7: RESCUE_PROTOCOL_ACTIVE

Princess Luna stood before her.

The beautiful ethereal Diarch she hadn't seen for a few years since reformation ─not since the Umbral Festival created to mark her return and the beginning of the Goddess Aeon─ stood tall and serious over her.

She was enrolling in the new Agent program, along with four other hopefuls who'd gone through the necessary training in the Guard to even get to where they were considered for the position. Agents were known as one of the top branches of the Crown, ensuring safety and peace wherever they went in the realm, they carried the word of the Princesses and worked to bring down corruption.

At least, that's what she'd thought. In truth, they were a little more sinister.

Princess Luna had asked if she thought a position in the Guard was worthwhile, she'd said yes, naturally it was, everything she'd done and forced herself through, struggling and bleeding, defying all odds and expectations against her to even join the Guard in the first place, it was the reason for her return from Canterlot. She'd moved back to finish her studies under Celestia after being in Ponyville for a few years as she soon realised that things were changing, and not for the better, so joining the Guard and helping to restore order was the only path forwards. She didn't want to be away from her friends but there was precedent for it, that the Elements were failing, that their last victory against the literal embodiment of Chaos known as Discord had been by the skin of their teeth, that things simply couldn't continue this way.

The Princess had agreed, though not without a clear suggestion.

So here she stood in the training room, overseen by Princess Luna, enrolled in a new scheme that would see her being far more proactive against the evil of the world. The Agent program was going to undergo a complete reformation, and incorporate several upcoming magitech advances to overcome any means of force that came against the Crown.

It hadn't taken them long to be thrown into Equestria's most brutal training regime that was several times more punishing than what she'd gone through in the Guard Initiate program either, and of the four hopefuls with her, one had already dropped out of the Agent training only a week in while the other three were going strong alongside her, one of them even being a Thestral.

There was little downtime, little rest between sessions, and after days of gruelling endurance training in forced conditions, endless hours of non-stop exercise and mental assault, they were thrown into bizarre CQC sparring that hadn't been taught in the Guard. It was far too specialised and specific, meant for extremely high manoeuvrability when surrounded on all sides during solo excursions where the odds were stacked against an Agent.

They quickly began in earnest again, weary but forcing themselves on, and she was eager to prove herself in front of the Princess, show Her that there had been progress and that she wasn't wasted potential, that she would do her utmost to do her part for Equestria. She was wild in her fervour for it, her current sparring partner was-

-the tawny Gryphon in the dark undersuit, she saw him as she blinked away the sudden static burst, he was somewhat near the door and away from the Wildbuck leaning against the nearest wall, a claw already moving as he surged towards her. Her hooves were configured into the shard augments, but she still brought her right hoof up and slammed it into his arm at the wrist immediately, hearing the crack of bone while her left came up and firmly smashed into his face, his beak crunching in a nice little red expulsion as blood spurted freely.

He collapsed backwards, anguishing to the floor clutching at his face and holding his broken wrist to his body as she then fired her shard augments at the other two stallions getting up from their couch. They went for their rifles and failed spectacularly as their armour-less bodies were ripped open in pained screams, her fléchettes drawing messy blossoms of crimson across their pastel torsos and spattering the room. The final Jackal sitting in the seat next to the HV in the corner was uninjured, the caramel-coloured Unicorn mare with a tied-back mane wearing only in a pair of panties almost shocked into torpor and making no attempt to grab her armour or weapon, yet Twilight's right foreleg still raised as the mare's hooves ascended in surrender.

Twilight's hoofblade extended from its housing on her left foreleg as she released a jettison of micro-shards the mare's way from her right hoof, not watching her slump over and gurgle blood through her destroyed muzzle and neck where the shards impacted, and instead Twilight focused her attention on the downed Gryphon that was dragging himself towards the wall to grab his weapon.

She raised her left foreleg and accelerated the blade through the meat of one of his thighs, halting his movement and effectively pinning him. His cry of pain was lost in the far higher cacophony of gunfire happening outside of the flatpack. She recalled the blade and waited a moment as he went for the Wildbuck again, and lunged forward with a growl to force the length through his back, cleanly piercing through his chest and out the other side. He wheezed out a throaty gasp as he managed to put a claw around the automatic shotgun resting against the wall, though didn't get much farther than that as she watched his head lower bit by bit with a sigh, the weapon falling to the bloodstained wooden floorboards.

She freed the blade and stood back up, noting with a little interest that the weapon next to the mare's corpse was another Tachyon Complex ADEE laser rifle like the one she'd seen out front with one of the Gryphons, this one holding an emerald battery instead. It was just as well not all Jackals were so well armed, it would have been far worse for the CPS were that the case. The ADEE was enveloped within her lavender magic as her horn glowed and she brought it over, inspecting and finding the weapon's condition was rather good. She decided to take it with her as she faced about and went to the door, barely hearing Garrett outside rally another combined volley rather than individually placed shots before screaming FIRE! once again, and the building vibrated through the resulting eruption.

The Blackguards had very much kicked the nest and she could hear the Jackals returning fire from their positions within the building, as well as a Minotaur's machine gun out the front loudly belching out rounds. She hoped that if there was anyone innocent in the rooms with the Jackals that they had the good sense to stay down until the smoke finally cleared. Twilight swiftly moved past the fresh corpses she'd made with the scent of their blood giving her a kick in her step. Their struggle hadn't made much noise to be heard but she had still heard hooves coming down the hall.

Magic use gave off a certain feel, so her signature had likely been detected by another Unicorn, and she could also feel the faint hum of magic casting from beyond the open doorway, raising her left foreleg the moment a Hammerburst levitated around the corner and expelling the hoofblade at the same time that the rifle barked. The shield over her glowed momentarily before the blade pierced the weapon, and it promptly malfunctioned in a small contained rupture as it attempted to keep firing. Retracting the blade and letting it fix back in place she sprinted on her back hooves at the door, just as the overly curious face of a sable Unicorn with a punky mane peered around the doorframe with her horn glowing, likely for a magic bolt.

The end of Twilight's hoof slammed hard into the Unicorn's face and immediately stopped her magic casting, although rather than from pain it was quite possibly just because her neck simply snapped as her face gave an audible crunch and she went flying into the wall opposite between two rooms on the other side. She cracked against the shoddy stone and slumped to the floor. Properly stepping out into the dingy hall over the Jackal's twitching corpse she immediately raised her right foreleg and put a burst from her shard augment through a green stallion's head as he ran from one room to another on the side the Blackguards were assaulting, his body falling in the doorway he was passing into as his head was torn open.

She was certainly kicking the nest herself.

The mare she'd sent crashing into the wall had created quite a stir, and the door on her left exploded into scatterings of wood-chips as gunfire spewed out from inside the room towards her. Her shield shimmered as she moved and kicked the splintering door inwards instead, sighting three Jackals inside, two Gryphons and a Zebra. Nopony else. Her horn was still casting, and she raised her left foreleg along with the ADEE, firing both simultaneously, and though by now the Jackals had gotten their armour on, the laser rifle still made very short work of the situation.

It was set to burst-fire, and the three shots it expelled absolutely devastated the Zebra who'd been standing bipedal with a Stryke rifle in his hooves, two shots thoroughly burning through his metal chestplate and the leather behind it, and the third cauterising a strip out of the side of his neck. It left him stumbling on his hindlegs for a moment with the reek of burning flesh and fur in the air before he collapsed along with his weapon. The two Gryphons had been a little faster and dove for cover behind the room's only couch, though one had caught some fléchettes along the way that evidently pierced his armour given his cry of pain, yet it didn't stop their Hammerbursts' from raising up.

While their rifles blindfired at her she was also quickly zeroed on from down the hall as well from one or two doorways. She watched the bullets slam into her shielding and angrily vibrate as they tried their best to pierce without any luck, the barrier over her only erupting into arcing patterns. The ADEE was flicked to full-auto and swiftly released a torrent of glowing green death at the two Gryphons to finish them off while she turned to face her new assailants.

Which was when things got far more interesting, as a door to her right just up ahead was flung open with such force it broke off the hinges, and the gunfire her way ceased as out stomped an enhanced Minotaur with very augmented arms bearing massive serrated blades, which were more like actual swords. She immediately detected the shielding unit under his armour, and rapidly scanned him seeing he had quite a few implants that boosted his reflexes, negated pulse-charges, and it seemed his arms allowed him to dish pulse charges out too. Jackal lieutenant. If they were out in the open their upcoming fight would have been rather simple but both their space to manoeuvre around was severely limited in this cramped hall, that was going to make things rather fun, though it didn't stop him from breaking into a charge at her with a ferocious howl.

Pushing her back hooves against the floorboards the internal mechanisms tensed and accelerated, and she launched herself backwards in the direction of the stairs as both her forelegs focused shard fire upon him, the laser rifle adding to the barrage and peppering him as a mighty left hook arced with electricity through the air where she'd been. His shield held as he threw another punch at her with the other fist, the serrated sword on that arm extending out and she swiftly ducked back under its arc as the edge sliced into the stonework of the left-side wall.

The shield over him flickered intensely with the outpour of her weapons fire, the ADEE blasting on full-auto into its target and soon halting as side panels shot out and vented the strong heat build-up, while he forcefully yanked the sword free in a smattering of stone fragments and rushed her again, his implants assisting his speed as the sword pushed out in another massive downward swipe. She dropped the laser rifle from her magic and quickly stopped firing her shard augments, bringing the left foreleg up and bringing her hoofblade to bear, being forced back as her hindlegs heavily dug against the floorboards and making the wood creak their blades clashed. The edges of their weapons grinded for a single moment before the monomolecular diamond-edge of her blade bit into his sword as he attempted to push her down harder.

The serrated sword was cleaved as she swiftly drove back in an upward strike, though he pulled away in an instant to avoid being struck and before she could fire her right shard augment he cleanly thrust his other arm forward, the sword mounted there extending out before she could back-step enough, and as she hadn't been chemically assisted his blade struck against her left foreleg as she tucked it down to block the strike.

She grunted in anger as she skirted back across the floor, her shield flaring and almost dissipating. A momentary flick over her HUD showed that his single heavy blow had almost depleted the remaining sixteen percent or so. She didn't feel pain in her prosthetics, but she could feel the kinetic feedback of general force from his sword managing to pierce through her foreleg's reinforced surface. A warning flashed across her HUD to show its integrity had been partially compromised, yet thankfully it seemed her shard augment hadn't been. Melee weapons were something of a counter to shields, as force heavily concentrated into a single point rather than being spread over the entire barrier often allowed them to cleave past if they were strong enough, so she decidedly let the remaining shield drop and be cycled into a quicker boost charge from her power cells.

She managed it just as the lieutenant's accelerated and electrically charged left fist came around and straight up again, while she only had time to bring her right foreleg up to brace behind her left, the hoofblade blocking the sword while his punch connected. She was swiftly sent barrelling backwards from the hall, smashing through the upper doorway and over the stairs leading up, and into the farthest wall with a resounding thunderclap as she weightily impacted into the stone. She gasped in a minute amount of pain as she felt the deep throb up her back along her still-recovering spine, and the twinging shock through her stock muscle and tissues. Her shield boost failed to absorb all of the kinetic force alongside her multiple dampeners from the pulse-charge lowering it, but it was better than if she'd allowed her shields to remain as they had without the instant charge-up.

