Sora showered, dried off, and went to sleep in relatively short order. She got up, kicked aside her blankets for the morning routine, threw her uniform on and trotted up the flight of stairs with the rest of the herd as they did the same. The questions flooded the halls, though this time Sora ignored them altogether. Some part of her thought it was useless to even try answering them, though the downside was that her fellow soldiers' mouths kept running two miles a minute. They noticed her silence, and she noticed their rather animated chatter, but there had been a proverbial fence erected, and she stayed on the emptier side of it.

The herd went up the stairs, diverged through the multitude of doors that followed, and Sora had made another beeline to the elevators again. She ignored the dull throbs of pain shooting through her nerves, figuring it was no excuse to worm her way out of whatever Major Trinity had planned for her that involved crates and gags. The sooner she got it over with, the better, and the sooner she could babysit Starbreaker afterward.

Sora did not stop by the medical ward. Rather, she had the elevator take her as far up as it could go, which was the open launch pad. "Just act normal," she told herself as the elevator took her to her destination. A frown crossed her features when she'd realized Major Trinity neglected to tell her where to meet up at, and as Sora wasn't exactly a mind reader, this presented a bit of a problem. What if Trinity wasn't on the launch pad, or worse yet, was in the city herself? Hell, what if she avoided her deliberately, just to send her on a wild goose chase and further ladle on the punishments? Taking the elevator to the launch pad would let her fly around and perform a quick aerial search if such proved to be the case. Some small part of her was grateful to have wings that functioned. As her mind wandered, she thought of Yukito, namely the look on his face as she lied to him.

Bruises, cuts, a swelling and a limp, she could explain away, if all went according to plan and she could chat with Yukito later today as she had yesterday. A possibly-broken wing? Not so much, unless she'd said 'flying accident,' as that was the only remotely-plausible thing she could come up with to even justify such an injury. She assumed a neutral look as the elevator stopped and opened, revealing the launch pad waiting for her. Oddly, Trinity was present and accounted for, and so were a small retinue of fellow pegasi, each twice as tall as her with even larger and nastier blades to match. A few of them had been harnessed to wood carriages reinforced with steel, all of which would have looked decent if not for the extra gaudy addition of hideous puke-green filigree flecked with sparkles. The carriages were filled to the brim with goodies, such that she could see the piles from the few windows therein.

There was an extra carriage, standing by its lonesome at the far edge of the platform, and it was even gaudier than the rest as its wood was painted in black and white stripes which only accentuated the filigree and its sparkles. Its wheels were painted an almost blinding pink in color, and its equally-tacky harness, sporting a garishly neon-rainbow design, was laying down on the pad empty. It's doors were its worst feature, for it sported a horrifically blinding paint of blazing gold, with added decor of gemstones that would have looked far better framing somepony's hairdo. The gems were a myriad of browns, blacks, and silvers—there wasn't a single thing that was complementary about it. Strangely, it rattled a little, as if somepony was trapped inside. Unsure of what to make of that development, she trotted out of the elevator, wings tucked tightly at her sides.

"Aerial delivery in that tacky thing? With something making a ruckus within? Are you kidding me?" she mentally complained, eyes squinting in an effort to keep themselves from going blind as a result of staring at the vehicular monstrosity. "Calm down, Sora. Maybe the bitch stashed the crates in that thing…"

Trinity eyed her as she marched up to the carriage, grinning cruelly as she worked herself into the harness the moment she had reached the vehicle. She only trotted over once the harness had been secured, and her delinquent chanced a glance over her shoulder to see box-like shapes stashed within the ugly carriage. Her horn lit up, and in a burst of light a few straps of cloth materialized next to her. The cloth had gold hooks connecting each strap into a simple web, with a slightly more complex cylindrical shape on the front, and each strip thankfully was a simple grey in color. Its centerpiece, no doubt, was a bright red ball that held four of the straps that formed the cylindrical shape together with the aid of slots and yet more hooks.

