Chapter I: Stranded Mad Science and You.
Sofia groaned.
She was pretty sure she was dead. Vaguely, she recalled the series of events that had lead her here: she had been out on patrol, discouraging the probing groups of Locust, when her squad had been ambushed by a bunch of what she assumed to be COG soldiers. She had poured it on, showed them the fury of Onyx, but some right bastard had snuck up on her and tried to ram the side of her head in.
She really should have worn a helmet, in retrospect.
There was a long period of blackness: yep, black, black, black- hey, this one's BLANK! Of course, unconsciousness had bid her au revoir, leaving her on the floor of some white concrete room with suspicious dark stains and a rather ominous- as well as remarkably cliche- science device. She had recognized the room as one of the isolated testing chambers of the Halvo Bay Military Academy, having spent long hours in the labs doing tests for Elliot, but had not gleaned any more facts than that.
Well, she had not gleaned further facts than the little issue of the fact that they had left her with all her weapons. Vaguely, she wondered if they were incompetent, but dismissed it on the grounds that, realistically, any soldier that incompetent would have shot themselves checking the barrel of a loaded rifle for dirt already. She had wondered if they were stupid, but decided that if they were that terminally stupid, they would have spent all their time in a corner, drooling, during work hours. Break hours would have been spent watching reality TV.
Having dismissed both of these options, and being at a complete loss as to what other reasons there could be, she had decided to use a couple of her grenades to blow the observation window and start killing until things made sense. In general, in her experience, this had actually worked quite well for her in the past, especially when she ran with Kilo back in the good old days. Not like Loomis or tactics in general had done them any favors, anyway: they had gone through all the effort of setting up the Lightmass Missile, ignored Loomis' orders, and then held a rooftop against hordes of Locust, only to have to kill Karn with their guns anyway. She figured that if guns had worked against something that had walked away from a Lightmass Missile strike unscathed, they'd work for anything else she might apply them to. This case would be no different.
Unfortunately- for her, anyway, fortunately for those behind the glass- she had been unable to follow through. Really, she just assumed the scientists running the whole shebang had heard of her, and were so desperately eager to get her out of their facility that they began whatever experiment they had planned as soon as she started moving.
Lucky punks. She thought. Any later, and they'd have been *dead.***
They had known that, she had known that- everybody present had been uncomfortably aware of that particular fact. Which is why they activated the device before she could really get her bearings and realize that first, there were a lot of clearly labelled parts to the machine, and second that she had a plethora of weapons to plug them with. In retrospect, she suspected that they hadn't stripped her of her weapons because they hadn't taken the time: they'd just dumped her straight into the chamber, no ifs, ands nor butts. Which was rather sad: Sofia was a connoisseur of butts. Practically every Gear was, really: the lower part of the armor was exceptionally close fitting.
So they had activated the device, big lightning bolts, zip-zap-zapow. Normal super villain-y kind of stuff, though markedly lacking in mad cackling or the inevitable big NO that would come when whoever burst through the wall to stop it. Really, this was purposeful: Sofia was probably the number one person most qualified to do a little rescuing in all of Halvo Bay, and she would probably get so distracted reducing people's melons to chunky salsa that she would forget about it all together.
Mmmm, she thought. Chunky salsa.
So, big lightning bolts, lack of cackling, no more heroes anymore, and the machine had successfully activated.
It had hurt.
A lot.
Internally, she vowed that she would make it her personal business to go about wiping out the entire cadre of science geeks and their ex-COG mooks the second she stopped feeling like complete and utter dogshit and decided to get up and do anything. However, even that would be waived if they had messed with her guns or her hair. God help them if they messed with her hair.
Hesitantly, and making sounds of complaint the whole while, she moved a hand to her head. Thankfully for them, her shocking red locks were still tied behind her in their customary ponytail, and she vaguely felt the stocks of her MK II Lancer and Markza. In addition, she could make out the familiar weight of her Snub sidearm on her hip, and the knife tucked into the side of the armor. So, she had her equipment, she had her ammunition. What now? Well, she supposed the next step would be to open her eyes.
Yes, those years of Onyx training were not going to waste at all.
The first thing that she noticed, strangely, was that the sky was blue. She blinked: had that been like that before? Gray, perhaps, occasionally black with smoke or clouds, either dust or natural, but the last time she had seen blue skies was... when she ran with Kilo? There were clouds, but they seemed wrong, strangely misshapen and weirdly uniform. Surely the Locust or the Lambent hadn't done that? What purpose would it serve? She could think of none, and was sadly assured by logic and knowledge that one could not kill the answers out of a cloud, and so abandoned that line of thought. Clearly, it lead nowhere in particular.
With great effort, she managed to pull herself into a sitting position. Every part of her practically screamed with the effort, but she angrily suppressed it: pain was like the guy downstairs that tells you what's wrong with the plumbing. He helps, he tells you when stuff is wrong, but when he becomes too insistent you slug him.