She grit her teeth as she heard the Jackals cheer, wrenched herself free of the cracked and crumbling wall, and shot out at her opponent on accelerated hindlegs through the mineral dust, hoofblade flashing as the Minotaur punched toward her with his right fist, perhaps thinking his augments were tougher than his sword had been.

He was wrong.

Her shields weren't the only thing that could be pierced, and her blade's perfect edge shunted and sliced down into his fist mid-metacarpals, carving through to three-quarters down the wrist as she swung herself up and accelerated both back hooves into his chest with an ill-tempered shout, driving him back and making him focus on keeping his hoofing even while at the same time she fired her right shard augment without restraint into his face. With everything she'd piled into his shield already, her hoofblade depleting them down, and without ample time to recharge, it wavered, and he brought his other hand up just as the dazzling patterns across him fizzled and the shield broke, the prosthetic blocking her stream of shard fire slowly being chipped away as the fléchettes sliced into it.

With a mighty great shove he accelerated the damaged limb outward and she let herself fall back to avoid the strike, shearing the hoofblade through the arm it was lodged in. She kicked away and landed in a crouch upon her haunches, dashing back as he lunged forward throwing a hasty left hook with less power behind it while she raised both hooves and fired, the jagged shards tearing into his armour and slowly eating through it as he pulled back to protect his face, at which point he realised he wasn't going to win. He backed off and turned to retreat, and the gunfire her way from multiple Jackals leaning out of the rooms started up again.

Her shields were still low and almost down again, they'd only gotten a short burst of life from the quick boost, and her power cells had taken that valiantly as it wasn't meant to be done often, it effectively harmed their internals and the overall power they could store. It wouldn't be an issue when she got her check-up back at the Palace as they could repair the strain, but to keep doing it in a combat situation meant she'd have to take cover far more often as the power of her shielding lessened.

She moved and ducked herself into the room she'd already cleared on the left, the sounds of battle outside the flatpack increasing through the half-open windows as she threw herself behind the couch she'd ventilated with the laser rifle, being greeted by the two dead Gryphons with shocks of pain frozen across their faces from the holes burned through them.

"Hey guys." She said for no particular reason.

Twilight shifted about and waited for the Jackals to charge in as her systems soon began the process of recharging her shields, her horn flaring as instead a fun little number bounced off the doorframe into the room and landed just before the tattered couch. She wasn't about to allow an uncontrolled explosion in an area she was certain still held civilians, and that they'd tried it only angered her more than she already had been. She ensnared the frag grenade and chucked it out of a window down towards the Jackals still fighting the Blackguards, smiling a bit when she heard their cries from it touching down and promptly exploding within their ranks.

Her shields peaked to their maximum effectiveness of eighty-seven percent, her internal power now down to forty-four percent, and she jumped to her hooves, horn glowing as she took the Gryphon's Hammerburst rifles with her and strode out into the hallway with fury in her breast, holding down their triggers while her hooves raised and sang. Both bullet and fléchette took two or three Jackals down in sprays of gore before they all tucked themselves in to avoid danger, the Unicorns amongst them blindfiring at her instead. Her right foreleg reshifted into the hoofcannon momentarily and she brought forth a smoke grenade, priming it for immediate detonation as she fired it.

Her imaging sense flicked into action.

The hoofblade extended while her right foreleg's internals changed back to the shard augment, and she went to work as the Jackals confusion mounted from the obscuring heavy blast of billowing grey smoke that had instantly filled the hall and spread into the open rooms. She leapt forward and slashed her blade through the throat of a Gryphon that was stumbling blind, watching the spray of his blood spatter in a brilliant glow of lavender from the vision mode as the Hammerbursts fired into a lightly-armoured stallion that tried to quickly move further down the hall into a different room towards her in order to get a better vantage point.

The stallion went down in a vibrant haze from the rain of bullets and was left screaming, she let him die slowly while firing at two Jackals that thought utilising the smoke as cover to fire from their doorways was a good idea, and they slumped back and to the floor in messy bright splatters as her rifles put each of them down. The one Jackal within the building she saw actually wearing a helmet was outright killed as she raised and loosed her hoofblade directly through the mare's eye as she leant out to fire, her body thwacking back into the doorframe before the blade was retracted.

She focused on open doors and cleared rooms with ease, levitating the necessary mags from corpses to reload the Hammerbursts and keep them in use. The few Jackals with eye augments that possessed thermal sight or imaging sensors were her main targets as she then switched to those confused about dealing with the Blackguards outside or her wreaking havoc in here, and they were quite uncoordinated from it. She could see when she stepped into a room now home to some freshly perforated corpses that her allies were approaching little by little as their muskets devastated the enemy, the Blackguards having cleared a massive amount of Jackal strength from outside the building.

Twilight moved back into the hall and sighted the huge lavender glow of a Diamond Dog coming up the stairs from below, the bitch opening fire through the smoke with a Wildbuck, the automatic shotgun roaring through the hall's confines and sending vibrant pellets scattering through the air, partially smacking into her shield as she moved behind an opened door which was immediately chewed up by the rapid onslaught, Twilight leaning out and spraying some shard fire the Dog's way before letting her blade fly. The edge of it skirted the shotgun and sliced into the bitch's bicep as Twilight let Hammerburst fire rain down the passage in return.

In a sharp growl and a sudden fit of rage the Dog dropped the shotgun and charged at Twilight, forgetting about the blade that had flown past and maybe assumed was now out of Twilight's reach. It was pulled back towards its housing and quickly found a new home, sinking into the Dog's back and embedding. The bitch loosed a pained roar as she came in to swipe her deadly claws at Twilight, obliterating what remained of the door as Twilight very neatly shot herself under the bitch's legs, the rifles still firing until they clicked. She twisted about and recalled the blade, having it return after a moment of it tugging its way free of the Dog's thick hide, to then immediately accelerate it out again the moment the Dog turned around to take another swipe.

The hoofblade pierced deep into the bitch's throat and the claws that were mid-swipe suddenly faltered in their attack as she gave a surprised choked gasp. Twilight didn't relent as she deftly got her hooves underneath her and backed away while firing her shard augments into the Dog, who clutched at the bloody blade with one hand while slashing haphazardly with the other claw. The shard's tore into the bitch's face with smaller bursts of glowing blood, and her chest as her armour was partly stripped away enough for the shards to bite in there as well. With a deep whimper followed by a rattle in her throat, the Dog collapsed to her knees with numerous bullets and fléchettes embedded in her body, tearing and returning the blade from the bitch's throat in a flourish of lavender as the corpse fell face first into the floorboards with a heavy thump.

Taking a breath of air saturated with the scent of blood as she dropped the empty rifles, she accelerated her right hoof into the snout of a Zebra with a wonderful crack as he barged open the door behind her and rushed out the room trying to shank her with a longknife, putting a burst of fléchettes into his broken face for good measure as he hit the floor on his back and spraying lavender across the wood, raising her hoof to fire into the room and then pausing for a moment, her eyes narrowing in anger.

"You better stop this shit right now, you Shade whore!" The glowing silhouette of the Gryphon shouted out at her frettingly glancing around at the smoke, grasping a terrified Changeling in a claw and holding a Thuddgun to the sprite's head with the other. "I'll decorate the wall with this little fucks head if you don-"

Her horn flared and she sharply snapped the Gryphon's neck, while angling the pistol with her magic gripping his claw so it didn't shoot the hostage he'd taken. She quickly darted into the room and shoved the Changeling to one side as random gunfire followed her in, grabbing the Gryphon's body and throwing it forward through the doorway into the path of bullets as she put herself in front of the young sprite.

"Are you hurt?" She quickly asked the Changeling while casting a barrier around him. He shakily shook his head and tucked himself in. "Good, stay down, I'll come back."

She kept the barrier cast for a couple more seconds as she charged out of the room towards the opposite one on her right where a trio of Jackals were firing their weapons blindly into the smoke, the shield flashing and bright bullets seizing in front of her as she impaled the nearest stallion on her hoofblade with a snarl. The other two pathetically scrambled back as he cried out, and she put a torrent of shard fire through both of their heads, painting the room's interior while she turned back into the hallway.

She switched her vision back to standard as the smoke slowly dissipated, lavender turning to red as she glanced around, gunfire and individually shot musket rifle blasts continuing beyond the flatpack's walls. Of all the rooms on this level only a few remained shut on the side facing out to the Blackguards, and she strode over and shattered a door in with a kick, finding the room only occupied by corpses at the smashed windows of Jackals that had clearly been eviscerated by musket shot from below. She gave an appraising nod at the precision she turned back and went back to the Changeling.

"I can't stay here, and neither should you. Go upstairs and you'll see the room with a faint barrier over it, you'll be able to get in. Stay there until I or the police come for you, you understand?" She tersely relayed the instructions as she stepped inside the room, her horn flashing momentarily to cast a quick spell over the Changeling, a simple brief magical signature that would allow him in with the others. She moved back out into the hall and saw it was still unoccupied, beckoning a hoof for him to go and waiting a little impatiently as he managed to trot out on slightly shaky hooves. "You'll be alright, the top floor is clear of danger, go now."

He moved a little faster at her intense glare, and she waited until he went through the broken door at the end and saw his legs disappear up the stairs before she relaxed a little. She slowly took a breath or two as her emotions ran rampant, casting an eye over her HUD and checking inventory amongst other things to try and calm down.

Her shard ammo was at just under sixty percent, she'd burned through a lot going as she had for just a single floor. It wouldn't be an issue if she utilised more weaponry around her, it was just a shame she couldn't use any Neurellix. She'd already been thrown into a wall because of that bullshit and the Ghost had fully filtered through as well, she really was starting to feel the twinges up her back where the hairline fractures to her spine were plaguing her. It was more a note in her mind if anything else just not to get thrown around so much, the pain was there as a background note but it was manageable, it was mostly just fucking annoying, and she'd had far worse.

She brought up the warning about her foreleg being breached, and it had changed slightly since before which didn't bode well. She didn't have much time to assess any additional information beyond that though as the floor then promptly exploded a few short hooves behind her, showering her in shrapnel and chunks of wood as she threw herself towards the doorway that led down to the next floor. She growled as another explosion sent more pieces of floorboard flying, and her horn glowed as she commandeered a few fallen weapons from around her, including the laser rifle she'd previously dropped.

Instead of taking the stairwell down she leapt straight through the huge gap in the middle of the hall floor, created by the grenade launcher she could see was being wielded one-handed by the Minotaur lieutenant she'd already kicked the arse of. She used the small cloud of dust and debris thrown up from the grenades as cover as she raised several of the firearms she'd liberated and unleashed them into him, while she landed directly onto another Jackal holding a pump-shotgun and forced her hoofblade through the Gryphoness' head in a flash.

