starting to blur his sight.

'Brother' nodded weakly, a mournful frown of his own on his face. "You are my tether, as much as I am yours," he said. "I may have lost my physical mind…" He lifted a claw and held it to his chest, right where the mana boosters were encased. "But I am still here, in essence—bonded with you. One day, you may have to let go."

Mira huffed, but the sound barely reached his ears. When it did, it sounded apathetic and foreign. "But if I let go of you…"

'Brother' nodded again. "I'll go to the stars," he finished. Then, the reflection became as still as Mira did, and Mira began to mentally examine the most recent turn of events as he saw them.

That niggling detail regarding the walkabout murderer sitting in the same carriage he was elicited a wave of creeping dread that shook his wings. Yet, most murderers didn't express any shred of remorse… much less make off with highly valuable intel with rather dubious intent. Or a pair of mares that he did not want to run into ever again, for that matter. Something was iffy with it all, even as everything started to add up.

Begging the question, what had that murderer been planning for? How long had be been planning it? Mira shook his head, shelving those fun queries for later as he reflected on how he and his 'wife' got along with a twinge of envy. He turned to Tsih, and an uncomfortable musing surfaced in his head: "What does she have compared to them? What do you have to match that?"

Tsih stirred again, but still did not wake. It seemed the dream world had an unbreakable hold on her yet. "I just wanna go home…" she whimpered, sniffling as more tears rolled down her cheeks.

Mira wilted a little, wings and shoulders sagging as his mismatched ears caught that horrible sound. "You can't provide her with a stable family. She can't go home again. She can never be stable again. She killed with her four hooves—nopony would want a foal soldier," that scathing part of his conscious hissed in a voice low enough he could not pinpoint its inflection. "You can't replace Alte. Alte's gone now."

Mira forced himself to look away as Tsih kept muttering in her sleep, and looked to the descending moon again. The moon itself gleamed purely, its light unblemished by the environment and yet dancing upon the snow with but a faint twinkle that almost reminded him of the ocean. The snow, in turn, failed to glimmer brightly; the collective glow was almost as dim as Tsih's prospects.

A cold, cruel beauty that reflected his own current reality lay outstretched before him.

Had the moon sensed loss, perhaps? The thought was as improbable as windigos mourning their own dead, even bordering on the impossible… but then again, he had seen Alte one last time, if that was indeed her spirit clinging to the mortal coil somehow. It probably wouldn't be any comfort to Tsih, but… the thought had soothed the ache in his chest a little.

And Alte had left them her weapon and drones. They had no business being in a murderer's hooves, and Mira was of a mind to bring that up with him first chance he got… but the fact that the stash had remained, for him and the others to use helped ease that ache further.

She was gone, yes… but had given them that much more of a fighting chance. Her fate would not be theirs if she could help it, Mira reasoned. He smiled softly, but bitterly at the thought. Insane and improbable as his musings were, maybe that was what Alte and Sirius would've wanted—for them to live and see that brighter tomorrow. A tomorrow they, themselves, had been cruelly denied. Nopony deserved to end up like them, short of the truly monstrous and irredeemable; left to rot in a frozen tomb thanks to ignoble ends.

It's what Brother would've wanted, too. Mira's heart ached again for Brother, but it was best to let him sleep for now as well. Tethers were delicate things… best not rattled too much.

He looked at Tsih's reflection again, expression hardening a little as resolve burned in his eyes. "You won't end like Alte, Tsih…" he quietly swore as she sniffled in the blanket again. "We'll protect you…"

He turned to the frozen wastes with a sigh of resignation and an air of wary confidence. He blinked the tears out of his eyes, which had the odd effect of making the encroaching figure that much more noticeable to him.

For a long moment, Mira could do nothing but stare at the figure as its features started to crystalize. The first thing he noticed was that it wasn't cloaked in shadow, yet instead was a predominantly translucent orange that seemed to wisp off into colorless smoke-like puffs as it trotted to the carriage. It had a mane and tail, both suntouched blond, that were fading in and out in a similar manner. A dark brown, tattered object that sat on its head bounced up and down with its legs, framing glowing green orbs that didn't cast relief on anything except the snow in front of it. Whatever it was, it seemed to defy its owner's harried movements; Mira assumed it was a hat, though the wisping nature told him it may well have been otherwise.

Strangest of all, it did not leave prints in the snow nor a shadow in front of it, and the silver light just lanced right through it even as the moon continued to sink. Squinting his eyes, and magically wiping at them with the muffler to further clear his sight, he found the figure strangely equine-shaped. And yet, it was not equine in form at the same time—its semi-corporeal nature just distorted it the closer it got.

Mira saw Tsih stirring via the reflection again. His expression hardened further into a scowl. If the figure, incorporeal or not, posed the slightest bit of danger…

He glared balefully at it the instant it was close enough to make eye contact. It flinched and halted its advance, an inch shy of the harness. The air tried pulling parts of its body away, piece by piece, yet it constantly reformed even with the faintest of gusts. Stranger still, it had no horn or discernable wings of its own, and it even raised a semi-tangible leg to its barrel as he continued his staredown.

He raised a claw again, right where the figure could see it, and balled it into a tight fist. His horn sparked once with a faint crackle, and he conjured a knife that floated at his side with its blade facing down and angled in just the right way for the moonlight to gleam off of it. Some part of him hoped this creature was sentient, and could understand the gestures he was making. If it wasn't sentient, or was and decided to ignore the gestures… well, some part of him anticipated things turning nasty.

This wasn't a windigo, that much he could see right away. It had some of the attributes of one; glowing eyes, ghostly figure and somesuch, but that was where the similarities ended. It did not regard him with malice either, or an expression of desperation—in fact, it wore a mask of apathy; lips pressed into a firm, thin line, eyes seemingly staring past him, and ears perked to attention. It did not swivel or jerk head or limb, yet still held an air of alertness around it.

He noticed the figure's posture soon after. It was tense, yes, but also ramrod straight—not in the militaristic, obedient sense, or of a pony strung up on the world's biggest ego trip, but rather that of something that seemed to know what it was getting into. And then getting into it anyway, for a reason he could not place—the still-raised leg did not descend yet, and by now it should have done so. Bravery or foolishness didn't matter; at least, for the moment, since one had yet to breach the final line in the snow that would spur Mira into scrambling out of the carriage and attacking.

Strange creature, this thing was. With the gall to even approach the carriage to begin with. That by itself was enough to set off several alarm bells in his head. He studied it carefully, waiting for it to strike or turn tail or something else, and yet… it did nothing of the sort. It simply stared back, leg half-raised, glowing lights that tried to pass for eyes focused on him and nothing else.

He, in turn, was far too focused on it to notice anything past it.

The stare-off lasted for a whole hour, both pony and semi-tangible thing staying almost perfectly motionless in that time. It was as if both had, spontaneously, froze without warning—out here, they may well have. The evidence to the contrary, being the creature's still-wisping form, had itself slowed phenomenally enough that if he were hard-pressed, Mira could've seen all four of its legs fading in and out of reality itself. Mira wanted to move first, but held in the urge—for one claw placed wrong could spell disaster for him and Tsih.

Against this thing, whatever it was, direct combat was a risk he could not afford but realized he may have to take the option all the same. He had a promise to keep. He wasn't going to let that happen.

Whether the creature was concerned with his woes, or even had the capacity to be concerned about such matters, would prove to be another matter entirely.

The critical first move, inevitable as it was in this situation, would tell him all he needed to know no matter which way things took a turn for.

Chapter XXIX- Respite, Broken

The strange figure did not falter, even as it continued to seemingly defy the laws of reality itself. Its raised limb did not even twitch. Its wisping form didn't fragment itself more than it already had. Mira did not lower his guard, let alone his blade and claw. Save a brief flaring of nostrils, he too failed to move. The barren desert of snow outside continued to twinkle, though it did nothing more save dance under the occasional gust of wind.

Mira blinked just once, before he could stop himself. The creature took three steps closer, moving between the reaches of the harness, then stopped and raised its leg again in the time it took him to fully complete the motion. Another blink, and it came closer still.

Odd. It wasn't this statuesque when it was farther away from the carriage. Perhaps it was trying to pass under the guise of a bluff; if it was such, then the bluff was failing. "Great. It wants to play red light, green light," he mentally hissed. He kept his eyes open for longer that time, but alas, the longer he stared the more his exhausted eyes began to hurt. The blinking, inevitable though it was, only brought the figure even closer to the window.

For less than a minute, or perhaps longer than an hour, this unorthodox staring contest continued, broken up only by his blinking. Time was turned on its head as far as Mira was concerned, seeing as something completely out of the ordinary was gradually approaching his temporary sanctuary. And it kept stretching on until, at last, the thing was effectively face to face with him. Only the glass kept them apart, and Mira didn't want to find out if it could somehow bypass the pane altogether.

Its glowing lights drilled into him, but they had not narrowed or widened one little inch. Other than his blinking, which increased in frequency as his body started demanding sleep, he did not falter. Then, the creature tilted its head to its right, and Mira canted his in turn—opposite its tilt, and he made sure to tilt the blade likewise just to make sure the whatever-it-was got his message.

It drew in air from around its head and blew it onto the window, then used its raised leg to draw in the resulting frost. From Mira's perspective, it looked to be writing backwards—and he rubbed his eyes with his other, still-empty claw to try and grasp whatever the hell it was conveying as it was etched onto the glass.

Once it lowered its leg, Mira studied the scribbling left behind on the pane. He took a long moment to process the scrawling, and yet some part of his brain just refused to function properly—and as a result, his eyes saw naught but symbols passing off as gibberish. Foreign language, or his eyes deciding to opt out of the translating job to conserve energy, he didn't know and care for. He did find it odd, however, that the creature outside went this far just for the sake of written communication instead of breaking the glass outright when it had the chance.

That's what trouble did. This thing screamed trouble, yet its mannerisms were anything but. Something did not add up, no matter how hard his mental gears span in an effort to find an answer as to why.

All Mira could do was shrug and shake his head either way, and hope that was answer enough. The strange… thing flinched back, orbs flickering wildly as orange overtook them for a brief moment, and just stared at him with pools widening once the green returned. The motion wasn't quite blinking, but that was the closest thing he could chalk it up to.

Minutes passed, and it continued to stare at him in its equivalent of bewilderment. A multitude of emotions flicked across its orbs, making them flare and dim as they passed. It erased its scrawling with its raised limb, leaving behind a clean circle with a fogged edge. Against all explanation, it then moved into the carriage, phasing right through the pane headfirst, front legs shifting to hook onto the otherwise-barred edge to look him square in the eye.

The cab chilled for a brief moment at the intrusion, then warmed with its presence. Its orbs flitted to Tsih, then back to Mira once it confirmed she was asleep. He continued to stare this thing down; even struggling against the encroaching tide of exhaustion, his mind started to babble at half a mile a minute that a strange ethereal being should not have made access for itself in a closed vehicle. He hissed in a sharp whisper, "Who are you… what are you… the fuck do you want?"

The figure, after taking a second to blink again, replied in an equally-hushed, echoing voice laced with a feminine tone and a very distinct accent, "I asked if you and yourn were the ones who entered the Castle."

Mira frowned, and decided to backpedal. "Ah. In that case, yes we are," he grumbled. "Couldn't friggin' read whatever you've made…"

The figure nodded with a faint groan of annoyance, orbs turning into half-domes with leveled tops. "Guess you don't do Equestrian," she muttered.

Mira shook his head that time. "Never majored in pre-Clash linguistics," he snarked, still frowning. He waved the blade again, but now it had occured to him that maybe this stint wouldn't do any good in this instance. He ruefully considered the fact that, if the visitor struck here and now, he mused that he may as well have retaliated at thin air given the stunt she had just pulled.

Which, by itself, wasn't a particularly pleasant thought to even entertain. Tornados wouldn't cut it either; such a feat would probably launch the carriage somewhere else if Mira tried that. The only thing left for him to do was see what this crazy figure wanted, and pray for her to go away. His tail lashed in irritation.

The thing kept her orbs in their half-lidded state, but did not dip them enough to avoid seeing Mira's tail trying to imitate a whip. "Why's it always the soldiers…" she grumbled. That made Mira lower his blade a little.

"We take it we weren't the first visitors?" he asked.

The figure shook her head. "Eenope. But yer the first batch who didn't kill each other first chance ya got," she replied rather blithely. "Don't surprise me none that ya still fought, though. Y'all musta had burrs wedged mighty tight under yer fancy new body parts."

"We have our reasons," Mira grumbled, raising the blade again. "Who, what are you, and what do you want?" he repeated, tensing slightly.

"Who I am probably won't matter much to you, or most anypony else that sticks around out here this long. But I guess I could tell ya the what at least." The figure pulled the rest of her spectral body in, and Mira moved to give her the space to land on all fours. She turned to him as soon as she was fully inside, half-orbs still not shifting. "I was one of six who held the Elements of Harmony." She saw his mouth opening and cut him off before he could speak, "That probably won't make much sense to ya, so lemme keep it short: the Elements are magical artifacts, made way 'fore even the Clash came 'round. They're keepin' me on this blasted winter wonderland until me and my friends can find some new bearers."

That time, Mira's blade hit the floor with a soft thud. His claw followed shortly after. He then took a second to look at Tsih to see if she had woken up yet, and relaxed when the quick glance gave him his answer: nope, she was still down and out for the count. So he turned back to the spectre and pressed, "And…?"

"The other soldiers who done visited in the past weren't even the least bit Element material. Sad to say, but you and yourn are the closest thing we got," the thing said, orbs narrowing into tiny slits, as if that very thought irked her in some way. Considering the mumbo-jumbo she was spewing a mile a minute, Mira wagered that he'd be a little irked too. If, of course, he were stuck in her constantly-disintegrating horseshoes rambling about something the pony he spoke to didn't understand a lick of.

Mira sighed and shook his head. Pity he wasn't in those wispy frogs, because then he'd have even less care to give to this wretched world. "Gonna have to pass, whatever that garbage was," he stated flatly. "Kinda want to live to see another day, thank you."

The figure sighed, in a slow manner that almost seemed rehearsed and left without anymore crap left to give. "Was expectin' as much." Then she straightened her posture. "In that case… you and yourn can help find new Element bearers, so this world'll keep runnin' smoothly… at least, as smoothly for whatever ponies are left when all's said and done."

Mira's shoulders sagged, and his wings spread behind him across the floor. "Us? Help find new bearers?" Now, he was pretty sure the spectre was trying to sell him a bridge of some sort with a few strings attached. "Pretty tall order, since there aren't many cities even left standing, and we don't know what the fuck the Elements of Harmony are or even mean."

Now, it was the figure's turn to sit down and wilt. Another irritated sigh left her wisping muzzle. "Don't need to remind me of that," she grumbled, orbs slanting a little mournfully and tiredly. Exhaustion seemed to warp her face into something more equine, and sorrow further sculpted it into an age-old expression that must have been worn numerous times, with how damnably well it dulled her whole body as it passed. "Already done seen the damage to my home. 's been wiped off the map."

Mira made his blade vanish, then shifted to lay down and tuck his head between his forelegs. "And we've helped wipe towns from the map whenever the higher-ups wished it. Fucking crazies, making suicide bombers because of bullshit…" he muttered disdainfully, eyes closing as sleep started winning its little war with his body. The figure huffed and the temperature shifted again. That made Mira crack an eye open to look at her. "Still here," he hissed. "Just dead on my claws."

"I see that," the figure replied, dipping her head a little. "Listen… yer friend…"

Mira jerked his head up and his other eye opened. Alarm bells started ringing in his head, and his claws began to tap a muffled tune as confusion took hold. "What friend? Apart from Tsih, we don't have any," he snapped, raising his voice just a little. Something about the figure's statement seemed a little off, and his brain struggled against sleep in an attempt to figure out what the hell that was.

The figure blinked and sagged a little more, before shifting to kneel at his eye level. "Frozen, torn in pieces… pink mane?" she retorted.

Mira's wings stiffened. His gut twisted, and his encased boosters flashed once in unison. One word left his mouth in a disbelieving tone, eyes widening as it rolled off his tongue before he could stop it, "Alte?"

The figure nodded once, firmly and slowly. "Yep. Me and my friends are why she's one of those unlucky folks who're on a rock now. Nopony else was gonna bury 'em, so we did," she replied bitterly. "She told me to watch the castle last night, and I did, and saw with her what had happened—includin' you blazing outta it." Her gaze hardened, but her orbs widened a smidgen.

Now, Mira snorted as his brain ran all that through its many filters before reaching a conclusion. "Excuse us, but we're calling horseshit on that," he stated, lowering his head again.

"Then what explains the Castle takin' damage on its big star?" the figure retorted, almost rhetorically.

Mira snorted. Even in a snowstorm wrought from the seven hells, something like that would have been highly visible if given enough time to let the weather clear up first. Begrudgingly, with legs shuddering, he sat up again, the muffler slipping off of his snout as a claw snagged onto it. "Listen… have you heard of the shit that's hit the fan lately?" he asked, at least wanting to make sure the figure understood the ramifications of the recent shenanigans he had caught wind of first. At the very least, they'd be on the same page then.

The spectre nodded. "Uh, kinda saw the airship," she muttered, a faint twinge of dismay in her tone. "So, yeah, didn't need to hear much—just saw the evidence."

Mira huffed and put the muffler back on his snout. For once, and only once, he could sympathize with this ghost, because the same had happened to him not even a day ago. Still, the mere thought that this ghost somehow—if he could even bring himself to believe it—knew Alte irked him a little. "And you are aware," he spat, eyes narrowing again, "that we have a harbinger with us?"

The figure blinked, orbs widening. "Of what?" she asked, canting her head a little.

Mira threw a claw in the air and waved at the ceiling as frantically as exhaustion would let him. "The apocalypse, the end times, world smouldering in fire?" he retorted. Dropping the claw, he scathingly added, "Yeah, as far as 'closest material' goes, she ain't it, whatever it is. All she knows is how to destroy shit."

The ghost wilted. "Well there goes that plan…" she muttered, low enough that Mira had to strain his ears to hear her. She straightened and stood up again. "In that case, the winter wonderland's gettin' bigger, so me and mine'll just follow y'all until you find some new bearer material or y'all reach the edges of the wonderland—whichever comes first. We'll get outta your manes, keep our distance, all that."

"You know what to look out for; we don't," Mira retorted, nodding in agreement. He laid down again, and closed his eyes as the figure sighed and excused herself via phasing through the glass of the frontmost window again.

Sleep claimed him as soon as the cold left the cab, but not before he checked up on Tsih again. She was curled up, still dozing, though her murmuring had hushed.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

The following morning, Starbreaker had awoken with a drawn-out yawn leaving her mouth seconds before her eyes opened and a bleary cab seat greeted her. Slowly, she raised her head and blinked the fog away prior to scanning the cab. Omega was asleep on the seat, sitting upright with his fronts slack at his sides and his back pressed against the rear wall of the makeshift bed. A soft snore left his mouth, and a small river of drool meandered its way down his branded chest.

She turned to the curtains at the back, and lifted a hoof to part them and gauge the weather outside. Clouds were returning, but also let sunlight filter through; the weak rays shined in her face, making her wince and squint slightly as their warming touch slowly faded and shrank. She dropped her hoof a few minutes later, rustling the curtains as the clouds overtook the skies once again.

Her stomach rumbled a bit, though that wasn't enough to claim her attention. She turned back to the dozing Omega, who lolled his head back onto one of his shoulders and snorted a few times doing it. He seemed so deep into sleep that, were he to fall here and now, he wouldn't have woken up from the impact.

Starbreaker frowned and, quietly, shifted her hooves to the floor one at a time in order to stand. "You idiot," she hissed in a low tone, face contorting in a glare leveled at Omega as her voice distorted. "You'll die out here if you sleep with both eyes firmly shut like that." Then, a small but wicked smirk crossed her face, and very slowly and dimly, her horn went alight with its hideous red aura. "But then again… you've probably been stuffed in those damned Corps walls your whole life…"

Slowly, ever so slowly, her dimmed magic lanced out and dragged itself to the prone Omega, gently grasping him by his hind hocks and his tail with such softness he didn't even register the touch. Then, with such care that kept him asleep, she lifted him off of the seat by his hinds and tail, holding him headfirst over the floor and letting his front legs dangle at the sides of his face. For a moment, she admired what she had done and was about to do. Some part of her, small yet stirring nonetheless, found the poor bastard adorable when strung up in such an unorthodox manner. Though, the illegible branding and the stitches that ran amok made another part of her stir, and her eyes shifted red with a faint whir that still didn't rouse him from slumber.

She let him dangle like that for perhaps a moment longer, but set him on the seat with a jerk once she heard the sound of glass being tapped at. She glanced around for a bit, before her eyes fell on parted curtains revealing the middle cab, and a bleary-eyed, groggy Sora with one hoof raised on the pane. A firm frown of disapproval stretched on her rather reddened muzzle, and though they were clouded with the fog of sleep yet to be dispelled, her eyes were slightly narrowed in a look Starbreaker knew all too well.

They stared off like that for a moment, before Sora shifted to lay on the seat and pull up some quilts to cover her body. Starbreaker glowered, though the small part of her that found the initial amusement piped up in her head with a tiny voice, "Let's not make the married weirdo mad." So she watched her nemesis intently, ears turning back as her husband woke up and rose to stretch his legs. He looked at her, shrugged his shoulders, magically readjusted his glasses and turned to knock on the frontmost window with a hoof.

In seconds, curtains parted with the aid of claws, and Mira stared back with a tousled mane and his muffler askew. A minute after, Tsih rose up with a reddened face and some matted fur around her snout and eyes. Another snort left Omega's snout, and Starbreaker turned to him as he, finally, woke up and turned to look at her. "What time 's it?" Omega croaked, voice hoarse.

"Waking up time," Starbreaker scoffed, and turned to open the door with her magic. Rolling her eyes and then using said magic to sling Omega over her back, she trotted out into the snowfield before then turning to the carriage as Yukito, Mira and Tsih followed suit. Strangely, Yukito was not accompanied by Sora, who herself had shifted closer to the door to do little more than poke her head out. Frigid air greeted all of them, though a faint warmth was now stirring within the frozen hellscape. The five gathered around the middle cab's open door, closing the doors adjacent to it with magic, and silence held for maybe a half-minute before Mira got up in Yukito's face and started squawking.

"We don't know what the flying fuck is going through that screwed-up noggin of yours, and we're of a mind to knock some damn sense into you!" Yukito simply stood up on his hinds to look Mira dead in the eye as he continued his tirade. The warmth left the area, and even Starbreaker shivered as the temperature dropped enough for clouds to form from her breath. "Truth be told, you're better shredded to fine ribbons of meat!" Sora winced as Mira raked his front claws across his metal pasterns, causing two cacophonous scrapes to wail in the air. "And if nopony else is gonna do it, then we will!" Mira raised a claw and aimed it at Yukito's face, but a half-metal front leg blocked the attack before it could connect. Another claw rose, thrust towards Yukito's stomach, but that was blocked by his other front leg in short order.

With a hard shove, Yukito sent Mira stumbling back on his hinds, and he in turn stumbled into Starbreaker, who shoved him away with a jerk of her shoulder. Both stallions regained their balance, and Mira rushed forward once again to rend flesh from augments and bones bare-clawed. Yukito teleported, and Mira flapped his wings and skid to a hard stop before he could accidentally graze Starbreaker. "Watch where you're going, you walking pile of shrapnel!" Starbreaker screamed, sclera turning black as Mira huffed and waved her off with a claw.

Two flashes of light from behind had Mira whirling around and charging once again, though now his claws met with the elongated shaft of Alte's axe, with Yukito's own fetlocks clutching it tightly as both tried to push the other away with the weapon. For a few seconds they struggled, swaying on their hinds as they made every effort to throw the other off. Though with sheer size on his side, Mira was able to shove Yukito back and seize the axe with a push fueled by augments and wings flapping to add extra force.

Yukito windmilled his forelegs as he wobbled back a few steps, and was only just regaining his balance when Mira charged yet again, axe raised to cleave him in half. He teleported out of the way, reappearing behind Mira as the axe landed in and sent snow everywhere with the unsuccessful strike. He whirled around once more, axe lowered to swing at hind hooves, but Yukito simply jumped back past the carriage's central door and summoned the rifles with barrels pointing at Mira. To keep him from charging, he made certain to magically pull the triggers just a little bit, enough for the raging lunatic to actually see them moving.