She was lying in the center of a small blast crater, blackened and slightly smoldering from... something. She wasn't sure, really: the impact crater itself did not match explosives or heavy ordnance that she was familiar with, and she was pretty much familiar with all of it. Beyond the edges of the indent was a surprisingly foreboding forest. Not that this was particularly effective towards Sofia- seen Karn, kicked Karn ass, nothing was scarier than Karn besides her- but she made the observation all the same. Darkness and shadows seemed to cling and grow at the bases of the trees, only to shrink back at her gaze.
"Yeah, that's right." She mumbled. "You better be scared."
The darkness didn't answer her back. Fortunate indeed for the plant life it surrounded, for all of it would have been subject to a spray of hot leaded death had it elected to do so. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she wondered if these were normal thoughts to be having, or if something had kicked her in the coconut. This same part of her mused that perhaps she should be seeking medical attention and/or allies of some sort, considering that she was in an exposed position and without the support of her fireteam, wherever they were. The rest of her figured that she had nothing better to do.
She nodded to herself: now that she had an actual goal to pursue, the situation was contractually required to get better. With a swift movement, smooth from many hours of practicing and cursing- though more the latter than the former- Sofia lurched forward into a crouching position, drawing her Lancer in the same motion. She checked the magazine of the rifle- a full sixty rounds, good- and chambered a round, before slapping the rifle back onto the magnetic strip that had held it there. With the dispenser of hot death- emphasis on "hot", every round had to be a tracer- securely in the upright and locked position, she made a small hop to a rock embedded in the wall of the shallow crater, planning to jump from there to the top.
It turned out that the second half of that particular plan was unnecessary. What she had gauged to be a small hop carried her over the edge of the crater and almost into the forest, with only her long hours of training and experience saving her from stumbling. She blinked: that had been a good four feet, and she had hopped it easily. Had she been able to do that before? She didn't think so, but she had done it all the same. A slightly bemused expression crossed her face as she realized that she had not only done it, but done it with extreme ease: now that she thought about it, she felt better than she had in a long time. She felt like she was stronger, possessing of more energy: she felt like she could run for miles without breaking a sweat. Strange.
If that machine had done this to her, perhaps she should be merciful towards the weirdos who did... whatever they did to her. Of course, 'merciful' in Sofia's mind roughly measured out to a quick death instead of a slower one- an effect, she supposed, of spending so much time with Paduk- but still. Of course, she would find out what, exactly, they did to her first, but she could find whatever information she needed in their computers, and probably only really needed one of them alive to open up the system.
Nodding to herself, mind made up, Sofia drew the rifle once again and made her way into the treeline.
The first thing that was truly notable about the forest in question was its color. Even here, in the shadows and out of the sun, the trees and plants were colorful enough to make Sofia's head throb a little. She tried to remember if this was how the world had looked before the Hammer of Dawn strikes, but she didn't think so: in her memories, the colors had seemed much more muted and less, well, loud.
The plants weren't just green, they were GREEN, like some jerk had distilled all the green in the world into its final form, then painted everything with it. The brown, even though it was technically a cool color, was just as loud as the green, and it was as omnipresent. Vines with silver spikes, the occasional flower, the ferns: the whole place was like a technicolor nightmare. This was nothing like the drab gray-and-brown city that she had lived in for so many years, where the plant life had primarily been composed of long-dead lambent stalks. In some manner, she was actually enjoying the first signs of plant life that didn't outright want to kill her: really, had she still been in Halvo Bay, she had no doubt that she would have been attacked at least twice by now, either by Locust or by other Stranded. In fact, she was growing rather suspicious of the fact that she hadn't encountered any living things besides the aforementioned probably-not-lethal plants and numerous small animals that scurried, rustled and generally tempted her with the promise of fresh meat.
Still, she did not particularly have anything else to do or anywhere else to go, so she continued tromping through the strange forest, Lancer in hand. After all, she had taken down bigger things than anything that lived in this forest, and would not hesitate to do so again: she'd show THEM who was the bigger predator. There was a reason that humanity had ruled the planet, back in the days before the Locust, and by God, she was going to teach anything even remotely hostile that she encountered exactly why her species were apex super-predators.
This mentality held strong in the face of the darkened forest, and was only reinforced when a series of growls reverberated through the air, and a number of vaguely wolf-shaped figures stepped out of the underbrush. Sofia grinned vampire wide: this? This was going to be fun.
Kudzu Vine was a gardener of no small talent. Her garden, small as it was, was filled with a number of herbs and various plants that were at least decently difficult to care for, and only grew in the soil of the Everfree. Thus, Kudzu was also an excellent fighter, experienced from years in service with the Royal Guard, a necessity if she wanted to live here, even on the very edge of the foreboding forest. This is where the trees came thick and ancient, and magic, wild and untamed, came whispering about their branches while shadows moved in the dark.
Of course, the produce more than made up for the risk: the plants were difficult to grow, requiring the touch of an Earth pony, and, again, only grew in the Everfree: this, combined with the naturally timid nature of many ponies, made said plants rare and relatively valuable on the open market. Supply and demand, and she was one of possibly five suppliers, each of them experienced fighters. It was a common joke among the Guard that talented officers and soldiers with a special talent in plants would never retire: they simply moved from fighting enemies of Equestria to fighting the Everfree itself. Different battleground, but a battleground all the same.
