rainbovv dash

Storm's expression changed when she heard the name of the AI. "You're an Aegis...!?" her mood was suddenly lightened, she addressed the machine. "Oh my...! I thought you were never completed. What version are you running on?" The authorization request was something she still didn't want to fulfill. "Aquila knows who I am. And he knows I'm coming!" she answered, but ammended for herself "Why I'm here is something none of us knows." The whole ship suddenly had turned into the center of her interest. Since she had left the military, progress was something she had not experienced. The Aegis project had been something she had collaborated on, she had considered it to be cancelled when she had left. The mare continued to inspect the ship in front of her in detail while she waited for a response from the AI.

Storm cocked her head at the unexpected voice. The voice was clean, melodic, like it was synthesized by a machine. She guessed it had to be a machine, but maybe it was just a pony with a really soft voice. Whatever was behind that speaker asked her something she didn't know. "I'm not here for games, Aquila" - she thought it would be best to ignore the fact she wasn't talking to him personally. She felt like it had been a stupid idea to go there, but she wasn't about to give up. - "I'm not gonna leave" She was tired and felt like a stampede had run her over. So she just sat down to wait and see if anything happened.

Shit... was the only thought that circled through Storm's mind when she woke up from her slumber, the whole bed stank of alcohol. An empty and transparent bottle was rolling through the bed. She guessed the wet spot under it was the main cause of the smell. The wave of nostalgia that had hit her the day before was back, now mixed with an awful headache. She didn't want to get out of the bed, there was no reason for her to do so. She rolled a few times in bed until she found a new position she was comfortable in, trying to unnecessarily extend her sleep in order to waste time she didn't want to use. After a few minutes a knock on the door woke her again. She got up and muttered a short "I'm coming!" towards the door just to find her landlord behind it. "What do you want?" she asked. - "I'm here to collect rent" - "I will bring it to you later. Let me get ready and I'll bring it personally" She turned around and pushed the door for it to close. Instead of the clicking noise of the lock she heard the door bouncing back at something. When she turned around she noticed the earth pony had entered the apartment. She stared the pony. Just to make sure he hadn't misheard she repeated in a slow and controlled manner "I said I will pay it to you later" The stallion continued moving towards her grabbing her mane and answered "I have no need for your bits this month" - with a sickening smirk he continued - "But I'm pretty sure you can give me what I want". She noticed that, even though she usually wouldn't even go to bed without her blade, right now she was unarmed. With a forceful push the pony sent Storm spraying to the bed. He followed shortly. The colt was bigger and stronger than her, making her attempts to fight his grip futile. After some struggling, Storm grabbed the empty bottle and swung it against his head, causing the bottle to shutter and the attacker to lose balance. The earth pony landed on the ground, writhing in pain. Storm picked herself up, grabbed the remains of the bottle and addressed the stallion "You will never do this again". She was about to make sure he would never do something alike again. She wrapped her hoof around the bottle , making sure she had god grip and rammed the bottle into his chest. Shattering noises of glass and the colt's ribcage was everything there was to be heard for several seconds. Then silence took over, leaving Storm alone in her sadness. She felt no pity for the pony, no remorse for her action, but she felt that in past times she would have felt guilty for what she had done. The lack of remorse was way worse than the feeling of remorse itself. It felt like something deep inside the mare had been irreparably broken, she had grown to be a coldblooded killer with a total lack of empathy for any living being. Her mind was clear while planning her next steps, she needed to leave the apartment, grab whatever she could and pack it into her spaceship. After a few hours of moving every single one of her belongings to her ship, she decided the most clever move would be to go and find Aquila. As much as she hated it he was the closest she had to a friend right now and the only one who was able to help her to get her old life back. Finding his ship was no quest for Storm, and after she had reached it she decided for the formal approach of knocking politely against the hull. Waiting for the colt to open.

