//------------------------------// // Chapter 14 // Story: Mass Effect: Salvage // by N00813 //------------------------------// Chapter 14 -- I’ll fight and win this war without compromising the soul of our species. – Commander Shepard, 2185 CE -- “We’re almost out of ammo. But we have to continue the mission, which means that we’ll have to enter the town proper.” Gilda paused, looking out over her platoon of troops. Her responsibility. Her children, almost. Every one of them looked up at her for guidance. She couldn’t fail them. “It’ll be tough. Close quarters fighting, bloody, vicious. I won’t lie. Never before have we faced an enemy such as this. They will show us no mercy.” She paused. “So we shall show them no quarter.” She stood on her hind legs and spread her arms, as if she wanted to encompass her entire platoon in them. “But take heart. Look around you. You’re not in this fight alone. We face our enemy together, and together we will defeat them.” Gilda paused again as she dropped back onto all fours. “Dismissed. Except for Anya.” The mottled grey griffon with the blue feather cocked her head. “Yes, ma’am.” She remained where she was, whilst the others went back to their tents to recover from the night watch, or to the barricades to stand guard. Luna stood alongside Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor. All three of them looked haggard – tired, and haunted, as if they’d stayed up all night. They probably had, Gilda reflected. They weren’t used to the sound of gunfire. She’d been able to sleep soundly only after the third night here. The aliens stood in another group – well, ‘group’ was a bit generous. The slimmer ones, Riana and Levin, stood together, side by side – but the hulk stood at least a meter away. Gilda could see the traces of blood that had dried on his armor or shell; a souvenir of his late-night excursion. He’d tried to wash it off, under the prodding of his teammates, but it hadn’t worked as well as they’d liked. Or as well as she'd liked. Gilda had guessed that he’d been looting the town. She narrowed her eyes at this defiling of the dead, but without proof, she couldn’t really do anything. Not to mention, Sev looked like he was capable of snapping her spine in half. Gilda motioned for Anya to follow her, and she ambled up to the ponies and aliens. “Clearing buildings,” she said, stopping once she that she was close enough. “Anya and I will lead a squad through the buildings closest to the barricades. If you ponies or aliens can help us, great. If not…” She sighed. “We’ll still do it. But the help would definitely come in useful.” Luna stepped forwards. “I will help.” Twilight and Armor looked at her in horror, and their jaws dropped even further as Sev stepped forwards as well. Armor coughed a bit. “Princess, are you sure?” Luna nodded solemnly. “It has to be done.” Levin shook his head and stepped backwards. “I’d rather not. I’ve done enough of this in my old days. I’m sorry.” Twilight and Armor followed Levin’s lead, whilst Riana stayed in her position, silent. Gilda inhaled deeply, and then breathed out slowly. Two out of six. Not bad, considering that they were ponies. It was better than zero, in any case. Riana suddenly put her hands in her pockets. “How about the non-combatants tend to the wounded? We can help that way.” Armor nodded. He could handle bloody injuries. It was in the Royal Guard’s job description. Twilight, however, looked a lot sicker about the prospect, but she nodded as well. She didn’t want to sit by whilst other ponies – or in this case, griffons – suffered. Gilda clawed at the ground as she spoke. “I suppose. Don’t know how much you know about griffon anatomy, though.” “They have some chemical that can seal wounds,” Luna said, putting a hoof to her chin. “My sister got some after he” – she flicked her horn at Sev – “injured her.” Gilda blinked twice. “Wow. That is some power. Good to have you on our side,” she said to the krogan. His response was merely a grunt. “Right. Me and Anya will be in the squad, doing most of the killing itself. I know ponies” – she looked at Luna – “are squeamish about it, so to minimize any deadly mistakes or hesitation, we’ll do it.” She paused, huffing. Even talking about this was tough. “Princess, you can project a magic barrier around the group. Sev, you will assist in the killing.” “I can go solo,” the krogan rumbled. “But I’m too heavy to go higher than the ground floor. That’ll be up to you.” Gilda nodded. That would definitely speed things up. And she wouldn’t have to kill as many citizens by her own claws. The quicker we finish, the better. “Standard procedure is for 5 griffons to do a total clear, but this isn’t standard at all, so we’ll have to do,” Gilda said, cracking open her weapon to check its innards just one more time. She couldn’t afford to see it fail in close-quarters fighting. Her life literally depended on it. The two griffons attached bayonets to the ends of their rifles, giving their weapons a spear-like look. Still, that would get the job done. Gilda led the group of four to the westernmost barricade, one that connected both a hillside and the crumbling walls of a building. “Hans, you’re with us. Clearing,” she said, in her native language. ‘Hans’ perked up, and he took a low position as he crawled away from the barricade. “Very well,” he replied, in that same language. He was that same griffon that had greeted them in the skies above, Luna realized – white head, gray body, and still carrying that same rifle. “One second,” he said, as he fiddled with the bayonet. The griffon town had been built in a very efficient grid system that made it resemble a rectangular chessboard from above. It was five per row, for thirteen rows, with the last row being closest to the wrecked ship. The closest row of buildings had already been cleared, but the risk of moving deeper into the town had stopped the griffon advance at the first row, relative to the encampment. “Sev, you take that building,” Gilda said, pointing to the second-westernmost building. “Go