In truth, Kudzu loved fighting as much as she loved gardening: of course she could have entered her early retirement and gone to work on a normal farm somewhere, but she would have gone completely crazy with boredom after a month. She just wasn't happy unless she got into at least one scrap a week, and once per day was most preferable. By the time that she had officially announced that she was leaving the Guard, the rumor had circulated for at least a week, and she had discovered- to her chagrin and their amusement- that her fellow officers had already selected a patch of land for her, right on the edge of one of the thicker parts of the forest itself.
She had happily accepted, without a second thought.
And she loved it, too: she fought a variety of monsters almost daily, and loved every second of every fight. She was sharp as she had been in her days with the Guard- sharper, perhaps, for experience. She barely used the enchanted armor and spear that hung next to the door in her small house anymore, relying on quick reflexes and her ability to naturally channel Earth pony magic to harden her skin to keep her safe, and they had yet to let her down. She was fast, nimble and monstrously strong, but- more than that- she felt good.
However, this had been a slow week: she had faced down a curious manticore earlier that week- which had been an excellent fight- but no others had come from the woods to challenge her. She was feeling bored, really, and could use a distraction. So, when a small group of three timberwolves came screeching out of the forest in pain and apparent fear, she felt her blood rise in excitement.
She had been caring for one of the herbs when they had come: before they had even time to recognize the house, garden and yard for what they were, she had vaulted over the short fence and sunk a trowel, which she had been using not moments ago to shift dirt around, into the left eye socket of the timberwolf in the lead.
Being magical creatures constructed of wood refuse, timberwolves have no brain, nor nervous system. In fact, they entirely lack the physiology of most living creatures, instead replacing it with the ambient magic of Equestria, which flowed through them in a manner similar to blood and allowed their consciousness to use strings of magic to control their limbs and even, in rare cases of exceptionally intelligent entities, cast basic spells. However, a timberwolf's seat of consciousness is still their head, most particularly a single object that the entity itself is focused around.
Thus, Kudzu, with the momentum of her quick sprint and fall behind her, sent the trowel crashing through what stood in for the brain case in a timberwolf, completely destroying the small pinecone that was this creature's base artifact. Nigh instantaneosly, the wolf creature was reduced to a pile of limp wooden scraps in the vague shape of a wolf, which feel limp at Kudzu's feet as she pulled the trowel from its head with her teeth, hooves spread in a battle stance and eyes ablaze.
The other two wolves, completely surprised by this new and completely unexpected threat, skidded to a stop. One of them, younger and far less experience, immediately spun in place and ran back towards the forest, completely forgetting why the three had fled it in the first place in its blind panic.
The second, however, was an older veteran of many battles: scars littered the wood that constructed its body, and there were different colored patches were chunks had been torn off and replaced. This was one of those rare and dangerous timberwolves with the resourcefulness and intelligence to realize the magic that coursed through its false wooden veins, and use it to effect. It drew upon the power now, collecting and concentrating it: while it recognized that its opposite was just as experienced as it was, if not more so, the timberwolf half hoped to distract her long enough for it to escape. Even if it did not, facing her would be a better option than sticking around and facing what was coming.
With a sound that, to any observers, would exactly resemble that of a cat horking up a particularly large and unpleasant hairball, the timberwolf spat a small fireball against its opponent. Kudzu, for her part, practically blurred to the right, easily side-stepping the small ball of flame, which impacted harmlessly against the ground, leaving a small blackened crater as it exploded. As soon as she was sure that she was out of the way, she dashed straight for the wolf, intending to negate the advantage of range that magic provided it. The wolf, recognizing her intentions, dashed to her left, attempting to get around her and strike from behind: Kudzu was having none of that.
Shifting trajectory in the middle of the dash, she threw her weight sideways and into the wolf as it passed. The wood nearly buckled from the sheer strength she had put into the move, and the unfortunate timberwolf was sent sprawling on the ground. Before it could even realize what happened, she drove the trowel down through the bottom of its chin and into the brain pan, destroying the entity's anchor. Unfortunately, this move bent the poor abused gardening tool, which lodged itself in the head of the downed creature and refused to be removed. Grunting in annoyance, but very aware that there was still a third enemy to deal with, Kudzu left the tool-turned-weapon where it was and turned to face the third.
The third timberwolf in question was currently frozen, rigid in absolute, all-devouring panic. Kudzu had just enough time to comprehend the emotions that must have been passing through the young entity's head before, with a roar, a large black something cut right through its head, demolishing it before it had even the chance to react. The black whatever-it-was made its way right through the ex-timberwolve's head and neck easily, before the roaring suddenly ceased and it was withdrawn, leaving the body to return to its constituent parts. Kudzu, sticking to her battle stance and ready to react, raised her eyes to the black-armored biped, which shouldered what she was now sure was a weapon, before grinning and saying... something.
Kudzu really wished that she had worn her armor today.