6: PARAMATER_INCREASE_PARSE

Twilight breathed out in a gentle shudder.

She was still feeling the creeping chill of Neurellix from her initial Jackal encounter with the police tickling at the base of her neck, even when they finished dealing with the next group as they moved deeper into gang-controlled territory and away from where most of the peaceable subjects generally lived in Black Crow. Surveying the skirmish now done, she let her forelimbs return to being hooves and lowered back to all fours as the bodysuit finished forming, silently walking down the bloodied street.

It was the third grouping of enemies they'd encountered after joining forces, and the criminals had fallen to a heavy onslaught from their combined might. Although, Garett's disciplined platoon and the Vanguard Muskets made incredibly short work of the Jackal contenders likely more, even with them having already been waiting in decent cover and bearing some excellent firepower. Twilight's vision caught wind of a glint on one of the bodies and picked up a very interesting silver trinket, stowing it away as she slowly trotted between the corpses and found herself briefly examining a large piece of shrapnel. It looked to have formerly belonged to the body of a heavy grenade launcher that had been violently ruptured by musket shot and killed both its wielder and two others besides them, that was some pretty good value. Glancing back, she saw Garett take another purple rose from within his coat and gently lay it atop the gored wreck that had been the Jackal unit's only Gryphon member.

He had an awful lot of those to go around.

It held them up only slightly, but she understood it though; amongst Gryphons it signified a certain respect to fallen enemy soldiers who had chosen to die for their causes. Gwyndolin had spoken to her a few times on the subject of final respect for kin regardless of the path they took in life. She couldn't help but feel it might be slightly tongue-in-cheek like a calling card of some sort, yet Garett's expression was completely sombre and devoid of any humour. Twilight decided not to displease him by making any silly cracks about it, as much as she might want to. Like with the Thestrals and their Mausoleum in the Royal Palace, the Astralists and their shrines to the Diarchy, Gryphons and their revered Drossels, Changelings and their bizarre worship to Death personified, or really any other race; all races had their unique rituals and odd beliefs, and as they weren't harming others with them she was content to let them have such things unmolested by her own jaded personality.

Even though Astralists especially ticked at her.

She still didn't try to dissuade them of the notion that Celestia and Luna weren't deities, even if they might seem it at times with all the good will and noble intentions they spread around. As technology had advanced that belief had only deepend among a number of the populace as well, she still wasn't too sure as to the why of it. Maybe it was due to how little the Sisters appeared in public anymore beyond special events and functions, and how much they worked behind the scenes to keep everything propped up out of sight, giving people everything they could while happening to be elusive. There had to be a link between the belief and modern tech.

She didn't have a proper telecommunication device herself, but just as with the various displays around Canterlot or the equipped AMR billets, ones used for visual imagery and entertainment were the most popular for the public in the modern day. Holovision had long surpassed radios like she or her friends used to have, or a TV like Rainbow Dash had once owned when they were the newest thing on the market, as she'd just had to have the latest gadgets. Dash did actually own a sixty-inch holoscreen now, or she at least did when Twilight had last dropped by to check on her at home however long ago. Personally, she didn't need any of it. HV's might have been very sleek, flat, and fancy, projected with something that skirted the boundaries of the most basic magitech in an impressive display of utilised technology, yet she had access to the Canterlot's extranet and the Farscape Web directly built into her system; a CINI was really all that she needed.

Across the Farscape Web were always dozens of theories as to the Sisters origins, and despite the history she'd been a part of growing up being enshrined in multiple books, museums, and information kiosks completely open to the public, including the Canterlot History Museum itself, it seemed that ponies were content to forget things taught in school and only go looking into online articles and websites that espoused their own ideas of history. She personally took it upon herself to change or remove a number of blatantly false claims and bullshit she knew wasn't true beyond the idea of the Sisters being deities, even if Celestia or Luna didn't care a bit about the things that were believed. Maybe it was a fruitless gesture anyway, but it certainly killed some time when she didn't have much else to do.

She suspected that it was a similar situation with most people that had HVs just being happy to go along and accept what narrow views were shown to them on their screens by curated news stations; because it was easier. It wasn't like the Crown had its own news station dedicated to putting its views out there as it was to be completely impartial in regards to all of the political turmoil pervading the landscape. The partial idea of abolishing the Monarchy and establishing a democracy was a small one constantly touched upon by networks owned by a number of megacorps and even certain nobles, and the only reason she could fathom as to why such a notion had any traction at all amongst the public was because those stations might have been all a number of subjects bothered to watch. She just wished people weren't so quick to jump on a single idea and stick with it so vehemently, if one only subjected themselves to a narrow field of vision they would only see very select information and ignore the bigger picture, and it didn't help that some more influential stations were capable of suppressing smaller ones that didn't hold certain views of whichever megacorp or noble house.

The Crown did have one official channel though. It was used sparingly, but the Sisters did make appearances on HV, primarily with the few yearly celebrations that Equestria held, though only ever speaking evenly on current and past events that they felt may need addressing neutrally or informing the populace of major shifts in the landscape whatever the origin might be. During Celestia's Summer Sun Celebration, Luna's Umbral Festival, Hearth's Warming Eve, or even Nightmare Night on occasion, Celestia would commonly deliver a kind-hearted message to her little ponies and all creatures that would reassure and calm to balance things out, and in all situations Luna just sort of stood there awkwardly, willfully stayed quiet, and did her best impression of a statue while trying to pretend the camera didn't exist. When Celestia finished talking by giving the Crown's hopes of what was to come, Luna would then briefly recite an ancient-Equish passage, they'd both wish Equestria their best, and that would be all anyone would hear for a while until the next major celebration, or if there was a crisis or state of emergency to be spoken on.

Regardless of all the reasons as to the Diarchy's supposed divinity she supposed it all played into one another, really. It was just that Astralists were more fervent about it and it gnawed a little more, so maybe that was what made her uncomfortable with them, though she couldn't be too upset as it was still a form of care and love for their rule, and in the end that was what mattered most.

Even now as they passed through the war-torn streets she spotted a rather well done mural painted onto a side alley wall that they moved past, that depicted the ancient sigil of the Two Sisters circling one another with their celestial bodies. The sigil was mainly used in a more spiritual context these days by Astralists since the symbol of the Crown now was the same as on her duster; the graceful glowing form of an Alicorn. The new emblem was instantly recognisable at a glance and brought the thought of safety and peace to the realm, and fear to criminals.

Twilight didn't deny that it struck differently when a Crown Agent personally bore it, though.

She did prefer the old sigil for its tranquil look, it reminded her of the better days. Those that worshipped the Sisters likely felt the same, and she would guess that the newer generations raised on such beliefs would see it as something wholly different and to aspire to from the modern dystopia they were growing up in. She really hoped more creatures would put their general faith in returning to harmony, but all the Crown could do was provide the basics and hope for the best, they'd never force the issue and that's what set them apart...

Another shiver down her spine. Her system was trying to purge the remnants of the drugs in her bloodstream, and her body was stubbornly clinging onto them along with everything else.

The floating red-tinged smoke from the Blackguard's musket rifles was still clearing as she stepped over the gored body of an Earthen stallion whose enhanced leather jacket was completely in bloody tatters, Nimbus and Sable following Dusky as she came up next to Twilight and tried her best not to breathe too deeply or look ill at the death around her.

"I think these gangers did a lot more harm than you would have, Ma'am." Dusky commented in a hush, moving past the remains of the Jackals. "Those muskets are nasty things, hardly equine."

Twilight grinned a little.

"Don't let the Blackguards hear you calling them gangers, it reminds them of what they've lost." She glanced over her shoulder to Garett as he was checking one of his members wounds, patched up by the dedicated medic of their platoon. She looked back at Dusty with the same grin. "Besides that, look at me; I'd say I'm hardly equine about my methods either."

Dusty's eyes flicked away. "That's... different. You fight for the Princesses."

"Oh? So the end justifies the means if you're on the 'right' side of the equation?" Twilight teased her, smiling wider at Dusty's sudden glare. "Rather Draconian of you, maybe you'd do well in the Dragon Lord's army."

"I'm willing to bet you weren't like you are now, once upon a time. You're a horrendous weapon, a necessary evil to bring harmony back to Equestria, borne of desperation from good-hearted ponies, and I'd hope you chose this out of a desire to see peace." Dusty growled, rather suddenly intense. "Those Gryphons revel in violence, their barbaric traditions dictate their actions. The shard weaponry in your augments are the highly illegal variants, and were you a criminal you'd be getting two to six years for their possession and usage, minimum, but they're weapons made to kill quick and instant, quiet for assassins and the like. They're nasty, but still equine. You said it earlier yourself; everything inside you is made to be decisive, the Princesses wanted you that way. Those Gryphons though? They don't need clawed bullets, and they don't need muskets, they just cause completely unnecessary suffering to their victims."

Well, that was certainly an insight, even if it wasn't entirely accurate.

Twilight chuckled, keeping on down the open street. A horrendous weapon, eh? She'd heard a lot worse, though she couldn't fault Dusty for her opinions. It was young ponies like her that were going to do their part to bring Equestria back to a fair and just society long after Twilight had been killed or passed on.

"You're a good mare, Dusty, just don't let idealism get too much in the way of pragmatism. Sometimes the ends really do justify the means." She paused walking and talking, leaning her head back. "Garett!"

"Agent?" He answered in kind from where he was and quickly trudged over, his older plate armour clinking slightly as his coat billowed behind him. "Have you any concerns?" He asked, clicking his beak as he surveyed the open street up ahead and shifted his Vanguard Musket into both claws, immediately scanning the area for danger.

She shook her head. "Nope. We've been doing just dandy so far." She flashed him a grim smile, and roughly tapped a hoof on top of a corpse. "One for you to sort."

