Sora alighted on the platform, sending snow everywhere with a flap of her wings. She carefully scanned it for any signs of the teleporting visitor, but found nothing more than a half-scattered trail of hoofprints leading only a few feet to the elevator. Strangely, this set of tracks was not only deeper in the gathered snow, easily an entire two inches in, but more clustered together as well. Whoever made them either had problems, or was a heavyset machine. Which begged the question: if it were the latter, then why had it teleported? Was it being piloted, perhaps?

Sora sucked in another cold lungful of air and turned to the elevator, trotting deftly to it. Only the crunching of snow beneath her hooves, and the soft clang of the platform beneath, registered in her ears. The ice continued to spread and cover the base, following after her with its reaching tendrils, bringing with it that unearthly chill she had felt earlier. She reached the elevator and pried its doors open with her hooves, revealing another empty shaft going down. She spread her wings, only to pause and look down to find scorch marks adorning the elevator.

Distantly, she heard ponies shouting, and turned to where the smoke cloud was rising. Lightning danced, illuminating several airborne forms heading back to the base. Sora turned back and jumped down the chute without a second thought; wings tucked tight behind her, spread in such a way to avoid cutting the walls of the shaft as she descended down several doors. Only as one set of doors opened of their own accord a good ten stories down did she flap her wings and ascend back to it, brow furrowed as a familiar hallway stretched out before her. Sora grumbled and alighted in the ever-familiar medical ward, though now the ice crept here from the elevator shaft, and it looked just as empty as the frozen city streets she had trotted through not hours ago… or was it moments?

Sora shivered, hearing a faint but constant sound. It was monotonous, never changing in pitch unlike the siren, and the more she strained to hear it to determine where it was coming from, the longer it pervaded the hall. She turned to a patient's room on the left, close to where she had landed, and pressed an ear to the door to listen.

The sound grew louder as she did. Wrenching the door open with her front hooves as soon as she confirmed it came from behind it, a sight that had her tensing greeted her. On the bed of this room was a patient, one who had the covers pulled over their head. Next to the bed stood a machine that gave a constant, ear-piercing beeeeeeeee as it displayed a flatline on a flickering monitor. This room was otherwise empty; nothing but tile on floor and ceiling, and smooth metal on the walls.

Sora trotted to the machine with a wince. The power went out throughout the city; how the hell was this thing still on? She reached it in mere seconds and pawed around it for a bit, trying to figure out how to turn the blasted thing off. The patient was already dead, insofar as she knew, so there was no reason for the machine to be hooked to them any longer. She paused in her search, however, upon hearing a screech coming from the hall, followed by the door she had forced open slamming shut behind her.

Haltingly, Sora turned to the door and shuffled to it, deliberately muffling her steps with the aid of the machine's incessant droning in case any unexpected visitors dropped by. When she reached the door, she pressed an ear against it and waited. It wasn't long before another set of hooves echoed into the hall, accompanied by a whirring of engines, followed by two more sets near-identical to it.

Silence held outside for a full minute before Sora heard somepony speaking—somepony she quickly came to recognize from the contemptuous tone alone. "Something came from here," a feminine voice muttered. Damn, they arrived faster than she thought.

"Yeah, we have ears, Major Trinity," a masculine voice snarked. A sharp crack rang in the air, and the owner of the voice yelped.

"Don't you fucking mouth off with me the way ex-Private Sora did, Takahara!" Trinity snarled, her volume rising. "We don't need anymore smartasses in our ranks!"

"Major, Colonel, calm yourselves," a third masculine voice spoke in an eerily calm, yet cold tone of voice. "We have to ensure the emergency generators keep running; I have a feeling we're going to need all the backup power we can get." Quietly, he added a few choice words that Sora had to strain to hear, "And then secure our… rebellious weapon afterwards."

"How're we gonna secure the bitch, Professor, if she's gone walkabout?" Trinity snarled, stomping the floor with her hooves. "And that's not even taking into account she's coddling the Herald, for crying out loud!"

"That's not even taking into account the fact she had inside help, too," the Professor snarked in reply, snorting. "But Sora's not the sharpest tool of the shed… she's bound to do something that'll end in her getting caught."

Trinity guffawed. "Oh, like that time she called me insane, then did something that just proved she was the crazy one?" she asked. Sora could hear the smile in her voice.

"Something to that effect," the Professor replied smoothly. "But weapons aren't tailored to be smarter than, let alone able to outshine their masters, after all—you and I both know that."

"So the bitch is dumber than we gave 'er credit for?" Takahara piped up. The sound of three sets of hooves filled the air as the trio marched down the medical ward's hall.

"Yes. As they say, 'stupid is as stupid does.' I almost wonder how Yukito puts up with her—and, admittedly, how much he'd been… dancing with her every time they retired together," the Professor replied bluntly. Sora withered a little under that, but forced herself to keep still as she heard the sound of more doors being wrenched open.

