The Conversion Bureau: Stormriders

By Silvertie

Part 2 of 3

Hailstone came to as he felt the wounds in his torso being knitted together with a prickling sensation, and grunted in pain as bullets were pushed out of his body by a green glow.

“Stay still,” the EMT said, waving the handheld medical wonder-device over the pegasus’ body. “You’re gonna be alright. No major damage.”

“Snowflake!” Hailstone wheezed, feeling another round claw it’s way out of his gut.

“Talking to the wrong guy,” the EMT said, holding up a hand in defense. “You wanna talk to the cops.”

The moment the last bullet wound was sealed, Hailstone got up, pushing the EMT aside as he staggered towards the human policemen loitering near the entrance. The EMT protested, citing wounds that needed rest, but was ignored.

The policeman in charge of the investigation was interrupted mid-conversation as something butted him in the hip; it was considered extremely rude for an Equestrian to get anyone’s attention with a gentle headbutt, but Hailstone wasn’t feeling particularly polite today.

“What is it, sir?” the officer choked back a snide response, putting on a polite smile.

“What’s going on?” Hailstone cut to the quick. “Where’s Sleet and Snowflake?”

“The kidnapped ponies?” The officer shook his head. “We don’t know, sir.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Hailstone pressed. “Haven’t you humans been able to find them with your fancy satellites yet?”

“We, uh,” the officer coughed. “We haven’t started yet.”

“WHAT?!” Hailstone exclaimed. “What in Celestia’s name are you doing, then? Get started!”

“We haven’t got the authorization yet,” the officer argued. “If we start searching now, and find them, they’ll walk because we don’t have a warrant.”

“You-” Hailstone closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “I don’t give a flying feather about that. I just want my friend and wife-to-be back!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the officer apologized. “But there’s a book for a reason. We work by it.”

“Then the book is stupid!” Hailstone stamped a hoof. “You’d better pray this delay doesn’t cost Sleet and Snowflake their lives, human, or there will be hell to pay.”

======

The truck rocked to a halt, and muffled bangs of doors and shouting filled the air outside. Sleet and Snowflake instinctively whimpered in fear a little.

"We're going to die," Snowflake wept. "It's all my fault -- Hailstone wanted to go to a local restaurant, but I insisted on coming to Earth, and-"

"Shh," Sleet whispered, giving the smaller mare a hug. "It's not your fault. It's the HLF. Besides, I'm sure we'll get out of this. We always find a way, don't we? We're the Stormriders -- if anypony would know about dancing with danger, it'd be us, right?"

"Heh." Snowflake sniffled. "You're right."

"Besides," Sleet smiled in the half-light of the truck. "Stormriders stick together. No pony left behind. The worst mistake these chumps made was to leave Hailstone and the colts alive, they'll move heaven and hell itself to get us back."

Snowflake nodded. "You're right. As usual. What do we do now?"

"Now?" Sleet laughed. "We make Hailstone's job easier and escape!"

"How?" Snowflake asked. "We're tied up!"

"Come on, Snow," Sleet grinned. "You're the brains of this outfit, the organizer. I just provide femininely-toned muscle."

"I guess... we start with untying ourselves?"

"Sounds good," Sleet smiled. "Turn around, I'll bite through your ropes first. Then you can get my ropes off."

Snowflake obliged, and Sleet snickered as she bit the ropes off with ease. Clearly, the HLF hadn't thought this abduction business through properly. No gags, no muzzles.

With a quiet thump, Sleet's ropes followed Snowflake's to the floor, and the two looked around. The truck was less a prison than they'd thought -- the walls, roof and rear of the truck were made of a thick canvas, and the rear wasn't even locked down or anything.

The two mares listened to the muffled conversations outside -- from the sounds of things, it was an argument about themselves. Specifically, how and when they should die.

To their horror, the method of execution hadn't been finalized, but the argument for execution to happen ASAP was gaining a distressing amount of momentum.

