Painted Faces

Swift Wing woke to the sound of the compound PA system announcing a new slate of missions had been sent down from the thestrals on compilation duty and smiled. It may have been one of her few off days that month, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t claim her next mission a little early and start planning with the rest of the band.

She languidly rolled off her cot and turned the room’s light on with a mental command. One cursory inspection later she found nothing out of place, it looked like she drew the long straw on Dice’s jokes today. When she finished inspecting her desk for unwelcome surprises she spent the time to rearrange her bedsheets to regulation standard, not that the inspecting officer really cared, but precision was important in her line of work.

Before leaving for the mess hall she pulled on her undersuit and used the mirrored interior of her locker to brush her unruly grey and blue mane into some semblance of order. Waves and curls were straightened, and Swift double-checked that the illusion on her body was still working properly. She probably could’ve added her proper uniform to the ensemble, but for the relaxed morning she had planned she wouldn’t need the special clearance non-civvies would provide. Catching a glimpse of shifting red light out of the corner of her eye while closing the closet so Swift stopped and poked her head back in. “Just in case,” she sighed, pocketing the stone.

Walking out to the hallway Swift was met by the last trickles of the night shift returning to their quarters for their eight hour rest period. She passed a flagging minotaur-thestral coming from the darkroom while stepping into the mess hall for her midnight breakfast, the bags under his eyes were almost black. Swift liked the darkroom, not being one of its many detractors, if only because she actually found data aggregation and compilation to be interesting. Spying the rest of her band over at the mission board she picked up her pace and trotted over.

Tip-clawing the last few meters to her music group she snuck up beside Tong, their communications expert. “Boo,” Swift said in her best monotone, which managed to get a flinch out of the less observant group members, but neither Steel or Current seemed even slightly fazed.

“It seems we’re all accounted for now that the kid has arrived,” Garter said, beak quirking up at the last word into a small smirk. She didn’t like that nickname and he knew it, which was probably why he always brought it up in every conversation they shared. “Let’s go get our food before some other band takes all the good stuff. I can smell the bacon and I haven’t had first pick on those slices in forever.” That got some good chuckles all around, which was why, in her opinion, he got away with pushing everyone’s buttons.

Over at the line Swift picked up one of the pristine metal trays in her red aura and quietly began scrolling through the breakfast menu sent out for the night. By the time the others had finished getting their chow she knew exactly what she wanted, and placed her tray up and onto the counter. “Two berry pancakes, and one chocolate, four slices of bacon. Please.” Once she felt the weight on the tray stop changing, she brought it down to eye-level and made her way to their band’s second-floor table.

Swift unfurled her mechanical wings and fell in behind Current for the short hop up to their table. It might have been the standard table everybody else used, but it overlooked most of the first floor and shielded them from the majority of the noise from down there. Garter the griffin took his usual place at the head of the table, already tearing into his bacon with what could only be described as a reckless disregard for manners. She took the far end of the table from him, and the rest of the band spread out between them in a routine everyone had gotten used to over the last four months.

“Mastication, missions, then music?” Gust inquired.

“Sure, Mister Alliteration. It’s not like we’ll be getting any input from Garter any time soon anyways.”

The silence after that exchange lasted for almost a quarter hour before everyone had their fill and looked up. The hall had filled up in the meantime, lending some muffled background hubbub to their little meal.

“I see we’re all satisfied with the food. Should we move on to the next matter for consideration?” Tong took the initiative to begin their discussion. When Swift had first been assigned to the team she’d asked around about what the grey changeling’s actual name was, but nobody in the base actually knew. She’d not even found anything on him over the neuralweave, and everyone knew everything the Conglomerate knew was on there.

“Yes, please. I saw a few interesting things on the board tonight, and I heard that people without missions are going to be in the darkroom instead of the field until the backlog clears out.” Swift thought that would be the best way to get some focus going around the table. Most of the normal thestrals would be fine, if a bit irked, at having to do extra shifts looking at displays all night. However, everyone at the table with her was a combat cyborg, and that came with certain expectations from the rest of the agents in the department. Her point was only helped along by everyone in the band but Tong and her having a reputation for being awful at desk jobs. That wasn’t to say she was any good at them either, but she was better than bad, and that was something.

