Catalyst ch 9: Interception

“What am I supposed to do then?”
>You're walking behind your bodyguard mare, a magnificent quality cunt of the soldier variety as far as you can tell.
>At least she's effective, you presume, because of this simple fact.
>Mjolna shrugs. “Stay alive. I think that should be enough to keep you busy.”
>Gee, thanks bitch.
>”Rarity is on her way back,” Shining says. “With how she did the first time, I don't think they're going to be too appreciative of her being around. We'll have to take down the outside detail.”
“Shouldn't we try to be subtle?”
>”No choice, there is some kind of lockdown going on. The club's being personnel filtered.”
>Mjolna peeked around the corner for an instant. She pressed against it, and put a hoof up.
>Mjolna: stop. Two guards, civilian group between.
>Shining Armor: I see the one on the far side.  Six more LunaCorp. Guards inside, three Butterfly additional plus buyer.
>Mjolna: Got it. I can take out the one here- what about the civvies?
>Shining Armor: Panic button.
>Mjolna: Oh. Fun.
>Shining Armor: The entrance is going to be well covered, form up when after the first two are down.
>Mjolna: You gonna layer me?
>Shining Armor: don't see a reason not to.  Quiet takedown, we'll need the time for the layering
>With that, Mjolna dissappears around the corner.
>Against your better judgement, you peer behind her.

>You see those terrible yellow colors, the glistening chitin weave atop the synthetic muscle.
>Past him, there is a cloud of very angry ponies.  They look more interested in each other, and many of them have those familiar, dumbfounded looks from the club music.
>Mjolna creeps up behind him, more akin to a large, carnivorous cat than a pony.
>When she finally reaches him, she rears up a front hoof.
>It slams right into the tender, vulnerable section between where his legs meet, and his thighs.
>There is the vivid sound of electrical discharge, bright flashes going off while she holds her hoof there for several seconds.
>He falls, his backside steaming, to the ground.
>cannotunsee.jpg
>The civilian ponies don't respond.
>Are they really that far gone?
>”Hey. Hey asshats!” Mjolna says.  “Go home.”
>The group of indoctrinated ponies, still under some level of command, begin to shuffle off and grumble.
>Mjolna: you better engage the audio firewall, this doesn't look good.
>Shining Armor: Moving with a group of ponies for sight masking.  Will form on you for layering.
>He materializes from the crowd. Mjolna takes a seemingly practiced position, as his horn starts to glow.
>A beam starts to scan over her as he walks around her.  “Plates” of violet magic begin to hover over her armor, section by section, until she's entirely covered. A helm of sorts appears, akin to a riot visor.
>Shining Armor: You need to get to a safe spot. Do NOT cross that doorway, the heartbeat monitors already gave us away.
>You begin to look around. The hallway won't cut it?
>No, moron. It won't, if the two of them get downed.

>Shining Armor places a shield of violet energy in front of himself. It tapers off on one side, and Mjolna takes a place beside him. She can see over it, the Celestia conglomerate weapons aimed neatly over the side.
>He trots to the door, with her closely behind. She taps him, and they step into the door.
>Ping ping.  Heavy thwacks sound off, the shards slapping his shield and beginning to ooze off.
>The noise makes you cringe.
>Where, where, where?
>It dawns on you.
>No. It's too much of a gamble.
>They wouldn't want to be in danger with this though, right?
>It's the only spot that makes sense to you at the time.
>You make your way to the apartment door.
>You hadn't been awake for them.  But you knew you had to have gotten out somehow, without their aid, the following day. How to get in?
>You AR vision produces a ping at the door entry.
>Wait. The VIP pass. They wouldn't have time to revoke it just yet, would they?
>And if they were controlling you, would they have expected you to come back for seconds?
>The door slides open.
>You lucky bastard.

>The elevator stops and opens. You peek to and fro. You're in the room overlooking the bar, and this section of their apartment seems empty.
>Through the window, you see one of the LunaCorp. Guards in midair. Some kind of webbing is covering his wings, but it certainly doesn't seem to stop him from flying.
>Quite the opposite actually. He's making sudden dashes left and right, his gun harness downturned and firing.
>You hit the rug and crawl.
>Peering around the division wall, you don't see any other pony in the room with you.
>They hadn't been here for the exchange.
>That little precaution on their part just saved you a world of trouble. For now.
>You make your way to the glass, and peek over it.
>Shining armor and Mjolna are standing there, taking every shot in stride.  They're advancing, however slowly, and three yellow corpses bleed profusely.
>Cobalt-clad ponies peek out from behind tables, sharp blue muzzle flashes pinging out cold metal shards.
>The one flying pony has forced Shining to enlarge his shield, vertically.  He obviously wasn't used to having a vertical flank, and the look on his face showed it.
>As if taking a queue, Mjolna focused upwards. She slung projectiles upward in a haphazard spray, a wave of bullets that had the transparent magazines emptying quickly.
>It was enough, at least. His wing tore in mid flight, in three seperate, painful jabs. He fell put that shoulder to the ground, pushing like a wounded animal, and leaving a bloody trail before going still.
>Mjolna was reloading from her saddlebags, when the LunaCorp. Pony behind the bar darted up and took his place.