all around to the east. Every time you clear a building, tell one of the griffons nearby. They’ll handle the top floor.” Sev nodded his assent. Usually, he’d rather be caught dead than follow an order, but this one played to his desires. He’d get to take his pick of anything valuable, not to mention getting into fights. Without another word, he moved off into ground floor of the building, and disappeared into the shadowy embrace of its rooms. Gilda took a deep breath, and narrowed her eyes. This was for Gryphonia. For her griffons. She didn’t want to do it – but she had no choice. “Let’s go.” -&- The wounded were only composed of two griffons, each being tended to by another two. One of them, a male grey-black griffon, looked like he’d had his shoulder blasted apart by a bullet – the bone was visible, and the flesh around it had been shredded. He was lying on a blanket, and the only signs that he was alive were his slow, placid breaths and the blood dripping down under his bandages. His friend was pushing on the bandages – providing pressure on the wound, Levin noted – and her talons were covered in blood. She hadn’t even looked up at the newcomers – Levin could see the signs of exhaustion in her slumping posture, and her constantly drooping eyelids. She’d probably been up all night. The other one was in a better way – he was sleeping soundlessly on his stomach, and it looked like a bullet had gone through one of his wings. It was bandaged heavily, with a wooden splint keeping the wing where the medic wanted. The fact that the female griffon hadn’t attempted to do a sling suggested two things – that she was incompetent, which wasn’t likely if she was in the military; or that she couldn’t risk it. And that was a problem. Shoulder wounds could be crippling, and Levin knew that even a best-case scenario could leave the male unable to use his shoulder for life. He’d need state of the art medical attention from the Citadel’s hospitals, not some work from a battlefield medic. Hell, he didn’t even know if griffons were dextro based or levo based. If he gave the guy the wrong medi-gel, he’d worsen the situation. But there was no other way. Levin got to work. He tapped the female on her shoulder, and she jerked up, staring at him. He could still see the tear tracks that lined her white face. He uncapped a medi-gel spray, and with both talons, carefully began to unwind the male’s bandages. Disintegrated shoulder joint. Fractured scapula. Without the gel, the guy wasn’t going to be able to walk, after all of this. If he even survived. Levin washed out the wound with some water that his omni-tool had sterilized with radiation. The griffon patient groaned and hissed, and the female lapsed into another bout of silent tears as she held the male. The turian ignored the griffon’s cries. That state of cold, intense focus, the one that seemed to be hardwired into turians, had swallowed him completely. Nothing, save for death, was going to deter him from his task. One second was all it took for you to die, or worse – for someone else to die. To her credit, the female had tried her best to put his bones back in the approximate location, but it’d need more than a spray of medi-gel to cure this injury. He plucked out the heavy bullet, still lodged near the end of the humerus – one of those pre-spaceflight era slugs, a detached part of him realized – and flicked it to the side. Someone jumped back out of the way to avoid getting hit. Or somepony. Didn’t matter. The blood flowed more freely now, in spurts, and he realized that an artery had been punctured. One more complication. He’d have to move quick, then. A short, sharp blast of medi-gel solved that quickly, and the chemicals instantly promoted a blood clot. A light spray of medi-gel to the whole wound, and it was disinfected. The griffon sighed once, and clacked his beak steadily. Levin assumed that was from the anesthetics. He couldn’t do anything about the bones, though. Keeping the area immobilized would lead to the quickest recovery – but that entailed a sling. The griffon was swimming in meds, so he didn’t react when Levin put his forearm parallel to his shoulders as gently as he could, and kept it in place with a sling made from the bloody bandages. “Thank you. Please, take care of him,” the female griffon said, and clacked her beak, wiping her face with the back of her claw as she did so. She bowed her head momentarily to the turian, before she strutted off out of the tent, picking up her rifle as she went. Levin looked at the busted joint. He’d done the best he could, with the stuff he had. He had to be pleased with that. Of course, whether he deserved to be pleased rested on the final state of the patient. He looked down at his own talons. They were still covered in blood. Red blood. At least it wasn’t turian blue. He could see that Riana was tending to the other wounded soldier. That one hadn’t needed a lot of help, but at least the soldier on duty tending to him could be relieved and sent back to the barricades. Right now, she was scanning his form with her omni-tool. Checking for any symptoms of fever, probably. Levin put some water and food nearby, next to his patient, and turned around to face the entrance of the tent. The male with the busted shoulder had been placed at the far end of the tent, most protected from the elements – and from there, Levin could see the whole weird ensemble that they were. Armor looked impressed by his treatment of the wound – clearly, he hadn’t seen anything like it before. Of course he hadn’t. He didn’t even know what medi-gel was. Twilight, on the other hand, was the one he’d nearly hit with the bullet. Whoops. Hopefully she wasn’t too pissed at him. She seemed to be examining the tiny metal object in great detail, although she tried to stay as far away from it. It was like her eyes were forced to look at the bullet, but her body didn’t want her to approach. Levin closed his eyes for a moment. He could clean his talons off, a bit later. Blood on his hands. Huh. He didn’t know