The only thing that Sora knew for absolute certain was raw, unrelenting pain. Every few minutes, the Admiral eased the pressure on her neck, letting her gasp frantically for air, but firmly reapplied that pressure the moment she opened wide to emit a scream. Everything else in between the bouts of fresh air was a blur. One second, he seemed to be on her; then, he wasn't. She wasn't sure if he was toying with her or not. Some part of her didn't want to find out. At one point, she could've sworn he levitated stacks of paper from… somewhere, all neat and tidy and stashed away in one filing folder that he opened. Perhaps the papers and folder came from his desk. Perhaps he conjured them out of thin air.

The Admiral scrutinized the papers, holding them in his magic as he nonchalantly continued to strangle Sora on and off to see how long she'd last. He eased the pressure, hearing another sputtering cough from his soldier as she sucked in another breath of air. "Hrm…" he hummed, speed-reading the papers. He flipped through them one at a time, until roughly the fourth sheet greeted him with a giant red ink blot inlaid with a large set of emboldened letters in its center. "You were very recently deployed to the Crested Plains, were you not?" he asked.

Sora took an entire minute to process the question as she coughed and gagged. "Y-yes sir," she managed.

"And you… were to investigate strange occurrences in that area?" the Admiral pressed, eyes narrowing as he continued to scan the page with the great big blot of crimson.

"Th-that is… c-correct, sir," Sora answered, starting to squirm now that the Admiral had most of his attention elsewhere.

"And… it says here you failed…" the Admiral paused, letting the papers vanish in a flare of light. He turned, slowly, to his captive, who continued to writhe underneath his stare. "Oh, my dear little pidgeon, I wonder how in the wide, wide world you managed to flop so spectacularly…"

Sora paused to consider his statement. The Admiral leaned close again, until they were nose to nose, though he had to readjust his hindquarters to do so. His front hooves shifted to press her wings down, and once more he was canting his head at her. "Care to tell me why you disregarded your mission?" he asked.

Sora began squirming again, adrenaline surging through her veins now that sufficient oxygen had returned to her lungs and her body recognized the danger she was in. She tried to push the Admiral's hooves off her wings, though even with the boost in strength that the surge granted her, she still may as well have tried to move a mountain. "Wh… where did you… get those files?" she queried.

The Admiral smiled at her, and he was all too happy to answer her question, "One of the Majors filed it personally and hoofed it to me a few days ago." He did not yield his hold on her wings—not yet. "Now… why did you disregard your mission?"

"I… found minimal s-suspect activity, sir," Sora answered, pausing to swallow another lump in her throat. "N-nothing was… out of the—" A hoof lifted up and he promptly slapped her on the cheek with it, and it hit hard enough to make that cheek swell almost immediately after impact.

"Oh, please stop being so evasive. If nothing was out of the ordinary, then the informants might not have told me you got all merciful towards a bloody war criminal. And besides, I've sent them to investigate the scene two days after you returned, and they found corpses," the Admiral stated in a sharp reprimand, grinning as Sora shuddered and spat out a little bit of blood. His horn lit up with a whir, and he clambered off before magically thrusting her upright and then onto the desk, making sure her hind legs dangled over the edge that faced the unseen chair.

He sat in that chair and scooted it closer, until her pasterns made contact with his rear knees. She started to kick, only to yelp as her back legs were forced to part once again, this time nicking themselves against her own blades as they finally drew blood. Hooves planted themselves onto her back, right on the joints where wing met shoulder as the chair inched a little closer alongside the pony sitting in it. They pressed firmly, shooting yet more daggers of agony through her rattled nerves. Sora tried to kick again, but could only manage a slight jerk of her hind legs now, and struggled as her wings were forcibly spread by magic in a way the deadly primaries could not give so much as a scratch to her tormentor. She grit her teeth and shut her eyes, trying to block out what had come after.

Her mind went blank, yet still whirred in the fog of emptiness as yet another fresh wave of pain assaulted her from an entirely different angle. She refused to think about what it was, and simply put her remaining energy into keeping herself locked in a state of agonized apathy. All she could do was resign herself; she'd already been thrashed enough, and anymore struggling would just prolong the torture at this rate. Her body still fidgeted, but she let it do so, knowing full well that it was only reacting to the pain in a way her mind did not even wish to comprehend. The desk shook as her tormentor kept at it, and her nerves with it, again and again even after she lost count of the tremors.

