The following week after Starbreaker had received the news regarding her physical state, Sora dropped by to visit her again. Her visits were daily during that week, but at its end something had changed. Before, Sora came in and out without a shred of cloth on her body sans collar and the small device on her ear. Now, on the tenth day of Starbreaker's official hospitalization, she was dressed in a pale blue outfit with a jutting collar that just barely reached her cheekbones, overlaid on top of a black shirt that hugged her tight. The outfit had long, loose sleeves ending in cuffs that dangled above her forehooves, and it had a large hole cut in the back to allow her wings easy access. She had them folded carefully over her rear end, which was easy to guess why, as Starbreaker could see it past the gleaming blades.

For reasons that Starbreaker could not nor did not want to grasp, she was wearing an embarrassingly short skirt of black on her hindquarters. The garment ended at her tail and fanned out as much as the closed wings would allow to show off her cutie marks and the hips to which they were attached. Thigh highs cupped her rear legs, ending in boots that were dubiously absent on her front hooves. The bell-holding necklace she had was readjusted to hold the collar in place. She had a heated pink blush on her lilac face, one whose meaning escaped her charge, and the device that was on her ear had now been absent.

"What… is with that getup?" Starbreaker asked after a long moment of awkward silence passed.

"Military uniform," Sora replied in a clipped tone, averting her eyes briefly. "Don't ask about the skirt. I had to buck a couple of my…" The next word came out in a venomous, sibilant hiss, "coworkers in the barrels to get them to lay off."

Starbreaker's brows shot up. "I never knew you one for kicking," she mused.

Sora's ears fell back at that. "If I'd have stabbed them with my wings, they'd have put somepony else in charge of you, and that somepony else could have killed you," she muttered bitterly. "Kicking was the next best thing."

Starbreaker's eyes widened, and she would have perked her remaining ear if she were able. "They?" she pressed.

"My commanding officers," Sora elaborated with a shuffle of her wings and a small scraping of her hooves. "You do not want to meet them. Trust me." At that moment the door slid open, and a stallion that Starbreaker wasn't familiar with trotted in with his head high and his gleaming grey eyes affixed squarely on Sora. The sod had a dark brown coat, with a white mane to contrast it, and patches of steel affixed onto his legs and backside that made him look more like a jigsaw puzzle than a pony. Out of his forehead, a horn that was off-grey and gleaming like metal jutted from his head, further offset by an ugly, shoe-shaped black spot that cradled his right eye.

Sora didn't even meet his gaze as he addressed her, "Now why're you kickin' at everypony today? All we did was admire your ass."

Sora snorted and lifted a back, booted hoof. "Get near me again, I will twist you around and stomp between your hinds," she threatened, eyes narrowing coldly. Starbreaker noted that, as her gaze shifted to a slit glare, her eyes averted away from her and to the stallion sporting the black eye.

The stallion, much to Starbreaker's confusion, did not heed Sora's threat. He seemed to not even take it seriously at all, instead opting to snort and guffaw for a few seconds. He edged a little closer to her, and stepped in front of her, hiding the sickening grin that spread on his face from the bedridden charge as a result. His horn crackled and sparked with a metallic groan, followed by an unnatural whirring sound that filled the air. "Oh, and how're you gonna do that when I got the magic, hrrm?" he challenged smugly.

Sora flared her wings in response. However, before she could do anything else, a silver aura that was not there before seized them and flung her bodily out the door, producing a horrible scraping as he angled her wings to the floor whilst she flew from the unexpected assault. The stallion followed after her, and the door shut behind him. A shout of indignance, high-pitched and almost keening, came as soon as the door clicked shut. "Let me go, you cybernetic abomination!" Sora screeched as another unnatural whir hummed in the air, the softness of her voice entirely gone. This change of tone then gave way to another dull thud as she was, Starbreaker could only assume, being flung around the hallway outside her door.