The Buster model conjured a small orb of light, no bigger than a frog, as its trigger was just barely pushed. It held steady, and at this Mira faltered, causing the axe to lower further and then raise a little past his shoulder as he reconsidered the situation. Starbreaker moved to flank Yukito, burning red eyes alight with fury and fire circling around her horn to match her anger.

Tsih galloped to Starbreaker, then leapt with tiny hooves outstretched and aimed for her face. Starbreaker snorted, and merely stepped aside a couple of paces with thunderous stomps that shook the snow and made new craters into the ground below it, which caused Tsih to faceplant in the snow. Omega yelped as he was jostled by this, but hushed his protests when crimson magic worked to keep him anchored. Mira rushed again, axe raised, but a volley from the rifles struck the weapon's head with just enough force to tilt it to one side, allowing Yukito to sidestep harmlessly out of the way as the head crashed into the snow where he stood.

The temperature dropped further, and the clouds of breath merely thickened with its decline. Mira, still within range of Yukito, turned and stretched out a claw in another attempt to tear his face off, but his target simply bounded away to return to the carriage with another volley of lasers being fired in his wake. He snarled as two lasers grazed his right shoulder, leaving burnt flesh and singed fur that smoked a little and stung quite a bit against the cold. He charged once more, wings flapping and eyes glinting dangerously as the axe was once more raised in another attempt to bludgeon somepony.

Mira was stopped when he heard Tsih screaming, and turned away from the carriage to find she had been sent flying to him from the side with the aid of crimson magic. He could not react in time; she came in too fast, causing both to crash in the snow and the axe to drop from his grasp. He got up and reclaimed the weapon with one claw as soon as he landed, picking Tsih up with the other claw to hold her to his chest as Starbreaker came towards him with hooves stomping and face contorted in delightful wrath.

Mira flapped his wings and flew up and above Starbreaker, making her skid to a stop under his shadow. He swung the axe, sliding down the shaft with his claw to let it get closer, but she spotted the incoming attack and darted off a trot's length to avoid it. Mira made to swing again, but he heard a loud pop and suddenly felt weight on his back where there was none before. Hooves grasped his barrel, something yanked on the muffler from both ends of the cloth, and Mira could only tilt and wobble in the air as his balance was compromised.

"Going somewhere?" Yukito taunted, smirking as Mira turned his head as much as he could to glare at him.

Tsih clambered onto Mira's free foreleg and reached over to sock Yukito in the mouth, but a rifle had her stop her advance when she suddenly found it in her face. Mira span in the air as if on an axis, hoping to dislodge his adversary, but he held tight with a grip bellied by his natural, seemingly weak hooves. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you," Yukito reprimanded, before using both guns' butts to clock Mira upside the head mid-spin, with enough force to disorient him and send all three plummeting to the thankfully-close ground. Yukito teleported just before the landing, leaving the pair to faceplant in the snow and alighting on his hooves next to the carriage.

Mira scrambled up again, Tsih still on one leg and the axe in claw. Starbreaker returned to flanking Yukito, grinning tauntingly. Yukito piped up, "That the best you've got? My wife's quicker with her blades."

"He's gotcha on that one," Omega added.

Mira barked, "That's because she's fucking augmented!"

"Yeah, but so are you! You could do better yourself, Daddy Long-Legs!" Yukito replied with sass in his voice.

Mira snapped, "Can it, you teleporter!"

"Why don't you come over and make me?" Yukito fired back, blasters still raised. "You've been doing a particularly shoddy job of that for the last five minutes!" Mira huffed and started to check Tsih over to see if she was alright, but she wordlessly hopped off and landed on her hooves with a roll of her shoulders and legs tensing. Yukito charged another laser volley with both rifles, and Starbreaker conjured more flames, both evidently itching for a round two. Mira swung the axe once in front of him, going wide and above Tsih as she charged her horn.

Yet before they could start the fight again or even let things escalate from there, Sora carefully stretched her wings out from under the quilts and thrust them forward with blades straight out. Willing her mana to charge the blades, she waited until only crackling reached her ears. Her command was uttered in a weak whisper, but it was firm, as blunt as her boots, and carried across to the would-be combatants with a heavy weight. "Stop."

Yukito took the chance to make the axe vanish, but he kept the blasters at his sides. Slowly, though, he warily lowered them, easing pressure off the triggers and causing the blasters' charge to shrink and die with little more than a series of soft snaps. Starbreaker stopped casting her flames, allowing them to dim and wither, with only weakened embers glimmering as they showered lightly around her hooves. Mira hesitated, claws still raised until Sora lifted a hoof and stomped it upon the floor of the cab. It was then that he reverted to all fours.

Tsih piped up, trotting over to Sora as she stopped charging her blades and pulled them back. "Why not let us sort it out?" she asked.

Sora turned a not-so-amused look at Tsih and shook her head. "We can't afford it," she said tersely.

Yukito trotted over, making the rifles vanish once he was sure Mira wouldn't brazenly gallop towards him with the intent to kill again. "Unfortunately, she is right… if we spend too much time screaming and throwing punches, we'll just make ourselves bright red targets," he grumbled, snout wrinkling slightly as that unsavory statement left his mouth. Mira winced and snorted, but trotted over with nothing more than a firm frown on his face as Starbreaker did likewise, her eyes reverting to their usual rainbow but still fixed in their narrow glare.

"But isn't that how most ponies sort things out these days?" Tsih asked, the question eliciting a groan and a facehoof from Sora. "I mean, it's not like anypony really gets along anymore… and those who do just end up as cannon fodder anyway..." That made her wilt a little, ears turning back as she continued to stare at Sora.

"She has a point," Mira sourly added with another wince, earning him another groan in short order.

"Yeah, and I'm ruling governess-in-chief of the whole galaxy," Sora hissed, hoof sliding down the bridge of her snout. When her hoof dropped she leveled a firm glare at Mira, willing her ocular augments to work and glow. For a moment she kept drilling into his soul with the expression afterwards, before abruptly closing her eyes and turning away with a hoof lifting to her snout as she started to huff. A second after hoof and snout made contact, she sneezed and shuddered her wings, retreating a bit into the quilts and opening her eyes again.

"Bless you," Yukito muttered.

Sora nodded to him with a faint smile, before glowering again and redirecting her ire at Mira. "Attack him unprovoked again, you'll not only have to deal with dismemberment, but your hide will be used to sheathe my blades." Her eyes narrowed to thin, glowing slits, and her blades rattled against each other, producing a noise between whistling and scraping. "Is. That. Understood?"

Mira flinched and tried to keep his composure, but then he remembered Starbreaker's presence very close to him, and heard a scraping of snow and the faintest pop of crackling fire. Tsih sighed, shook her head, and looked up at him with a small frown. "Sorry, can't help you if you become somepony else's wing warmers. Besides… she kinda beat our asses silly when we got deployed. Doesn't that make her top gun?" she muttered in a low voice, somewhat apologetically but with enough weight to her words that Mira had no chance of misconstruing her meaning.

Mira sagged, wings dropping and unfolding to let the primaries touch the snow. "Fine," he grumbled. He mentally faceclawed for not seeing that one coming sooner, much less from Tsih of all ponies. Then again, he ruefully supposed, this was his just desserts for trying to attack Yukito out of the blue. What a day this was turning out to be, and as far as he knew it wasn't even noon yet. He had none to blame but himself for even deciding to stay with these loons, though.

He could hear Brother chiming in now, with all the sarcasm he could muster, "This is our hole. We have to sit in it."

Yukito turned to Tsih and, after deciding against kneeling to her eye level, asked her in a level voice, "What all do you have in the way of supplies?"

Tsih turned to Yukito, still frowning. "Not a lot... " she grumbled, lifting a hoof and pointing it at Mira. "He made our ride vanish, and that had what little we've held on to… that aren't his knives and plasma chakrams." She considered his question and proceeded to retort, "Why? You want to share or some shit like that?"

Yukito sighed and slowly drew in a deep breath. "We'll need to ascertain food stock," he replied calmly. Mira winced again, horn glowing as he summoned the wooden carriage he had been using yesterday. He pulled it up, turned its rear to Yukito, and turned to the ride as it jostled into place. Now that he had a better look at the thing without it going at blinding speeds thanks to a lunatic driver, Yukito found that it was scratched and beaten and wobbling in place ever so slightly. No doors or hood to speak of besides the reaches; it was as basic as they came, just large enough for maybe two adults if he had to hazard a guess.

Leaning over its pitiful bed to see what it had in store, Yukito found more boxes within the first; metal, scratched, blackened, and taking up a lot of what little room the ride had to begin with. Many of the boxes had patchy brackets anchored onto both them and the floor of the vehicle, though none were flung open thanks to latches and padlocks that kept them shut and their contents sealed. The wood was splintered, and the job looked very much rushed overall…

Something told Yukito he was about to enter a makeshift lottery. He turned to Mira. "You have a key?" he asked.

Mira nodded to Yukito, and lit his horn again to conjure a small key anchored to a silver ring and a black cube. "Made damn sure to keep the cargo safe. You show us the rest of yours, we'll show ours. Fair trade?" he asked.

Yukito nodded and turned to Sora. She nodded in turn. "Done deal," she said, unaware of what she was about to delve into.

Chapter XXX- Diving Into Cold

Mira whistled as the smaller contents of Sora's bell were summoned up and plopped in the central cab's floor in a heap about as tall as Tsih, and that was discounting the blankets and pillows and quilts now standing behind said pile. With another command and a click of its button, the bell spat out the furniture that was then plopped before the cab itself. Another click right after gave rise to yet another pile, cab-bound and orderly, thankfully.

Gauze rolls, antibiotic ointments, even some syringes with clear liquid and still-sealed scalpels were the first to meet his sweeping gaze, followed by the useless plaque stacked atop some books, and a few closed envelopes. A hoofful of empty steel bowls, cups, spoons and forks stood next to the books, surrounded by wrapped plastic bowls and an assortment of tin cans without labels. One final click, and half the furniture was laden with the rest that wouldn't have been able to fit in. "... why'd you guys pack a bed and a nightstand?" he asked.

"Sentimental value," Sora replied, gesturing to the nightstand that had its little picture frame resting snugly atop it. Yukito moved it over to her with his magic, and she reached over to pull open the drawer with a hoof as soon as it was shifted within range. Mira leaned over, spotting two cuff-sized rings resting within that drawer, one silver with a blue gem and the other gold with a lilac gem. He watched as Sora picked picked up the gold ring and tossed it to Yukito, who caught it with a hoof and affixed it to his left pastern. Sora picked up the silver ring and did likewise, smirking as she moved the picture frame to rest it in the drawer. She closed it right after.

"... huh. So ya two did get th' rings after all…" Omega mused, garnering a glance and a chuckle from Yukito. He returned the look and asked, "How th' hell'd ya manage that?"

Yukito grinned. "Just set aside the bits for them. Didn't pay extra to have them augmented," he replied. "Last thing any of us need is to be tracked through the damn things."

"True enough," Omega agreed with a nod.

Mira gently pulled open the drawer again with a claw, and levitated the picture frame out of it carefully, whistling again as he got to see what it held. He glanced from the frame to Sora, then Yukito, and then to Omega before returning his eyes to the picture. "... holy shit, this is your guys' wedding party?" he remarked, seeing no more than six ponies… one of them a mare in full uniform, with medals, held at gunpoint by a smiling Sham.

They, in turn, were flanked on either side by a pale-faced Omega and a silvery-blue unicorn with navy eyes trying to eke her way out of the picture altogether. In trying to vacate the photo op, she wound up leaving the forefront of the shoot all to a beet-red newlywed couple that tried and failed to hide their features through their wedding garments. Unfortunately, the red cutie mark and altered wings gave their sorry hides away. "Awfully small…" He ignored Sora's wincing as he added, "And that green unicorn's taking it a bit far with that gun there…"

"She… the mare in uniform… was a Lieutenant-Sergeant. A woefully incompetent one at that," Sora muttered, face paling as she spoke. "Walked in by freak chance… she was disposed of after the photo shoot."

"Awkwaaaaaaaaaaaard," Omega sang in a scratchy falsetto, cringing at the mention of 'disposed of' as he did it.

Mira turned to Sora, frowning at that tidbit of information. "And who's that pony?" he asked, turning the picture to her to gesture to the one trying, and failing, to hide in the corner.

"Nath," Yukito replied, frowning balefully. "Before… she was augmented," he added with a wince that shook his body briefly. Mira turned to him just in time to catch that shudder, opening his mouth for a moment, pausing, then closing his jaws before he gently returned the photo to its drawer. "It was a private ceremony. Didn't stop Sham from trying to get us to share a bed that same night."

Mira nodded, set the photo back in its resting place, and turned to the rest of the furniture. Beside the cuffed table, stool, bed, couch and coffee table… there wasn't a whole lot to go around, barring the punching bags, dumbbells and dart boards resting atop the cushions and mattress. He picked a dart board up, stabbed with scalpels in place of the standard, all surrounding a full-bodied and uniformed picture of Colonel Takahara. Mira flexed his claws a little on the dart board, and widened at how firm it held in his grip. Tightening that grip did little else, save for making some tiny indents in the frame that would take an expert's eye to discern. "Good quality board…" he muttered. "Where'd ya get it?"

Yukito grinned and pointed a hoof at Omega. Omega beamed and piped up, "Well, somepony dumped th' things at th' disposal plant f'r burning… along with th' bags and dumbbells. Gave 'em all a good clean and jus gave 'em to th' doc f'r keeping himself in shape," he answered, grinning a trite smugly. Mira turned to him and whistled in his direction. "Being a disposal pony had its benefits," he added, grin growing wider.

Mira turned back to the board and took notice of the picture tacked onto it. "Hey, that dude's got a horn like ours!" he noted, before then seeing one scalpel positioned between the hind legs of the picture. And another on its neck, with dotted lines scratched in around his skull. He set the dart board down carefully, if only to avoid dislodging the mishandled scalpels. "Okay, what'd he do to upset you?"

"Sexually assaulted my wife more times than I could count," Yukito replied bluntly, eyes narrowing into a glare. "Would have progressed further with his most recent attempt, had I not intervened."

Mira's jaw dropped. "He what?" he squawked, organic voice rising an octave higher. "He actually tried that? To the Windchime of all ponies?"

Yukito nodded with teeth bared and clenched tight at the thought. "Yes he did. I had to dislodge him," he hissed.

Tsih threw her front hooves into the air, and waved them to the sky in exasperation. "Gya! Now I'm getting mental images of bad things!" Her hooves went to her temples and started pounding, garnering looks from everypony else. She fell to her haunches, screwing her eyes tight and shaking her head wildly with ears pinned as she kept bashing herself. "Nope! Don't wanna see the Windchime being bred like a whorse!" Then, she dropped her hooves, dug into the snow, and stuck her head in the resultant hole to continue screeching into it with her tail tucking between her hinds.

Sora blanched at that disconcerting display, wings tightening against her sides as a frown creased her brow. She turned to Mira, the frown on her muzzle deepening to frame a rather disapproving look. "Tell me she hasn't had the talk yet," she grumbled, an eye twitching.

Mira wilted. "... didn't get it so much as had the…" Here, he sat, lifted his front claws, and made grabbing gestures with his digits. His limbs were spread just wide enough that Sora could've seen him grasping a small boulder by the sides, were one actually present before him.

Her eye twitched again when she realized what he was alluding to. "A foal," she hissed, eyes glowing. "A fucking foal." Mira grimly nodded and dropped his claws. "And that's… why you two are out here?" she pressed, one corner of her mouth trying to twist the rest of her frown into a hellish scowl.

"One of several reasons," Mira affirmed bluntly. "Didn't… sit well with us." His face darkened. "Let's not discuss it, ever, whenever she pitches a fit." He got up, trotted to Tsih, lit up his horn and magically pulled her out of her pretend-sand hole before gently grasping her by her withers. "The bad things won't get to you. Not if we have anything to say about it." Tsih frowned, shivering before Mira pulled her to his chest and used a wing to brush some snow off her mane. "No more bad things," he said firmly. "Alright?"

Tsih nodded weakly, waiting until Mira released her before trotting to the carriage and sitting in front of it. She took a few deep breaths, fur standing on end as cold air stole warmth from her lungs, and exhaled slowly to calm herself down. She turned to Sora after a minute or so of breathing in and out before asking, "Ca… can I use a dart board later?"

Sora nodded immediately. "We do have regular darts for that. I certainly wouldn't mind you using the boards," she said. "Of course… if you do, you're not allowed to use anything but your hooves to throw the darts. I'd like them unbroken."

Tsih nodded. "Won't use my magic for the boards," she muttered. Sora lifted a hoof from her blanket bundle and reached over to gently pat her on the head.

Sora's ears twitched as a gust of cold wind brushed up against her head, carrying with it the distinct sound of machines roaring in the distance. A hoof went to her bell, and she turned to Mira. "We'll continue this later, once we find good shelter."

Mira looked at her, brows drawing together in confusion before he, too, heard the faint sound. "On land, or in air?" he asked.

"In air would be preferable; there's still some things we need to sort out with our possessions," Sora answered, clicking the button and muttering a command. The items she and Yukito had brought with them vanished in one bright burst of light, save the blanket still wrapped around her and the wedding bands. She looked at his carriage. "Want me to stash that too?"

Mira nodded, and watched as his carriage was also made to disappear. "Saves us some magic we could've used otherwise," he said, and trotted over to the harness. He considered it for a moment, shrugged, got in front of it and magically grasped it with wings spread. He waited for everypony else to hop aboard and close the doors before flapping and galloping, dragging the vehicle with him as he prepared for takeoff.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Tsih wound up sitting with Sora and Yukito, though she kept her distance from them after the most recent hassle nearly devolved into lunacy. She wanted to speak with the pair, animosity set aside for the time being and all that, but at that moment she didn't want to risk the foul mental images paying her another visit. She shuddered, ears turned back as the pair opted to nestle in the middle of the cab.

At least they didn't get lovey-dovey with each other, and she was grateful for that—the embarrassment of watching them getting lovey-dovey would have been a bit much. Though, their silence was a little deafening just by itself. Yukito busied himself with glancing at the back window, past which was the cab that Omega and Starbreaker got huddled in, and Sora opted to look out the side window for trouble. On both fronts, nothing particularly interesting was happening, though the snowstorm had started once again.

A niggling question began dancing in her mind, bouncing in her skull as she weighed the ramifications. She opened her mouth, then closed it again when she considered just how… strange the question was to start with, relative to her current circumstances. Beginning with the fact that she was rehearsing it, even now, sent her mental gears spinning in all sorts of directions. And with each rebound in her skull, Tsih could only find herself wondering why as of the present. Without Mira to confide to, she was left with… these nutjobs who should have been executed long ago, yet were still around and kicking for some reason.

The carriage rattled as it started to climb with Mira, gaining speed in doing so. The ride was a bit bumpy, but overall manageable. Tsih shifted to lay down on the floor, contemplating her lot and burying her head in her forelegs when a slight itch tickled her left pastern. She scuffed at it with her right hoof, and after a moment the itch went away. To be certain it wouldn't bother her again, she nibbled at it once the scuffing was done—gently of course; she didn't particularly fancy drawing her own blood so soon.

This, however, caught Yukito's attention. "Are you alright?" he asked.

Tsih shook her head as her teeth parted from her pastern. "Just scratchy," she replied with a shrug. "Why do you care?"

Yukito nodded and sighed at the question. He opened his mouth when Sora interjected, "You know… when he first operated on me, I asked that same thing." Tsih jerked up at that, but Sora merely turned to her and nestled deeper into her blanket. "And believe it or not… that wasn't the time I got sent through the augment wringer."

Tsih frowned. "Cool, okay," she grumbled, then shifted to lay down again.

Sora shared a glance with Yukito, sighing quietly. "Kids," she muttered with a shake of her head.

"Hey, we were foals once," Yukito replied with a blaise shrug of his shoulders. He gestured at Tsih and added, "She still has much of her life ahead of her."

"I can hear you two," Tsih hissed, pressing her snout into her pasterns.

Sora nodded and shifted around to tuck the blanket beneath her legs. She turned to the side window again, only to flinch as another bolt of lightning flashed outside. A distant clap of thunder had her shuddering, and she felt another tremor as her husband laid down with his ears turned back. "I hope this isn't a lightning rod we're in, I really do…" Sora muttered.

"If I die by lightning in this damned thing, I'm kicking you in the teats when we go to the seven hells!" Tsih complained, head buried under her forelegs as more lightning danced outside, briefly illuminating the cab.

Sora wilted as another clap of thunder shook the carriage. She turned to the front window, and Yukito magically pulled the curtains aside to see Mira frantically flapping, claws on the reaches and the harness flailing in the wind. In the distance, with how far exactly lost to her, some unidentifiable blot stood as snow and lightning worked in tandem to blur its features. They heard a thumping from behind, and both adults and Tsih turned to find Starbreaker pounding at the window with wide eyes and ears folded back.

"How do you open this thing?!" she mouthed, a hoof fiddling furiously with the edge of the window as her other one continued to beat at the glass. Sora apologetically shrugged in response, baffled and dreading the window being busted all at once. Starbreaker glowered, and turned to Omega as he muttered something to her. Within a minute after turning her gaze forward, her hoof found a latch and she flipped it, backing off to let it swing harmlessly out of the way. That done, she lifted him out of his seat with her magic and plopped him next to Sora before clambering into the cab herself.

The window shut with magical aid, and Starbreaker turned a wild look to her nemesis. Her hooves moved to clasp her by her blanketed withers. "Do you know how to stop the storm?!" she barked, fear etched on her face and pooling in her tone.

Sora shook her head that time. "I know about as much as stopping the storm as Yukito does about gardening!" she exclaimed, wings rattling under her blanket.

Starbreaker didn't just wilt; her posture sagged until her chest was level with Sora's. "Y-you don't?" she squeaked, pupils shrinking. "N-not at all?"

"Not at all," Sora repeated. "We'll just have to hope—" The carriage jerked so suddenly everypony tumbled to the floor with a yelp, barring Tsih who instead rammed against the wall. The group scrambled up to the seat, except for Omega who opted to sit on his haunches to look out the window.

Lightning danced in front of Mira, who had stalled to a complete stop. He faced the outermost window on his end of the vehicle, hind claws clutching the reaches as his front ones waved at the lightning before him. He mouthed frantically "Do you guys see this shit?!" as thunder shook the carriage again and again.

Sora, after regaining her bearings and looking where Omega had affixed his attention, could only sourly nod. "Lower your altitude!" she mouthed back, hoping that he could see her do so. After a few seconds, Mira stared at her dumbfounded, then nodded and reoriented to get the reaches back in his front claws. The carriage tilted and rattled as altitude shifted, and this time everypony clutched the seat and floor for dear life as they started to descend. Sora made sure to keep her wings tucked tight, and glanced between Starbreaker and Yukito to make sure there hadn't been any unexpected accidents.

She frowned as she noticed a very slight cut stretching both of her sides and the blanket, though thankfully her flesh was left untouched. But the same wasn't true for the others; Yukito's shoulder, stomach, and cutie mark were now decorated by a singular, long and thin cut. It oozed a small margin of blood above his stomach, and she nudged him with her snout above the wound. He yelped and pulled back, muttering, "Could you please…"

Sora prodded with her snout again. "Look, your whole side," she said. Yukito did as he was asked, and frowned at the wound.

"... I'll have to clean that, won't I?" he asked.

"It's only bleeding a little, but… that would probably be best," Sora muttered, wilting.

Yukito nodded and turned to Omega. "How are you holding up?" he asked.

Omega shrugged. "Lil' better than yesterday," he replied.

"No wires trying to scramble your brain?" Sora asked.

Omega shook his head. "So far, damn things've been behavin'," he said.

Sora nodded and lifted a hoof to her bell, but was stopped when a grey-teal hoof touched her pastern and lowered it.

Starbreaker was shaking her head as Sora turned to her. She gestured to a fresh wound that matched Yukito's, now lining her side. "Not. Here," she hissed firmly, shuddering as thunder clapped outside once more. She turned to the window, and Sora did likewise—both hearts sank upon seeing a massive shadow hovering to the side, just close enough that the snow couldn't blur its shape. Massive wings, all fitted with massive rifles pointed squarely onto them.

