”It’s simple; we fight, they die! We’re Airborne! We’re meant to be surrounded!”
-Corporal Cirrus Surfshot, 101st Airborne Division prior to combat dropping into New Ayacachtli

November 13th, 1011
41 km south of Metztunalia, New South Buckcastle Province, Arisian-Occupied Chiropterra
Flounder Company, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division
Operation Sucker Punch

“Alright, listen up Flounder!”

A claw slapped down on the map, pinned to the top of the supply crate by two combat knives and the weight of a Buckstar .45 pistol, illuminated by a small flashlight held up by one of the paratroopers.

“Our target is Ocean Spray, the infamous doctor and war criminal of the LMRD. You all know who he is and what he’s done, enough said. The official story tells that his boss Commander Emerald Light got away. Forget the official story, we’ve got her and a bunch of Bat commanders locked away. But we don’t want this fucker thinking he needs to run yet.”

A photograph joined the map, displaying a thestral in the uniform of a Legion officer. While the photo was black and white, every paratrooper there had been given a description of his black coat, mint-green mane and gray eyes so he didn’t slip away if they caught a group of Legion diehards and he was hidden among them. This on top of the perpetual sinister smirk and the scars over his muzzle meant no Airborne would be likely to miss him.

“A month ago, National Intelligence Agency assets got word from a moonspeaker who received a tip that a group of ‘scary ponies’ was collecting supplies for a secret base in this area. Once the intel was verified and confirmed to the best of NIA’s ability, they left the job to us. Our target has taken up with an insurgent group known as the ‘Crescent Moon Society’. According to local intel, their methods are guerilla hit and run attacks, chemical weapon strikes and terror tactics like singling out individuals of some import and leaving their mutilated remains behind. Apparently, they think this is going to be enough to scare us out of the country, convince the locals to throw in with them again or even just wipe out who they see as collaborators for not resisting hard enough.”

Captain Summers raised his head, glaring furiously at all the paratroopers gathered around him, snapping his beak in agitation. As well as Flounder’s platoon commanders, most of the experienced NCOs were in attendance as well. So far as could be gathered, some had fallen during the drop, either killed on impact or in firefights with Crescent Moon scouts in the jungle. Most of the missing, it was confirmed, were probably just lost and off course. Including the Pathfinders, perhaps sixty Airborne had made it to the DZ. Already, Flounder Company had suffered six KIAs and seven WIAs, leaving another twenty paratroopers lost in the woods. But they couldn’t wait for them to catch up.

An explosion and the faint rattle of gunfire in the distance told them exactly why.

“Barracuda Company’s moving in from the east. They’ll draw the attention of the guerillas, but we have to move fast. If Ocean Spray thinks he’s in danger of being found, he’ll light out and we’ll have to go through this crap all over again. Now listen up! We’ve got seven Jeeps, four machine guns and sixty troopers on ground. Intel says the Society has taken up residence in an old Legion bunker here in the mountains. NIA spooks dug up some dirt says it was an old armory that got abandoned about a decade ago. Means the place is still probably intact enough to give them shelter but overgrown enough that aerial recon has a snowball’s chance in Tartarus of finding it. That’s where we come in. Barracuda sweeps towards us in a line, we go towards them. Between us, we find exactly where they’ve holed up out here.”

Summers glanced up at the dozen or so faces around him, eyes flickering from one to the next to the next.

“We find this monster, we kill any stupid jackass dumb enough to protect him and we haul him in to face the music for killing, maiming and torturing who knows how many people. We miss him, and he goes right back to doing it all over again. You all know what’s at stake. Get your people ready. We’re out in fifteen minutes. Move out, Airborne.”

* * * * *

They moved fast, almost constantly bipedal as they covered large tracts of land. Claws gripped weapons tight, wings occasionally flared to keep their balance and now they had more light shining down into the trees they had a lot more confidence in where they were going. Sergeant Stratus Deeptide wasn’t the pointgriff, he needed to be able to coordinate the whole squad. Given how the drop had scattered and depleted the company, they needed to stay flexible and spread out. For that purpose, Corporal Charybdis had been put in charge of Team 2, taking her four Airborne on a parallel track about a hundred yards away. Between them, they were able to cover more ground and follow after the vanguard Wakies as the Jeeps conducted reconnaissance in force. If they ran into any problems, each Jeep had a Buckstar .50 machine gun and a Buckstar .30 machine gun. In this forest, that was more than enough to handle whatever the Crescent Moon wackos were packing, and all evidence pointed to their triple-A being the most firepower they could bring to bear.