Starbreaker shot up in bed, wide-eyed and in alarm. She wanted to know what the stallion was doing to her adversary, but the wounded hoof and leg sent pain roaring through her nerves the moment she tried to twist out of bed, reminding her that what she wanted to do wasn't a good idea. The stallion howled in laughter, and more thuds filled the hall, almost entirely masking the sound of a third set of hooves that likewise came from beyond the door. The stallion hissed just as sibilantly as Sora did, the very moment the thuds had ceased to be made, "Says the modified pegasus with the freaky blades! Why, I should just break your bones and your hinds here and now!"

Another whir filled the air, almost entirely masking the click of a button in its wake. "Shield, invert!" Sora squalled in that high-pitched keen, only to be superseded by another thud, that time accompanied by a pained scream. "That is not for you to touch!"

"Enough!" a new, masculine voice called out, followed by the sound of another spell being cast. "Takahara, do I have to take this… this flagrant display of unprofessionalism to your commanding officer?!"

"Bite my shiny metal ass, doc! You ain't got no business interrupting two modified ponies in the middle of a round, you au naturale piece of horseshit!" the first stallion cried defensively. "Why don't you go and kill another patient, like you've done countless times before?!"

"I do not kill my patients, you undignified boob!" the third voice yelled angrily. "I try to help them as best as I can, and—"

"Spare me the platitudes, you ass, and go on before I bust your head in!" the first pony yelled shrilly. A low hum filled the air, and a yelp of pain came from him a second later as the crunching of bone filled the area, followed immediately by a dull thud. Then, a brief scuffling filled in the void, followed by the very soft click of a button and then the rattling and clanging of a violently-thrashing bell.

Only when the bell stopped its incessant ringing did somepony speak. "I-is it… gonna hold him if I leave the hall?" Sora managed, her voice soft again as her breathing turned heavy and ragged. Starbreaker noted a prominent shake in her tone that hadn't been there before.

"No, it won't," the third voice sighed ruefully. Another hum filled the air. "But I'll take it from here, Sora. Go… gather your bearings, please," the owner affirmed in a soft, no-nonsense tone which brokered no argument. In the seconds almost immediately after, the door opened and Sora scrambled back into the room, her face pale and wide-eyed, whilst her hooves were flailing as much as they could. She was very flustered, despite blanching.

She turned to poke her head out of the room once she'd actually entered it. "Yukito, please take him to the nearest Major pronto," she uttered in a pleading tone of voice.

"Can do, Sora," Yukito replied. Sora nodded and pulled her head back before turning around to find Starbreaker sitting up and looking at her. Once they made eye contact, the sound of something magically dragging something else filled the hall outside, in perfect tandem with the clip-clop of somepony's hooves. It ended when a loud pop sang through the air, giving way to silence.

"What… just happened?" Starbreaker asked, eyes narrowing as Sora fell to her haunches.

"He… tried grabbing my cutie mark," Sora muttered, frowning ruefully as her gaze averted to the door as though it were responsible. "If this keeps up, I'm gonna ask Yukito to install a hoofprint recognition keypad on your door," she added.

Starbreaker continued to stare at Sora. "Your cutie mark?" she repeated. At Sora's hesitant nod, she uttered an innocent question, "Why's that making you red in the face?"

Sora turned to Starbreaker, pupils shrinking and feathers bristling as she sat there spluttering incoherently at the query. Her face fully turned a healthy beet red, which managed to reach the tips of her ears as she choked and gabled while she fruitlessly tried to manage something relatively coherent. It took her several minutes, but when she did she blurted out, "H-have you not had your cutie mark grabbed?!"

Starbreaker shook her head and shrugged in earnest. "Not by another pony, no, until you found me and decided I needed to be examined," she answered sincerely. Sora spluttered again, and Starbreaker unhelpfully added, "I honestly do not understand what the deal is."