"Oh, please, I'll bet ten bits and my turbines he'd been nuttin' her on a bi-weekly basis, Professor," Takahara snarked. He paused and grunted audibly. "... now that I think about it, maybe that was why that au naturale piece o' horseshit got mad at me," he added in a somewhat surprised tone.

"I'd be mad too, if I had a wife and you touched her flank," the Professor snarked again. "Of course… even I wouldn't be stupid enough to bed a weapon."

"Eh, true enough; wouldn't be stupid enough to let a weapon get hitched, either," Takahara agreed; Sora could almost hear him nodding at this point. Engines whirred to life, the beating of hooves stopped, and gradually what little noise outside of the incessantly-beeping machine faded.

"I may be trotting into a trap… fantastic…" Sora hissed, pulling back from the door and waiting for a full minute before deciding to open it. With caution, she pushed the door open again and poked her head out into the hall, sighing in relief upon finding it empty. The ice was spreading faster, encasing doors to keep them shut. She stepped out of the room, and the door shut on her to trap the dead patient in their bed.

She turned to the still-open elevator door and rattled her wings a little. "Weirder than that one pony spouting about how two others got fucked up, and more… tense than my wedding night…" she muttered in dismay, steeling herself again before trotting to it and making another leap. She descended down several more stories, keeping track with the aid of closed doors marking the individual floors. Her wings snapped out again and flapped only when the door on the very bottom opened, and flew up to the door above it to shed excess momentum.

She descended down and alighted after, wings snapping shut at her sides. A hallway stretched out before her, splitting into a T-intersection after a few feet; both ends were marked with signs. The left had 'training facility,' and the right boasted suspect smudge marks streaked across its surface—inky black, hurriedly-scribbled marks seemingly scrawled with crayon. Sora trotted up to the right sign to investigate, lifting a hoof to prod at this substance. It was gooey in texture, somewhat runny, yet oily—it stuck to her hoof, and she wiped it against the wall.

She winced when a chill greeted her as she rubbed it off, running up her leg and through her augments right to the shoulder. She pulled back, lips pressing into a tight line as she turned to the right hall to find more of that mysterious gunk smeared in one straight line on the floor. Oddly, it came with a set of hoofprints that only appeared on the left side of this stain, tightly-clustered and planted into the floor with enough force to repeatedly crack and smudge it. Stranger still, next to a door at the end of this hall was a pony in soldier's garb, laying against the wall with a slumped form riddled in frost and yet more black gunk. An object with a large muzzle easily the size of Sora's front legs, a grip only half that length, and a trigger big enough for a pair of hooves to easily grab it had been kicked away. It was resting only a foot away from the downed pony.

Sora trotted to it and picked it up with her front hooves. Despite its size, it was surprisingly light, and she found that this object had a hinge near its trigger. Activating it caused the object to fold in on itself, revealing a brightly-glowing bluish-white sphere in its grip, further bolstered by similarly-colored crystals embedded within. A delicate carving that read 'Buster' had been etched smoothly into the handle's interior, but Sora had to strain her eyes just to see it. "Fully charged, standard-grade buster-model rifle with a plasma power core… alright, I'll take it," she muttered, folding the rifle back into its original configuration. She shifted upright to keep her hooves on her prize and walked over to the downed pony.

She winced as she knelt down, only to find a throat that had been ripped open. She stood back up, frowning as she looked at the rest of the soldier. Oddly, despite the injury, no blood had managed to smear the coat or the uniform, much less the actual wound itself. Sora forced herself to press on; the less she dallied, the quicker she could find this 'fragment of truth' that mysterious message spoke of, and the quicker she could haul herself, Yukito, and Starbreaker out after.

She walked through the doors which opened to let her into another hall sporting a smudge trail, keeping her wings angled, the rifle close to her barrel, and her ears twitching for the slightest sound that would indicate danger. "Seems somepony infiltrated just before I did…" she muttered, walking opposite of the hooves made with the trail. Her tail swished as she found another intersection stretching out before her. Cocking the rifle, she slowed her pace to move as quietly as possible, though that didn't exactly stop the thudding her hooves made due to her posture.

She was just about to round the left corner where the smudge and hoofprints ended when she stopped, ears perked and straining the moment she caught a faint shuffling sound. "Don't come any closer!" a distant, masculine voice shouted, somewhat muffled but frantic in tone.

"You… don't… command me…" an echoing voice, even more muffled than the shouting pony, retorted in a tone as icy as it was firm. This was followed by a pained scream that had Sora darting down the left hall at a full sprint, eyes glancing wildly in an attempt to find the source, only to find several closed doors on either side of her. She heard metal groaning, objects jostling, a rifle being cocked, and it all culminated in a door on the far end of the hall being wrenched open by a soldier sporting a smoking stump where his horn used to be.