"Ah, a survivor. I shall be quick." Garett noted as the 'corpse' coughed violently, a dark-cherry Earthen mare with an indigo ponytail that was suffering from a number of bleeding shrapnel wounds through her leather armour, and missing a back leg at the gaskin from a musket shot having blown it off.

"Good, I need to speak with my lot." Twilight inclined her head to the three police that looked on with shock as Garett quickly placed down his musket rifle and began to roughly pick the fallen mare up with a claw despite her daunting condition. "You three, come with me."

Dusky blanched at Twilight, taking a step towards the Gryphon as he reached into his coat and fretted back at her. "W-wait, Ma'am! That mare needs medical attention! Just because she's a criminal doesn't mean you can exec-"

"Calm, officer." Garett stated as he pulled free a medical syringe from his coat, carefully injecting it into the mare's neck as she stayed deathly limp, and clicked an order at his medic who promptly rushed over, taking both her and the used needle from Garett's hold and immediately administering life-saving measures. "Generally our rifles don't leave survivors, shock and blood loss kills an enemy more oft than not, however anyone able to survive such a barrage is commonly quite worthy of living."

Twilight nudged Dusky, walking away. "Come on, the Blackguards fix the injuries of those they hit personally, let them work."

"I... yes, Ma'am." Dusky conceded reluctantly. "A-are we moving without the Gryphons?"

Dusty quickly looked away from the medic as he worked to stop the mare's stump from bleeding using a cauterising implement that was rapidly heating up. Looking a little disturbed, she trotted away as the Jackal's whimper turned into a low groan of pain with its application, moving past Nimbus and Sable as they followed Twilight to get beside her.

"Garet'll catch up with me soon." Twilight said, continuing on and taking a serious tone. "You three need to link up with another police unit now a couple of streets down, they're in trouble and requesting backup but I'm guessing the message isn't getting through the network, and there's no way for AMR teams to arrive in time to assist, they'll be overrun by the time one gets there."

"So how do we get there then?" Dusky wondered, glancing down as her eyes slightly unfocusing while she checked her HUD, though came back out looking annoyed as she likely still had no connection through her CINI. Her ears flicked to gunfire in the distance as she looked at Twilight with concern. "And what about the Captain and the others?"

Twilight's horn glowed as she floated out the silver trinket she'd picked up from one of the corpses a few moments ago and placed it in Dusky's hoof, her annoyance at her leg being hoisted up with magic immediately disappearing as she saw it.

"A Captain's badge!" She cried out in shock.

"Jackals like their souvenirs." Twilight said darkly. "If it's your Captain's then it's likely she's still alive; Garret's map doesn't indicate any police deaths around this area. I'm going to go rescue her and your other officers if I can, Garett's going to back me up."

Dusky stowed the badge away in her armour with an annoyed huff. "Damn it. Yes, Ma'am... We're not gonna ignore other units that need assistance."

"What's the plan?" Nimbus spoke up, her voice coarse as a lot of Gryphons' tended to be, she looked between Dusky and Twilight. "Am I flying over a building or something? I can draw fire from up high."

"No, I've plotted the three of you a route that should be clear." Twilight explained, holding up a hoof and projecting her purple-tinted map between the four of them, being sure to look at Sable and include him as he seemed to be quite reserved, even his hoofsteps barely made a sound. The path she'd set out between the gently pulsing buildings and streets glowed gold amidst an immense amount of coloured groupings, a few clustered pockets of pale-silver and charcoal within specific areas were visible amidst an overwhelming amount of cherry-red and baby-blue practically all over the place. "There are a lot of individual battles going on between the gangs, though it's mostly the police in Black Crow who are getting a shitty deal. The Blackguard and the Children are mostly just defending their territory, but the Jackals with their superior numbers are going full out and they're focusing a brunt of their forces against the CPS while they can't raise the horn." She circled in on a cluster of cherry-red encroaching upon a smaller amount of baby-blue, where the golden line was leading to. "This route lets you come out on the Jackal's left flank. If you're careful you can punch a heavy hole and distract them, then the police unit can move in and mop up with you, you got it?"

"I can remember this route, Ma'am." Sable said softly, his eyes glancing up.

"Good stuff." Twilight smiled at him as her eyes travelled over his fit body, he didn't seem too perturbed at her ogling. Letting the map disperse as her foreleg's inner-pattern began to reconfigure itself. It took a second, but then a side panel moved back, and a compact enclosed compartment opened up. She insistently tugged with her magic and with a little effort, lifted out something small and rounded, extremely magically potent, encased in enchanted steel, and glowing orange from its core, and she quickly held it out to Dusky. "You'll need this."

Dusky's eyes widened. "M-ma'am?! That's Class-A illegal ordinance!"

"I know. Told you I had crowd control, didn't I?" Twilight smirked for a second, her face becoming serious in an instant. "Do you want to have a chance of saving your fellow officers? You can't flank a force of twenty with just your two officers here, Dusky. This evens the playing field."

"But... that's a cluster firebomb." She barely whispered, almost sounding as if saying what the dangerous weapon was would mean it would explode in front of her. "I can't carry that."

"I don't care if you or one of these two does, but you're going to need it." Twilight frowned at her, getting slightly irate. "Time isn't a luxury we have. I've already been sidetracked from what I should be doing, and if I'm being honest I'd much rather be checking on my own friend over in Sapling Green instead of doing the CPS's job, but I don't abandon people, and in order to fully succeed in that I need people to work with me, without fucking me around."

She growled in annoyance and quickly shut up as she hadn't meant to raise her voice, it was the myriad of chemicals and oestrogen flowing through her body making her less tolerant the more it all built up, to the point where she was going to snap at the drop of a hat. She really wanted to work out her frustrations with a hot piece of tail, or several.

"Sorry, didn't mean to bite your head off. I know everyone's trying their best and it's not easy, I'm just worried for my friend." Twilight frowned, glancing away from Dusky for a second, looking back quickly enough and fixing her with a stern look. "But for fucks sake, take the fucking grenade."

"I'll take it. I'll fly up high, throw it into them, and snipe it." Nimbus swiftly cut in, nodding at Twilight and outstretching a claw. Twilight sharply appraised her, returning the gesture and levitating it into her grasp, and she carefully placed it inside a spare ammo pouch.

"That'd do it." Twilight nodded with a smirk, liking the simple plan. Sometimes simple was all that was needed, and all the grenade needed was some applied force. Noting Dusky's uncomfortable expression, she turned towards her again. "These days it's often the case that in order to do good in the world, you have to resort to underhoofed tactics."

"It's just so... cruel, and it's illegal. Even criminals don't deserve that." Dusky sighed, glancing between the three, quite displeased no one was raising a fuss, and perhaps thinking she might have picked the wrong officers to tag along with her.

"It is cruel, and very illegal, yet no one that matters gets hurt." Twilight shrugged, the discussion now greatly trying her patience, though mostly keeping her tongue. The Jackals did matter, and on any other day she'd probably go along and speak with Jöhtunn as best she could, then shoot the shit with his followers and offer them better choices if she could help them, but right now they were choosing violence, so violence would be given back wholeheartedly in kind. "Now you have to move quickly, the Jackals are advancing. My system is tied into the network directly so I can monitor the situation in real time, and they don't have long. I've let them know backup is coming for them whenever they get back into the system, so you need to go ASAP."

Dusky sighed heavily, taking her Stryke rifle into her magic field from across her back and keeping it by her side. "Alright... Let's go, you two. I hope I don't lose my job after this, or worse."

"Crown Agent directive. You're acting under my orders. You could kill a noble if I commanded it and nobody could even remotely threaten action against you, the Crown would step in on your behalf and I'd be the one held to account." Twilight informed her with only a little bit of satisfaction.

"I-I don't want to..." Dusky began, but Twilight cut her off.

"Of course, anything that I order you to do has to be within the limits of the Princesses' orders for me to carry out their will." Twilight bumped Dusty's flank with her own. "So I can't exactly ask you to do that, relax."

"Oh, right. Good." Dusty nodded with very little assurance, trying not to glare at Nimbus and Sable's amusement.

"Go on. I'll link up with you later." Twilight tilted her head in the direction she'd laid the path for them to move. "Follow the route, move fast, and don't die."

With a confused frown at the comment, Dusky quickly nodded and set off, motioning Sable forwards to lead them as he'd memorised the route they needed to take. Twilight watched them go before turning back to the Blackguards, going over to where Garett's medic was still tending the fallen Jackal mare, with Garett smartly walking to join her as she approached. The Jackal was partly conscious and wary, in pain, and seeming confused that she'd been saved ─albeit archaically─ by enemy gang members, though didn't deign to question it.

Twilight glanced over the groggy Jackal mare, seeing the numerous wounds from shrapnel had been cleaned out and wrapped up in gauze and bandages. Her leg had likewise been tended to and the bleeding staunched, even if the bandages were slightly discoloured through with pink. It was all rather a bit slapdash and hasty but she seemed like quite a tough mare, she hadn't even passed out from having her stump cauterised, a good show of just how tough Earthen could be.

"Get anything from her, Garett?" She asked the Gryphon, as she then turned and met the Jackal's eye, smiling nonchalantly with the tinge of burning flesh still in the air. "Sorry about your leg, but opposing sides and all that."

"Piss off, Shade." The Jackal grumbled through gritted teeth.

"I did not speak with her, no; I was waiting for you to join me." Garett then replied with a raise of his beak as the Jackal fumed. Switching his musket rifle to the other claw, he unsheathed his trench knife with the other, flipping the blade upward as he pointedly met the Jackal's gaze as it then automatically fixed on the deadly weapon. "Now, miss, I'm not usually in the habit of torturing an unarmed enemy, it goes against what I have been taught with respect to captured combatants, however you are in a unique position to assist my superior in her endeavours and time is limited."

Always so long-winded.

Twilight grinned wickedly at the Jackal's expression, her glazed look having turned to fear as her cherry coat paled considerably more. "We just want to know where the cops are, the ones you or another group of Jackals took hostage."