They turned to Mira in unison, who alternated between glancing in front of him and towards the encroaching figure. Tsih stood up, seeing the object closing in. A hoof went to her mana boosters, and her ears fell back. Her horn glowed as she grumbled, "Gotta hide again? What's out there now?"

"Airship…" Sora answered, shakily nodding to Tsih. "Hiding would be good about now…"

With a click of her booster, without triggering its hinge, Tsih's power worked itself upon the carriage, spreading across everything in dizzying blue ripples that caused light to refract. Then, her magic kicked into gear and spread another aura across every connecting surface for good measure. Within seconds, they, the vehicle, and Mira all turned invisible as the snowstorm started to pick up.

Outside, the ship's pilot began squawking through the intercom. "Where the fuck did you go?!" they yelped, confusion leaking through the feed. The rifles started to move every which-way, trying to track that which had suddenly escaped from sight. Mira descended lower and lower into the snow-devils, gradually easing himself and the carriage into an impenetrable cloud of frost raging right beneath the vessel's wings.

The pilot, secluded in the cockpit, began fiddling with the control panel and the radar for any signs of foul play. They did get through to the Corps, but the radar was beeping and blipping without picking anything up—its green glow and droning, spinning line of gold did not change once. "This is Partisan Five, I've found the stolen vehicle!" they barked.

The Admiral's voice cut through the drone of the radar, "And?"

"It was being driven by a freak of a stallion, and-and-and it up and vanished! I was looking at it and it just disappeared with light eating it all! Even the radar won't pick him up!" the pilot replied, ears turned back as they turned to the radar to find it still wasn't having much luck.

The Admiral snorted on his end. "Describe to me the stallion driving the pilfered carriage," he ordered.

"Couldn't get a good look at 'im, but he had steel for legs and natural pegasus wings," Partisan Five replied, sweating a few bullets as they anxiously glanced at the radar every few seconds, silently praying for a miracle.

"... natural wings…" the Admiral muttered contemplatively, seemingly absorbing that bit of intel. "Keep watch over the Frostborne Moors, Partisan Five. I'll see if our new… cloaked companions that we've found prowling the city streets have anything to say about this matter."

"Yes sir," Partisan Five replied, slowing down the airship a little to see if, perhaps, the radar would pick up whatever was in front of the vessel. Still, nothing turned up, so they began letting the gears spin in their head as the hum of the engines filled in the silence. That hum, broken up by intermediate thunder, helped them think over the situation more clearly. "They vanished, so I can't just fire everywhere…"

The airship began to descend, hum now at full throttle and turbines whirring as fast as they could go. The rifles did not retract; there was no need for that, just yet. After all, the smaller vehicle could turn up again, and then it would get blasted to the moon for its defiance. Partisan Five wilted a bit when they realized the Admiral hadn't given out the order that would allow said blasting, and—

Speaking of, the Admiral's voice cut in through the mental fog again. "Tell me, Partisan, have you also seen a bluish foal in or around the carriage?"

Partisan jolted and replied immediately, "No sir, I haven't."

The Admiral snorted. "Figured as much. Our new cloaked friends informed us about a pair of rogue weapons who are skilled at the ancient game of hide and seek," he scoffed. "If they vanished… watch the surroundings closely. That is all I can say on the matter. I want that herd alive."

"Yes sir," Partisan replied with a nod, face hardening as the airship slipped noisily into the raging snow-devils with as much grace as its form could allow. The storm briefly gave the ship a wide berth, snow rushing away from its wings and loaded underside before then dancing past them once again.

The snow-devils, though, picked up in speed. Within moments, they did an excellent job of blurring everything five feet in front of the cockpit. It did not escape Partisan's notice, however, that there were minor lapses here and there in the storm—a shifting gust here, where there should not have been, a brief funnel there that collapsed onto itself as soon as it was spotted…

Partisan watched closely, as per the Admiral's rather sparse instructions. It didn't take them long to notice a pattern within the storm, when surely one could not have possibly existed prior. A wicked smirk crossed their muzzle, even as the command to leave the herd alive rang in their head. It didn't mean they couldn't give that herd the seven hells, after all… no it did not. The barrels of the guns slowly turned ahead as hooves went to various levers.

A thought hit Partisan in that moment. "Hiding from standard radar…" A hoof went to a button as that left their mouth, and slowly pushed down. The radar blipped once, and the green shifted to a dark navy before a trilling beep sang through the cockpit. Partisan turned to it, smirk twisting into a grin as a red dot appeared on the screen, flaring white every time the spinning line hit it.

Bingo.

"Sir, I've switched from standard radar to infrared," Partisan reported through the radio.

"And?" the Admiral challenged.

"It's picked their asses up!" Partisan cheered. A dark chuckle came in from the Admiral's end.

"Most excellent. Keep them in the infrared's sights," the Admiral ordered bluntly.

"Yes sir!" Partisan replied enthusiastically, turning ahead as the infrared radar continued to sing and display that damning red-white dot. Out of the corner of their eye, the dot moved in a zig-zag pattern, rather swiftly at that.

But it didn't matter how fast the target was moving. Soon enough, the fun would begin.

End of Arc II: Chapter XXXI- The Lights Are On...

The invisible Mira kept flying forward, the cold starting to sting at his fresh wounds and augments with a chilling vengeance that made him tremble slightly. He was grateful for his muffler; it kept what little warmth it could save. He was also grateful of the fact he was still ahead of the airship; that meant he and the other whackjobs he was now stuck with could ditch it faster.

That was, until he looked back and found out that lasers started sailing far too close for comfort—not enough to singe anything which got close, but still left their heat in passing. Mira stifled a squawk in his throat at the first one, veering sharply to the side in order to dodge the blast. Another near miss had him swerving right, nearly tossing the carriage doors open in his mad dash to escape being vaporized. A third almost snagged one of his wings by freak chance, but a near-miss downstroke proved lifesaving in the split-second the laser took up airspace in such tight proximity.

He beat his wings faster, and the air distorted around him and the carriage as he began to pick up more speed. He was probably going to get an earful for driving like a lunatic in the midst of a blizzard later, but it wasn't like he was the madpony piloting an armed airship. He scanned the landscape as best he could with the conditions present, looking for the quickest way out he could find.

Alas, white blinded everything within feet of him. He couldn't tell where the area past the Gorge was anymore. The search proved fruitless, and another laser careening above reminded him to keep his attention elsewhere until the storm waned. He dove low as a few more followed that fourth shot, watching as the volley sailed into the snowy gloom up ahead. Distantly, oh so distantly, he heard them impacting something—he could not parse whether it was ground or something else, as the winds muddled the noise.

But there were the echoes left behind—singing to him with a very distinct crackling he could not ignore. Some part of him screamed, something transcending even the primal, and he stooped downwards with wings tucked tight. Not a second later, a blasted missile sailed overhead, trailing smoke and emitting a beeping chorus that sang in tandem with the sputter of its fire. Mira's heart temporarily stopped upon seeing it travel farther ahead into the snowy gloom.

Seconds later, it emerged from back from the blizzard, head flaring with LEDs that were trained on him. A scream started its escape route from his throat, in turn causing Tsih's cloak to falter, but it died halfway through its journey when a flash of light embraced him and the vehicle. The missile exploded harmlessly into the air, and Mira reappeared in front of the smoke cloud, flying away from it… and feeling extra weight on his back along with hooves wrapping around his barrel.

He glanced back to find Yukito looking back at him, frowning ruefully. "Well, now I know they'll do anything to flush us out of hiding," he hissed, voice raised so he could be heard over the winds and laser volley, in turn making the cloak dissipate. Another missile sailed past them, red lights passing and then fading into the white that surrounded them.

"Translation: Hide and seek is out of the question," Brother unhelpfully piped up in the confines of Mira's mind. "Unless you can pull a miracle, we're all screwed," he sibilantly added.

Mira sourly nodded, scowling as he collected himself and turned ahead, anticipating the second missile. "So now what?" he asked.

"I would have Starbreaker help, but she might cause collateral damage," Yukito grumbled, horn glowing as soon as the second missile came into sight, followed by a third whizzing past them. He teleported himself, Mira, and the carriage once more, leaving the second missile to explode as the third changed course to head for the explosion. Reappearing behind the second smoke cloud, Mira grimaced as he realized he didn't hear a third explosion rocking the sky.

Mira glanced over his shoulder and his scowl only deepened. Of course, that third stupid missile was tearing its way through the smoke cloud now, aimed right on his and the others' haunches. Some part of him scrambled to formulate something, anything they could use to avoid certain death-by-shrapnel. He turned ahead, and the winds waned just enough for him to spy a tall shadow in the distance. The only thing he could make out was its erratically-shaped peak, molded into suspect round shapes jutting upwards.

Mira did some quick calculations as the missile slowly gained ground. It would be unlikely that this airship would crash into it, assuming what lay ahead was solid and corporeal. The pilot had probably seen what happened to their fellow, and rightly coming to the worst conclusion, would take steps to avoid that fate. He whinnied in tandem with Yukito as an explosion sang from behind, the shockwave of which was close enough to tilt the flight path and jostle the wagon's doors open. Though just as quickly as they opened, the doors shut with a series of thuds that briefly shook the reaches in his claws.

Yukito dared turn his head back, catching sight of falling blue and orange embers flickering out of existence as the shrapnel descended harmlessly into the snow below. He turned back to Mira and shouted over the din of the storm as he corrected his flight and the carriage, "You have any ideas?!"

Mira grimaced. "Not many!" he admitted. And that was a woeful understatement of his mental processes at the moment, as they scrambled to formulate something cohesive, feasible, and most importantly would help preserve everypony's hides except for the pilot behind them all. Another missile sailed past, and another, and another, almost taunting him as they vanished into the world of white ahead.

Then they came back, heads poised on them, side-by-side in such extremely close proximity that the explosions would probably join as one were they to go off prematurely. The pilot's voice went into a sing-song tone of mocking as Yukito prepared another teleport. Unfortunately, the brief sting was accompanied by the grating of the microphone on the receiving end of the taunt, "That endless bag of tricks won't get you anywhere. You'd best stop or else you'll drop then and there."

"This one's even worse than the last pilot," Yukito complained, horn flaring brighter as the missiles came closer. "If he's going to sing again, I might be left with another headache sooner than I thought…" With that, driver, ex-doctor, and vehicle vanished in one burst that made the missiles widen the berth between one another. The gargantuan cannons attached to the ship began firing everywhere, trying to detect their target.

Then the ones on the bottom tried to turn up towards the empty space between them as Mira found himself hovering right beneath the airship; he was close enough he could touch the cold metal with his wingtips and risk knocking the carriage's roof clean off if he sailed any closer. The ship shook as a laser impacted the side, then again as another followed. The missiles were even more confused; at their proximity to the massive vehicle, it was only inevitable that they collided with the front of the ship, though not before trying their best to separate in the last few seconds before the triad of explosions sounded ahead.

The pilot shouted in frustration as the vessel sailed harmlessly through the resultant smoke cloud, "Godsdamnit, Swiftcure! No wonder the Admiral wants your cutie mark as part of his new rug! I'll knock you and that bitch of yours out of the sky if it's the last thing I do!"

Yukito opted to not make a retort to this, instead focusing his attention once more on Mira. "Think you can fly a bit longer?" he asked suddenly.

Mira nodded, though his body shivered as it once more registered the decline in the temperature. "Gonna need to bundle up tonight though!" he retorted, frowning. "If you can think of something, smartass, let's hear it!"

"Sora made the last airship that detected us crash into a mountain! Do you think you can pull something similar?" Mira gave that strange suggestion some thought, before his brain concocted an image of the vessel that was close to the crystal castle. In moments, he shook his head.

"I'm not built for long distances! And the fuckers who augmented our legs didn't include thermal regulators!" Mira barked, eye twitching as he detected the faintest traces of frost building on his claws.

Yukito swore under his breath hearing that, noticing the mass up ahead was growing taller, wider, and darker. He hoped that wasn't thunderclouds he was seeing, because at this rate that wasn't promising with the present conditions. The airship shook again as its own missiles impacted it, and the smoke started to trail above and beneath it, but dispersed before it could reach the stolen carriage.

Mira tried squinting his eyes to see past the cloud of smog. Strange… was the whole world growing darker all of a sudden, or were his eyes playing tricks? He blinked, trying to dispel the strange fog that had overtaken his sight, before hollering to the murderous hitchhiker upon his back, "Isn't it still daytime?!"

"Maybe another thunderstorm's going to hit!" Yukito yelled back, hocks twitching. "We need to get away from this airship pronto!"

"And how are we gonna do that, wiseass?" Mira snapped, eyes narrowing as the landscape darkened some more, along with the rest of the world. He wondered if he had reached his limit, before a shrill scream blasted through the air with enough force to rattle the airship.

"Gah! You… how did you fuckers get inside the ship!?" the pilot howled, followed by the audible sound of a gun being cocked. The airship rattled again, and Mira nodded before descending and accelerating to put some distance between the vehicles. Shots were fired from within the vessel, feeding through the intercom as they impacted on steel with a distinct clang.

A few more missiles let loose, followed by a score of fifteen after that, whilst the cannons began to fire erratically once again, some shooting up into the wings and some shooting down into the snow. Yukito paid heed to this growing bedlam he'd found himself in, wondering what had suddenly gone wrong for the pilot.

The airship tilted slowly with a groan, one wing swinging down towards the ground. Mira saw the shift from the corner of his eye, and immediately corrected his flight to fly at an angle towards the dark object in the distance whilst also dragging the carriage farther and farther away from the flying arms factory. The missiles that were launched sailed into the white gloom by now, and for just a moment, Mira thought he'd have to dodge them again.

"Lemme go! I don't know what you assclowns are on about, but I ain't makin' a spark of light!" the pilot howled, continuing to fire shots as if that could save them from whatever decided to assail their hide.

A new, different, and distinctly hoarse voice filled into the feed, chilling Mira to the augments and down his spine as the owner spoke. "It's not you we're after… but you're still making light in this flying coffin nonetheless… don't worry, we'll fix that for you," the second entity said, followed by the sound of something smashing against steel with enough force to make the metal groan.

The carriage rattled slightly, followed by a distinct sound of hooves hitting glass. Yukito turned back to find Starbreaker had crawled to the frontmost cab, eyes wide and irises shimmering blue. She was moving her mouth a mile a minute, pounding again and again as though she wanted out. He took a moment to piece together what she was trying to convey, "The shadows that eat light! They're here! Fly away faster, damnit, I don't want my horn broken again!"

That made Yukito's brow furrow. He wondered if that was Starbreaker's insanity doing the talking, but then he noted the sheer desperation in her eyes and mannerisms. She pounded again and again, the glass shaking against her hooves as she kept striking like a trapped labrat that had been stuffed into a cage. He turned to Mira again. "Are you able to go faster?" he asked.

Mira nodded. "We can try!" he replied, beating his wings as fast as they could go. "Hang tight!"

At that moment, the missiles emerged from the world of white, heads still blinking and trained on the group. Mira grumbled, swerving the carriage so he and the vehicle faced the airship. It was still tilting, slowly flying with wings rising to a position as rigid and tall as a flagpole. The cannons were still firing, their volleys sailing off in the far distance. As fast as he could go, he sped towards the airship, leading the cluster of missiles onward.

The cluster began to converge, inching towards itself more and more as they tailed Mira. Yukito clung for all it was worth, clenching his teeth as he dared to glance over his shoulder to find that not one of this fresh volley had exploded. In addition, Star seemed too focused on pounding the glass to do much else.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled, voice muted by the pane that kept her in the carriage. "You'll make the shadows notice us! Stop!"

Yukito was about to retort when the world jostled. He found himself glancing back forward, only to find his gaze skyward. He looked behind himself again, magically holding his glasses in place to find that a few of the missiles in the back of the procession were starting to redirect their course. The missiles up ahead weren't as fast; in seconds, explosions came from below, and the airship went careening through the cloud of smog.

Yukito let light dance upon his horn. As soon as Mira swerved to the dark object in the distance, he teleported himself, Mira and the vehicle to reappear at the airship's exposed underside. The missiles that managed to get out of exploding crashed into the airship's back, rattling it and its still-firing cannons. One persistent rocket, though, managed to sail over the airship's back, still homing in on the fleeing herd; were it alive and with eyes, there would have been fire blazing in them.

With a mute nod between them, Yukito lifted his hoof to gesture ahead, then upwards for a brief moment before he had to return to clutching with it. Mira started flying that way, the funnel of wind forming as he picked up speed. The missile kept up its pursuit though, dogging them even as Mira swerved again to fly to one of the airship's cannons. The carriage doors flew open, though with a blue aura surrounding them a second later, they slammed shut just as quickly.

Zipping around the first cannon as it fired into the distance was a chore, largely due to its size in comparison to the carriage. Even with speed on his side, it took Mira a minute to clear the swiveling base entirely, which was the time that the pursuing projectile spent tracking his trail intently. Another swiveling base was before him, but Mira had an idea.

Another mute nod was all the signal that the murderous hitchhiker on his back would need. Scaling the swiveling base was one thing, but swerving around its side to fly down the other side was another. Mira was sure gravity was aiding him one moment and fighting him the next, but that concern slipped his mind as soon as it announced itself in his head. The airship began tilting again, continuing in the same clockwise maneuver that had yet to correct its course and altitude.

Mira went with the wing of the beast, adjusting his flight to compensate for this. He flew around the swiveling base of the cannon a few times, hoping to persuade the missile into hitting it, though he wasn't surprised that it was still tailing him a few laps afterwards. So he doubled back to the first cannon, that damnable rocket still following him. Instead of going around it, though, Yukito noticed he looked like he was going to charge through it.

With a teleport both had reappeared on the other side of the cannon, and turned just in time to see an explosion rocking it from behind. The cannon jerked upwards and fired into the sky, but after that it was still. Another teleport, and the herd and carriage were ahead of the airship once more.

The pilot shouted once more, garbled and gargling this time, "That's my—no, wait, what are you doing?! Stop! I don't want to be—"

"You will submit to the darkness that your beloved Admiral resides in!" the second entity declared, and with a loud retort and hooves scraping against steel, the feed cut off entirely for a moment. When it came back, it was superseded by the tearing of meat and the crunching of bones and augments. A choked scream, raising to a crescendo, was all that came out of the pilot afterwards.

Slowly, Mira widened the berth between carriage and armed airship, though even he was sure Yukito now wondered why the pilot had shifted their attention all of a sudden and what had decided to make said pilot meet their gruesome end. The firing from the intercoms died, but the striking of steel continued in tandem with the less than savory noises filtering through the feed. Though as he gained more and more distance, the snowstorm and thunder started to drown out whatever pandemonium had stolen the pilot's life. Soon enough, only the howling winds reigned supreme.

The airship was lost to the storm around them. It was a few miles before a distant crash and explosion rang in his ears, barely audible through the gloom. Mira pushed on, heedless of the lightning. He had to find safety before his claws froze. He had to find safety before whatever else had boarded that airship could notice he was there too.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

The dark shadow's features crystallized, though only increment by increment as the pilfered carriage came closer. Mira wasn't sure how many miles he crossed or if time even mattered anymore, but all the same he could see that there was a small square thing set into the mighty stone side of a mountainside, doors ajar and rusted open with frost keeping them that way. To the side of this oddity stood a tower, a simple thing without a ladder that had a roof, four walls with windows, and the foundations.

Studying the mountainside around this discovery, Mira could spot more frosted windows and steel columns filtering in through the stonework, complete with a few more towers here and there. Yukito perked up at this. "Oh hello! A guard post!"

Mira sighed, shaking his head. "What, you want us to waltz in there and kill everypony?"

"Might not have much choice," Yukito retorted. "Besides, I don't see anypony flying around here but us." He glanced around as Mira slowed, but all the same came close to the guard post. "... strange, I don't see any lights on."

"Would lights be on out here?" Mira retorted. "If they are, then the ice is playing merry hell and you're the king of the pre-Clash continents."

"Good point," Yukito conceded. Into the open doors they flew, but in the guard post it wasn't much warmer inside than it was outside. Meeting them was a large square room, itself with three doors at the sides and in front of them. Above those doors rested signs, all smeared with black gunk that had frozen in place, and the doors themselves had also been frosted and rusted open. Yukito hopped off of Mira's back, and trotted around the carriage to open the middle door.

Starbreaker was the first to exit, followed by Tsih. Sora seemed to debate on whether or not she should stay in, but had Omega clamber onto her blanketed backside with Starbreaker's magical aid before she too jumped out. Mira made the carriage vanish with a flash of his horn, and the six grouped together to take stock of their surroundings.

Starbreaker paled upon spotting the black gunk, ears turned back as an unusually stifled whimper crawled out her throat. Omega turned to her as soon as she made the odd noise. "What grabbed your teats just now?" he asked.

"I find it odd that nopony's come," Yukito said, looking between the doors with a critical eye. Indeed, nopony had intercepted the arrival, much less come to halt any further advances. "We have airships trained on our cutie marks, the Admiral hot on the chase, and yet this post…" A chill raced up his spine, and he wasn't sure if it came from outside.

A thought hit Mira, and he turned to the ex-medic. "So… you think the airship might have some friends on board?" he asked.

"A platoon?" Yukito entertained that thought, letting it stew in his head as the mental gears turned. "... it's possible," he admitted after some seconds. "But given my present company, the Admiral probably wouldn't want to wantonly waste soldiers, like the other races that were slaughtered during the Clash. That… and whatever did the pilot in might have killed that platoon as well." He snorted. "At the least, somepony is probably watching the cameras here…"

"But nopony's come. Not even an announcement saying, 'Hey, we have intruders! Get your asses down here pronto!'" Tsih piped up, garnering a glance from Yukito.

"In that case, the security detail has been slacking lately," Yukito muttered. "Though, it would be unwise to just leave them here… we wouldn't be trapped with them; they'd be trapped with us."

Mira nodded, considering the fact that he was accompanying a walking disaster area, and a mare that knocked him senseless during the Clash at the given moment. His ears perked up and swiveled, but all he heard was the soft breathing of his small 'herd,' the occasional clap of thunder, and the howling of the wind outside. In fact, he should have heard the crackle of fire by now, given a certain somepony's disposition… but all that came from the mare in question was a soft, hitched breathing.

"Y'think th' Admiral might've pulled th' security detail back home?" Omega piped up, ears upright and tense as he did his own preliminary scan of the immediate premises. He looked up to the ceiling, and found there was a camera above the entrance they had waltzed in from… but it was frosted in place, its form barely recognizable.

"And leave a post unattended?" Yukito retorted, jerking in the direction of a distant clattering that came from the rightmost door. His gut clenched as the noise repeated, and his tail bristled as the sound grew louder and louder. He motioned with a hoof, and slowly, delicately trotted towards that door with steps as muffled as he could make them. Poking his head in as soon as he could, he found very little out of the ordinary; doors spanning the left side of the hall, frost coating the windows to the right, and not a single frame ajar or out of place.

What he did find out of place was the lights flickering intermittently, and the frosted black sludge smeared between, upon, and in front of the doors. Most were large, one even splashed against the ceiling somehow, and others were small enough he could trot around them without noticing they were there. Everypony else filed in behind him when he turned to the farthest door, shaking vigorously, though not with enough force to part it from its frame.

Another question flooded his mind, refusing to go away. If the security detail had been pulled away… then what was left in its place? Sharing a glance with Sora, he started to approach that door with ears pricked and alert. He took special care in stepping around the smudges wherever he could, should the frosted substance keep traction at bay. At a large swath of odd substance that would be impossible to merely step around, he paused, turning back to the others after noticing it hadn't reflected a thing upon its surface.

Nopony else had moved from the doorframe they huddled in. Mira even lifted a claw to urge him onwards, curling and uncurling his digits repeatedly in vague gestures that Yukito had to take a moment to understand. He turned back ahead, and set one hoof on the swath of sludge carefully. The ice flaked at his touch, and so did the matter it coated. The crunch was a little like snow, but less prominent. Neither even started to melt beneath his hoof, instead sticking to more of itself around where he'd stepped on it.