how long he was napping for. Doing so with one’s back against the tent was surprisingly easy for him. Must have been all the hastatim training. The first feeling he got as he was still in the midway between sleep and consciousness, though, was the sensation of rocking, as if he was in his mother’s arms. The very same mother that died in the Reaper War. Just one more death amongst billions. His eyes snapped open, and met another pair of eyes, attached to a purple head with purple hair. Reflexively, he kicked out, but Twilight Sparkle managed to teleport-dash like an asari commando out of harm’s way. Damn. Getting slow in my old age, he thought sarcastically. “Don’t ever do that again,” Levin breathed, adrenaline still jittering through him. “I have enough bad dreams as it is.” Armor placed himself in front of her – an overprotective brother to a naïve sister. Somehow, that actually worked, and Levin had to laugh at the similarities to many of the holovids he’d watched back in the days… “I just wanted to see how you slept,” Twilight said, scuffing a hoof on the ground. “I’ve never seen you sleep, and so I wanted to see how your race did that, you see, because I was curious” – Levin cut her off with an outstretched talon. “I sleep just like you do. On your back, side or stomach.” She peeked out, from behind the white form of her brother. “But – just now – I thought” – she giggled nervously – “you were just resting, weren’t you?” Levin had no idea how long he’d been ‘resting’ for, and a quick look at his helmet HUD told him he’d been out of commission for the last hour. He shrugged. “Yes. You could say that.” The medic tent lapsed into a silence that was only broken by the slow and steady breathing of all of its occupants. No one, save for Twilight, wanted to break it. The purple pony had opened her mouth, and then instantly closed it, for the last five minutes, and Levin had made a game out of counting how many times she’d done that. It was better than being bored out of his mind. Still, he’d rather be here than out there. The memories were still too raw. Armor was content to stay silent and observe, and that suited everyone else just fine. The griffon with the injured wing yawned, all of a sudden, and then his eyes fell on Riana’s form, sitting next to him. Yelping, he attempted to backpedal away, and his restricted wing flapped up a storm of dirt. Grimacing, he adopted a defensive position – low body stance, wide base, snarling, the works. Riana held up her two hands. “Whoa. I’m your nurse for today. Your friend went back to the barricades.” “You… you can speak Bird?” No shit I can. And it’s bastardized turian. Riana rolled her eyes under her helmet. “Yes.” “What are you?” He must’ve been injured the day before. Riana reintroduced herself and her teammates, as well as the three ponies that had accompanied them. The griffon’s eyes got wider and wider. “Foreigners? Not from this world?” he breathed, and wobbled a bit on his legs. “Am I dead?” Riana pointed to the bandage wrapped around his wing, as an answer. The griffon followed her gaze, and flapped the wing experimentally, before wincing. “Bollocks.” He turned his head to examine the two ponies. “Didn’t know ponies had the guts to go to war,” he said in English. Armor narrowed his eyes. “We’re not all bloodthirsty barbarians, like you.” The griffon shrugged as best he could. “Says the ones that petrified Discord.” “That was different,” Twilight countered. “We didn’t kill him – we only petrified him. Stopped him from causing any more chaos.” The griffon pointed to his own rifle – a longer barreled version, marked with engravings on the metal bodywork. “That’s what we do here. Stop them. The only difference is, our way is permanent.” “Discord himself was a special case,” Twilight replied, sitting down. “We only did it because we had no other choice.” Like the changeling invasion. Never fought before, and I never want to again. Poor drones. “No other choice, huh,” the griffon muttered, a smirk playing on his beak. “I guess when the worst comes to worst, war is the only answer.” He winced as his wing shifted slightly. “I can still shoot, so I guess I’ll be seeing ya all.” Grabbing the rifle from his side, he stumbled out of the tent. “No infection,” Riana said in English, eliciting a relieved sigh from Levin. “Vitals were just like the others, except for maybe a slightly low blood pressure.” He nodded, and Twilight’s mouth gaped open again. “How…” she breathed out. Thirty-seven. -&- The ground floor of the house was empty, as usual. Picked clean, like the others. In fact, the whole place looked like it had come straight out of an apartment advert, if he ignored the splatters of blood on the walls. Stepping through the house, he could spot the holes on the ceilings that led up to the second floor. Griffons had wings, which meant that they didn’t really need staircases. There was a ladder on the outside of the building that linked the two floors, but it looked rickety, and he was sure that it wouldn’t be able to handle his weight. His boot clacked as he moved about on the stone floor. He didn’t bother to muffle the sound. If anything came to investigate, they would be surprised. Nope. Next house. -&- Gilda breathed in, slowly. She’d be useless if the adrenaline messed with her aim. Alongside her, Luna projected a shield that wrapped the group in a purple glow of magic. The first floor didn’t have any hostiles in it. She'd expected that. The second would be where the fighting was at. Any griffon that had still had control of themselves would take the higher position, simultaneously giving them a wider angle of aim and protecting them from any predators that couldn’t get there. Any that could were too small to harm a griffon. Luna nodded, and the three simultaneously launched off the grassy pavement of the town, flapping their wings until they could see through the first floor window. A griffon looked out at them; beak matted in blood, claws with bits of meat hanging still stuck on, and head-feathers splattered