"I-I don't know that! The boss foisted 'em off to another group!" She insisted, perking up a bit more as Garett brought the blade closer to her chest.

"Well we haven't come across them. No possible ideas? I'd hate for you to get more injured than you already are." Twilight commented, tapping her stump and making her writhe a little, as the medicine the Blackguard's used wasn't nearly as potent as the magical mixtures in Crown or CPS med-hypos.

"Look... listen, alright?" The Jackal stammered after sharply inhaling, focusing intently on Garett's knife as the tip gently pressed against her breast, not breaking the skin of her coat but indenting, likely enough to cause discomfort. "J-just bloody well listen, ya wankers!"

Garett relented the pressure of his knife slightly. "We are listening with great interest."

"The filth might 'ave been taken to one of the, uh... bases, hideouts, w-whatever." She said quickly, eyeing the knife. "There's one just up the road, we met up with a group from that way earlier or thereabouts, ya coppers'll be there, maybe..."

Garett side-glanced at Twilight as he kept his blade steady. "Agent?"

"Yep, I see a flatpack that has a cluster of red on two sides, third side's in a blindspot." Twilight confirmed the information as she looked over the map on her HUD. "It could be our officers are inside."

Twilight was already going to check that tenancy block first anyway, as it was one of four closer areas nearby to where she had landed and that the police had gone on from bearing similar Jackal presences, and it had the greater amount of them. With one of the police being a Diamond Dog it was a certainty they'd not gone willingly or easily, so they couldn't have gone too far. It was the nearest site to their current location, and confirmation that it was a viable target was valuable information.

"Alright, she's been of use. Could always just open up an artery anyway, save the trouble of lugging her around, and I'll reimburse you the coin for the treatment you've done." Twilight gave a slight shrug, smiling impishly.

"W-what?! But I told ya what I know, didn't I!? Please!" The Jackal shrank back. She was rather fearful until Twilight's face broke out into a wider grin as Garret coughed to cover his amusement through the serious demeanour, shaking his head at seeing the usual dark humour Twilight employed to get by in life.

The Jackal was slightly lost. "Wha-"

"I'm just fucking with you, you've been a great help." Twilight smiled and chuckled to herself as the Jackal just scowled back at her with fury. "You're not getting far with that leg anyway, so you're coming with us." Though as she leant in a little closer, her smile disappeared as her tone became serious. "But, when we near our target, if you try to alert any other Jackals to our presence or make any loud noises, any sudden moves at all that might be you going for any kind of weapon; Garett will slit your throat, or shoot off your other leg and let you bleed to death. And if he doesn't, then I will, do you understand?"

The Jackal shrank back even further while fiercely nodding. "Y-yes, of course."

"Good!" Twilight smiled sweetly, straightening up, flicking the Jackal's dark ponytail out the way and patting her on the shoulder. She hadn't been serious, but it never hurt to use a good threat when necessary, and she needed to amuse herself. She quickly slinked past the mare, facing the direction of another side-alley in the street as she glanced at Garett sheathing his knife and readying his musket rifle for action. "Garett, I'm going to head on and find a quiet way inside. I need you standing by ready to make an extremely loud entrance, I've given you the location."

"Understood, Agent. It will be done." He gave her a curt nod, followed with a brief salute as he received the data for his personal map. "Good hunting. Call, and we shall answer in fire."

He swiftly turned about face towards his unit, and with that she took off in a sprint, not bothering to dampen her hooves into silence as she sped down the alleyway. After she built enough speed, the inner configuration of her hindleg prosthetics cycled forth, the bodysuit morphing and the thrusters in her back hooves igniting as she forced herself upright and launched up into the air in a blast of heat. Everything quickly reshifted back into form in the space of a second as she hit the wall of the building in front of her on all fours, in between a pair of windows, and hopefully not surprising the tenants inside too badly as she kept the momentum going and ran up the side of the stonework.

After a brief gallop upward that didn't take much time on enhanced limbs despite the height of the structure, she deftly slipped over the top and took a second to assess, a parting glance to her map telling her she'd picked the right block to get onto. She was overlooking a series of buildings that were mostly equal in height to the one she stood on, surrounded by a number of actual high-rises and a few skyscrapers further out. The location she wanted was a tenant block called a flatpack behind one of the taller ones ahead, called such for how small and contained all the rooms tended to be just like in general studio flats, but far more packed in, hence the name. There was no need to go along in the streets when she could just drop in from above, or at least get a decent overview before dropping nearby.

Black Crow had one of the highest numbers of high-rises and flats for dense housing across Canterlot, which to many in the higher-class wards like Eclipse or indeed the Sanctuary ward might have said contributed to a greater level of crime and disorder with so many people crammed into a small area. While not entirely wrong, it was far more to do with the type of person that inhabited an area, and unfortunately for Black Crow; it was heavily populated by numerous gangs. The result was a constant hive of activity run through with chaos, and a number of buildings had their residents evicted, having simply been taken over and turned into strongholds for use by whoever had seized it.

After she'd launched herself from this rooftop onto the next, she spied the place she was after between the two blocks of taller flatpacks across from her. From here she could see plenty of windows were varying in states of damage, some intact but grimy in a way a normal person living in an actual home would never allow it to get to. There were a number that were fine but simply boarded up for protection from gunfire, which was probably one of the more telling aspects that it wasn't a nice location. If the slapdash graffiti sprayed over graffiti of gang signs and allegiances wasn't already telling enough anyway, then indeed the people wearing specific armour standing around cobbled together fortifications certainly lent a clue to the fact that it wasn't a place for everyday subjects to hang around.

Even with the current onset of gang war she'd have thought the Jackals might have been a little more discreet about it, but she supposed that with the CPS being spread so thin and the other two major gangs similarly occupied with defence, with small-time gangs likely holing up and waiting for everything to blow over to see what power plays could be made, it was no wonder they were being so brazen and obvious. They wanted to show off their power, perhaps even inviting an attack to be made against them just to have a little action.

How Black Crow had gotten to this point was rather disheartening, and due to an endless number of factors, though it primarily remained a question of the people living in it. Crystal Sky was one such ward where regardless of the higher density of people within its confines, and despite the fact that it bordered Black Crow with nothing but a single Runegate, very little trouble generally ever crossed the throughway itself. Crystal Sky had one of the lowest rates of incidents of any ward within Canterlot City, which was true for Sapling Green as well.

Some might say those in Crystal Sky were more privileged though, as the ward didn't stretch onto the extended plateau too far so it had more going for it, that Black Crow had a lower average rent because of it's distance from the uptown areas so it was easier for the more downtrodden to gather en masse; a perfectly sound argument if not for the fact that Sapling Green or even the Spider-Silk ward on the west side of the extended plateau were even further out, and had a lower rate of incidents per year. It all came down to the people. Black Crow had been just fine until Jöhtunn established the Jackal Cartel, and then everything had massively gone to shit. With too much to deal with across Canterlot and the rest of Equestria, policing the already unstable ward had slipped enough that the Jackals had gained a major hoofhold next to the Blackguards and Yly Ilkinsfáerinr, and they were stubbornly stuck in like a tick.

Both the Blackguards and Yly Ilkinsfáerinr had needed to step up their illicit endeavours and expand in order to not let the Jackals push them around. Constantine, for one, hadn't always done smuggling on such a massive scale, nor did she have a legion of whorehouses beyond the few she'd started out with in Black Crow. Her business now reached slightly into other wards, and she had ramped up her efforts at least on the whoring in order to keep desperate people from being taken in or off the streets by the Jackals' pimps. If there was one thing Twilight liked about Constantine it was that she did somewhat care for those abused by society having been there herself, providing a small safety net in the form of shelter and non-sexual work in her whorehouses to those that fell through the cracks which the Crown had sadly failed to catch, and lately that was quite often regardless of its best efforts to combat the issue.

A certainty as to why the Crown didn't muscle in too hard on her. Twilight had heard and seen the general reports of homeless people eventually moving into housing the Crown had set up for them, with a number from Black Crow to elsewhere in the city amongst them having cited that they'd been cared for by Yly Ilkinsfáerinr, in more or less so many words; the reports had mostly been confused about Changelings being helpful and not consuming them. If only they weren't such a small group, they might actually manage to go from a shady gang into a professional business one day equivalent in scale to the grandeur of some of Hibiscus' finest establishments, although they'd need to drop all the extra shit they did on the side.

Twilight was working on it.

One day she'd get Constantine and Gwyndolin to play it straight. They'd both do amazingly joining Equestria under the Diarchy in the pursuit of harmony, they both just went about attaining their own sort of harmony in the entirely wrong way.

Now as for Jöhtunn and his Jackals... They required a much harsher approach in some regards. She had hope for a lot of the fresher Jackals, as they were just misguided into crime and could be saved. There was even a slim hope for those that had killed others, that if they could be rehabilitated and made to regret what they'd done, pay their dues to society and those that they wronged, they might be able to rejoin Equestria and become a part of harmony again. It was slim, but it was there, and she had to try to push for it for the Princesses sake if nothing else. She only had a bare sliver of hope for Jöhtunn, though. She was fairly certain for him to want the Princesses' harmony that she would need to break him so harshly he ended up a simple broken dog at their heel in order to get him to see the bigger picture, and that would kill whatever fiery spirit that he possessed. She didn't want to extinguish that fervourous fire, she wanted to redirect it for good, and if she couldn't...

Well, it was better that he died in a blaze of glory and be a minor footnote in the history books than be relegated to a pitiful footstool. She knew at the very least that Luna would send her on a special mission if he didn't hoof the line soon.

Up until this day, Jöhtunn hadn't actually killed any police or other innocents with his orders, only other gangsters, and she or other Agents dealt with him when he started to muscle in on everyday subjects, his drug trade was constantly being screwed with. The Crown kept close tabs on such things amidst everything else. With this little war he was making though, he'd certainly just placed himself within Luna's little black book; she would have access to all this information soon enough through her Lunaris Agents working tirelessly from the shadows, rather than consulting Vee.