A peal of thunder did not stop the shaking, nor did it amplify it with its passing. Yukito looked down at his hoof, noticing that the fragments around it did not rattle. Another step produced the same result, and delicately, he trotted on through the sludge. Once he crossed the swath, he looked back at it to find the matter moving by itself to fill in the gaps he made with his hooves. The frost reformed after the gaps were refilled, a perfect sheen of ice that did not reflect the flickering glow of the overhead lights.

Mira urged him on again. Yukito turned to the rattling door, walking around the patches of solidified sable with care. When he reached it, he carefully turned one of his ears and pressed it against the jittery door. Besides the incessant shaking… there was nothing that he could make out. Shifting to rest his front hooves against the door, he started to strain in an attempt to force it open.

It didn't budge to his whims. He tried again, grunting this time as he applied more force. It groaned and shifted the tiniest bit, but that was it. He tried again, yet the still-shaking door didn't part any further. Yukito sighed and tried to peek into the tiny slit he had managed to open, but found absolute darkness within.

He heard the crunching of the strange substance, and metal scraping against metal. He turned to find Mira cantering over, and moved aside to observe him. Mira reared onto his hinds and his claws slipped into the crack of the door, and he heaved. With a few pushes and some growling, the door parted before it got stuck again, yet the rattling still didn't stop even then.

This did, however, let light spill into the room—and with just enough wiggle room to let Yukito inside as well. His shadow stretched to the farthest wall in the room as he went in, and as he glanced around the light glinted off various corners of the things strewn about. A broken table lay before him, its legs ripped off and thrust into the ceiling lights overhead, and the chairs were cleaved in half and resting on their sides. To either side of the room rested opened cupboards with many of their doors wrenched off and tossed about haphazardly, all smeared with that foul substance he hoped wasn't decayed blood. At the farthest wall a painting hung askew, sludge trailing from behind it to pool in a frozen mass at the floor.

Mira shoved the door a few more times, and it stopped its jittering. He squeezed himself in and looked around, noting the destroyed state of the room. A chill raced down his spine as he realized that nopony else had been in this room; given the destruction, there should have been at least blood splatters to indicate a scuffle… but there wasn't even so much as a frozen drop on the floor. He heard a door creaking, and snapped out of his stupor to find Yukito pawing in the cupboards with a hoof, and one lucky enough to still cling to its door at that.

Mira wanted to ask the obvious 'What are you doing?,' but held his tongue. Perhaps there were corpses stuffed into them? He watched, the light from the hall dancing upon those silver strands of tail like a beacon. Mira turned to the door, hearing hoofsteps and crunching coming from outside. He shrugged, figuring it was the others catching up, and turned back to the ex-medic as he lifted his hoof out of the cupboard to discover more frozen sludge clinging to it.

Yukito shook his hoof off, frowning. "Nothing over here," he reported, turning to the taller stallion with a sigh. He began trotting to the door, and Mira followed, though not before casting one last look at the room. Another chill swept up his spine as he took it in, followed by a sense of utter wrongness that settled in the pit of his stomach.

When the two left, they found the others waiting on them. "What all didja find?" Omega asked.

Yukito shook his head. "Signs of a fight… but no corpses," he answered. Then he noticed Starbreaker's rather disturbed expression and turned to her. "Do you know what happened here?"

Starbreaker's head shook a mite too fiercely for a mare so nervous. Yukito tried again, "Do you know what caused this?" That got a nod from her straight away. "Then what is—" A grey-teal hoof was stuffed into his mouth swiftly enough to clack against his teeth as they were parted, and Starbreaker leaned in until she was snout to snout with him.

"Not. Another. Word," she spat, voice and lips trembling as she spoke. Her eyes darted from Yukito to the sludge, and her ears rotated back as she removed her hoof from his mouth.

Sora opened her mouth to comment on the absurdity of what had happened, but a low groan from deep within the mountain stopped her from speaking. The groan was less sound and more vibration, so low that she couldn't hear it so much as feel it coursing throughout the building. She turned to the room that had its door forced open, and so did the others in unison. As the strange tremor passed, she could've sworn she heard something crashing upon, then clattering against the floor.

Tsih poked her head into the open room. She found that the lopsided painting had vacated the wall, revealing a circle sporting something that was scrawled in its circumference. Motioning the others in with a hoof, she cantered delicately to it to see what it was. Soon enough, everypony had crowded around the sludge, and for whatever reason Sora made the painting vanish with the aid of her bell.

After some jostling, Yukito lit his horn and scrutinized the scrawling. What he read did not bode well for the others, "'It hurts to breathe… somepony please stop the pain.'" He took a step back, ears rotating to the door. If something had happened, enough for a dead and pregnant silence to permeate here… and Starbreaker knew the cause, but wouldn't say a word of what that was… those musings gave rise to two prominent questions he couldn't ignore.

Who wrote this message? What had visited this guard post before they did? He shared an uneasy glance with Sora, her brow furrowing as she seemed to consider these ramifications too. Omega glanced at Yukito as well, lips pursed as his own mental gears began to grind. Then the gazes went to Mira, who only kept staring at the scrawling with a furrowed brow and a slight frown on his muzzle. The three turned to Tsih, who did much the same, save for her having to look up due to her height.

At long last, the ex-Corps trio turned to the one mare in the room that gave rise to their half-baked, less-than-grand escape. Her eyes were distant and pale, an already-pale cornflower blue that seemed to be turning whiter and whiter with every passing minute, with pupils shrunken and unfocused. Her ears had barely twitched since entering. Her jaw was set, and her lips pursed tight against themselves to the point the resultant frown seemed to be carved from a statue. Her tail was nestled between her hinds, and her gaze was set straight ahead.

Sora waved a hoof in front of Starbreaker's face. Her eyes did not follow the hoof. The lights were evidently on, as she had walked into the room with them of her own volition… but now, nopony was home. Yukito tried the same, and garnered very similar results. Both dropped their hooves, glancing at each other once again. "... is it something bad, Yukito?" Sora ventured, lip quivering slightly even as she tried to settle the mask of apathy over her face once again.

Yukito took another look at Starbreaker's rigid, unchanging expression. Merely making eye contact, however distant her gaze seemed, made his stomach flip worse than her normal, manic glare. Slowly, hesitantly, he nodded with a soft gulp that was barely audible. His throat started to dry as he spoke, "... I would assume as much. If it's enough to terrify her, then…" He licked his lips, trying in vain to wet them before continuing with the unhappy train of thought he began to entertain, "then what could it do to us? What in the seven hells have we gotten ourselves into?"

Mira turned to Yukito, face settling into a scowl as his train of thought derailed to take in what Yukito had just uttered. Even with the light of the ex-medic's horn, his expression was shadowed in anger and a hint of dismay twinkled in his eyes. "Nothing good, that's what," he said bluntly. "We… know what it is, too. But—" He winced as the marked ponies turned to him, scrunching his eyes tight as he put a claw to his temples in an effort to dull a sudden and sharp pain that came from his mismatched ear. "—it's… you'll have to see for yourselves."

"Sableshrouds?" Sora guessed, brow furrowing when Mira shook his head.

"Worse," Mira said, continuing to shake his head until the pain in his ear had went away. "Much… much worse." He turned to Starbreaker, dropping his claw as he considered her vacant expression. "... and it seems she's acquainted with it too."

A chill swept into the room from outside, running down everypony's spines once more. Sora looked to Tsih, who shook her head. "He's… he's right. You'll have to see for yourselves," she said bluntly, not even daring to look away from the scrawling that was written upon the wall. One of her hooves had twitched, but that was the only other movement she dared to make.

Omega turned to Yukito with a frown. "... that means something else's out here, with us?" he asked slowly. A sour nod answered him, and nothing more.

"What that is… I don't know, Omega. And something…" Yukito swallowed again, pursing his lips for a moment before continuing, "tells me I'd be better off not knowing." The mountain gave another deep, cavernous groan that was once more felt instead of heard, which caused the strange black gunk pooled on the floor to jitter and flake momentarily before it reformed. He looked to the substance as it moved of its own accord, almost daring it to do something else under his now-cautious eye.

It stilled after it reformed, as quiet and cold as the tomb that cradled Sham's body. He wondered to what this substance could belong, or if it could be produced… or linked to something that was once living.

He made up his mind in that moment, and turned to look Mira square in the eye. "We'll have to scrounge for supplies here, just in case. The post may extend to the other side of the mountain; we could fly out from there," he said.

Mira nodded even as he considered this. In the depths of his mind, Brother grumbled a bit, but made no disapproving noise to object to that idea. "Do we scout out the land after?" he asked.

Yukito shook his head. "Far too much snow; it would muddle even our senses," he replied. "If we have to, we'll spend the night here." He looked around for a moment before asking, "Any objections?"

Sora shook her head. So did Omega. "None whatsoever," they said in tandem.

Tsih tilted her head and hummed before nodding. "Much as I hate it, it beats freezing out there," she grumbled. She sat and stretched her forelegs over her head. "Nanoraaaaa, I wonder if there's any food left here."

"Probably frozen and freezer burned to hell, so… yeah, we'll have to pass on the food," Mira muttered, pausing as he raised a claw to tap it against his chin. "Unless we luck out and find canned rations? Those things go a long way, even if they've been turned to ice cubes."

Yukito turned to Starbreaker, who still stared into the middle distance in a manner that suggested she'd gotten strung up on something, and apparently that something had decided to wedge itself where it didn't need to go and stay there. "Of course… should we find frozen cans, we'll just have her thaw them out," he said, noticing she still didn't seem to be home yet.

"If we can get her to snap out of it," Sora pointed out, also turning to Starbreaker with concern flashing in her eyes and niggling at her instincts, screaming that something was amiss. "At this rate, she might need to be piggybacked."

At that moment, Starbreaker slowly shook her head, some bit of awareness returning to her eyes. "No… no… I can trot. I'm not a foal," she said quietly, legs trembling as she spoke. "Just… want out of here… as soon as possible. Now would be nice. I won't have to burn you all sooner if we just leave, alright?"

Sora's ears perked up at this. The niggling concern grew stronger when she realized, mere seconds after Starbreaker had spoken, that she had not heard an ounce of malice within the threat. Whatever had her by the horn had her on edge—an edge that she hadn't seen or heard since they had first met during the Clash years ago.

"Is it just me, or is she chickenin' out?" Omega asked, looking at Yukito.

Yukito shook his head. "Afraid it's not just you," he said with a deepening frown, "and I'm starting to wish it was."

Start of Arc III: Chapter XXXII- ... But the Darkness is Home

The group filed back into the hall, their steps drowned out by another groan of the mountain that the guard post called home. This groan made the windows and doors shudder with its passing, and the lights flickered more and more until one of them popped and died. The sludge on the ceiling moved by itself, frost and all, to cover the light that had gone out with a fluidity that should not have been possible given the coldness of the area and the rather strange circumstances surrounding it. It almost seemed sentient, pooling into the busted wiring and pulsing like the beating of a heart.

Starbreaker shrank as the substance continued to writhe, and watched it as it came to a standstill. A horrible chill swept through her augments, ringing in her artificial ear even though she could no longer hear out of it. Her mind screamed, and instinct howled for her to get up and leave, but her body would not heed her frantic commands to move. It wasn't until Mira nudged her with a claw to the withers did she break out into a stumbling gallop, hurtling back towards the entrance as though she had caught fire. The others followed her a minute later, and heard her skidding to a halt with a shriek in moments.

When they reached her and the entrance, they found her on her haunches with a hoof pointing towards the doors, shaking mid-air. Harried gasps left her gaping mouth, and pinprick pupils were poised on what had stolen her attention. The rest of the sextet turned to the doors, and all eyes widened when they saw it suddenly barred shut with more of that sludge coating it. Oddly, this patch of sludge wasn't frosted that much if at all, and what little there was glinted strangely as Yukito came to inspect it. It formed a message in a semi-circle of steel, ringed by more of itself and dripping in rivers that made it seem as though it were written in fresh blood.

"'You cannot go back. Only forward from here,'" he said after a moment, turning to the others. His gut began churning, nagging at him to stay alert, and he twitched and twisted his ears behind his head to see if any other sounds filtered into the now-barred entrance. Once more, he could hear little else but Starbreaker's shuddering breaths. "So, what should we search for, and where?"

"Food," Mira piped up. "Preferably tinned."

Sora jerked her head a little ways behind her to indicate to Omega. "More blankets, maybe medicinal supplies. As for the where… well, hopefully they have the storage facilities marked in this place," she added. Omega jerked his head and tail up, haunches shaking a bit as though somepony were prodding at his fresh scars again.

"A toilet would be really good right now," Omega said, making Sora a little tense as he said that.

Sora shuffled her hooves and started to part from the group. "I'll… uh… find him a latrine…" she muttered, eyes shifting from door to door. She lifted a hoof to her bell and muttered something to it as she pressed, and it rang and spat out two earpieces. She lifted one and tossed it to Yukito, who caught it with his magic as she took the other, sat on her haunches, and fumbled for a moment to attach it to her left ear. As soon as it was secure, she stood up and bolted down the central door without another word.

Yukito sighed and attached his earpiece to his right ear, turning to look at Mira. "I doubt these would get much reception here. The Corps has probably disconnected us from the rest of the network by now," he grumbled. He pushed on it, and received static for a few moments. Then, distantly, he heard the sound of a door being forced open, and it fed into the earpiece, creating a grating noise that made his fur tingle in unpleasant ways.

He turned to Tsih. "You know what to look for, right?" he asked.

Tsih nodded, albeit slowly enough that Yukito thought there was little enthusiasm behind the motion. "Yeah, I know. I'd kill for something fresh, though," she said with a blaise shrug of her shoulders.

Yukito frowned, and turned back to Mira again. "Diomedis Defectus?" he guessed.

Mira nodded. "Unfortunately for you, we've got it too," he said. "Not sure if being out there made it spring up, or if we've always had it but didn't notice until shit hit the fan." He waved a claw at some point past the barred doors, indicating to outside. "But… yeah. The Clash may have made it a lot more common than anypony thought." He trotted over to the quivering Starbreaker and magically lifted her up, slinging her across his back.

"H-h-hey!" Starbreaker squawked, starting to struggle against the magical field that held her.

"Sorry, but we might need you to cook something for the 'herd,' so don't get your tail in a twist," Mira growled, turning to the leftmost doors and trotting to them rather briskly, Tsih shadowing after his steps with a quick gait belied by her small form. This left Yukito alone, and he started to trot to the central door to see if he could find Sora.

Despite the suspicion he held about the communications' link between the earpieces, though, he found himself jumping at the very garbled sound of Sora's voice feeding into the earpiece as he stepped into the frame. "Yu—found a—Omeg—sing the la—" was all that could be heard amidst the buzzing of the static.

He held a hoof to the earpiece, hoping the connection could stabilize. "Is it usable?" he asked.

"Ye—" was all that came out. "I'll—ou at the—"

Yukito sighed. "Alright," he said into the earpiece, before turning tail and trotting back to the blocked doors. He waited for minutes on end, and did not budge until he heard the sound of hoofsteps echoing into the room, faint at first but steadily growing louder and louder until they'd stopped. He turned around and found himself face to face with Sora, who had Omega on her back looking rather relieved.

Sora glanced around, noticing the lack of the rest of the 'herd.' "Where'd everypony else go?" she asked as soon as she made eye contact with Yukito again.

Yukito lifted a hoof and gestured to the left door. Without another word between them, they turned to the door in question and started to trot in that direction, side-by-side. Static continued to feed into their ears from the earpieces, but besides that and their hoofsteps and the occasional crunching of that strange substance, it was silent. Omega turned his head every which-way as they traversed down another hall nearly identical to the first, but with already-opened double doors at its end that were caked in gunk.

Sharing a glance, the Swiftcures forged on ahead. Omega decided to pipe up, "So, uh… any ideas about what th' strange black stuff is?"

Sora shook her head as they came upon another hallway that forked up ahead. "Negative," she said.

"It might be decayed blood… though, why would decayed blood be here?" Yukito mused aloud, eyes briefly gravitating upwards to find more overhead lights with the substance generously smeared upon their frames. He looked to Sora, and paused briefly enough to gesture to the sludge. "Did you find out anything about this?"

Sora shook her head again. "It did appear in the base, though," she replied, pausing at the forking paths. She turned to the one that lay straight ahead and scrutinized it; a wall of frost barred the path from floor to ceiling, perfectly clear save the faintest reflection of the overhead lights and herself. She lifted a hoof up to gently touch its seemingly polished surface, and a chill raced up her leg on contact.

Yukito did the same, once he came within reach. A chill went up his leg too. Sora pulled her hoof back, brow furrowing slightly. "They couldn't have gone this way… that would've required Starbreaker to punch a hole through it," she muttered.

Yukito turned to scrutinize the frost, but found something laying on the other side of its spotless surface. He couldn't make it out too well, however, for the area beyond laid in nearly absolute darkness. He turned to Omega. "Should I teleport over there?"

Omega frowned at the suggestion, and would have facehooved if he had figured out how his new legs worked. So he settled on shaking his head with ears turned back. "Not a chance in th' seven hells," he said. "F'r all we know? Th' whole damn side of th' hall's an ice cube."

Yukito sighed, and lit up his horn. His light shone through the ice, but did not penetrate the inky gloom past a few rows of tile. Something writhed within the sable, and that which he had seen but could not discern slunk further out of sight seemingly of its own accord.

"Okay, anypony else got a bad feeling all of a sudden?" Omega asked, glancing between the Swiftcures. Both turned to him, Yukito dimming his horn and Sora clicking her blades together as they contemplated the question. In seconds, though, they turned pale as a horrible wave of dread seeped into their augments. They looked back to the frozen wall barring their path, yet the darkness hadn't stirred once since the horn was lit.

But instinct began to scream. Its silent wailing grew louder and louder until the pair backed away from the frost and shadows, and turned to trot through the other half of the fork. Here, the lights were on, the grunge minimal, and doors lined the right side that further expanded into a T-intersection were neat and closed. At that intersection the three halted again, largely because more frost had blocked them off to the right… and would have done so in front of them, were it not for the hole that had formed through it.

Sora turned to her husband. "Did you hear ice shattering?" she asked.

Yukito turned to inspect the edges of the hole, eyes narrowing a bit as he noted the lack of jagged edges that would have suggested brute force being used, and another lack of fresh and dripping water that would have pointed to flame melting it. The ice was neat, pristine, and the hole oddly circular instead of ovular. "I did not even hear the crackle of flame," he said after a moment. "Let's move in tandem; I don't want to find out what this frost could do."

Sora nodded, and moved at the same time as Yukito did. Both stepped through the hole, and stopped to turn upon hearing the shuddering crackling of frost forming. Their eyes widened when they saw the hole closing behind them, inching itself shut piece by piece until it formed a new, more polished surface that let their own reflections stare right back at them.

"Okay, that's freaky," Omega muttered, frowning contemplatively. "I ain't seen ice do that before."

Sora shuddered. She opened her mouth to counter Omega's statement, only to stop as another chill coursed through her blades with enough force to make them rattle against each other briefly. Yukito shuddered as well, and with another flash of his horn he made the earpieces vanish in a burst of light.

They backed away from the ice wall, and turned to what had been concealed beyond it. Sora noticed a few scratch marks going to the left side of the hall, and started to trot in that direction. Yukito followed, a bit slower so he could glance over his shoulder. He picked up his pace when he saw tendrils of frost starting to stretch along the walls, slower than he was treading, but covering everything that much more thoroughly because of its lack of speed.

It wasn't long after Yukito turned back forwards did he notice something horrific and bizarre in equal measure. A pony was ahead of them, blackened grunge around and behind him, seemingly standing upright against a wall without assistance at first before the trio came closer to inspect. Sora winced upon finding that a rifle, split into halves, had been rammed into the stallion's chest with such force as to cave in both his ribcage and dent the wall behind him.

Blood thickened to ice had trickled generously from the wounds, though oddly enough there was not even the tiniest puddle at his hind hooves despite the frozen rivulets pointing downward. Furthermore, his head hadn't been slumped down so much as wrenched at such an angle as to almost come clean off his neck; it was only thanks to the ice and grunge that it could still claim to have an attachment to the rest of the corpse.

She wasn't the least bit surprised to find Yukito at her side in a heartbeat, scrutinizing the sorry bastard critically. "What in the… what did he anger, an augmented earth pony on illegal performance boosters?" Yukito wondered aloud, his gaze seemingly fixed on the dent in the wall and the dent in the carcass.

Sora looked out of the corner of her eye, seeing the tendrils of ice gradually coming closer. "Yukito…" she said in warning.

He didn't budge, much less heard the crackling of frost or his wife's utterance. Instead, he continued to analyze the cadaver in an attempt to piece together what most likely had happened to him.

"Yukito," Sora repeated, slowly turning away from the dead stallion and to the approaching rime.

Yukito didn't even twitch an ear to signal that he heard her. He seemed so transfixed by the strange murder they had stumbled upon that he might as well have been a statue.

"Yukito," Sora said more forcefully, even lifting a hoof up to roughly smack him on the withers. That managed to get his attention, and with a jolt and a hiked tail he turned to look at her.

"What is it?" he asked. Sora mutely pointed to the growing frost and nodded in that direction. He looked at it, frowned, and sighed with a reluctant nod before they finally parted from the corpse to resume trotting through the hall. They hastened their pace though, as by the time they had started anew, the tendrils of cold were mere millimeters behind their hooves, and stranger yet more of those tendrils were becoming overcome by black sludge as they drew near.

"Uh, doc? You okay?" Omega said, ears folding back at the oddly neutral look that held on Yukito's face. They made eye contact, and Omega added, "You've… been zonin' out since we bailed."

Yukito shook his head, and turned to the hallway again. "There's… there's been an awful lot on my mind lately. I'm starting to wonder if anypony else that we find here might have wound up like that stallion…" he muttered.

Sora's stomach attempted to turn itself into a pretzel, but she reigned it back in before it could start another mutiny. Some part of her idly hoped that Mira and the others hadn't strayed too far from them. Hopefully, he had more luck in his hunt than she had with hers.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Mira could not believe what he was presently seeing.

No amount of alcohol or drugs or insanity could have explained what he found himself watching, even if there were any of the former two items on hoof at present. There was simply not enough of any of those three items presently within this wretched, wicked world of woes and wrath to even attempt to make sense of what was presently playing out before him. No justification could have done it justice, even with the insanity excuse factoring into the bizzaro scene his eyes were glued to.

Yet no matter how much he wanted to look away, he could not muster up the strength to do so. Some part of it still failed to gain admittance into his mental processes. Even Brother remained silent, scratching his nonexistent head over this development. Befuddlement overrode almost all else, and it was by blinking that he confirmed that—yes—his eyes and divided mind were not playing phony parlour pranks upon his poor, present reality.

Starbreaker was shirking away from a hunk of blackened ice, taking two steps for every one that Tsih made her go forward with nothing more than her magic. Oddly, Tsih wore a neutral expression, though Mira could see it in her eyes—the tiniest glimmer that screamed, 'Are you fucking shitting me right now?'

Stranger still, the blackened ice moved with a fluidity that should not have been possible. It rippled and wavered, bounced and warbled, and danced back and forth as Starbreaker kept trying her best to skirt away from it. Weirdest of all, however, was the lack of noise it should have made; it was silent as the grave, despite not being as still as one. In addition to that, it lacked the capacity for reflections whatsoever; it was akin to staring into a moving abyss that couldn't decide what it wanted to do other than stare back.

"We'll go with you, okay? Just chill and the shadows won't eat you," Tsih growled, her glow brightening considerably in her effort to make Starbreaker move forward.

Alas, she was met with a shriek and further resistance; augments whirred, shifted beneath grey-teal fur, and Starbreaker pushed back with equal force. "N-no! I'm not going this way!" she protested, her eyes almost completely white save for the little circles of black that watched the shifting frost with rapt attention. "I'm not having my horn broken again!"

"Just calm down, nora!" Tsih complained, stomping a hoof as she kept trying to shove Starbreaker with little success.

Finally, Mira huffed, trotted over, and put a claw on Tsih's shoulder. When she turned to him, he shook his head. "The ice is fucking moving. So yeah, it's going to eat her. Just stop," he said bluntly.