The renewed shield around the Minotaur flashed while her weapons laid into him, and he fired the grenade launcher again, however this time she was ready and she caught the grenade that sped out of the tube in her purple corona as it zipped through the air at her. While its yield was limited to a certain area, there was no accounting for the trajectory of the shrapnel and there were still likely innocents on this floor, so she cast a quick spell to contain it within a suppression field as she fired her shard augments at the Jackals in the rooms flanking her, then quickly teleporting the grenade into the room on her right that held four of them, making sure the grenade reached the window before she released her hold on it.

The frag grenade detonated and ripped into them from one side while her fléchettes tore into them from the other, and she switched her focus as everyone in the room was bloodily decimated, bringing her right foreleg around to jettison a heavy burst of shard fire into a duo of Pegasi leaning out with rifles from another room in front. She watched them go down in the corner of her vision, sharply dipping to her right as she sensed movement behind her and dodging the longknife from the Zebra that attempted to stab her in the back, and brought her hoofblade up to slash up through his muzzle in a wonderful spray of blood. She never quite understood the Zebra and their fumbled attempts to get in close to an opponent that wholly outclassed them as it was always to their downfall, they did the exact same thing back in the Zebralands during her recent trip there.

If they were coordinated then it was quite dangerous to fight a zeal of them that possessed good military training without first possessing some form of military training, neurozyme, or reflex implant to counter their innate magic, but so many young Zebra tried to simply just imitate their military instead without learning to harness their magic and ended up being embarrassingly weak-hooved opportunists.

The ADEE stopped spewing green as it overheated again from full-auto firing while several of the commandeered Hammerbursts clicked empty, and she dropped them momentarily to retrieve other weapons instead, piling the rounds still remaining in their magazines into the Minotaur. He knew she'd just grab a fired grenade in her magic again so he dropped the launcher and reached behind himself, swinging around a Thuddgun and immediately blasted heavy slugs her way. A few impacted into her shields and brought the barrier down considerably more than other rounds might, and she charged at him while she kept the weapons chattering into the lieutenant, soon dropping the ones that ran out of ammo.

The magnolia wall next to her exploded in messes of fragments and powder as Thuddgun slugs tore through the flatpack's light inner structure, while she shot the hoofblade out directly at the lieutenant. He saw it through the chaos at the last second and jerked to one side in order to dodge, but even with his enhanced reflexes his profile was far too large and the blade pierced through into his ribs and brought the shields down, and he retreated again into a side room to escape the bullets now striking into his armour. She'd had quite fucking enough of that and gave chase, snarling as she smashed past other Jackals firing at her, breaking bones and necks with accelerated hoof punches as she barrelled into the room to confront him.

She ducked under the blow of his damaged fist swinging to greet her and headbutted it out the way while unloading her shard augments into him. He stumbled and dropped the Thuddgun under the punishment as she then wrenched the hoofblade from his torso with a gout of red and locked it back in place, and stopped firing as he fell back into a worn couch that gave way under his muscled frame. His breathing grew wet and raspy, multiple fléchettes and likely her blade having pierced into his lungs, and she made to turn away and leave him to die before he gingerly reached back and grabbed at something.

Twilight had fought enough criminals attempting a shitty last stand to know where this was going. She sharply levitated his own Thuddgun up from the ground and punched a couple shots into his chest, putting a stop to him as his arm partly raised a grenade belt belonging to the launcher he'd been firing, the limb faltering in the attempt to utilise a pulse charge that began to arc up it to detonate the grenades, and sagging back down as a final sigh issued from the lieutenant's throat.

Whipping around she dove back out into the hall with purpose and put the remaining slugs in the Thuddgun through those nearest to her, blowing gory chunks from torsos and making heads burst in showers of crimson and brain matter as the heavy pistol devastated through what it hit. She dropped it when it was empty and roared as she rushed forwards and viciously slit the throat of a Unicorn firing their battle rifle into her, the hoofblade cleaving so deeply it nearly decapitated the mare, blood spewing from the mare's neck as she swung her foreleg around to shoot the blade into a stallion across from her, punching into his chest through the armour.

Both bodies dropped in a second, her blade returning to its sheath while she streamed shards from her other leg at the last few rooms on this end with some Jackals hanging out of them trying to shoot her, and their armour did nothing to protect them as their heads were shredded apart by the deadly shards. They went down in gory messes to the floor as she faced about in a flash toward the other end of the hall, her mind racing as she seized their weapons into her magic to bear them upon the remaining Jackals.

She blew apart one stallion sitting on his haunches before her ears flicked, and she realised they were begging with her, their weapons fallen to the floor and their forelegs or arms raised in complete surrender as she took a step forward with a venomous growl that made those nearest to her flinch. She took deep breaths as her head swam, levitating all of their weapons to her so they couldn't be taken back up.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she felt herself shake with hatred.

Her thoughts still raced and tried to find any good reason to spare them, but found no inkling of mercy within her at the current moment. There was fear set into every Jackal's face and she couldn't bring herself to care, they tensed with the sudden quiet in the hall between her heavy breathing and the gunfire outside. She knew every last one of them was complicit, every one of them knew what happened on the top floors, and in her mind none of them deserved any ounce of forgiveness. They all deserved to die, they all needed to die. It would be completely justified and she knew it, fuck their surrender, she should just kill them all and be done with it.

A few of the weapons roared as she lost her composure, two of the Jackals going down and shouting in pain, though they didn't die yet. The others pleaded louder and she grunted as some started to move.

"Stay the fuck where you are!" She bellowed, clenching her teeth as she almost just pulled every last trigger to be done with it. "Don't fucking move!"

Luna would sanction it despite her recent infraction. Twilight knew when her actions were reviewed that if she explained the situation well enough she would be fine, she could kill them and write it off, she knew it. Her nostrils flared as magic kept squeezing the triggers tighter, it would be so easy. After what had been done to the Children, after they'd kidnapped a foal to do who knows what with, they'd taken hostages to save their pathetic hides, and there were officers still captive somewhere and she wasn't even sure now if this was the right fucking building for fucks sake... she should just gun them all down and move on, truly ensure the survivors upstairs were going to be safe.

She felt herself twinge... as much as she desperately wanted to, something tugged deep within her despite the blinding hatred telling her to perforate every last one of them, she was battling her wild fury while the logical part of her was slowly creeping up. A tiny inkling of cold truth came bubbling up from her enraged core into her mind... that of what Celestia might think of her at this very moment. She swallowed the lump in her throat as the sobering thought gave her immediate pause and settled heavily in her stomach, envisioning if her mentor was here watching her actions, and it was somewhat of a dousing bucket of water over the blazing inferno screaming within her.

Not enough to wipe out the burning fire, not at all, she was completely righteous in her anger, but it was quelled and quieted enough that she quickly realised that if she executed them all... fucking... if she did that... she wouldn't be helping Equestria heal though a better way, as Celestia herself saw it. Even Luna with all her silent fury would have told her she was going too far killing unarmed opponents. Celestia would give her that look, the heavy one that made her heart seize in hurt and sink down into a deep pit of shame, because Celestia in all her wisdom would dearly hope that despite the things these Jackals had done or had known was going on; they could still know regret.

The same as Twilight had.

They could still atone for their crimes. They weren't beyond saving.

She struggled with herself internally, with both what she personally believed and what she wanted to believe, and actively worked against her training, reasserting her mental barriers as one of the Jackals made a quick move, and dove into a room before she could think to not fire just one of the guns. She took in a sharp breath in panic as she shut down her magic, the weapons falling to the ground. She gasped in alarm as she'd almost slipped and done it, she'd almost pulled all triggers and wiped them all out.

She swallowed after a few shaky breaths and recovered, casting a spell to magically bind most the Jackals she could see that had surrendered, then levitating and placing all of the weapons behind her into a cleared room. The Jackals she'd shot in her rage were still bound, though she floated out some magical healing bandages and med-hypos to the single Jackal she'd decidedly not locked into binding. She put them in the sage-coloured Unicorn mare's hooves where she was sitting, seeming a little stunned as her short jet-black mane fell across her vision while she stared down at the rather choice medical supplies.

"Sort those two, jab them both with a hypo each, remove the bullets and wrap their wounds, you know what you're doing. The solution should help things along, the bandages are enchanted and they'll staunch the bleeding." She told the mare with a sharp edge to her voice, who swallowed and quietly nodded after a moment, moving to do as she was ordered. Twilight then took a steadying breath and addressed the whole floor. "Stay down, and don't try to escape, otherwise you will be hunted down." She said, walking with her shard augments at the ready and keeping it together. "Anyone still in the rooms, come out or stay there with your hands, claws, or hooves up."

She walked and raised her hooves, passing each room and making one or two of the secured Jackals tuck in fear for a moment, binding Jackals she came across that were yielding having thrown down their weapons, and making sure the guns were safety put away too before she came to the room halfway down the hall that the one Jackal had retreated into during her outburst. She kept her augment level as she paced across the open doorway, seeing with a great level of discontent and rising anger that he had taken a hostage. The Unicorn stallion was clearly deeply afraid, the semi-auto pistol in his magic grip was shaky against the Changeling's head, the young nymph had tears running down her face.

"Listen, I've killed a lot of Jackals today." Twilight sighed, keeping herself in check as she met the Unicorn's eyes. "Killing you and saving her would be just as easy."

He was too young, almost a colt, about as old as she was when she first moved to Ponyville if she guessed correctly. His green eyes were alive with fear, his light blue mane plastered against his face. Was he currently holding a gun to an innocent mare's head because he'd done something horrendous or was simply not wanting to die? She didn't want to think that this young stallion had raped any Changelings, and didn't want to think he was in the know about it going on, though she couldn't discount the idea out of hoof.

"I understand you must be afraid. Crown Agent waltzes in, blasts away all your friends like it's nothing, and I guess you think you're next so your only option is to try and get me to make a deal, something like that, right?" She said with a hint of venom, keeping her hoof perfectly still. She was too angry, she needed to calm down.

He didn't respond, she could see him trying to but he couldn't form the words.

That wasn't a good level of fear, his heart was racing a million miles a minute and his magic was erratic. She could simply snap his neck the same as she'd done with the Jackal earlier but it wouldn't be the better way. A part of her wanted to know what he chose here rather than her just suppressing the gun and tearing it out of his magic, whether he'd attempt to shoot the Changeling or fire at her instead or give up and surrender. Despite her anger she wasn't going to kill him, but if he chose to pull that trigger she'd simply block it and he'd be facing quite a while in jail, and she'd rather not be the one to consign somepony so young to that fate.

The basic leather undersuit he wore over his light-yellow coat was something she'd noticed coming in, the same for one or two others that had surrendered, it was a talking point if anything to calm him down, and herself for that matter. He was shaking about as much as the nymph he held, she could see his pale-green magic was flickering a little, and that trigger was tensing just a bit much for her liking.

"You haven't got proper armour." She stated, his eyes meeting hers again. "That means you're not long in the Cartel, maybe a few months at most. My guess is they stuck you here so you could get some hooves-on experience to some degree, hear the gang war going on so you don't flinch at every bit of gunfire, maybe shoot at some rival gangs if they came sniffing around looking for a fight... like my friends outside. Have you ever killed anyone?"

He swallowed, and slowly shook his head.