Abruptly, PFC Stormsurge halted, raising his claw in a clenched fist. The rest of the team stopped in their tracks, dropping down into crouching positions or slipping up behind trees. After a second or two, Stormsurge signaled behind him, still holding his Cloudfall rifle up. Stratus could read the signs from his talons; enemy position ahead, anti-air, multiple enemies spotted. Stratus moved up, passing through the trees until he reached Stormsurge’s position, taking a knee next to him.

It was just as the Private said. In the clearing just ahead, a weapon emplacement sat. While it was currently quiet Stratus could recognize the telltale signs. The emplacement looked to be a quick-firing 20mm, likely an Aquileian or Wingbardian design copied and refined by the Chiropterrans. The emplacement was half-sunk into the rocky soil, the gun pit lined with sandbags. While the upper limbs of trees had obviously been cut down to clear fire lanes, the numerous camo nets on stands around the pit also kept it from being easily visible from the air. From here, Stratus could see the lean-tos in the gun pit, the shifting of dark green uniforms and the glint of binoculars.

From here, he counted ten soldiers. Four in the pit, acting as gun crew and spotter, now lax and cleaning up the piles of shell casings while the spotter made sure they had no more targets. Three soldiers sat nearby under a lean-to, two playing a card game while another napped. The other three were sentries in the woods, keeping an eye on the tree line. Occasionally, the rolling echo of a detonation would sound out from the trees, evidence of the battle taking place just a few miles distant, as Barracuda Company pressed hard. Whenever a blast or bang sounded out, however faint, it drew the eyes and turned the heads of at least a few of the guards. The tension in the air was palpable, even from here. Stratus could tell they were thinking about running. It was how the guerilla die-hards had survived so far, hit and fade and relocate when they needed to. Against the massive advantage Aris and her subjects had over the remnants, it was all they could do. But the sentries stayed, watching the skies and trying to pretend everything was fine.

Stratus wondered exactly why they hadn’t run yet.

He withdrew into cover, gesturing to gather his team around him. With a few sharp gestures, he sent another private off into the bush. He needed to find Charybdis and get her troopers into position. He had the beginning of a plan.

Five minutes later, three Mk. 2 claw grenades flew out of the treeline, clattering across the clearing to land at the hooves of a pair of sentries, one of whom had stopped to light the cigarette of another. Both of them looked down, eyes ballooning to about the size of grapefruits in shock. They didn’t have much longer before the three grenades detonated in flat cracks that assaulted the eardrums and sprayed shrapnel all over the clearing. Of the two sentries, little was left aside from ragged flesh, sprays of blood, tattered uniforms and destroyed weapons.

A second later, an M990 machine gun, a BAR and two Thundersplash SMGs cut loose, dumping ammunition like their operators would be docked pay for every round left over, backed up by the sharp cracking of four Cloudfall rifles taking accurate shots between the barrage. The fire came from three sides as the paratroopers enfolded the defensive position in a brutal cover fire, the foliage smashed flat as the roaring Jeep rolled towards them, the Buckstar machine gun mounted in the back already chattering and laying down a curtain of .30 caliber lead. Before they could even go for their weapons, three more diehards fell to the jungle floor hard, their comrades scrambling to find cover as bullets whizzed overhead. The snap of bolt-action rifles and loud popping of pistols seemed rather pitiful in retaliation, and another went down in the blizzard of bullets coming their way. The others, hunkered down and only firing back out on occasion, were well and truly suppressed. But now they had to be rooted out.

Another claw grenade clattered down between the boxes, and a Chiropterran yelped as she grabbed it up with a hoof, clumsily tossing it away before it detonated. However, with the distraction, the remaining soldier ponies did not notice the two Arisian paratroopers who, having flanked around to envelop the position from the rear, emerged from the undergrowth directly before them. One of the diehards lurched backwards, eyes wide, mouth half open and hooves raising his BA-12 only a heartbeat before two Cloudfalls cracked and snapped. Not taking any chances, the two hippogriffs emptied their rifles, and only stopped when the weapons both emitted identical pinging noises, their en bloc clips flying out of open actions.

Silence fell on the clearing.