>Mjolna takes a number of hits that strike the violet shielding atop her uniform, but the plates hold. The glow weakens, but they hold.
>The elevator within the apartment itself descends. The one opposite, the exit elevator, remains untouched since you entered.
>Shining Armor: Buyer is moving, unarmed. package lost.
>Oh fuck you. Fuck, you.
>It would only be a couple seconds before the elevator reached the apartment.
>Shining Armor: Rarity, Twilight, can you intercept?
>”I'm in the hotel room, do you THINK I can?” Twilight says over the AR.
>”Darling, I'm barely halfway back. I'll pick up my pace, but don't have high expectations.”
>godfuckingdamnit.jpg
>Two ponies are now in flight, firing down.  You stand to move to the adjoining room, and the elevator door.
>You wait beside it before it manages to open. The moment you see a yellow clad body go through it, you push everything you have behind yourself and onto the other pony.

>They're light. Lighter than you expected. It sends you both into the wall, and the impact causes them to drop a small box that thumps heavily onto the rug.
>They gasp  behind the compound-eye helmet, and put their hooves up to protect their face.
>I don't think so, Tim.
>You strike, cleanly, though it's deflected a bit by the hooves and helm.  Not by much, though; this pony sure isn't a soldier, you can tell that much already, and they certainly don't have a good amount of weight behind them.
>You put both hooves down, clenching your teeth. You scramble them over the helmet, trying to find some kind of node, button, anything, to remove it.
>You wanted to record them. Record their face.
>The most you can do is find a seam near one of the eyes. You hit it again, and the other pony curls up with a gasp.
>You turn her head and push, your weight pushing down enough to rupture the pseudo-eye with a wet, disgusting goosh. You peel it off, putting the hoof in the gap, fully intent on peeling it open like some sick orange skin.
>But that eye inside the helmet.
>You recognize that eye. That pretty, sky blue.
“Fluttershy?”

>She stares at you, her expression hidden through the bio-helm, the blood of the armor on her cheek.
>It's then you feel a familiar lift, a weightlessness. The one you'd felt with the two mares last night.  Items begin to lift in the apartment, and you yourself are floating.
>Without your weight atop her, she looks up. Her wings unfurl, and she uses them against the rug to dash out from under you.
>Though you land on your feet when the gravity kicks in again, she's long gone. The adjacent elevator has already shuttled her down a level, while you were several inches off the ground.
>you see an AR ping.
>Mjolna: We are SO fucked.
>Shining Armor: Relax, we have to take cleaner shots.
>You run over to the box, scooping it up by the carrying handle in your teeth.
>Shining Armor: If you're seeing this, don't go into the club- find some way around it.
>You return to the glass overlooking the bar.
>Things are floating around in the club.  The bodies, the blood, drinks and trays and chairs. Only four of the blue ponies are left.
>Every one of those blue ponies is now hovering with that glowing webbing around their wings, while Shining Armor is doing the only thing he can in zero-g.
>He and Mjolna are floating together, a full sphere of energy covering them.  The ponies scoot around the helpless duo, peppering it with burst-fire and alternating whom is reloading. The shield is fading quickly.
>Mjolna tries firing. The shots exit the shield, some sort of one-way spell.  But they push the two viciously, unintentional thrust from the projectiles exit slamming them into the wall, shield first.
>Shining Armor: Stop stop stop
>Mjolna: well what the hell are we supposed to do?
>You look around.  What COULD they do without the right-
>wait.

>Fuck, this was awkward. But it would work. It has to.
>You jump into the room overlooking the zero-g dancehall. Ponies had this stuff perfected before, and just because these two weren't prepared didn't mean others weren't.
>You knew, after all, because you'd seen those mares using it on you when...
>You leave the box drifting near the door, pushing off the ceiling to the bedstand. You open the drawer, and the garments float out.
>You grab the magnetic stockings, giving one a tug. They were stretchy enough they could fit over the armor.
>Why not? There were worse things in the world than fashion clashing.
>You bump the box with your head as you push your way out, and let it tumble to the floor.  You ping the area for devices on your AR, stretching one of Vinyl's stockings over your front hoof.
>Open window?
>Y/N?
>Y.
>you slap your stocking-clad hoof on the ceiling, sticking there as the windows descend. Everything not tied down starts to hover and spin.
>You wrap the stockings around each other. They needed weight or they'd scatter.
>Shit. What were they called?
>Didn't matter.
“Wall stickers! Here!”
>You wind up, and throw.
>Shining Armor looks up at you. He points upward to the floating ball of clothing.
>Shining Armor: Fire, push us

