Like Father Like Son

"Spymaster."

Fruit Bat turned at the sound of her title, and bowed her head the minute she came to face her princess. "Your Majesty. How might I serve you?"

"We require thee to send out spies to look for and investigate the destruction of outposts and the disappearances of soldiers in the Northwestern taiga." Princess Luna told her very simply. "We have utmost trust that thy ranks possess stallions and mares capable of completing such a mission."

Fruit straightened her posture to look directly at her princess. Luna was clad in her usual military uniform, a dark blue dress uniform with black pants tucked into knee-high black boots. A scarlet sash was tied around her waist, from which hung a saber, and over her shoulders was an elbow-length capelet of black. This was the standard dress uniform of the Lunar Guard, only she wore a crown instead of a garrison cap.

Fruit wore much the same thing, only it was all black. Her capelet bore epaulets, upon which were sewn five silver bars and one star, signifying a military rank of Colonel. She also carried a saber at her hip, as was the standard sidearm of the Lunar Guard.

"I do indeed have ponies capable of completing such a mission." Fruit assured her princess, she turned back to her desk.

Fruit's office was a simple one. Located in a tower of the Lunar wing of the castle, it overlooked much of the city of Canterlot and was in the perfect position to send messages to any corner of Equestria. It had a simple carpeted floor, a single desk, bookshelves, a chest and a few cabinets for storing files. Not much else was in it. It of course had the usual dark decor of the Lunar wing, dark blue walls with black curtains over the windows.

Fruit Bat was, as her name suggested, a Batpony, much like the vast majority of Luna's guard. Her coat was a pale white, almost yellowish, but not quite. Her serpentine eyes were of a light blue and her mane was a dark black. "I'll be sure to bring back news to you Princess."

"Be sure you do so Spymaster." Princess Luna told her before turning to leave. "Whatever or whoever is responsible must be brought to heel as soon as possible. No threat must be allowed to stand unchallenged."

With that the princess departed from Fruit's office, leaving her to her work.

Considering the information we already have, it is best if we send a team, not an individual. Fruit thought to herself as she began to consider who to send. Since we know that at least two outposts have been destroyed, and the entirety of their garrisons completely disappeared, then we will need a good fighter, a good tracker and we might need them to have magic at their disposal. We can't send a unicorn, they're too slow and they can't see in the dark. I'll see to it that the team is issued spell rifles. And we'll need to give them scrying crystals so they can report back from anywhere.

Now it was just about how many to send, and who.

Fruit walked into the small room, and looked over the unit. Five ponies, two mares, three stallions. All of them were clad in the black uniforms of the Lunar Intelligence Bureau, all stood at attention. All of them were silent.

Each of those selected was a batpony, for a number of reasons, primarily their ability to see in the dark and their extremely sensitive hearing as well as their capability of flight.

All of the ponies lined up snapped to a salute as she came in, and held it until she said, "At ease."

All of them dropped their salute. "As you all know, in recent days a number of outposts in the north have been destroyed, and all of the soldiers garrisoning those outposts have gone missing without a trace. And more outposts have been taken down every few days since. your task is to find out who or what is responsible for these attacks and report back to me as soon as the information is obtained. Do not engage unless it cannot be avoided. Understood?"

"Ma'am, Yes ma'am." All five said in unison.

"You are being issued spell rifles for this mission." Fruit told them. "You will be on your own. There will be no supply drops, no returning to base. You are on your own once you're out. You hunt your own food, you boil your own water, until you find whatever is responsible. Am I understood?"

"Ma'am, Yes ma'am." All five said again.

"Good." Fruit said quietly. "Arm up, and get going."

"Ma'am, Yes ma'am."

With that Fruit left them. Hopefully they'd be able to make it. And hopefully without injuries or casualties. They already knew who was in charge of the group, they already had their scrying crystals and they had their standard issue equipment ready. They'd be fine. She hoped.

Corporal Stargazer looked back at his team. All four of them were privates, pretty green but tough. Every last one of them had passed the training for the Lunar Special Forces with flying colors, and all seemed to have great discipline, though this was the first time any of them had worked with any of the others, so they might have to work out a few kinks at the beginning of this whole operation.

First there was Private First Class Stormcloud, a thestral stallion who's namesake was built around his very dark coat, making him almost indistinguishable from his uniform, it was a strange sight but it could definitely be useful if they ever had to hide in dark places. Then there was Private First Class Nighteye, she was also a thestral, all of them were thestrals, with a green coat and a dark brown mane. On his other side were First Class Privates Rock and Dagger. Rock was a big fellow with grey fur and black hair, while Dagger was a slightly smaller mare, though still big, with a snow white coat and grey hair.