Sora continued to flap her lips madly, staring at Starbreaker with such thick incredulity she could probably cut it with her wings without even a token effort if she were able to. An entire ten minutes passed before she facehoofed and took a few deep breaths to gather her bearings, which had the added benefit of making her blush recede. When hoof parted from face, the very flustered pegasus leveled a firm, almost steely-eyed glare at her bedridden opponent. "Remember how my hoof was between your hinds? How I checked the… the… scribbles down there?" she pressed.

Starbreaker nodded. "How could I forget?" she shot back icily.

Sora's gaze hardened. "Well, you were medically examined… which by itself was necessary, but it was one examination that I had no business partaking in. I'm not a doctor. And… technically speaking, I felt you up, medical examination or not. And feeling somepony up is just a nice way of saying you and I got molested," she hissed uneasily.

"Molested?" Starbreaker queried, letting the word sit on her tongue for a few seconds. Something about it made her stomach twist, and before long it made her head start to hurt. As the headache settled, it dawned on her, and helped explain why Sora was all too eager to trot back into the room after being forcefully dragged out of it. It also made her do a double-take, and her technicolor eyes almost bugged out when she looked at the ludicrously short skirt and spotted a bruise just barely visible behind Sora's forehooves, which she could only see now since her adversary was sitting. Another revelation then hit her like a brick, and it made her pupils shrink. Then, her blood surged through her veins, heating up like magma with a fresh wave of anger.

"He touched you there?!" Starbreaker screamed at the top of her lungs.

Sora flinched at the sheer volume, but managed a nod nonetheless. She got up and raced over before putting her hooves on Starbreaker's shoulders as she started to wildly thrash about in bed. "Let me go, damnit!" Starbreaker yelled, her voice gaining an unnatural, mechanical reverb as she fought with all her might to get out of bed and slip out of Sora's hooves. "Let me run loose so I can make him regret laying his hoof on you!" she cried, her voice only growing more mechanical with each second.

Sora tightened her hold, and flared her wings for balance as she tried to wrestle Starbreaker to her bed. "But they'll kill you if I turn you loose!" she pleaded.

Sadly for her, Starbreaker did not hear Sora's warning. She redoubled her efforts, locked in a stalemate with her adversary as adrenaline shot through her veins. A whirring sound filled the air, and Sora watched with horror as her sclera turned black as pitch. "I will murder that stallion! I will rend his body apart, limb by limb! I will force him to devour his own four hooves! I will feast on his heart before his very eyes! I will burn the remainder of his corpse thereafter, until nothing remains! He will regret ever being born into this wretched world!" she promised darkly, in a voice almost mechanical enough to pass off as outright demonic, her cry echoing viciously about the room in a way that merely amplified Sora's concern.

Starbreaker kept kicking with her good rear leg and thrusting with her good forehoof vehemently. Her irises went blood red entirely, and for a second Sora could've sworn her pupils became tiny slits that almost seemed to glow with an unholy light. Adrenaline shot through Sora's veins in that moment, and without a token effort she finally managed to pin her screaming, fitfully-thrashing charge back to the bed. She clambered atop her again, careful to keep her wings tucked at an angle to avoid severing the supports.

They stared into each other's eyes, one set unblinking, unnatural, wild in every sense of the word and the other frantic and sporting pinprick pupils. "Starbreaker, it's gonna be okay!" Sora pleaded, keeping her hold tight. "Takahara's going to get in some big trouble, and we won't have to deal with him anymore!" She stayed on top, hoping to the powers that be that Starbreaker would, at the very least, hear her and see reason. They were like that, one holding the other down as she flailed nigh-uncontrollably, for a few minutes on end in a stalemate. As the adrenaline rush faded from them both, Starbreaker's thrashing slowed down until her still-free hooves could only swing sluggishly and her breathing turned shallow and sparse.

The door opened, and Sora took the opportunity to hop off and turned to the intruder the second her hooves met the floor. She relaxed when she saw it was only Yukito, who now sported a bruise on his cheek. "The nearest Major's taking the trouble-maker right to the Admiral, and I am grateful that I learned how to teleport," he reported. Turning to Starbreaker, he asked, "Did you have a fit?"