Before Sora could even turn her gaze back around, the straps had seized her face. Startled, she shrieked and flapped her wings once, before an orange glow grasped her by the head to force her mouth to stay open and keep still. Once the ball slotted itself between her teeth, she closed her wings and folded her ears as strap by strap secured itself around her skull and muzzle. The work was swift, painless, and professional; this was one of the things Sora simply could not fault Trinity for. Though, she had to dock points for using an actual gag; that, she decided, was unprofessional in itself.

The Major backed off, eyeing her handiwork, the wicked smirk still affixed on her muzzle as she took in how Sora's mouth was now corked shut. She did a quick once-over on the harness, tightening and loosening straps as needed before doing likewise to the tack she had affixed upon Sora's face. Then, she conjured a clipboard with a piece of paper affixed to it in a flash of light and hoofed it over to her now-gagged soldier.

Sora studied it for a long moment, finding herself looking at a list scrawled in impeccable writing. "You're gonna be going quite a ways around the city today, filly," Trinity muttered, garnering a reluctant nod in response. "I'll expect you to deliver all those crates to their destinations, contents and boxes without one scratch on them. Fuck up even once, and… suffice to say, you and I both know what'll happen if you do."

Sora heard the words, understood their meaning, but dared not let her gaze move away from the list that was shoved in front of her. She had to memorize the destinations, after all, and shivered as Trinity went on in a monotonous droll, "You will not acknowledge anypony unless you are delivering a parcel straight to their locales. You will not stab anypony, no matter what they do. They could fucking mount you or break that damned jaw of yours for all I care, and you will not shake them off if they do. Take this punishment in stride, Private." The next two words came out in a sibilant hiss, "That understood?"

Sora nodded, and a lump formed in her throat. She dared not swallow it, instead continuing to memorize the list until Trinity pulled it away. Then orange magic seized her by the mane and tugged, forcing her to look up at her superior. "You will not come back until dusk and that damned carriage is empty. You break a leg or a wing, that's on you," Trinity hissed. She let go. "Now get that perky little ass of yours moving, Private." Sora turned and started to flap her wings, before trotting around to pick up momentum with which to lift the carriage. She did not dally, launching as she completed a lap. She flew, slowly, above the great wall that seperated the city from the base, and scanned carefully for her first destination.

The carriage continued to shake as she descended. Sora figured there was a pack of rats throwing a hissyfit amidst the cargo, but ignored it as she could not address that here and now.

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

The ponies who were trotting upon a busy street of the city all wrinkled their noses collectively as a noisy, gaudy, rattling carriage landed smoothly onto the pavement, its pony not even pausing to catch her breath as she broke out into a brisk trot the moment she landed. "It's that rogue bitch," a stallion muttered as Sora closed her wings and went right past him. "Why the hell didn't the Admiral just put some bullets through her head? Why's she still working her tail off for the damned army?"

"Look, her mouth's corked," a mare noted as she reached an intersection and promptly rounded the leftmost corner. "What did she do now?"

"Musta talked back. Who she pissed off, I don't know," another mare chimed in as the carriage wheeled and rattled along past her. "And damn, she has some delicious-looking hips!"

Somepony else audibly did something to the third pony that ended in a sharp, piercing thud. "Fine-looking she may be, I hear she ain't nothing but trouble. I'd feel sorry for whoever decides to even look under her tail," the fourth pony, their voice sounding vaguely mare-like, remarked. "And she'll need to have her mane trimmed. In my opinion, those locks are too long."

"Just… ignore them," Sora mentally muttered with a wary sigh leaving her nostrils. "It's just a bunch of words leaving mouths. Harmless as a house fly…" Still, she picked up the pace a little, well aware of the attention she was already getting. It never sat well with her whenever ponies remarked about things like her rear end, but she comforted herself with the fact that, as long as it was merely spoken words, there was no real damage done. She couldn't have stopped the chatter anyway; the moment she stepped out of line, the chatter would amplify a thousandfold and then promptly descend on her and word would reach Trinity… and all that would end up in something she did not want to think about any longer.