"It's very easy, especially with magic." She informed him, casting an eye at his pistol. "I don't think most ponies realise that despite our history and general status as herbivores that killing comes as easy to us as it does to a Gryphon or a Dragon, historically they both commonly hunted smaller animals as prey from near birth, most still do back in their own lands. Ponies are just as capable of killing others but most are ignorant about it, most think it's like in the movies where there's a certain tension to it, that a mental barrier presents itself and our own conscience steps in and stops us from stomping down on a neck..."

"It doesn't." She stated in a whisper, the young stallion looking at her with a little more worry in his eyes, yet he was listening. "Instinctively we will stomp and thrash and beat the ever-living fuck out of something or someone when we're afraid enough, and in the now when you bring technology into the question, especially so when a pony is so afraid that all they can focus on is survival and nothing else, it becomes very easy to do something as blindingly simple as squeeze a trigger on a weapon that does the killing for you."

His eyes flicked down at the pistol, and back to her.

"If you're wondering why I'm telling you that, it's because I want you to think about what you're going to do next." She said, keeping his gaze. "If you kill her, which yes, will be very easy to do; you're looking at most of your young life in prison, and I really have to wonder, for what? A future in the Cartel? I don't believe you want to hurt that girl, and I understand that you don't want me to kill you, however you have to understand that by threatening her you're putting me in the position where I'm forced to consider that choice."

"Think about what I said, about just how easy it is for a pony to kill another, and apply that to a Crown Agent. It's burned into me that you're a danger right now, there's a furious part of my mind telling me that you need to be put down immediately to stop you from being a threat to that girl or myself, and you're not even up there in terms of what I would rate a serious criminal, yet my spirit pushes me, wills me to take action." She paused, assessing his movements. He was still shaky though his magic was more stable. He was afraid but he was clearly listening and it was calming him to simply talk, and his eyes were absently staring through her and flicking back every now and then as he mulled over the situation. "You understand it, don't you? You release her, and I stop feeling that instinct so much. You drop the gun, and that part of me that sees you as a threat stops shouting in my ear altogether. I have to actively force myself to stand here and not act, it's not easy fighting it."

He seemingly found his voice. "Y-you won't kill me?"

"On the Crown's honour." She intoned back.

The young stallion swallowed again, breathing out in an odd release of tension. His horn stopped casting and the pistol fell towards the floor before she caught it in her own magic, bringing it over to the doorway as it broke apart into its components. She motioned her hoof to the side for him to back off as he let the Changeling go, and the nymph quickly ran towards her as all fours hit the ground. Twilight held her for a brief moment as the nymph bumped against her chest, though quietly whispered for the Changeling to move over to the corner. The young stallion was looking a bit lost as he thumped down to his haunches, and she cast the spell to bind his hooves while she fixed her attention on him.

He glanced up at her. "I don't know much about Agents... but... my dad once told me that you can always trust when they swear upon the Princesses."

"Always." She smiled with some pride, though her expression flattened again as she cleared her throat. "I have to ask you; did you do anything to the Changelings upstairs?"

His eyes went wide and the reply was instant. "N-no! Never! I... I just... all I could do was ignore it, but I would never..."

That was all she really needed to know. Once someone was in with the Jackals they couldn't often leave without penalty, and the longer they stayed the more likely they'd fall into darker things, or grow indifferent to the suffering that was caused.. Thankfully she could tell he wasn't lying about it and hadn't forced himself on anyone, it was written all over him.

It made her just a little less irate.

She turned to the Changeling and waved a hoof for her to follow, reshifting her shard augments back into hooves and going to all fours again with a relieved sigh, trotting out into the hallway and seeing the sage Unicorn mare she'd given the supplies to was sitting down waiting for Twilight to return rather than run away, though she looked a bit more perturbed than concerned. Twilight went over and saw that she had done as she was bid, the Jackals that had been shot weren't in any immediate danger of dying anymore, though they and the others in the hall were eyeing her with great concern.

"Nice work, knew you'd do fine." Twilight told her, stretching as she glanced over the messily painted patch on the Jackal's armour of a small red cross with a heart at its centre, a crude representation of Equestria's medical symbol, but it got the point across. "I've got another job for you if you're up for it."

The Unicorn mare's expression showed that she didn't seem thrilled at the prospect. "That is?"

Twilight nudged the nymph beside her. "Go with her upstairs, keep an eye on the Children still alive up there."

"W-what the fuck, but she's a Jackal!" The Changeling blanched, speaking up.

"I am well aware." Twilight said, her attention going to the nymph as her tone became very serious. "Though I'm curious if you saw the rest of your friends and their states."

"E-exactly! It's not right! Which is wh-"

"-Which is why-" Twilight cut her off. "-The few that are still with us need someone with medical experience, however little it is, to watch over them until help arrives. I would do it myself except I have an important mission to complete, and I'm fairly certain that-" She turned to the Unicorn mare. "What's your name?"

"...Foamy."

"-That Foamy here-" She emphasised by leaning over and slapping her hoof on Foamy's shoulder and making the mare jerk. "-Would absolutely love to help and get herself into my good graces before it comes time that the police get here. Isn't that right, Foamy?"

"Sure." Foamy quickly replied, her golden eyes now flicking over Twilight with a very healthy level of concern.

Twilight flashed her a wide smile, fairly sure that Foamy knew she would be absolutely fucked if she tried to run, then turned to the Changeling. "And your name?"

"Nimble."

"Well, Nimble; think of you two working together as fostering good relations between the Jackals and the Children, hm?" Twilight kept the smile up, until Nimble slowly nodded. "Wonderful! Right then, follow me, you two."

Sharing a muted glance of shared worry between themselves that probably did wonders for their rapport, they paced behind Twilight as she trotted further down the damaged hall to where the grenades had blown holes in the floor above, moving past and over the bodies of slain Jackals and spent casings as Nimble and Foamy did the same, Nimble looking a tad paler than Foamy at the dead as she tried to step around the blood pooling underneath the corpses.

"Upstairs there is a secure room with a barrier, enter it and stay there until I or the police come for you. Understand?" She recited, though she hadn't mentioned to Nimble that she'd put the living corpses out of their misery, so she added an additional. "Do not enter any of the other rooms."

They both quickly nodded, and her horn lit up as she cast the entry signature over them, then encompassing and lifting them in her magenta corona up through the broken floor with ease and depositing them towards the stairs. She cracked a small grin at their moderately surprised faces, being a powerful telekinetic had its amusing moments, and it certainly did wonders for her mental state to find some small joys in between the chaos.

"Go." She said, glancing over her shoulder as they left.

The hall was a mess of the dead and rubble at this end, with Jackals bound at the middle where the debris lessened and to the other end in various doorways and rooms. Their weapons were stashed, though she turned and moved forward, igniting her horn to grab them from where she was, pulling them out and promptly beginning to disassemble most of them within a few short seconds. She liberated the conventional weapons from their firing pins, putting them in a pocket while breaking essential components in other more advanced weapons.

"Just so no one's tempted." She announced with a thin smile, as they watched her pull the guns apart. "When I leave and go down to the next floor, I hope none of you will make any attempts to escape. I'll know if you do; your bindings have a signature, and as I said earlier, you will be hunted down."

The only weapons she hadn't taken to pieces were the panty-Unicorn's ADEE, the Minotaur lieutenant's Thuddgun, and the berserking Dog's Wildbuck. The laser rifle still had a decent amount of charge in it despite the reckless level of full-auto fire she'd been subjecting it to, a testament to how well Tachyon made their weaponry. She went over to the farthest part of the splintered hole in the floor above and retrieved a bandolier of shells the Dog had wrapped around her torso, discarding the ones that had been pierced by fléchettes as they'd be useless and putting the sling around herself, quickly returning to the room with the dead lieutenant to take his Thuddgun magazines as well.

Storing those in her duster, she kept the weapons at the ready within her corona as she walked over to the ajar door leading out into the next stairwell. She looked back once more after going back onto her hindlegs and shifting the shard augment setup back into place. "Remember; hunted down."

With that, she carefully went through and down each step, and listened, though she didn't hear anything much beyond slightly increased breathing from a few sources including the floor below, so she had to assume they were lying in wait to attempt an ambush, at which point there was a certain flick in her mind just as she happened to wonder why the firing had stopped outside, and let the connection go through.

"It is done, Kommandant." Garret's grave tone greeted her.

"Nice work, Garret, ease up." She returned as she moved. "I'm somewhat secure in here and working my way down, still no sign of the officers yet, but I think I scanned a small underground level for storage below the ground floor so that's where I'm headed. Knowing you, you've already got a perimeter set-up, so keep ready for enemy reinforcements."

"Of course, Agent."

"How many?" She asked.

There was a slight pause.

"...Three."

"I'm sorry, their deaths are on me." She reassured him, there'd likely be Tartarus to pay when she next saw Gwyndolin for having her soldiers directly attack a Jackal stronghold, and she'd bear it completely. "It's also on me that I told you to give no quarter, I shouldn't have done that."

Twilight heard Garret make an odd noise. "I decided to be lenient in giving it, however."

She genuinely smiled. "I'm glad, how many surrendered?"

"Fifteen. Mostly ponies, a few Gryphons. The wounded have been helped."

"I'm quite sure they weren't happy about it." She grinned. "How's our hostage?"

"She sleeps, the stimulant in the medicine wore off. Losing a limb is an ordeal."

"We would know." She said, her smile sobering a bit. "Be safe and keep alert, some Jackals I secured might try to make an exit, so kindly smack them over the head if they try."

"By your order, Agent." He replied, cutting the connection.

The door ahead was shut as she stepped down onto the landing, and she still couldn't hear anything beyond the door but breathing. She switched to the imaging sensors and found that she had to laugh a little, as the Jackals in the hall were waiting for her as she'd thought, however...

She opened the door with her magic, still wary and keeping bipedal as she eyed the Jackals either sitting or standing, though their weapons were laid on the floor, and their hands, hooves, or claws were partly lifted in surrender. What amused her all the more was the dead lieutenant she passed by having been shoved unceremoniously into an empty room, the Dog having been taken out from a good headshot it looked like. She doubted any of them would own up to being the one to do that. Maybe she could ensure that it was simply put down to some unfortunate crossfire if they kept cooperating.

"Good choice, people." She announced, casting the required binding magic as she walked down the hall with her three deadly weapons in tow, with a little extra input to really secure the two Diamond Dogs at the end as they still had powerful claws. "Not shooting at a Crown Agent and yielding to the authority of the Crown is going to go a long way in helping all of you out. There's no forgiving what's been done on the top floor, though I hope none of you are responsible. You can all realise the path you've taken in life isn't the right one and try to make amends."

It was a little cheesy really, but it was the sort of thing Celestia would have said. The Jackals that had subjected the Children to assault and rape would be found and punished accordingly, just the same for those that had essentially killed them by wrapping them in Winter-Iron, assuming of course she hadn't already blown half of them away when she'd entered. For all she knew, the members of the Jackal Cartel on this floor were only aware that the sex-slavery was going on rather than partaking, so when they were put into the system the truth would soon come out.

That and she was going to personally oversee every last case.