“Clear!” yelled one of the flanking troopers, flipping a nearby corpse over to double check and make sure it was true. The rest of the squad moved down from the treeline, carefully covering each other as they advanced. It wasn’t unusual for Chiropterrans to play dead or rig boobytraps even in the midst of active positions about to fall. In fact, as they moved a cry went up from one of the ‘corpses’, and a pair of pistol shots squeezed off. In startled reaction, the nearest paratrooper happened to be the BAR gunner, and emptied the rest of her twenty-round magazine into the thestral. The resultant splash of gore on the crate behind the unwise guerilla left little doubt as to his current status.

Stratus called a ten minute halt, allowing his troopers to pause and reload, check their surroundings and gulp down some water. They didn’t have long, and it was clear they had to keep moving up. In the meantime, he tasked Charybdis with searching the site for useful intel. Being in enemy territory, they needed to know where they were in relation to the base.

It didn’t take long before the search turned up the impossible.

“Sarge! Got a door!”

The two teams immediately reformed, converging on Charybdis’ location. Sure enough, the corporal stood next to a recessed, rusty steel door set into a concrete fortification, sunk partly into a small rise. And the door, for some reason, was unlocked.

“Guess we dropped a lot closer inside their perimeter than we thought,” Stratus muttered. “Didn’t think we’d find them this fast.”

There were no guards immediately inside. But Stratus, being a paranoid bastard in an elite service, knew better than to blame luck or fortune for this turn. Instead, he tasked several of his troopers to hold perimeter around the destroyed AA site. To another, he stated one thing;

“Set it up.”

The paratrooper broke out a strange device, somewhat familiar on the surface. A base unit, a speaker as if on a radio and a compact arcane battery. Sergeant Deeptide and the other Airborne had trained on this unit, but they couldn’t help but all crowd around and watch as the device assembled before the bunker door. On the surface, it resembled a phonograph connected to a loudspeaker, the glowing power unit indicating its strange oddity as a magitek device. This, like the moonspeakers, had come from the magitek capital of the world, Equestria. Even hip deep in changelings, they’d managed to dispatch several of these units to help correct the last living remnant of Nightmare Moon’s legacy.

To the engineers and mages, it was known as the ‘audiographic projector’.

To troopers on the front line, it was simply known as the ‘Ex-Wife’.

“Okay Sarge,” said the private, setting the Ex-Wife up. “She’s ready to go.”

To cap off his statement, he extracted a large black vinyl disc, lifting the lid on the unit, sliding the record into place, setting the arm and tooth and shutting the whole thing back up again, tugging a headset out of his pack and slipping the unit on. With a click and a hum, she was ready to go.

“Fire away,” Deeptide stated. “Let’s see how they like a bit of Canterlot’s finest bitching them out.”

With a nod, the hippogriff operator turned to the Ex-Wife, flipping off the safety and thumbing the trigger button. With an audible whine, the arcane capacitors built up their charge before firing into the main chamber, and from the speaker grille came none other than the Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice, boosted and augmented and more than full of the same weight of booming authority as the alicorn who had spoken the words in the recording booth. Turned out, moonspeakers weren’t the only thing Equestria was willing to send in order to deal with Chiropterra once and for all.

“SOLDIERS OF THE LEGION!” came Luna’s holler, booming down the passageway like a gust of wind combined with the shock of an explosion, almost like a physical force had been unleashed. “I AM PRINCESS LUNA! THOU CLAIM TO FIGHT FOR NIGHTMARE MOON, THE ETERNAL EMPRESS, SHE WHO RULES THE DARK! I KNOW FULL WELL THE ATTEMPTED PLOT TO SHEPHERD HER RETURN! BUT YOU FAILED THEN, JUST AS YOU HAVE FAILED NOW IN THIS WAR! THE NIGHTMARE IS GONE! THE LEGION STANDS DEFEATED! IF THOU CLAIM TO FIGHT FOR MINE DARKER SPECTER, KNOW THAT YOU FIGHT IN VAIN! SURRENDER, OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!”

With a whine and a pop, the message ended. The Ex-Wife sizzled out the speaker as the operator quickly reached over, popping the lid and extracting the now smoking vinyl disc from within. Stratus winced. As always with fidgety new gear (especially magitek) accidents happened and equipment broke quite often.

They waited, weapons trained on the entrance, staring down into the dark gloom of the tunnel. The paratroopers’ eyes twitched, searching for any trace of movement. While seaponies had fantastic darkvision given their preferred home in Seaquestria, hippogriffs were not so lucky. They all huddled closer, careful not to present a silhouette target ideal for a grenade or burst of automatic fire.