Starbreaker scowled, eyes narrowing coldly. Yukito shivered as her eyes slowly, and with one last whir, reverted back to more or less a normal state, if indeed 'normal' even existed as a concept to Starbreaker. Sora decided to answer for her, "She wanted to kill Takahara, so I had to…" Her gaze averted as she trailed off. "You saw… didn't you?"

Yukito nodded in confirmation. "I told the Admiral to give you a longer skirt… how long ago?" he queried. Sora shrugged in earnest.

"When I was eighteen and on my first mission?" Sora guessed.

Yukito nodded. "Poor bastard must think you'd be self-loathing enough to lift your tail for the first pony to touch you," he muttered under his breath.

"Not willingly," Sora murmured. She sat down again and sighed, raising a hoof to rub the bridge of her muzzle contemplatively. "Admiral didn't say anything, right?" she asked, brow furrowing as she started envisioning a meeting with her own commanding officer in her current getup.

"No… nor has the nearest Major, for that matter," Yukito muttered, frowning. "She just… looked at me strangely."

Sora's hoof parted from her muzzle. "Define 'strangely,'" she requested. Yukito chose not to answer with words, but instead to look at Sora cross-eyed, which looked much more bizarre since his glasses had framed it. "So… like that," she guessed, which garnered her an immediate nod in response.

Yukito uncrossed his eyes and looked at Starbreaker again. "Some part of me would like to knock first, but the sliding doors make that impossible…" he groused.

"Why knock to begin with? Why not just blast the door down?" Starbreaker queried in a sincere tone of voice. Yukito wryly smiled at her and chuckled at the question.

"Well… I'm not exactly a combat specialist. I don't know any explosive-type spells," Yukito answered. His horn sparked and glowed, and light and heat began to build… only to wink out with a pop a few seconds later. "At most, teleportation." He vanished in a flash of light, and Starbreaker gawked as the door slid open again and Yukito trotted right back inside as though nothing interesting had happened.

A piercing sound filled the air, akin to something being picked up and then subsequently used to record nails on a chalkboard. Everypony winced at it before it briefly cut to static, and a masculine voice droned out in a no-nonsense tone, "Private Sora, the Admiral is expecting you in his office." As soon as the feed cut off, Sora's pupils shrank, and she gulped audibly. With her blond tail tucked firmly between her rear legs, she trudged out of the room.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

A lone stallion sat in a small, almost cramped office, a projection screen lit up before him whose light came from behind him, framed by a silvery aura and revealing Takahara and the white unicorn with the purple tail attending to him as he was placed on a gurney. His right fetlock was twisted, to the point the hoof attached to it faced backwards. In addition, there was that bruise on his eye, which the stallion in the office took immediate note of. The mare faced the stallion in the office, as though somehow seeing him through the projection. "He'll be fine, sir," the mare dourly reported, her horn glowing orange in color. "In a matter of weeks."

Takahara wasn't having any of it, however, and he waved his broken hoof erratically as he screamed, "Make that fucking blond-maned bitch pay!"

"At ease," the stallion in the office spoke, with a deep baritone that resonated in an eerie calm. "I have already summoned her. She'll be at my office any minute now, and I will see to it that she is punished."

"Sir, that's not all I wished to share with you," the white unicorn interjected, her tail lashing about. When the stallion in the office lifted a hoof and spun it for her to continue, she elaborated, "She found the Herald of the Crimson Light, alive, crippled, and even crazier than before. She didn't kill her on the spot, oh noooooo, she had to make nice with her while I and my whole damn retinue watched."

"The Herald…" the stallion in the office spat, his calm now laced with an undernote of anger. "Pastely-silver, technicolor eyes?"

"The one and the very same, sir," the white unicorn answered with a nod.

"That bitch is in the medical ward! I saw her with my two own eyes!" Takahara piped up.