A brief thought flashed in her mind of the Pegasus she'd killed the other night, and what he'd done to deserve the black book. She'd not even really looked at the file as she'd essentially just come back from her previous mission in the Zebralands, simply scanning for his species and the last known location. She always knew when Luna gave the order that it was wholly deserved, but still; what had such an unassuming pony done, she wondered? She'd look over it later, right now she was needing to deal with Jöhtunn's bullshit. If she couldn't sort this out soon and get him to stand down to actually come in for his crimes, he was going to find himself punished in a rather disturbingly creative manner.

Luna may have lightly ribbed on law enforcement when Twilight had paid her a visit after the assassination, yet she had nothing but respect for those everyday officers that selflessly threw themselves into the fire to protect her subjects, and of course woe be upon anyone that hurt her little ponies and other innocents. Twilight would likely receive a very specific set of instructions as to how Jöhtunn met his end. Now, she hated when others got innocents killed, even more so when it was done with purposeful intent, but her own ways of dealing with a target of such calibre were quick and clean in comparison to when Luna deigned to step into the equation and hoof-craft the perfect torture. Just like Celestia, she was a truly ancient power, both terrible and wonderful in strength, and in her case had been given countless years in exile to concoct specifically vengeful ways to poetically deal with her worst enemies.

With any luck she wouldn't have to weld him by his augments to a block of metal and electrocute him for weeks on end after pumping him full of hyper-awareness drugs, and letting a bunch of angry whores run a train on him afterwards before finally dumping him off a bridge into a deep lake... or something like that. Luna would certainly come up with far worse than what she could on the spot.

With another run, jump, and fiery burst, she soared across to the next block of flats over the road and made sure to brace herself. Landing hard, she hit the rooftop in a roll onto her side before neatly sliding back up onto her hooves and to a full stop, keeping crouched low as she approached the edge of the roof. She was lucky the building had a surrounding half-wall to it that bore gaps as she could sneak closer without being spotted, and with the arrhythmic backdrop of gunfire and the occasional explosion any sound she'd made coming across to the roof had gone utterly unnoticed, just a singular drop of rain splashing alongside hundreds of others during a storm. She'd be far better off were it night time, though she would be fine with the overarching smog of the day as a form of cover. The sun wasn't currently bearing down so it must have been hiding behind some clouds that lie beyond the cloying grey haze that blanketed Canterlot.

She focused her eyes and zoomed in on several clusters of Jackals dotted about just a few hooves from the reinforced main entrance, a number sitting around an old fountain that no longer worked in the flatpack's rather spacious community courtyard, though most were idly milling about some chipped concrete barricades placed here and there in the area. Every barricade was fitted haphazardly with makeshift embrasures, which only a few of them were bothering to utilise while they were smoking and chatting amongst themselves, a few carelessly resting in circles around a game of dice or cards. They weren't really bothering to pay much attention to their immediate surroundings despite the gang war going on, not even the lieutenants that she could see, so this must have been a somewhat secure location within the territory. These Jackals mostly consisted of ponies, Dogs, and Gryphons, but she also saw a few Zebras and Minotaurs in there, even a Changeling or two in the form of Unicorns, their auras being a little easy for her to distinguish.

It made sense as to why they were more relaxed than usual though as she scanned through; a majority of the Minotaurs were decently enhanced with a whole mess of combat augments, armed with heavy machine guns that would have had the CPS having a tough go of it alone against them. She saw the usual implants or prosthetic limbs on some of the ponies and Gryphons, and one of the Zebras, though didn't detect anything on the Dogs, as they rarely went for enhancement anyway. It must be why her little group she'd formed had a much easier time getting here as she'd not picked up much else but basic implants on most of the Jackals they'd burned through, keeping their more enhanced members on defence around their bases like this one.

The flatpack was beset on two sides by a mostly empty road and a side-street, and she could see a path from here that suited her purposes for getting inside. The group nearest to a set of parked cars, smashed into and looted and looted again for parts, consisted of a trio of Dogs and the one enhanced Zebra who possessed a single mid-range eye augment. She pinged them and scanned for more possible annoyances that could spot her sneaking her way in. Further to the left of the main entrance nearer the side-street she saw a fervour of Gryphons milling against the stone of the building, one's Stryke rifle resting against the wall next to them as they spoke amongst themselves, another with a snazzy-looking streamlined and scoped ADEE laser rifle made by Tachyon Complex resting in his claws, its small sapphire battery glinting in the daylight. Not a bad piece of kit for a Jackal at all, but then again they did come from all walks of life, so while most of the Jackals here possessed armaments from Hammerforged or Ironclad, something from Tachyon or perhaps even Gornwerks wasn't off the table. Pinging all of them too, she moved back and crawled to the adjacent side of the roof.

A fast peek into the alley below to check it was clear and she swiftly swung herself over the half-wall with a hoof, dropping down and landing on her back hooves against the flagstones in a bit of a heavy crouch, the fall from quite a fair height being evenly compensated for and absorbed through her myriad of dampeners alongside her system automatically generating an inertial-resistance field from the long distance, though it still sent a fleeting tremour through the stock parts of her body and up her back that bordered on an ache. She moved behind a large stack of thrown out appliances that were rusting through, the magical components that hadn't been cannibalised giving off gentle flickers of energy as she peeked out, quickly spotting her target destination and the way she was going to take. A gentle push in the mind allowed only the barest trickle of ice to spread down her spine, and her pupils dilated again. Neurellix was an excellent addition for stealth in that every single movement she made could be incredibly precise, down to a hair of motion, but with the vestiges of Ghost also still in her system that just yet refused to leave her, the two combined into a decently potent mix when she wasn't accidentally overdosing herself.

While not as powerful as some other designer narcotics specifically geared for it, a low yield of both drugs meant that if she willed it she could stay as perfectly still as a sculpture, not even have to breathe for slightly longer as her instinctual panic at holding her breath for an extended period was suppressed, and not that she needed it but it would dampen her fear response too. She hadn't planned on the small boon, however it was something to utilise to her advantage now. She waited for the Jackals' attention to glance in a direction that wasn't vaguely her own, paying an eye to the Gryphons she'd pinged nearby as they'd be more likely to properly spot her with their naturally powerful vision, before tensing her back hooves and accelerating forward in an upright dash to reduce her profile.

She was faster than they could comprehend and she knew it, her perception of time may have been altered, but the custom neurozyme she boasted allowed her to push to the speed she needed. With her augments already dampening sound she was a silent blur. The most they might see was a flicker in their peripheral vision, and by the time they looked she would be hidden or gone. A definite reason for why some used the name of Shade that was credited to Crown Agents. She saw the Zebra out the corner of her eye just start to take notice as she'd crossed the distance and crouched down between the two wrecked cars in the street, having seen something in his eye augment's peripherals, but he'd just attribute it to his mind playing tricks, a simple glitch in the signal. She could hear his breathing, almost feel his heartbeat; it hadn't changed its rhythm and there was no intake of breath or exhale of surprise. No alarm.

Twilight waited for a few seconds to let any curiosity lingering in his thoughts to fade. When his breath changed pitch as he turned his head in the direction of his fellows, she made sure the Gryphons were still talking to one another before moving again, and burst forth from her position, making for the side of the Jackals' hideout.

The building next to their rundown base was an old two-storey shop of some kind, from a glance she'd guessed an augment parts shop, likely shut down a while ago as this particular neighbourhood turned sour. She'd hazard a guess that it was a contributing factor as to why the Jackals had initially situated themselves here, seeing as the place looked completely gutted. She smartly slipped into position behind the corner of the building as she swept along, with a cursory glance to the Jackals she'd pinged informing her they were none the wiser, and she looked to the roof.

She hadn't spied anyone up above, but there was no sense in not taking the possibility that someone might be up there now, she also didn't know how many she'd be fighting once she was inside. Her eye augments were of the highest quality she knew, yet even with Neurellix going through her system they couldn't see through two-and-a-half hooves of dense stone wall even as she switched her vision mode to imaging sense, something that all Aeon eyes came with as standard military gear. Ideally, the sensors needed multiple surfaces to bounce the emitted frequency off of, detecting movement and heat to construct a basic silhouette of a being.

All she could see with a single thick wall in her way were the closest scatterings of faint plum-tinted wisps within, like seeing minor distortions within a veil of midnight smoke. That indicated that there certainly was an enemy presence, just not how many, and she also had no way of knowing or had time to figure out who the hostages were. She switched her eyes back to their standard vision setting. If the building was devoid of non-combatants she'd have just burned it out with a firebomb through a bottom floor window and called it a day as it consumed the structure, and shot anyone that came charging out of the roof or windows until everypony surrendered.

Inner-systems shifted, and another one of her more silent weapons came to bear, the left foreleg restructuring at the side as panels sleekly lifted and her bodysuit reformed, and out pushed compact housing that was almost still flush with the limb in its sleek contour, the weapon held until it was needed. She didn't need the thrusters right now though, she kept upright and securely purchased grip onto both the wall beside her and the ground beneath her with the padded soles of her left side hooves, springing inward before instantly launching herself up off from the ground towards the parts shop wall, gripping against the lighter stone and tucking in for additional momentum before pushing off again, deftly alternating between buildings as she made her way up to the roof.

She didn't take her eyes off the lip as she wall-jumped, and her ears sharply flicked as she heard movement atop the building of a door moving with her highly heightened senses. Her own manoeuvring wasn't making much in the way of noise but it was likely enough to draw attention from the roof, at least with the trembling echo it made through the side-street she was bounding between, though she couldn't tell if that was actually happening or a result of the Neurellix enhancing the sound. Either way, as she neared the top she braced herself for action, seeing the hint of feathers of a Gryphon as she made the final jump and forcing herself a little more for that extra burst of height.