The soldier, wide-eyed and in panic, stumbled out into the hall before a burst of concentrated light flew from the door and shot clean through his head, forming a black scorch mark on the opposite door without smearing his blood all over the place immediately after. He only had enough consciousness left to stand and croak before keeling over lifelessly, turning in such a way Sora got to see the hole punched into his skull as he landed.

Sora stared at the ghastly sight, holding her rifle tightly as she turned to the room the soldier had fled from. Another rifle was flung from within, and it landed upon the soldier with a metallic clunk. A cold gust of air rushed out of that room after, and the door slammed shut before ice formed to keep it sealed. The zephyr warmed briefly as it passed Sora, but oddly ice still spread with its passing. She decided to turn to the other hall and sprinted to, then down it, feeling the air freezing behind her as the ice crept upon her hocks.

A door at the end of that hall opened up, revealing an elevator stuffed to overflowing with more armed unicorn soldiers. Sora skid to a halt just four doors away from them as they stepped out, and for that one moment, time froze as the group sized her up. When they snapped out of their stupor, they collectively trained the barrels of their rifles on her. Sora lifted her rifle, training her barrel on the pony closest to her.

One stallion sneered. "So the rebel won't take it lyin' on her back?" he asked.

Sora flared her nostrils and snorted. "I take that shit from nopony," she hissed, putting pressure on the trigger, but not enough to fire. "So if you value your lives, I'd suggest dropping the guns."

The stallion who sneered howled in laughter. "You ain't even got your bell! You couldn't take multiple shots now!" he jeered.

Sora nodded in acknowledgement of that fact. "I don't need a bell to kick your asses from now into next year," she retorted, slamming the trigger and firing off a bolt of concentrated bluish-white light. The blast knocked the gun clean out of the leader's hooves, and he yowled before another bolt was sent clean onto his horn. The rest of the soldiers made to fire, but Sora calmly shot the guns out of their hooves with honed ease and lightning quickness, and then their horns before they even had the chance to cast one spell. After that, she simply barreled past them, using her deadly wings to forcibly part the mob out of her way and to the sides of the elevator's doors.

As soon as she was in, she slammed her elbow into the button panel and turned to face her disarmed, discombobulated ex-coworkers. "I'd recommend vacating the premises," she said, using a primary to gesture down the hall when one of the soldiers looked at her. The soldier in question looked, and paled as a writhing, corporeal shadow—suspiciously equine in shape, yet sporting odd protrusions coming out its head and back and somehow ambling upright—marched to the whole sorry lot with the spreading ice on its hocks. Just as the figure got within five feet of everypony, the elevator doors closed, and Sora moved to press her back against the furthest wall.

It didn't take long for the disarmed soldiers to start screaming, and Sora forced herself to tune out that series of gods-awful noises as the elevator shook and started to descend. She looked at the panel and tensed; a button with '44F' under it was aglow, and she groaned. She steeled herself, cocking her gun once more, and waited for the elevator to stop and let her loose. "Not even close to that door… now I understand why Yukito overtaxed himself…" she muttered.

Ice crawled along the elevator's little box, seeping its way into the ceiling. Sora wilted a little; she started to wonder how Yukito and Starbreaker were holding up in the off-duty building now that she up and left them. Briefly, she saw white, and that cold feminine voice echoed in her head again, "They're fine. I checked on them before trotting after you, worrywart."

Sora shook her head, lifting one hoof from the rifle to hit herself on the forehead. Some part of her still believed she was hallucinating, and her gut clenched as the elevator finally stopped and opened to reveal another hall so frost-stricken icicles were growing on the ceiling. She stepped out, tail hiking a little as her raised hoof returned to the rifle, lifting a wing to brush her primaries against an icicle. The icicle held firm, and a chill raced through the blades to steal a bit of the warmth from Sora's wing.

She retracted her wing and stalked down the hall, ears perked again. A cross-intersection stretched out before her, filled to teeming with soldiers who exchanged uneasy glances at Sora's approach. Most had their guns in holsters, and a few pegasi kept their wings tucked tight at their sides. None of them dared approach her until she stopped in the middle of the intersection, augmented eyes scanning for that labeled door. Alas, a set of stairs marked the leftmost hall, and elevators the right and the one dead ahead met her instead.