with gore. Feral. What was worse, was that he was feasting upon the body of another griffon. And, he had a gun. Gilda twitched, sending the end of the barrel jerking sideways until it faced the feral griffon's head, and pulled the trigger. An explosion of light and smoke coincided with her rifle kicking back into her shoulder. Headshot. Luna flattened her nostrils at the sight, and exhaled a wavering breath. Push through. Be strong. You have to. Cannibalism. This insanity had to be stopped. By any means. This was the first time she’d gotten responsibility over someone else’s lives. Without her shield, her griffon teammates could have gotten seriously injured. Was this how my sister felt? To choose me – the griffon over there – over her people – my team? As one, they moved into the first floor, stepping past the bodies of the two dead. Hans shunted the bodies to a corner with his rear leg, and shuddered. Mercifully, the remaining parts of the floor were devoid of enemies. To the next building, then. Anya leant out of one of the windows that faced the barricade, and ducked back as she saw the muzzles of rifles aimed directly at her. “Clear!” she screeched, hiding behind the safety of the wall. Luna dropped her magic shield, and retched as the smell of blood reached her nostrils. She’d need to get used to it. What better time than now? Gilda aimed her rifle at the next building, the one that Sev had cleared. Anya followed her lead, but Hans aimed his north. “Shit,” he chittered. Gilda groaned mentally, but kept her cool. She needed to be cool under fire, or her people were going to die. “What is it?” she asked, in Bird. Luna looked on, perturbed, but obviously getting the gist of it as she conjured the shield. “They must have heard the shot,” Hans squawked, getting a bead on the targets. “I can see several – er, five – approaching from the north. They’re not shooting at one another, though.” “They’re not? Shit!” Gilda hissed. That meant that they’d have some sort of rudimentary hive-mind intelligence, maybe even a controller somewhere. The aliens had said that all known Reaper tech had been destroyed, and if they were telling the truth, then this had developed out of the blue. Hell, she’d remembered when they’d first flown into town. Rifle fire from the houses had wounded one griffon, a bright kid by the name of Serd – and they had been forced down to ground to avoid the spray of rounds. There were some insane in the forested area they’d landed in, but even then, in her distressed state, she could clearly remember the townspeople shooting at one another as well as anything else that moved. At its prime, the town had about 200 griffons. She guessed that 100 had been killed in the madness, by their fellow townsfolk – and they’d taken down about 20 more from the barricades. But that still left 80 insane griffons, out for blood, against her 25-griffon platoon. Change of plan. “Fire on them!” she said, in her native language, and both Hans and Anya pressed themselves to the walls around the northern-facing windows. “Exile, shield!” she yelled in Equestrian. Anya and Hans exchanged quiet squawks, and Luna summoned a purplish magical field around the bodies of the griffons and herself. Gilda took aim at the middle griffon, as she rolled out of cover – standard protocol said that each shooter should aim at the enemy in their position – and so, as Hans and Anya simultaneously brought their rifles up to their shoulders and took aim at the westernmost and easternmost griffon respectively, she pulled the trigger. The hit was messy, by her standards – she’d blown out the griffon’s temple rather than his eye – and so, with a pain-filled screech, the target sailed through the window as both Hans and Anya opened fire. Gilda launched forwards just as the target landed on the floor, and her bayonet caught him in the neck. With a savage twist, she pulled it out and quickly cut his throat. The other two griffon targets – males – had flown through another window. Saliva dripped from their beaks as they launched themselves at Gilda’s teammates. Anya was closer to the feral griffons – she swung her rifle around, and the end of it connected with the griffon’s head, sending his beak sideways into the wall. His body continued to move, and she tried to leap out of the way – but alas, she wasn’t fast enough. The griffon’s claws raked across her chest, scoring her armor and some of her neck-feathers, but she didn’t even grimace from the pain – rather, she pulled back her rifle, positioned the bayonet in front of the griffon’s chest, and stabbed forwards. Hans had a better time. He’d been further away, which meant that he’d had time to prepare. He’d danced around the form of his target, stabbing at the throat with the bayonet fastened to his rifle, before using the griffon's falling body as a launch pad to rocket straight towards Anya’s target. In that moment, Gilda knew the reason why, despite his lack of proficiency in the languages, he had been promoted to sergeant. Hans had managed to whip out his combat knife whilst he’d vaulted over his own target, and with a hiss he’d sunk the blade deep into the griffon’s neck, severing the jugular, as Anya’s bayonet found its mark. Cutting outwards, the blade shone red for a moment in the sunlight, before Hans whipped the blade around to the back of the target’s neck and jabbed it straight between two vertebrae. The whole thing had only taken about a fifth of a second. Gilda doubted that even the best sikskysher could manage that. Wiping the blade clean on the dead griffon, Hans took a couple of deep breaths, and then slipped his knife back into the sheath strapped to his chest. Anya pulled out her rifle from her target’s chest. She was still breathing heavily, and her target’s blood had stained her grey feathers black. Her own wounds were also starting to sting. “Thanks, Hans,” she squawked, still in shock. “No problem,” Hans replied nonchalantly. “Lieutenant? Orders?” Gilda closed her beak, and took in a few breaths of her own to calm her