Blindsided

“You know, Lazuli, they say you have to run sometimes before you can walk.”

“Well given I already know how to walk,” Lazuli said, stretching out her wings and ruffling her bright blue mane as she got into a position ready to take off. “I think I’m perfectly fine with running.”

“I meant that you should really take it slow with this one…” The voice speaking directly into her ear said, obviously a stallion and rather annoyed with her. “You can’t just fly in and take them out, it’d be suicide.”

“I calculated it.” Lazuli assured him. “In exactly two minutes he’ll be walking out from the building and crossing into the airship.”

“Which is bulletproof.” Her commanding officer warned.

“Buuut the air between the ship and the building isn’t. He has to walk twenty feet to get to the pad.”

“Lazuli, that-“ There was a moment of silence, then a resigned sigh. “Don’t get yourself killed. I’ll trust your judgement because I can’t see what you’re seeing, but you’d better know what you’re doing.”

Lazuli’s tail reached up to the side of her head and clicked off the earpiece embedded in her ear. She shifted, making sure her black combat suit was properly fitted around her legs before she ran forward, flapped her wings a few times and took off into the air.

As she leapt over the edge of the rock formation she had been standing on, the compound she had been observing came into view below. A blemish in the middle of the forest, cleared completely of any plantlife and covered in concrete and metal with no sign of the natural world allowed in past the tall electrified fences. She was just glad that her suit made her almost undetectable to any magical sensors, which were still used instead of the more recently developed electric variety that searched for body heat rather than innate bodily energy.

Lazuli’s bright blue wings made it quite easy to spot her normally, so she made sure to cover them with black membranes whenever she was working. The only real exposed part of her was her head, but it wasn’t visible from below, and at night she was virtually invisible as it was.

She had neglected to tell her superior that she had no intention of using a gun, as she only ever carried a small sidearm that she could clip to her tail to fire. Her only main weapon was the sharp blade that attached to the spaded tip of her tail, allowing her to fight with her strongest appendage in a way that most ponies didn’t know a proper counter to. She wasn’t planning to ambush her target on the walkway either – the airship wouldn’t get very far, she thought to herself.

Lazuli gently alighted on one of the taller buildings near the airship’s pad, her mane gently bristling in the cool night breeze. It made sense that an arms dealer would leave at night – less chance of ponies trying to do exactly what Lazuli planned to in less than a minute.

Her eyes stared, unwavering, at the door to the right side of the walkway that led across to the airship. As the door began to open, she started moving.

She knew that she couldn’t make a mistake. Dropping from the building, she spread her wings out and soared over to the airship itself, flaring her wings out to the sides to slow herself down before latching to the back of the vehicle. Her hooves briefly lost purchase, before a low hum from her suit had them thunk back into place. With the magnets holding her front hooves to the ship, she allowed herself to relax slightly. All of this had taken place so quickly that her target had yet to make it halfway across the walkway, accompanied on both sides by large stallions that Lazuli couldn’t properly make out under their heavy armour. She also couldn’t see the target, but she knew he was there.

With a gentle wiggle to adjust her hind legs, she took a deep breath, hearing the airship’s doors hiss open and then shut a few seconds later. The force of the ship lurching off of the landing pad nearly dislodged her, but the magnetic hold managed to keep her stuck to it. If anyone saw her hanging from the back of the ship, they didn’t trigger any alarms, and she was fine with that.

Once it had gotten far enough from the compound that she was confident she could move around, she started to climb up to the side door. Using her magnetic suit implants to climb was dangerous, she knew, since every time she moved a hoof she had to disengage that magnet to re-attach it in a new spot. Her hind legs lacked the same implants, so she had to use her tail – fitted with a weak magnetic implant that let her pick things up – to shimmy along the outside of the ascending craft. Once she reached the door, she swung herself to the side so she was dangling underneath it, then reached up with her tail and pulled it open it took a fair bit of effort, essentially having to wedge her tail into the space between the door and the fuselage to pry it open.

When the door swung open, the guards sitting in the ship were immediately alerted. One of them shimmied to the edge and peered over to see what caused it to open, and Lazuli made her move from there. Swinging her whole body backwards, her hind legs wrapped around the stallion’s neck and yanked him out of the ship, plummeting about two hundred feet to the forest floor below. He must not have been a Pegasus, or if he was, he was really bad at flying. She used the follow-up momentum to swing herself completely into the ship, landing on all fours and brandishing her tail above her head much like a scorpion.