The Admiral stopped when he realized that Sora gave little more than an uncomfortable shiver in response. He looked at the back of her head, and canted his, trying to figure out what was going wrong. He had her in his own front hooves, completely at his cruel mercies, immobilized with magic, and yet she seemed to ignore him entirely. It took him seconds to connect the dots: not one sound left his soldier's mouth after she'd been thrown onto the desk.

His horn lit up, and his magic seized her neck before its grip tightened to the point of cutting off her windpipe's air intake. She failed to yield, choosing to grind her teeth some more to keep herself from screaming. He pressed harder on her wings, and that failed to get a reaction out of her. Had he not known any better, he'd have very well assumed she had fainted on him just to spite him.

His magical grip tightened on her neck a little more. That did nothing to address the problem he now faced. Pulling back a bit, and inadvertently scooting his chair back in the process, caused her to give little more than a flicking of the ear. So he pushed forward again, chair and all, until he was mere millimeters behind Sora. Still no luck. Turning to her recent wounds, he pressed his magic into the cuts, yet this still did not make her react in the slightest.

He lifted her muzzle a bit, and found it turning a tinge of blue, before something else occurred to him. Finally figuring that, perhaps, she was saving her strength to take in as much air as she could, he let go, and for a moment she heaved and sucked in a desperate breath. Though after that, and a few smaller gasps that followed, she fell silent again.

Before he could ruminate on what to do to address Sora's silence, the projection light lit up of its own accord and formed a screen before his very eyes, though it was static-filled when it materialized. Startled, the Admiral lept back, then pushed his chair back whilst using his magic to cram his soldier beneath his desk, and a little extra to start forming a bubble around her head as a precaution.

He looked down at her and scoffed, seeing the screen start to clear. He took the opportunity to lean down as much as the desk would let him to whisper at Sora, "You're going to stay there for a few minutes, as something unprecedented has just come up. You won't be able to eavesdrop; sincere apologies, but I cannot risk having you fuck something else up in spectacular fashion, especially in my presence." That said, he lifted a back hoof and pressed it on her lower back, if to add nothing more than a side of humiliation atop her recent wounds.

He turned his attention back to the screen as the bubble finished forming around her skull, and his horn glowed brighter. Some of his magic held the screen, which finished clearing up within three and a half minutes and an irritated scowl crossed his face as Major Trinity once more greeted him on the other side. He scooted closer to see what the hell she wanted, noting that this time, she was standing on the open launch pad of all places.

But Trinity wasn't alone; with her was with an entire retinue of ponies who weren't in uniform, all arrayed in a line of no more than seven behind her. Five of these ponies had strange protrusions jutting from their backs, angled in a way he couldn't tell what they were, whilst the sixth had nothing of the sort at all. The seventh stood... he assumed behind Trinity, because he could not see the pony in question that well; just four stray hooves and little else. "This had better be important," the Admiral hissed sibilantly, noticing that Sora had started thrashing the moment the bubble engulfed her cranium.

"Well, sir, I hate to be the bearer of bad news," Trinity began, shaking her head grimly, "but the unmodified ponies of Aeverafree decided to drop by unexpectedly, and they've been waiting for hours. I caught them on the camera feed and cantered over to investigate. And get this—their leader wants to chat with you."

The Admiral's brow rose. "Diplomacy?" he asked, curiosity piqued. "Send the leader before the screen, but make it snappy. I'm not even half-done with a certain soldier yet." Trinity stepped aside and waved somepony over, and the Admiral assumed a neutral expression as somepony in the unprecedented, and quite unwelcome throng, stepped forward.

But even he found himself taken aback when he saw that the pony in question was a slender mare with a slate-grey coat and half-flared wings jutting from her sides, ending in natural primaries instead of the wicked blades ponies in the base possessed. Long locks of a silvery white mane trailed past her front knees, with some resting on her back. Eyes crimson as his stared, and a slender, spiral horn protruded from her forehead. "Who are you?" he found himself asking.

"I am Suguri," the bizarre pony diplomat replied, flapping her wings once, "and I assume you are the military leader of the Umbralium Corps?"