"You don't have to do this," a mare to her right pleaded, stepping towards Sora with a shaky hoof reaching for her gun. "It doesn't have to be this way…"

Sora turned to the mare, lowering her rifle a little as she weighed the soldier's words. "You're right, it doesn't, and I wish it didn't turn out like this." She heard another soldier cocking their gun, and lifted her rifle again. "I'd appreciate it if you dropped your weapons; the less bloodshed, the better it will be for everypony involved." The soldiers around her shuffled uneasily, exchanging concerned looks as Sora flared her wings and raised her primaries up high before charging them with her innate magic. With one hard flap that connected with the floor and left smouldering scrapes in her wake, the soldiers on either side scattered to get out of the range of her crackling blades. She twisted left, blades poised at either side, their mere presence enough to further scatter the opposition, allowing her clear entry to the flight of stairs.

She lept and flapped to soar down the flight, veering and flapping sharply enough to leave burning dents in her path as she descended several more floors with haste. Down and down she went, turning so sharply she'd embedded her blades deep in the walls before pulling them out and continuing on her way. Each turn filled the flight with the shrieking of burning metal, the whistling of her blades, and another ringing in her ears. She had to angle herself to avoid the railings of the steps, and half-folded her wings to maximize distance.

She heard the dumbfounded soldiers give chase before long, though by the time they'd even started, she was already a half-dozen flights ahead of them and still going. Her eyes scanned the halls she passed on her way down with desperation; some were already frozen, and others left dubiously pristine. She scoured for another cross-intersection hall, but it took her another half-dozen floors before she'd found the end of the flight—and a cross-intersection hall not far from the flight's last step. She steered to alight and landed in the hall just in time to see that upright shadow with the bizarre protrusions appear in a flash of tealish light dead-center, and it veered right almost immediately after, smoke trailing behind its retreating form.

Sora once again stood on her hinds, keeping her wings half-spread as she righted her posture and sprinted to the intersection, seeing more ice creeping behind the specter with its passing. She skid once she reached the junction of the halls, glancing about hastily as she heard the soldiers she'd ditched shouting and stomping—doubtless closing in on her. The hall the upright figure wheeled down ended in a flight of stairs blocked off by a sheet of oddly reflective ice so thick it may as well have been a cube. The elevator to her right was opened, yet pouring out black smoke without a box in sight. That left the hall in front of her, which was riddled with black gunk and ended in a flight of smoking stairs, the smog itself doing its best to flood the rest of the junction.

Sora sprinted down the blackened hall, feeling her hocks turn cold and numb with each step. Her stomach cramped at the chill, but stopped when she reached the flight of stairs. Lifting a hoof to her snout as the smog threatened to suffocate her, she carefully scanned both directions of the stairs. The lower flight caught fire, the flames climbing upon and licking all they touched, while the upper flight was growing icicles that were melting.

She weighed the options, before darting towards the flames. Her wings propelled her onwards, hacking and slashing at the walls and steps and beating furiously to repel the fire. The warmth and smog tried their best to stall her, and though her eyes watered and her feathers began singing at their edges, she did not relent even as the flames built up all around her with each and every set of stairs she descended. She wondered just what had went down for this flight of stairs to catch flame, but shoved the musing to the back of her mind as she delved deeper. The heat around her increased tenfold, almost a smothering embrace that threatened to rend her flesh from her bones and augments.

Her wings kept flapping to disperse the building flames, eyes scanning the roiling smog and dancing tongues for anything resembling a hall. Her lungs filled with smoke and ash and burning metal, and she was coughing in seconds. Still, her stubborn side refused to let her turn back, and she continued to descend—with her inner skeptic calling her a jackass and the fires continuing to lick at her, already shriveling parts of her mane and tail. She darted down three burning flights and ran into the first open door she saw, finding herself skidding into a T-intersection as soon as she got clear of the smog.

She turned to her mane and tail, wilting as she saw their ends ablaze. With one hoof, she caught her mane and angled one set of blades before snipping all of the burning ends in one motion, keeping just enough to reach her elbows. Then she turned to her tail and cut off half its length, leaving behind a burning mess and her tail only dangling past her gaskins. That done, she looked at the hall's ends to find opened elevator shafts—left smoking, right open and yet pristine. She flew to the pristine one, not exactly keen on playing with more fire.

She poked her head in the shaft and glanced up, then down, in case a box was coming. But no box came; she jumped and flew down to a door at the bottom of the shaft, alighting in a cross-intersection hall. Landing on her hooves and cocking her gun, she stalked slowly, trimmed tail swishing as ice formed in the other halls. "If I don't find that fucking door soon, I'm going to just start ripping these damn…" Sora muttered, only to trail off as she stopped at the junction of the intersection and looked around.

Oh, to her right was a door that was marked with warning labels and slight dents. Sora approached it slowly, seeing if it would open by itself, but alas it failed to budge even after she got to it and tapped the barrel of her gun against it. "Oh well; the Admiral's gonna be shilling bits out the ass anyway," she stated in resignation, before checking her blades to see if they were still aglow. That glow had dimmed considerably, nothing more than weak crackles and a lukewarm heat now. "Oh fuck me…" Sora growled, turning to the door and feeling her wing augments writhing as she cancelled out the channeling of her mana. She tapped at the door with the gun again.