raging heart. “We’ll have to be a lot more careful, now. Anya, get some of the higher ranked soldiers to hold this building – top floor – from the closest barricade. With luck, we’ll get this row done by day’s end, and then we’ll have pushed forwards a bit. Hans, stay with me in case we get more visitors. Oh, and Anya, clean your wounds. We don’t want infection. Dismissed.” Anya saluted, and flew off, whilst Hans reloaded his rifle and peeked out of the northern windows. A moment later, he shook his head. “None yet.” As he did so, several deep booms sounded out from Gilda’s right. -&- Levin jerked upright as the door to the medic tent flapped open, and a griffon emerged. This had been the one that had stayed behind with the lieutenant – Anya? – and she seemed a bit worse for wear, judging by the slow drip of blood from the area where her feathers and her cat-hair intersected. Twilight bound over, examining the new arrival. “What happened to you?” “Slash,” Anya replied. “Need anti-septic.” Riana went off and got some bandages from a nearby bag, as well as some bottle of liquid. Medi-gel was relatively rare here, since they were the only ones carrying it. Better to use the local meds for non-serious wounds. Anya winced as her eyes fell upon that bottle. “Better safe than sorry, I suppose,” she said, and lay down with her chest facing the sky. Riana carefully brushed aside Anya’s chest-feathers to get a closer look at the wounds, and the griffon’s face flushed beneath her feathers. “Little privacy here?” she snapped to Twilight, who backed off, miffed. Quickly summoning a wad of cloth, Twilight telekinetically flicked it to Riana, who caught it and then poured the liquid onto it. The griffon closed her eyes, readying herself for the pain ahead. Twilight watched in amazement as the asari dabbed the griffon’s wounds with the wet cloth, eliciting winces of pain. Even though the griffon was so rude, she had guts for taking the punishment like that – Twilight herself would have folded and asked for some form of respite. Battlefield medicine was still basic, at best, and she shuddered to think how dirty the air was, what with all the traces of cordite, gunpowder and blood she could smell… The griffon got up as Riana finished bandaging her, and retrieved her rifle, slotting a new bullet into it before she slung it over her back. With a nod of thanks, she left the tent – back to the front lines. Would Twilight herself do that? She had, once. When Nightmare Moon appeared, she’d gotten back up after being flung 20 meters back. But she’d lost her spirit, when Discord had attacked, and she’d lost the help of her friends. She would have lost the spirit to fight Nightmare had it not been for the timely arrival of her newfound friends. What of Anya? She hadn’t. As a soldier, she was here, risking her life, away from her friends and family back home. She fought regardless; she didn’t quit. No doubt she had friends here as well, but she didn’t need them next to her to fight. She only fought with them in her mind. Twilight guessed that she’d fight through hell and high water to do what she needed to do. Now, that was conviction. Would she? Would she do anything, anything, for her friends? Her country? Her mentor? Would she give her own life? Yes, she would. She’d proved that. Would she… kill? Twilight wasn’t a competitive pony, but she still felt her spirits sink when she realized that this griffon would sacrifice a lot more than she herself would be willing to, in order to bring peace to her own people. -&- Anya fluttered back into the building’s row, with a group of three armored griffins in tow. Gilda nodded, pleased. Luna, meanwhile, was still gazing upon the three bleeding bodies with a mixture of horror and pity. Hans kept silent, as was his usual, still keeping vigil. Gilda ordered the extra troops to hold the position. “But fall back to the barricades when you feel as if you need to,” she added, and quickly motioned Anya and Hans over to the eastern window. Anya rested her rifle on the windowsill, and slowly scanned the next building for enemies. None. Still, this had been the plan. There were two windows per side of each house, correlating to old griffon beliefs and tradition. Gilda personally didn’t believe in those, but right now, she thanked whoever had thought of this idea. They’d be able to breach through the other window, pushing any enemies to the first, which would be covered by Anya’s sights. And Gilda knew: that girl never missed. Sev had cleared out the bottom floor, she hoped. Still, it was never a stupid idea to double check. It was time. Motioning to Luna and Hans, Gilda slipped out of the second eastern window, her rifle at the ready. Luna’s shield was still present, but Gilda could tell that it was waning in strength – clearly, the sights of battle hadn’t been welcome to the pony. It was better than nothing, though. Hovering beside the window, with Hans opposite her, on the other side, the two griffons nodded. And as one, they turned to face the room inside. Nothing, at first glance. Gilda took point. Her higher rank obliged her to do so – after all, griffon doctrine said that an officer should not give an order that she would not carry out herself. Hans followed close behind, whilst Luna took the back. Even though all houses looked identical on the outside, on the inside, it was a different story. The room they’d landed in looked like some sort of bedroom – a trashed bed, a raided closet and an empty bookcase were just some of the highlights. A hole in the floor led to the ground floor, which appeared empty as well. Still, appearances could be deceiving. The more interesting exit was a door – ajar and swinging loosely – by the side of the room, which Gilda swung open with the end of her gun. Beyond that door looked to be a hallway, with another door opposite her, and a wall to the west. Gilda threw a glance around the corner. Nothing. The opposite room would be open to Anya’s sniper fire, so she’d leave that to last. The hallway ended in an open, stone