"That I am," the Admiral replied, giving Suguri a soft grin. "What need do you have of my business today? I had just about started filing something for the dockets very recently."

Suguri did not even blink at that. "I'm sure you were," she said blithely. Ignoring the fact that the Admiral's smile fell at her sarcasm, she went on with a proposal that gave him pause, "That being said, I do believe it is time we negotiated a truce of sorts." It took him seconds before he could answer, as a truce was not something he'd expected to have been proposed now of all times.

"A truce? But the Clash ended two years ago," the Admiral replied, frowning at that, taking little heed that Sora had continued struggling, perhaps sensing that he was very distracted. "Why in the seven hells do we need to establish a truce? And since when did you become the leader of the Aeverafree colony?"

Suguri's eyes narrowed by a small margin. "About the same time that Starbreaker dropped the colony a visit and decided to slaughter most of the previous Council, and that was before I arrived and chased her off," she replied caustically. "The reason we need to establish a truce is twofold: one, since the Aeverafree colony is effectively under new management, the new Council urged me to come to you and negotiate the terms of the truce, just so we can get to know each other a little better. Two, the sooner we can stop fighting and start working together, the better off all of our ponies, au naturale and modified, will be."

New management for Aeverafree, young-looking and as spry as a foal, offering a deal such as this, and freshly thrown into the leadership gig? An idea presented itself to him like a light bulb switching on. The Admiral nodded and smiled as the idea took shape in his head, figuring this was too good to pass up. "Would you and yours mind waiting in one of the guest wings, then? I am afraid I am… occupied at the moment," he stated coolly.

Suguri folded her wings shut and stood there, contemplating this for a few seconds. "Still need to get that filing in?" she guessed.

The Admiral nodded. "Yes, and a small pile of others just beneath it on my inbox," he stated. "I've been getting more paperwork as of late."

Suguri nodded back, seemingly unaware that something else was happening right beneath the Admiral's desk. "Sounds reasonable enough," she replied. "Very well then. I shall see you in the evening." With that, the projection shut off, and he sighed for a moment before registering the feeling of something still wiggling in his magic and under his hoof.

Grinning, he hefted Sora back onto the desk and flipped her so she faced him, and he noticed at once that her forehooves were tapping fruitlessly at the bubble encasing her head which seemed to be doing more than making sure she didn't eavesdrop. Her muzzle was fast turning a shade of blue, then it grew darker with alarming swiftness. "Air, air!" she mouthed over and over with urgency, though if she was speaking then no sound simply left the bubble. "I need to breathe!"

He sighed ruefully, realizing this was probably her third scream, and he couldn't hear a single note of it. He figured that this was all he'd get out of her today, and the bubble held her for just long enough, so he dispelled it and watched her heave as she tried to get air into her abused lungs once again. Besides, what good would it do to smear his hooves with her blood, with visiting diplomats already present and probably inside the base right now?

Sora flailed on his desk the moment she saw that he wasn't moving, front hooves racing to the wood and pawing desperately for purchase as she tried to scramble away. This time, the Admiral let her go, and watched as she helplessly flipped over, pulled herself across the wood surface bodily, only to then promptly tumble ass over teakettle to the floor.

Dragging herself to the door shortly thereafter, tail once again tucked between the legs, she twisted to glare at him the moment she got into the light that shined upon it. Granted, she now had a solid steel surface to support herself with as she hauled her body back up into a standing posture, shaken and yet still refusing to produce anything more than a labored and pained breathing. He had to admit, even with her life on the line she had spunk, and she had the good graces to not scratch a thing with her wings on the way to the door. Though, he wondered just why she was glaring at him, when she knew full well what waited for her here. Perhaps she held a grudge. Perhaps she'd reached a point to where she simply couldn't cry anymore, and he simply did not see that until today. He honestly cared not for her reasons, whatever they were.

"Still being insubordinate, are we now?" the Admiral asked with a chuckle, shaking his head disapprovingly at her. "You seem utterly determined to disobey every single command that has ever been given to you. Not even letting yourself cry is something that would be admirable, if you weren't a delinquent." Sora didn't say anything in response to that, for taking in deep breaths was a much bigger prerogative at the moment. She did not shed a tear still, but her reaction to being released told the Admiral all he'd needed to know.