She still had to remain Starbreaker's bodyguard, and as this punishment was fairly simple to carry out, she obeyed so that no harm would come to her charge. Besides, this was the closest place where she could get her needed medical treatment at all. She idly wondered how Yukito was dealing with her now, but shook the thought out of her head to focus on her current task. She eyed the buildings carefully, noting that they were built of highly reflective glass and steel that gleamed so much it would probably blind her if the sun rested at a certain point in the sky, which fortunately it did not for the time being.

Some part of her wondered how ponies could stand to live in such a place, and though she acknowledged that she wasn't the architect behind this madness that called itself a city, she still wanted to find and strangle that bastard one of these days. But, the buildings were so eerily similar that deviations such as signposts, trash cans, and even the ponies going in and out of them were few and far in between. She couldn't be bothered to note coat colors and mane colors; to her, the inhabitants may well have been aliens, or perhaps background noise compacted into a crowd. Which, in all fairness they sort of were in the sense that she didn't really get to know them all that well.

Sora preferred it like that. Poor bastards may as well have tried getting in her way, but fortunately they didn't bother her beyond the occasional crass remark and warning other ponies not to get themselves involved with her, and she did not bother them in turn. The less dallying, the fewer distractions, the better. All in all, this was an ideal arrangement. Her eyes, in her state of ruminating, almost missed a sign ablaze in tasteless neon, yet she halted in her tracks and did a double-take before she could waltz past it.

She studied the sign for a second, and took note of several other features which popped out as she examined them. This building to which this sign was attached had carpeted stairs, an overhang shielding them with small barber poles connected with loose cloth ribbons situated under them and put in a straight line. The sign was shaped oddly, sporting a small windmill at its front that span in front of two pairs of bright red ailerons. A pony dressed in a sharp servant's garb stood at the front of the building, eyes drooped as though he were bored out of his mind. "Bingo," she thought with a nod of approval, "first stop: Red Barrel Suite…" She trotted to the Suite, more specifically the pony waiting in front of it, making sure to not bump into anypony else as she went.

The servant pony looked up and blinked rather languidly as Sora made her way to him. "Oh… it's you," he muttered dismally, nose wrinkling and eyes squinting as he stared at her. "I take it you're the one with the parcels of towelettes?"

"Towelettes?" Sora mentally grumbled incredulously, though nonetheless she nodded her head. The servant pony nodded back and trotted around her, flinging open the carriage door with a hoof and peering inside, which oddly caused the rattling to cease. He stepped inside, rummaged through the cargo, and trotted back out in short order with a stack of small wooden boxes bearing paper labels being balanced precariously atop his backside. He gently kicked the door shut, thankfully leaving nary a scratch or a scruff in his wake. He plopped the cargo he took on the ground, and wrenched open the boxes with his hooves, revealing a whole collection of pearly white towels all folded and stacked neatly.

The servant closed the boxes after the cargo passed his inspection. Turning to Sora, he lifted a hoof and made a series of flicking motions with it. "Ah, yes, the highest quality. Toddle along now, you low-class whorse," he stated, without so much as a grain of appraisal in his voice. Sora nodded again and trotted off, nostrils flaring as she took a deep breath.

"Sticks and stones, sticks and stones…" she mentally muttered, and as she turned down another bend, this time on her right, apathy immediately took hold again. Her wings spread, began flapping, and as she rounded another corner she took to the air, making sure to fly just low enough she could pinpoint the next locale of delivery. Behind her, the cargo wagon started to shake again, which perplexed Sora. She angled her body a little, in turn tilting the carriage, to see if that could get it to stop in the event there was something about to fall apart.