"Alright." The stallion in the office carefully considered this information. Whether or not it was true, it had potential to become another reason for punishment in itself. "It seems my session with the delinquent Hawk has just gotten a bit more interesting…" the stallion in the office cooed darkly. A cruel smile spread on the white unicorn's lips, and it was soon matched by Takahara who nodded in confirmation himself. "How many times must she come back here before she learns to be a good soldier for once in her life?"

"Make this session different, sir. Just so it'll stick," the white unicorn advised. A dark chuckle met her ears, and her cruel smile only widened fractionally.

"Very well, Major Trinity, I'll see what I can come up with," the stallion in the office promised.

"What if she doesn't show up at all?" Takahara pointed out.

"Then I'll just have to find her and drag her to my office myself," the office stallion replied before, with a mechanical whir, he cut the projection off and the light that it was conjuring. That done, he placed his hooves onto his desk and observed his office. The only things visible therein to any outside visitor were his mahogany desk, the sable hooves atop it, and a bright light shining onto the door and illuminating a bit of beige carpet before it. The light also revealed twin hooks that jutted from the door's frame, gleaming in the light alongside a rectangular piece of something that hovered just beyond the glow. The rest of the room was shrouded in a thick darkness, one that felt more corporeal than it should have.

His hooves, easily the size of Yukito's head and framed with the black cuffs of a uniform, tapped idly but noisily as he waited. Off to one side, just barely visible in the gloom to his eyes, was a plaque beset in a runic language, hewn of crystal and lined with copper filigree. A ticking noise from an unseen device, perhaps a clock of some sort, sang in the air. Its drone was as monotonous a tone as the tapping of his hooves.

He dared not get up and pace. Dared not grind his teeth as minutes ticked by. Dared not even cease fiddling his hooves, for he knew that all he had to do was wait for as long as the day would allow if it came to that. He was alone for an hour straight like that, idly tapping his hooves with the patience of a saint before the door opened, and Sora shuffled inside. She had a hoof raised to block out the glare of the light as she stepped inside, and the stallion could see she was already shaking at her knees, guessing she'd go weak in the legs entirely before long.

Only as the door slid shut behind her and she had the time to adjust her vision did a pregnant silence fall. The two stared at one another for several minutes on end, with only the tapping and the ticking providing any form of discernable sound in the darkened room. A tense air hung heavily, doing little to the shadow-clad pony and as much as it possibly could to Sora. Before long, the stallion spoke in a low, ominous, intimidating tone of voice that caused Sora's ears to pin back against her head and her knees to shake that much harder, as if she were perhaps strained just by listening to him, "I heard you were causing trouble… as usual. What possessed you to snap Colonel Takahara's fetlock?"

Sora winced, her mouth going dry as the question hit her. She shakily dropped her hoof and tried to stand rigid, staring into the gloom to find piercing eyes, blood red and perhaps mechanical, staring back at her expectantly. The owner was thrice as big as she was, as his eyes seemed to reach just under the light shining onto her height-wise. Perhaps it was a trick of perception, but all the same it made her feel small. "Well? You have permission to speak, you wretch," the stallion hissed sibilantly, eyes narrowing with a soft whir that she didn't miss.

"He…" Sora swallowed a lump in her throat that hadn't been there before, and took a second to gather her bearings. "He… Takahara assaulted me, sir. I attacked in self-defense," she managed, her voice less firm than she'd have liked.

"Assaulted, you say?" the stallion mused, canting his head ever so slightly. "Takahara told me you kicked him earlier this morning."

Sora promptly shook her head, the feathers closest to her withers bristling ever so slightly. "That is not what happened, Admiral," she replied, her voice faltering a little as she realized he caught the bristling.

"Then what explains the bruise the Major showed me on his eye?" the Admiral shot back, his remark eliciting a wince from Sora. His eyes narrowed further, until they were slits that threatened to incinerate her on the spot. "Well?"