“That so? What’s on offer then? I won’t be caught dead again behind a computer screen. Tong, show us a holo of the assignment board. I know you have one.” The light purple hippogriff leaned over the table and lazily pointed to the changeling in question.

“As if you don’t know which one you want already, Current. You just like bossing Tong around.”

“Yes, but visual aids help with planning. Or so I’ve been told.” Tong for his part just sighed at his comrade’s admission and lit the holographic projector behind his right eye. Over the center of the table shone a replica of the mission board in all of its stainless steel and glass glory. It should’ve been a perfect copy, but nobody had figured out how to keep projections out of the uncanny valley.

“Surveillance… surveillance… surveillance… smash and grab,” Garter’s voice perked up at that one, “Surveillance… surveillance… sting operation! Hey! How does that sound to you lot?”

“Set someone up so they can jump off the cliff themselves and take a video for IntCom? That’s a bit outside of our wheelhouse. When do we get to smash some skulls in again?”

“I’m getting to that part, Steel. Please try to exercise patience with this old bird.” Swift had to resist rolling her eyes at that argument. It didn’t even make sense; agent Smith was at least 100 years older than the rest of them combined. She went back to looking for the mission she needed and tuned out the rest. “Anyways, once we have confirmation that the target has taken the bait, we get to move in and restrain everyone involved.”

“I’m still waiting for you to get to the point.” Swift could’ve sworn she’d seen it near the bottom of the list. Maybe in the last fifth of the registry?

“Yes, do get on with it. We are on the clock after all,” Current interrupted.

“Heavy resistance to the arrests is expected, and lethal force has been authorized. There. Happy?”

“Very.”

“Oh hello Lodestone! How nice of you to join in with us. Care to stick around?”

“…”

“May I handle the setup for the operation? It seems a sensitive matter that could easily be turned on us if we’re discovered early.”

“Where!? Where did that blasted posting go!? I swear it was here when we walked in!” Swift hadn’t even noticed she’d voiced her thought before the whole table turned towards her. Current even raised an eyebrow before asking the question that was on everyone else’s mind.

“Dahling… were you listening to any of what was just discussed? Because it sounds to me like you’re scheming out loud again.” The faux-elitist accent to the whole accusation only made it grate more on Swift’s already frayed nerves. She was right there! She could practically smell victory!

“WHAT?” She snapped. Lodestone was the only one not to flinch at the volume and anger of her exclamation. She could hear her breathing over the silence, it was a ragged and harsh sound, rasping in and out of her muzzle at a rate that was almost hyperventilation but not quite. The shock didn’t last very long though, and now they were squinting at her as if daring her to continue yelling at them. She wouldn’t, they were her friends and comrades in arms, but sometimes they could just be so annoying!

They were still looking, she could see their eyes weren’t even on her face but slightly lower. Swift couldn’t figure out what they were staring at until she looked down and noticed a mirage of heat and color creeping up her hooves from her shadow, slowly staining her illusory maroon coat in a wavy sheen of even less real blue-ish grey color. Her magic was heating the air around her to the point that the undercoat she wore was smoked and sparked as the electronics woven throughout melted.

Frantically Swift stuffed her claws into the quickly melting pockets of her clothes grabbing, searching for her fire ruby. She grabbed the stone like the lifeline it was and ripped it out of her now disintegrating clothes and focused inwards. Most thestrals with useful amounts of thaumatic energy were taught early how to control their magic. Most managed through use of dampener rings and little calming rituals, like what Gust did, but those methods didn’t work for her. Acting like she was breathing out all her feelings wasn’t enough, she needed to watch them burn to cinders before they went away.