doorway that was currently secured with a portcullis, and that iron gateway looked like it hadn’t moved in months. Stalking over to the next door on her side, Gilda readied her rifle. As she prepared to breach, Hans covered the other two doors on the opposite wall with his own rifle. Luna stood awkwardly behind him, probably not knowing what to do. With a solid kick, the door gave way, and Gilda stormed into an empty bathroom. So it was Anya’s side, then. Gilda made her way back to Hans’s place – he sat at the very end of the hallway, almost with his back to the wall – and opened the door slowly, so as to not get her head blown off by her sniping teammate, before walking into the room with her rifle aimed to the east. Anya got the unwritten message, and launched off from her sniper perch towards her teammates. Hans greeted her with a simple nod, which she reciprocated, whilst Gilda kept her attention on the door on the far side of this room. Opening the door, she found nothing. The house was clear. -&- Sev wiped his bloodied bayonet on the white-red chest feathers of the closest griffon body he found. He could see where the group of five had charged him. They’d appeared from the holes in the roof, from the windows, from everywhere, really. And that had done them no good. The first three were simple enough to dispatch – shotgun blasts turned them into bloody giblets, but then the clip had reached capacity and the gun wouldn’t fire. The remaining two acted as if they hadn’t even noticed the booming sound of thunder; they lunged at his back, snarling like feral varren. Krogan couldn’t really sidestep or dodge, thanks to their weight – so, instead, Sev braced himself for the impact by adopting a solid standing stance. The hit almost sent him stumbling – two griffons weighed about two-fifths of his own body weight, a substantial fraction – but he recovered, and used the momentum to pull one of them off his right shoulder. The other continued to grapple with him, pecking uselessly at the ceramic-metal alloy of his armor. Sev crushed the grounded griffon’s ribcage with a stomp, and then turned his whole body around, smearing blood and fluid all over the floor. One of the griffons’ tails whipped out, and he yanked on it, eliciting a screech from the hapless creature as it was flung into the air. The krogan flicked the tail like a whip, and the griffon slammed into the ground with an almighty crack. Groaning, it tried to pull itself up, but its legs folded beneath it, and Sev ignored it for the moment. There was still one more griffon hanging on his back. He hadn't noticed the extra weight at first, such was the strength of his adrenaline rush. Sev backed up to a wall, trying to crush the bird-cat between stone and steel. The griffon instinctively jumped up, off his shoulder hump and into the air above him, where Sev slapped it out of the air. He examined the knife that he pulled out from the scabbard. Tungsten-carbide, modified shotgun bayonet. With it, he lopped off the griffon’s head, and did the same to the one with the broken ribs. Finished. Another six to the body count. -&- It was night by the time Gilda stalked into camp, belly and chest covered in blood. Behind her, Anya and Hans were also in a similar state. Luna looked comparatively clean, but that was only because her dark coat helped to disguise the blotches of red. Their armor had taken the brunt of the bloodshed; the once-proud Gryphonia red had turned into a mottled brown that resembled rust. And the haunted, tired faces of the group didn’t help them look any more heroic. They’d taken the first row. Twelve more to go. That was one good thing. The second was that they’d retrieved ammo from some of the empty houses – some griffons had gone insane faster than others, apparently, and neglected to secure them before falling prey to the indoctrination. Stumbling into the camp, she caught a sight of the ponies’ shocked expressions, and laughed darkly. How innocent. They hadn’t been the ones doing the actual killing. But one look at the blood on her armor, and they had half a mind to run for the hills. Gilda ignored them. Unicorns weren’t that useful back at base – magic healing didn’t work on griffons, whose bodies were somehow naturally resistant to its effects. Their ability to erect magical shields, though – that was invaluable. The only difficult part was finding a unicorn who was willing to go into the killing fields… Obviously, these ones weren’t willing. Gilda glanced at Armor again, who had a stony expression – trying to hide his real feelings, like how all the guard back in Equestria had been trained. Useful in poker, but useless in a combat situation. Under torture, he’d just buckle as easily. But at least Captain Armor’s eyes weren’t twitching as much as Twilight Sparkle’s. He could handle blood. It was probably just the implication of what that blood meant that disquieted him. The encampment was bordered by the local forest, a river and the town buildings, with the river meandering from the peak of one mountain, along the side of the town, towards the lower river delta past the forest. That was where everyone dumped their waste products – the forest trees would welcome the extra nutrients… It was the area just above that point where Gilda and her companions stopped, and hopped into the river to wash the blood off. The water wake formed by their bodies turned into sanguine froth a moment later. Gilda ducked her head underwater, blocking out much of the sound of her companions. It was just the sound of water roaring past, the feel of cold fluid running past her wings; in that moment, she could feel a little bit of peace. Of course, it couldn’t last, and she reared her head back to a higher point – where she saw Twilight Sparkle looking at her from the riverbank. “Erm… Gilda?” “What?” Gilda said, irritably, causing both Hans and Anya to jerk their heads up from whatever they were doing, in order to look directly at her. Twilight instinctively backpedaled at the sight of the annoyed, 4 foot