No luck still; it wouldn't budge. She heard Starbreaker's voice echo in her head, "Why knock to begin with? Why not just blast the door down?" Sora snickered, cocked the rifle and took aim, pushing the trigger about three-quarters of the way. She started smiling as energy began to build up at the end of its barrel with a crackling power.

"Eh, I have an unlimited charge. That should do nicely in the meantime," she stated with a blaise shrug of her shoulders as the rifle continued to charge. Mentally, Sora started a little countdown, going from thirty as the rifle shuddered in her grip. The gathering sphere grew and grew as she continued to charge it, crackling more fiercely and burning with a concentrated power that sent tremors to her augments through the rifle.

The power continued to build, expanding until the concentrated force was as large as Sora herself, overshadowing her frame with a bluish-white light. Sora closed her eyes and pushed the trigger the rest of the way; the resultant burst of energy caused the entire intersection to quake as the sphere turned into a large laser that proceeded to shred that metal, dented door. It pushed her back to the junction, almost toppling her with its own might, but with the help of her blades she caught the corners leading to the hall behind and held firm as the laser continued to erupt from the rifle.

A full minute passed before Sora no longer registered the force of the blast trying to push her back, and another thirty seconds after that before the light the blast generated died, but not for a lack of trying to blind her through closed eyelids. Her eyes cracked open and beheld the destruction she had wrought; the marked door had all but ceased to exist, a gaping scorch mark and remnants of melted steel the only testaments to its previous fortitude. Beyond that, Sora saw an elevator shaft going down—also blown to absolute hell, and sparking and sputtering wildly. "Oops," Sora muttered, a hint of a smile spreading on her muzzle as she folded her wings and sprinted to the elevator… or what was left of it. Glancing up, then down to confirm there was no box in her way, she frowned when she noticed nothing more than a flat, charcoal black ceiling above her head—either this shaft didn't go up past this point, or she'd welded the bottom of the box directly above her to said shaft.

Stranger still, this one was only a short drop down; just an entire three floors and nothing more. The door on the bottom hadn't been tampered with; it was as pristine as the halls Sora had ignored, untouched by any ice or scorch marks or shady specters. Hell, it was so clean she saw her reflection as she jumped and alighted, right down to her new manecut. Curiosity aroused, Sora approached and tapped at the door with a hoof, and it failed to budge. The elevator shaft shook and trembled with a terrible screech, and Sora shifted to hold the gun's handle with her teeth. Hooves shifting to plant themselves on the door, she strained as the shaft shook again, and fitfully the door opened with a groan of protest.

Sora rushed in, and shifted to put her gun back in her hooves when the door slammed shut behind her. Its echo, and the following crash that shook the surprisingly large, compost-site-sized room she now stood in, did not phase her—for instead, a distressing sight had her full attention. Rows upon rows of clear walls greeted her, formed into ceiling-high boxes barely big enough to hold basic utilities like food, water, beds, and toilets.

A door made of the same clear material was put onto each box, riddled with small holes to enable breathing, and a hoofprint recognition device. Each and every single box was inhabited by a pony. Mare, stallion, young, old, pegasus, earth pony, it made little difference; equines of all possible outcomes were kept here—easily by the dozens, from what Sora saw just then. Two ponies were dragging something towards the back of the room, seemingly unconcerned about the crash that shook the room, but Sora's eyes focused elsewhere.

The nearest ponies in the boxes turned to look at her, a pair of mares with eyes so vacant and sunken they almost seemed dead. One sported a distended stomach so large it was fit to pop; the other, nothing but skin and bones still clinging to life. Beyond the disturbingly skinny mare, a shaved stallion reared on his hinds and tapped at the walls of his prison, silently screaming with eyes equally as devoid of life. "Please let us out," he mouthed repeatedly, yet barely any sound left his prison. He lifted a hoof and gestured erratically down the row in front of Sora with it. "They'll kill us!"

Sora stood frozen in place, her eyes gravitating and zeroing in on to where the shaved stallion was gesturing. Her heart stopped at what she saw; two medics were magically dragging an unconscious Omega towards a great furnace at the end of the room, black as pitch and roaring with a bright fire that seared its grates. Omega himself had some sort of device on his head, circling his skull with three false horns protruding from it, and both his forelegs had been replaced with steel replicas. "It's a shame we couldn't make another," one of the medics dragging him groaned. "I'm starting to think the longevity projects aren't worth it anymore."

"He's an earth pony—the technology we used on Nath isn't compatible with his ilk," the second scoffed. "Perhaps we should tack another prototype onto the Herald's head when we can catch her."