Her target was plain to see – the weakest of the stallions sitting in the seats for sure, wearing a tacky beige suit and surrounded by bodyguards. His fur was deep blue, his mane a bright silvery colour with piercing blue eyes that, at the moment, looked terrified. One of the guards took a swing at Lazuli with a sword held in his magical grip, and all she needed to do was duck to the side and underneath him. Being shorter, she brought her entire body under him, working her head up into his stomach and throwing him backwards, out of the airship like the previous one.

The suited unicorn moved as far to the back of the ship as he could. Lazuli moved forward quickly, ducking under a hoof aimed at her head from another guard. The enclosed space made it very difficult for the stallions to hit her without hitting each other, which only worked to her advantage. She dodged to the side as another one tried to stab at her with a blade, her own tail turning his sword to the side and stabbing straight through his armour, into his chest. Not bothering to check if he was dead, she pulled her tail out and whipped a hind leg behind her, catching another guard in the stomach as he reared up on his hind legs to bring both forelegs down on her. He crumpled, tumbling to the floor as the whole ship lurched from the amount of movement in the back.

Another attempt at an attack came from a Pegasus in the corner, swinging at her with a blade clipped into his wing. She narrowly avoided it slicing through her cheek, skimming the fur and hair on her head before she grabbed his wing in her teeth and ripped the blade off. The stallion tried to lash out with a hind leg, but she ducked beneath it and rammed her head between his legs – that made him fall like a sack of potatoes immediately, and finished off the guards in rather quick order.

With the guards dead, dying or incapacitated, Lazuli stepped over the crumpled one and stopped in front of her target, brandishing a pistol at her with his magic.

“T-“ The stallion swallowed, his pupils the size of pinpricks as he held the weapon in front of him. “Take one more f-fucking step and I’ll kill you.”

“Try it.” Lazuli growled. Her voice was gruff, not by choice but by happenstance. She liked to think it added to her intimidation factor, but it didn’t really matter here. “The ship’s moving, you’re shaking. You’ll miss and I’ll kill you with a lot more mess than I was planning.”

Still he didn’t listen to her. She heard the click of the hammer being pulled back only milliseconds before the trigger was pulled, a loud BANG nearly deafening them both in the confined space. The bullet ricocheted off a wall behind her and buried itself in the floor harmlessly, but Lazuli was on him before either one could figure out where it went. She tackled him to the ground, grabbing the gun from him and throwing it out of the ship before sinking the sharpened blade of her tail into his chest.

“G-…gg…nngh…” He struggled to breathe, let alone speak, clutching desperately at the powerful tail pushing the weapon into him. She said nothing, her eyes locked onto his as the life slowly drained from his eyes and blood seeped out of the wound around her tail. With a sickly crunch she wrenched her blade to the side, causing more internal damage to make death as quick as possible before yanking her tail back, dripping with blood.

She reached up with her hoof to tap the earpiece at the side of her head, breathing heavily. “Steel, it’s done. Heading back now.”

“You did it?” Her commander paused, then grumbled slightly. “Alright, good. Get out of there and report in.”

Lazuli walked back to the still open door, spreading her wings and peering outside. The airship was hovering, no longer moving forward as the pilot presumably was about to come back to investigate. Briefly she considered taking him out too – but she only had one target. The guards had just been in the way. She didn’t need to kill another pony who wasn’t a threat to her. She shrugged, and dove out the door into the night sky.

The flight from the Equestrian east was long and uneventful. Flying all the way from the areas near Baltimare to Canterlot was difficult even for a physically fit mare like Lazuli, but as she arrived at the sprawling Equestrian capital she couldn’t help but feel reinvigorated. The city had become more friendly to the average citizen as of late; still frou-frou, for sure, but more affordable. It had even gained a substantial farmer population, though farming space was limited on top of a mountain of course. Lazuli herself even lived in the suburban district, despite not being an extremely rich mare from her work with the military.

As usual, she had to radio in to remind the base not to shoot her when she approached. A Pegasus, of course, would never have to do such a thing, but Draconies were essentially considered enemy combatants in every way except officially. Technically the two nations weren’t in active conflict, but a Dracony flying to Canterlot without proper warning was seen as aggression in any other context.

Lazuli knew she had to head to the base before she could go anywhere else, but it was all normal protocol for her. Land at the airfield, walk through the airlock to have her suit removed and her body cleaned of blood and any other substances that might have contained diseases or poisons, then exit the decontamination room to get to debriefing. This, too, was simply a routine. She met with her commander, Steel Resolve – a hulking Pegasus that was large in all three senses – he was as tall as a draft horse, bulky as one too, covered in grey fur with a bright silver mane and tail. His mane was a flat-top, buzzed to a certain length every week to maintain his look. It was clear that the lack of actual combat in recent years had added substantially to his weight; there was a reason he refused to wear his armour anymore.