Sure that they were firmly trussed, she repeated the process of ensuring all of their weapons were non-functional, delivered the warning not to try and run just in case, and added a few magazines and shells to her stash before she continued onward. The next floor was the last, and she found the ground floor much the same, the Jackals had surrendered, either afraid of her extreme might from hearing her clear two floors, or that the Blackguard had taken out their main force outside. She bound them up and took their guns too, stopping as she walked down the ground hall to the middle where the symmetrical design differed, and in place of two rooms on one side instead opened out into a sort of entrance lobby where she saw a rather large Jackal waiting for her.

It seemed every floor had been assigned a lieutenant to rally the forces inside the flatpack, this one still alive, so having likely seen the writing on the wall and thereby ordering his Jackals to lay down their arms. The Diamond Dog was a strong looking sort, many were, but this one was a tad more muscular than most, his shaggy silvery-cream fur somewhat unevenly laid over the wider frame, and he was also a bit taller than most other Dogs she'd seen.

"Morning." She greeted, her guns and the guns being dismantled in her magic all lowering a bit as she trot over, he didn't try to resist as she bound his clawed hands in extra protections.

He grunted. "Afternoon."

Twilight gave him a shrug. "Sun's still pretty high, it's morning enough. Your name?"

"I am Snowbound." He said in his growling voice.

"Do you know if there are any police officers in the basement, Snowbound?"

"Yes."

"Yes, you know whether or not anyone's down there? Or yes, there is?"

"The second, little pony."

She nodded. "Excellent. Don't go anywhere."

"I yield to you." He intoned, bowing his head.

"Not to the Gryphons outside?" She raised an eyebrow as she dismantled the remaining weapons and chucked them into a corner.

"Blackguard are strong, yet you strike into us directly, no fear even from little pony. We hear you kill us above, we hear you kill us again, I know when pack is beaten."

Diamond Dogs could be very strange sometimes, they were nomads throughout Equestrian history and never really had a place to call home, always moving from spot to spot in splintered groupings and making burrows wherever possible, scavenging for anything they could eat or hoard. Many had ended up putting down roots in Canterlot and places like Solar City simply because such a lifestyle wasn't viable anymore, though they still hearkened back to their older ways and almost pack-like dynamics.

Dogs like Snowbound were almost like relics of a different age, he'd likely been roaming the land hunting and gathering around the time Twilight's parents had settled into their second home where she'd spent her formative years. Silvery fur was only sometimes an indicator of time for Dogs, often it was their stance and faces, and she could see Snowbound was at least sixty. He'd likely lived this long from constantly joining new packs that bested his previous packs, or it was simply down to him being more of a loner, so it was interesting that he was placed in charge of his own few units. It made her curious as to how he'd ended up a lieutenant in the Jackal Cartel, she thought it was somewhat general knowledge that older Dogs weren't as driven to needlessly fight as their younger peers. Perhaps Jöhtunn or his secondaries alongside him managing the forces hadn't thought this flatpack was going to be assailed by the Crown in the near future, and that this had been an easy posting for an old Dog like Snowbound to keep people in line.

"Have a good one, Snowbound." She mock-saluted.

Turning to face the stairs at the end of the hall she went down past the Jackals, equally amused and annoyed as some of them offered apologies as if it really helped, and slipped through the shabby door moving down, the stairwell on this side of the building being the one that led down to the basement. Given that the Jackals had surrendered she was a little more relaxed, though that didn't mean her little arsenal wasn't prepared, the ADEE tracked at the front as the stronger weapon while the Thuddgun and the Wildbuck hovered behind to cover side angles. It wasn't entirely necessary as there was no hallway when she reached the bottom level, simply a small gap from stairs to door, a small flickering light on the ceiling between them and some broken bottles on the floor.

When she pushed the door open she was partly expecting what she saw, a simple musty storage room, though she hadn't expected it to be absolutely packed and larger than most. When a flatpack had a storage level it was small and perhaps half filled at best, as the most common types of people that lived in them were usually single renters or students with the contents of a few bags or possibly a truck, most things which would fit within a studio room if one planned well enough. That this was so large didn't seem right, it was more akin to a warehouse and it had her curious, the place smelled strange.

Twilight flicked the lights on and was presented with a slightly better view as a fair number of bulbs lit up, though it was still obscured with rows of shelving and shipping crates, and switching to the imaging sensor created a mess of overlapping fuzzy lilac distortions. Something down here was messing with her scanning as she shouldn't be picking up this much interference from objects, she'd tailored the settings to only detect body heat, vibrations, and certain electrical signals, yet nearly everything was lighting up. Despite the interference though, she could see that all the crates and smaller boxes on their shelves nearest to her were completely empty, and when she placed a hoof against a box her system detected the slightest tremour throughout it, every single container was vibrating.

Now what was causing that?

Switching back to standard vision as her imaging sensor was mostly a detriment here, she still saw a clear path through the maze of storage, though something else felt amiss and she took a left along a branching path between the shelves when the opportunity presented itself, her hooves silent as she prowled. She saw before she reached the edge of the room that the basement had been artificially extended from the original finish, and where foundation walls had once been set, now the quartzcrete had been eked out and new walls that were decidedly not quartzcrete branched out in their place. It wasn't what had her feeling off, though the method was odd, the walls being stacked bricks consisting of clay and lesser aggregate, a rather simple building method in this time period. It worked well enough, the bricks were packed with mortar and everything was holding.

At least it didn't interfere with the flatpack's actual foundation, otherwise she'd worry the floor above might collapse into the basement. Quartzcrete was poured and pressed, consisting primarily of granite and quartz aggregate, ceramic substrate, and magically enchanted binding liquids that contained powdered lesser gemstone. When builders set it in, they would apply a particular heating spell to activate the magic, akin to firing bricks, and the gemstone component throughout the binding liquid would combine and make the entire pour virtually untouchable to all weather conditions once it hardened, said to be capable of standing for thousands of years without wear.

It had only been invented some years prior during the plateau's initial construction, so it had yet to make good on that claim, given that she never saw any wear on modern structures she was inclined to think it might though. These laid bricks on the other hoof... she wasn't certain they'd last even a year, they'd clearly been put into place rather quickly and she detected air bubbles throughout where moisture would be able to get in and help them crumble. How long ago had they been laid, she wondered? How long until they gave way? She saw that they slightly varied in colour so they'd lain for a little while, and added bit by bit as the quartzcrete had been taken down.

It hadn't been completed recently she'd wager, as she didn't see much in the way of quartz residue beyond traces. Quartzcrete also wasn't the easiest thing to drill through and yet she also didn't see any leftover tools or remnants of them. She did a quick analysis scan of the area and sent it to Vee, silently moving on once the little minimalist ruby on her HUD flashed in confirmation of receipt.

She crept through the basement following the implanted bricks, the scent of materials weakening and colour getting lighter as she neared the corner onto the other hastily made wall, the brick here as old as those initially laid. So then they'd started with the corner and worked outward and inward at the same time, likely leaving the foundation's original corner up until the supporting pillars she could see in the ceiling had been put into place. Here she found a tad more residue, and something else of interest that she forwarded to Vee; minor indents into the brickwork that lent to a different type of hoof, it was faint and somepony had definitely tried to fix it but it was there. Vee would be able to look through the database and hopefully pull a comparable signature if she could, with the damage it wasn't likely to turn up much.

Twilight thought it rather odd that the magic signature didn't feel quite like a pony, though it might be due to deterioration so she wondered if she could entertain the idea that it might have belonged to a Deer. They had an innate ability to shape the world around them and primarily worked with wood over anything else, though that didn't mean they wouldn't work with other materials and they could move stone in much a similar manner. It was a strange new puzzle piece to add to her stack if her gut feeling was correct.

Her interest kept mounting as she moved toward the basement's centre, finding more than a few boxes starting to contain items, namely small packets of illegal drugs that the Jackals were known for trading along with sachets of Availant, yet more importantly there were a multitude of parts from cannibalised weapons in pallet crates, Ironclad and Hammerforged chiefly amongst them, so that told her that it was likely a majority of these larger flat crates had once contained whole complements of firearms.

Had she been fortunate enough to come across a distribution site?

It was a certainty, this was a stronghold that had contained a significant Jackal presence which the CPS had so far been unable to move in on due to the sheer enemy numbers and their own lack thereof. This flatpack was also deep in Jackal territory in one of the Canterlot extranet's more extended blind spots, so Vee wouldn't have spotted it unless she looked closely, and given everything she was already doing it was no wonder it hadn't popped up through her general scans, especially if they'd been laying low before all this kicked off. The closest Twilight could find in the database as she had a quick look was a line of shops a few streets down that previously arrested Jackals or an informant in their ranks working for the CPS would frequent.

Though she felt a rush of excitement as her ears caught the barest sounds of breathing, flicking to her imaging sense briefly to sight the unmistakable lavender forms of a Diamond Dog and several ponies not far beyond her despite the heavy interference that was now making everything distort in multi-hued purple hazes. They were prone and not moving, however given the interference she couldn't tell much else right now.

But she'd found the wayward officers.

The fucked vision wasn't a good sign though, so she kept her commandeered weapons at the ready while her shard augments were tensed to sing as she turned back to standard sight, and she dialled up the intensity of her sensory implant. She only caught the hint of breathing again as she stepped forward, taking in the sight of four huge steel containers kept in the smallest of open sections, the area just large enough for maybe ten ponies to stand shoulder to shoulder. Her eyes carefully tracked around the area, but she wasn't sensing anything from her surroundings beyond the slight breathing from the makeshift jails.

Twilight's instincts were screaming at her as she approached the nearest container that held one of them. She felt coiled like a spring as she waited for an attack, yet nothing came and it was almost frustrating. To make things far stranger, the container wasn't locked shut with any heavy-duty padlock she'd expect of the Jackals, but instead a disturbingly high-level barrier spell not dissimilar to the one she'd cast upstairs to protect her quarry.

However... Its signature was mostly alien to her when she tried to feel it out, and continuing on to find a loophole in the spellwork made her head swim while she detected multiple countermeasures in place to ward off would-be jailbreakers. First the unknown gang with the powerful weaponry and impossible hex-core, now bizarre barrier spells on par with or greater than her own magic?

She stopped trying to tamper with the faint green barrier, some of those inlaid matrixes promised a lot of fiery explosions that would bring the house down if she fucked up breaking through it. This was too far above the Jackal Cartel's paygrade, Jöhtunn didn't have this kind of pull. Her mind immediately went to the only other magic users she knew of that had near this level of ability; the Princesses, the mages of the Royal Court, and possibly Changelings.

She immediately and quite obviously ruled out the Princesses, there was no entertaining any thought that they would be involved. The royal mages being somehow involved was an interesting thought though, it wasn't as if they couldn't be bought or coerced, they all had names, homes, and families, all of which despite being kept under wraps could be found with enough effort from a criminal organisation with the right contacts. They could be brought into the fold one way or another. Yet that didn't sit right either, royal mages were elite and loyal, only appointed to the position in the Royal Court by express allowance of either Princess, and their judgement wasn't usually wrong in making such decisions.