She did not hear the carriage do anything more than rattle. Her brow furrowed, and she righted herself again, wondering if Trinity had given her a faulty wagon on purpose. Honestly, she'd be more surprised if that wasn't the case. Perhaps some cargo was loose and flailing around… which would earn her another trip to a certain office she wanted no part of. But if the cargo was loose, then she'd have felt some manner of reverberation through her harness by now, and that servant pony might have probably noticed it when he took his look-see. She doubted he was even aware of it, but considered that he was possibly only acting like such, and a creeping sense of wrongness took hold as she ruminated on this.

Turning down a couple of more streets, she gave a grimace as more carriage-haulers greeted her. Some, she noted, sported turbine engines instead of bladed wings in front of them, and all of them were compacted into four lines at a cross-intersection above the street that filled the gaps between the buildings tightly. Half of the lines faced the opposite way of the other side; in her case, she was facing forward, while the throng of carriages to her immediate left faced where her tail was pointing. In the center of the throng, letting carriages come and go was a quartet of pegasus ponies who hovered above them, each holding signs in their front hooves and directing the flow of traffic.

"Just great, rush hour…" Sora mentally groaned as she languidly got in line, taking the time to facehoof. Though, traffic moved faster than she'd expected, thanks to the ponies directing it, which let her keep the momentum of her ugly vehicle in check. She chanced a glance down, seeing something similar play out on the ground, again with four ponies directing that flow too. She looked back up and proceeded through the throng as fast as the line would let her move, ears folding back as she got closer to the quartet directing its flow. Still, she meandered on, waiting for when she'd get the signal to go ahead and carry on with her task.

The ponies directing the flow of traffic gave her wary stares as one of them bade her to go on ahead. Sora nodded to them and flew on, content to get as far away from traffic as she could. Going higher than the rest of the carriage-drivers would probably blind her temporarily, as the sun continued to climb the sky and cast more and more of its light on the buildings all around. This was a risk she could not afford, so she simply kept herself in as low a profile as she could manage—easier said than done, given how sorely her vehicle stuck out like a set of natural primaries in these parts.

She glanced down after she rounded another corner on the left, and sighed. She had a feeling today was going to be a long one.

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Starbreaker grumbled, watching as Yukito pulled her patient's gown down to her hind legs and carved into her chest with a scalpel. Her impromptu operator had taken to surrounding her with black and blue photos of a ribcage and shoulder blade of somepony who had a casing of… some sort of substance covering said ribcage. It was only thanks to the molding she could even determine what was on the photos; the molding was identical to a set of natural ribs down to the curvature and gap formation, but even then it appeared muzzy.

She didn't feel a thing as he injected anesthesia into her with a myriad of needles held in his magical glow, nor as he pried apart her skin, a very thin layer of fatty tissue with meager bits of muscle and fur to unravel what lay beneath. His brows climbed up his forehead as doing this revealed a layer of blackened metal that hugged her ribcage tightly enough to have been molded in its very shape. He noted it was dented in places, but had yet to puncture.

"... so you're a modified unicorn… guess that explains why your x-rays came out strange," Yukito noted, a curiousness in his tone as he spoke. He promptly closed the cavity and conjured a sewing hook-shaped needle and surgical thread to hold it shut. Looking Starbreaker in the eye as thread after thread was woven into her skin, he queried in a level voice, "How in the hell are you still alive?"

Starbreaker promptly snorted. "Bring out a torch and scald me," she replied. "Go ahead—I dare you."

Yukito's brows went higher, until they reached the base of his horn. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" he queried sincerely.

"Just do it," Starbreaker replied with exasperation in her voice, coupled with an assured nod. "I'll burn you later for it, though." Yukito groaned and lifted a hoof to rub his muzzle as he took the time to conjure a wad of cloth to scrub off what little blood had seeped out during the procedure. When that was done, he made his tools vanish with a nod of reluctance.