Channeling her magic through the pain of the synthetic fabrics melting into her fur and the gaps in her scales a bright but unfocused column of fire shot up from the gem. She watched the light blue flame for a second or so before her breathing evened out and the fires of her irritation and panic were smothered by the conflagration surrounding them.

Looking up again to give a real answer to the rest of the band, Swift simply said: “No, I was trying to find a mission that caught my eye earlier. I should’ve set a subroutine to transcribe the conversation next to the list. I’ll do better hiding my distraction next time.” Swift tilted her head up and to the side in contrition.

“Swift, you do not need to bare your neck to us for some perceived tactlessness in your distraction. I didn’t notice you had left to do work on your own and I must commend your initiative,” Garter replied before continuing, “You’ll need that if you follow through with your plan. I also think that I speak for all of us when I say it’s good to see you coming out of your shell.”

“If this is going to happen every time, I’m not sure I can afford to come out all that often, or at least not that much in that way.”

“Emotions are important to maintaining mental wellbeing in the medium to long term for most species.” Tong chimed in.

“You’re the emotivore of the group, Tong. I’ll take your word for it, but they just don’t go away when they’re done being useful. They just build, and pile up, and cause problems,” Swift evenly replied.

“So much for ‘coming out of the shell,’” Steel heckled, “she practically is the shell with how much she lets out when she’s outside the recording booth.”

“If you don’t bring it up again, I might actually consider voting your song higher this round, Agent Smith.” There wasn’t much venom to her retort, she wouldn’t do another burn so soon after the first, but the promise did get a second glance from the thestral. “Besides, being bland and having you lot to talk to is so much better than being boisterous and avoided. To me anyways, that’s probably not how it works for most people now that I think about it,” Swift mused.

“You too know how hard,
Trying to hide yourself is,
To seem a normal.”

“So did you actually find what you were seeking? Because that would have been a whole lot of hot air for no real gain otherwise.”

“Yeah, gifts were given,” Swift opened the verse and looked up.

“And life was born again,” The rest followed.

“Anyways, here it is Tong. Display it would you?” On the table the holo switched from a roster planner for that sting mission they were talking about to an infoweb of the investigation and dissolution mission that Swift was after. The information was sobering, but nothing they hadn’t seen before. Some twenty adult thestrals had been abducted or had simply disappeared near the agricultural city of Everdark over the course of a month. The others had been called in to deal with similar cases before, and so jumped to the only logical conclusion.

“It’s either a cult, or a lich, or both. What was your thought with this one Swift?”

“Well, the doc wants a full combat test before he’ll agree to sign my transfer papers. Also, going over these logs of your conversation it seems some of you’ll be waiting for a few hours for Tong to social engineer someone into killing themselves. I wouldn’t mind some extra logistical support for when I raid their underground complex before you get busy with the second part of what you’re probably choosing as your assignment?” Swift was careful to leave that last statement off as a question instead of the cajoling that it actually was. They might recognise it as blatant coercion if she didn’t, now it was just coercion which was much more palatable.

“Okay Swift, I’m sure I’ll have a bit of time before our sting gets to the ‘the point’, I’ll tag along and help set this up, but only if you take a bet.” Swift had seen that one coming from a mile away, Garter always made at least one bet every mission. Sometimes two if he was feeling extra lucky that night.

“What would the bet be, then?” She wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. Everyone learned it at some point, but usually after unwittingly accepting their first impossible bet from the griffin everybody stopped blindly accepting offers.

“I’ll owe you a favor if you get all of the cultists in five minutes. And if you don’t succeed in that, you owe me a favor.”

“Alright, deal.” The wager was pretty tame, at least by their standards, but who knew? It might end up being more challenging than expected. The actual deed involved was still something of a touchy subject for her, but she was becoming inured to the murder, and if there was anyone who deserved death it’d be those freaks.

“Excellent. Now may we move on to less violent plans?” Current interjected.

“Of course, your highness. By all means, please do serenade us with your newest sound.” Swift couldn’t let Steel be the only one to get in a jab in tonight, and judging by the snickering from the rest it seemed she still had it.