I have a shot

Another scene from the anthro MLP dream/movie Petina and I watched one night in my sleep.

    It was raining lightly outside. That light, swirling type of misty rain that seems to take its time falling from the sky. It soften the edges of objects and made the Manehattan skyline fade away until one could only see a few city blocks in any direction.

    Coco Pommel usually enjoyed this kind of quiet weather, but today it made it difficult to keep the reticle of her scope centered on her target 300 meters away. She was sitting in the living room of an apartment with a 12.7mm anti-material rifle aimed at the head of a Death Bringer. The target was sitting crossed legged in a mediative state on the floor of a nearby flat.

    Coco could hear the chatter of encrypted radio communications on the headset she wore. Local law enforcement had almost finished discreetly evacuating all of the residents in the immediate area. The assault teams had successfully infiltrated the building and were moving to their final positions. 15 minutes ago local cell coverage had gone down. The local cellular carrier had sent a truck out to investigate the problem, but the crew was actually undercover RESF personnel who would assure that the coverage would stay down for the duration of the operation.

    A series quick beeps alerted Coco of a transmission being sent to her, then she heard the refined, smooth voice of her commander. Rarity.

    "Ms. Pommel, what is your status? Over."

    Coco replied in a calm voice. "The targets appear to be unaware of our presence m'am. The main target is still in sight."

    Coco quickly glanced away for a second from the scope to the laptop on the table which was monitoring and controlling the other equipment she was using. Her eyes then returned to the reticle.

    "All equipment is operating within acceptable parameters and I have a shot on the main target. I am in standby awaiting further instructions. Over."

    "The operation is scheduled to begin in 5 minutes. Please confirm last transmission Ms. Pommel? Over."

    "Operations to commence in 5 minutes. Understood m'am. Over"

    Royal Equestria Security Forces (RESF) had become aware of this cell a few weeks ago and had been planning this Op ever since. Coco had been assigned to help keep the cell under observation until the enemy combatants could be captured or neutralized. As part of that plan Ms. Pommel had moved into this apartment a couple of weeks ago. Working under the guise of a young, work from home, author she spent her days in the living room or out on the balcony of her 22nd story apartment working on her latest literary masterpiece on her laptop.

    In reality what she was doing was a monitoring the flat across the small park through a series of hidden cameras that had been installed by undercover RESF personnel who'd come and replaced and installed new lighting on her balcony before she'd moved in. The cameras were linked to a secure laptop that she used to monitor the enemies activity.

    There were 3 other RESF operatives along with Coco in the area that kept the flat under 24/7 observation, but this week she'd received word that RESF would be eliminating this cell.

    In preparation for the operation more undercover RESF personnel had come into Ms. Pommel's apartment earlier in the day to supposedly fix a faulty furnace. This required moving large number of big, bulky, heavy boxes into her apartment. Unfortunately the repair crew had been unable to fix the problem with her furnace but promised to come back tomorrow and take care of it once and for all. They'd made sure to have this conversation out in the hall as they tried to calm down the now very grumpy tenant.

    They apologized for the mess they'd made and promised to move all the furniture back tomorrow and make things right. However they did ask if Coco leave the door to her balcony open so the fumes from some of the solvents they'd used would vent out of her place?

    In reality what they'd done was deliver and install all the wards and equipment that Coco would need for operation later today. Her apartment was now warded so anyone scanning her apartment either magically or physically would not pay attention to her place. Their eyes would just slide off it and look at something else. Also acoustic cancellation wards had been installed which would help dampen the thunderous concussion of firing the anti-material rifle from inside the apartment.

    So Coco having returned from a supposed trip to the local deli, which had another RESF operative working there, to find a new laptop similar to the one she'd been using. A bolt action 12.7 x 99mm rifle with a programmable real-time ward-breaker encoder attached to the muzzle, and a passive ward evaluator attached to rifle scope.

    It had come to rude shock to Equestrian force to find some beings from the Realm of Shadows seemed to be unaffected by projectiles using destabilized mage crystal (DMC) ammo. The projectiles either failed to pierce the wards and if they did they acted like normal ball ammo which was not very effective against them. At first troops had blamed defective or flawed ammunition, but recently it had been learned that some of the more powerful beings from the Realm of Shadows were able to constantly modulate their wards, rendering DMC ammo ineffective.

    Princess Twilight and her team of researchers had come up with a solution but it was an imperfect one. They'd developed a ward evaluator that could take passive observations of a beings wards and in real-time compile a spell that could be applied to a ward-breaker projectile.

    Unfortunately this solution which had been rushed into initial field operations used some rather brute forces methods to achieve its results. The result was it produced a projectile with very unstable properties to it. Projectile undergoing this process had a life expectancy of only 15 seconds before they simply detonated on its own.

    This meant that they had to be encoded, compiled and sent on their way in shortest time possible. Also the stresses put on the crystals meant they had to be of a larger physical size to take the strain and had to be handled much more gently than regular ammo. The end result was that 12.7mm was the smallest current projectiles available and the ammo was restricted to use in bolt action and single shot weapons since it was found that even the act cycling then rounds through semi-automatic actions damaged them.

    Fortunately encoding only took milliseconds so projectile could be encoded as it left the muzzle. However this placed the encoder head where it was subjected to the punishing effects of the muzzle blast. Especially since 12.7 x 99mm rifles used a muzzle brakes. At the moment Twilight would only guarantee an encoder head would work for about 15 rounds before it need replacing. Also the encoder system drained power packs at a terrifying rate so the system wasn't activated until the last instant.

    So Coco sat with the rifle tucked against her shoulder. Her target in her reticle but her finger was off the trigger. In her left hand she the button to activate the encoder system. An instant before she pressed the trigger she'd push the button to activate.

Now she waited for the signal.

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Edit. this piece is a bit larger than most of the drawings I have done from this dream. It is on 11" x 17" paper.