"But, you have had a stroke of luck today." When lilac ears perked up at that, he elaborated, "Diplomats have come from Aeverafree to discuss a truce. As my presence and my presence alone had been requested of them, I am afraid I cannot have you entertain me for the rest of this night. Take your bell back. Consider yourself dismissed for the evening." He reached under the desk and pressed on something on its underside again, and Sora heard more clicks singing out and turned to the door as the bar slid out of the hooks. Heeding his advice, she knelt down and took the bell in her teeth before trudging out of his office with a noticeable limp in her gait, breathing laboriously as she went.

He did not scowl at her retreating form, nor at the door when it closed behind her. All he had to do was wait for Sora to commit another bout of insubordination, and he could continue where he left off. Hell, he might do more then, just for kicks. But given the unannounced arrival of Suguri and her little retinue, if she did indeed come with her own herd of ponies, this meant that he had to be a lot more careful about the timing from here on out. The timing, however, was something he could deal with. The projection light would let him know when and when not to take that risk.

After all, Sora may have had a lucky break and a solid reason to get out of her punishment early, though he had doubts her luck would hold out for long. She'd wound up in his office for a reason, and doubtless, she would probably end up in it again. It would only be a matter of time, given what little he managed to glean from her.

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

The halls of the Umbralium Corps were dubiously empty, from the top of the highest spire where the Admiral's office was at, right down through several floors straight to the medical ward. Sora's only company for the whole trip down a myriad of halls and elevators were the cameras stationed just about everywhere, their lens trained on her as she limped and descended floor after floor.

Sora had known she'd screwed her own case over the very instant she'd told the Admiral to check the camera feed. This was something, which in all honesty, she had expected him to do, although not for reasons that would support the rather inane claim that Takahara had punched himself to produce the black eye. She smothered a mask of neutrality on her face, even as a turmoil of anger and pain and guilt kicked up within. All she had to ask herself was this: what possessed her to think that such a thing was a good idea to tell that bastard?

At least there was nopony else present to see her limp along, favoring her front legs just a little more than her back ones, with the bell clenched firmly between her teeth. She bit down slightly harder when she shifted one of her sore wings a little, both to stop herself from further agitating that forming bruise, and to keep that mask of neutrality in place. Left to her own thoughts, she did the only thing she could: press on, and keep using the elevators. The abuse had been one thing; that she could very well handle, no matter the severity, as the Admiral himself had so simply put it. The humiliation, on the other hoof, was something she didn't want to endure for long. At least that part of her punishment was cut mercifully short.

Or was it, truly? Word had, surely, spread throughout the base by now of her little get-together with Starbreaker. So too would word, inevitably, spread that she had to drop by the Admiral's office. She shivered, agitating more bruises as she reached the medical ward, all of which were too happy to remind her of the torment she had to endure today. Something edged in her mind, creeping up, but she caught that thought and quickly smothered it before she even had the time to process it. No use ruminating about the past when it had already ran its course.

She limped as fast as she could to Starbreaker's room, and the door slid open to admit her. Yukito was present in the room, changing the bandages on Starbreaker's broken hoof with magical aid. Both turned to her, and both noticed her limp as she waded inside. Yukito finished redressing the hoof, eyes trained on Sora as she let her back knees give way. She'd fallen on her haunches and winced before shifting to close her hinds as much as possible, with her forehooves lifting up. "What happened?" he asked, watching as Sora took the bell out of her mouth and settled it back onto her neck with a suspicious bout of haste.

"Nothing," Sora lied the moment she set her front hooves down, frowning as Yukito's eyes narrowed a little.

"Sora… you're in pain. You trotted in with a slightly hunched posture, and your knees shook just before you sat down. I may not be that astute under normal conditions, but these are hardly normal conditions—even I just cannot dawdle and ignore something as obvious as that," Yukito stated in a firm voice, making a beeline for Sora with his horn aglow. "And your cheek is irritated, that much I can glean. Your feathers are singed at the tips, and… how did you cut your back legs?"

Sora flinched, but relented. "My limp was when Takahara grabbed me," she replied. "It must only be hurting now that I've trotted up and down the whole base. The cheek… I slipped and hit a slab of steel on accident. Cutting my back legs was also a result of the tripping, and..." she paused, thinking of something to explain away the singed feathers. "And… I grabbed a wire with my teeth, and accidentally severed it. It was made of copper, so… it gave me a nasty shock."