But nothing emerged. Nopony challenged them, no bullets came chattering out, no surrendering Crescent Moon diehards. Five minutes. Seven.

Finally, Stratus stepped forward, already set to his grim task.

“Fine. Guess we’re doing this the hard way.” He gestured around, designating two Airborne nearby. “Kelpson, Reefjack, hold here with the Jeep. Keep our tailfeathers clear. Everyone else, on me. Heads on a swivel, don’t bunch up, close quarters battle. Let’s go find this bastard and drag him out by his fucking teeth.”

It was time to go into the lion’s den.

* * * * *

They moved fast down the tunnel. They didn’t have any option now, stealth was out the window. Eight hippogriffs hurtling through a passageway, guns up and ready. There was no room for finesse, both figuratively and literally. There was only enough room to move two abreast if they sucked in their breath, and every second they delayed was a chance for Ocean Spray to escape, if he had one. Every time they reached a fork, Stratus took up position with two others in the center, pointing and gesturing for the paratroopers to spread out, kicking down doors and chucking grenades into each passageway, the time tested tradition of clearing a structure perfected in New Ayacachtli by the 101st and Iztāctepetl by the 82nd. After the blast, go in with weapons raised, move fast and sweep the room with maximum efficiency.

But they found nothing. Room after room, each chamber appeared to have already been emptied. They found supplies in the form of foodstuffs, ammunition, most of it freshly scorched or torn by fragmentation grenades. They found two barracks, each possessing thirty bunks and lines of storage lockers. They found a map room and a radio room, and even though this would normally be a treasure trove to secure, Stratus knew he had to keep pushing onwards, had to leave behind what they were turning over. For they had not found a single soul in the bunker complex, living or dead despite breaching and clear a dozen rooms by now.

One thing did stand out, however; at one point, a team discovered a furnace with its hatch open, allowing them all to look into the hot coals and spy the blackened, shriveling remains of stacks of paper curling up to be swallowed by the flames. Judging by the haphazard array of cardboard boxes scattered around the room, they had grabbed as many documents as they could and tossed what was possible into the fire to destroy any and all sensitive evidence.

One of the paratroopers leaned down, squinting before plucking one paper from the ground with her claw.

“Ey, anyone speak kraut?” she called, holding the document up.

Sergeant Deeptide frowned, advancing forward and snatching the paper himself, frowning in the low light. From the smoldering glow let off by the furnace, he could barely make out a line of typed text;

‘Vom Schreibtisch von Doktor Lintz, Ravenholm-Institut, Griffing, Angriver’

“Von is ‘from’ I think, and Institut is obvious,” Stratus muttered, squinting to try and read further. The problem was, not only was the document incomplete now, what he could see of it was beyond his limited comprehension. Shaking his head, he pocketed the strange paper, and the squad grabbed whatever else they could recover before moving on.

Finally, the paratroopers formed up outside a pair of double doors at the far end of the complex. Stratus knew he didn’t have to be a genius like Mister Terrafin to know this had to be the command center. Closed off from the rest of the bunker, at the literal end of what would have normally been a close quarters nightmare to assault. While the rest of the place had been abandoned, that could also simply be another defensive strategy. The diehards had to have heard the explosions, the gunfire. They knew what was coming. And so, they had concentrated all their guns in one place, waiting for the paratroopers to breach the one place they couldn’t bypass; a fatal funnel.

Two paratroopers up front kept their rifles aimed at the doors. Stratus Deeptide stared at it, hard. He knew the decision rested in his claws. They had no other option than to go through. The other paratroopers watched him, waiting. He could feel their tension, their apprehension. One nearby ran a tongue over the edge of her beak, shifting. Another flexed his claws on his Thundersplash, quietly dreading the command. A third huffed under his breath, clearly trying not to lose his nerve.

Stratus wished he knew of some other way. And yet, all they had before them was this. And if they waited much longer, who knew what hidden tunnel Ocean Spray might slip down, if he hadn’t already. It had to end, here and now.

He gave the nod.

The doors flew open, driven apart by strong hippogriff hooves. Stratus had an image of the inside of the room, of a raised table in the center, surrounded by chairs. Desks and radios littered the outer wall, and papers were stacked all over the place. On the far wall, the purple crescent moon of the Chiropterran Commonwealth hung on its banner.