Corporal Stargazer had a blue coat and a navy blue mane. All of the five soldiers had sabers at their left hips, and carried spell rifles. The weapons were basically long tubes of metal with a larger, revolving cylinder near the back containing the spell crystals, behind that was what was called a stock, for bracing the weapon against the shoulder to make aiming significantly easier. Each weapon had a fixed blade at the end of the barrels, pointing outward as a sort of spear. That way these could be used both in close combat and from far away.

Frankly he was surprised that all of them had gotten such weapons. Everyone knew about them but they were expensive to make, and very difficult too, so they weren't given to just anyone. He'd thought only one or two of them would get one, but apparently Colonel Fruit had other ideas.

"Corporal."

The words snapped him out of his thoughts, and her turned to face Private Nighteye.

"What is it Private?" He asked.

"Do you have any thoughts on what we might be looking for?" the mare asked him. "It's not like a garrison can just disappear, they had to go somewhere. But it's also unlikely that they went without a fight."

He sighed. "I don't know Private. But I do have a plan to find out. It's attacking outposts. So we're going to stake one out, and wait for whatever's responsible to show up and do their work. Then we report back to Corporal Fruit."

Nighteye looked back at her fellow soldiers. "But, won't that just mean that more ponies will be hurt? Isn't the point of this mission to stop that from happening."

"The point of the mission is to find who's responsible." the Corporal corrected. "And besides, they were taken somewhere, and with no signs of blood, which means if we let it happen we might be able to find the other victims too, and we'd find out what caused all this."

Nighteye nodded. "Understood sir."

Well this put a kink in his plan.

"Spread out and look for survivors." Stargazer ordered. "Search the perimeter and see if you can't find any tracks leading to or from this place. Be on the lookout. If anything unfriendly shows itself, shoot it. Shoot to stun."

All five soldiers rotated the cylinders on their rifles, selecting the stun crystal, and went about carrying out these orders. Stargazer joined Stormcloud and Dagger as they went searching through what was left of the outpost. It was mostly splinters, the lookout tower had been knocked over, and the roof had collapsed in on itself. But there was still enough room to squeeze through.

"Goodness," Dagger cursed. "What could have caused this?"

"That's what we're here to find out." Stargazer reminded her. "Any sign of bodies or survivors?"

"Not over here, absolutely nothing." Dagger informed him.

"Corporal!" Stormcloud called, and once he had Stargazer's attention he told him, "The woodstove's still going. Whatever happened happened recently, very, very recently."

He nodded, "Go get Rock, Dagger, come with me. We're going to see if what did this is nearby still."

"Yes sir," Both ponies said. But before anything else could be said a wet squish was heard, everyone looked to Stormcloud, who picked up his hoof, his boot now had what looked like icing on it, and where he stepped looked to be the mangled remains of a cake, small and poorly decorated, or just messed up during the collapse, but a cake.

Stormcloud shook some of the icing off his boot before taking off into the air.

"Sir?" Dagger asked.

"Yes Private?"

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed her mouth again then said, "Nevermind. It's nothing."

Stargazer looked her way, "We'll find them Private."

She nodded.

"Come on. We need to find Nighteye, see if she found anything."

"Oh I found something." Nighteye said, flying down to talk to them. "A couple somethings. One, a giant snowfort that looks really freaking cool, and second I found two sets of tracks going to and from the fort, then back here. One set ran off into the forest."

"Someone escaped?" Dagger asked hopefully.

"Looks like it. But who knows how far they'll get if we let them run too far." Nighteye said. "Corporal, I ask that you let me go after them."

"Not alone, take Dagger with you. If you see whoever or whatever is responsible, and you don't see the escapee, do not engage." Stargazer instructed.

"Yes sir." Nighteye said firmly. "Come on Dagger. Let's bring that pony home."

With that the two mares took to the sky, with Nighteye leading the way, following the tracks left behind by the one pony to escape the attack on the outpost.

"Where am I?"

What a typical question to ask when one doesn't know where they wake up.

She looked around at her surroundings. She was in a cave, but not the usual cave. this one wasn't plain stone with stalactites and stalagmites, this was a cave of crystal. Of dark crystal. Black crystal. Her ears flopped, she looked back at the fire, it was a burning blue with a greenish center. The same fire cast by King Sombra.