Sora cocked her gun and sprinted towards the medics, who both whipped around at her approach. "Aaaah, if it isn't the hitched bitch herself," one of them cooed, before he found his muzzle meeting with the butt of the rifle. Sora then turned and shot the other medic in his horn, garnering a strangled yelp as he found himself in burning pain. She fired off another round on the first medic, before grabbing Omega by the head and wrenching the false horns off of it, taking with it bits of flesh and exposing bits of snapped wire that had been affixed in his skull. She turned and picked him up carefully, wrapping his forehooves around her barrel and tucking him between her wings.

As soon as she did, she felt him stirring. "Wha… who…" Omega muttered.

"Hang tight, I'm busting your ass out of here," Sora muttered as the medics made to stand. She hastily stabbed them in the necks with her wings, ending them in one fell motion, darting directly out of the fountains of blood they spewed whilst keeping her wings in their jugulars—she tried not to think about the red that started spreading everywhere from the downed medics. She removed her blades as cleanly as possible and sprinted to the massive furnace, then wheeled down another row of clear cages and trapped ponies pounding their walls, begging for release. Sora wanted to stop and help them, or at least put an end to their suffering, but right now she had bigger things to worry about—further compounded by the ice growing from the elevator shaft, spreading everywhere it could take hold. She searched for an elevator that functioned, spreading her wings and taking off with one hoof on her gun and the other on Omega, but only found two stairwells next to the furnace after a single go-around between the rows.

The base quaked ominously as she flew down the stairwell on the right, finding herself in a pitch-black room with a single light swinging above a table some distance away. Sora flew to the table, finding metal cuffs and straps and old bloodstains littering the scene. A retort of static filled the air, and a familiar voice she didn't want to hear dogged her every wingbeat as she started scanning the darkness for a way out. "Oh, there's the missus… in an area she's not authorized to be in, with the compost pony between her little wings. Major Trinity, Colonel Takahara, head to Sector 4K-3B at once, if you're not there already… and subdue the rogue," the Admiral ordered in a blunt voice.

Twin flashes of light, one silver and the other orange, flashed from the stairwells. Shortly after, hoofsteps flooded the pitch-black room. Sora cocked her rifle, hearing faintly the crackle of growing frost encroaching on her location in addition to the beating of hooves. A whirring of turbines joined the fray, and each sound echoed from everywhere at once. The base shook again, as an orange pair of lights started gleaming in the darkness, followed by an orange aura that winked out a second later. "All alone out here, you crazy cunt," Trinity spoke, keeping herself shrouded in the sable, voice echoing in tandem with her hoofsteps. "You just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper…"

"Deeper than you get plowed, that's for sure," Takahara snarked, red eyes alighting for a brief second.

Sora snorted at the remarks, continuing to hover in place. The room turned colder and colder, and the crackling of frost grew louder all the while. She felt contemptuous gazes land on her with scorn and derision, and the darkness itself threatening to swallow her up if she wasn't careful. "My sex life is none of your concern," she hissed.

"Oh, but it is! That au naturale piece o' horseshit saved your ass twice—first time after somepony blew up on you, and second after you stopped the Herald! When'd you get hitched with him and start diddlin'?" Takahara shot back. Sora could feel the coldness radiating off of him, worse than the freezing room itself, and donned her mask of apathy.

"Heh, I can see 'er on top of that doc. Thanks for the mental image, Colonel," Trinity snapped, tone somewhat amused yet cold at the same time. "But in all seriousness… he's got a point. When did you get hitched?"

Sora's face hardened. "That's none of your concern," she repeated bluntly. She saw a flash of orange out of the corner of her left eye, and whirled around to point her rifle in that direction. But neither Trinity nor Takahara came at her, instead keeping to the shadows.

"She's defaultin' into not talkin' again," Takahara hissed. A flash of silver came from the right, and faded before Sora could even turn to point the rifle's barrel in that direction.

"Same old typical Sora," Trinity agreed with an audible stomp of her hooves. "We may have to clip her damn wings to get her to talk."

The base shook again; another flash of orange flared from behind. Sora turned to face it, only to find darkness. Her ocular augments kicked in again, but even they could not help her pinpoint where her current enemies were thanks to the light already overhead. She was half-tempted to demand the two to show themselves, but Omega stirred on her back with another groan, inadvertently reminding her that doing just that would probably end in disaster.

"Too bad that hornless, wingless freak wouldn't spill anything," Takahara hissed. "Just as tight-lipped as the great cunt herself." Another flash of silver had Sora spinning in place, trying to track it, but she still got naught other than pitch-black. The overhead light flickered as the crackling of ice grew louder and louder. "Not even a few rounds of smashing his back doors, or ripping off his forelegs and augmenting his stumps and noggin convinced him to talk!"