And a line of guns, using turned over desks as cover. One of them was even an Arisian made Marlin machine gun.

Grenades flew. Rifles barked. Automatic weapons chattered. The BAR gunner let loose with her thundering weapon, the tremendous .30-77 rounds capable of dropping a feral boar ripping through the furniture. Thundersplash guns rattled, emptying their box magazines in a heartbeat.

The grenades went off, and all pandemonium broke loose.

Stratus advanced into the suddenly dark room, the explosions having killed the lights (unless the Chiropterrans did it first) and nearly slipped in a puddle of blood. The first Arisian pointgriff had gone down in a hail of bullets, her corpse thrown to the side and shredded. As he tried to scramble back upright, the trooper behind him went down with a wet gurgle and a sound like a tenderizer striking raw bloody meat, Thundersplash still spraying .45 caliber rounds off as limbs kicked feebly and feathers flew away from spasming wings. A flash of movement caught his eye and he raised his weapon on instinct, hosing the shape down. To his relief, it was a thestral in purple and green, flailing under his barrage as she slumped over a radio panel and fell bonelessly to the floor.

His surroundings had become a nightmare soup of darkness, muzzle flashes, gunsmoke so thick it almost drowned out the stench of blood and the gunfire so loud it cut through the yelping screams of the dying. The BAR gunner hollered as her magazine snapped open on an empty chamber, and two Cloudfalls barked in unison to cover her. Opposing them, BA-12 rifles snapped and cracked, searching for targets in the gloom. Their machine gunner had gone down after only a half dozen rounds, robbing them of their advantage early.

Stratus waited, listening to the shots as he tried to count them off, much easier said than done considering the overwhelming amount of fire still coming from his own troopers. Though it had certainly fallen off, they were still pouring out an appreciative amount.

Finally, Stratus heard his opening.

“Ceasefire! Ceasefire! Everyone stop fucking shooting!” A pause. He’d been correct. The bats were caught reloading, and they all knew it. “This is Sergeant Deeptide, 11th Airborne! We’re here for Ocean Spray! Everypony come out with your hooves up! Nopony else has to die!”

One bat trooper got brave and stood up, revolver leveled. But one of the paratroopers was on the ball and even in the cloying gloom of near total darkness raised her rifle, putting a round into the dumb pony. He collapsed, though given the gasping and groaning the shot hadn’t been fatal.

“Anyone else wanna be a hero?” the hippogriff snarled.

“Hold your damn fire!” Stratus ordered again. “Everyone needs to stop playing stupid fucking games! Just give up, godsdammit! It’s over! There’s no way out, and there’s only two ways it ends! Both of them involve Ocean Spray coming with us, just a matter of who else we take too.”

For a moment, the tension reigned between the two sides. Here in the dark, in an underground bunker where they could hardly see each other, there was at least half a chance the diehards would scream their devotion to the Nightmare and charge forward anyway. They’d seen it plenty of times in the field elsewhere.

“Okay,” came the accented reply in rough Arisian. “Okay, Joe. We come out now. No shoot, Joe.”

Indeed, there came the clatter of weapons dropping to the floor and the shuffle of hooves. The agonized groans that followed said the ponies were collecting their wounded too. In the darkness, it was hard to tell.

“Check the wounded!” he called out. “And someone get me a light.”

In a heartbeat, Private Challenger stepped over, his field flashlight in claw as he held it up for the sergeant to see. The sight was certainly one to see; out of the bunker’s gloom came a file of Chiropterran diehards, about fifteen of them. Not all of them were thestrals, Stratus cold see. Some were unicorns, a few pegasi and at least half were earth ponies. He estimated there had been no more than a few deaths, so counting the team up on the surface this cell numbered less than thirty. This bunker complex could hold at least two hundred from what he’d guessed. Had the Crescent Moon diehards really been so strung out that this was all they had to crew the defense of this one installation?

The surrendering ponies began lining up, laying the wounded unable to support themselves in front. Most of them looked thin, emaciated. Stratus hadn’t seen that before. Most of the Chiropterrans he had seen in this war had been hale and hearty warriors, fed their own propaganda and battling on with a determined fanaticism that almost made up for how badly outnumbered they’d been. It was sobering to see this as the battered, starved remnant of that mighty army.

Stratus’ eyes narrowed as he searched the line. Only a few wore helmets, the rest had soft caps or no headgear at all. Most stared back with wearied defiance in their eyes, and he had to remind himself that he was dealing with fanatics. Surrendering or not, they clearly were not happy to stop fighting.