Magical niobium-crystal alloy sharply slid forth from the angled sheath on her left foreleg, its dark polished form barely catching the glare of the day and her own chemically-alert eyes in its slightly mirrored face. Two hooves in length, precisely sharp to a perfect monomolecular diamond edge, and tapered to a single deadly point at its centre. It smartly came into play as the Gryphon's vision turned to her at a snail's pace, eyes going wide in alarm as he both started to raise his Hammerburst up and began to open his beak to shout out to his fellow Jackals.

Before he could even utter a sound beyond the initial vibrations of his vocal chords she'd levelled her hoof and forcibly ejected the blade, accelerating it along its electromagic inners and firing it out at high speed with a nothing but a near-silent gentle breeze from the mechanism, the blade lazily crawling from her perspective directly at his face.

The dark part of herself she often acknowledged marvelled at the way it neatly pierced into the flesh and feather, cutting an almost minimal hole like a shard weapon as it sliced through the centre of his head, travelling through at a languid pace that saw the expression on his beak and in his eyes steadily morph into that of pain and confusion as the blade passed through the back of his skull and beyond. He gasped from down in the throat in a way that wouldn't alert anyone as he fell backwards. She'd fired true and severed his brain from its spinal column, watching the light in his eyes fade in slow motion and his body lazily descend to the rooftop while the blade cleanly buried into the topmost layer of stone beneath them. She landed tensed like a spring, and shot forwards in a blink, catching his corpse and lowering it gently so nothing made any more noise than she wanted, and thankfully his body had instinctively locked up so his assault rifle was clenched tightly in his claws.

She raised a hoof and activated the retraction field on her augment, the weapon surging back from where it had cut into the stone and neatly back into its sheath as quickly as she'd ejected it, fixing back into place as she let it slide away into the housing for the time being. Hoofblades were something she generally only employed when she might go up against a dozen enemies in close quarters, however their versatility and function as both a melee and ranged weapon for swift and silent takedowns was incredibly invaluable for her clandestine operations.

She quickly dragged the Gryphon's corpse behind the rooftop access just in case another flight-capable Jackal came up top from the outside, although she didn't bother to clean the slight blood stain as once she got inside things were likely going to get hectic once she got her bearings. Her right foreleg shifted into a shard augment as she carefully approached the rooftop access as the door was slightly ajar, and being held open with a rolled up magazine of all things so it didn't get locked shut. She attentively pulled the door open enough to slip inside, feeling a measure of amusement watching the magazine fold out to see it was a bisexual edition of Wingboner Unfurled, the hardcore variant of the standard nudie-mag with full-spread centrefolds, toy usage, and a lot of large cocks going into different holes. Dash's guilty pleasure, she kept a few in the bottom right drawer of her desk at the station, the key to it hidden behind her team picture of the Wonderbolts back when she was a member. It wasn't contaminated, so she picked it up and stored it in a coat pocket on a whim; a gift, why not. She let the door close itself and lock shut for some extra security, assuming that if any Jackals got onto the roof they probably wouldn't have a key, she'd hear them banging at the door if they did. Right now she was going quiet, and until she went loud she didn't want anypony sneaking up on her.

Silently padding down the dim L-shaped stairway with careful steps, she pushed upright against the dirty wall's corner and kept herself at the ready, peeking out and seeing the rest of the way down led into a dingy hall painted in a mute magnolia. There were numerous rooms staggered along either side, twelve in total, with several doors missing from them while a few were simply covered over with a curtain or tarp, and many piles of collected rubbish and debris were gathered around along its length besides the doorways. Despite the general attempt at keeping things tidy, cracks ran up the chipped stone walls and small patches of mould grew where water dripped down freely, while light levels of wind whistled through from the boarded up broken windows she'd seen on the way in. She spied what looked like a few separate groupings of used needles and hypos along with the rubbish piles too, how lovely, a good thing she had prosthetics. Completing the oh-so-delightful décor of the drug den was the semi-broken fluorescent lighting along the ceiling that left dark patches along the way, since the rooms apparently lacked their own lights.

Concentrating as she felt the gentle shiver of the Neurellix wearing off, she dialled up the sensory implant and listened, but didn't hear anything from the first couple of rooms along her path beyond light breathing, a little movement, and sleep talking from one. A room on the right that had a curtain for a privacy measure had a Jackal going nuts and thrashing around from a likely drug-induced seizure, she'd need to deal with that soon. On the lower floor she could hear voices and laughter, though that didn't matter too much right now.

Slinking along and checking on the first room she found herself stopping with a shocked intake of breath that tasted foul, as she'd immediately turned into the enclosed space with her shard augment pointed up ready to possibly kill, but instead saw a barely conscious Changeling tightly bound around his neck and hooves by cruel thin Winter-Iron chains, lying on a jizz-stained mattress and twitching violently within a threadbare sheet.

She'd thought it might just have been a junkie house, not a fucking torture den...

The poor sprite mumbled incoherently in what was likely unfathomable pain as he shook through the throes of an intense overdose alongside the malefic metal digging into his lithe body. Twilight instantly crossed the distance with a light curse of anger, scattering used hypos as she pulled a specialised med-hypo from one of her back inner pockets with her magic. She quickly peeled away the horrendous Winter-Iron that was burning into his skin and chitin around the neck and forelegs before pushing the hypo against the sprite's neck and depressing the nub, tossing the cursed metal into a corner as she counted the long seconds waiting for the Changeling's system to normalise. The extremely effective drug would very quickly attack whatever harmful narcotic he had running through his blood in the blink of an eye.

Tetraethylnaxalone, another of the Institute's tetra wonder-creations, known on the street as Brink, because that's what it pulled you back from. It was a blanket solution to harsh poisons or fatal overdoses of the powerful neurozymes that she or other Agents used amongst other substances, that which was too much to be purged from their systems. It was absolutely life-saving, however the problem with it being a 'cure-all' meant it really fucking sucked to use.

It quite literally barrelled its way through the body in fast pursuit of outright neutralising any and all other unwanted matter in the bloodstream, and would target certain natural chemicals in the purge as well that were part of common over-the-counter drugs too. It made a person feel like they were being subjected to a combination between intense electro-shock therapy and complete body enema as their system was thrown into a tailspin of chemical imbalance alongside the resulting clustered muscle cramps.

An incredibly fast withdrawal, but it was felt all over and all in an instant. The body generally recovered from the imbalances soon enough after plenty of water, fruit, protein, and a long piss to get the residue out. For her the effects were lessened as her augments streamlined it a little better, however the young sprite here was getting the full brunt of the effect. It was certainly better than dying, and this lucky son of a whore had just been found in time. She breathed out slowly as his minute spasms began to subside, and waited for him to settle.

Given the sprite's possible state of mind, maybe dying from an overdose would have been better for him. It had been a toss-up between whether to remove the Winter-Iron first and risk letting him overdose, or injecting him to stop the overdose while the Winter-Iron had still dug into his body and thus highly increasing his trauma. She'd chosen the former option as resuscitating someone from an overdose was actually possible, the latter was far more of a guarantee of death, and yet she still wasn't sure of his mental well-being.

Normal iron did nothing special magically unlike some other natural metals ─except maybe make Changelings uncomfortable─ and forged into steel or naturally smelted, it lost all known dangerous properties it could hope to possess as its magical structure was irreparably altered. However, taking iron ore and enchanting it during the forging process, as with any ore, would allow new creations. Through dark magic with a purposely corrupted true-ice spell, and thus turning the spell into a curse, iron could be permanently turned into Winter-Iron. True-ice never melted without specialised magic, and when deeply twisted into the magic of iron it formed a never-ending feedback of purely hateful unforgiving cold that attempted to compete with Luna's most violently enraged blizzards or avalanches, piercing without restraint into the very core of a Changeling's soul.

Winter-Iron forging was an extremely fringe piece of dark magic, unfathomably illegal to perform, and quite unfortunately for them; only affected Changelings, the poor bastards.

Used during the Third Age of the Grogarian Aeon, the most brutal of any age that Equus had ever known, ancient Royals of old Unicorn bloodlines had created Winter-Iron to combat the hordes of rogue Changeling hives that had sought to enslave Ponykind as cattle for their food sources, constantly infiltrating small towns and cities and seeking to ensnare ponies for what meagre love had been available. It hadn't mattered if some hives were tucked away and kept to themselves, they had been hunted down relentlessly and put to the sword, the weapons used to slay them being made of the cursed metal. It burned on contact with their skin and chitin, and parted the tough plates with the ease of a hot poker against a plastic sheet, utterly defeating them in every open battle they'd charged into.

Until the beginning of the Fifth Age of the Alicorn Aeon when the Two Sisters had defeated Discord and established Equestria, Changelings had been thought to have been hunted almost to the point of extinction, which was one of the reasons why there was so little concrete information on them to this day within standard Equestrian history books, because until relatively recent years they'd simply ceased to be around in large enough numbers to be studied or be a part of everyday pony society.

Such dark magic as the creation of Winter-Iron was wholly outlawed along with all other forms of dark and chaos magic when the Diarchy had come into being, yet it didn't mean the magic didn't exist anymore, or that it couldn't be researched, found, or used again, and she knew from the Venrum Disaster that old magic never stayed buried forever.

Coming into the room and seeing a captured sex-slave of the Jackal Cartel was one thing that was horrible, she'd dealt with such incidents before as it was something not unknown to happen. It was jarring to put the barest point on it; damaged people with their lives immutably tainted being led out into medical vehicles as they shook and wept never really got much easier for most, though it was something that didn't faze her anymore, but, coming into a room and then seeing a Changeling subjected to an evil torture like Winter-Iron was on quite another level of disturbing that left her feeling even more disgusted and angry.

In the modern day such things had been rediscovered, and there were all sorts of creatures out there in the world willing to use even the most horrendous of weapons to achieve a specific purpose. The irony of it was not lost on her.