tall griffon in plate armor – before remembering that Luna was there, as well, to hopefully protect her if things got out of hoof. “I just wanted to ask you… how did it feel back there? The fighting, I mean.” Gilda grumbled. She was in no mood to revel in her kills. Hell, she didn’t even want to remember her kills this week. “Why don’t you go see for yourself?” she growled, much to the horror of the unicorn. Good. If that meant she’d go away and stop bothering her… “Maybe I will,” Twilight countered, and she saw Luna raise her head and slowly shake it in Twilight’s direction. Gilda had heard the alicorn’s subtle movements – but she couldn’t tell what they were, and she couldn’t turn her head to check without looking like she was eavesdropping. “Or not,” Twilight muttered. “The only way to know what war is like is to experience it for yourself,” Gilda said, flaring her wings and letting the water caress their undersides. Ah, bliss. Ironic, considering the subject material of their conversation. “That is… a shame,” Twilight murmured. “Perhaps.” Gilda shrugged, flicking water droplets off her neck-feathers. “Still, you get to just go home, after all of this.” Armor had kept silent throughout this whole exchange, but now he spoke up. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “There’s a line people like us have crossed, Captain Armor,” Gilda said calmly, ignoring the aforementioned Captain’s shocked expression. “You can wash the blood off your body” – she threw a thumb back to the sanguine waters – “be it changeling or griffon. But not from your mind. Not as easily, in any case.” Luna nodded. “The griffon is right. Ponies have forgiven my past transgressions, even though I myself have not. Do I deserve forgiveness? I did kill thousands.” Armor shifted nervously. “Perhaps you did, but that is all in the past. Don’t dwell on it, please. Just learn all you can, and apply those lessons to what you do now.” Luna laughed bitterly. “You make it sound as easy as breathing. Levin told me the same, but I guess he was hardened enough by his time in the death squad.” Gilda smirked alongside the exiled princess, but her mind was a maelstrom of thoughts. Was she becoming like this? The first killing had been shocking; a very vivid example of the fine line between living and dying. Hell, if she hadn’t been trained, she doubted she’d be able to keep going, keep fighting. She'd just have run off into the forest. The fifteenth? Not so much. Was she hardening? Looked like it. Where did that road lead? Well, at least it looked like she wouldn’t be alone. Luna would be alongside her. So would Levin, and Sev. “How did you know?” Armor asked, still a bit shaken. Gilda sighed. “One of her friends told me,” she said, gesturing towards Twilight. “Guess which one,” she said to the purple pony. Luna stepped out of the river, and away from the scene. Armor rushed to her side, and she responded with an absent shrug. Twilight also made to leave, but paused awkwardly, placing her side towards the griffons that were now emerging from the waters. “You’ve changed, you know.” Gilda laughed harshly, moving to face the pony. “No shit.” She started to unbuckle her armor. The water that had been caught in the crannies ran out, collecting at a point and then dripping down into the soil. Twilight held her ground, watching the griffon. “I used to think you were just some bully. Someone who cared about themselves more than anyone else.” Gilda harrumphed absently, as she focused on a particularly awkward buckle. “Did you think why?” “Huh?” Gilda affixed the unicorn with a flat stare. “Everyone does something for a reason. Griffon, pony, doesn’t matter. Even dogs kill to eat.” Twilight winced as the mental image of a starving wolf chomping down on one of Applejack’s sheep suddenly appeared in her mind. Gilda ignored her. “I gotta thank you morons, though.” Armor’s cry drew Twilight from her astonishment. She turned, to look at her brother, who was trying to look at both her and the Princess at the same time, and ended up walking sideways. At least the Princess seemed amused. “A moment!” Twilight shouted after him, and she could see her brother roll his eyes whilst Luna smirked. For a while, this situation that they were in seemed almost normal. The sound of gunfire, carried by the wind away from the front, quickly brought her back to reality. “You don’t sound very thankful.” Gilda had piled her armor onto her back, and fluffed out her chest feathers to get rid of the moisture trapped in them. She spread her wings, to better balance the pile on her back. “Do I ever? You only know me for what, a few hours at best?” She started the walk back to her tent. Twilight paused for a second. The griffon hadn’t made any sort of gesture that she wanted Twilight to follow her, but then again, that sort of thing could have been assumed… For the second time, Twilight slapped herself for not diversifying more in her studies. Magic was all well and good, but she’d only ever skimmed the other books, and as such only had a rudimentary understanding of other topics. Her friends didn’t seem to get that, though, what with their constant treatment of her as some sort of living encyclopedia. Trusting her gut, Twilight made to follow, trotting up to keep pace with Gilda. “Why thank us? For ‘annoying’ you?” Gilda could hear the air quotes, and for a moment her old anger arose, before she let it peter out in a low cackle. “Yeah, you could say that. That helped me become a better griffon.” She shrugged, readjusting the pile of gear stacked on her back. “Except maybe the pink one. She was such an idiot.” Twilight glowered. “Pinkie is my friend. Besides, those pranks were all Dash’s fault.” Gilda whistled like a bird, seemingly ignoring the pony’s angry expression. “You believe her? She could be lying. To protect her friend. You’re just gonna take what they say at face value, without research? Some scholar you are.” “My friends don’t lie,” Twilight huffed, but as she did so she thought back to the time Applejack had done such