Back door breaking? Sora's brow furrowed; the grip on her gun tightened as she realized the implications of such a statement. If they did that to her acquaintance with the intent of making him talk... "You didn't…" she seethed, wings starting to crackle as mana flowed into the blades without restraint.

"Sure did, sweetheart," Trinity answered in smug mockery, tone dripping with amusement. "Too bad we couldn't get a few rounds with the psychopath; I'd bet she'd have been loads of fun." An orange bolt of energy launched past Sora's head, popping behind her in a burst of light.

Sora trembled, resisting the urge to fire lasers everywhere. Her mind concocted an image of Trinity and Takahara doing a whole menagerie of questionable things to Starbreaker, which only got her blood boiling. "Guess we'll just have to settle for the married bitch, until she tells us where the Herald's at now?" Takahara offered, launching a bolt of silver magic past Sora, who turned away to avoid going blind at the resultant explosion.

"Oh no; Admiral's got dibs. We get the seconds," Trinity answered, launching from the darkness to punch Sora at blinding speed, aided by a pair of turbine wings affixed to her back. At the same time, Takahara came in from behind, hooves outstretched and poised to strike the back of Sora's head. Sora ducked and kicked aside the table to let them punch each other and sprinted into the blackness, wings madly beating as she made to find the stairs. Takahara and Trinity cursed as their hooves met with each other's faces, disentangling with new bruises forming as they made to pursue her. "You cheeky cunt! Get back here!" Trinity roared.

"Bite my augmented ass! No way in hell am I staying!" Sora barked, zig-zagging her way to the stairs. Her eyes caught the faintest hint of ice, however, and it wasn't long before she found herself skidding towards the flights. She twisted and flew out of the way when she found walls of ice blocking her path, in turn sending Takahara face-first into one of those walls as he made to grab her. The base shuddered again, and the ice cracked and flaked like glass as Takahara pried himself from it.

Trinity still dogged after Sora, eyes gleaming and horn alighting with gathering power. "Hold still, tramp!" she commanded, launching a bolt of magic after Sora, who twisted out of the way and returned fire with her rifle. She landed on the floor and sprinted as Trinity smashed all four hooves into a wall in a strike meant for her head, then bounced off of it with enough force to leave a sizeable crater in her wake. Sora fired again, striking a turbine's rim, and for a split-second her pursuing opponent tilted as she lost balance.

But Trinity righted herself and simply cranked up her speed, engines howling and roaring as she continued to give chase. "That's a nice buster model you got there, didja diddle it in your spare time?" she taunted, gaining ground until her forehooves were just inches from Sora's muzzle.

Sora fired off another shot, striking Trinity square in her barrel. The Major screamed and backed off, hooves reorienting to clutch the wound. She darted past the fallen table as Takahara came in from the side, horn blazing in silver light and intent gleaming in his eyes. She turned to fire off another round, and hit him right in his false horn. It sputtered and groaned, and Takahara wailed as an explosion of light and dust filled the room, followed shortly by a sharp snap that echoed in the dark arena. She veered for the stairs again, checking to see if Omega was still on board; she heaved a silent sigh of relief to find he was still clinging to her barrel, his own grip tightening as he seemed to finally wake up and realize what was going on.

"F-filly? Wh-where are we?" Omega asked, voice riddled in alarm.

"Right now, we're in hell," Sora replied, making for the dent in the ice as Takahara and Trinity recovered enough to start closing in, horns blazing brightly. The stairs still hadn't been opened; she turned to her enraged once-superiors, hearing their own augments whirring to life and Trinity's flesh writhing with the effort.

Both wore baleful scowls, their amusement now gone. "Oh, you've done it now, you whorse," Takahara spat, voice distorting with a mechanical groan as his magic continued to build.

"Looks like somepony's gonna be losing her fucking legs soon…" Trinity hissed ominously, face aflame in an orange light that looked red in the smog.

Sora opened her mouth to retort, but then closed it when she saw the tell-tale grippings of budding rage forming on her opponents' faces. Now, there'd be no reasoning with them; she'd pushed far too many of their buttons in far too quick a succession, and her stomach cramped a little as they slowly closed in. Back against an icy wall, she cocked her rifle as her passenger shifted his hind legs to wrap awkwardly around her flanks. This wasn't an ideal situation, and sooner or later, somepony was going to fire.

Sora weighed her dwindling options, spreading her wings slowly enough that she hoped they wouldn't draw Trinity or Takahara's attention, and all the while their magic continued to build. Slowly, the glowing horns angled themselves toward one another, and as they crossed, Sora's eyes widened—the power they had individually grew tenfold, engulfing the two in a hellish light. Both Trinity and Takahara spoke in tandem, voices echoing and distorting with their joint power, "You're going to wish the Admiral had killed you when we're done with you!"