"If this harms you, I'll have to perform surgery to address that…" Yukito warned. When Starbreaker nodded back, he groaned and lit up his horn to conjure a very weak ember. "This really isn't one of my best spells…" Carefully, he lowered the tip of his horn onto her chest, just under the spot where he'd made his incision. The flame flickered as it came into contact with fur and flesh, dancing ever so slightly… yet it did not do anything. The fur did not catch so much as one spark, the skin that held it failed to char, and if he had to hazard a guess the metal beneath that did not even melt in the slightest.

Starbreaker, probably due to being numbed for the initial procedure, did not flinch at all. She eyed that tiny spark caressing her fur and smiled, before lifting her good hoof to gently cup it like a mother would her foal. That made the flame burn brighter, and her eyes twinkled in delight as the meager blaze covered just a little more of her fur. "It's… so precious," she muttered appraisingly, watching the spark with interest. "So much… destructive potential." The spark flickered, and she added, "But… by itself, it can't do anything. This little flame… is so helpless…"

Yukito sighed and let his horn dim, figuring he had entertained Starbreaker's passion for fire and her bizarre request long enough. The spark of flame promptly died, and he pulled his head back. Starbreaker, likewise, put down her hoof to let him examine the patch of fur he had tried to torch to no avail. "It's… it shouldn't be…" he muttered, eyes going wide. He turned to the good hoof and lit his horn up again, resummoning that tiny spark and trotting around to trail it up and down her foreleg. Then, he tried her mane, her face, and her neck, all of which yielded the same result. He let the spark die again, making sure to avoid torching her bandages, and took a step back, his mind boggling.

"Y-you should have caught fire, or at the very least, your mane and fur should have shriveled by now…" he muttered, shaking his head as his pupils shrank. "Even a small flame could manage that much… Unless…" He gulped and trotted forward again, steeling himself and taking a deep breath to collect himself. "Do you… remember how you were… modified?"

Starbreaker's smile fell, and her eyes narrowed. "Yes," she sibilantly hissed. "Every. Single. Moment of it."

Yukito frowned. "Could you… tell me what your fur and flesh are made of?" he asked slowly.

Starbreaker lifted her hoof and tapped her chin idly, trying to scrounge from memory. After a few minutes, she shook her head. "Nopony would tell me. Then again, you couldn't ask the ponies who did this if you tried," she muttered grimly.

Yukito's brow furrowed as a mental picture began forming in his head. "You burned them, didn't you?" he asked.

Starbreaker nodded and dropped her hoof, smiling again. "Until they were bones. I crushed the bones with my bare hooves after," she chirped. She gestured to where her cutie mark was under the gown and added, "Here's the funny thing: I didn't know it until the day after, but by then I'd already gotten my mark." Yukito rolled his eyes and conjured the scalpel again. Her smile widened a little more.

"In that case, would you mind terribly if I took samples for testing? You don't know what you're made of that's fireproof, and you killed the ponies who did know, so… I'm afraid I am left with little option," Yukito muttered, suppressing the urge to facehoof.

Starbreaker nodded and extended her hoof. "Go ahead," she replied. Yukito nodded and swiftly cut away a square of fur and flesh on her chest, and made sure to scrape off a few flakes of metal to deposit onto a cloth rag that he conjured prior to summoning the needle and thread to sew that new hole shut. When that was done, he lopped off a few strands of mane and settled those on the rag as well, for good measure.

"Stay there for a few minutes," Yukito instructed. At Starbreaker's nod and groan, he added, "I'll not be long." With that, his horn flared and he vanished in a flash of light, rag and all. She laid back and sighed, lifting her hoof to play with her mane since that was all she could do. Curling it around and around to alleviate her boredom, her mind started to wander.

"That little purple-faced… ooooh, she just makes me mad… first takes my power, then seals it off…" Her eyes flashed red as she thought of Sora. Her hoof started trying to rip her own mane out. "If only I could torch her! Maybe I'll melt those damned teats clean off, and then those blades next! And that bell too…" As she ruminated on how to deal Sora a dose of retribution, each thought decidedly more dangerous and hectic than the last, she failed to notice how much time was flying.