It was still something to consider however as it wasn't just gangs that could find out such information, and looking into the Royal Court was definitely worth doing every now and then anyway as all five of the high noble houses had their place within it too, and the lords and ladies were quite often playing sly games of political gain that pissed her off to no end. Just because it was highly unlikely that those personally chosen by the Princesses were corrupt, didn't mean it wasn't happening, and it was a Crown Agent's job to weed it out. If the nobles were involved in this... well, that certainly didn't bode well, but it also meant she'd have to start politicking with their games too, that was going to be a slog. At least Constantine's word games were infinitely more palatable because she was halfway honest about what she wanted in any given situation, nobles weren't bound by such ancient magic to be so.

Which left Changelings in the current bag. The only major group consisting of Changelings within Canterlot were Yly Ilkinsfáerinr, and between the mages and the gang, Constantine stood to gain more by working with other gangs like the Jackals. She didn't doubt for a single moment that Constantine would dare hurt her own intentionally, yet she was one to try and make deals, and one theory Twilight was building up was that she had bitten off more than she could chew in a new deal.

Before Twilight had left for the Zebralands she'd sat in on a meeting between Constantine, Jöhtunn, and Gwyndolin. As their unofficial troubleshooter she kept the peace and went to each of them for her usual rubbing of elbows, but sometimes she had to lay down ground rules when certain things happened. That particular meeting she had informed them that she was going away for a while, and if they ended up fighting and causing chaos then she'd come down hard on all of them. It likely explained why Gwyndolin had been so quick to assist with her best lieutenant at the helm, though that didn't mean Twilight would go any easier on her.

So what had Constantine been up to in that time? This barrier's spellwork did have a certain aspect to its signature that felt like it wanted to deceive, to twist and coerce, it lent toward Changeling magic in many degrees even if the rest of it was unknown to her. What if Constantine had ordered her kin work on these makeshift cells for Jöhtunn some time before the alliance had broken? Was it why the Jackals had held some of the Children upstairs? It begged the question as to the purpose and why she'd do it in the first place, as Twilight couldn't fathom why Constantine would assist the Jackals in their ability to capture others even if they were working together against the Crown, especially considering the history of Jackals making prostitutes of any race including Changelings before the duopoly of whoring had been established between Yly Ilkinsfáerinr and the Blackguards.

This flimsy theory only created more questions, and wasn't accounting for possible freelance Changelings in the mix unrelated to Yly Ilkinsfáerinr, there were still too many unknown variables and pieces of the puzzle missing to consider anything beyond what was in front of her. All she could do currently was continue to find the pieces, and she had a feeling that a few more would slot into place once this war had been settled and Jöhtunn's forces had been pacified. Of course even then she still didn't even know that Jöhtunn had been the one to start this war either, which even if he was the most suspect and was confirmed to have killed police, she still didn't actually have proof that he'd fired the first shot.

Twilight sighed, she was definitely going to have a talk with each gang leader before drawing up any concrete theories. It was the first step in any investigation to question everyone possible, which she had been planning on doing for her own case before this ward gang war shit-fest had kicked off, and now she was being further side-tracked with needing details regarding it instead.

Glancing at the pale green tinge over the front of the container, she thought for another moment before her ears flicked and a deep chill shot up her spine. She whipped around with her shard augments raised, all weapons in her magic tracking as her eyes darted around for movement. Her sensory implant was picking up something and her instincts were never usually wrong, and while she'd initially thought the breathing she could hear was from the captive officers, she could hear them as she stood beside the containers.

The sensory implant and eyes were dialled up, and she was listening.

"You haven't attacked me even with ample opportunity to do so." She spoke out as she carefully scanned the room, finding nothing. "Come on out and talk, or fight, but don't waste my time."

She was met with silence, the presence remained.

Her eyes widened as there was a sudden bright glow from between an aisle of the denser packed crates, and she quickly leaped out the path of a massive blast of energy that shot through the air in a high-pitched whine, her shields almost immediately depleting to half as the particles in the air beside her were heavily ionised and heated plasma spread from the beam. The ADEE in her magic rapidly responded and saturated the hidden enemy's location, her legs reshifting as she got to her hooves and quickly galloped into the cover of a packed shelving unit that was immediately burned through by the arcing beam.

She was getting really fucking irate with the unknowns, since when the fuck did Jackals have access to a fucking Fusion Lance?! That was prototype Crown tech! Getting a bunch of Availant from a black market supplier was something she could see, but cutting-edge plasma weaponry was on a whole other level!

The beam sharply cut off, the heat trailing her stopped, and she swiftly moved around the crates and peeked to its source to see nothing. All her eyes were scanning were disturbed particles that were settling down, and no signs of any life as she dialled the intensity of her eyes up and cast an expert detection spell. At this current juncture she wasn't seeing her enemy having a superior cloaking augment as unfeasible, she could always see ponies that were casting powerful invisibility spells with a detection spell and this one was a ghost even as she switched to the imaging sense, which even through all the heavy noise should still pick up enough body heat and respiratory activity to form even a minimal silhouette of her attacker.

The Lance burst into being again and she sharply reeled back, accelerating her limbs to leap through into another section of storage and crashing into a few crates as the beam burned away everything it touched. It quickly trailed her and she felt the hair of her tail being singed as she righted herself and sped on, letting all her stolen weapons fire in the direction of the Lance. It would hopefully hamper her sneaky attacker and keep them mobile enough that she could pick up some pattern of their movements.

Sneaky here was some kind of equine given their complete invisibility, as such spells required a direct magic caster bearing a horn. Unicorn, Changeling, or Kirin, and with a high-tech cloaking augment. It was as good as Tempest's own, so likely it was Crown tech. They had a Fusion Lance, also Crown tech, and stocks of Availant, which were Crown supplies. She really was going to have to entertain the possibility of betrayal from within, this was all getting a little too close to home for her liking...

There was a flicker in her mind as she ran, she let it through.

"Agent, do you require aid?"

"Little busy here, Garret!" She barked as she leaped over a cluster of metal barrels that were soon slagged by the Lance's heat. "Call back in ten!"

She threw herself to one side as the beam finally stopped again and blasted its location with another salvo from her guns, the storage in that area being decimated by laser, slug, and pellet alike, and her heart rate spiked, her mind screaming as an ethereal dagger shot out from nowhere. She barely dodged it as she tucked to one side, the dagger's sinister pale edge slicing through her shields and carving a chunk through both her duster and bodysuit, gritting her teeth as it bit into flesh along the way.

"Show yourself, you pussy!" She shouted, her heart beating faster. A part of her wanted to properly be able to enjoy this on some level, another very high-level magic user with powerful augments and weapons that eclipsed her own was an excellent opponent to go up against. It made her feel alive, the circumstances just weren't very good.

She realised Sneaky was quite a bit more as her mind was then assaulted with a heavy psychic attack, briefly spasming as she put up her mental barriers and immediately lashed out in kind with a blanket mental shout to deter the assault, while also letting the ADEE burst over the area opposite. The attack on her mind lessened as no doubt Sneaky was forced to move rather than concentrate on her, and she quickly pulled mags from her duster and shells from the bandolier around her torso to reload the Wildbuck and Thuddgun as she moved into new cover.

Sneaky hadn't opened with that attack, so maybe they weren't fond of being insulted.

Twilight grinned a little as she shouted. "Come on, don't you want me to at least see you in one piece before I put you in the ground in pieces?"

The Lance droned as its deadly energy fired out in an instant and she kept on dancing out of its arc while her weapons roared in its wake. Taunting her enemy wasn't the most impressive of strategies but it seemed to be working and was the only one she could utilise right now, she didn't have time to channel a dispelling aura to try and interrupt Sneaky's invisibility casting, and with her overall power now down to thirty-four percent she didn't want to simply discharge a massive magic beam of her own into the area and end up near to being a paperweight again.

She slightly yelped in alarm as a volley of the ethereal daggers flew to cut her off, and she ducked and accelerated, sliding across the floor and getting back to her hooves only for more to zip irregularly through the air as the beam nipped at her tail. She shot back under the beam's channel, feeling the intense heat and gritting her teeth as her shields rapidly plummeted before pushing off and twisting into a gallop the other way, gasping as she found one of the ethereal blades had sunk into her side. She tugged it out with her magic and let her healing matrix take care of the wound while the beam hunted her down, having instantly turned back with her.

Right, improvisation was needed.

Well, more of it.

Quickly shifting, she threw out her right foreleg as the beam cut off for the brief moment it needed to cool, the hoofcannon coming to bear as she loaded in her remaining firebomb and almost instantly fired off. She hoped Sneaky liked being warm.

The basement flashed as the firebomb smacked into one of the sturdy support pillars, exploding into a massive concentrated burst of intense flame that spread outward and covered everything it touched. She wouldn't have considered it at all had Sneaky not been so far from the jailed officers, but she'd been running towards one side of the room and Sneaky had followed. The fire quickly rose and the inferno spread, her bodysuit beginning to regulate her temperature as the heat sharply climbed, and she ducked out the way of the pale daggers that sped at her while switching the hoofcannon back, breaking into a sprint as the Lance flared back to life.

Her weapons sounded as she galloped, the flames hopefully keeping Sneaky just as mobile as her as the beam chased her tail, cutting off for a moment as it began again before her and she moved in a new direction. Between the firebomb and the Fusion Lance the basement was being consumed, and both she and Sneaky were going to be out of places to run to until they had to face one another properly.

It was going to be risky, but then again what wasn't?

She jumped into an open gap as the Lance suddenly faltered and its keening ceased, its core was likely overheating from the sheer usage, and perhaps her firebomb's heat was assisting in making it unable to cool down. She went upright switching her shard augments back into place as it was certainly out of the game now. The cooling issues were something that the R&D teams had been trying to fix for months to no avail, the systems weren't up to the task with everything going on inside it and the fusion core within the weapon basically melted through the internals and slagged the weapon.

Her shields recharged as she carefully stepped forward, reloading her weapons and keeping the ADEE ready. A trio of ethereal daggers shot out at her from between two massive crates the flames had yet to spread to, their faces glinting in the firelight as she dodged them, though she grinned as she realised they hadn't truly been aimed at her.

She dropped the ADEE as its gem battery fizzled out, a blade protruding from it.

Good move.

She raised her forelegs and jettisoned fléchettes over the area along with saturating other places she thought Sneaky might be lurking with the Wildbuck and Thuddgun, before she felt a chill up her spine, whipping around to see a strange glint and swiftly ducking just in time before the Wildbuck was cleaved in two as a massive sweeping wave of malevolent energy seethed through the air, carving a perfect slice through nearly all the storage behind her and the tips of her mane. Crates and shelving collapsed, her heart thundering as she shot back up and kept pouring her shard augments all around her wherever the sensory implant was picking up any kind of movement, while more of the ethereal daggers zipped at her.

Breathing a little harder she threw the useless Wildbuck in her enemy's direction, a dagger sinking into the shotgun as it travelled and hit the floor, and she grunted in pain as despite how deftly she was moving another dagger thunked into her chest, thankfully stopped short of piercing properly by her dermal armour. She rushed forward as the sensory implant picked up what she believed might be the sound of heavier breathing and loosed a burst from her shard augments down an aisle, and she grinned as she heard the tiniest emission of pain through the roar of the rising flames, stopping firing momentarily as she quickly switched vision modes and just caught sight through the heavy distortion of a plum-tinted wisp moving through the shelving units, letting the Thuddgun she still possessed crack a few shots off as she followed. She ducked into cover as a dagger flew her way, watching the distortion flicker and convulse as it disappeared around a corner, another painful cry whispering out before once again disappearing completely.

