Manehattan Vice

Awaking in my bed, I was filled with nervous anticipation on the day of the briefing for the raid on Andy Quill's residence. I was almost literally chomping at the bit with anticipation for the upcoming action, trotting in place to get the blood flowing for some early morning callisthenics. Afterward, however, I took a look out my window and saw Diamond doing some Close Quarters Battle drills, I figured she could use a sparring partner so I opened the window and hopped down.

"Hey, you ready to knock some sense into the target?" I asked her as I approached, cracking my neck.

"I was born ready, sweetheart." Said Diamond, firing off a roundhouse kick straight at my head.

"Oh, yeah? Where were you born?" I asked, weaving under Diamond, giving her a 'come get some' gesture in response. She smirked, at the idea of getting a competent sparring partner.

"Mean streets of Cloudsdale, making money off of pimping my two girls, Noelle and Molly." Diamond said, giving me a one-two punch. those are presumably the nicknames of her fists, based off of that little remark.

"So, taking dives?" I asked in a cocky tone, having blocked both punches with relatively straight forward ease.

At that moment, like a strike of lightning, she headbutted me in the sternum, knocking the wind out of me and sending tumbling to the ground. she cheekily remarks "No, winning them." She offers me a strong hoof, adding "I assume you'll want me to take point then?"

Grumbling, I take her hoof, getting back up. "Yeah, but I'll be the first to ask him questions", I say with a snarl. "I know how to get weaklings like him to break with relative ease."

“Oh yeah?” Diamond asked, folding her muscular arms and giving a cocky smirk. “What makes you think you’re tough enough to do that? I bet you’re not even brave enough to wear a dress on this mission.”

Dumbfounded by that dare, I replied “Really? You wanna pull a stunt like that on the mission?” I gave an incredulous eye roll. I’m always willing to follow through on a dare, but really, a mission that is critical to national security is not the time to mess around.

“Really.” She said, her smile turning into genuine elation. “The van that Talon was able to secure was an old news van, so I said I’d go in as a reporter, and if you’re brave enough to spend time with, you won’t object to me prettying you up so you can pose as my equally beautiful camerawoman. That is if you are brave enough.” Diamond says, playfully elbowing me in the chest, my diaphragm seizing up reflexively from her earlier headbutt.

“Okay, sure, you got yourself a deal then, may the best stallion, or, mare, win,” I say, with a bit of confusion about the social protocol, but I finish with a badass lean against the wall and folding my arms. There’s never a wrong time to try something new, so I am going to do that at the briefing today.

Diamond burst out laughing. “Okay, I can’t believe I managed to get you to agree to that,” after a few seconds she was able to recompose herself, grabbing my hand arm firmly and rushing me in the kitchen with excitement. “Come, I’ll make us a drink I invented called a cherry bomb. It’s a rum and cherry cola.” Admittedly, that did sound like an interesting combination, and sure, I’m a special forces guy, if I want to drink in the morning, I can. It’s always afternoon somewhere right?

We went into the safehouse, I sat at the table while she poured me got two glasses and poured both of us a cherry bomb each. She picked hers up and held it from under, giving a kind of rough sophistication to her. “So, we’ll have to coordinate our colors, guess us girls get to have a briefing of our own huh?” She asked with another heartfelt giggle, I simply rolled my eyes let out a quiet groan. For some reason I didn’t quite object to being called a girl, perhaps it didn’t register in my mind at the moment?

Soon, however, Diamond was able to recollect herself and start talking with a slightly more serious tone. "Sorry, but yeah, I'm gonna go with a teal dress and some teal eyeliner, I think for you, we'd best go with a red dress and eyeliner, plus some grooming. I'm not a plastic surgeon, but I can get you close enough he'll be none the wiser." Diamond took a sip from her glass before continuing. "Plus, worse comes to worst, we'll have the camera running at all times, he won't be liable to risk criticizing us on camera, and we can blackmail him for the information from there. Trust me, video evidence of him calling bullshit on us is not going to look good for his journalistic career." Diamond set her glass down on the table before asking me "what do you think?"

My first reaction was to drink the contents of my glass in one big gulp, Diamond appeared incredulous and poured me another. "Okay, first of all, we don't have enough time to chop off my McNuggets in a way that won't cause systemic shock," I chug my drink again before I resume speaking, "and secondly, isn't hormone therapy dangerous? I don't want to endanger my long term ability to serve this unit or stress biggins out anymore..." My thoughts were interrupted as Diamond proceeded to grab my hoof, and I could instantly feel myself calm down.

"Relax, you're taking this way too far. Not all trans ponies take hormones." Diamond said, before giving a sly, blushy grin. "Plus, as I'm sure you saw, some of us are quite fine with our anatomy, cause I certainly am." She let go of me and screwed the caps on to both of her beverages. "We shouldn't get too wasted, we'll need to be able to stay sober long enough for the briefing. We'll discuss what we'll do for dresses after." Diamond said, getting up from her seat and walking off with her glass bottles in hand.

However, I simply moved on over to the worn-out sofa and thought about what Diamond had told me, having brought back a memory of Aurora in the process. I was sitting in the back of the cruiser, next to Aurora. I was trying my hardest at this point to try and cheer her up from her horrific night a few days, and despite it all, she seemed to be getting worse and worse despite my best efforts to try and cheer her up. How I would lash out at her for never appreciating my attempts ar what I thought was kindness, trying to make her life better. I burst into tears thinking about how I treated her.