The meeting was quick to start, since she had little to say. As she stepped into the debriefing room, Steel stood up from his chair – which groaned almost in relief at his unreasonable size being lifted from it – to greet her. “Glad to see you made it back safe, Lazuli.” He said, his voice deep and confident.

“Thanks, Steel.” She smiled softly, sitting down in the chair across from him while he returned to his.

“So I was reviewing the audio recorded through your headset and it’s pretty clear you killed the right guy…just to be sure though, did you bring the necklace?”

“Yeah. Handed it to the mares in forensics before I stepped into the chamber.”

“Good.” Steel leaned back in his chair, one hoof draped over the back. Lazuli had to admit that the sight of his stomach so large, so different from the chiseled form she recalled on the battlefield, was almost alien to her. “Now…about your next mission…”

“You promised, remember?”

“I know, I know.” Steel nodded slowly. “And you’ll get it, don’t worry. Your next one isn’t for two weeks, like we agreed. It’s not healthy to have you going out every day anyway.” He reached over to the table between them and picked up a clipboard, one that looked almost comically small in his large hooves. “But…I should warn you this one might be a bit different from the usual.”

“That’s what you said two weeks ago.” Lazuli kicked one hind leg over the other, sitting back in her own chair. “But I’d appreciate if you actually told me something about this one instead of springing it on my for the first time in the first briefing a day before the mission starts.”

“…Right.” Steel snorted, though the annoyed gesture did very little to intimidate Lazuli. “You’re going to head into a warehouse in Manehatten and take a look around inside. We’d prefer if you don’t cause too much ruckus – we believe this is the staging area for a new organization led by an unknown entity.”

“So intel gathering, right?”

“Just about. I don’t expect you to do much besides taking a look and seeing what’s happening in there. We’re not sure exactly what this group’s about, or what they’re even called, we’ve just received word from the Manehatten PD and they’re worried it might be bigger than just a local gang.”

“…And they need the federal intelligence agencies to handle this?”

“We think it’s best if we take a look.”

“That doesn’t really make sense, Steel.”

“The Manehatten PD thinks the benefactor for this…organization might be paying off some of their cops. They need an impartial group to go in.”

“If they’re being paid off, how can we trust them telling us to go in?”

“I didn’t say I trust them completely, but I have my orders.”

“Alright…” Lazuli glanced over her shoulder, then sighed. “This doesn’t seem like something that can wait two weeks. Why don’t you skip to the part where you ask me to do it sooner?”

“I wasn’t-“ Steel clenched his jaw, then crossed his forelegs. “Alright. Fine. When I got this assignment I’d already promised to give you two weeks of rest.” He paused, then raised his voice a bit. “I honestly don’t understand what you plan to do. Cirrus still has to work, you know. She doesn’t have the same circumstance as you, and you and I both know you only really need a few days.”

“Maybe she and I want to spend some time together after work.” Lazuli snorted. “And I can’t do that if I’m off in Manehatten scoping out some gang den.”

“Don’t put it off like that, it’s more important than a gang’s hideout.”

“So you know more about it then.”

“…” Steel paused in a position with his hoof raised as if he was preparing to speak, then petered out a bit. “Alright…fine, we know a bit more than that. Ponies around the warehouse were seen with cybernetic limbs.”

“Cybernetics?” Lazuli blinked, then tilted her head. “Those are only really any use with the military versons, though. Civilians don’t have that kind of tech yet.”

“That’s what I said, but according to eye witnesses these limbs functioned just like regular ones. We’re worried they might be illegally experimenting in there – possibly even on ponies.”

“Right…and you planned not to tell me this?”

“I was going to tell you when the mission started.”

“You mean like I just told you not to keep doing.”

“…Yes.” Steel grunted.

“Commander, respectfully, you can be a dickwad sometimes.” She pushed her chair back, standing up and looking the much taller stallion in the eye. “I’ll do the mission in two days instead of two weeks. I plan to spend tonight with my wife, thank you very much.”

“Reasonable.” Steel said, though he didn’t sound happy about it. “You know, if the two of us hadn’t fought together-“

“I wouldn’t get away with this, I know. But I’m pretty sure if you didn’t know me this well you wouldn’t be hiding information from me about my missions.”

Steel didn’t have a response to that. “You’re dismissed.” He said finally, standing up to his full height – on which Lazuli only reached his chest – and followed her out of the room. They both went opposite directions down the hallway.