Tsih wilted, and her glow died. "But aren't the kitchens supposed to be here somewhere?" she pouted.

Starbreaker shimmied back down the hall they were standing in, and Mira followed her with his eyes as she made it to a pair of double doors that had been frozen open. He wordlessly trotted after her, and rotated his ears slightly as he heard the clicking of tiny hooves behind him. When the three reunited at the double doors, they shared a wordless nod between them, and Starbreaker turned to the doors to take point with ears folded back.

Mira glanced back behind him as they started going down the next hallway. For a moment, the rippling black sludge did nothing else but wobble in a way he'd have thought comical if he were strung up on a drug trip. Then the mass took on another shape, spreading across the hall they had left as miniature towers with bridges erected between floor and ceiling. Gradually, those towers and bridges sprouted heads and tails and horns with faceless expressions, and even looking at it made that sharp pain in his mismatched ear start flaring up again.

If it had eyes, he'd have made contact with them. As it was, he couldn't tell whether it was staring at him or past him. A hollow chuckle, distinctly masculine, came from the entity even though its mouth and chest hadn't moved. The others heard it too, and the clicking of hooves on time increased in speed. Mira made his claws move faster, careful to keep the sharp tips up and away from the floor to minimize the noises they would have made otherwise.

Mira glanced ahead, and saw overhead lights flickering as he went beneath them. A cross-intersection stretched before them, various signs pointing in different directions having been wrenched off the walls and smeared in sludge that pulsated with the erratic frequency of a labored heart.

Starbreaker halted at the intersection, glancing left and right as she checked the halls. None of the three in front of her or at her sides were barred with that sludge. But the one ahead and the one to the right sported nonfunctional lights, so thus she trotted down the leftmost hall with as brisk a pace as she could manage with her tail between her hinds. She hustled when the lights began turning off and on intermittently, and Mira and Tsih could only shadow her steps.

Mira turned to look over his shoulder again as they filed through another door. The sludge started hauling itself up the corners of the intersection, inching ever so slowly onto the ceiling. At the same time, the sludge from the hall they had gotten away from meandered its way to the intersection, seemingly shepherded onwards by the sludge pony that had formed from it. Without moving any of its limbs or neck, instead rotating as if on a pivot, the sludge pony turned to seemingly regard him once again.

The pain in his ear came back, as strong as before. He turned away again, and grimaced as he heard the lights popping one by one. He turned to Tsih and weighed the options. "Tsih?"

She looked back at him. "Yeah?"

Mira glanced over his shoulder again. "Turn invisible… and run," he said in a tone brokering no argument. "We'll try to catch up…"

Tsih frowned, ears pinning back against her head. She sensed an unspoken 'but' in there somewhere. "What else do you want me to do?"

Mira hesitated, and slowed his steps just the slightest bit. He turned back to look at her and kept silent. "Find the Windchime. Get her to summon the carriage. Hide in it with the medic and the other weirdo, even if you hear us screaming—the fucking shadows have lead us all into a giant trap," he mouthed, resignation and dread flickering in his eyes. He lowered his head to nudge her with his snout. "Go."

Tsih nodded sourly, face crumpling as she mouthed, "And if you can't get out?"

For a moment, her silent query went without answer. Mira's scowl deepened as he replied firmly, "They almost always spare us… to make us suffer more. You remember, don't you?" When Tsih nodded, he lifted his head to glance back over his shoulder again. His horn flashed, and in a burst of light a kunai materialized at his side, its blade scratched from what must have been many battles. He charged to the sludge, and Tsih took that as her cue to press a hoof to her encased mana booster with her horn flashing.

She hesitated, looking at Starbreaker, who had started breaking out into a gallop ahead of her. She followed, her power rippling across her body to cloak her in the safety of refracted light. Tsih rounded a corner on the heels of the fleeting Herald, and didn't dare to look over her shoulder even as Mira screamed with a protest of, "We're not going to be your little toy again! We're not going down so easily!"

Tsih felt an aching pain in her heart when she heard that utterance. With its passing came so many horrid memories that she wanted to keep from bubbling to the surface of her thoughts, that tried to claw their way out into the here and now to force her panic into the open. She surged onward, running as fast as Starbreaker as they sprinted through another door.

A loud clatter and screech of steel, followed by a pained howl, filtered in through the flickering shadows behind their heels. Tsih shook her head, trying to avoid glancing over her shoulder, muzzle scrunching as she heard Mira yell, "We're! Not! Going! To be! Your one-steed entertainment parlour! Knock that shit off already!"

Another voice, hollowly baritone, made a retort that had ice crawling up Tsih's hocks and across her spine. "Noshade asked you what you wanted, whorse. Noshade wants a mouthy piece of breeder filth," the unseen owner said scathingly, with just the faintest hint of desire buried within that tone. "Besides… why have you gone gallivanting with our other favorite piece of filth?"

Other favorite? Tsih shuddered, her mind daring to ask who that could have been. She had to force her unwilling mouth shut, lest she break out of her cloak and give herself away. Seeing Starbreaker skid to a halt up ahead, she slowed herself down in a way that didn't make her hooves shriek against the floor.

A T-intersection met them, open and lit on both sides. Starbreaker was glancing between them wildly, lips pursed tightly and eyes dancing about in search of an easy exit. Tsih took a moment to glance as well, weighing her limited options. Starbreaker didn't take as much time to weigh her options; she darted to the leftmost hall, and that was that. Tsih noticed that the lights were dying behind her, and so she darted right with a glance over her shoulder only as she passed under the door frame half a minute after sprinting.

The lights on the hall she had taken didn't explode behind her. The opposite hallway had fully darkened in the time it took her to look. She heard the distant crackle of flame, and saw blues and oranges dancing further along that way, but what the light was reflecting against grew smaller and smaller with the distance.

Tsih turned ahead again, in time to spot a pair of closed double doors up ahead. With a swift, almost imperceptible flash of her horn she wrenched the doors open and sprinted through them. She halted, almost skidding before catching herself, as she found a room large enough to have been a mess hall for at least hundreds of ponies. Tables and chairs were all strewn around, some upright and others laying on their backs and sides with at least two legs stuck in the air, and so haphazardly she couldn't see a clear path to whatever might have been on the other side.

She glanced back again, as soon as the sound of a bulb exploding reached her ears. At the end of the first hall she had parted from Starbreaker, she spied the faintest shower of glittering glass descending to the floor. Forming just behind the fragments stood another sludge pony, seemingly looking right at her despite her cloak. A voice boomed from that hall, shuddering the next and the tables and chairs of the room in which she stood as it said, "You cannot hope to hide, little filly. You failed to hide before. You'll fail again."

Without moving its legs, it started heading down the hallway as though pulled onwards by some unseen force, trailing more gunk in its wake. Each light it passed under ceased functioning, cascading downwards in more showers of glittering glass that didn't phase it even slightly.

Tsih turned back ahead, paling beneath her cloak as she started to look for any chinks in the mess before her that she could crawl through. To either side, though, the tables and chairs were piled just high enough that she was fairly certain she'd kick one aside accidentally if she were to attempt scaling them. In front of her, between two tables, lay a single chair on its side, its legs positioned between the gaps, askew just enough for her to wriggle through them. She seized her chance and dove, ducking beneath the raised legs and crawling along to the other side of the gap. As she pulled her hooves under her, though, she slipped and kicked the chair behind her, causing it to rattle slightly enough to bang itself upon both tables.

She flinched when doing that caused the rest of the mess behind her to creak and tilt dangerously onto itself, coming close to crashing down but not quite. She looked around, finding a dead end on the left and a path carved through the furniture to her right. Tsih sprinted onwards to the right, shuddering as the cacophony of bulbs breaking grew louder and nearer. With it came the crackle of frost, the pitter-patter of liquid that had not been present before each amplying each other and the shower of fragmented shards that clinked and clacked against metal flooring.

She stumbled when she heard a distant mare screaming in anguish, a long and drawn-out shriek that shuddered furniture and lights alike before abruptly cutting off. The horrible sound was more than enough to drive spikes of fear into Tsih's heart, stirring up the adrenaline that took any and all possible detours to her legs. Even as she took a few attempts to right herself, she realized that cry could have very well belonged to the Herald.

And if what she was fleeing from had reduced the Star-Blasting Light, of all the ponies it could have grasped, to wailing like that, Tsih pondered with no small amount of dread… than what had they done to her to elicit such a reaction? What would they do to her if she were cornered? What would they do to the Windchime if she were caught?

Resolve burned in Tsih's cloaked eyes. The Windchime had to know just what she had set hoof into, before it was too late to act—before she could learn the hard way. Nopony, not even her, was deserving of such a fate. Yet as she considered the thought of warning her, her chest began to burn where the wires had sank into her flesh—the pain rapidly reaching levels comparable to a knife plunging into her heart. She stumbled again, rounding a bend to correct her gallop and course.

Sweet gods of old, the tables and chairs were piled even higher here, and tightly together to the point they seemed to have become walls that almost reached the ceiling. Light could not filter from the sides, casting instead long shadows that caused her cloak to ripple erratically as she passed under them. The path twisted sharply to the right, then left, meandering in a zigzag pattern that Tsih idly hoped would lead to the other side of the room.

The cacophony of breaking glass increased in frequency and volume. Now, the rattling of chairs and tables joined it, drumming against the floor almost like a frantic stampede as repeated crashes filled the room, some of them intact and some of them breaking off into smaller noises that rattled without rhyme or reason. Her pace hastened, her little hooves barely muted by the chorus of syncopated pandemonium that closed in on her heels.

Tsih resisted the urge to scream, even as the adrenaline began to blur the muted colors of the room.

The furniture-built labyrinthine confines she found herself running in continued to stretch on and on, twisting and turning at random. Soon enough, she was losing count of how many times she swerved and jerked—as well as the precious seconds ticking by, the ones that she had left to contemplate her lot in life. The room began to shake, adding another note to the terrible orchestra that started making her head hurt with its sour notes of despair and anguish.

The frequency of danger continued to taunt her even as it swelled towards its gradual, inevitable crescendo. The shadows lengthened, some of them forking off into weaker halves that overlapped as the lights continued to die behind her. Some part of her was screaming that she should not have come to this deserted guard post—that she should have left when the front gates were still open. That she had none but herself to blame for her plight.

The sprint lengthened, too, thanks to the rat's maze she was trying to navigate as swiftly as possible. She could have self-levitated over it, of course, but that would have risked knocking something aside and giving her position away all at once. As far as she knew, Mira was still doing his best to distract the terror that had set its sights upon her small and tender frame. The Herald may have started fighting, but if so… she did that at the last possible minute, when they exhausted the other options.

A turn had a scream try to tear itself out of her throat before she reigned it back in. The sludge was starting to ooze through whatever gaps in the furniture it could, spreading tendrils of ice with each splash of liquid against the floor. Behind the chairs and such rained a shower of glass, each individual shard amplified to the loudness of gunfire with every impact upon the ground.

Tsih moved with the sharp left turn, almost spinning on her hocks as she charged. There was good news to be had; the double doors were in sight… but she could only make out the tops of their frames amidst the wreckage of the room. At least one pile of furniture barred her path, forcing her to stop as soon as she reached it.

She glanced back. Lights were still dying explosively. The sludge spread across the walls, ceiling, and floor. The frost only harkened to its own promises of suffering. She looked at the obstruction and lit her horn. She reached for the highest, weakest link in the chain; a chair sitting between a table and the door frame itself, askew at an angle that left its front legs hanging. A few tugs, and the chair came loose with a snap that broke its back legs.

Whirling around, she threw the chair towards the maze. It bounced a few times on impact, then skid and rolled after in a rapid pirouette, coming to a stop at the last turn she had rounded. She span again, and set to work removing the next three tables that were beneath that chair. One popped loose with no issue, and was promptly cast aside to join the chair that had flown before it. The second required a bit of jimmying, but as soon as its legs were free of the clutter it was sent flying. The third, however, caused the whole pile to tilt to one side with each tug.

The baritone voice returned, echoing ceaselessly across the room as it pounded itself into Tsih's ears with its cacophony, "Look at you… trapped like the little insignificant rat you are. Not even the Star-Blasting Light could hope to dispel my darkness. And that wannabe hero you've been carvoting with didn't stand a chance then or now. What hope do you have?"

Tsih pulled the stubborn table loose, but in doing so caused half the pile to landslide on one side; the tumbling pieces all crashed and bounced into each other with the shriek of metal on metal. They rolled onto themselves, each other, then the other tables and chairs separate from the pile. While this cleared up more of the door, it still left a sizable portion to be dealt with—and Tsih didn't have the time or luxury to do this the neat and tidy way. The silence had all but left her, and even now, her cloak continued to falter with each precious second that she spent dallying.

"Clock is ticking, you little brat," the unseen speaker hissed, malice and demented joy warring for dominance within the tone that sent horrible shivers skipping across her augments. "I am already tired of this game. And the longer I wait… the longer your suffering will be. You don't want me to bring my friends over, do you?"

Tsih pulled aside more furniture hastily, throwing them over her head as she struggled to unblock the door. She might have dented the mass somewhat, but it wasn't even close to what she so desperately needed right now. The chorus behind her continued to grow and sing with new, twisted notes that started to grate against the wires within her body, sending dread skipping along both metal and organic arteries with the brutal equality of an awaiting executioner's blade.

The shadows continued to stretch, rising up the walls as she worked. The lights continued to dim as their number decreased slowly and steadily.

It was well past time for her to leave. She should have left when the front gates were open.

Panic and dread began screaming in her brain, spiking the pain in her chest which continued, even now, to amplify itself. Tears began stinging her eyes, further blurring her vision. With the agony coursing her body, her magic faltered, and finally her cloak faltered fully, revealing her in the few remaining lights that were left—and the terror etched on her wide-eyed, blanched face. Her grasp on the furniture before her, however, didn't yield even slightly; too much was at stake here.

More chairs and tables snapped, in halves and quarters as she dislodged them and cast their fragments aside. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the door was unblocked more and more as the pile loosened; the process was nowhere near fast enough for Tsih's liking. But it was either this… or fall prey to that which had most likely subdued Mira by now.

The horrible memories tried to surface again. In her mind's eye, she caught a glimpse of Mira bent at something of a painful angle, front claws held awkwardly above his tied wings and hinds splayed and suspended over stone with forced, unnatural flexibility that left him all but exposed to the world. She shook her head to regain her focus, and started pushing the pile aside with more force as soon as she caught the first dent down the center of the mass.

Twin cries pierced the chorus, only briefly. Tsih could recognize Mira's voice in one, and before it was cut short it reached a mare-like pitch she would not have thought possible with his current body. The other could have only belonged to Starbreaker; such was the inevitable conclusion, with few living souls present within this accursed place. What hell she was presently seeing…

Tsih could only imagine, and shudder, at what her mind could paint. And horrible things it procured; her innocence long gone, as distant as the memory of Alte's death.

The tears stung her eyes again as she remembered Alte, even when she started pushing her magic harder to compensate for her lack of progress. Hope dared spike in her heart, causing it to flutter as the pile finally began to part from the center upwards. The whole mass must've weighed as much as a boulder, but then again it was currently both the least and greatest of her woes. It had to be moved; there were no ifs, ands or buts about it.

The crackle of frost, and the pitter-patter of that foul substance drew closer still. She could feel their crackles and ripples reaching the very tip of her tail hairs.

Maybe this was why Alte went for the stars, Tsih bitterly reflected as she pushed the mass of furniture further and further apart—so she would not join them in inflicting suffering upon others. If that were the case… then who was she to fault her, when the only other choice was to lose what made her a pony in life?

Her magic faltered again when that damnable voice called out, booming and yet brushing up against her ears as if the owner was right behind her, "Every single friend and foe you've met was weak. Everypony you idolized, just the same—even that stupid whorse who went and self-destructed in battle, when she could have faced the price of failure head-on. What. Hope. Do you. Have here?"

Tsih scrunched her eyes tight, bracing for the inevitable when something in her snapped. She wasn't sure what it was that had sprung loose; all she knew was that she felt a surge of power pulsing across her body, screaming for release. As one of her only two outlets was her horn, the power sparked from there and launched every ounce of itself at the stubborn obstacle before her with enough force to completely scatter it to the sides of the doors.

Then her eyes opened, and hope rose even as she saw a horned shadow looming high over her own. Smoke lined the doors, and broken furniture was spilled all before her, but now it was unblocked! With another flash of her horn she levitated herself there in a heartbeat, pushing the doors aside with her hooves to go down the next hall. Darkness permeated, and so some of the power that came from within manifested itself as a brilliant light at the tip of her horn, throwing into stark relief what lay beyond.

Ponies were strewn about, in pieces, frozen, their blood decidedly not spilt where their carcasses lay. There was no time to question it; she simply self-levitated over the menagerie of bodies, her heart beating as fast as it could go now.

She hoped she could find the Windchime, and soon. She had no idea what she had stumbled into, that lucky bitch; Tsih could only wonder how she would react if she had somehow gotten word beforehoof. Mira was right, she reflected; they all were led right into a trap, and the fact that only now was it so glaringly obvious, she decided she was going to kick herself over this when the danger had passed and the herd had reunited. She had to warn the Windchime before she could be caught, too.

The choice between the Sableshrouds, the shadows, the Windchime and the Corps was never before clearer to her. Tsih wouldn't have had to pick any of them in normal circumstances, but these were hardly normal circumstances; she had to concede that the Windchime was currently her best bet at living for another day.

She just had to find her first, before the shadows could descend onto her head. The alternative was far worse than even she would have liked to admit.

Chapter XXXIII- Cold Enclosure

Sora clenched her teeth as she passed underneath another dead light that was dripping with the sludge, trying to stave off her wincing as the substance stained her coat and Omega's with its rather small, mist-like sprinkling. The more she walked, the more wrong this abandoned guard post began to feel—not an emotional wrongness per se, but her gut was presently bashing the bars of its cage in an attempt to escape.

It wasn't helped by the fact that Omega was shivering on her back with each step, almost as if he were debating whether or not to make a run for it himself. Yukito sidled closer to them, his body only an inch from closed blades as the frown decorating his face deepened in contemplation and concern. "Forgive me if I become more analytical," Yukito said, his eyes poised forward and darting around every few seconds. "But I can't help but feel that we shouldn't be here."

"You aren't the only one," Sora said, feathers puffing out slightly as a chilly breeze wafted into the hall. She wanted desperately to wrap herself in her blanket, but that could wait until after the others had been found. If the herd was to survive, they needed to be together at the end of each night… as insane as that sounded within these circumstances.

"F'r one, I don't think a cuddle's gonna fix this," Omega piped up, pressing his chin against the back of Sora's neck as he said that. "It's almost like them nightmare stories I heard as a foal." He sucked in a breath through his snout and added through clenched teeth, "Almost like I'm livin' them."

"Don't you mean 'nighttime?'" Yukito asked.

Omega shook his head. "No. My folks hated me enough to give me ripsnorters f'r my bedtime stories. Couldn't sleep much as a foal," he answered.

Sora huffed. "Let me guess: you weren't soldier material," she hissed, the last two words coming through clenched teeth as another cold shiver played a very brief bout of merry hell with her body.

"Yeah. It went way worse when I got my cutie mark," Omega answered, scrunching his nose and turning away to sneeze at a wall as soon as he had finished speaking. "It took th' whole damn lot bein' sent t' die in th' Clash f'r th' abuse to stop."

Yukito turned to glare briefly at a door that hung ajar to his side as they passed it. "Ah, the 'you're of no use to us so we'll make you want to wring your own neck' approach," he hissed, ears pinned back as he spoke. "Just like my brownnosing stepfather…"

Omega turned to him. "You had a stepdad?"

Yukito nodded, keeping his head turned. "He wound up being my first patient after I obtained my cutie mark. Let's just say… there were several things I had botched that day," he grumbled. "On purpose. And in a way that couldn't be traced back to me."

Sora nodded, then shook her head. "Trust me, I got the full spiel when we shared the quarters while he was drunk one night. His stepdad… was a real piece of work," she muttered.

The three rounded a corner, and discovered the lights therein had ceased working. That didn't surprise them any, given the decrepit state of the rest of the place—rather, it was what was standing at the light's edge. A being of sludge, somewhat equine but rather limp of legs and blank of face, was standing there weakly. It seemed to have been staring ahead, though it was hard to tell given the lack of eyes.

"... th' fuck is that?" Omega asked, staring at the sludge pony with his tail twitching. Immediately, the thing lifted its head up slightly, almost as if it had heard him loud and clear.

Sora noticed that the creature, if one could indeed call it that, did not have any defining features—no mane or tail, no wings or horn, no visible augments, with a muzzle dripping enough that she could not tell if it was a mare or stallion. It was as if somepony sculpted it, then left it unfinished to melt. Either that, or it was finished, but in a half-assed way that would have gotten the riot act back at the Corps. Whoever the architect might have been, though, could have had other issues to attend to if that were the case.

Yet that still didn't address the fact that this thing had moved, seemingly of its own volition. She doubted it was built with movement in mind; machine or not, it didn't appear as though it held together very well. She lifted a hoof to take a step forward, but a blue hoof rose up to obstruct her. Turning to Yukito, she found his eyes narrowed and focused on the entity, his head grimly shaking slowly as though he couldn't process what his eyes had relayed to him.

"That…" he said quietly, his voice almost trembling with the word. His raised hoof shuddered, and his ears twitched. "No… we… we can't…"

Before another word could slip past his lips, the sludge pony lunged. Sora and Yukito scrambled out of the way, barreling back down the way they came as the being impacted itself on the wall that was behind where they stood. It ended up splattering messily with enough force to touch both the floor and ceiling. It partially reformed after its mass settled, shifting to stick halfway out of the impact site with only its head, chest, and hips present.

Sora fanned her wings, careful to avoid slicing Omega and Yukito. "What the fu—" she started, only to see Yukito's horn flaring far brighter now. Before she could finish, his magic seized the three of them and whisked them away back to the entrance of the guard post in two flashes of light that left scorch marks where they stood.

Sora looked around the room, turning in place to see if anything had changed. Besides the fact that the entrance remained barred with gunk, very little seemed out of place. Her concerns about the scenery were waylaid when she heard a distant, yet eerily familiar, shrieking that echoed from beyond the hall Mira had trotted through earlier. It took her one second to place the emotion of the fading echoes: panic. Her still-flared wings shuddered, blades clacking as she recognized the high pitch that could only belong to a grown, terrified mare.

A jigsaw puzzle assembled itself rapidly in her mind, and taking into account events from the previous month or so enabled Sora to piece together who made that sound and where it was coming from. Her gut stirred again, gently whispering in her ear that there was a chance that whatever caused that panic to rise could very well strike her down, too.

She shared a glance with Yukito, who mutely nodded before turning back down to the hall to signal that he had heard the scream as well. His irises seemed to quiver in his eyes as they shrunk, staring ahead as another shriek danced from beyond a myriad of doors. "That… that couldn't have been…" He shared another glance with Sora, lips shuddering. "Is that… who I think is yelling?"

Sora licked her lips to wet them as they suddenly dried, before haltingly nodding. "The same tone she… she used when I found her that night," she muttered, wings continuing to rattle in alarm. "I… I don't know… what could make her…"

A third cry came echoing down from that path, although this time filled with words that had managed to silence the barely-formed thought that was leaving Sora's mouth. "Get away! I-I'll burn you all to ashes—wh-what are you doing to my horn?!" The utterance was enough to clench the trio's hearts and grip them for three seconds—time enough to keep them from beating before letting them hammer out a frantic tempo that rushed through their veins when they realized what they had just heard.

Sora could not believe her own ears. And yet, they had failed to deceive her. Her legs filled with resolution before her mind did; she galloped onward, Yukito shadowing her steps with his own frantic ones as the screaming continued without interruption. Omega yelped as he nearly slipped off, only to find himself magically planted onto Yukito's back during the stride and held tight. "Wh-what th' hell could make her scream like that?" he asked as the pair veered a corner and raced down another ice-riddled hall.

"I don't know, but I'm not chancing it!" Sora replied, eyes wide with panic as she pressed on. The hall flew by the pair, and then another one partially encased in gunk. A third tried to obstruct them with a wall of ice, but Sora willed her blades to glow and carved a big enough hole in the obstruction that let her and her husband pass through with minimal resistance.