Something caught his eye, and he turned back again. Yes, now he looked closer he spotted someone shifty moving around back there. A single high peaked cap among the group, a senior officer. Normally, such a catch as a POW was a juicy find, both for the war effort and the unit who did the catching. Yet the sergeant balked, glancing back down the line until he spotted the insignia of a Chiropterran captain on a thestral mare. Frowning, Stratus looked back at the peaked cap owner, who had his head down to keep his eyes out of sight.

“Sargasso! Laurentia!” he barked, not taking his eyes off the shifty bastard. He didn’t know how much of his squad was still up and moving behind him, but he knew they had at least three KIA so far. “Pull that fucker out of there. He wants to play stupid games, let’s give him a stupid prize.”

The iconography was all wrong. That dark green uniform, those pins, that cap. There was already a ranking officer in charge of the bunker, likely commanding all the defenses in the area as well. So that meant this mysterious figure…

Sargasso and Laurentia approached the target, weapons held at the ready.

“Okay, Vlad,” Sargasso drawled, his thick accent indicating he expected a confrontation. “How ‘bout’chu give us a good loogaddat mug an’ rattle off name, rank, serial all polite like, see?”

The Chiropterran didn’t respond, merely glancing to the side with his head still down. Laurentia chuckled derisively.

“Fucker’s all shy,” she snickered, lifting her Cloudfall.

Sargasso glanced back, likely about to make some kind of sarcastic quip himself. Sergeant Stratus Deeptide saw the trap coming a heartbeat too late, lifting his own weapon, beak opening to shout a warning. But he was too late.

Before Sargasso could finish his maneuver, the officer struck first. In a flash of movement, the paratroopers abruptly found himself in a rear chokehold, gasping from the knife that had suddenly materialized in his chest. Before Laurentia could do more than blink in shock, the officer maneuvered his victim’s weapon around, pulling the trigger. The Thundersplash spat fire and lead, spent shell casings raining. Laurentia seemed to hang in some kind of grisly stop motion, the bright flares from the muzzle flash capturing each second as she fell under the barrage.

“Hostile! Down down down!” Stratus hollered, his night vision ruined again. But he had for a brief second caught the illuminated form of the Chiropterran in question. Black coat, mint green mane, gray eyes, scarred muzzle and a perpetual smirk. There was no doubt about it; this was Ocean Spray, the stallion in question they’d been sent after.

Ocean Spray didn’t waste time, leveling the submachine gun and holding down the trigger. .45 caliber rounds flew around the room, casting out lethal reaping sweeps to search for targets. Stratus hit the desk, his own weapon falling from his claws under him as he held onto his helmet. He listened with dread, quivering ears trying to find the shriek of agony or wet slap of another of his troopers going down over the thundering din of automatic gunfire in such an enclosed space. Miraculously, he heard neither.

Then, silence and darkness swallowed up the bunker again like a dark shroud had been tossed over his head. In the silence, he heard Ocean Spray curse and knew immediately what happened; the twenty-round magazine had emptied in the brief flurry of violence. The spent weapon clattered to the floor, and Stratus knew what he had to do, standing and drawing his Buckstar as he did, thumbing off the safety. After all the shooting, his ears were ringing. The darkness seemed even more oppressing with the sound and light cut off. But he took a pause, trying to judge where Ocean Spray was based on his last split second impression of the stallion’s form.

He held his breath. He’d only have one shot, literally. Just a heartbeat longer.

A shadow moved. Black on black, his darkvision just barely starting to return. But it was enough. It would have to be. He fired, the .45 kicking in his grip, lighting up the room one more time. Again, everything was frozen in the momentary flash. Ocean Spray was reaching a hoof down to his own belt, just about where a holster might be. He was looking right at Stratus, his own thestral eyes able to pierce the gloom.

Darkness and silence again. Stratus’ breath caught in his chest, waiting. It could only have been half a second, but it felt like an hour to him, waiting to see the result of his shot.

And then, the thump of collapse. The hissing of pain, air being sucked in through clenched teeth before being expelled in a curse. Stratus exhaled himself, an explosive gasp of relief.

“Somegriff get a light over here, please.”

He was a bit surprised how strained his voice sounded. But after a second, as the adrenaline wore off, he felt the clamminess of his skin under his feathers and fur and realized why he had made such a sound. In that moment, he had gone from combat ready mode to scared shitless. Even if it had only lasted a heartbeat, that sense of not knowing whether he was about to live or die in this oppressive dark had almost made him a ghost of sheer fright.