"Now or never," Sleet breathed, and Snowflake following behind, the pair burst out of the truck.

Canvas flapped in their wake, as the two pegasi sailed over the rear of the truck. As they fell, they scanned their environs with reflexes born of managing some of the most unruly storms known to ponykind.

They were in a multi-story car park; a concrete and stone affair, on the ground floor -- evidenced by the painted letter G on all the concrete pillars. Behind them, a semicircle of trucks and cars was parked, humans huddled nearby, cradling guns as they discussed what to do next. Ahead of them beyond a sprinkling of parked and abandoned cars, the exit, revealing the snow-coated night-time street outside. Freedom. Once they made it out there, they were home free -- not many land-creatures could keep up with a pegasus in the air, much less catch them.

Eight hooves hit the ground, and the two mares ran as one, shouts ringing out from behind them as the humans realized their prisoners were escaping. Sleet watched her speed, keeping pace with Snowflake, who was already starting to huff and puff with exertion. She wasn't the strongest athlete in the group, but her theory knowledge of weather-working made her an excellent team coordinator, which was why she had a place in the Stormriders.

"Come on," Sleet encouraged. "You got this, Snow. Just a little further, and we'll have one hay of a story to tell the guys!"

"I-" Snowflake gasped for breath, "I can't!"

"Fuck the plan, kill 'em!" a voice shouted behind them, and Sleet gritted her teeth.

"Bonus round, girl," she grunted. "Bob and weave!"

The two broke into a desperate slalom, bodies criss-crossing as they wove back and forth, the crack of guns and the whiz of bullets all around them. With a heave, they approached a car, an old one that had been abandoned by the owner as they went to a bureau, evidenced by the dozens of parking tickets still stuck under the wipers and the large, red X on the bonnet marking it as having had it’s engine stripped.

A shot rang out, and Snowflake screamed in pain as she started to clear the car; with a stumble, she fell and landed on the concrete behind it. Sleet skidded to a halt on the concrete, and without missing a beat, ran back to her.

“Got the bitch!” a voice whooped. “Drinks on me, boys!”

Red blossomed on Snow’s otherwise white side, over her wing, and she cried in pain as she tried to move her wing. Sleet quickly dragged her behind the car, and Snow looked at the injury, and smiled weakly, trying to put a brave face on.

“It’s... it’s nothing, right?” Snow coughed, and a trickle of red, bright against her white muzzle, trickled out of her mouth. “Right?”

“No, it’s not nothing,” Sleet guessed, kneeling down and squeezing under Snow. “Come on, stay still, I can’t put you on my back if you squirm.”

The sounds of running humans were in the air; the pegasi had been swift, and the exit was a scant hundred metres away, the humans equally close behind. Between the car and the exit, there was no cover, no protection.

An uninjured pegasus could probably make it, with a bit of luck. A pegasus carrying another one, though...

“No,” Snow wheezed, pushing herself away from Sleet, before pointing with a hoof. “Go that way.”

Snow was pointing to another exit from the car park; five time as far away, it had marginally more cover, by way of pillars and more parked cars. Sleet frowned.

“Ain’t no way I can make that fast enough. Not with you on my back.”

“That’s... the idea,” Snow gasped. “You go that way.” She pointed again at the long way, before shifting her hoof to the nearest exit. “I go this way.”

“Snow, that’s- that’s suicide! You’ll never make it!” Sleet begged. “Come on, I’ll try harder, I’ll carry you!”

“If you carry me, we both die,” Snow whispered, getting up to four unsteady hooves. “Know when to fight the storm, know when to let it blow. Gotta let it blow.”

“We’re Stormriders, Snowflake,” Sleet said, pleading. “We ride together, we fly together. We escape together.”

“No,” Snowflake said. “You’re a Stormrider. You escape alone, or neither of us will survive.”

Without waiting for a counter argument, Snow ran for it, hobbling on three hooves. The humans whooped when they saw the thick red trail running down her side, and Sleet had no choice.