"Ready to talk?" She called out, her vision switching back.

Silence.

She waited tensely in an odd crouch before loudly swearing as the crate she was hunkered down behind was perforated by a huge scathing spear of energy, quickly jumping back, dodging, and sweeping her hoofblade up as another few screamed past her. The enchanted edge blocked one that almost skirted her head and would have taken a huge chunk from her scalp, the hoofblade glowing dangerously bright from taking the brunt of the magic. She retreated back as they still came flying at her, the cover around her useless as everything was seared through as if it didn't exist.

"Fucking-" Twilight exclaimed, as her already damaged foreleg was pierced by one of the ethereal spears of what she figured was lightning as it bypassed her shielding, and only managed to twist out the way enough that another spear run through her side rather than impaling her torso, definitely feeling like lightning as it ravaged away leather, chitinsilk, and flesh alike.

She was remaining rather calm throughout as her leg malfunctioned and her side was in absolute agony, and as an additional worry her HUD flashed an immediate warning that her left foreleg's power system had been heavily compromised, and one of its fall-back measures was about to rupture as well. Her heartbeat jumped again, dropping the Thuddgun as she ceased her magic casting and let a cold shiver of Neureliix shoot down her spine, running through countermeasures while now far more easily dodging the pale arcing spears, the neurozyme calming the unusual spike of fear she wasn't usually accustomed to feeling.

The foreleg was going critical, and she quickly issued several commands, feeling her left-shoulder docking port whir as it expeditiously released its secure locking mechanisms, and she had no choice but to risk magic usage as her horn blazed again, enveloping the volatile leg as it then ejected from the port and hastily teleporting it far away to the front of the basement.

Two explosions promptly occurred.

The heavy detonation of her disconnected limb shook the lower level and spread an intense wave of uncontained fiery energy outward from the blast site, at the same time as she was instantly rocketed back into a shelving unit from her horn's shockwave of rapidly overloaded energy, wood and metal crunching and bending down on her as she smashed through the storage and indented into the ground. Teleportation was one of the most demanding spells that could be cast, and with her emotions running so rampant under the surface along with a powerful designer combat drug empowering her it was no wonder she'd launched herself into the floor. There was a good reason she didn't mix magic and neurozymes.

Neurellix took the edge off, but she felt like she'd just pounded her head into a wall going at a hundred miles per hour, while dunking her head into the fire she'd lit up and letting her face cook for a while. The searing hole in her side didn't help matters, and her spine was starting to ache harder. The flames' orange hues washed over her as she stumbled up onto her hooves and forced herself upright, slightly shaky as the Neurellix then wore off, gone almost as quickly as it had come thanks to compensating for the heavy shock to her system, and she quickly retrieved a med-hypo from within her duster to jab it against her neck, groaning as the pain in her body left completely. Her left foreleg tingled despite the limb not being there anymore, the docking port felt cold, almost itchy. She knew it was in her head, glancing for a moment at the duster's limp sleeve on her left side with nothing to fill it. It was her own reckless fault, she'd slotted in the hoofblade and shard augment systems together and she really wasn't supposed to do that. Angle and Rize were going to be a bit pissed off when she got back.

She eyed the flashing alerts on her HUD and dismissed them through the mounting headache that built despite the potent painkiller, keeping her remaining foreleg raised and the shard augment ready. It seemed Sneaky hadn't taken the opportunity to simply gut her while she was down, and she figured that maybe it was clemency to a downed foe. A certain sense of honour to not kill a disarmed opponent, perhaps? Well, she didn't have arms, but whatever, it worked with other species.

There was a wisp in the corner of her vision from within a destroyed section of the storage away from the roaring fire, she snapped her foreleg to it as something shadowy appeared for a scant second between the aisles, though she didn't shoot and just kept watch for the moment. Quarter given for quarter received, that and she needed answers. Whatever Sneaky was, she still couldn't see much of them, the air was gently displaced from their breathing, their cloaking augment probably taxed to where the intensity she'd dialled her eyes up to could detect the fluctuations.

They both stood for a few seconds in a silent truce.

"We will meet again."

The voice was an utter whisper, distant and echoed and altogether odd in its tone, and then suddenly the distortions ceased as what she believed must have been Sneaky's fierce presence she'd felt pressing down abruptly vanished as if a dense fog had been lifted from the room, one that she hadn't realised had been oppressing her senses. She waited a few moments for the other boot to drop, but it didn't feel like she was in any immediate danger anymore so dialled the eyes and sensory implant back to standard levels and sighed in relief as her severe headache and warmth at the back of her neck also receded somewhat.

She probably shouldn't push the augments so high again until she fine-tuned them. She switched her right foreleg to the hoofcannon and loaded in her last smoke grenade as she watched the rising smoke of the fire become thicker, priming it with a delay and shooting it out over the centre of the blaze. The lighter grey smoke burst out in a wide arc spreading into the dark cloud and blanketing a majority of the roaring inferno, and thankfully she could use magic to corral the rest of the flames licking along and disperse the smoke that was building up against the ceiling, though it didn't help her headache much. Yet even with the overload, the spells weren't too difficult to cast and it took her little time to reduce everything to nothing, though when she saw the magnitude of the damage caused she was thankful that the support pillars weren't made of a lesser material than stone.

All that remained of a majority of the basement's storage at the epicentre of where the firebomb had landed were blackened remnants of the once huge crates and boxes, metal shelving reduced to slag and the weapon parts in the pallets burned into ash and lumps of cooling iron and steel. The damage lessened as it went on, though everything was still quite charred and smoking, and whatever drugs the Jackals had left to be distributed had been completely consumed by the fire too, but it wasn't an issue as she had recorded that it had all been here in the first place. As she'd hoped, even with the fire spreading out it hadn't been able to get to the officers in their metal prisons.

Another flicker in her mind. She chuckled a little with a few steadying breaths as the connection was quickly made. "Garret, hey, it's all clear down here. How's everything on your end?"

"The perimeter is secure, Agent, there are two sentries holding the ground floor ready to assist should you have need of them." Garret answered, she heard his beak click. "There was a heavy explosion that was felt from out here, and the sentries reported the smell of smoke, though given your nonchalance I assume there is no issue?"

"It was contained enough." She shrugged to herself. "There was a fire but it's gone now, I'll be up soon."

"Agent."

He cut the call as she switched the hoofcannon back and went to her hooves, feeling a little more weary as she did her usual stretch. Still moving well enough on three legs, she went over to the large containers to see that the complex magical barriers in place had now disappeared, and casting a brief spell she found no trace of anything remaining, so they'd been dispelled when Sneaky had left the scene.

A good kick from her back hooves busted open the first metal container, though as she rushed to assess the officer she realised they weren't breathing, the interference in her imaging sense had given her the impression they had been. She held the discontent in her chest at the blatant puncture through the stallion's armour and his heart, his pale-green eyes unfocused and staring into the ceiling. There was nothing she could do for him at this juncture, so she closed his eyes and silently moved on. Sadly, even a nice little Tetra wonder-drug wouldn't save him now, he was too far gone for anything to work. The adjacent container kicked open had another dead officer, the mare killed in exactly the same manner, an angered growl escaping Twilight.

She broke the doors in on the next and Twilight quickly moved to the prone and unarmoured Captain that thankfully still had a heartbeat, scanning many lacerations and multiple fractures in the mare's legs and ribs. She immediately took a small amount of time to cast a proper healing spell, watching her power cells tick down as the magic fixed the broken bones into perfect condition, bruises and angry wounds across her pale-white coat knitting over from where she'd been clearly cut and beaten. The Captain's breathing was shallow but her heart rate was becoming steady, though she sensed a magic signature lingering that was the same as the complex barriers which had locked the containers.

It became readily apparent that something was amiss as the cuts she'd healed over started to open back up, and she cursed at the foul play. The wounds weren't bleeding, but the flesh surrounding the rents in the Captain's coat were slowly webbing out. More dark magic. She glanced down at her own side and saw the heavy wound the summoned spear had created was almost closed up completely now, and the two punctures in her other side and chest made by the daggers had already healed over, the spellwork in her sophisticated healing matrix being well attuned to deal with many types of harmful attack.

It wasn't detectable by her magic, and there had been no warnings to the type of magic the ethereal weapons had been created from on her HUD, which meant if this was the kind of dark magic she thought it was then it would slowly corrupt from the inside out at the site of injury. The Captain wasn't going to die anytime soon, though she needed aid Twilight couldn't provide in the field. She pulled out some medical supplies and performed the same basic first aid she'd had Foamy render earlier as it was all she could do for the Captain at the moment, hopefully the magical bandages might stave off the webbing somewhat.

Twilight pinged the flatpack as all clear for cargo extraction as she worked, relaying various important details to Vee, such as the Jackals' complete surrender, the safe room and its innocents that might need medical attention, and of course the police officers in immediate need of special medical attention, as Twilight moved into the last container she broke open and saw the Sergeant was in a similar condition, though with far deeper lacerations across her snowy pelt rather than bone fractures as Diamond Dogs were a lot tougher on that front. Most hospitals weren't equipped or the staff trained to deal with dark magic as it was so rare to see, so they'd be taken to the Royal Palace instead.

She took care of the Sergeant's injuries in the same manner and ensnared all the bodies in her corona, lifting their forms up and gently bringing them along, and grabbing the Thuddgun for good measure too, placing it inside her duster for the time being. Trotting along to the front of the basement, she stepped through the wide blast area and now non-existent doorway, the area massively decimated by her limb's detonation, and up the partly destroyed stairs, successfully patching through to the police's network as she reached the landing. The network's activity had increased and the police were able to access it again judging by the massive flow of data being rapidly transmitted. While there were multiple locations across her map of places in Black Crow they were now concentrating themselves in an effort to route the Jackal Cartel, there were a few units not far from the flatpack that could be diverted, and she put across a command to get two of them to properly take care of the situation here.

She wasn't feeling like it was coincidental that the police communications had come back up soon after Sneaky had disappeared. She smiled a little flatly that she had a lot more work on her plate, adding a few notes to her ever growing checklist.

One of Garret's sentries nodded to her as she entered back onto the ground floor, seeing the officers in her corona and moving out the way so she could bring them through, the Jackals a little alarmed as she repositioned them for space as well. Moving over to the entrance she pushed the double doors open to barest sound of a Stormchaser thrumming far off in the distance alongside the echo of police sirens, the AMR cruiser might have roughly been a few thousand hooves out but was audible as Black Crow would have received a no-fly warning due to the gang war, any that were still chancing the pass through were flying quite high so they didn't get shot at.

Garret marched from his position towards her where she saw the Blackguards spread out in double postings, utilising the concrete barricades that the Jackals had set up around the base as cover, and quite a bit of the debris too that had also been barricades before Vanguard Muskets had decimated them. The carnage and bloodshed around the courtyard was quite impressive and the old fountain she'd seen on the way in had been utterly blown apart, the Jackals that the Blackguard's had spared sitting in or around its remnants. A few were laid on the floor missing limbs while others simply appeared shell-shocked, the police would have little issue dealing with them. There was a sombre note to her thoughts when she saw the platoon medic standing further off with a few other of his fellow Blackguards, beside their fallen members lying on cloth stretchers, Vanguard Muskets held in their claws upon their chests.