Yukito raised a brow at that. "A bruise? And a bout of tripping?" he repeated slowly. Sora nodded and lifted a forehoof again, straightening her front quarters ever so slightly to show him the bruise down below. He peered at it for a few seconds, then retracted with a sigh to scrutinize her cheek. Something about the swelling was off; it was almost too uniform to have come from a bout of falling. Still, if she landed on a bar of steel, then that would have probably been why.

Taking a peek at her back legs, he found the cuts had scabbed over; she was already healing. "It'll all heal in a few days, just don't do anything to make it worse. It's turned almost black between your hinds, your cuts appear to be shallow, the feather damage and the swelling is minimal so I wouldn't recommend prodding at any of those too much. Though, I would probably clean the blood off if I were you."

"Can do," Sora replied with a satisfactory nod. She heaved an internal sigh of relief as Yukito tottered off to tend to Starbreaker again. But that inner sigh halted, only half-exhaled when she saw technicolor eyes narrow.

"That does it," Starbreaker hissed, eyes still affixed on Sora as Yukito unwrapped her broken back leg to check its progress. "Once I get better, only I will be allowed to hurt you. And I will probably set you on fire, too!"

Sora nodded and proceeded to roll her eyes at that originative declaration. It wasn't as if Starbreaker could do anything now, with what her being effectively tied to the ceiling. Still, she decided to rise to the bait. "Alright, Starbreaker, if you want to play that way, we'll play that way. If you do, though…" She lifted a hoof and gestured to the bell with it, "Then I'll be more than happy to invert my shield on you all over again."

Starbreaker flinched at that, and her eyes flashed red at the implications. "You wouldn't," she hissed, an eye starting to twitch.

"I did it when you tried to turn the planet into a scorching hellscape. I'll do it again if it comes down to that," Sora answered in a clipped tone. "Just warning you now."

"Now, now, fillies," Yukito interjected, getting incredulous looks from the two, "please behave."

Sora rolled her eyes yet again. "Eh, how about no? As long as the Admiral's running the Corps, I'll do the exact opposite of behaving, thank you very much," she stated blithely.

Yukito sighed. "Is it because he had ordered your wings be modified when you got drafted, like so many pegasi before you?" he asked.

Sora nodded. "That, and doing next to nothing when Starbreaker punched a hole in the base from outside," she added.

"Speaking of…" Starbreaker started to grin now. "Is that hole still there?"

Sora shook her head. "Once the Clash of the Sky ended, they pretty much repaired it. I went and checked it out a few months ago," she replied. "It's airtight now."

Starbreaker's grin fell and she crossed her forelegs as best as she could. "Damnit," she hissed. The grin returned a second later. "I guess I'll just punch another hole somewhere else, once I get my magic back."

Sora heaved a tired sigh and got up. "I'm going to the barracks, namely its showers. See you guys tomorrow," she said, and with that she trotted out of the door, still limping on her way out. She heard Yukito mumble something about tomorrow, but didn't catch even half of it. Even bodyguards needed their rest, and so long as Starbreaker wasn't getting into any trouble, she figured she could leave her alone for the rest of the night.

Besides, Sora herself needed some time to get cleaned up and take a nap. "You shouldn't have lied like that," a small voice in her conscious said, its words echoing harshly about in her head. "Starbreaker looked like she didn't buy your excuse for one second, and she's been living under a damn rock so thick she didn't understand the concept of molestation at first. And that's sad." She shook her head, and smothered that small voice before it could go any further.

Making haste to descend to the next floor, she winced when the elevator at this end of the hall took her to the floor below… into another hall filled with ponies trotting out of a myriad of rooms. The stallions of the procession were sporting armor plates and the mares were clad in outfits similar in build to hers, although most did not have wings, and so did not have holes in their outfits' backsides. A few turned to her and took notice as she groaned and joined them in their throng.

"Don't make eye contact don't make eye contact don't make eye contact…" she mentally rambled. Unfortunately for her, a unicorn mare in front of her did just that, this one sporting the most distant and dull set of grey eyes she had ever seen. Her dull beige coat and stone-grey mane did little more than accentuate it.