Another trooper hurried a flashlight over, as what was left of the squad rose again. To his great relief, Stratus saw that none of the prisoners had tried to take advantage, clearly as confused as everyone else. He looked down at Ocean Spray’s fallen form, glaring and feeling his eyebrows draw together furiously as his eyes found the crumpled forms of Sargasso and Laurentia, clearly dead where they lay. But as he spotted Ocean Spray, he felt a surge of vindication and triumph. The bastard was nursing his hind leg, where the sergeant’s single bullet had grazed him.

They had the target. It wouldn’t bring back the countless victims he and the Crescent Moon Society had claimed, or reverse the deaths of his Airborne. But Stratus took what he could get. He snarled, feeling disgust rise up in his throat, the urge to just level the pistol and put another round in this monster’s head almost too strong to suppress.

Finally, he turned away, picking up his Thundersplash as he did so.

“Somebody clap this motherfucker in irons. Then we haul his worthless ass up topside. Let’s radio Flounder and Barracuda, let them know we have the target. We’re going home, boys and girls.”

They made a point of conducting the first trial under Chiropterran law two months later. This had a dual purpose: to show that the Legions had repeatedly flaunted the laws that the civilians operated under, and to provoke outrage at just how many of the things the LMRD did were perfectly legal.

Ocean Spray, the mad scientist of the LMRD, was acquitted on counts of grievous bodily harm, murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and so on, simply because his victims were ‘laborers’. The trial was followed in depth by many branches of the media across the North Zebrican Federation, and even former Legionnaires were incensed as he was acquitted one by one of horrific acts of torture. Of course, the way he had embezzled funds and inflated his successes, the fact that certain experiments were illegal for procedural reasons, and the terrorist actions of the Crescent Moon Society were all enough to get Ocean Spray and most of the others in the Doctors' Trial heavy prison sentences. Even all their protections didn’t completely save them.

Then came the trial under Arisian law one week later.

Crimes against sentient life, war crimes, serial murder: it was enough to get Ocean Spray and several others hanged, with mountains of evidence leaving little in doubt of their guilt. Witness testimony, documents recovered from LMRD facilities, photographs of the after effects of these experiments, previously classified intel relating to the horrific experiments and connection to the Bureau of Native Affairs, things the Legion would never have allowed to be exposed to the public eye were all put out for the media to see, and the people to witness. The outcome stopped being in doubt even midway through. The jury’s vote was guilty on all charges.

At the end of the trial, a curious change had come over the Chiropterran public. They had always prided themselves on their ruthlessness compared to the weak harmonists, but their laws were so weak that only under harmonist law would the monsters actually be put down. The Legions hadn't protected them. The Legions had protected themselves, and given the experimental drugs the LMRD would sometimes test on enlisted soldiers and lower-ranking officers, Chiropterran opinion solidified that the Legions were, essentially, a racket.

Much of the publicity was done by officials in the former Chiropterran civilian government. One Carrot Stick in particular had stepped up and ensured that every Chiropterran he could reach would get the play-by-play of the trials. In the aftermath, he also convinced several insurgent groups to lay down their arms in exchange for amnesty. After so long with the Chiropterran public stonewalling efforts at a proper peace, it seemed the tide was turning, and leaders were emerging on their side who were able to finally stop the cycle of violence. A few executions, to wash away a millennium of blood.

The risers wrapped around his neck, connectors cracked his dome;
The lines were snarled and tied in knots, around his skinny bones;
The canopy became his shroud, he hurtled to the ground.

He ain′t gonna jump no more.

Gory, Gory, What a hell of a way to die
Gory, Gory, What a hell of a way to die
Gory, Gory, What a hell of a way to die

He ain't gonna jump no more

-Excerpt from ’Blood on the Risers’, an Arisian paratrooper song sung to the tune of ‘Battle Hymn of the Kingdom’

Author's Note

So, here we are again. It's always such a pleasure; remember when you tried to kill me twice?

No, wait, that's GLaDOS.

But from me, I wanted to use this as my grand return! Read enjoy and stay tuned for more as both this and the main story, From Front to Front.

In short; call us the Looney Tunes, cause we are Back in Action, folks!

Again, keep an eye out for any errors or mistakes you may find, and I'll fix them post haste.