Sora's blades quivered, and she briefly considered the idea of absorbing their magic before discarding it and flapping instead. They launched their dual bolt, and Sora only had enough time to get out of its way and scrambled to the other side as a great magical wave of energy pulsed from her adversaries, shattering the ice of the room and forcing her and Omega into a corner, then out of it seconds later. The destructive energy swirled around, Trinity and Takahara turning to her in unison, redirecting it fluidly, damaging everything in its wake with the force of an unlimited charge. The burst was fast approaching, sending rubble and dust everywhere, and all Sora could do was fold her blades in front of herself to take the attack as she was backed against another wall.

A flash of tealish light exploded in the room just as the magic reached fever pitch within mere inches from Sora, and a second wave of similarly-colored power erupted from the darkness before forming a wall of reflective ice in a hexagonal configuration and structure to counteract the dual magics, just before it could even singe a hair on Omega and Sora. It first absorbed that power, the walls turning silver-orange, standing firm and steadfast throughout the ordeal. Then, as the attack stopped, she heard her ex-superiors gasping in confusion. Before they could ask what was going on, the reflective wall glowed and sent the absorbed power straight back to whence it came, and Sora heard—but could not see—Trinity and Takahara screaming in unison, and the base shook at their redirected attack. Then, the chorus of trapped ponies upstairs joined in, howling for exactly one second before ceasing entirely with the Major and Colonel's wailing. "Wh-wha…" Sora stammered, struggling to make sense of what had just happened.

Only when the base stopped shaking did these reflective walls drop, disintegrating into nothingness with one last flickering pulse of power, and Sora walked to the lone light in the room. She stopped, finding that her opponents themselves were back under that stationary light, standing but shaking with exertion and confusion. Both were singed so badly the stench of burnt fur, flesh, and augments hung in the air and fresh smoke wafted from their bodies in places—hell, the two were bleeding profusely at this rate; it was a miracle they were even standing now. But the way they shook told Sora they were but moments away from collapsing; their knees quaked enough they started to slip of their own accord, aided by the falling blood. Their wings were melted and warped, engines barely hanging onto their backs, locking up with feeble sputters before long. "The fuck was that? We weren't standing here a second ago," Takahara grumbled with a wheeze.

Trinity's ears perked, and she turned to the stairs as a set of hoofsteps flooded the room from that direction. A cruel smile spread on her lips in spite of her horrible pain. "I think we have reinforcements," she muttered darkly as the hoofsteps grew louder. Her smile fell, however, when she realized it came in a half-tune; one-two instead of one-two, three-four. "The fuck kinda reinforcements is this?" she hissed, and paled when an upright shadow lurched into the light and kicked aside the fallen table with a mighty swing of a powerful hind leg, sending it crumpling into a wall on impact. The ice was reforming, creeping on its hocks as it lowered that leg in a stomp that cracked the floor, glowing with raw power yet to be channeled. Sora turned to the figure and blanched, though she noticed something different about it.

Now, though, the darkness of the room did not meld to it or even form a corporeal body, but rather accentuated its presence, revealing a translucent form that had shards of highly reflective ice dancing around its body which pulsed with a teal power that kept them levitating. The light above popped and died, and all found themselves under another, more sinister presence. Glowing orbs of an ice blue that acted as eyes were trained on the group as the figure towered over them with its upright stance, brimming in anger and despair, glancing apologetically at Sora for the barest of instants. Three horns, two of them warped and mechanical, shimmered with an ominous but unusually dim light that burned as fiercely as the glare it redirected to Trinity and Takahara.

For a mere second, time froze as the new arrival and the combatants stared at one another.

Omega gaped. "Wh-who…"

Trinity gabbled. "Wh-what the…?!"

Takahara gawked. "Th-the fuck?!"

Sora gasped, eyes widening in recognition. "You're… a windigo…?"

The figure turned to Sora and gave one sharp, mute nod before embracing Trinity and Takahara in its hellish light. "No… more…" the figure mouthed silently, intangible jaws stiff and shuddering with the effort. With one whipping of its distorted head, it sent bursts of tealish magic at Trinity and Takahara, knocking them against a wall. With two stomps of its hooves, the base quaked and quaked until the ceiling started to cave in. It kept thrashing its head, launching bursts of magic everywhere, breaking walls and making reflective ice erupt, which further destroyed the room. Then, just as the stairs collapsed, the figure turned to Sora and Omega before it grabbed them in its magic. "The caged ones… their suffering ends… here…" it mouthed, before it vanished with Sora and Omega in a final flash of light.

"Windigos have infiltrated the Corps?!" the Admiral barked after a retort of static flooded the shaking base. "Initiate Friendship Flame Protocols, pronto, pronto!" Trinity and Takahara exchanged glances as the room around them continued to crumble, and both nodded mutely before they locked horns and vanished in another flash of light to save their own sorry hides.