"What did you get in the Admiral's office for?" the mare asked, in a tone as flat and lifeless as her eyes. Sora quickly got the impression she'd found herself staring at a trotting, talking doll.

Sora groaned. Word spread faster than she'd thought… though then again, she was summoned via a loudspeaker. She supposed she should not have been surprised if the announcement shook the whole damn base to its foundations. "I failed another mission," she answered simply, and chose to leave it at that.

Much to her annoyance, the unicorn pressed on. "What mission?" she asked.

"You didn't partake in it. It's none of your concern," Sora stated, shaking her head.

"I was deployed two weeks ago," the mare argued.

"I got deployed a week after," Sora shot back. She looked away to her left… and to another mare sporting dulled eyes, and promptly glanced to her right, straight into another vapid gaze that seemed to look past her. The more she looked at her fellow ponies, the more she realized that sets of dull eyes were trained on her with the subtlety of automatons wearing patched pony flesh. With few options left, Sora averted her eyes just a little to the ceiling, directing most of her attention and her gaze back forward.

Not even three seconds after, somepony poked her on the withers. She turned to the offender, finding a pegasus stallion staring back at her with a slight smirk. One look at her withers confirmed that he had used blades to prod without drawing blood, and she turned back to his face, noting that his eyes were anything but dull. "Alright, what do you want?" she hissed.

The stallion canted his head. "So, what was that mission you screwed up on?" he asked.

Sora promptly looked ahead and slightly up again, noticing the leaders of the herd vanishing, followed instantly by those right behind them. "I don't want to talk about it," she mumbled, hoping that would at least deter the parade of queries she was sure she'd have otherwise received.

The stallion prodded at her withers again as the herd kept going down, and asking questions Sora tuned out as they found themselves following the herd onto a massive flight of stairs that was descending. The other soldiers chimed in, but the cavalcade went in her right ear and out the torn left. She kept herself focused on just following the herd to its destination. The flight curved slowly on itself, not quite like a spiral staircase in that its resulting loops were larger and more ovoid, and it spanned a hefty twenty yards before ending in a hall which diverged in a smooth T-intersection.

To the left, a sign that read 'stallion barracks and showers' hung on the wall. Directly next to it on the right, another sign reading 'mare barracks and showers' had likewise been affixed to the wall. It was at this point the crowd divided, and Sora veered with the other mares. She groaned as she realized it didn't get her away from everypony, but made no more nonverbal complaints since at least half the herd was going to stop bugging her for the night.

The hall she, and several other mares took led to a set of large double-doors that had already been flung open, in turn leading to another hallway lined with bunk beds galore, ending in yet another set of double doors some sixty yards down. The walls were concrete, and so was the floor. A rectangular clock that displayed the time in a black canvas with neon green lights hung above the second set of double doors, and a lot of the beds themselves had fresh mattresses that could only be seen because a corner of the sheets weren't tucked in just right. Blankets were neat, tidy, and perfectly made up onto the beds which upon they sat. The bunks were spaced evenly apart, just enough to allow ponies to climb in and out of them as needed.

A myriad of chests lined the foot of every bunk, in pairs. More than three dozen strange devices fitted with turbo engines affixed onto crude wings hung above the beds, dull in color like the airships and further affixed with small engines that protruded between the wings like a deranged tumor. A lot of these machines were sporting looped hooks for some purpose that Sora couldn't grasp, and as with the chests, many of them came in pairs above the beds. Innumerable ponies went to various beds and started undressing, crudely throwing their clothes off and kicking the chests open to dump them inside. Sora trotted past the throng, to the far end of the room, ignoring everypony else as she searched for one bed in particular.

The bed was at the leftmost portion of the barracks' end, next to the second set of double doors, and it was here she'd stopped and turned. It wasn't a bunk, either, nor did it have a strange machine dangling above it. This bed only had one chest, and its blanket was haphazardly thrown onto the floor. The mattress had several deep gashes, letting more than a few springs loose, and had a myriad of rust red stains that Sora did not bother thinking about. The pillow was barely holding together, bleeding cotton and riddled with a myriad of dark splotches. The chest at its foot was dusty, and splintered with age. Sora kicked it open and started to undress herself, wincing when she had to angle her wings a certain way to avoid tearing up her outfit.