Storm watched the stallion, every second felt like an eternity. Every second she hardened her grip on the gun, if he tried to leave just like that she would pull the trigger herself. Suddenly, the stallion motioned and started freeing Storm. As Aquila was running away she noticed that she had stopped breathing out of the tension and inhaled deeply. The mare grabbed the scattered contents of her bag and started running in the direction Aquila already had made his escape, after all the other one was where the guards were coming from. Her mind was racing and her heart was beating like an engine, everything she wanted was to run. So she did, using the obstacles she found on her way as tools to distract her mind and avoid thinking about what she had been through today. Other ponies would have called this 'parcour', she just needed a way to relax and to stretch her unused wings. After all, her wings were the body part suffering the strongest consequences of her altered lifestyle. Flying was not compatible with sneaking, using them was like diving head first into her past. She dreamt of just spreading her wings and let the wind carry her away while she watched the golden fields turn into dark woods and cold mountains. Not the slightest of this was left to her, she always crawled through this stinking city. Stealing to just feed herself with enough painkillers to drown her past away, a past she loved. A past she would have traded her soul for. The sun was already lowering in the sky when she reached her apartment, the lock clicked and she opened the door, uncovering the mess hidden behind it. She sighed out of disappointment, home, sweet home she thought. Giving the voice in her mind a sarcastic tone. She entered her bathroom. Every inch of her felt dirty, sweaty and tired. Her magical fur though kept her coat clean, in a perfectly shining yellow, just a few pearls of her sweat which weren't repulsed by her coat were visible on it. The sight of herself in a mirror showed the image of past Storm. Everything was clean and perfect, yet she didn't feel so. Who deserved the right to rip her life out of her? Why couldn't she just not have a normal life? A new wave of hate, nostalgia and helplessness washed over her. Yelling she hit the glass, causing it to shatter into a thousand pieces that rained on the floor and her foreleg, mixing with her blood as one or two of the shards injured her skin. She sat on her haunches, starting to sob anew, wishing some day she'd break out of her life.

"Did you ever get something straight?" she answered giggling like a school filly at the cruel joke. She then continued in a mocking tone "Well, I've murdered a bunch of ponies, stolen money from honest ponies to pay for drugs, hurt the feelings of almost every pony that has formed a part of my life... My life is an example of not being worth a damn." She suddenly heard voices coming down the alley. - "Here is were the shots came from" - "Let me see" Storm new exactly what this meant. The guards are coming! anything Aquila would do to her seemed like a joyride compared to be left out in the desert, without map and with just a small amount of water. No pony would last more than 4 days out there. It was cruel. She stood up in panic pulling desperately at the chain. "Ok, do what you want but take a decision. Shoot me or let me go, I'll do whatever you ask for! Please! Just don't leave me like this." It was not her style to ask for mercy, but there was no other way this time. She put her hooves on the gun, holding it, and said in a dark tone "If you're not enough of a man to shoot me, at least be so decent to leave the gun here. I won't wait for the guards to grab me"

The effect of the painkillers was slowly coming up. Storm noted her mind was a bit fuzzy, today's dose would probably have knocked out any adult stallion in just a few minutes. The sudden smoke and rushed movements took her by total surprise. Something was off, as soon as the smoke lifted she saw her situation. "DEAD EYE! I'M GONNA KILL YOU, YOU SON OF A BROODMARE!!" she yelled into the depths of the alley "Great, this is great!" she then added as she noticed She sat against the wall, after all she hadn't noticed who had the key, and thought she would have to get out on her own. Looking unfocused at the other wall she addressed Aquila without looking at him, a rhetorical question she wished it wasn't "What did I do to make my life go so wrong?". She shifted into a more comfortable position, hoping she'd stop being high before the guards or somebody else noticed her. Her mind filled with nostalgia, a feeling she would never get used to. This time the feeling took the form of an old song which had been special to her in the past, she started singing it in a low voice to dwell in the feeling and let her tears roll free. "Silly foals with silly dreams, together eternally, come out and play, well spread our wings... and fly!"

[i'm just playing Storm as an horribly grumpy char. After all she's been through a lot, I think this is how a person becomes after years of avoiding social life] "I just wanted to invite you to some tea and cookies, and do some knitting... You know, gay stuff" - Something inside her found it horrible to hack on the colt for something he couldn't decide for himself, but she was angry and it felt just great to get down on him for anything. To release her frustration against him. "You don't say!" she said struggling against his grip. He's lucky I'm unarmed, I'd probably rip his head off right now

[Just a heads up, Storm is angry and says stuff even she would probably regret at a later point. I don't share 'her' views] Storm coughed at the sudden display of force of Dead Eye, he was way bigger and stronger than her and her neck was paying the consequences. She pushed herself away from him again, "No, I'm not Ok" - he was the last pony she wanted to have close to her right now. "So..." she said addressing Aquila "What can the goddess of trickery" she said with a fake seductive tone "do for the coltcuddler with the gun?". She returned her gaze to Dead Eye and continued with a mocking voice - "This time it's you who has to fear getting assaulted, prepare your rear!" Perfectly aware that she was going to far, she wanted to push the situation. He would probably not shoot her for making jokes about his preferences, but he'd probably answer faster and explain what he wanted from her and Dead Eye. He didn't look like someone who would stay if he didn't knew that either Dead Eye or Storm had something he wanted or needed. But she didn't want to wait for an answer-

"What a waste of ammo! Look," she said lowering her head until it was the height of her knees - "If you shoot my head you just need one shot and I won't be rolling around in pain and making unnecessary noise." She had grown to be reckless with her body and to stop fearing death, so she continued her slow advance towards the unicorn. But she was curious, "How do I work? Did you read my past off my flank while you were staring at it? No mister, this is not how it works."