things – as Honesty, ironically – when she’d been under Discord’s influence, and when she’d broken a promise. “Some loyal friend Dash ended up to be,” Gilda chirped, seemingly in thought. She shrugged, all of a sudden. “Nice gambit. It was me, or her new friends. Loyalty is subjective, huh? You end up screwing over one of the two.” Twilight felt another cold chill run down her back. “You still didn’t have to shout at Fluttershy. She was only herding a family of ducks down a street.” “My drill sergeant would have been proud of me back then,” Gilda said, laughing, ignoring Twilight's shocked expression. “Those roads are for public use. She was being a disturbance." "You do that in any griffon town, you get a fine.” The griffon laughed lightly. “Culture shock is a bitch.” Twilight sighed, and shook her head. “That still doesn’t excuse your actions.” Gilda shrugged, eliciting a clank from the pile on her back. “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, you know my motives.” They stopped at the mouth of a canvas tent. The entrance, two flaps of canvas, flapped slowly and hypnotically in the breeze. "Why are you suddenly telling me this?" Twilight asked. Something had just told her that it was a good time. It wasn't any sort of image or any words in her head, just a flashing feeling of the need to take action. "Because I might die tomorrow." Without another word, Gilda walked through the entrance. It was obviously her tent, and Twilight stopped and stood awkwardly at the mouth. She’d slept in the medic tent the past night. It wasn’t the best place to sleep, not with the sleepy moans of pain from the wounded. Armor had slept beside her, but Princess Luna had chosen to sleep under the stars. Twilight had thought that it was for an appreciation of her own work – but now, she really didn’t know. Maybe Luna really did have deeper, unresolved problems. So much for the Nightmare Night facade. Luna stood in the middle of the camp, near one of the barricades. The griffon lines had moved forwards by about a building, and as such, the barricades weren’t as heavily manned – most of the forces had been moved to the front lines. As Twilight watched on, the moon rose steadily into the sky, until its bottom touched the horizon, and then it appeared to stop. Luna hadn’t even moved. Her horn wasn’t glowing, and it looked like she didn’t even try to raise the moon. Twilight saw the look of defeat in her eyes – the look of a pony that knew they weren’t ever truly needed. That must have been how she felt, 1000 years ago. Useless, unneeded… The Princess didn’t even seem angry, though. She just collapsed, onto the grass, and began to sleep. Acceptance. She’d accepted the belief that she wasn’t needed. Attempting to deny it had brought her ruin – accepting the fact, meanwhile, had made her into a machine. Twilight shivered, and for once, it wasn’t because of the cold winds blowing down the valley, or the casual ruthlessness of an acquaintance. -&- Sev sat with his back against a barricade. Already, he could hear the growls of the animals deeper in the town, the screeches of the insane griffons, and the bangs of the griffon rifles as they spat out their bullets. Just add the rumble of tomkahs and trireme tanks, and the deep booms of their mass accelerator cannons, and they’d have a perfect re-enactment of one of battles of the Krogan Rebellions. The crunching sound of footsteps upon dead leaves pulled his attention up to where Riana stood, some 10 meters away. “Can I speak with you?” she asked. She knew that she was his employer, and as such, she could talk to him whenever she wished. But this question gave him some authority, and it would prevent him from becoming defensive and locking himself away. It was better for her in the long run to appear softer, and treat him as an equal rather than a subordinate. Sev nodded. “Why did you press Levin for his past?” she asked, keeping her voice high and light, to make the conversation seem more like a friendly chat than an interrogation. That way, he’d be more willing to talk to her. She hoped. Sev could see through the ruse, but he wanted to answer anyways, more to clear out any bad blood between them than out of explaining himself. “I figured that he was hastatim. This kind of fighting is very similar to what happened in his past. I could see his reaction to what the griffon said. He doesn’t like it.” Riana nodded, even though she could see that he wasn’t really answering her. “But why then? Why not break it to him, slowly?” “He’s a tough man,” Sev rumbled. “I thought he could take it. It was better then, than being pushed into the fight and then freezing at the first look of his target.” Riana’s brow furrowed under her helmet. “What do you mean, being pushed into the fight? He could refuse.” Sev chuckled. “He could. Would he? The griffon asks him to fight. He doesn’t want to, it reminds him too much of the hastatim. But he knows that if he doesn’t, others will die. He has the training and equipment to survive. He knows that. The griffons may not survive. It would be dishonorable to leave or decline. So, he will go. Even if he doesn’t want to. And he will suffer.” He breathed out, slowly, after that long monologue, and found Riana looking at him oddly. “You did this for his benefit?” the asari asked, tilting her head slightly to one side. Sev shrugged. “He is the one that pays me. The griffons don’t.” Pausing to take a breath, he looked around, finding only one griffon keeping her eye down her rifle. “I thought he could take it. Turians are tough.” “He seemed fine, last I saw of him,” Riana said, sitting down on the ground with her arms wrapped around her legs. “But next time, leave all of the counseling to me. You’re not subtle at all.” Sev nodded, and watched as she walked away. Life used to be so simple. Get a job, shoot someone, get paid. Now I get roped into some diplomatic shit between two alien species I’ve never met before, that I don't have a stand in, and yet I'm playing a part to resolve it. Heh. Nothing’s ever easy.