The screaming seemed to bounce from multiple directions as the trio came to a fork in the halls, almost sounding as though it were coming from the damned. The cries of havoc rose higher in pitch as they went on, and echoing everywhere only turned the one-pony orchestra into a hellish chorus that few would hear outside the realms of one's own nightmares. Sora glanced between the available choices; ice on one side, darkness and sludge on the other. Her gut stirred again as Yukito moved to the one shrouded in shadow, his horn flaring up as it conjured light.

She tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention before he could stray too far. He turned to her, ears twitching as the orchestra of agony developed new notes of confusion amidst its pain. "What is it?" he asked.

Sora shook her head, a nameless force gripping her heart as she stared at the hall of sable. The longer she stared at it, the more alarm bells went off in her head, ringing louder and louder with each passing second. "I… I don't think we should go that way," she muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

The screams had abruptly cut off as she considered the still-lit hallway, and her stomach formed into knots at the sudden silence. Chills crept up her legs and across her blades, and only increased in tempo when she looked closer at the illuminated path and saw various signs strewn about, all smeared in that strange substance she didn't want to put a name to.

Then, in that hall, the sludge began to move, congregating in the middle and rising into another vague equine shape. It seemed to regard them despite a blank face, almost waiting to see what they would do next. And where there was one on that side of the fork, several more congregated in the other, only visible thanks to Yukito's light.

Sora turned to her husband, confusion etched on her frowning face. "Did… you see these things at the base before we left?" she asked.

Yukito swallowed with a heavy nod. "They kept to the alleys, but… yes," he answered after a moment. "They left before we did, though…"

Sora's wings twitched. She wondered if she could slice the sludge creatures and get away with it, before Yukito grabbed her in his magic and teleported them behind the singular entity and the ice. He proceeded to gallop onwards, as if there were heat-seeking missiles trained on his hide. Sora sighed and galloped after him, daring to look over her shoulder to find that the sludge things started to glide after them across the floor with legs stiff and unmoving. Some impacted the ice, dispersing back into something less equine, and then stretching across the other side as though they had their own ways to get around the obstruction.

She turned back ahead, seeing her husband dart down on an approaching hall to her right. She turned that way, cursing under her breath when she saw it had somewhat compacted thanks to forming ice that seemed to be spontaneously growing. She could hear its crackling, and raised her wings halfway from her body just in case she needed to slice through it again. She willed her blades to glow again when she saw encroaching darkness, the only other visible thing therein being the light of Yukito's horn a few feet ahead.

Down another hall Yukito went veering, before a sharp thud rang out from just around the corner. Sora turned that way, frowning as she caught sight of Tsih hopping off the stunned stallion and magically lifted him back to his hooves and Omega onto his back.

"We don't have time! Get the carriage out!" Tsih barked, eyes wide and frantic.

"What for?!" Sora asked, even as a hoof went to her bell.

"We gotta hide!" Tsih replied, paling as she began to prance in place. "Otherwise we're going to have it really bad soon!"

Sora nodded and uttered the command to summon forth the carriage, and her bell rang and spat out light before bringing the vehicle from the ether. The four hopped into the middle compartment, closed the door, and let Tsih work her cloaking abilities to hide it there and then. Yukito dispelled his light, and so did Sora, plunging themselves and the vehicle in perfect, unblemished darkness. The group laid on the floor, their guts churning for not only food, but safety.

Sora opened her mouth to ask where Mira and Starbreaker were, only for Tsih to crawl over and jam a hoof between her teeth to silence her. Tsih mouthed, 'They're having it really bad right now. They'll be alive, but…' She left the rest unsaid with a shudder as she retracted her hoof, eyes still wide as though she had been put under a spotlight for all the world to see.

It didn't ebb Sora's concerns at all. It merely amplified them to morbid degrees, each clamoring in her head without answer.

She had no such closure or mercy—only the darkness to accompany those who had gathered with her.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Starbreaker tried to scream, but something cold enough to bypass her augments held her mouth open, and her throat shut. She had breathing holes for her nostrils, but each inhale sucked in further blasted her insides with cold air that threatened to bring her closer to death. Her legs were immobilized in the same substance, and at her front hooves her horn lay once again broken off of her head.

Her eyes had been forced closed by the same trappings that held her still, but she wasn't sure if that was from mercy or cruelty. She tried shaking her head, but her neck was stiff with cold and could barely move. She knew her heart was beating and her lungs were working, both cranked into overdrive to compensate for her inability to combat the paralysis gripping her.

The sludge creatures had her surrounded, and currently forced her to kneel on her front knees despite the stiffness in her legs. Her chin was parallel with the floor, and an icky hoof had pinned itself on the back of her head to keep it there. The ichor slid down her neck and cheeks, its slimy sojourn sending more chills throughout her body.

"You failed to burn us to cinders the first time, you haughty wretch," one of the sludge creatures hissed in a demonic baritone that had Starbreaker's heart briefly halting its rhythm when she heard it. "And you failed again. How does it feel to be one of the weak and powerless, grovelling for mercy which you yourself had denied unto them?

She tried struggling, but the only parts she could move were her shoulders and haunch. A muffled grunt tried leaving her mouth, but could go no farther than her back molars thanks to the substance keeping her jaws parted. She yelped as a tendril of frost and thorns came crashing down on the middle of her back, scarring her flesh and drawing blood.

"This foalish folly of yours cannot continue, impudent Herald," the sludge-creatures spoke in unison, sounding more like a cluster of accusing demons than anything equine. "We'll have to devise… new punishments to further break you as you had broken others." She could hear the demented grins in the legion of voices, and tried to move again. She was met with another sting of frost and pain dancing on her spine, and yelped once more when it shifted to score her left cutie mark in red.

She ignited her broken horn, but it could only manage feeble sparks now. The cold raced to cover it, and when she made to cast again, it triggered a backlash that ran jolts through her body and caused her to shudder briefly before she had to make herself stop. This brought her close to passing out, but unfortunately for her even that mercy had been denied.

"Fortunately… there is another who needs to be punished alongside you. And who better…" She heard metallic claws being dragged along the ground, and more muffled yelping from a stallion who was equally prevented from speaking. "... than somepony who tried to be your opposite in every way?"

Starbreaker yelped again as somepony with metallic legs and a muffler was thrown bodily onto her, yet the prison didn't break enough to even let her bend her hinds. Another chin rested on her head and was frozen in place, the cold racing across both necks to keep them steady. There was a brief scrambling of metal and clunking, scraping shrilly against the floor before they too were immobilized. She felt metal brushing against her marks, and knew instantly who had been dragged into the same hell she was experiencing.

She struggled one more time, trying once again to scream. That time, the thorns and chill crept along her stomach before thwacking her where it was bound to hurt most, making pain flare up very close to where that ink had been written on her body. Her scream died halfway up her throat as she was struck again and again in that area, choking on itself until it turned into a pained whine sounding closer to a sob.

Even then, the attack didn't cease until she felt blood trickling down her inner thighs and heard it dripping onto the floor, accentuated by cold and frost that further stung the fresh wounds. She felt more pain in that region, but not from the cold—from something warm that she dared not put a name to in the back of her mind. She tried her best to block it out from body and soul, but alas it breached her few defenses and lingered for far longer than she wanted it to.

Mira tried to scream and pull away, only for the sound of feathers being violently ejected from flesh to permeate the room. "For your crimes of trying to ascend to greatness for the sake of empty praise," the sludge-creatures yelled in unison, their voices punctuated by more tearing feathers, "you shall be subject to the punishment of the lowest dregs of the damned, worthy only of anguish and despair!"

The true torture for the both of them began. They repeatedly tried to disengage from each other, but the prison kept them stuck to one another in more unpleasant ways than one. To say they wanted out would be an understatement; both struggled with a vigor matched only by wounded bears, but in the end the attempts to break free meant little to their tormentors.

No, it only prolonged their agony. The cold lashings made them yelp and thrash in limited ways they disagreed with. Particularly prone places were struck repeatedly, making the pair howl and scream as much as their confinement would allow. The beatings persisted, forcing the two to find an off, disagreeable dance to lessen their pain, though to call it a dance was giving it far too much credence. Then, just when it seemed as though it couldn't get any worse, Starbreaker felt an odd warmth emerging in her body from where the worst of the injuries were sustained.

Immediately, she screamed as her mind started to slam the panic buttons and let loose the dogs of havoc. Her struggles tripled, and she tried with all of her might to send Mira off of her as she found herself unable to deny what was happening any longer. Mira tried to aid her, screaming into his confinement as well, only for the cold prison to wrap around both of them entirely, save their nostrils and the small pocket of air between their bodies.

The torment didn't relent with their nearly complete paralysis. Thorns grew within, digging into their flesh and forcing them to move constantly in the limited ways they could, drawing blood repeatedly as they found themselves only adding to each other's anguish. Soon enough, another blossom of unwanted warmth entered the world, and another, until they lost count and drew themselves to exhaustion with their vain attempts to fight their way out.

The cold chipped away at their resolve, the thorns sending needles and pins of pain throughout their bodies, their blood cooling against their wounds and stained coats. The struggles grew feebler and feebler, and one of the few things telling them that they were still alive were the blossoms of heat that, themselves, grew weaker and weaker with every jerk and swing of their bodies. Neither could feel their legs or mouths at this point; it was nothing short of a grievous miracle that they were still breathing, and even then their breaths were short and labored as their augments failed them.

As that exhaustion settled, they both found themselves sobbing, tears streaking their faces even as the prison kept them still. It didn't thaw; it didn't relent. It kept them there as the voices of their tormentors rang in their heads with a clarity that couldn't be ignored, "For your sins, you shall be bound like that overnight, held in an unholy embrace until you fight your punishment no more!"

Save for their crying, silence then permeated the room. Exhaustion eventually forced that to cease as well. Hours passed uncounted, yet neither fell asleep in that unholy embrace. Starbreaker felt that accursed warmth leaving her along with that which breached her defenses, leaving in its place a much preferred void that didn't set her at ease. No sound celebrated its departure; nothing else was there to let her know that she was free of that.

She felt her emotions numbing, followed by the rest of her brain as sleep came to announce its presence. Eyes already closed and body perfectly still save for her breathing, the stage was set for her to simply drop right then and there if the prison allowed it. Visions of fire painted her dreams, but instead of charred corpses and destroyed architecture and screaming ponies, the only thing she noticed around her were black metal and iron grating on one side. She was alone in the blaze, and it ate as much of her flesh as her body would allow.

Shadows on the other side jeered at her, and she raced to the bars to wrap her hooves around them to free herself. "Pitiful failure," one of them hissed in a rasping voice she couldn't place despite it sounding oddly… familiar.

"You were our greatest, Reika," the other snapped, shaking their head visibly. "And you had to throw it away. We could have won the Clash of the Sky. Could have ruled the world. And instead, you had to fuck it all up when you left us to rot in hellfire."

The first grinned, the expression painted with hellfire and malice. "And now look at you; reduced to nothing more than a plaything for our brethren. You're even gallivanting with the enemy, for crying out loud. Now you're suffering the consequences of your failure."

"I—" Starbreaker felt her words dying in her throat as the fire's crackling rose to drown out whatever she could have used to defend herself with.

"Whatever paltry words you could say have no power here, Reika. You're as weak and feeble as you were before your augmentation. We thought we had stamped out your capacity for weakness. It seems we were wrong." The shadows turned away and shouted into the darkness, "Do with her as you will!"

The flames blackened, cold air and hot air meshing together into an unholy bond that had her screaming all over again. Ichor and frost formed and melted and formed again, racing up her legs to encase her against the bars of her prison, trapping her into another hell that had her screaming at nothing in particular.

But it didn't end there—it never did. She was thrown to the floor, the constantly-melting ichor and ice failing to shatter as burning shadows descended onto her with darkened grins promising nothing but cruelty, one using its icky hooves to forcibly seize her face and redirect it to a far wall. She kicked her legs out, only for sludge to grab them and pin them to the floor, rendering them immobile. She inhaled smoke and rot and ash as one of the burning shadows forced itself to compress into a form small enough to traverse her nostrils. Fire erupted within her, glowing white-hot as agony danced in places where her augments failed to protect her.

At the same time, another shadow was forcing itself to shrink to do something unspeakably vile, burning sensitive regions and making her stomach glow with the same smouldering agony that her lungs were presently experiencing. Though unlike her ribs, this burning was actually potent enough to be visible beneath modified skin and fur, shining horribly and brilliantly as she was assaulted. Her throat burned, glowing, and she screamed as more scorching and suffocating shades descended on her to amplify her suffering.

Again, and again, and again, they forced themselves upon, and then into, her. She felt her organs liquefying, her bones crumbling, her augments collapsing onto themselves. Each new speck of ash, each new mote of ember, accounted for nothing less than complete annihilation. Through it all, though, death's icy hooves never dared touch her, nor came to deliver her from this hell.

Crimson light built within, growing exponentially as her suffering continued. Her eyes, ears, throat and mouth burned in a red aura that spilled out, as did more unfortunate areas of her body. She still screamed, and screamed, and screamed, but nothing—nothing—could save her from this torment. She felt her own body withering, drying, desiccating to ash.

Ashes swirled around her, seeking easy entry. They followed the crimson glow, and her body began to swell with its uncontrolled power. Her stomach bloated, and her chest plates groaned and snapped alongside her ribs as they were forced aside to make room for the burgeoning aura. Her head hurt, and her skull fractured along with its plates as it, too, grew in mass. Her legs flexed, bulged, writhed like worms as augments snapped and went the way the rest of her body was going.

Anypony looking in at that moment would have retched at the grotesque sight. The swelling continued, and so did the howling, the glow forcing her body to expand to fill the prison interior from wall to wall and corner to corner. The furnace glowed red-white, though it held firm even as scorching flesh and augments tried forcing itself out through the bars of its cage.

Only when she felt her brain smouldering to ash did the light burst within her and overtake her swollen form, reminiscent of a supernova that sent pieces of her body flying everywhere in explosive, burning vitriol that was unrivaled by anything the Clash could have ever produced. Suns and stars and planets came out, each spiraling into a vortex reminiscent of a black hole. Through it all, Starbreaker remained conscious, barely keeping her mental state together even as she processed what was happening. The black hole swallowed everything but the prison, and the various pieces of her body now painting its interior in scorched scarlet.

The fires died, and her body pulled itself back together, and her grievous wounds healed. There she lay, wide-eyed and gasping as the ichor solidified around her legs again. How had death not come for her yet? That should have done her in multiple times over! She lifted her head, warily glancing around.

All was suspiciously quiet. Not a peep was to be heard in the darkness.

She inhaled deeply, and began to scream again.

And there she was, for several hours uncounted, screaming at the void of shadows continuously for somepony—anypony—to get her out. And none answered back, for there was none but herself in that void.

At least, until the burning shadows came to start the gruesome process all over again. And again, and again. It went on until she, worn out from her constant attempts to get help, finally stopped screaming sometime later.

Then, only then, had she been allowed to wake up, numb, gibbering, and wrapped in a blanket and Sora's wings and forelegs. She hadn't known how much time had passed, nor did she care. She didn't protest as Sora and the rest of the herd escorted her and Mira to the carriage, instead mindlessly blabbering with mangled words that didn't make sense. She didn't stop as she was laid into the seat and had her wounds tended to by Yukito.

She wanted to tell them what had happened, but her lips were moving too fast and her tongue was bastardizing its repeated attempts at language. She kept going on until she ran out of breath with which to speak. Through it all, they looked at her in concern, unable to voice their thoughts on the matter as they tended to her and Mira, who'd been laid next to her.

For a while after that, none spoke. None could.

Starbreaker wasn't sure if she preferred the uncomfortable silence, or the half-crazed mangling of words her own mouth had produced.

Chapter V- 'Diplomacy?'

The only thing that Sora knew for absolute certain was raw, unrelenting pain. Every few minutes, the Admiral eased the pressure on her neck, letting her gasp frantically for air, but firmly reapplied that pressure the moment she opened wide to emit a scream. Everything else in between the bouts of fresh air was a blur. One second, he seemed to be on her; then, he wasn't. She wasn't sure if he was toying with her or not. Some part of her didn't want to find out. At one point, she could've sworn he levitated stacks of paper from… somewhere, all neat and tidy and stashed away in one filing folder that he opened. Perhaps the papers and folder came from his desk. Perhaps he conjured them out of thin air.

The Admiral scrutinized the papers, holding them in his magic as he nonchalantly continued to strangle Sora on and off to see how long she'd last. He eased the pressure, hearing another sputtering cough from his soldier as she sucked in another breath of air. "Hrm…" he hummed, speed-reading the papers. He flipped through them one at a time, until roughly the fourth sheet greeted him with a giant red ink blot inlaid with a large set of emboldened letters in its center. "You were very recently deployed to the Crested Plains, were you not?" he asked.

Sora took an entire minute to process the question as she coughed and gagged. "Y-yes sir," she managed.

"And you… were to investigate strange occurrences in that area?" the Admiral pressed, eyes narrowing as he continued to scan the page with the great big blot of crimson.

"Th-that is… c-correct, sir," Sora answered, starting to squirm now that the Admiral had most of his attention elsewhere.

"And… it says here you failed…" the Admiral paused, letting the papers vanish in a flare of light. He turned, slowly, to his captive, who continued to writhe underneath his stare. "Oh, my dear little pidgeon, I wonder how in the wide, wide world you managed to flop so spectacularly…"

Sora paused to consider his statement. The Admiral leaned close again, until they were nose to nose, though he had to readjust his hindquarters to do so. His front hooves shifted to press her wings down, and once more he was canting his head at her. "Care to tell me why you disregarded your mission?" he asked.

Sora began squirming again, adrenaline surging through her veins now that sufficient oxygen had returned to her lungs and her body recognized the danger she was in. She tried to push the Admiral's hooves off her wings, though even with the boost in strength that the surge granted her, she still may as well have tried to move a mountain. "Wh… where did you… get those files?" she queried.

The Admiral smiled at her, and he was all too happy to answer her question, "One of the Majors filed it personally and hoofed it to me a few days ago." He did not yield his hold on her wings—not yet. "Now… why did you disregard your mission?"

"I… found minimal s-suspect activity, sir," Sora answered, pausing to swallow another lump in her throat. "N-nothing was… out of the—" A hoof lifted up and he promptly slapped her on the cheek with it, and it hit hard enough to make that cheek swell almost immediately after impact.

"Oh, please stop being so evasive. If nothing was out of the ordinary, then the informants might not have told me you got all merciful towards a bloody war criminal. And besides, I've sent them to investigate the scene two days after you returned, and they found corpses," the Admiral stated in a sharp reprimand, grinning as Sora shuddered and spat out a little bit of blood. His horn lit up with a whir, and he clambered off before magically thrusting her upright and then onto the desk, making sure her hind legs dangled over the edge that faced the unseen chair.

He sat in that chair and scooted it closer, until her pasterns made contact with his rear knees. She started to kick, only to yelp as her back legs were forced to part once again, this time nicking themselves against her own blades as they finally drew blood. Hooves planted themselves onto her back, right on the joints where wing met shoulder as the chair inched a little closer alongside the pony sitting in it. They pressed firmly, shooting yet more daggers of agony through her rattled nerves. Sora tried to kick again, but could only manage a slight jerk of her hind legs now, and struggled as her wings were forcibly spread by magic in a way the deadly primaries could not give so much as a scratch to her tormentor. She grit her teeth and shut her eyes, trying to block out what had come after.

Her mind went blank, yet still whirred in the fog of emptiness as yet another fresh wave of pain assaulted her from an entirely different angle. She refused to think about what it was, and simply put her remaining energy into keeping herself locked in a state of agonized apathy. All she could do was resign herself; she'd already been thrashed enough, and anymore struggling would just prolong the torture at this rate. Her body still fidgeted, but she let it do so, knowing full well that it was only reacting to the pain in a way her mind did not even wish to comprehend. The desk shook as her tormentor kept at it, and her nerves with it, again and again even after she lost count of the tremors.

The Admiral stopped when he realized that Sora gave little more than an uncomfortable shiver in response. He looked at the back of her head, and canted his, trying to figure out what was going wrong. He had her in his own front hooves, completely at his cruel mercies, immobilized with magic, and yet she seemed to ignore him entirely. It took him seconds to connect the dots: not one sound left his soldier's mouth after she'd been thrown onto the desk.

His horn lit up, and his magic seized her neck before its grip tightened to the point of cutting off her windpipe's air intake. She failed to yield, choosing to grind her teeth some more to keep herself from screaming. He pressed harder on her wings, and that failed to get a reaction out of her. Had he not known any better, he'd have very well assumed she had fainted on him just to spite him.

His magical grip tightened on her neck a little more. That did nothing to address the problem he now faced. Pulling back a bit, and inadvertently scooting his chair back in the process, caused her to give little more than a flicking of the ear. So he pushed forward again, chair and all, until he was mere millimeters behind Sora. Still no luck. Turning to her recent wounds, he pressed his magic into the cuts, yet this still did not make her react in the slightest.

He lifted her muzzle a bit, and found it turning a tinge of blue, before something else occurred to him. Finally figuring that, perhaps, she was saving her strength to take in as much air as she could, he let go, and for a moment she heaved and sucked in a desperate breath. Though after that, and a few smaller gasps that followed, she fell silent again.

Before he could ruminate on what to do to address Sora's silence, the projection light lit up of its own accord and formed a screen before his very eyes, though it was static-filled when it materialized. Startled, the Admiral lept back, then pushed his chair back whilst using his magic to cram his soldier beneath his desk, and a little extra to start forming a bubble around her head as a precaution.

He looked down at her and scoffed, seeing the screen start to clear. He took the opportunity to lean down as much as the desk would let him to whisper at Sora, "You're going to stay there for a few minutes, as something unprecedented has just come up. You won't be able to eavesdrop; sincere apologies, but I cannot risk having you fuck something else up in spectacular fashion, especially in my presence." That said, he lifted a back hoof and pressed it on her lower back, if to add nothing more than a side of humiliation atop her recent wounds.

He turned his attention back to the screen as the bubble finished forming around her skull, and his horn glowed brighter. Some of his magic held the screen, which finished clearing up within three and a half minutes and an irritated scowl crossed his face as Major Trinity once more greeted him on the other side. He scooted closer to see what the hell she wanted, noting that this time, she was standing on the open launch pad of all places.

But Trinity wasn't alone; with her was with an entire retinue of ponies who weren't in uniform, all arrayed in a line of no more than seven behind her. Five of these ponies had strange protrusions jutting from their backs, angled in a way he couldn't tell what they were, whilst the sixth had nothing of the sort at all. The seventh stood... he assumed behind Trinity, because he could not see the pony in question that well; just four stray hooves and little else. "This had better be important," the Admiral hissed sibilantly, noticing that Sora had started thrashing the moment the bubble engulfed her cranium.

"Well, sir, I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Trinity began, shaking her head grimly, "but the unmodified ponies of Aeverafree decided to drop by unexpectedly, and they've been waiting for hours. I caught them on the camera feed and cantered over to investigate. And get this—their leader wants to chat with you."

The Admiral's brow rose. "Diplomacy?" he asked, curiosity piqued. "Send the leader before the screen, but make it snappy. I'm not even half-done with a certain soldier yet." Trinity stepped aside and waved somepony over, and the Admiral assumed a neutral expression as somepony in the unprecedented, and quite unwelcome throng, stepped forward.

But even he found himself taken aback when he saw that the pony in question was a slender mare with a slate-grey coat and half-flared wings jutting from her sides, ending in natural primaries instead of the wicked blades ponies in the base possessed. Long locks of a silvery white mane trailed past her front knees, with some resting on her back. Eyes crimson as his stared, and a slender, spiral horn protruded from her forehead. "Who are you?" he found himself asking.

"I am Suguri," the bizarre pony diplomat replied, flapping her wings once, "and I assume you are the military leader of the Umbralium Corps?"

"That I am," the Admiral replied, giving Suguri a soft grin. "What need do you have of my business today? I had just about started filing something for the dockets very recently."

Suguri did not even blink at that. "I'm sure you were," she said blithely. Ignoring the fact that the Admiral's smile fell at her sarcasm, she went on with a proposal that gave him pause, "That being said, I do believe it is time we negotiated a truce of sorts." It took him seconds before he could answer, as a truce was not something he'd expected to have been proposed now of all times.