In a flash of movement, the pegasus ran fast; she’d really been holding back to allow Snow the chance to keep pace, but now... she was free to go as fast as she could. Very fast, indeed. Like blue lightning, she shot out from around the car almost running into a HLF thug going contrariwise to her, and sending the human spinning with her passage. In an instant, the HLF’s attention was divided; the easy catch limping towards the closest exit, or the harder catch sprinting for the far exit?

Greed weighed in along with malice, and while a few rounds were fired after Sleet, the pursuit’s sole focus became Snowflake, who was almost in the street, covered with her namesakes.

Sleet ducked her head, but what few bullets that gave chase to her hit pillars or cars harmlessly. She skidded to a halt outside, hooves ploughing up small furrows in the snow, as she looked back. The humans were all gathered around a small object. Sleet choked back a sob, and saluted as the mare began screaming in pain.

“I’m so sorry.”

With a rustle of feathers, Sleet was gone.

======

Two hours passed, and the roar of engines filled the air. Flashing red and blue lights strobed off the surrounding buildings as police disembarked from their vehicles, guns ready. A quartet of pegasi also followed by air; one dark-blue mare, and three stallions, off-white, yellow and ice-blue.

The guns weren’t necessary. After Sleet had led them to where she’d left Snow, there had been precious few questions about what had happened. Bullet casings by the dozen all throughout the carpark. Bullet craters in cars, concrete pillars and walls. White snow, marred by a trail of red.

Sleet, Blizzard and Wind Chill had stony expressions on their faces; Frostbite and Icicle were on their way to hospitals for their more complex wounds. They had no idea how they were going to break the news, words couldn’t do it justice.

Hailstone didn’t say anything, just sinking to his knees with a crunch in the snow, steps away from the body that lay in the middle of the car park’s entrance, blending in with the snow, save for the rapidly freezing claret staining the whole sordid scene.

A choked sound escaped his mouth, and the police officers present holstered their weapons, and took their hats off in silence. Nobody, equine or otherwise, should have gone like that.

Hailstone’s tears began to flow as he knelt next to Snowflake’s corpse in the cold winter night, her head looking down upon him with a vacant gaze from it’s perch atop a spike driven into the concrete.

======

The weather lacked any of it’s usual zing. For the last week, the weather had been as forecast by the Equestrian Weather Service, but Stalliongrad’s skies lacked a certain spring in their formation, sunlight weak, winds lackluster, rain sporadic.

And on the eighth day, despite a scheduled day of clear skies, the skies of Stalliongrad were black with clouds, and nopony dared to complain to the weather ponies. Not today.

The dark clouds began to drip moisture, the soft plack of rain hitting wood as the casket was lowered into the earth. The only sounds in the cemetery.

The Stormriders, what was left of them, stood in silence, suits black and their tears long since spent, the weather doing the crying for them as it mourned the loss of one of their closest friends.

The rain waited until the service was concluded, before evolving into a fully-fledged downpour. Ponies gave their condolences to the six, before rapidly retreating to drier environs. The freshly shovelled earth began to sink, the rain making it more fluid, until the surface of Her grave was smooth.

“Hailstone?” Frostbite wheezed, his missing half-lung making itself evident. “What... what now?”

The elder pegasus stared at the grave, eyes running over the name and the pitifully close-together dates beneath, as rain ran down his own face.

“Boss,” Icicle said, “We’re with you all the way. You know that.”

“Wherever you go,” Sleet vowed. “We’ll be there.”

“We’re Stormriders,” Wind Chill said.

“We ride together,” added Blizzard, cradling his leg, still in a cast.

“We fly together,” finished Frostbite.

Hailstone nodded slowly, then closed his eyes.

“They called for a storm,” he said. “Let’s give them the storm of their pathetic, miserable lives.”

There was a rush of wind, and the six were gone, six black garments drifting down through the rain-soaked air to land in the mud, where nopony would find them for days.

The time for grieving was over. It was time to go to work.