“H-hey, it... might not be a megaspell. For all we know it could just be some sort of… really big gem. Those have a lot of latent magical energy too, you know,” I said, trying desperately to rationalize away the glowing object as anything other than an instrument of destruction. “They could just be retrieving those to power some sort of generator… and they were shelling Hopeville, because… they already have enough energy, and the dragon guys… want more?” I looked over to Night Strike, who was tossing the makeshift goggles back into my saddlebags, visibly shaken. She sat down in the seat of the Valkyrie ahead of me, letting out a long, shuddering sigh as she stared out of the window.

I stood up, stepping over to her and placing a hoof over her shoulder. “Okay, okay, I know this is bad, but it’s not like we’re completely screwed, right? We’ve still got the Valkyrie and megaspells ourselves, and a couple other bombs, right? They’re not going to start slinging theirs around unless they want to be on the receiving end of several themselves, right?” I continued, trying to comfort myself as well as her. Night Strike sat still for a moment before nodding slowly, taking another deep breath.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, it’s just… I guess I’ve never really thought about it before. Even after Hopeville, I never really thought things would get this out of hand. What’re we going to do, we don’t even know where they heck they are! And what happens when they’re ready to deploy whatever those things are, or whatever project Cerberus is? Robo-dragons, Harriers, one-ton bombs, 28-centimeter railway guns, who knows what else they have!?” She looked back out of the cockpit of the Valkyrie, her brow furrowing. Oh, Celestia, I don’t like that look. She turned and placed her hooves at the controls, lights flickering on as she did.

“N-Night Strike, what are you doing?!” I half-yelled, reaching out to grab the chair to balance myself as the plane shuddered. The plane began to roll forward, forcing me to take my seat back behind Night Strike to keep myself from falling over onto the floor. The engine roar grew louder as we picked up speed, the wheels bouncing off of rocks in the terrain as we began to hurtle forward. “What the hell do you think you're doing?! You’re not seriously thinking of bombing them right now, are you?” I cried, watching as the ground fell away outside. Glancing over my shoulder, I could just see the tip of the lighthouse and the rotating lamp slip beneath the back of the plane as we took off. My mind jumped to the thought of Crash Dive and Scouring watching our escape, a pit growing in my stomach. Oh, this is gota be one of the worst ideas we've had in recent memory.

Turning back to face the front, I watched as Night Strike turned the plane south slightly, making her way back towards the crater that used to be Seahoof Armory. She let off a small breath, relaxing in her seat. “Alright, calm down Sparky, I’m not going to bomb them. But we need to figure out where these guys are actually located, or we’re completely without any options other than waiting to see where they strike next. Look back at those pictures and try to figure out where they were headed, and I’ll get us there as best as I can. They can’t be too hard to miss unless they’re completely underground... even then, we might spot something.” Oh, yeah, that definitely makes me much more reassured. Just going to go flying right into enemy territory, no idea what’s there, definitely can’t end poorly in any way, shape, or form. Still, I looked back to the display on the Valkyrie, switching between filters to try and spot any sort of interesting details in the photos. The back of my mind wondered how exactly this computer was advanced enough to display photos in any color other than green while I clicked over to another picture.

“I’m not getting anything other than that they’re all pointed roughly the same way. Our best bet would just be to follow the corpses and hope we come across their base,” I said, trying to hide my feelings of impending doom from my voice as well as I could. I continued to scan the various pictures as Night Strike turned in the sky, the radioactive crater coming in over the horizon. Oddly, though the memeories of exploring ground zero of Shady Shores picked at my subconscious, the explosion looked almost peaceful from such high up. The ground was completely wiped clean, barely any evidence that the military base had ever existed. Night Strike squinted, trying to spot the wrecked remains of the dragons as she slowed the Valkyrie from its blistering speeds.

Switching from the photos to the live feed, I began to scan the ground along with her. “I think I see the robots, turn about…” I quickly consulted the compass on the array of instruments in front of my seat. “28 degrees east.” Night Strike nodded, following my instructions. The robots were soon in view, and the Valkyrie was flying along the trail of mangled electronics. I looked up from the screen to gaze out of the window at the passing countryside. The basin in which sat the armory raised up into the distance into a small collection of peaks. Night Strike pushed a lever forward, the engine roar growing louder as the Valkyrie picked up speed. “Ok, so any kind of special stealth tech we have on board? You sure this thing can’t turn invisible so we aren’t targeted when we come within 20 miles of the place?”

Night Strike shrugged, looking down at the controls. “I dunno, you were the one with the manual, what’d you do with it? I’ll take us a bit higher at least, maybe the cloud cover will help.” She said. Oh, sure, now the manual isn’t considered just a paperweight to you. 'I'm the pilot, I don't need to read it'... ugh. I regretted leaving my saddlebags back in the lighthouse as Night Strike pulled us higher, causing me to pull away from the window to avoid the intensified sense of vertigo. We were soon flying just below the clouds, occasionally the bottom of one bumping against the glass cockpit, pushing it out of the way. “See anything yet?”