The slightest threat of Winter-Iron against Changelings was seen in extremely poor taste and rather cruel, and it was one of those things that was a common insult between gangs, but its usage as she was currently witnessing was a rarity in the modern day that went against all natural rights of basic decency, and even though it was also illegal it went far beyond purposely taking off a Unicorn's horn or a Pegasus' wing.

While agonising, distressing, and certainly feeling like a loss of one's self; losing a wing or horn didn't quite literally destroy a part of a pony's soul even if it felt like it, yet Winter-Iron tormented and deranged a Changeling the longer the cursed metal was fused into them. There was an incident from a few years back wherein a shipment of Winter-Iron had collapsed and spilled over some Changeling workers ─as while the cursed metal was illegal to forge, it was not technically illegal to import or buy─ and even with such a small shipment it was enough to bury and burn into them, and hadn't been possible to safely remove in due time to which they had been driven utterly insane and soon catatonic, their psyche's damaged beyond repair. As far as she knew they were still kept in Royal Canterlot Asylum and Medical in the Sanctuary ward at the Crown's expense.

They couldn't eat anything without assistance, couldn't use the toilet without any assistance unless they simply made a mess of themselves... they just completely lacked even the most basest elements of self-maintenance or personal care. All they could do was sleep when tired, and that was usually from passing out from exhaustion unless they were lulled into it. Left alone without any stimulus to guide them they would just stand still and stare into a wall until they finally collapsed from weakness, before waking and lying there, going in and out of sleep until they expired from starvation. They had been violated completely beyond saving and made into little more than living corpses just going through the most basic of motions.

She growled in abject anger as that was exactly the abhorrent purpose here; the Jackals had just wanted mindless easy-to-use fuckholes of warm flesh for their personal usage whenever they pleased, the sprite before her even had a drip that was feeding him the required nutrients to keep him alive. She quickly removed the IV from his leg, he didn't need this Availant shit in him. She could smell the strawberry fluid within the bag, the same type of fluid in packets from Crown MRE's commonly used in special assassination missions, wherein an Agent had to keep in a single place almost indefinitely as they waited for a target.

It both kept an Agent going with all the energy that they needed, and also magically altered the kidneys and digestive tract so it suppressed the usual calls of nature, instead taking everything usually thrown out by the body as waste and forcibly converting it into something the body could supplement itself with as fuel, breaking most matter down into what was essentially just water and keeping the bladder nearly empty and the digestive tract almost perfectly clear. It was only used during those missions sparingly in extremely small sachets, because despite its usefulness it irreversibly destroyed a stock body's ability to eat normal foodstuffs if used in excess, the body becoming greatly more dependent on the liquid the more it was absorbed into the system, until the body rejected normal food and drink completely.

Twilight then sharply gasped in alarm as she rushed out of the squalid room, knowing the sprite was mostly safe now, and dashing to the one she'd thought contained an overdosing Jackal.

Another Changeling. More Winter-Iron. An intravenous drip. A scattering of used hypos.

Yet the nymph wasn't moving beyond a tremour, and her mouth was caked in vomit.

"Luna's shapely teats." Twilight swore as she moved over, promising extreme pain and death upon every Jackal within the building she came across as she removed the searing Winter-Iron from the nymph's body, the metal leaving angry blisters as she peeled it away and threw it to one side.

Reshifting her right foreleg back to normal and turning the Changeling on her side ─ignoring the smell of fresh semen that dripped out of the poor nymph and feeling annoyed she'd killed the Gryphon on the roof far too quickly─ she tried as gently as possible to hit the nymph on the back with the padded frog of her hoof without breaking anything, and was relieved that she soon choked up what she'd almost drowned in. Withdrawing another med-hypo of Brink and jabbing the shunts against the nymph's neck with a quick depression, Twilight let the magic do its work as she removed the IV of Availant with a scowl, moving the nymph's murky-green mane out of her face as she vomited again, coughing and lightly spasming as the Brink made her go through all the withdrawal symptoms in the space of a few minutes.

The nymph started to whimper and cry, and Twilight's horn glowed as she cast a light healing spell to fix the worst of the burns, gently shushing her. "It's alright I'm here, I'm here to save you."

It wasn't entirely wrong. It was her oath-bound duty to help anyone that needed her, she served the Crown and the Crown served the realm. She might not have actually been here for this situation initially, but she wouldn't dream of abandoning them all to such a ghastly fate, of which she was certain that all the rooms of this floor held more sex-slaves.

"C-constantine... home..." The nymph moaned out pitifully, Twilight sighing at the name. She'd had suspicions that these Changelings might be with the Children as it was highly likely, though that was her confirmation. This was gang-on-gang violence through and through, so the Jackals were subjecting their rivals to extreme torture because of the power play.

"Yes, it'll be fine, I'll get you back to her, I promise you." Twilight intoned, stroking the Changeling over her back across her elytra. "Please stay as quiet as you can, I need-"

"What the fuck is this?!"

Twilight snapped around in a flash, instantaneously firing her hoofblade from its sheath, straight through the throat of the lime-green Pegasus that was aiming his Hammerburst at them before he could blink. She'd thought she might have heard someone coming up the stairs, the bastard probably came up for a fun time. The Jackal stumbled back on his hindlegs as he touched a hoof to his rapidly rupturing neck, his silver eyes going wide and his wings erratically fluttering, dropping his rifle from the other hoof as he choked bloody spittle from his mouth. Twilight recalled the blade from where it had embedded into the doorframe of the opposite doorway with a growl, the sharp blade tearing an even bloodier hole through his neck on the return and bursting out in a spattering of scarlet webbing across her as it slotted back into place.

He fell backwards onto his haunches against the intact door across the way as he wheezed and sputtered through the ragged opening, blood trailing over his forelegs as he pushed them against the heavy wound, and Twilight watched as he tried in vain to utilise his innate magic, trying to shape any moisture in the air ─which was currently mostly his own blood─ and shape it into projectiles he could send at her, but in his panicked state all he managed was to make it all precariously wobble and drip around himself for a few pathetic seconds, only succeeding in staining himself further. She angrily accelerated the hoofblade out again straight into his belly for good measure, the Pegasus' hindlegs immediately ceasing their futile movements like a puppet having its strings cut as the perfect diamond edge cleanly severed his spine. He collapsed to one side in a gargling heap as she retracted the blade from his cleaved guts, sliding it away into its housing and letting the Jackal die in agony.

The nymph moaned lightly in distress as she noticed some of the blood from the Pegasus had hit her, and Twilight quickly calmed her again. Twilight knew a few procedures to check health and wellness from her knowledge on Changelings, and the nymph didn't seem too worse for wear currently beyond the vomit. There were no contusions across her body beyond a slight bruising on the foreleg that had bore the drip and no swelling in her limbs; no deep discolouration of the chitin plates of her body which meant no initial signs of them cracking or breaking, which was extremely painful for them; her carapace was fully intact as well, so she wasn't going to find herself unable to move or breathe; and her eyes weren't cloudy and tinged with red, which was often very bad for Changelings as it meant the likelihood of heavy thrombosis throughout the body.

Twilight was no AMR hotshot but she did pretty well for herself.

All things considered, other than the extreme mental trauma of being tortured with dark magic and being subjected to rape, the nymph was a pretty good picture of health. The Brink had fully flushed her system and she wasn't in any danger of death, and she was coherent too, able to form names of people she knew, which meant that the Winter-Iron hadn't destroyed her mind.

Twilight whispered and promised she'd be back later, and zotzed the nymph with a sleeping spell as she settled, watching as she drifted out of consciousness.

Quickly leaving the foetid room as quietly as she could to check on the sprite again, she listened out for anyone coming to check on the miniscule level of noise that had occurred, not sensing anyone walking up the stairs. She turned up her eyes a little as she switched to the imaging sensors and scanned to be sure, seeing actual distinct lilac silhouettes now in a light glow rather than darkly brief fuzzy distortions, their brighter colours being indicative of their closer proximity now there were plenty of surfaces to create noise from, and none were rushing upstairs to try and gun her down. Maybe these absolute cretins figured it was just their Jackal buddy hitting their captives or something. Moving into the other room, she was at the minimum a little bit heartened that the sprite was sitting upright, his teal mane a little plastered to his face as he groggily looked around. He'd used the sheet to cover his nudity and wasn't shaking, so at least he didn't seem too fucked up.

He slowly glanced at her through half-lidded eyes, trying to speak.

Twilight moved up to him and began checking him all over too, finding him much in a similar state as the nymph. Aside from the burns into his body from the Winter-Iron there was no other visible damage, and she couldn't detect anything wrong internally, though that obviously didn't show the mental damage of everything he'd been through at the mercy of the Jackals, of course. She raised her hoof to his cheek and looked into his eyes, and they almost as sharply fixed on her own. That was a very good sign that he hadn't been broken by dark magic. She smiled at him warmly after casting a quick healing spell on him for his seething welts, and looked into his lovely compound eyes that glowed a light green in the room's mustiness.

"Hey there, are you doing alright? Can you tell me your name?"

"Nn... name? S'... Name's Pitch." He slurred, falling into her a little. He caught himself and was fighting to stay upright. "S'go..."

"You can't leave right now, you're in no condition to move." Twilight told him, laying the sprite down onto the dirty mattress, to which he couldn't really fight her. "Stay here, and stay quiet, I'll be back for you, alright?"

He seemed to think that was also a good option, nodding as he nestled into the grubby pillow below his head. She had a better idea so that he wouldn't wander, and with a quick flash of her horn she zapped him with a sleeping spell too, stroking through his choppy mane as he dozed off, the sprite's pretty features softening as he went into a deep sleep.