>Mjolna does as she's told, firing past Shining and into the wall. The burst pushes them upward, and the LunaCorp. Guards try to give chase.
>Part of the shield opens, swallowing up the stockings. Mjolna immediately fumbles with them, pulling them apart while one hoof clings to Shining.
>She quickly pulls two of them on, trading off her free hoof as they sail upward, out of sight.
>Mjolna: Got em! Hang on to me.
>Much more accurate bursts of fire start to cascade in from above, causing the LunaCorp. Ponies to actually react. Their comfort in the zero-g battlefield quickly waned.
>And thanks to that little intervention, one of them spotted you.
>Splinters of cold metal shredded the ceiling in front of you. You use the AR connection to close the window, and fall uncerimoniously.
>You snatch up the box after a quick room scan for it, lost for a second in the plethora of loose crap that had been free-floating with you.
>As you reach the exit elevator, the window shatters.
>The moment the door opens, you're off. Or at least, you would have been, had Rarity not gotten in the way.
>You both yelp and slide into the opposite wall. The box careens off it and to the corner.
>”What do you think you're doing?!”
“Running! MOVE!”

>She doesn't second guess it verbally, but it takes her a moment to compute before she starts following you.
>As you pass it, you nab the box for the umpteenth time with your teeth before taking off.
>You pause at the club entrance, after sidestepping one of the unconscious Butterfly guards. A large blast door, clear and woven with that familiar reinforcement mesh, has closed off the area. Through it, you can see the pink-violet shield on the club ceiling.
“They're not gonna make it!”
>You say it through clenched teeth, yet still remain clear enough for Rarity to hear you as she runs past. It stops her, causing her to turn back to face you.
>The shield is cracking, so badly it's obvious even from this distance.
>Ping-Thwack.
>You feel something tap your front leg from behind. Rarity gasps.
>You look down to see a ragged, silver-lined red hole spilling blood from your leg.
>At first it feels cold. But you realize, it's a painful burn, something intense enough you can't place it.
>Ping-Ping Thwack Thwack.
>two more taps. One against your side, from behind. Another on your chest.
>Your lose your breath instantly, and collapse, the box cracking your chin as you fall. It starts to hurt, your stomach feeling as if it was being drilled through. Each time you inhale you hear a sucking noise, and spit up blood.
>Your ears start to ring, and the pain starts to spread, albeit slowly. Your eyes start to darken, as a warning about toxic mercury levels sends a warning to your still-bright AR vision.
>Rarity starts to rush to you.

>The two following LunaCorp. Guards intercept her, guns ready, pushing her back. “Don't move. Don't bucking move!”
>Despite this, she's reaching past them, trying to touch you. They both need to hold her back, thanks in no small part to her suit.
>”You done in there yet? We got an aware civvie out here.” one of them says.
>You can barely hear.
>Mjolna: Well, I'm out.  It's been fun, boss.
>You look up. Something glints.
>Huh. You ponies even made those, huh?
>Well, this feels so familiar.  Like the convention center.
>Only this time they've got Rarity, and your ass is no longer a problem. Or so they think.
>It's good to be ignored, sometimes.
>You inhale, hard, and hold it. God, does it burn.
>Standing on your functioning front leg, you grip the ring attached to the thing with your teeth. You hold it tight and fall again.
>Ka-ching!
>The sound causes everyone around you to stop what they're doing.
>They look back as you spit out the pin. The fuse starts to tick.
>The LunaCorp. Guard jumps away, as if doing so will get rid of it, while his friend moved to the panicking stallion to figure out which one you've armed.
>Rarity does the only thing she can think of.

>She rears up, and kicks. She puts the full force of the muscle suit behind it.
>One moment he's there. The next, he isn't. The door annihilates as he passes through it, and his panicked screaming stops the moment her hooves connect.
>As you spin upward, the gravity failing yet again, you see him bounce off the far end of the zero-g dance floor. In an instant, he'd cleared the entire club. The place where he met the wall is pure white, the outside a spiderweb of cracks.
>The grenade goes off.
>The entire dome shatters, and sound ceases to exist for a moment.
>You can see Mjolna holding on for dear life to Shining.  The wings on the last set of guards buckle inside the suit, grossly contorting as they're sucked out into the vaccuum.
>You, Rarity, and the last guard are pulled inside the club. Some sort of klaxon sounds, and a glittering, near invisible cloth floats over the wound in the station. It was something that reminded you of the webs over the LunaCorp. Guards wings.
>The pull toward the stars stops. Something hisses, and you fall painfully to the floor.
>You hear another thwack.
>Was that you again?
>The recovering LunaCorp. Guard falls out of the air, one clean shot having punctured his helmet.
>Shining and Mjolna were over you, then. Rarity too, when she finally rushed over.
>She was saying things. But you couldn't hear them at this point.
>But at least you could still see. Barely.
>She was doing something you'd not expect of her at this point.
>Not after what you'd done to her.
>She was crying.
>And you didn't even have the breath to say you were sorry for dying like this, either.
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