Soon I was able to wipe the tears away because that’s when it dawned on me. I did genuinely treasure those moments with her, where I did her makeup for hours sometimes, always wanting to go dress shopping with her, and the happy moments were genuinely happy. Maybe Diamond is on to something, maybe I have been burying myself for far too long, perhaps embracing this new side of me could help me out so much in being the pony that deserved Aurora.

After a minute or so, I took my seat at the dining room table, I was grateful it was dusted off by now. I had never realized how much I missed the rich, dark mahogany wood, or the cushioned oak seats. Our Commander Buckshot, however, took the largest chair available for himself, a big, pointy, master-crafted, slightly bejewelled oak and fabric chair, the kind that would sell who was in charge of this household. And even though I once sat in that chair, there is no one I'd want to see sit in that chair right now more than Buckshot.

"Listen up boys and girls. This is what Corporal Talon was able to gather from last night's reconnaissance, seems SEALs like him don't need to sleep much after all." Buckshot said in an authoritative tone as he placed a dossier of digital photos on the table, all of them consisting of everything we knew on Andy Quill's place of residence, mainly photos of ingress or egress points, such as doors and windows of all stories, but it also included all the building schematics.

"The good news is that the no-knock warrant was given the all-clear by the magistrate" Said Biggins in a reassuring tone. Buckshot patted him on the head, while Biggins simply smiled in a manner that caused his eyes to scrunch up in a super cute manner, it made me smile seeing these two brothers be so close with one another, it seems Biggins was right that Buckshot needs this little beacon of joy in his life.

"The bad news, however..." Buckshot began to say, as Corporal Talon quietly pulled more photos out from the folder. Photos of armed gun-mares, adorned in Nightmare Moon iconography, entering the house. There are also photos of chemicals I've never seen before. Phosphoric rocks, carbon, silica. There is no drug I know of that could be made with that, not even desperate meth-heads have tried that, and believe me, if you knew about any combination of the household ingredients that go into making crystal meth, you wouldn't want to get even remotely close to any weirdos missing their teeth.

Buckshot simply gave a nod to Talon as he recollected his thoughts to resume the briefing. "The bad news, however, is that The Balefire Division just moved into our AO, and shot Andy Quill dead." Most of the room gasped at the sudden wrench thrown into their plans, except of course for Diamond who simply smashed her hooves on the table in anger. I, however, simply stood there in shock. Did Iron Loyalty truly betray me? Did I compromise the mission? Soon the briefing table erupted into a blur of fears, anger, and accusations. I sat there quietly, believing I was the one responsible for this.

As the world was beginning to feel hazy from all the stress, everything stopped with a deafening loud bang, we looked towards Buckshot's table, where was standing up, glaring at all of us, smoke faintly rising from his pistol barrel, before he holstered it and resumed the meeting. "Irrespective of how y'all might think there was some kind of leak, we have no evidence of one yet, aside from us here at this here very table, the Director is the only other pony in the know about this op, so it sure as heck ain't him, who tipped them off. As far as we can tell, this was just an unfortunate complication. As I'm sure you're well aware, these things happen in the field sometimes." Said Buckshot, allowing me to exhale as I could feel my anxieties slipping away from me, I'm glad to have a leader who has got everyone's interests at heart.

Buckshot continued with “Our Rules of Engagement only allow one pony in the building.” Buckshot then turned to me and said “Ness, as you are a shotgun expert, you are our best bet for infiltrating. Everyone else will flank around the house and act as your eyes and ears. We need you to isolate and capture the cell leader alive. When you have the cell leader secure, we will fire at will. You are to fire only as a last resort. Understood?” I nodded yes, this was a huge responsibility but I felt confident in my abilities for once.

"Good. Everyone else, I will mark your positions on the GPS, everyone will enter the position at 20:00 sharp. Make whatever preparations you need to in the meantime, but whatever happens, we cannot, and I mean cannot miss our window, otherwise, we might end up screwing the pooch and see Equestria brought to the brink of mega-spell warfare. We'll split up just in the very unlikely chance there is a leak, but everyone is to be radio-ready no matter what, otherwise we might assume something went wrong. Dismissed" said Buckshot, concluding in an authoritative yet caring tone.

With that, I headed up to my room to pack a duffel bag full of the only two things I'd need. My shotgun, a crowbar, and a few fast-changing mags in both buckshot and slugs, while keeping my lucky dragon's breath shell wrapped around my neck for safekeeping. Every major drug deal or other close calls, I've always kept this sweet baby close, just in case I'm scared for my life and need to torch a mother fucker.

As I was locked and loaded and ready for battle, several hours before I needed to even leave, I let my mind wander. It kept coming back to my conversation with Diamond earlier this morning, and after a bit more thinking, a dress would in theory make a lot of sense for what I would be doing. it would be loose, comfy, keep my legs free, as well as just generally taking the heat away from me, Celestia-forbid, we do get compromised. They'll be looking for a mare, not a stallion like me.

Walking past a few clothing stores, I was very deliberate. I was trying to see if there was anything in my style. Unfortunately, most of the dresses shown are too lacy for what is essentially a black op. After about an hour of browsing, I finally find something that looks good on me, it's a simple, black, backless dress. I gave it a feel, made of the finest silk. I quickly tried it on and oh my god, there are no words to describe how good it feels on me. This was what I'd wear to my first mission with my EDF teammates. I tied my hair up in a ponytail, and smiled at the beautiful mare and or stallion I was looking at, I even did a few faux kicks and punches I was so excited. I even paired it with some leopard print stockings to highlight these thick, toned legs.

This was the look of an action hero I always wanted to see. I headed out to near the address and waited for the others, I'd mainly be staying out of sight and playing on my phone, but for some reason, I genuinely didn't mind that. I was just happy being me.