Beyond the terrible circumstances they found themselves in, both Changelings were incredibly beautiful. They weren't like the utterly starved and desiccated Changelings of Chrysalis's old hive, they didn't have emaciated bodies or holes borne of degradation through their hooves from a lack of love, or scarred and cracked chitin brought on by a life of constant fighting. Their bodies were smooth all over and supple, somewhat the same as a pony but simply devoid of a coat, and perfectly soft and sleek where their bodies weren't covered with chitin plates or structurally supported in places with the springy carapace that almost seemed more like an odd permanent item of clothing. It was only semi-rigid, and rather quite flexible, connecting at their backs with their elytras of which was more like waxy pliable plastic than anything else. It was general anatomical knowledge that wasn't particularly well known about Changelings that she'd learned over the years, not just through her more... personal encounters, but from pouring over any books or information she could find, though she'd gained the majority of all of that from treating with Constantine and various members of Yly Ilkinsfáerinr.

She was happy that these two and no doubt the other Changelings trapped in here would have a place to go back to. With a quick dip into the other room and an eye to the nymph to see if she was fully stable as she'd been puking quite a bit, she then went along and checked the first room across from the sprite when it was ascertained that everything was alright, pushing the door open as gently as possible.

Fate had decreed to shovel shit in her face, and snuff out that small ember of happiness.

The Changeling lying on the soiled mattress was a living corpse, clear as day.

The Winter-Iron that was wrapped around the young nymph's neck and hooves had burned so aggressively into her body that it had almost severed the hooves, and dug so deeply into her neck it was a wonder she hadn't already died. The Changeling was heavily entangled in the virulent metal to the point that it had seared across her face and burned right across an eye, the ruined compound organ oozing a steady mess of blood and intraocular fluid, and she seemed utterly indifferent to the pain that it and everything else should have been causing her. The stink of bodily waste was everywhere as Twilight properly moved into the room with loathing at the nasty situation. The nymph's remaining eye simply stared into space, she didn't register that there was another in the room with her whatsoever. She'd likely been injected with multiple drug doses, suffered a particularly violent reaction, and ended up in her current sorrowful state because of it.

Pushing down the discomfort in her breast, Twilight took an unpleasant breath and braced herself, letting the hoofblade slide free from its sheath. It was questionable to some but she wasn't going to let this continue, the broken Changeling shouldn't have to live in such a condition as there was no quality of life to be had. She trotted over calmly and gently placed her other hoof on the nymph's face, carefully lifting her head up, and in a single swift motion Twilight struck her under the chin at an angle, perfectly through the brain stem to instantly cut all activity. She withdrew the blade and let the body down with utmost care, taking off the Winter-Iron that was desecrating the nymph's corpse and angrily discarding it to one side, disconnecting the nutrient drip as well that had fallen to the floor likely from the nymph's heavy seizure. Twilight's horn flared as she took some basic non-magical bandages from their small packs within her duster, and attentively wrapped them around the nymph's cleaved hooves, and then the face and ruined eye to hide the offending wounds from view, but not the final mark she'd left herself for specific purpose.

Constantine had touched upon the topic of death rites of her kin in general conversation about their beliefs once or twice, apparently something that a majority of Changelings shared regardless of Hive, enough that she understood the basics. Twilight respectfully performed the few parts of the Ritual of Renewal she remembered that were normally undertaken by the most senior ranking Acolyte, Yly Yldhain Spiorýn, translating to The Void Spirit in Ponish.

She laid the Changeling on her back properly, hindlegs tucked together and forelegs open at her sides in welcome, the remaining eye looking skyward with her final wound bared for her maker to see that it was not self-inflicted. The nymph looked on in death to await Lady Death Herself, who would take her into the Void and ferry her soul into the lifestream of endless souls awaiting rebirth at Lady Death's behest, until she was allowed to return to life once again. There was so much more to it, but Twilight hadn't given much mind to pay great attention to Constantine's talk when it had come to the more spiritual stuff because of her personal disdain of Astralists.

Now she regretted it and really wished she had, she was fuzzy on other details that she was thankfully certain didn't apply here, specifics to do with suicide and far more grisly wounds so at least she was safe enough on that front, however she knew there was something important she was missing. There was a certain offering that needed to be given in thanks to their deity, that they were being allowed to leave their suffering behind before one day having the privilege of returning to the world with a clean slate. She cursed and formed a black rose into being from pure magic with an intermediate creation spell, placing it on the Changeling's breast and hoping that would suffice, as magic had been part of what was needed to be offered.

Twilight then cast a cleansing spell to give the nymph some extra dignity of an unsoiled body, cleaning away blood and waste to make the skin and chitin shine, as her magic then tidied the entire room as neatly as possible within the space of a second as everything swirled around her, all the detritus being orderly deposited in stacks and mounds out of the way into the corners.

She took a breath to steady herself, observing the nymph's final solemn scene.

"Pro corona et patria, quid faciendum est."

Twilight felt a brief shiver and her brow furrowed, blinking with the burst of static that shot across her vision from the ancient words. Something else treasured, like her thoughts of her friends and sharing their company, not buried so far in the mind that she couldn't recall the memories of better times, and of far more innocent days. She hadn't said them in years, not since she'd completed her training as a Crown Agent, and not since swearing her oath of undying fealty to the Sisters to serve ad infinitum, until she fell in battle or was released from her bondage, honourably or otherwise.

It was a recital of faith passed down from the Honour Guard throughout the ages, said before the Sisters in a meaningful ceremony. The words were meant to give comfort and solace to lean on in desperate times, and she hadn't even realised just how much she missed saying them until now. She'd purposely not spoken the maxim from since when she'd caused untold pain and anguish in doing what she had to for the Diarchy, as those words she'd taken pride in had almost as rapidly turned to ash in her mouth, and it ached as deeply as it helped to say them again now. It was a beautiful litany though, borne of thousands of years of dedication from the Honour Guard being prepared to die to the last in order to save the realm, and to protect the ideas of the Monarchy and what it stood for.

She smiled with a small amount of humour, they really hated that Crown Agents used the same words in the modern day, being granted such by the Sisters. It used to be that an Agent was far closer to an Honour Guard and was actually respected and well-loved, before they'd been repurposed as a secret service for the Crown's more covert dealings. Must have been a much more relaxing job once upon a time. Shaking her head she breathed out again, this was no time to be lost in thought, the barriers had faltered for just a moment, but she reasserted them and locked down the melancholy.

Silently leaving the room and closing the door she moved onto the rest of the rooms, and each time her anger and sorrow grew deeper. Every one of them held a living corpse, all Changelings of both sexes not given dignity in their states, naked, addled with drugs and nutrients, and horribly constricted in Winter-Iron until their souls had been shattered. She gave all of them the same final respect as the first nymph she'd released from suffering, then caringly wrapping and cleaning them, performing the Ritual of Renewal and giving each a magical black rose upon their breast. She had delivered the Sister's Mercy, as the Astralists would have said in their own rites. If Noctis were here he'd be rather disturbed and quoting verses to soothe his mind until her ears started bleeding, she was glad he didn't have to see this absolute fucking shitshow.

Breathing deep as she briskly moved to the floor's last room and expecting another living corpse, she opened the door.

She found yet another victim, but this wasn't a Changeling.

Of all creatures she knew that were common to Equestria, when she pushed the door open she certainly hadn't been expecting a Kirin, nor had she been expecting a foal. An extreme need to protect surged within her heart and she went over quickly but carefully, removing the blindfold, gag, and bindings the poor young colt had been trussed up with. She saw his dark-amaranth coat was only lightly bruised, the soft maroon scales of his back that hadn't yet had time to mature also partly discoloured, but to her knowledge it thankfully wouldn't affect their development, and where they'd wrapped the rope around his growing crimson horn wasn't marked at all, so the bruises were the only harm from what she could see so far. The little Kirin's innocent scarlet eyes went wide as he jumped upon seeing her, but before he could yell out she quickly shushed him placatingly with a friendly smile ─at least she hoped her augmented face could appear friendly to him, a lot of children didn't like it and she was probably splattered in quite a bit of blood─ moving a little closer and putting a hoof around him as her deep maternal instincts welled up, and she stroked through his deep-rouge mane comfortingly.

"Shhhhh-hey, hey, it's alright buddy. I'm a Crown Agent, do you know what that is?" She spoke softly, pulling him a little closer into her breast after he gingerly nodded, pushing his head into the leather of her duster, his horn gently indenting the material as she felt him tremble. "It's okay, you're fine now, I'm here to help fight the bad guys." She whispered, rocking him gently while feeling a rising spike of dread rise in her throat as she worked a bit of discreet sensing magic, and after a horribly terse moment, completely drowned that fear in utter relief as she sharply breathed out and sent a silent thanks to the Sisters that the young colt was mercifully unviolated.

A grim piece of magic that was a necessity for her line of work, and she passionately hated whenever she had to use it. When children came into the line of fire and had been harmed in such a foul manner she truly wished the Diarchy was divine so the guilty could know agony. She held back a deep sniffle and let out a shaky breath as she looked up into the ceiling, aggressively suppressing the emotions that had so fast welled up as she leaned down and kissed his head.

"Don't worry, okay little guy? I'm going to get you out of there, I promise you. On the Crown's honour, you'll get out of here safe and sound." She whispered.

Celestia's massive alabaster arse, she was such a sappy mare when she had all this oestrogen in her system, and it wasn't doing her any favours. She was incredibly vehement about helping children and this kid needed her, though she couldn't be an emotional wreck at times like this, and the stringent training was fighting her motherly instinct and keeping everything sealed down.

"Listen, I need to go-" She began, hushing him reassuringly as he clung tighter to her duster in protest, his tail swishing in agitation as he made noises in his own tongue for her not to leave, it made her heart ache. "-I know, I know, but I need you to be brave, alright? I have to make the bad creatures go away."

She thought carefully for a second as he trembled. "I need you to do something for me, do you think you can help out the Princesses by helping me?"