Storm coughed up some laughs as she listened to the conversation. "This is so sweet! Why not blame it all on the emotionally unstable..." - the thought of her name made her shudder - "mare!". She loosened the grip of the hidden blade until the metallic piece slid of her leg, the sound of it hitting the ground echoing from the walls. "You want to know who I am? I'm not going to tell you" she said, while starting to slowly move towards the pony on the other end of the alley. "This is my problem and it has nothing to do with your sorry flank. So please, shoot me if you want! You'd be dong me a great favor."

Storm disarmed the two stallions and ordered them to move. She was relieved none of the guards had offered to help her with them and walk her to 'her' ship. As soon as she lost sight of the guards she directed the group to where she felt safe, a dark and narrow alley. Her legs were trembling and her whole body shaking. Fear, shock and anger sharing her mind and confusing the mare. She felt dizzy and lost her balance, leaning onto a wall and letting the heavy guns fall to the ground below her. She had always relied on her emotional distance to everything. She had left behind what had happened, locked it deep inside her mind and drowned every bit of a memory in pills and alcohol. But everything was coming up again, her past was catching up with her. The danger of two adult stallions keen on killing her was secondary right now. She craved a shot. Fiddling with the latch of her saddlebags with such shaky hooves proved difficult, desperate she threw the bag to the floor and collapsed to her haunches. She started sobbing, overwhelmed by her situation, everything had gone alright this time, but it could have gone terribly wrong. She retried on the bag, this time the latch gave in and the bag opened, spilling it's contents on the floor. She picked up the orange plastic container labeled codeine and threw in some pills. Relaxing almost instantly by the mere knowledge she would feel better soon.

Damn, I knew Dead Eye would be a hard one. Her situation wasn't easy at all. She was in the middle of a crowd, surrounded by a lot of guards and the slightest error would cost her her life. Her only option was to get rid of the guards ASAP. "Shut your own mouth, you bastard!" she yelled back. This time it was not part of a role, she was close to panicking. She needed to throw in some pills urgently, her body was sweaty and she had a hard time trying to concentrate. "You traitor! You left us sitting on the last mission!" her anger boiling. "We did the job and you left us there, saved your own sorry flank!" she knew it was all lies, but fear made her go on. "But it is over now! I'm gonna throw you into a dark pit where you can rot for eternity". For her, Dead Eye was responsible for the failure of the last mission. Although he got what he wanted and she got pay, her best friend who had done every job with them died due to an error in planning, Dead Eye was good at being hard and knocking everything over. But not at plotting his way in and out. She on the other side preferred a more silent approach, watch the enemy, study it and then with a single quick and painless blow to eliminate it. Manipulation was her strength and swift and powerful strikes her tool. She did never wield a gun and wasn't planing on doing so for a while. [Needed to make some backstory for this two. In order to explain her behavior and being after checking the plan.] "You had to dive head first into that changeling hive!" she then took a few deep breaths. Restoring her calm façade she said addressing the guards "I'm gonna take this two to my ship and gonna present them to a military trial".

Storm kept up the shouting as long as it took her to reach the ponies. Flying was definitely faster and more effective, she reached the two just seconds after Aquila had stopped. The guards weren't far either. "I wouldn't shoot any captain of the coalition" she stated, pulling out of her saddlebags a golden piece of metal, engraved with the name of whoever had been unlucky enough to get lifted by Storm earlier that month, but marks were a useful asset. "I'm captain" - she took a quick look at the golden object in her hooves to read the name on it - "Fast Forward" What a stupid name, I could have probably come up with a better one "and you two are charged for several federal violations". She whispered over to Aquila "So, sweetie, how do you like it now, staring at the flank of a captain?" she bluffed, knowing that her fake coming out as captain wouldn't stand very long. Even this dumbpony must notice after a while it's not true

Buck! What did I do to always get the running cry-babies? was what Storm thought as she launched herself into the air. She noticed DeadEye appearing in the distance, somehow this was getting more and more inconvenient. She decided to play her last resource, she hated doing this for being a double edged sword for her. At the top of her lungs she started yelling as she flew behind the two ponies "Thieves! Stop them! Guards!" still tailing the stallion. The crowd was shifting under Storm, making room around Aquila. Just a few white and dark grey dots started moving in their direction. The running is over guys!

"Oh! I'm honestly sorry you don't have time for me." - she said with a depressed mood - "I thought we could have some fun. Well, I guess I should stop wasting your time." She used her left hoof to grab something out of her saddlebag "Ok, I'm just picking some bits" she said while pulling a purse with money out of the bag. She slowly extended the left hoof towards the other pony, she hoped the stallion was focused on the purse. "I'm really sorry, for the inconVENIENCE" she said, smashing the door with her empty hoof towards the stallion's head, throwing herself at the colt and motioning the right hoof slightly so the hidden blade would emerge from it's hiding spot. Just in case the door wouldn't have hit him hard enough to knock him out she would be close enough to make him lose any advantage his gun would provide.