Removing the rest of the garment after her coat and shirt had been stupidly easy. She folded them up nice and tidy and laid them in one pile in the chest, and tenderly put her boots and bell atop it before looking into the chest proper. Aside from her clothes, it was barren, unless one counted the cobwebs and dust that had taken residence in the lid's underside as possessions. She took a chance to peek at a fellow soldier's chest as she got naked, without actually moving to her, and her blood began to boil as she saw a myriad of gleaming medals hanging from the underside of the lid. One depicted an explosion, and another had a quartet of stars. Sora looked away before the other soldier could take notice, and took a breath and closed her chest to cool herself off. She glanced at the clock shortly thereafter.

"19:55…" Sora groused, mentally doing a calculation for a moment. "7:55 in the evening… late again. Wouldn't be the first time." That said, she trotted over to pick up the blanket with her mouth, which had a scratchy, frayed feel that irritated her tongue as she then flapped it until it rested more or less evenly upon the bed.

The double doors leading into the room opened once blanket reunited with mattress, and a feminine voice barked out in a no-nonsense tone so strong the owner seemed to possess a contralto for a moment, "Atten-tion! Line up, nice and straight, you miserable cunts! Tails high, heads higher! I do not want to see so much as a horn or a feather out of place!" Chests slammed shut, ponies raced to stand before the beds, and after that legs became rigid. Even Sora had been compelled to obey the spoken command, wings tucked tightly at her sides. It didn't take more than four minutes for twin lines to form, one on either side of the room, gazes facing forward and faces entirely neutral.

Only when complete silence reigned did hoofsteps encroach, starting in a slow, controlled walk with a very specific rhythm to it. The owner took three steps, then stopped for a tense few seconds. Only when she gave a snort did the three-time beat start, then cease once again. The owner did not speak one word as the walk-stop routine kept up for what had felt like an eternity.

The owner of the rhythm trotted into Sora's peripheral view, then directly in between her and the two mares opposite of her bed in the course of ten punctual minutes. She recognized a white coat and that lashing purple tail straight away, and cold orange eyes swept to the ponies on the owner's right. Major Trinity gazed at the pair for a few seconds, before she turned and that baleful gaze fell onto Sora. They stared off for well over a minute, with Trinity doing her best to incinerate Sora on the spot with her glare alone.

"All of you other bitches, hit the showers. Private Sora, I want a word with you," Trinity hissed in a voice that brokered no argument. Slowly, the other soldiers obeyed, heading to the second pair of double doors and around the Major with as careful of trots as they could muster. More than one set of eyes glanced at Sora on their way; dull, lifeless, and yet filled with a sense of genuine wonder.

They may as well have stamped 'What did you do now?' onto their hips, all of which were devoid of cutie marks—whether the hips were natural, or nothing more than mechanical parts trying to pass off as such. When she and the Major were left entirely alone, and the sound of running water hit their ears, neither budged for a few long seconds, and all the while red slowly creeped up onto Trinity's face.

Trinity closed the distance, and her horn lit up in an orange glow. In a flash of light, a riding crop had been procured into existence. "I've asked you once. I'll ask you again: why did you spare that psychopath?" she hissed coldly.

Sora decided she had, almost, thrown Starbreaker under the airship once. She wasn't going to do that again. So she asked something in turn, "Major, I was aiming to find out Starbreaker's motive for her attempt to destroy the world; is that wrong?"

Major Trinity's eyes bugged out, and she took a step back. Red still painted her features, but it receded a little as she weighed the counter-question. The corners of her lips twitched slightly. "A… motive…" she parroted, letting those two little words sit on her tongue.

Sora nodded and went for the jugular, "Yes. Doesn't every war criminal have that? You and I share Starbreaker's boat; the difference between you, her and I is that I'm not insane."

Major Trinity's lips continued to twitch, and her left eye joined in when she'd realized what Sora had told her, to her face no less. Her chest started to heave at the incredulity of it. She tossed her head back, and a hideous laughter that was high-pitched, echoing, shrill to the point of being akin to a series of horrid screams that coalesced into one orchestra assaulted Sora's ears.