Her mention of the Sisters perked his ears as those pretty scarlet eyes lit up and looked at her with slight wonder. Ah, she had a young fan of the Crown on her hooves, that was nice. She smiled down at his adorable little face with those soft maroon scales running down the bridge of his snout with as much parental affection as she could muster despite not having children of her own. One day, maybe. Kids like this always drove that primal need within her to have her own foals, to bring life into the world and cherish it absolutely rotten.

"I'm going to bring two Changelings, ones that were trapped here with you. You've seen them right?" She asked in a whisper, and he nodded with wide eyes. He'd likely heard a lot of stories about them and seen Changelings in passing, she fervently hoped he hadn't seen the living corpses though, no child should witness that. "They're hurt badly, I really need you to keep an eye on them while I'm kicking the bad guys' butts, alright? Can you do that for me? For the Princesses?"

The small Kirin looked a tad apprehensive, however it seemed the larger prospect of helping her ─if indeed just helping the Princesses─ overcame his initial worry, and his floofy mane bounced as he gently nodded. Good kid.

She left him there momentarily, telling him not to exit the room on account of the dead Pegasus in the hall, and quickly brought both of the sleeping Changelings into his room along with the mattresses once they'd been heavily cleansed. She placed them down, and with a brisk check over to see they were alright, leaned down and hugged the Kirin close again.

"Be brave for me, I'll come back or the police will. I'm going to lock the door now." She told him, and he gave another nod after glancing at both the Changelings. They should be fine with the Brink having cleaned out their systems, the most they'd have is a light headache and stomach cramps, and putting the colt up to watch duty would keep him feeling like he had to stay inside with them. "Whatever you do, do not try to leave this room unless it's an utmost necessity, alright? If I know you're here, you'll be safe. There may be more I have to help, so I'll tell them to come here too, they won't get in unless they have the right key."

He nodded once more and lay down, shuffling a little closer to one of the Changelings.

She left with a parting smile, firmly shutting the door and casting an intricate barrier spell that would secure it from the outside, her horn flaring as she swiftly laid in the magic. If anyone tried to access the door that didn't possess a CINI, have the specific magical enchantments made by the Crown in their armour as the CPS did, or didn't have the right magic signature granted by her, a huge concussive wave would blast outward and send the intruder flying back, and she'd instantly feel and know if the room had been touched upon. She needed to help the captive officers however they would all have agreed that with the Children being majority non-combative and held hostage, but especially an innocent foal being in danger, that both took precedence over them, and she'd drop what she was doing to tear it back up here and kill whoever tried to breach the magic defence.

Having put that in place, she still sent a gamma-critical alert to Vee for precious cargo extraction though, and within a second saw on her HUD when she pulled up her 3D map that the building, previously tinted purple, had been marked in a fiery gold with a symbol for priority pickup once the area was clear of hostiles.

When it came to Crown Agent alerts, with precious cargo extraction ─a general euphemism mostly for pulling people out of a hot zone─ alpha-critical would have had an AMR team barreling in at high speed regardless of the danger, as alpha-critical literally meant that loss of life would occur without immediate exfil. Beta-critical told the AMR teams that the cargo was currently under watch, but that exfil may be needed as hostiles were closing in, and/or the cargo still ran the risk of being lost, and to keep the engines revved and ready to fly on the Agent's word. However, gamma-critical was the standard go-to for a lot of Agents when they had a secure area, as it meant cargo was safe and stable, and extraction would possibly only be needed once the area was clear. Delta-critical was the lowest alert level, and more used for marking possible evac zones with the knowledge that it could turn into a hot zone at any moment.

As she moved through the door at the hall's end into the stairwell, she was pinged that a team had immediately picked up the request for aid, and it seemed given her sketchy location it'd be a six-strong team of the Guard kitted out with advanced gear, which meant they'd be coming in heavy with enhanced armour on par with her duster, assault rifles, and a support weapon. They were readying up and would standby for her in case she needed to move the alert up in scale.

Upright and slowly descending the stairwell that doubled back, she readied her shard augment on the right foreleg and kept the hoofblade ready to spring on the left. Going for a bit of a dangerous play that would see her doing more damage, with a flick of the mind the left foreleg reshifted, the hoofblade moving around for a moment as the inner-pattern changed formation, dismissing the warning that popped up on the left of her HUD as both the firing systems for the hoofblade and shard augment slotted against one another inside the forelimb. All weapons at the ready, she continued at a careful pace. She slowly stepped through the ajar door as she reached it, finding this hallway was in slightly better repair than the top floor. While still marginally messy along the passage itself and the chipped magnolia walls grimy and water damaged, all the lights and doors were intact.

That very likely meant that the top level was the main area where they held captives for their fun. These floors moving down would possibly only contain Jackals, but she couldn't be too reckless about it. They might have taken more people hostage like the officers or simply brought a captive down for ease of access and held them within these rooms, which meant that Neurellix was out of the equation. The flatpack layout at least meant everything was going to be as symmetrical as possible, and the studio flats would be small enough to clear out in a few bursts. Like above there were twelve rooms, all staggered in layout so they weren't looking into one another, so she'd take them one by one or as they rushed out into the hallway, being wary and starting with the room on her right as right above it was her precious cargo.

She'd stocked up before the last mission from Luna and hadn't needed to use anything but electro-pulses the night before, so she'd only expended ammo since landing in Black Crow, and no warnings had popped up on her HUD, though she took inventory anyway.

She smiled as she saw that her shard ammunition was only about a quarter down, and her power cells were at fifty-six percent, so all the scuffles earlier hadn't done too much there. She had a single explosive round left for her hoofcannon after her first fight in the alley, two smoke grenades for cover, a gas grenade for captures, and a single cluster firebomb after giving the other to the sexy Gryphoness officer with the big tits. She'd need to see which way Nimbus's barn door swung at some point. Other than the smoke grenades ─of which she'd certainly have liked to use them in earlier fights had it been advantageous─ all the other tricks up her sleeve weren't what she'd call practical in this situation, so for now it was the shard augments and the hoofblade that would be of the best use. Even so, her thoughts went to another few ideas that might come to fruition rather shortly if her current plan of action went in the wrong direction.

Her glowing eyes scanned again with the imaging sense, the lilac shapes throughout the floor still about the same between other objects, getting slightly fuzzier and darker the further up the hall and lower through the next floor down as they went, the ones nearest on this level that she could see still sitting and lounging within the rooms, and it appeared that a majority of Jackals were currently out of their armour.

It was a certainty they were resting in reserve until they were called to raise Tartarus or replace someone out front. Only some near her were enhanced to a small degree with implants, though even if they were greatly enhanced she could take them all with ease and take her time doing it usually. She wanted to, desired to make examples of them, make scenes that would strike fear into the hearts of other Jackals, and interrogate them until they spilled who it was that spouted the idea of Winter-Iron; but time was still of the essence, the whole process had to be expedited, and she couldn't play games while innocents were involved. Twelve rooms of Jackals. She'd cleared twelve rooms upstairs, and only found three survivors. The warm anger she'd kept down within as she'd laid eyes upon the Kirin colt, the revulsion at the living corpses, now freely began to rise up again and she welcomed it into her core like an old friend, letting it spread through her thoughts like sunshine. At least she could freely kill them. How many Jackals would survive this? None, she'd make sure of that. With a flick she opened a channel request to Garret, and it only took a second for him to answer.

"Agent." He stated simply.

"I can't confirm the officers' location right now, the topmost floor has numerous dead of the Children's members, two survive with a young colt that was hostage, there may well be more innocents in the rooms moving down, so mind your shots at the building and go for direct hits if you have to shoot at any windows." She laid out quickly, then slowly grinning with just a smidgen of pleasure in her voice as she continued, as Garret had asked that she give to him as would a Gryphon, and there was a certain intense edge to it. "Other than that, it's showtime Kapitän, carve a fucking path. By all means give no quarter, and go loud."

"By your order, Kommandant." He returned gravely, and cut the channel.

Twilight psyched herself for some action, her righteous anger bubbling venomously as nothing happened for a few seconds, before she heard, even in here, the muffled vitriol of FIRE! from Garret outside the building, followed by the deafening blasts of the Blackguard's Vanguard Muskets. Thankfully it wasn't ear splitting from where she was, yet the force of them impacting into stone vibrated through the flatpack even this high up, and she heard the screams of those taken in the volley as the chaos began outside. Already the Jackals within the rooms were starting to rouse in their alarm and surprise, having likely not expected a frontal attack, if at all even by the Blackguards.

She swiftly moved forward, and slammed an accelerated back hoof into the first door along the hall, the heavy kick splintering it inward as she surged inside and got to work with a vengeful snarl.

Author's Note

Apologies for the wait. IRL shite and fixing previous chapters abounded.
Lot of lore things added from my notes I'd forgotten to add and some paragraphs expanded upon or worded better, for previous readers I would suggest a quick skim, hopefully I've not forgotten anything else and it won't happen again. If anything confuses you that you haven't heard before, that'll be the reason.

Off the top of my head:
-The C.C.P.D are now the CPS. Canterlot Police Service. C.C.P.D was amusingly close to both CCCP (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, yannow, the funny Soviets of the USSR), and CCP (Chinese Communist Party), in both cases, Commies. While no doubt Starlight would approve, it needed a change.
-Neurochem to Neurellix, sounds better.
-Crown Integrated Network implant, (CINI), was two different things but I standardised it into one thing for simplicities sake.
-Astralists got a bit of exposition, fairly certain I mentioned them, but Noctis was meant to be one, he's been updated now.
-Hex and Dizzy previously weren't mentioned beyond a cursory name each but I figured I'd include them a little more rather than them just be cardboard cut-outs.
-Chronicles, personal bank accounts in essence that have an income, it was something I was looking to add already but I found a way to integrate it early on so it's there for the later chapters.
-Bulwarks and Runegates, called them something else before, maybe just walls and barriers, but they needed to be properly detailed.

Other than that, plain sailing.
Thanks for sticking about, let me know your thoughts, and if you're confused about anything I'm happy to clear it up in the comments.