There was the sound of hoofsteps. And the familiar sound of armor as it's wearer walked. She'd worn armor before, so she knew exactly what that sound was. Turning around to look behind her she saw exactly who she expected to. A tall, broad-shouldered stallion with grey fur, black mane and a curved, red horn. King Sombra.

He was clad in a suit of full-plate armor of grey steel, his armor covering everything but his head. At his hip was a longsword in it's sheath. His red eyes landed on her, though they were more... normal than she'd heard of them being. She couldn't see the wisps of smoke coming from the corners of his eyes, and the whites of his eyes were white, not green like she'd heard. No matter.

She cast quick, panicked glances around at her surroundings. Seeing her sword she went for it. Saber picked it up and ran at him, pulling the curved blade from it's scabbard and brought her blade up to strike at the dark king, her desire for vengeance seizing her heart. She had to kill this stallion. He killed her friends, all of them. Without warning, and they never even had a chance to defend themselves. She could at least kill him and stop it from happening again.

Or so she thought.

Pain raced through her body, drawing a long, agonized scream from her lips and forcing her to her knees. Saber's saber dropped from her hand a clattered to the floor, while she was on her hands and knees at his feet. Her scream had taken her breath away and the pain made her heart race, the result being that she was completely out of breath while remaining prostrate in front of the Dark King.

"That's no way to react to your host." King Sombra commented nonchalantly. "I see that making that shock collar was a good idea after all. And here I was hoping it was unnecessary."

What? Shock collar?

She reached up for her throat. Sure enough, something was there. But it wasn't what she'd think of when she thought shock collar. It felt cold, like metal, and it seemed to be completely seamless, though it was hard to tell when wearing it. She couldn't feel anything like a box or other device on it that could have shocked her though. How did...

Oh right, magic.

"Now calm down. You'll be no good if you're crippled from pain." He said calmly, picking up her sword. "You had quite a bad fall, I doubt you can take much more."

She looked up at him in confusion. "Weren't you tying to kill me? You ate all of my friends. So why haven't you eaten me yet?"

He looked down at her, his right eyebrow cocked. "I'm afraid I don't know anything about that."

"How can you not?" She demanded angrily. "You're the only pony alive able to turn into a black cloud. Who else could it have been?"

"I've been in these caves for the past few years. I can assure you that whatever happened to your comrades has nothing to do with me." Sombra told her as he moved closer to the fire. Setting down a sack she hadn't noticed him carrying.

He pulled out what looked to be a dead snow fox. He wordlessly started to remove it's pelt, and continued with a rather gruesome process of removing it's innards. The amount of blood that was involved almost sickened her, and once that was done he put the now gutted and skinned fox carcass on a long stick, and held it over the fire, turning it very slowly to let it cook.

Cautiously she approached the fire again. "Even so. Why am I still alive? Even if you weren't the one who attacked my post, why haven't you killed me?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't feel like it I suppose."

She deadpanned. "Didn't feel like it?"

He shrugged again.

"You can't be serious?" She said.

He just looked at her. No shrug this time. No response. Just a stoic, straight, unblinking stare.

"Okay. What about this?" She asked tapping the collar he'd put on her.

"I put that together in case you attacked me." He said simply.

"How on earth did you put it together?"

"With magic, how else?"

Okay. So far he seemed to be a stallion who gave simple answers. That she could get behind. But she was still confused. She didn't believe that he wasn't the one to attack her outpost, but then why would he let her live? Why would he bother lying to her if she was now completely at his mercy. It made no sense. And that thing that was chasing her certainly seemed to want her dead.

"So what exactly happened. What caused you to fall into the ravine?"

She was snapped out of her thoughts by his question. She hesitated, but after a few minutes she told him the story of how her post was attacked by a creature made entirely of black smoke, with eyes that looked just like his. Well, actually. Now that she thought about it. It's eyes were red like fire, more like the glowing orange-red of a coalbed, not the deep, crimson red of blood like the stallion who sat across the fire from her.

He grunted at her story. He didn't seem particularly surprised by this news. "I see."

"if it wasn't you. Then who was it?" She asked him.

He didn't talk for a moment. So long she waited that she wasn't sure if he'd answer at all. Then he took a bite of the fox, his large fangs sinking into the meat and ripping a good chunk of it off the bones, and sighed as he chewed. "I am unsure."

There were a few moments of silence. Then she asked another question. "What happens to me now?"

There was another long pause. This one slightly longer than before. Then he opened his mouth to answer.