"But… why did she…" It was here her mental ramblings halted, for she struggled to come up with a word with which to describe the moment four cloaked ponies fell over dead. Eventually, she managed to come up with something, though it nowhere near fit what had happened then, "Why did she take me away from… from those ponies, and to a place where she doesn't want anypony else seeing me here? Just what is her deal? Had she gone weird in the head too?"

Continuing to ruminate on Sora's erratic behavior as of late, her mind once again stalled as she tried to conjure words which fit them. Alas, she couldn't, largely because Yukito teleported back into the room with his mane frizzed and his pupils the size of pinpricks. "U-um… I f-found what y-you're made of," he managed, snapping her out of her reverie.

Starbreaker's eyes reverted back to their standard rainbow. "What?" she asked, canting her head.

"... just… this will sound strange…" Yukito took a deep breath to gather himself, and conjured a whole stack of papers in a flash of light. The stack was no thicker than the very tip of his hoof, and he lifted it to his face to start shuffling through it. "Your mane is made of flannel, infused with synthetic, blue fibers of asbestos and real hair. However, it feels entirely real to the touch. Your coat, made of a mixture of regular wool, stone wool and flannel, again infused with more asbestos and real fur. Do you follow?"

Starbreaker shrugged. "I don't see what this has to do with anything…" she admitted earnestly.

"Flannel and both variants of wool are effectively fireproof, and I'd wager that those fabrics have been reinforced by other synthetic materials, since your hide is still very much intact," Yukito replied. "Same with your skin in the fire-retardant aspect, which I found to be… vinyl and silicone, once again infused with the real deal for a much more harder-to-detect feel and, possibly, to keep at least some of your nerve endings intact. The metal in your chest? Mythril and orichalcum alloy; lightweight, durable yet fireproof as well, to protect your most vital of internal organs. How those who augmented you got their hooves on orichalchum, I haven't the foggiest..."

He sighed and made the papers vanish, whereupon he gave Starbreaker a hard, level look. "You are a trotting example of what it means to be immune to fire itself, and I am wondering how I failed to detect all of this sooner. How much of you is augmented, I don't have exact numbers… but you eat and sleep and sustain injuries and… make waste the way any other au naturale pony would, and clearly you maintain higher functions of the brain. I'd safely wager 50/50 easily."

"Make waste?" Starbreaker asked, pupils dilating as confusion took hold. "What are you on about?"

Yukito lifted a hoof and spun it around. "What comes out from under your tail?" he retorted, trying to keep this conversation from growing any more awkward than it already was.

It took Starbreaker but a moment to get what he was insinuating. "... oh," she muttered in understanding.

"Erm, yes. But, this presents a problem. You can't regenerate lost skin and tissue as easily, since you have a lot of augments just to maintain the look of something vaguely natural, no offense personally. And, since you lost an entire ear and a half, I'd wager it is difficult for you to grow back entire portions of skin and tissue because a lot of it is synthetic," Yukito went on, frowning. "While we do have the means to grant you prosthetics and possibly address your little recovery issue, it's strictly a matter of replication. I don't know how you were augmented, nor how much, don't even ask about the ratios needed, so… it's going to require something of a learning process."

Starbreaker perked up at that, blinking a few times and untangling her hoof from her mane. "It's possible?" she asked.

Yukito nodded. "Yes. But I cannot do that now, since Sora has yet to show up," he muttered, ears folding back against his head. "What in hell is keeping her? She should have been here by now…"

"Can I slap her if she comes back hurt again?" Starbreaker hissed, eyes narrowing once again.

Yukito shook his head and proceeded to facehoof. "As you are, no. You'd probably break another hoof doing it, heaven forbid," he muttered. "But… if she does need some sense talked into her at some point, I suppose there will come a time whence you can." He dropped his hoof and added, "Until then, I'll be the one to discuss such things with her, but I'll make sure to do it here so you can chip in. Is that alright?"

Starbreaker nodded and donned a small smile at that. "Very," she tersely replied.