Perspective: Chloroform

Winter gave me permission to not go into heavy detail about what, exactly, I was doing while he was off dealing with Hoof Burns. So, sorry to those of you who are into that sort of thing, but I'm gonna just skip right to when I saw him come out of the hallway.

Through the masses of love-hungry parasites, it wasn't hard to see bright royal blue stepping out and trying to lock eyes with me. He rubbed the back of his neck before flicking his tail twice; the signal for a successful takedown. Since I was in between patrons, I stood back up, to the confusion and disappointment of many.

"Sorry boys, gotta close early today," I told them. A quick chorus of translation from the few who spoke Equestrian later, and they were all groaning and sighing and heading off to do whatever they were doing ten minutes prior. A few stuck around desperately, but a couple kisses on the cheeks and some whispered sweet nothings (which they may or may not have understood) sent them happily on their ways as well.

Winter walked up to me, an eyebrow raised. "I could've sworn you were our medic, not our seductress."

"I'm multi-talented." I brushed myself off. "I couldn't even tell you were back there, let alone killing someone. Guess you got lucky."

He snorted and nudged my side. "Or maybe I'm just good at my job."

"Touché." I glanced at the gate keeping us in. Ten feet high, barbed wire up top. Only reason no changelings or pegasi tried to fly out was because that'd be way too obvious. But we had a stealthier route.

We casually walked in the general direction of the gate, making sure not to head straight for the door. He glanced at my horn. "That ring's not bothering you too much, is it?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you seriously asking if the inability to use my magic is a problem?"

"Just want to make sure it's not urgent that we get it off. I don't think we'll have the tools for that until we're back at base." We walked close to the door, and he gave me a push.

Getting the idea, I exaggeratedly fell to the side, falling to the ground right by the fence near the gate. It was mostly fake, but I definitely got some scrapes. "Hey, watch it!" Good, now we had an excuse to be so close to the way out.

He rolled his eyes, stepping up beside me and standing conveniently in front of the lock on the gate. "Calm down, you're fine. Barely any bugs crawling on you now."

"Had enough of those earlier." I sighed, standing back up and leaning against the fence. "At least they were just hungry and desperate, not trying to be dominant. They took whatever they got."

"Yeah, you don't strike me as the submissive type." He lit his horn up and carefully took out the key, sliding it into the lock. "Don't act like you never enjoyed it, though."

I rolled my eyes. "It definitely could've been worse, I'll give you that. But that's not saying much."

Click! The lock popped open, and he slowly worked it off the door. "At least you've gained a few admirers."

"Doubt I'd want to keep them." I swept my gaze around the yard. For at least a brief moment, no eyes whatsoever were on us, and I lowered my voice to a whisper. "Go, quickly."

He opened the gate just enough for me to swiftly squeeze through, and he followed immediately behind, using his magic to click the lock back on after, leaving the key inside. "Not gonna need that anymore."

We slowly started to stroll off, and a glance back revealed no followers. "How far until we break into a run?" I asked. We weren't even ten feet from the prison, and we weren't going much further at this walking speed.

"Only if we hear them yelling. Other than that, we stick to a casual pace," he replied at a low volume as he glanced around. The area we were in was... to be honest, basically a desert. Granted, we were pretty far down south. "Alright, I'm fairly certain I remember the path... plus, Boots and Skirmish told me about a few landmarks, so we can follow them to the meetup point."

I looked around. "What kind of landmarks?"

"We'll know them when we see them." Oh, how I hated vague answers... "Hopefully by the time we get there, they'll have the teleporter ready to bring us back to base."

Right... the teleporter. Whenever our missions took us far away, we had it charged up for use. Pretty self-explanatory; a magical portal that would warp us to a preset location, though it was far from convenient thanks to the amount of power it took - both electrically and magically. If we so much as had the microwave running when we turned it on, lights flickered all through the building.

It also made me want to vomit every time we went through it. But that's really not big enough of a problem to consider hoofing it back across half a country.

"Think they'll come after us?" I asked after another moment or two of silence.

"They'll try, definitely. Once they find his body, they'll round up the prisoners, realize we're missing, and draw the obvious conclusion. But by that point, we'll be so far ahead that even if they knew the direction we went in, they wouldn't catch us." He smirked, but it fell when he saw my uncertain expression. "Oh, come on. This isn't even close to the first prison breakout I've done."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, it's my first one. I can't help having some concerns. I don't even know for sure if this is legal."

"If any other pony was doing it, it probably wouldn't be." He shrugged. "But this is an official Equinox mission. We followed a plan that was unanimously approved by the higher-ups, we have licenses to kill, and the changelings are welcome to try and get us back into that prison for escaping. If they think they can find us without getting themselves arrested for trespassing."

I shrugged, trying to keep a neutral look, but inside I felt a bit relieved that we weren't going to be locked up as soon as we reported back to base. Even if everything he just said was stuff I knew already, getting it confirmed was a good way to settle my nerves. "I'll take your word for it."