((Just to make sure, Aquila is not straight. Am I right?)) After a few minutes of walking she reached a new crowded street crossing the alley. In a similar cheerful manner she announced "My house is just across the street" - she hated herself for this, but ended the sentence with a seductive- "sweetie" and lunged into the crowd, covering her face with the hoodie that made sure others wouldn't recognize her coat and eye color. Due to being forced to run with a low head, she didn't turn around to check if the new stallion was following her. She got the keys out of her bags and with a clicking noise unlocked and opened the door, entered - "Feel at home" - and leaned on to the door to ask Aquila to enter. [if you feel like running away now for some reason feel free to do so... Tried to not make this into a thousand door opening posts.]

Storm had only a faint idea of who her new namesake was, she found it amusing to be considered a goddess. It was not her intention, though, to reveal that knowledge and answered with a simple "Oh, that's a pretty name! An ex-marefriend?". Her job had turned into exploiting every small bit of information ponies gave away to retrieve more information and finally trick them, Aquila was just another source for her. Storm knew, the dumber she seemed the easier it was to gain trust. He didn't say his name, he must have been unaware of me following him for hours. Good. She took a few turns, it wasn't far and she didn't want to waste time unnecessarily. After all, she had lots of things to do and no time for playing games. Even though it was not the first time she was in this situation, and definitely not the last time. A pair of eyes piercing her from behind was inconvenient and not really helpful. "So, are you enjoying the view back there?" she gave her flank a slight shake so it provided him with enough context.

Storm couldn't avoid to feel eased when she started to hear the clopping noise of the blue Stallion behind her. She wasn't in any need to hurry, so she took her time. The question she received though made her feel uncomfortable. The yellow mare started staring into the distance, her sight unfocused. The answer was so easy back when she had a normal life, the answer had grown to be something automatic. The last few years though had turned her own name into a forbidden word, she would just pick some random name for every mission and make her best to not forget it during the course of it. She wrapped her thoughts up, and answered in a slow and controlled manner "I don't have a name, I had one... I traded it for something that is way more valuable to me" she noticed herself diving into a long story she didn't feel like telling, Damn it Storm, stop the talking. After an effort to restore a cheerful and uninterested façade she continued "As I don't have a name any longer, how about you giving me one?"

Storm didn't avoid to show the pony a smirk that covered her face as she turned around to look into the depth of his pistol. "Males, you always want favors..." She continued her slowly paced walk down the alley. "If you want to know if I can offer you anything you will have to follow rather than threaten me" she answered, she knew her speed and strength in close combat were most probably unmatched by the stallion. But after all he held a gun in his hoof. Letting the situation escalate would be a bad idea.

"He he" Storm Cloud chuckled. "You're probably right, I should have come out and asked you to be enough of a stallion to take me right there," - She said sarcastically - "It would have been way less suspicious". "You wouldn't expect me to run around following you for the sake of killing you, do I look so stupid to you?" was the blunt answer he received. Storm dragged Aquila into a dark alley, once they were away from the crowd she lowered the blade. She started walking away, breaking the silence with a simple "Follow".

Storm had been following the pony around town, after he left his Zebra friend with the ship running diagnostics she watched him head into the crowded street the rest of the group had gone down. She followed him, approaching him from behind. As soon as she was close enough behind the stallion reach for him she summoned the hidden blade. She wrapped her front hooves around the stallions head, the left one covering his eyes while the right one with the hidden blade attached to it disappeared inside his mane, she wanted to make sure he could feel the steel on his neck. "Who am I?" she said in the loudest and most excited tone she could muster. After all, nobody would look at a couple playing silly games in a crowd. "How about a little walk around town? I bet you'd love to make some sightseeing! Actually you're probably dying to do so..."

I'm still here and reading the topic constantly, but everyone I've been RPing with seems to have been hiding away. Maybe it's my breath... XD

Storm watched Aquila separate from the group, he was alone and probably would be the easiest to 'ask for help'. She kept some distance as she watched the pony head towards a tree while the rest of the group was heading for lunch. This will be an awesome lot of fun! she thought to herself.

Sorry, I'm trying to keep up with the RP but it's so fast in psoting I'm having a hard time even following it by the sheer amount of posts. I will try to follow you though.

(Thunder hasn't answered yet... I'll ignore him now...) As soon as Storm had reached her hiding spot to observe the new pony she noticed she had lost it. She still wanted some information about the pony requesting her services and how hot is trail was being, she knew that the disappeared pony was no good sign. The conversation the ponies were having was most interesting though, even if it had no valuable information for her. This Slicer pony is really wrong, she thought while carefully following them down the street.