Sora's chest tightened, and sweat started to bead her brow. The Admiral pushed something back, and lifted one hoof to beckon her onward. "He… must have punched himself, sir, or had somepony else do it. If you would check the camera feed, you would see it wasn't me who gave him the black eye!" Sora exclaimed defensively, trying to seize control of herself and the situation at hoof. However, the Admiral merely continued to gesture her to get closer, causing the feathers at the joints to bristle. The squeaking of a chair, and the scuffing of hooves on carpet did little to set her at ease. Hesitantly, she came closer to the desk, her own hooves dragging as she went.

"Punched himself? Who would ever have the gall to do that?" the Admiral questioned sincerely, a malicious spark in his eyes as he watched the rattled pegasus edging closer to his desk, "Not even you would do something that inane, and you stopped the Herald of the Crimson Light, for goodness' sake. I doubt he'd have somepony else punch him to set you up for the same reason."

His other hoof trailed below his desk, before a click of what sounded like a button filled the air for all of a second, giving way to a series of clicks that came from the door itself. This series of clicks briefly halted Sora in her tracks, and she chanced a glance to the door to find that a steel bar had protruded from the darkness and onto its frame, sliding into the twin hooks which were affixed to the door with a distinctly larger square-shaped object resting just behind the second hook as part of the bar that simply could not fit through. The door slid as much as it could, but alas could not bypass the larger square-shaped part of the bar, and so was kept firmly shut. "Is that truly so? Did Takahara really assault himself to obtain the black eye? If so, then why?"

Sora turned back and nodded. "Y-yes sir," she stammered, "H-he… he probably didn't want to get reprimanded…" Part of her screamed to unlock the door and to get away from the Admiral, but as he rose from his seat and leaned onto the desk, thrusting his raised hoof down on the wood to support himself, she found herself glued to the spot beneath his cold gaze. A mechanical whir filled the air, and a silvery aura materialized and yanked Sora clean off her hooves before throwing her backside-down onto the desk when she had refused to budge any further by herself. He shifted so they could maintain eye contact and also so that she would not run into his hoof on her way forward, even as he towered over her. His massive hooves lifted slightly and rushed to pin her wings to the wood by their joints.

Sora reached for her bell, but the aura beat her to it and tore it off of her neck and flung it, collar and all, across the room. It hit the door with a thud, and landed onto the floor uselessly. She shrieked as one of her back hooves was lifted up forcibly by the aura, causing her to bend painfully forward. The Admiral scrutinized her boot, unconcerned that as the hoof went higher and higher, her wings came that much closer to being broken in the process, and unknowing that she was biting her lip to stave off tears. Whether he was feeling merciful didn't matter; the Admiral came within just a hair's breadth of compromising his own soldier.

He dropped the hoof a few seconds later, and Sora's rear end landed on the desk with a hard thud. Then he made eye contact with her again, and leaned until they were nose to nose, pressing down on her wings without care. She could've sworn he grinned at her, and at this her heart sank.

"Your boot matches his black eye, down to the curveature of the hoof. Self-defense or not, you committed insubordination," the Admiral said in a cold reprimand. "Not only that, but I've heard you went and started coddling a war criminal…" His voice became crueler, horribly withering and more menacing with each word he spoke. "But… as you have committed some pretty big war crimes yourself, I do suppose that strange minds think alike."

"Y-you ordered me to perform those heinous acts!" Sora squawked. "I would have been punished had I not committed them!"

"That is true…" the Admiral agreed with a slow nod of his head. Sora made to kick, but stopped just short when he pressed harder on her wings, almost breaking them and driving shards of agony through her nerves. "That said… you still need to be… summilarily punished, Private." Another thud rang out, in tandem with a whirring sound, and Sora whimpered as she realized to her growing horror that it was her back hooves which had made the thud. That it was his magic now weighing them down.