"A truce? But the Clash ended two years ago," the Admiral replied, frowning at that, taking little heed that Sora had continued struggling, perhaps sensing that he was very distracted. "Why in the seven hells do we need to establish a truce? And since when did you become the leader of the Aeverafree colony?"

Suguri's eyes narrowed by a small margin. "About the same time that Starbreaker dropped the colony a visit and decided to slaughter most of the previous Council, and that was before I arrived and chased her off," she replied caustically. "The reason we need to establish a truce is twofold: one, since the Aeverafree colony is effectively under new management, the new Council urged me to come to you and negotiate the terms of the truce, just so we can get to know each other a little better. Two, the sooner we can stop fighting and start working together, the better off all of our ponies, au naturale and modified, will be."

New management for Aeverafree, young-looking and as spry as a foal, offering a deal such as this, and freshly thrown into the leadership gig? An idea presented itself to him like a light bulb switching on. The Admiral nodded and smiled as the idea took shape in his head, figuring this was too good to pass up. "Would you and yours mind waiting in one of the guest wings, then? I am afraid I am… occupied at the moment," he stated coolly.

Suguri folded her wings shut and stood there, contemplating this for a few seconds. "Still need to get that filing in?" she guessed.

The Admiral nodded. "Yes, and a small pile of others just beneath it on my inbox," he stated. "I've been getting more paperwork as of late."

Suguri nodded back, seemingly unaware that something else was happening right beneath the Admiral's desk. "Sounds reasonable enough," she replied. "Very well then. I shall see you in the evening." With that, the projection shut off, and he sighed for a moment before registering the feeling of something still wiggling in his magic and under his hoof.

Grinning, he hefted Sora back onto the desk and flipped her so she faced him, and he noticed at once that her forehooves were tapping fruitlessly at the bubble encasing her head which seemed to be doing more than making sure she didn't eavesdrop. Her muzzle was fast turning a shade of blue, then it grew darker with alarming swiftness. "Air, air!" she mouthed over and over with urgency, though if she was speaking then no sound simply left the bubble. "I need to breathe!"

He sighed ruefully, realizing this was probably her third scream, and he couldn't hear a single note of it. He figured that this was all he'd get out of her today, and the bubble held her for just long enough, so he dispelled it and watched her heave as she tried to get air into her abused lungs once again. Besides, what good would it do to smear his hooves with her blood, with visiting diplomats already present and probably inside the base right now?

Sora flailed on his desk the moment she saw that he wasn't moving, front hooves racing to the wood and pawing desperately for purchase as she tried to scramble away. This time, the Admiral let her go, and watched as she helplessly flipped over, pulled herself across the wood surface bodily, only to then promptly tumble ass over teakettle to the floor.

Dragging herself to the door shortly thereafter, tail once again tucked between the legs, she twisted to glare at him the moment she got into the light that shined upon it. Granted, she now had a solid steel surface to support herself with as she hauled her body back up into a standing posture, shaken and yet still refusing to produce anything more than a labored and pained breathing. He had to admit, even with her life on the line she had spunk, and she had the good graces to not scratch a thing with her wings on the way to the door. Though, he wondered just why she was glaring at him, when she knew full well what waited for her here. Perhaps she held a grudge. Perhaps she'd reached a point to where she simply couldn't cry anymore, and he simply did not see that until today. He honestly cared not for her reasons, whatever they were.

"Still being insubordinate, are we now?" the Admiral asked with a chuckle, shaking his head disapprovingly at her. "You seem utterly determined to disobey every single command that has ever been given to you. Not even letting yourself cry is something that would be admirable, if you weren't a delinquent." Sora didn't say anything in response to that, for taking in deep breaths was a much bigger prerogative at the moment. She did not shed a tear still, but her reaction to being released told the Admiral all he'd needed to know.

"But, you have had a stroke of luck today." When lilac ears perked up at that, he elaborated, "Diplomats have come from Aeverafree to discuss a truce. As my presence and my presence alone had been requested of them, I am afraid I cannot have you entertain me for the rest of this night. Take your bell back. Consider yourself dismissed for the evening." He reached under the desk and pressed on something on its underside again, and Sora heard more clicks singing out and turned to the door as the bar slid out of the hooks. Heeding his advice, she knelt down and took the bell in her teeth before trudging out of his office with a noticeable limp in her gait, breathing laboriously as she went.

He did not scowl at her retreating form, nor at the door when it closed behind her. All he had to do was wait for Sora to commit another bout of insubordination, and he could continue where he left off. Hell, he might do more then, just for kicks. But given the unannounced arrival of Suguri and her little retinue, if she did indeed come with her own herd of ponies, this meant that he had to be a lot more careful about the timing from here on out. The timing, however, was something he could deal with. The projection light would let him know when and when not to take that risk.

After all, Sora may have had a lucky break and a solid reason to get out of her punishment early, though he had doubts her luck would hold out for long. She'd wound up in his office for a reason, and doubtless, she would probably end up in it again. It would only be a matter of time, given what little he managed to glean from her.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

The halls of the Umbralium Corps were dubiously empty, from the top of the highest spire where the Admiral's office was at, right down through several floors straight to the medical ward. Sora's only company for the whole trip down a myriad of halls and elevators were the cameras stationed just about everywhere, their lens trained on her as she limped and descended floor after floor.

Sora had known she'd screwed her own case over the very instant she'd told the Admiral to check the camera feed. This was something, which in all honesty, she had expected him to do, although not for reasons that would support the rather inane claim that Takahara had punched himself to produce the black eye. She smothered a mask of neutrality on her face, even as a turmoil of anger and pain and guilt kicked up within. All she had to ask herself was this: what possessed her to think that such a thing was a good idea to tell that bastard?

At least there was nopony else present to see her limp along, favoring her front legs just a little more than her back ones, with the bell clenched firmly between her teeth. She bit down slightly harder when she shifted one of her sore wings a little, both to stop herself from further agitating that forming bruise, and to keep that mask of neutrality in place. Left to her own thoughts, she did the only thing she could: press on, and keep using the elevators. The abuse had been one thing; that she could very well handle, no matter the severity, as the Admiral himself had so simply put it. The humiliation, on the other hoof, was something she didn't want to endure for long. At least that part of her punishment was cut mercifully short.

Or was it, truly? Word had, surely, spread throughout the base by now of her little get-together with Starbreaker. So too would word, inevitably, spread that she had to drop by the Admiral's office. She shivered, agitating more bruises as she reached the medical ward, all of which were too happy to remind her of the torment she had to endure today. Something edged in her mind, creeping up, but she caught that thought and quickly smothered it before she even had the time to process it. No use ruminating about the past when it had already ran its course.

She limped as fast as she could to Starbreaker's room, and the door slid open to admit her. Yukito was present in the room, changing the bandages on Starbreaker's broken hoof with magical aid. Both turned to her, and both noticed her limp as she waded inside. Yukito finished redressing the hoof, eyes trained on Sora as she let her back knees give way. She'd fallen on her haunches and winced before shifting to close her hinds as much as possible, with her forehooves lifting up. "What happened?" he asked, watching as Sora took the bell out of her mouth and settled it back onto her neck with a suspicious bout of haste.

"Nothing," Sora lied the moment she set her front hooves down, frowning as Yukito's eyes narrowed a little.

"Sora… you're in pain. You trotted in with a slightly hunched posture, and your knees shook just before you sat down. I may not be that astute under normal conditions, but these are hardly normal conditions—even I just cannot dawdle and ignore something as obvious as that," Yukito stated in a firm voice, making a beeline for Sora with his horn aglow. "And your cheek is irritated, that much I can glean. Your feathers are singed at the tips, and… how did you cut your back legs?"

Sora flinched, but relented. "My limp was when Takahara grabbed me," she replied. "It must only be hurting now that I've trotted up and down the whole base. The cheek… I slipped and hit a slab of steel on accident. Cutting my back legs was also a result of the tripping, and..." she paused, thinking of something to explain away the singed feathers. "And… I grabbed a wire with my teeth, and accidentally severed it. It was made of copper, so… it gave me a nasty shock."

Yukito raised a brow at that. "A bruise? And a bout of tripping?" he repeated slowly. Sora nodded and lifted a forehoof again, straightening her front quarters ever so slightly to show him the bruise down below. He peered at it for a few seconds, then retracted with a sigh to scrutinize her cheek. Something about the swelling was off; it was almost too uniform to have come from a bout of falling. Still, if she landed on a bar of steel, then that would have probably been why.

Taking a peek at her back legs, he found the cuts had scabbed over; she was already healing. "It'll all heal in a few days, just don't do anything to make it worse. It's turned almost black between your hinds, your cuts appear to be shallow, the feather damage and the swelling is minimal so I wouldn't recommend prodding at any of those too much. Though, I would probably clean the blood off if I were you."

"Can do," Sora replied with a satisfactory nod. She heaved an internal sigh of relief as Yukito tottered off to tend to Starbreaker again. But that inner sigh halted, only half-exhaled when she saw technicolor eyes narrow.

"That does it," Starbreaker hissed, eyes still affixed on Sora as Yukito unwrapped her broken back leg to check its progress. "Once I get better, only I will be allowed to hurt you. And I will probably set you on fire, too!"

Sora nodded and proceeded to roll her eyes at that originative declaration. It wasn't as if Starbreaker could do anything now, with what her being effectively tied to the ceiling. Still, she decided to rise to the bait. "Alright, Starbreaker, if you want to play that way, we'll play that way. If you do, though…" She lifted a hoof and gestured to the bell with it, "Then I'll be more than happy to invert my shield on you all over again."

Starbreaker flinched at that, and her eyes flashed red at the implications. "You wouldn't," she hissed, an eye starting to twitch.

"I did it when you tried to turn the planet into a scorching hellscape. I'll do it again if it comes down to that," Sora answered in a clipped tone. "Just warning you now."

"Now, now, fillies," Yukito interjected, getting incredulous looks from the two, "please behave."

Sora rolled her eyes yet again. "Eh, how about no? As long as the Admiral's running the Corps, I'll do the exact opposite of behaving, thank you very much," she stated blithely.

Yukito sighed. "Is it because he had ordered your wings be modified when you got drafted, like so many pegasi before you?" he asked.

Sora nodded. "That, and doing next to nothing when Starbreaker punched a hole in the base from outside," she added.

"Speaking of…" Starbreaker started to grin now. "Is that hole still there?"

Sora shook her head. "Once the Clash of the Sky ended, they pretty much repaired it. I went and checked it out a few months ago," she replied. "It's airtight now."

Starbreaker's grin fell and she crossed her forelegs as best as she could. "Damnit," she hissed. The grin returned a second later. "I guess I'll just punch another hole somewhere else, once I get my magic back."

Sora heaved a tired sigh and got up. "I'm going to the barracks, namely its showers. See you guys tomorrow," she said, and with that she trotted out of the door, still limping on her way out. She heard Yukito mumble something about tomorrow, but didn't catch even half of it. Even bodyguards needed their rest, and so long as Starbreaker wasn't getting into any trouble, she figured she could leave her alone for the rest of the night.

Besides, Sora herself needed some time to get cleaned up and take a nap. "You shouldn't have lied like that," a small voice in her conscious said, its words echoing harshly about in her head. "Starbreaker looked like she didn't buy your excuse for one second, and she's been living under a damn rock so thick she didn't understand the concept of molestation at first. And that's sad." She shook her head, and smothered that small voice before it could go any further.

Making haste to descend to the next floor, she winced when the elevator at this end of the hall took her to the floor below… into another hall filled with ponies trotting out of a myriad of rooms. The stallions of the procession were sporting armor plates and the mares were clad in outfits similar in build to hers, although most did not have wings, and so did not have holes in their outfits' backsides. A few turned to her and took notice as she groaned and joined them in their throng.

"Don't make eye contact don't make eye contact don't make eye contact…" she mentally rambled. Unfortunately for her, a unicorn mare in front of her did just that, this one sporting the most distant and dull set of grey eyes she had ever seen. Her dull beige coat and stone-grey mane did little more than accentuate it.

"What did you get in the Admiral's office for?" the mare asked, in a tone as flat and lifeless as her eyes. Sora quickly got the impression she'd found herself staring at a trotting, talking doll.

Sora groaned. Word spread faster than she'd thought… though then again, she was summoned via a loudspeaker. She supposed she should not have been surprised if the announcement shook the whole damn base to its foundations. "I failed another mission," she answered simply, and chose to leave it at that.

Much to her annoyance, the unicorn pressed on. "What mission?" she asked.

"You didn't partake in it. It's none of your concern," Sora stated, shaking her head.

"I was deployed two weeks ago," the mare argued.

"I got deployed a week after," Sora shot back. She looked away to her left… and to another mare sporting dulled eyes, and promptly glanced to her right, straight into another vapid gaze that seemed to look past her. The more she looked at her fellow ponies, the more she realized that sets of dull eyes were trained on her with the subtlety of automatons wearing patched pony flesh. With few options left, Sora averted her eyes just a little to the ceiling, directing most of her attention and her gaze back forward.

Not even three seconds after, somepony poked her on the withers. She turned to the offender, finding a pegasus stallion staring back at her with a slight smirk. One look at her withers confirmed that he had used blades to prod without drawing blood, and she turned back to his face, noting that his eyes were anything but dull. "Alright, what do you want?" she hissed.

The stallion canted his head. "So, what was that mission you screwed up on?" he asked.

Sora promptly looked ahead and slightly up again, noticing the leaders of the herd vanishing, followed instantly by those right behind them. "I don't want to talk about it," she mumbled, hoping that would at least deter the parade of queries she was sure she'd have otherwise received.

The stallion prodded at her withers again as the herd kept going down, and asking questions Sora tuned out as they found themselves following the herd onto a massive flight of stairs that was descending. The other soldiers chimed in, but the cavalcade went in her right ear and out the torn left. She kept herself focused on just following the herd to its destination. The flight curved slowly on itself, not quite like a spiral staircase in that its resulting loops were larger and more ovoid, and it spanned a hefty twenty yards before ending in a hall which diverged in a smooth T-intersection.

To the left, a sign that read 'stallion barracks and showers' hung on the wall. Directly next to it on the right, another sign reading 'mare barracks and showers' had likewise been affixed to the wall. It was at this point the crowd divided, and Sora veered with the other mares. She groaned as she realized it didn't get her away from everypony, but made no more nonverbal complaints since at least half the herd was going to stop bugging her for the night.

The hall she, and several other mares took led to a set of large double-doors that had already been flung open, in turn leading to another hallway lined with bunk beds galore, ending in yet another set of double doors some sixty yards down. The walls were concrete, and so was the floor. A rectangular clock that displayed the time in a black canvas with neon green lights hung above the second set of double doors, and a lot of the beds themselves had fresh mattresses that could only be seen because a corner of the sheets weren't tucked in just right. Blankets were neat, tidy, and perfectly made up onto the beds which upon they sat. The bunks were spaced evenly apart, just enough to allow ponies to climb in and out of them as needed.

A myriad of chests lined the foot of every bunk, in pairs. More than three dozen strange devices fitted with turbo engines affixed onto crude wings hung above the beds, dull in color like the airships and further affixed with small engines that protruded between the wings like a deranged tumor. A lot of these machines were sporting looped hooks for some purpose that Sora couldn't grasp, and as with the chests, many of them came in pairs above the beds. Innumerable ponies went to various beds and started undressing, crudely throwing their clothes off and kicking the chests open to dump them inside. Sora trotted past the throng, to the far end of the room, ignoring everypony else as she searched for one bed in particular.

The bed was at the leftmost portion of the barracks' end, next to the second set of double doors, and it was here she'd stopped and turned. It wasn't a bunk, either, nor did it have a strange machine dangling above it. This bed only had one chest, and its blanket was haphazardly thrown onto the floor. The mattress had several deep gashes, letting more than a few springs loose, and had a myriad of rust red stains that Sora did not bother thinking about. The pillow was barely holding together, bleeding cotton and riddled with a myriad of dark splotches. The chest at its foot was dusty, and splintered with age. Sora kicked it open and started to undress herself, wincing when she had to angle her wings a certain way to avoid tearing up her outfit.

Removing the rest of the garment after her coat and shirt had been stupidly easy. She folded them up nice and tidy and laid them in one pile in the chest, and tenderly put her boots and bell atop it before looking into the chest proper. Aside from her clothes, it was barren, unless one counted the cobwebs and dust that had taken residence in the lid's underside as possessions. She took a chance to peek at a fellow soldier's chest as she got naked, without actually moving to her, and her blood began to boil as she saw a myriad of gleaming medals hanging from the underside of the lid. One depicted an explosion, and another had a quartet of stars. Sora looked away before the other soldier could take notice, and took a breath and closed her chest to cool herself off. She glanced at the clock shortly thereafter.

"19:55…" Sora groused, mentally doing a calculation for a moment. "7:55 in the evening… late again. Wouldn't be the first time." That said, she trotted over to pick up the blanket with her mouth, which had a scratchy, frayed feel that irritated her tongue as she then flapped it until it rested more or less evenly upon the bed.

The double doors leading into the room opened once blanket reunited with mattress, and a feminine voice barked out in a no-nonsense tone so strong the owner seemed to possess a contralto for a moment, "Atten-tion! Line up, nice and straight, you miserable cunts! Tails high, heads higher! I do not want to see so much as a horn or a feather out of place!" Chests slammed shut, ponies raced to stand before the beds, and after that legs became rigid. Even Sora had been compelled to obey the spoken command, wings tucked tightly at her sides. It didn't take more than four minutes for twin lines to form, one on either side of the room, gazes facing forward and faces entirely neutral.

Only when complete silence reigned did hoofsteps encroach, starting in a slow, controlled walk with a very specific rhythm to it. The owner took three steps, then stopped for a tense few seconds. Only when she gave a snort did the three-time beat start, then cease once again. The owner did not speak one word as the walk-stop routine kept up for what had felt like an eternity.

The owner of the rhythm trotted into Sora's peripheral view, then directly in between her and the two mares opposite of her bed in the course of ten punctual minutes. She recognized a white coat and that lashing purple tail straight away, and cold orange eyes swept to the ponies on the owner's right. Major Trinity gazed at the pair for a few seconds, before she turned and that baleful gaze fell onto Sora. They stared off for well over a minute, with Trinity doing her best to incinerate Sora on the spot with her glare alone.

"All of you other bitches, hit the showers. Private Sora, I want a word with you," Trinity hissed in a voice that brokered no argument. Slowly, the other soldiers obeyed, heading to the second pair of double doors and around the Major with as careful of trots as they could muster. More than one set of eyes glanced at Sora on their way; dull, lifeless, and yet filled with a sense of genuine wonder.

They may as well have stamped 'What did you do now?' onto their hips, all of which were devoid of cutie marks—whether the hips were natural, or nothing more than mechanical parts trying to pass off as such. When she and the Major were left entirely alone, and the sound of running water hit their ears, neither budged for a few long seconds, and all the while red slowly creeped up onto Trinity's face.

Trinity closed the distance, and her horn lit up in an orange glow. In a flash of light, a riding crop had been procured into existence. "I've asked you once. I'll ask you again: why did you spare that psychopath?" she hissed coldly.

Sora decided she had, almost, thrown Starbreaker under the airship once. She wasn't going to do that again. So she asked something in turn, "Major, I was aiming to find out Starbreaker's motive for her attempt to destroy the world; is that wrong?"

Major Trinity's eyes bugged out, and she took a step back. Red still painted her features, but it receded a little as she weighed the counter-question. The corners of her lips twitched slightly. "A… motive…" she parroted, letting those two little words sit on her tongue.

Sora nodded and went for the jugular, "Yes. Doesn't every war criminal have that? You and I share Starbreaker's boat; the difference between you, her and I is that I'm not insane."

Major Trinity's lips continued to twitch, and her left eye joined in when she'd realized what Sora had told her, to her face no less. Her chest started to heave at the incredulity of it. She tossed her head back, and a hideous laughter that was high-pitched, echoing, shrill to the point of being akin to a series of horrid screams that coalesced into one orchestra assaulted Sora's ears.

This laugh managed to reach a very high C-note, one that made the beds and chests shake and the machines rattle against the walls as it rebonded again and again with the force of a thunderclap that caused everything to ping noisily about. It kept on for some time, but Sora dared not lift a hoof to shield her ears as the demented cackling went on and on and on until she was certain she'd have a migraine on top of her other problems come morning. She could've sworn the face of the clock cracked during the howling.

Only when the laughter ended some impressive five minutes later, had Trinity leveled a firm glare back at Sora, though now her face was redder and an amused smile crossed her lips. She waited until the hapless pegasus recovered from almost going deaf before her mouth opened. "Private, I gotta hoof it to you, that actually tickled me positively pink for a moment," she stated in a cruel tone with a distinct note of appraisal about it.

Sora took a moment to rub her temples, a headache already starting to build, staring into Trinity's eyes with as level an unblinking gaze as she could muster. She made a mental note to talk to Yukito tomorrow and see if he could hork up some medicine for the eardrum-bashing she'd just received. "Ma'am, damning me with praise won't get you anywhere," she said in a tone flat enough to come off as apathetic. "Just cut to the point already, so we can both go on with our monotonous lives, thank you."

Major Trinity's smirk fell at that remark. She elected to whap Sora across the face with the riding crop, just once so she'd know who was in charge here. Sora barely even flinched, and did not blink, having already endured worse that day. "Well sounding like a smartass won't get you anywhere either, you miserable reprobate," she shot back. "I'm amazed you ain't gone glassy-eyed like all of the other bitches in these here barracks."

"Unlike them, I still happen to give a shit," Sora rebutted, again in that apathetic tone. That earned her another smack of the crop, this time on her temple. Again, she barely twitched in acknowledgement to it. Major Trinity leaned in close and canted her head, grinning once again.

"Oh, do you now? Then why do you disobey almost every damn order we give you?" Trinity hissed back, looking deep into Sora's eyes in a manner that suggested there was a smudge on her soul. "The more you obey, the happier you'll be; that's just how it works here."

"Because you and yours are cruel, heartless sons and daughters of immoral whorses who don't know the names of your daddies," Sora thought. Out loud, without faltering or blinking, she said, "Because most of your orders are simply unethical, and inequine on top of that. And I have not been happy for a long time now, so don't try to rub that on me."

"Unethical? Inequine?" Major Trinity leaned back, ears perked to attention. She ignored Sora's second remark and pressed on, "Oh, please, what is so unethical about what we do?"

"You take away other ponies' futures through wanton slaughter and modifications galore," Sora replied, eyes narrowing a little. She got smacked again, on the bridge of her snout. "In some cases, you remove the ability to earn cutie marks outright!" Another slap. She pressed on regardless, "And in others still, their ability to act of their own accord! Isn't all of that inherently wrong on some level?"

Major Trinity kept glaring at Sora. "You're only telling yourself all that, so you can sleep at night!" she hissed. Then she took notice of her soldier's failure to blink, and her pupils shrank a little at that.

Sora shook her head, seeing Major Trinity was now gabbling for a shred of any cohesive argument to counter her rebuttal. Thus, she decided to end the argument, and tersely at that. "Whatever floats your boat," she stated coldly.

Major Trinity howled, and slapped Sora once more—with her hoof, and enough force to knock her to the concrete floor. Her eyes remained open, and gravitated to stare at her orange pools the moment she'd fallen. Trinity's coat bristled at her withers as that gaze of green continued to judge her. Slowly, almost robotically at that, Sora rose to stand, and they were eye to eye before long. The Major saw something shifting in those pools of green, something which caused her blood to surge and her mind to scream, "Just get the hell away from this mare!" She snuffed out that voice and only hardened her gaze, but Sora nonetheless caught something shifting in the Major's orange eyes as well.

"Get your ass scrubbed clean. You'll be hauling crates tomorrow, with that fucking mouth of yours gagged, since you apparently can't keep it shut!" she barked indignantly. Sora trotted to the showers, letting the smallest of smug grins cross her muzzle the instant her back was turned to the commanding officer. Having to haul crates whilst gagged sounded almost laughable, compared to the punishments the Admiral was all too happy to hoof out. And some small part of her liked that she managed to goad Trinity's goat in the process.