"They died well, if their King were still alive he'd be proud." Garret said with a hint of pride coming to a stop as he saw where her eyes were looking, and then to the quarry she held before they met one another's solemn gazes. "We have both lost kin this day, it is regrettable and you have my sympathies. You seem to have also lost a leg, Agent. The explosion removed it?"

"My leg was the explosion." She said humourlessly at him with a smile that didn't quite reach her face at the current moment. "It had a lot going on inside it."

Garret inclined his head, glancing at the police officers held in her corona. "At least your mission is done, even if only a few live. Limbs can be replaced, lives cannot."

"You're right about that..." She agreed, glancing behind her. "The Guard and police will arrive soon to help the lives that we have saved here though."

"Then it's likely best that this is where we part ways."

"Agreed. My lot coming in aren't going to take shots at you, but I'm not sure how the police are going to feel after the morning they've been having." She nodded gently, glancing up at the sound of the Stormchaser growing heavier as it approached the area before looking back at him. "Nice working with you, Garret, I appreciate it. Give Gwyndolin my regards."

He gently bowed to her. "I wish you well. Until next time, Agent."

She watched him swiftly move back to his platoon and ready his soldiers to clear the area while she carefully set the officers down to the floor, the Sergeant and Captain remaining unconscious but stable. She placed the two dead officers apart from them, casting a spell and creating a simple magic sheet over each of them that shimmered in the partial sunlight coming through the smog above.

She inhaled and exhaled, taking a moment.

Twilight designated a good landing zone for the Stormchaser as she then glanced towards the destroyed fountain, shooting a look at the Jackals that were left near it and figured they got the message to stay put with her stare alone now that the Blackguards were clearing out, not that many of them were in much of a condition to run, musket rifles didn't make small wounds. She stepped a few hooves back from the landing zone to avoid wake as the Stormchaser came into the vicinity of the flatpack, the under-thrusters steady thrum echoing off the stonework of the surrounding buildings as the propulsive sharply lowered into the courtyard.

Before it had fully touched down her allies swiftly filed out of the vehicle and dashed to meet her. Four stallions and two mares soon including the pilot, all fitted in hardy gear and bearing impressive weaponry, the one Earthen amongst them supplied a huge machine gun mounted upon his back, a shame that it wasn't really required at this point.

"Ma'am." The Lance Captain leading them said, bowing his head.

She greeted him and started directing, one of them moving to secure the officers in need of the Crown's special facilities while she had the Lance Captain and one other go to secure the safe room and its occupants, hearing the sounds of police cruisers approaching from far off. They had their orders too so she waited for them to arrive as a Warrant Officer of the Guard squad started to administer additional drugs to help the surviving police, and the remaining member, a Lance Corporal, respectfully took the deceased officers to the back of the Stormchaser.

Usually officers killed in action would be picked up by a police coroner, which was likely happening throughout Black Crow where possible as the police rallied their positions to recover lost ground, but these two officers had been slain by dark magic and the Crown was going to need to examine the bodies with their own forensics teams in special facilities before releasing them to the CPS and their families.

Twilight took the moment to pull up the extranet to get some bearing on the passing day while she'd been running this small op, finding herself just as concerned as when she'd initially left the Palace as she pulled up the Agent database again. Dizzy was surprisingly still there, now holding Sapling's main police precinct rather than outside the area, the situation was also still marked critical despite the issues in Black Crow beginning to clear up, likely as a majority of trouble was moving that way while the police regained control and the Jackals rerouted. As much as Twilight would have liked to stay and sort things out with the Children she'd saved, the few Jackals she'd interacted with, the small Kirin foal, seeing the Captain and Sergeant back to the Palace, and even finding out how well Dusky's team did, she needed to move and assist.

The Lance Captain had gone into the flatpack to secure the safe room, and she shot him a quick alert to inform him of her imminent departure. She waited for a few moments more as the police finally came speeding into the area with their sirens alight and alive, the noticeable tempo of the klaxons quieting as the vehicles came to a stop and the officers started to pour out. She counted two cruisers and two transports as their lead came rushing over to her, others moving to secure the Jackals in the courtyard and within the flatpack.

"Here as ordered, I'll take things over." The gruff Sergeant Tungsten stated, and he sighed as he appraised the area and the absolute state of the building behind her. "Sparkle, why'd you drag me and mine into this?"

"You're no-nonsense about things, and I need that here." Twilight replied honestly. "I trust that you'll follow my word to the letter?"

"Wouldn't dream of doing otherwise." He huffed.

She gave him a nod as she turned away. "Excellent, I'll leave it with you."

"I've still got your suspects from the other night in holding too, Sparkle." Tungsten grumbled as she looked back at him over her shoulder. "At this rate the precinct isn't going to have any room left."

"Big place like that? You'll manage a couple more." She shrugged.

Almost immediately she faced forward and bolted from the courtyard knowing things were going to be well handled here. The police had orders from her regarding the Jackals so that they could be put in for assessment and rehabilitation if they were found to have done little wrong, all of them still remaining here would have some notice placed on their police files in that regard.

Twilight had gone in there and tore the place apart, likely killing a majority of ponies and creatures that might otherwise have been saved in the long run if she'd not been so deep in her anger, even if they'd done or participated in the torture and rape of the Changelings. There was a good chance that all who remained aside from that could be put back into society quite easily once they'd done their time, jail was likely unavoidable, and for some though there would be a higher sentence as it was more than likely they had records in the police and Crown databases already.

The remaining Children would likely be released from the Guard's custody once they were considered medically well, pending no records of their own, and then given the chance to receive counselling though she knew they'd probably turn it down to return to Constantine quicker and heal with their own. The Kirin foal would also be cared for and returned home safely, and that made her feel a little better. Everything was mostly in order as much as it could be and for her that worked, she knew these days that nothing could be done perfectly.

She activated the thrusters in her back hooves and was soon atop another building, being forced to gallop on three legs not slowing her much at all. She accelerated with her prosthetics as well as a little encouragement from her Neurellix to give her a boost, and kept even on her hooves as she went moving from rooftop to rooftop where the buildings were somewhat even in height, crossing a great distance in very little time at all. She could have opted for pick-up to drop her directly at the precinct but it would take longer and she didn't want to stand around while Sapling Green was still a critical area. She slowed as she jumped to the next building ahead, her duster sleeve flapping as she zoomed in on the Bulwark up ahead that usually blocked Black Crow from Sapling Green, she wasn't far now and she could see the massive hole blown through it, police cordons and flashing lights set all around the area.

Bulwarks were extremely tough and made to resist a lot of punishment, though Sapling Green's Bulwark had been erected later on after the inner plateau and its surrounding Bulwarks had already been put into place. It wasn't as large or thickly plated as the others, it was the same deal with the one that closed off Draconis. Due to that she could see why the Jackals had succeeded in punching through. While it was surprising they'd gotten their hooves on Crown tech, getting ahold of multiple explosives or making them from scratch was very much within their ability.

The police presence was heavy when she soon arrived on scene, the numerous CPS cruisers were layered carefully for the officers standing by to make use of as cover beyond the initial cordon she walked up to, being let through immediately as the officer that came to stop her saw the emblem on her duster. She trotted past him with a nod and went straight for the massive hole blown through the Bulwark through the forensics teams that were still scanning and collecting samples through the chaos from the Jackals that had been holding the area previously. She watched as a few body bags were loaded into an ambulance before its doors shut and it sped off, the Jackals had been taken out and the police had moved in, the situation being brought under control.

The Captain present saluted her as she stopped before the blast site to assess the damage, they'd even destroyed the turret at this section of the wall beforehand. The Bulwark stretched on for a while in both directions, ending on the northern side as it bordered the Pale Edge ward, and on the southern side where it bordered the Ardent Cascade ward. Black Crow was ultimately locked in, surrounded by the three wards on its outer edges while it had Crystal Sky and Hydra at its back.

That created a level of resentment for some, she'd always felt that Jöhtunn had essentially been birthed from Black Crow, mired in the attempt to perhaps make a living and failing at it with enough disdain to become what he was. The surrounding wards around Black Crow were far better off and built up, and with Hydra being an inner ward that also possessed a powerful Bulwark it wasn't hard to imagine that many living in Black Crow felt shut off or maybe even stigmatised by it, buried beneath the limelight that shone on other wards.

She scanned heavy traces of residue in the twisted shrapnel of the Bulwarks inners, they hadn't been subtle about it at all. The shape that spread through the wall and then the markings outward from the exiting burst suggested it had been a barely controlled explosion from a large shaped charge, or several packed together ones. No common mining explosive or even something military-grade would punch through a Bulwark by itself, though while she suspected that this had been built from multiple components and chemicals bought over the counter, she wouldn't discount the idea they'd simply gotten their hooves on a whole bunch of C4, and it would have needed to be a lot. Beyond a Bulwark's heavily layered composition they were enchanted to resist such things, even the less fancy ones had that much going on, the only difference was thickness and height.

Moving through she passed the opposite cordon past the police and scoffed. The difference between Sapling Green and Black Crow was almost night and day with how much nicer things looked despite the damage, it even smelt nicer, though maybe that was just because she'd come from one of Black Crow's more rundown areas. She broke into a gallop again past numerous expensive looking shops boasting large holofronts and a few prime bordellos along the way, their security plating gone up under the smashed in crystal windows and barred doorways. No doubt the second the Jackals had blasted their way through that the security measures had activated, there were a few markers of bodies that had previously been laying, whether they had been Jackals or innocent subjects going about their day she didn't know. Given that she saw the remnants of a few sentry-droids littered around the ground and dozens of pockmarks from gunfire alongside fragments of stonework she wager it was the former.

The lieutenants leading the Jackals wouldn't have wanted to stick around, if this was done as a distraction or signal to start the gang war then it was a pretty big one, and they must have had a clear objective in mind to do it. Given their encroachment upon Sapling Green's precinct she had a pretty good idea of their goal. She didn't follow the path of destruction that had been made, she took a side route quickly mapped out that would bring her out just beyond the police precinct's main entrance. While it would no doubt be watched, or contested by Jackal forces warring with the police, the Jackals inside would most likely be focused on Dizzy as she fought with them.

Twilight would lock them in, with two Agents and police forces either side gunning for them they'd be curtailed within a very short space of time, and after that she could finally start sorting out her own mess, though as she went on through the spacious streets all locked down with their fancy gadgets and a smattering of officers to keep order and reassure the people, there was a subtle worry building within her heart. She'd been burying it this entire time along with her normal worries, keeping it under the weight of her other objectives she'd been saddled with, but with the rescues done and only one thing to focus on it was rapidly asserting itself in a way that even the Neurellix wasn't able to control it.

She hoped that Rainbow Dash was still alive.

Author's Note

I think this is the first chapter to break 20k. I couldn't cut it down.
They're getting bigger, help.