Still, alarmed as she was, she looked the Admiral dead in the eye. "N-no," she hissed, lifting her front hooves to her chest. The Admiral chuckled when she glared at him, before snorting as she made to punch him with the only limbs left that he hadn't yet pinned. He was quick to change that, however, and within seconds her forehooves landed above her head and held there with a silvery aura in one last thud of finality.

"Ah-ah, Private. When you're in my domain, I get to call the shots," the Admiral hissed, his tone equal parts gleeful and scorned. Something slid open, and Sora could barely feel it shift beneath her, before a metal object with a cylindrical barrel levitated up out of the gloom and pressed itself to the side of her head. "And you don't want to die now, do you?"

Sora blanched as she took one look at the object he brought out, seeing a trigger, a hammer, and a small revolving chamber. The Admiral took it as a sign of resignation, and used his magic to grasp the plaque before lifting it off and putting it to her neck. He adjusted it to rest under chin, and only then did he press it down on her windpipe, seemingly intent on choking her with it. The runes glowed as he did while she made the first sputtering cough, and white electric currents shot out before they rushed around her body and through her nerves. Lightning painted the room a vivid white, casting aside all shadows as it danced upon her prone form.

She screamed as the electrocution continued for several long, agonizing seconds thereafter, as jolts coursed through her body like white-hot magma. Her fur felt as though it were smoldering; her flesh burned with the force of a thousand suns. Her feathers started blackening at their edges, her blades were still and utterly useless to help her. All the while, the object pressed against her head remained, and the hooves which pinned her by the wings did not even move an inch. The magic on her legs did not yield once, holding her like iron cuffs as her suffering began.

Sora thrashed as much as she could, which only worsened her pain and caused the Admiral to pin the plaque on her neck harder, seemingly intent on cutting off her oxygen supply. She screwed her eyes shut, crying out as current after current ran through unimpeded, and within ten more seconds she could manage no more than a strangled howl that barely sounded equine. At one point, her eyes opened, and they felt as if they were boiling in her sockets the instant her lids had parted. She closed them again, if only to lessen the pain, but not prior to noticing her vision was turning fuzzy and black at the edges. Within seconds, her mouth opened, and her next outburst left her throat in a raspy, hoarse cry, the resulting words barely coherent at this point.

"Please, stop!" she pleaded, simply unable to take anymore before long. The runes faltered, but did not cease their attempt to scorch her inside-out until the Admiral magically lifted it up, causing it to stop with a pop and a fizz. The lightning died shortly after, with a crackle and a hiss. She heard the hammer click as the plaque stopped glowing, and the object against her head pressed itself more firmly than was necessary.

The Admiral leaned closer to Sora, dangling the plaque over her head as her eyes slowly opened and trailed up to it. He saw, plain as day, that her eyes were now dewy and dull, though the fog of pain that clouded them gave way as she frantically sucked in deep breaths to fill her lungs. He did not, however, see a single tear streak her face, and a sense of irritation started to build at that. "Do you wish to die?" he repeated, just as coldly as before.

"N-no… sir," Sora mewled, trembling as the hammer clicked again and both plaque and object retracted.

"Thought as much. I'd hate to have to waste bullets on your delinquent hide. A shame too; you're paradoxically my best and my worst soldier." He lowered the object down back to whence it came, and the plaque followed it. "But, you didn't dirty my precious Vera with your blood, so I suppose that much is alright." His eyes gleamed once again, and Sora shut hers to avoid looking into those crimson orbs any longer.

"And I don't know how you found your little buddy… so we'll just settle this the old-fashioned way: if you give me what you know, I'll turn you loose." When Sora failed to speak and turned her muzzle to the door, his lips twitched. "Seems like you're being quiet, and you're not crying either. Same old typical Sora, as always. I'll have to start… extracting the information from you. Fortunately for us both..."