The sense of schadenfreude, however tactical and utterly satisfying, did not last.

Chapter XXI- Shifting Shadows

The distant roars kept on howling, almost like a warning siren that had a different tempo. Sora tensed and dropped her hoof, ears straining in an attempt to catch for anything else that wasn't in the immediate radius of the cavern. Starbreaker groaned and ground a hoof against the floor, tail twitching with anticipation. "This is worse," Starbreaker spat, averting her gaze to Sora briefly, "than having all of my bombs destroyed at once thanks to your stupid shield."

"We'll continue this discussion later," Sora muttered, still straining to catch anything else she could hear. Unfortunately, all she could get beyond the crackle of the fire was that distant roaring. Each echo, each reverb, each repeat of that horrible sound started driving needles of dread directly into her augments—small, thin needles that slowly but surely started to pile up. Needles that had enough numbers to halt her own body several times over if she allowed them to. For minutes, she didn't dare count how many, that terrible sound continued without end.

She shook herself, trying to cast the invisible needles off. But that distant, repeating noise only brought them right back. She wouldn't dare admit it with Starbreaker right next to her, but… she knew things were wrong. Worse, half of those things beyond the intangible just didn't make sense—she couldn't work out the how, much less the why. And with those needles of dread sinking into her heart of hearts, she felt the first courses of primal fear running through her nerves.

Now, of all times, was not an ideal situation to let that primal fear take control. So she put on her mask of apathy—only now, Starbreaker was looking at her intently. Sora returned the look, and noticed something off about her charge straight away. Her jaw was oddly set, and for a fleeting moment, there wasn't any sort of malice to be seen in her prismic eyes. Not one shred. Not one spark, nothing so much as an atom's worth of ill will. It was as though they stood on equal footing—of and for what, though, she could not glean.

But she could tell that Starbreaker knew that her mask had already cracked—her expression alone told Sora that much. Truth be told, she'd much rather welcome this uncomfortable spotlight than the primal fear that surpassed even her own augments. "You're not alright… not at all," Starbreaker muttered slowly, almost too carefully at that. Her words came with an unusual air of acute awareness that could not have come from a madmare, much less one whose talent was destruction—yet did.

Sora slowly nodded, though she'd expected to hear something like that come out of Yukito's mouth. "What," Starbreaker began, tail lashing, "is making you weird in the head?"

Sora sat on her haunches, seizing just enough motor control to avoid slipping. She did not seize enough, however, to keep her mask from breaking further. "... a lot of things," Sora answered uneasily, her voice cracking ever so slightly. She winced a second later, as if her own words were hot coals whose burn registered far too late. Still, she held her nerves, even under the onslaught of the needles of dread and her charge's very flat expression.

"If you really are an ultimate weapon as we suspect—and, let's face it, you have the makings of one in your body—" Yukito briefly shut his mouth when that unusually stoic stare came his way, considering earlier what he'd said that day, "—then why would you willingly come with us? You could have burned us, after all, and then go about doing laps around the Corps once we were ash." That caused Starbreaker's expression to falter, and a very dour frown formed on her muzzle, and her eyes shifted once again to that deep blue. She considered it for a moment, and her ears pinned back.

Starbreaker opened her mouth to answer, only to close it a second later. She maintained eye contact with Yukito for a few minutes after, then averted her gaze to the entrance of the cavern. Sora straightened her posture with pupils shrinking; she'd expected another dark promise to come from her charge instead of this. Whatever the case, that one gesture she didn't see coming was telling—and it was one she almost didn't want to believe herself. Her eyes didn't change back to their standard prismic, either—itself another sign that didn't go unnoticed.

She turned to the fire and trotted over before rearing up and repeatedly bringing her front hooves down onto the now-ashen tinder, scattering motes of still-burning embers as she worked with a suspect amount of haste to put out her own fire. Yukito lit up his horn to cast light, watching the disconcerting display with his own eyes widening. He tried his best to gauge whatever turmoil lay in her eyes; he found traces of sanity and dread glimmering within, almost as though she were afraid of what she had done.

Something was wrong with Starbreaker. Very, very wrong. He turned to Sora and mouthed, "Look outside and see if they're coming." Sora nodded, and got up to trot to the entrance to gauge the situation, internally praying to the old gods that this unusual behavior would be the last she'd see from her charge—her dark promises were worrying enough! She dropped her blades again and trudged up to the overhang, keeping a low profile to avoid the stalactites on her way. By the time she'd reached the entrance, the snow had piled up thick enough to easily brush up against her barrel, worsened still by the pine tree that just kept shedding branchfuls of the stuff.

Past this, however, she saw dark forms and distant glimmers going in circles up above, right under the dark clouds that kept making snow. Lightning danced for brief intervals, revealing massive turbines and flapping...

Sora pulled her head back in and went down the slope before either of those two things could detect her. She was not going to stick around for that nonsense, nor was she going to fly into it and paint an even bigger target on her cutie mark. But she noted sourly that there were few options left… unless…

Her mental gears started to turn as she delved into that darkness of the cavern, finding those shadows oddly comforting—perhaps due to the company she now kept. When she caught sight of a familiar light and the cessation of stomping hooves, she trotted faster to meet up with the group. Sora's brows rose when she returned to the cavern, as she stumbled upon a sight she wasn't sure whether to find amusing or disturbing.

Starbreaker was trying to use her forehooves to snuff out the light of Yukito's horn, eyes wide and pupils dilated. Yukito didn't even do anything to push her away, instead opting to look at her with a bemused frown. Starbreaker acted like a mare possessed, doing everything in her power to stop Yukito from casting—without alighting her own horn or even knocking him to the ground. He, in turn, did nothing to stop her worrying antics.

Sora strode over as she emerged from beneath the stalactites, mental gears grinding to a halt at the sight. "Whoo-kay, what's going on here?" she asked, letting every ounce of confusion she had give an edge in her voice in that moment.

"The shadows hate light, they hate it! Stop making that light or they will strike us!" Starbreaker babbled, worry tinting her tone without restraint. Even as she managed to cup her frogs on the tip of Yukito's horn, she failed to keep what little light that could seep between them from shining upon his head.

"... whaaa?" Sora blinked and shook her head, mentally short-circuiting at what she'd heard.

"I have no idea," Yukito muttered, and he would have shaken his head if part of it wasn't clasped by a pair of hooves. He settled on averting his gaze to Sora.

"Stop making the light!" Starbreaker muttered harshly, bringing her voice to a whisper as she was trying to tighten her meager hold without breaking her hooves again. Yukito groaned and ceased casting, plunging the cavern into darkness. She relented a second later, tail twitching fitfully as she dropped to all fours. After that, she trotted to her seat of the carriage, opened the door, jumped in and closed the door behind her as if that could stop the shadows she spoke of from attacking.

Sora facehoofed once she was certain Starbreaker wouldn't poke her head back out. "Some part of me is really, really glad she didn't harp on about that back at the base…" she grumbled in exasperated confusion. "Not that I understood half of what came out her mouth." She dropped her hoof and trotted to Yukito with a heavy sigh. "And the Corps already sent out what looks like a reconnaissance crew over the Plains. We're gonna have to tear these mountains a new hole if we want another way out."

Yukito nodded and trotted to the second door of the carriage, opening it with a hoof. Instead of climbing in, however, he moved to stand behind the open door with a nod. Sora nodded back to him with a smile and trotted to clamber in with a silent "thank you" mouthed to him. Once she settled in, her husband came after her and closed the door behind them, shifting to lay down into the bundles of blankets and call it a night. He unfurled one of the rolls with his hooves, and Sora spread out the other roll, making sure to not cut into it with her blades.

Once the blankets were unfurled, they crawled into them and rested their heads on their pillows, smiling as the plush seats worked in tandem with the blankets to keep them warm. "Do we have to kill the ponies who attacked Starbreaker?" Sora muttered, smile fading with disdain at that prospect.

"Likely, yes, and I hope it doesn't come to that…" Yukito replied with a sigh. He shifted to scoot closer to Sora and lightly nuzzled her once he was in range. "Though, we might not have to kill them at all. It's like our consummation night—I doubted we could even pull it off."

Sora giggled and rustled her tail a little. "Just tell them they'll be in the crossfire of the Corps if they don't head east?" she muttered.

"Something to that effect," Yukito replied, a tinge of amusement in his voice. He frowned, though, and asked, "I take it Admiral Prickleston is aware of what we were trying to do, aside from smuggling Starbreaker out?"

Sora glumly nodded. "Or at least, that we've been… wanting out one way or another this whole time," she answered with a tired sigh. "I'd think he'd have shot us both on the spot if I hoofed in our letters of resignation. Wouldn't be surprised if he started calling us two-faced."

"We pretty much gave him a reason for that, but at the same time, we couldn't let Starbreaker fall into his hooves," Yukito said, shifting a little closer. "If, of course, he planned to use her for something else instead of killing her outright. Which… may have been the motive for letting me patch her up."

Sora nuzzled Yukito, relaxing even as that morbid statement's implications sank in. "Trinity and Takahara said they wanted some 'fun' with her," she muttered with a shudder. "I'm glad we got her out when we did."

"And they'll stop toying with us and Omega, too," Yukito added, smiling rather wistfully as he raised his forelegs to hug Sora tightly. "So long as we stay away from their grasping hooves." He lowered his voice and asked, "But… why all the way to Aeverafree?"

Sora smiled in spite of the question. She saw this query coming from a mile away. "It's… one of the very few places I'd be willing to let Star trot about in, under supervision. It's not like the Corps, from what I heard," she replied sincerely. "We could get reliable help there."

"But we'd have to get there first," Yukito pointed out with a tired sigh. Sora nuzzled him and returned the hug. "Then again, you can fly…" He managed a smile. "I feel confident we'll manage. This isn't the first time we've been on the lam."

"Well, this is the first time we're having to run from an entire military force," Sora stated, giggling at that morbid thought. "But everypony from the privates to half the Majors won't lay hoof on me."

Yukito snickered. "They won't be able to, if I can teleport us all a few trots ahead of them," he retorted, somewhat amused himself. The two shared another laugh, and snuggled close to get some sleep. They didn't notice the shadows writhing and twisting outside of their carriage—how could they, when the curtains were closed?

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

"What do you mean, she left with the garbage pony!?" the Admiral barked, his office shaking and his desk jumping in place as he slammed a hoof down onto it with enough force to crack the wood. Before him, a heavily-bandaged, cast-sporting and wheelchair-bound Takahara quaked from the power of the shout, and not too far off, Trinity—who herself wasn't doing much better—quivered at the door.

"A-a… a fucking windigo teleported her out!" Takahara stammered, ears pinned back. "Just waltzed in, smacked us around, destroyed an operating room, and whisked the ex-private and the trash collector away!"

The Admiral snorted with an exhale powerful enough to rustle what little of Takahara's mane managed to poke from between the bandages. Slowly, he lowered his raised hoof and stared him down with a malicious glint in his possibly-augmented eyes. Briefly, his gaze flicked to Trinity, who whimpered and looked to the door as if begging it to open. Alas, the bar slid into place between the hooks sometime ago, and so couldn't open now.

"I couldn't have cared less if it was just the lovebirds and the Herald who'd escaped. But the garbage stallion… may have colluded with them," the Admiral growled, a dangerous edge in his voice that wasn't there a moment ago. "Gave them a means for them to even leave in the first place. Assuming, of course, they could escape the ravages of the Protocol." Another snort left him, playing with Takahara's mane as it danced past him. "But if they have… and there's a chance they did… then once the trash collector recovers, he'll most likely put his new augments to use against us."

The Admiral seethed in his seat, and Trinity could've sworn she saw one of his eyelids twitching in the darkness. "Tell me… what did the windigo look like?" he asked slowly, the dangerous edge dulling with his softened tone.

Trinity and Takahara balked in unison, and exchanged glances for a second before Trinity spoke up in a shaking voice, "It… was like solid darkness one second, and then… only half-there the next. It was walking o-on it's hinds, like some of our retired war-mechs…"

Takahara proceeded to continue where Trinity trailed off, "And it looked right mad… it had glowing eyes and everything! Hell, it was horned, and all three of the damned pointy things crackled like crazy!"

The Admiral nodded and quietly absorbed this information, wondering internally if Takahara made up the whole three-horned thing the windigo supposedly had on the fly, before lifting up both forelegs to cross them over the desk. The desk groaned in protest, but did little else beneath what little weight he applied upon its surface. "That is… troubling…" he muttered. "We're going to have a slightly harder time catching the missus and her herd if windigos of all things have come to her aid."

Trinity perked her ears up at that odd statement. Something about the Admiral's soft tone and choice of words put her on edge. "Slightly?" she echoed.

"Yes. We have the means to repel the windigos. But considering we have confirmed that one amongst their number can teleport… it is nonetheless a cause for concern," the Admiral replied smoothly, barely shifting his posture in the slightest. "If nothing else, that one teleporting windigo could have easily evacuated the rest of its ilk, well before the Protocol even reached them, should such prove to be the case."

"Should we warn the colony of Aeverafree and all the other settled provinces about the windigos, sir?" Takahara asked, frowning at that prospect. "Because… we got attacked by them, strictly speaking…"

The Admiral let the question soak in and toyed with that idea a few times in his head. As he contemplated his options, the office sank into an unholy, disquieting silence. His eyes slid closed briefly, and his subordinates tensed even as they opened again, for that unholy light of unbridled rage deepened the crimson hue into a dark bloody maroon. "Yes," he said, shifting in his seat after a few minutes. "We should also tell them to arrest Sora and her herd on the spot if they even try crossing their borders, until we can come to bring their sorry hides back here."

He waved a hoof and focused his hardened gaze on Trinity. "Send the word, Major. Do so telepathically if you must," he ordered in a no-nonsense tone. "We cannot spread our forces too thin, however; send a pegasus with supplies to all the provinces to deliver the warning."

Trinity balked. "B-but sir, I overtaxed m-my alicorn! P-Professor Tsukumi warned me a-against casting magic for th-the next two weeks!" she stammered.

The Admiral leaned back in his seat and lowered his hoof, turning to Takahara. "Colonel, are you able to cast?" he asked bluntly.

Takahara shook his head. "Not without pissing off our remaining doctors," he muttered dismally. "And… why just one pegasus with supplies to every province, sir?"

The Admiral flashed his subordinates a smile that the shadows thankfully concealed. "Because, chances are, the windigos might have attacked those areas as well. Perhaps the cloaked ponies who might have been sticking the mysterious crystals in the corpses of our citizens have come… to issue a dire warning," he answered, though his voice betrayed no amusement whatsoever at that prospect. "We've only had a visit from the spring chickens of Aeverafree… and they seemed healthy and hale, if not a bit too young for the burdens of leadership…"

Trinity nodded, seeing the logic of that. "Of course, the cloaked weirdos never gave any signs of a warning," she pointed out, ears turning back. "And those sons o' whorses left no other trace, if they are producing the crystals to begin with."

"And we don't know where they even came from," Takahara added. "Just sorta…"

The Admiral cut them off with a curt nod. He leaned a little closer to them, letting them see his wide and toothy smile. He savored their shudders, almost soaking in their pooling fear that was betrayed by their widening eyes. "You both need say no more," he muttered darkly. "If you cannot send word… either tell the medical staff, or I shall have to do so myself." He stood up and shifted to push his chair back. "You two are dismissed for the evening—and, quite likely, for the next three months at the minimum. Get some rest. And next time… don't use a joint attack unless it's absolutely necessary." With that, he reached under his desk and pushed on something on its underside, and the bar slid out of the hooks, letting the two sorry sadsacks wheel out of his office with cast-bound legs.

Once they left and the door shut behind them, the Admiral waited for the sound of squeaking wheels and discontent grumbles to fade entirely before ever lighting up his horn. He vanished in a burst of silver light, and reappeared in the confines of the massive room that held the giant furnace and transparent cages—or rather, what remained of it. Large swaths of ice covered the area, perfectly freezing the hapless ponies within their prisons, fogged up with contaminants that stayed a distance away from their horrified faces. The furnace fared not much better; it's flames had already died, letting no warmth permeate the large chamber. The lights were smashed, plunging the room into shadow.

And yet, in front of that furnace, in the dismal gloom stood a figure sporting glowing brown eyes. It seemed to have trained its gaze right onto the Admiral the moment he'd arrived, and the Admiral had to squint a little to determine its posture—ramrod straight, eyes level, with a dimming horn jutting from its head. It didn't move in the slightest, save for a darkness-concealed smile so slight it might as well have not been present at all. The Admiral glared at the figure, who mutely stared back with that contemptible expression—he could see it on its face, 'looks like I won.'

Neither found the gumption to take a step forward, nor to light up their horns anymore than they already had. Something, something about this figure's presence set off several alarm bells in the Admiral's head, yet he could not figure out what it was or why. The living shadow—he himself wasn't even certain it was equine—seemed content to stand there and smile knowingly. He donned his no-nonsense face, and knew something was up when an echoing, mirthless, all-too-feminine chuckle wormed its way out of the shadow's throat—assuming it had a throat to work with.

Finally, he addressed the thing, "What business have you here?"

The living shadow chuckled again; didn't look even the least bit affronted. Didn't dare utter a word, as instead it opted to lift a stiff, shuddering hoof and strike the ice repeatedly in movements that were simply so fast it was as if the leg wasn't moving. The Admiral noticed several metallic pings coming with each and every impact, before the thing channeled oddly white light into the resultant holes in the ice and vanished in a burst of light. Curious, he trotted over to the anomaly, both brows raised high and horn lighting up to better look at what he was about to get into.

On the floor, where the shadow stood, he found a message—a message that crackled in miniscule lightning bolts. He read it aloud to himself, if only to convince his inner skeptic that his eyes weren't playing another sleight of hoof on him.

"The Wheel of Fortune spins, round, round and round,
Bladed wings flapping, trying not to make any sort of sound
For He who stands atop the Tower will face the wrath of the Star
As the King of Wands and his Knight of Swords watch from afar

Truth set in motion, its Chariot's course can't be ever changed
Flames of fury and hate, born of one whose fate was arranged
All lies will come undone, like cloth unfurling, slowly unravelling
As Sun moves alongside Moon, with speed of hooves travelling

The shadows watch carelessly, tirelessly, waste not effort with words;
The shadows watch always; they timelessly have, they timelessly will
I joined them, left the mortal coil years ago, became the Page of Swords,
Frozen from head to hoof, eyes becoming glass after my blood was spilled
The Wheel of Fortune spins; it endlessly goes round, round and round
Bladed wings flapping, hurrying to get afar, safe and sound"

This message also sported four carvings next to it—square-shaped, depicting a carriage, a five-point star, a knight chess piece, and a king chess piece. The Admiral studied the message and the square-bound scribbles, turning it all over and over again in his head. What nonsense had the being wrote? It took him moments to piece together the message's meaning, though—and his glower deepened when it clicked and only came out more cryptic in his mind.

He turned to look at the gathered prisoners, and noticed that behind their frozen expressions, he saw reflections of relief and… and anger. A moment ago, they were looking every which-way they possibly could; now, all eyes were inexplicably trained on him. The eyes of the frozen ponies burst into hellish fires one minute, then returned to their glassy stares the very next. He blinked, not certain if he was hallucinating, and his horn lit up as he realized that he couldn't take chances no matter what the case was.

He teleported back to his office before things could get any weirder, though he doubted that the scales of strangeness could be rigged anymore considering what had happened over the course of the previous day. Strangely, when he returned, he found that the projection light had been turned on in his absence, and he trotted to his desk to figure out why. His magic cupped the light, and he eased his glower as he found Professor Tsukumi standing in a room whose furniture was shrouded in white sheets. "Have you found anything?" the Admiral asked, shifting to sit down in his chair.

Tsukumi shook his head. "I even checked the off-duty building nopony uses anymore. Yukito was thorough in cleaning his quarters out; only the things that are nailed down have remained, and even they are barren. He somehow made off with the plaque, too—might have it repurposed for something else," he replied dismally. "It's as if he were a ghost." His expression hardened. "Curiously, the cameras there were ripped out at some point."

The Admiral groaned at that tidbit of news, which shed light on a little more of his ex-employees' antics as of late. This was the best vanishing act that Yukito had pulled yet, he had to give him that much. Some part of him started to regret having that bastard on the medical team, almost as much as he started to regret having Sora amidst his ranks, when she proved she wasn't one to be trusted. "I'll assume he did that so he could… test Sora's durability," he muttered with a wince; stars above, that sounded awkward.

"And he may have well squirreled the Herald in there as well, before taking his leave," Tsukumi finished, seemingly understanding what the Admiral was referring to. "We should've torn down the structure long ago, sir." He adjusted his posture for a second, swishing his tail. "That said, I already have the demolition crew gathered for that task. They shall set to it in the 'morrow."

"Have you found anything else on your end?" the Admiral asked, careful to not let hope creep into his tone. He knew better than to take that bait—especially now of all times, when things were still going topsy-turvy.

"The citizens came out of that freak icestorm and the Protocol unusually unscathed. There's little doubt in my mind—the weather was coordinated, and so was the attack on the base itself," Tsukumi muttered, glowering. "Every single soldier of every rank and file that came out of it alive reported living shadows—one upright, one crawling, and one quadruped."

"Windigos, I'd guess," the Admiral hissed, lifting a hoof to rub his temples. "Have you spread word of my orders yet? Or even received them, for that matter?"

Tsukumi nodded, donning a small smile. "Yes; Major Trinity informed me of them, and I sent out the word through swift teleportation. We'll be able to cut Sora off before she can reach any of the major provinces by the end of the month," he answered, oddly chipper. "She could travel to Aeverafree and be beaten by our more loyal pegasi in weeks; I made certain they were fitted with a small airship each to house the supplies needed for the trip."

The Admiral smiled back. At least things were turning up, if only a little. "Most excellent," he said. "Any signs of her passing?"

Tsukumi shook his head. "None yet, nor of her leaving except for the door she dismantled and the two medics that were slain," he replied. "But, she's bound to slip up—between her foalsitting the Herald and her adamantite-electrum alloy Zapper blades, we will at least get tell-tale marks indicative of where she has recently been. That's not even assuming when and if she'll… allow herself to be tested by her husband again." His smile widened. "She's made herself easy pickings… and when we catch her…"

The Admiral let his own smile widen, and ideas began swimming in his head. Oh, he'd make an example of Sora once he could get his hooves on her, and he'd start by tearing her troublesome wings off outright. Then he'd go to town as he saw fit. He'd made her beg for air once—what more could he make her hopelessly grovel for? "Let her get her hopes up—it will be far sweeter than if we quashed that hope here and now, when we do catch her," the Admiral ordered in a firm voice that belied his giddiness. "After all… we're going to need to let her lower her guard."

"Pity that the trash collector didn't tell us anything. A shame, too," Tsukumi lamented, smile falling as he spoke. "But then again… we shouldn't have expected him to know anything anyway."

"He might have still been privy to some information—Trinity stupidly had Sora deliver corpses to him," the Admiral retorted, shaking his head. "We'll have to kill him too, first chance we get. And Yukito, so he can't intercept."

Tsukumi nodded and smiled again. "That can be arranged, sir," he replied. With that, the projection light switched off and plunged the office into darkness again. Even with the good news he'd received, the Admiral couldn't take his mind off of the message the maybe-windigo wrote out to him before his very eyes. With little else to do, he took out his chessboard and mini-replicas, being careful to add a pawn in Omega's likeness and placed it in the middle of Sora's troublesome triangle, followed by vague shadowy things hanging off to the side. He even carved 'Page of Swords' into the base of one of the things, and frowned when it turned to his pieces the instant the carving was complete.

Neither of the other shadow-replicas moved. His frown deepened as he once again went over the cryptic message he'd gotten. A niggling feeling that something was amiss sank into his hardened soul. He just couldn't pinpoint what exactly that was, but he knew the source of that feeling… was now officially out of the premises of the Corps itself.

He steeled his nerve and scoffed at the warning within the message the shadow wrote to him. He'd make Sora pay very dearly for what she had done before the coming winter melted into spring, and he'd off Starbreaker for good measure. So he moved a chess piece of a faceless pawn towards the triangle, and turned to the side of the board housing Suguri's replica.

Oddly, Suguri's replica moved on its own—no less than three squares back.