I looked back down at the console screen, but could see nothing but a dense forest of trees and a thin river cutting its way through the ground below. The ground was slowly growing closer again as we approached the peaks, which appeared to be much flatter than they had looked from a distance. “Hold up… I think there’s something in the distance,” I said, fiddling with some of the controls to turn the camera away from straight down. Placed atop the hill, hidden partially from view by the peaks surrounding the plateau was a sprawling complex. Buildings sat at each end of the mountain, all surrounded by fence and high towers. Among the dozens of buildings sat what appeared to be an even larger amount of guns, all, now more easily visible as we approached, with several figures stationed around them.

The most impressive feature of the base, however, was a cluster of large circular doors embedded into the ground. Each looked to be at least as wide around as the Valkyrie was long, and several large guns were sitting guarding the silos. I gulped, momentarily forgetting about the situation as we approached. I was snapped out of my stupor when an explosion suddenly rang out above us, a cloud of shrapnel and dark sulfur pouring down from the sky. The Valkyrie shuddered as the shockwave smashed into us, Night Strike pulling up on the controls to try and hide ourselves among the clouds. I grabbed onto the arms of the chair instinctively, watching though the console as the complex below us flashed by. A few large flashes of light could be seen from below, and seconds later more explosions blasted up around us. “Shitshitshitshitshitshit, they've got flak guns!” Night Strike cried, yanking on the controls and sending us spinning to the side. “Hurry up and get a picture or something before they blow us outta the sky!”

I took hold of the camera controls, pointing it towards the complex as we banked and turned to avoid the anti-air fire. I tapped the button several times, hoping that at least one of the pictures would be usable as we were bombarded by the flak shells. “Okay, I got some, just go go go go!” Suddenly lights appeared from below, cutting through the darkness to fixate on us. Oh, this can’t be good. The familiar sound of fire spewing into the sky could just barely be heard above the explosions and engine roar. Through the camera I spotted a horde of dragons taking to the sky, several spewing jets of flames about as they followed the lights towards us. “Holy Celestia fuck me silly, just drop a megaspell and get out of here!” I shrieked, attempting to search the console for the button to ready the weapon. As I slammed my hoof down onto the console, another explosion caused the Valkyrie to shudder, and I could see out of the window that part of the wing was now skewered by a large chunk of metal, sparks leaping between it and the rest of the wing.

“It’s ready, drop it drop it droooop it!” I cried out in panic. Wrestling with the controls to avoid a few of the dragons’ fire, Night Strike pressed one of the buttons, the sound of the bomb bay doors opening below us as something clicked. Peeling away, Night Strike pushed a lever up as far as it would go, the Valkyrie’s engines straining as they were pushed to their limits. We were picking up speed, dashing away from the base as the dragons began to fall behind, unable to match our speed. Faster and faster we flew, myself gripping the chair for dear life when a thunderous explosion suddenly echoed all around, the plane screeching through the sky.

I peered back out of the window, noticing the that had been damaged was beginning to glow, the repair talismans working quickly to fix up the electronics. As I looked behind us, though, I wasn’t able to spot any signs of damage or an explosion, only a mass of metallic figures circling the base. “Night Strike… are you sure you dropped the megaspell?” I asked. Now that we were no longer in immediate danger, she looked down at the console in front of her, panting slightly from the excitement. Her muzzle scrunched as she stared at the buttons, glancing back to me for a second before breaking eye contact. “Night Strike… please tell me you didn’t release the controls for the megaspell we’d taken out for Shady Shores… did you?” She simply gave an awkward, non-committal whine as she tilted her hoof back and forth. I dropped my head into my hooves, shaking it. Of course she did.

“Hey, it’s not my fault! I only have a single button up here, you were the one who routed the power to that bomb rack! I thought you knew which ones were empty!” She took a breath, shaking her head as she glanced out the back of the cockpit. “I... think that explosion was us just shattering the sound barrier... Yeah, we’re going pretty freakin' fast right now.” she said, looking down at the dials and guages in front of her. With some swiftness, she pulled the trottle back, the deceleration taking us both as everything stopped being so much of a blur. I just shook my head again, fighting the urge to unbuckle and smack her upside the head. “Well, we can’t go back now, they’ll have us shot out of the sky in a second. At least we got some pictures, right? That’ll help us form a plan of attack at least.” She gave a small grin, trying her best to look cheerful. Her smile faltered as I looked up from my hooves, my gaze piercing enough to have struck a bloatsprite dead on the spot.

Night Strike sighed, looking forward again as she began to pilot us back towards the lighthouse. “Ok, so I might have just royally screwed any sort of chance we just had to take out that place in one swoop, but we can’t start crying about it now. We’ll head back to the others and see if they can help us think of a plan. I’ll let you put all the blame on me, is that enough?” She said, smirking back to me a little. I rolled my eyes, not wanting to admit that the chance to have her chewed out rather than me would certainly help matters.

Looking down at some of the captured photographs, I gave a worried groan. “Let’s just hope that they don’t try and launch some all-out attack on Vanhoover now that we’ve basically just set every alarm they had on red alert.” Night Strike nodded, mirroring my expression as we flew through the sky.