This laugh managed to reach a very high C-note, one that made the beds and chests shake and the machines rattle against the walls as it rebonded again and again with the force of a thunderclap that caused everything to ping noisily about. It kept on for some time, but Sora dared not lift a hoof to shield her ears as the demented cackling went on and on and on until she was certain she'd have a migraine on top of her other problems come morning. She could've sworn the face of the clock cracked during the howling.

Only when the laughter ended some impressive five minutes later, had Trinity leveled a firm glare back at Sora, though now her face was redder and an amused smile crossed her lips. She waited until the hapless pegasus recovered from almost going deaf before her mouth opened. "Private, I gotta hoof it to you, that actually tickled me positively pink for a moment," she stated in a cruel tone with a distinct note of appraisal about it.

Sora took a moment to rub her temples, a headache already starting to build, staring into Trinity's eyes with as level an unblinking gaze as she could muster. She made a mental note to talk to Yukito tomorrow and see if he could hork up some medicine for the eardrum-bashing she'd just received. "Ma'am, damning me with praise won't get you anywhere," she said in a tone flat enough to come off as apathetic. "Just cut to the point already, so we can both go on with our monotonous lives, thank you."

Major Trinity's smirk fell at that remark. She elected to whap Sora across the face with the riding crop, just once so she'd know who was in charge here. Sora barely even flinched, and did not blink, having already endured worse that day. "Well sounding like a smartass won't get you anywhere either, you miserable reprobate," she shot back. "I'm amazed you ain't gone glassy-eyed like all of the other bitches in these here barracks."

"Unlike them, I still happen to give a shit," Sora rebutted, again in that apathetic tone. That earned her another smack of the crop, this time on her temple. Again, she barely twitched in acknowledgement to it. Major Trinity leaned in close and canted her head, grinning once again.

"Oh, do you now? Then why do you disobey almost every damn order we give you?" Trinity hissed back, looking deep into Sora's eyes in a manner that suggested there was a smudge on her soul. "The more you obey, the happier you'll be; that's just how it works here."

"Because you and yours are cruel, heartless sons and daughters of immoral whorses who don't know the names of your daddies," Sora thought. Out loud, without faltering or blinking, she said, "Because most of your orders are simply unethical, and inequine on top of that. And I have not been happy for a long time now, so don't try to rub that on me."

"Unethical? Inequine?" Major Trinity leaned back, ears perked to attention. She ignored Sora's second remark and pressed on, "Oh, please, what is so unethical about what we do?"

"You take away other ponies' futures through wanton slaughter and modifications galore," Sora replied, eyes narrowing a little. She got smacked again, on the bridge of her snout. "In some cases, you remove the ability to earn cutie marks outright!" Another slap. She pressed on regardless, "And in others still, their ability to act of their own accord! Isn't all of that inherently wrong on some level?"

Major Trinity kept glaring at Sora. "You're only telling yourself all that, so you can sleep at night!" she hissed. Then she took notice of her soldier's failure to blink, and her pupils shrank a little at that.

Sora shook her head, seeing Major Trinity was now gabbling for a shred of any cohesive argument to counter her rebuttal. Thus, she decided to end the argument, and tersely at that. "Whatever floats your boat," she stated coldly.

Major Trinity howled, and slapped Sora once more—with her hoof, and enough force to knock her to the concrete floor. Her eyes remained open, and gravitated to stare at her orange pools the moment she'd fallen. Trinity's coat bristled at her withers as that gaze of green continued to judge her. Slowly, almost robotically at that, Sora rose to stand, and they were eye to eye before long. The Major saw something shifting in those pools of green, something which caused her blood to surge and her mind to scream, "Just get the hell away from this mare!" She snuffed out that voice and only hardened her gaze, but Sora nonetheless caught something shifting in the Major's orange eyes as well.

"Get your ass scrubbed clean. You'll be hauling crates tomorrow, with that fucking mouth of yours gagged, since you apparently can't keep it shut!" she barked indignantly. Sora trotted to the showers, letting the smallest of smug grins cross her muzzle the instant her back was turned to the commanding officer. Having to haul crates whilst gagged sounded almost laughable, compared to the punishments the Admiral was all too happy to hoof out. And some small part of her liked that she managed to goad Trinity's goat in the process.

The sense of schadenfreude, however tactical and utterly satisfying, did not last.