Sora felt her back legs part with magical aid, and though she fought to keep them closed, quickly found that to be a losing battle. "I've grown tired of the usual methods I've had to use on you in the past, as you've grown resilient to them. We're going to play an old game with a new twist to it..." He trailed off, forcing Sora's back legs wider still, until they could go no farther without causing pain. He paused to glance at his handiwork so far, and something about Sora's helpless state struck a chord with him, though for reasons far less than noble. "And we'll play it until you cry in defeat."

Dread sank in fast, and Sora opened her eyes and looked at the Admiral almost pleadingly. Some part of him found her slanted brow and shrunken pupils adorable, and it was made all the more delicious to him as he saw a spark of recognition in her eyes as she fast realized just what he was about to do. Admittedly, she could have stopped him… if he'd let her. In a last-ditch effort to save herself, Sora muttered incoherently for several seconds until, at last, she managed something somewhat sensible. "I-I'll… I'm… not going to t-tell you… wh-what I know a-about Starbreaker... just… just don't…" she whimpered in a small shred of defiance, hoping with all her might that, perhaps, the Admiral would actually cease and listen for once. For a few seconds, he stared at her rather contemplatively, and the hope within soared.

His braying laughter, however, rang in her ears and shattered that hope into a million pieces a mere second later. "Too late; you've already made your choice when you kicked Takahara. Now, you must bear the consequences upon your withers." Sora tried squirming again, but the aura seized her entirely, rendering her immobile. Only then did he lift his hooves from her wings, and with one frog he cupped her chin. "I don't need you to tell me about her current location anyway, merely just about how you found her… I've received word she's already presently with us, here at the base. I could just waltz into her room and chat with her m'self once I find it."

"Wh-who…" Sora stammered, stopping her squirming for a few seconds to let the Admiral's utterance sink in. "Wh-who… told… you?"

"Oh, I don't know, a little birdie? The tip was anonymous, and the informants said they wanted me to keep it that way since you'd probably hunt them down the second you trot out my office door," the Admiral shot back, "Besides, you have proven time and time again that you can't be trusted. First, Sham… then, Nath… hell, I heard you killed somepony who would've gotten back home, had she lived on your first outing."

Sora's heart stopped in her chest for one beat and drummed harder immediately afterward as she'd came to the realization that somepony had thrown her under the proverbial airship. That she didn't know who made it much worse; it could've been anypony, at this rate. "And I find it quite bizarre," the Admiral continued, "that you know the Herald's name, though since I have heard you've decided to spare her life, I do suppose that's ultimately inevitable. Let's get started, shall we?"

The fact that she now knew that somepony had ratted her out, and made sure to keep their identity hidden on purpose, was just the icing on the cake for her tormentor. Sora's mouth quivered as panic took hold of her once again, but she didn't say anything. She couldn't muster the strength to do so, not when she was pinned, helpless, and had almost been electrocuted to death.

The Admiral took her silence as his cue to get started, and he started with gusto by knocking Sora off of his desk with a backswing of a hoof to the muzzle, making sure to hit just hard enough to bruise. As she fell, he simply canceled his magic and left her to tumble helplessly to the floor with the grace of a sack of potatoes. Then he dragged her behind the desk with no effort on his part, using his teeth to grapple her tail just as she made to scramble up. Once she was behind the mahogany desk, he wasted no time and planted his forehooves onto her—this time, her neck, and he made sure to pin her to the floor by sheer force.

"It's almost miraculous to see just how much you can take. And for a modified pegasus, you sure are tough as a brick, despite being so petite and frail-looking," the Admiral commented, pressing down to limit Sora's air intake. He planted his back hooves on her wings, to keep her from slashing at him as he fell to his haunches. "You should've been a mass of broken bones and torn flesh by now… hell, that little bit of shock therapy should have done you in." He smiled cruelly at his pinned, helpless soldier, who could only stare back with widened eyes. "I wonder… are you as soft within… are you are on the outside?"

Sora frantically shook her head, hoping the nonverbal answer would deter the Admiral. He did not back off; instead, his grin widened, and only then did her punishment truly begin.