It wasn’t very long before the tall figure of the lighthouse peeked up over the horizon, Night Strike beginning to slow the Valkyrie down to prepare for landing. As we approached the cliffs, I was just able to make out the three figures of Aerith, Crash Dive, and Scouring standing outside of the lighthouse’s shack. The wheels whirred as they were lowered from the bottom half of the plane, Night Strike continuing to pull back on the controls to keep the Valkyrie from straying off into the ocean. With several bumps and six new wheel marks dug into the earth and snow behind us, we came to a stop just beyond the land bridge. Standing up, I moved for the cockpit hatch, swinging it open and allowing Night Strike and I to head out.

Hardly a second after we had stepped down from the metal stairway onto the damp soil were we confronted by the other three, Crash Dive fuming while the others looked more relieved. “What the FUCK made you two decide that flying off without any sort of warning or notice, not mentioning where you were going, or what to do if something went wrong, was a good idea!? I want to know your entire thought process from beginning to end before I tie you to the edge of these cliffs and waterboard you!” She yelled, spit flying from her mouth.

Night Strike stepped forward, biting her lip as Crash Dive’s glare shifted towards her. “Uhm… well… sooooo… we were looking at the photos of the bombing site, and we saw that the dragons had, uh… m-megaspells… and so I decided to fly off and try and find the place… maybe bomb it pre-emptively and such… then, eheh, funny sort of thing, we were going to drop a bomb, but Static got the wiring wrong and-“ She was cut short by Crash Dive, who was now leaning in so close that her and Night Strike’s muzzles were millimeters apart.

“So you’re telling me you saw that the enemy had megaspells, and rather than act like a rational pony, you decided to go gallivanting off on an impromptu bombing run in hopes of getting off on another massive megaspell detonation? You put your fucking libido ahead of your sense of self-preservation?!” Night Strike’s jaw dropped, her eyes widening as she stepped backwards. I tried to step between the two, Crash Dive turning to face me. “And what the fuck made you think it was fine to just go along with that? You didn’t try and stop her? You can’t tell me that thing isn’t built with some kind of launch abort system, you had every available moment to stop this, but instead you think that this couldn’t go wrong? That you’d be fine? You want me to remind you how I found you two? Crashed so hard into the ground, it’s honestly amazing your skulls weren’t shattered from the impact. Must be because of how bloody thick they are!” Crash Dive glared daggers between the both of us, who were struck dumb. She let off a huff, seeming to think her point was made. “Anytime you two want to come down off from that high of heroism of yours and remember that you’re not immortal, I’ll be here.” She turned away, walking towards the lighthouse.

Night Strike and I stood frozen in place, neither of us entirely sure how to react. Eventually Scouring spoke up, turning his head to watch Crash Dive leave. “I… uh… sorry about that. Had a feelin' she was upset, but if I’d known she was going to… well… look, should prob'ly just head back inside fer now.” He began to slowly make his way towards the lighthouse, Aerith, Night Strike and I following once we’d broken out of our stupor. The door squeaked on its hinges as we stepped inside, all of us entering just in time to hear the door of Crash Dive’s room slam shut. Aerith and Scouring slid into the booth in the kitchen while I sat opposite them along with Night Strike. All of us sat in silence for a few more minutes, Night Strike giving an awkward cough.

“Well, uh, um, anyways, we did manage to get a bit of a look at that place and snapped a few photos. We know it has to be where that Cerberus guy is hanging out, because some robo-dragons tried to attack us. Any, uh… ideas on some sort of assault plan?” She asked. Aerith gave a blank stare, while Scouring shrugged a little, looking down at the table.

“Well, we don’ really know anything about the place, even with whatever photos you might have gotten. Air-to-surface recon’s only goin' to get you so far. At least, I’m assuming that the place was at least as defended as Seahoof Armory.” Yeah, comparing the two is like comparing a bazooka to a bb-gun. We’re screwed. Scouring looked over his shoulder towards the hallway, as if expecting to see Crash Dive leaning around the corner, staring at us. He lowered his voice and locked eyes with me, only occasionally shooting glanced back towards the stairs. “You think you might be able to… you know… sneak in? Get more intel on the place first? I don’ think Crash Dive would be very keen on the idea, but considering how ye did back at the old slaver pen, and how they’re goin' to be expecting a full on assault any time soon now, it might be our only option, lad.”

I gave a small grimace of fear, clenching my teeth a little as I avoided eye contact. “Uh… well… I’m not really keen on… dying, so…” My voice trailed off as I tapped my hooves together. Night Strike pushed her hoof into my shoulder, giving a small grunt of annoyance.

“Oh, come on, Static. You keep whining about how we never do things your way, now you get the best opportunity to go sneaking around in some high tech military base, the whole day depending on you, you being the sole and glamorous hero? Don’t you lie, you’d be in and out of there in a flash. Besides, with that new suit of yours fixed up, nopony will ever know you’re there. As long as you don’t bump those big cute flanks into them.” She laughed, a faint twinge of worry in her eyes. I only gulped, the color draining from my face.

Sent in alone on a suicide stealth mission? Oh, this is going to be just grand.

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