Episode 1: All beginnings have a beginning
1
I combat rolled through the door, ending upright on one knee and foot, quickly bringing up my two SMGs and unloading into a few of the thugs, the twin barrels on each relieving the dual mags of their lethal charges.
2
The remaining people inside the room started shouting, taking cover and started to return fire, as I flipped a nearby table.
3
I could feel the fire of the rounds tearing through my makeshift cover.
“I could really use that help now!” I screamed down into the comms device in my ear at Muse.
4
“On it, Harmony,” she stated in that posh voice of hers, before it turned positively childish,”ooooooooooo, this is going to be so much fun!”
5
A loud bang rung out, followed within .2 seconds by another, as Muse’s sniper fire took out two opponents.
6
With three more falling to the sniper fire, the thugs stopped returning fire, shouting at each other, giving me a chance to run above cover and take out my Hydron Pumper.
“Arlea, targets!’ I shouted to our computer person.
7
“Got them, and uploaded” she replied, causing the implants in my eyes to suddenly gain the positioning information of our foes.
8
I unloaded with practiced clockwork motions a single, 20 cm wide pointed shell into the remaining foes, blowing their brains and many other pieces of viscera across the room, as the shells tore through both the cover and heads of them all.
“9 seconds and done.” I stated into the comma device. “Arlea, you have the location of the target?”
“Yes, yes I do” she replied nervously. She was always the most pacifistic one of us all, and thus didn’t like to see death.
“Very well, both you and Muse need to get in here and help find it.” I ordered down to them, to which I got a reply in the affirmative. First one through the door was Muse, wearing tattered jeans, simple grey trainers, a jumper and short sleeved jacket, having a ponytail of red hair, and blue eyes that seemed to light up with glee at the “condition” of the room. The one and a half metres of sniper, folded in half upon her back, held by a hoop of hardlight, gripped by a hand she had casually on her shoulder.
“Oooooohhh, so simply exquisite. You really outdid yourself this time, Sir Tyran Harmony” she stated with that fake posh voice of hers.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a psychopathic artist, who loves my cacophonies of death and violence. I get it. But I’d careful about what you say unless you don’t want a decent meal, seeing as that tends to be Arlea's punishment if one of us gets too into the violence.” I warned her, to which she just shivered. Down here, in the lower echelons of this so called “Elysium”, also known as the Walking City. It was a literal dump. All trash from the middle and upper echelons made their way down hear, leading the survivors of the lower echelons to live in slums surrounded by trash yards. As such, without a decent cook, it is nearly impossible to have a decent meal, but luckily, Arlea is one. Speaking of which, she came in, wearing her usual puffy coat and skirt, white trainers, her pink hair down to her shoulders, with one clump of strands coming down her face, her green eyes fixed clearly on the mini computer in her hands, both as to not lose the signal on it, and so she would not need to look at the blood and bodies around us.
She moved deliberately behind a counter with us following. Taking a moment to perceive the ground, she moved a rug, and opened the trapdoor hidden underneath it.
“The target is just ahead once you’ve moved down the trapdoor” her voice explained, to which Muse and I merely nodded. I took out my sonic from its sheath, just below the SMGs on my hips, and fingered the trigger on it, as I grabbed the ladder leading down from the trapdoor, and slid down into the inky depths.
As I detached off of the ladder and landed on the smooth flooring, the apertures in my eyes whirred, as they took in the low light, allowing me to see more, I took a few steps forward, hearing a thump behind me, followed quickly by another.
“Jeez, its so dark down here.” Lamented Muse, as she took out a flashlight, and switched it on, illuminating the short passageway ahead of us.
“Ahhhhh, quit yer bellyachin',” I grunted.
“Oh its all well and good for you isn’t Sir Harmony, with your fancy eyes that let you see in the dark” she quipped back. I merely grunted in annoyance and started moving forward. I knew she meant nothing by it, after all, the three of us had been friends in this hellhole for as long as we could remember. We were basically siblings at this point. As we moved forward, the passageway opened up into a spherical chamber, with a catwalk into the middle, upon which there was a platform on the end. Upon this platform, was a containment machine, which held a glass sphere that held three gems, each clear, but pulsing with different energies. One pulsed pink and white, another purple and yellow, and the last blue and orange.
“Well, we’ve done everything together up to this point. And since this could be our first real step to fighting the corruption, I say we grab this glass together” I stated, looking back at my friends, who merely nodded in agreement. We all went further, and after counting down from three, grabbed the glass sphere together. Suddenly, there was a rainbow pulse from the sphere, and everything blanked out.
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A group of six friends descended into the darkness of the cave. They had been here a few times before, mainly to give back the elements to the tree of harmony, and in order to open the chest said tree gave them in order to defeat Tirek. These friends were of course Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash. Twilight had felt a strange surge of energy emanate from the cave which contained the tree.
“Careful girls, we don’t now what we’re dealing with here” warned the purple alicorn, honestly worried of what could be ahead.
“Pssht, whatever it is, I’m sure I could take it!” boasted the rainbow maned cyan pegasus.
“Ah have to agree with dash on this one sugarcube, ah'm sure we can deal with anything that comes our way. Ah mean, we dealt with Tirek after all” said a certain orange earth pony.
“Plus, something that seems to be coming from something as fabulous as the Tree of Harmony can’t all that bad. Now if only it would relocate itself to somewhere a bit more…worthy of itself, everything would be well with the world” stated a white unicorn with a certain level of contempt.
They continued walking in silence for a bit, if in silence means five of them didn’t talk while the pink earth pony spurted any number of things out at an insane rate of being on the verge of gibberish. The soon found themselves in the presence of The Tree Of Harmony, and felt the sudden urge to be extremely respectful in front of the crystalline blue tree.
“Now, if we can only figure out why we’re here” muttered Twilight, which seemed to make the tree comply. A sudden rainbow light suddenly started to grow inside the tree, causing Applejack and Rainbow Dash to take run ahead of their friends, ready to protect them against whatever came from the tree. Suddenly the light shifted, and a rainbow pulse emanated from the tree, and three gems shot out. Two shot out in a wide arc, pinning into the wall, while one pinned itself directly between Applejack and Rainbow Dash, causing lightning to blue lightning to arc to the former, and orange lightning to arc to the latter, as they screamed in the unimaginable pain that now coursed through their bodies. There was a sudden flash of light again, and instead of the two mares in front of them that they expected, they all gasped, as there was now one, passed out on the floor.
She had an orange coat, with orange wings that faded to a cyan blue. The tail was blond with blue lightning bolt shaped streaks through them, and the mane was blond, except for the numerous rainbow coloured highlights littered it, slightly faded. The strangest thing was the large metal block on her back, and two differently shaped blocks, blocking view of her cutie mark, as well as a strange looking knife nearby. They simply stared in awe at what transpired before them, before snapping out of it as they heard her groan, signifying her waking.
Author's Note
I've been having trouble, and decided to write a different story. This by no means means I'm giving up on In Twilight's Shadow. This idea just came to me and I thought, "why not?". So I wrote it over the next few hours. Hope you enjoy.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6wIxC66FLYfQzs4nPzrZ_Xs-D8p2_ymByUs6vxnJtsbtM6wzVvw
The image is not owned by me, and all credit goes to the original creator, but the top one is sorta how I imagined this mystery made, who honestly is probably not that hard to figure out.