"You'll find yourself doing that a lot in this line of work. There's a reason-"

He suddenly stopped talking, freezing mid-step. I stopped walking and looked at him, seeing his ears perking up. I glanced around, but didn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary. "What is it?"

"Someone followed us from the prison," he replied in a hushed whisper. "They're staying out of sight. Keep your eyes peeled."

I quickly shut up, but my mind was racing. Who was following us? If it was a guard, why weren't they coming out and trying to arrest us again? And if it was a prisoner, why were they interested in following us? You'd think they'd be more focused on running far away instead of keeping pace with a pair who were just casually walking.

He suddenly grabbed my shoulder. "Whatever happens, stay out of it, alright? Fight in self-defense if you need to, but otherwise, stay uninvolved. You have less combat experience."

I raised an eyebrow. "What are you expecting to-"

"Pony!"

I whirled around, as did Winter. As he guessed, a changeling was approaching us. I tried, but I couldn't recognize him (if they even were a "him") from back in the prison. Must have been someone who stood back and passively absorbed the love from my sessions rather than lining up to accept my services more directly. However, he seemed to recognize Winter, who seemed to recognize... the big bruise on the left side of his face.

My eyebrow had just been raised, and then I needed to raise it again. Changeling shows up with a bruise on his face, mad at Winter? Connecting the dots wasn't hard. At least my companion had the decency to offer me a sheepish grin, before turning back to the changeling with a stone cold expression.

"Look, buddy... guy... you know what, I'll just call you Bruise. It makes sense." Winter took a couple steps toward the changeling. Bruise, I guess he was now called, didn't react much besides narrowing his eyes further. I got the impression he didn't understand a word Winter was saying. "We're in a hurry right now, so if I can take a rain check on you wanting to rip my foreleg off and beat me to death with it, that'd reeeeally help us out."

Bruise, whether understanding him or not, gave a snort and a slew of unintelligible changeling dialect. If that didn't translate to "I don't plan on waiting", the fact that he ran forward and socked Winter in the side of the face sure did.

A second punch was stopped when Winter quickly lifted his hoof, grabbing the changeling's, throwing him to the side before he turned to me. "Like I said, Chloe... stay out of this, alright? Keep an eye out and yell at me if someone's coming. My friend here has some anger issues he needs to sort out, and I'd like to assist with that."

I slowly nodded. "Uh... sure. Go ahead." Did we seriously have time for this? I mean, I had been told numerous times to never question our team leader, but sometimes he made it really hard not to...

An attempted tackle from behind by Bruise was quickly countered, as Winter's ears flicked at the sound of his incoming hoofsteps and suddenly crouched down low. The changeling went comically flying over him; I needed to dart out of the way myself to avoid getting hit. With his foe briefly vulnerable on the ground, Winter didn't pass up any opportunities, instead jumping on him and using his hoof to slam the changeling's already-bruised face into the ground.

I backed up several feet to stay as far out of the impromptu battlefield as I could. Winter wasn't able to hold Bruise down for very long before he got shoved off, though he managed to back away before the changeling could throw a punch. Jumping up onto all fours, Bruise tried to sidestep around Winter, who turned to meet him and duck out of the way of the next couple of thrown hooves.

Bruise yelled something I don't think either of us understood, and tried to tackle Winter. This time, he succeeded, but rather than shove him to the ground, he pushed him right up against a rock. One hoof kept Winter pinned by the neck, the other slammed into the side of his face. His first punch successful, he went for a second, but Winter turned his head enough to make him miss and slam into the rock instead. Bruise barely winced, but it was enough to loosen his grip, and Winter pushed him away with his back legs.

The two ran right at each other and got into a hoof-to-hoof scuffle, grabbing at one another and getting in whatever small hits they could. A sudden jab to the muzzle from Winter sent Bruise reeling for just a second, which was more than enough time for Winter to shove him to the ground, ending up on top of him for the second time that fight. This time, he focused on keeping the changeling down, not even bothering to get any hits in.

"Chloe!"

I jumped as I turned around. Getting snuck up on, I could handle, but getting snuck up on by someone who knew my name wasn't something I was experienced with. Luckily, the face I saw was that of a burgundy unicorn stallion with a short dark orange mane and tail, cutie mark of a broken dagger, crouched down low. I sighed in relief. "Skirmish!"

He gestured for me to follow him. "Come on! The prison guards are spreading out; they'll find you any minute now!"

I looked back at Winter, who was still pinning Bruise down to the ground. "What about them?"

Skirmish followed my gaze, saw the situation, and gave two quick sharp whistles. "Winter! We gotta go!"

Our leader glanced at us, then down at Bruise. Shrugging, he slammed his hoof against the right side of his face, leaving promises of a matching blemish in the hours to come. The changeling fell limp, and Winter trotted almost casually over to us. "Alright, ready."

I gaped at him. "...you could have just knocked him out this whole time?!"

As Skirmish turned to lead the way, Winter just gave me a shrug before following. "This was more fun!"

I felt my eye twitch.