Stale Bread and Rug Burns (A Calm Introduction)
"Damn it! Take cover!"
The explosive hit the ground and unleashed its fury upon the earth. Bodies littered the field, most missing limbs, some blown completely out of their uniforms. Screams could be heard, suggesting some of the victims were still alive, but not for long. The remaining soldiers in the trench knew that those screams would cease soon, and the bloodshed would continue, but that wasn't the problem. The Griffons were going easy on them...
I remember the day I arrived at boot camp. It was cold, I was sick, and was surrounded by the biggest idiots I could have ever known. Still, we all had the same desire, join the battalion, support the country and the princess, and slaughter the "bad guys". Of course, the real reason was because we all wanted to impress the mares, which no one ever admitted to an officer. When I think back though, the officers must have known, because whenever a soldier would pin up a picture of his "supposed marefriend" everypony in the barrack would want to look, so we would hang around their bunk until we had a good, long look. The officers would see us do this yet say nothing. They just let us go on with our business of trying to check out a mare who we knew would never change posture - which was rather disappointing at times.
Anyways, the day I arrived, as I said, I was sick. In fact, because of it I almost received a "4F". Thankfully, the little mercy that existed inside those cold hearted officers let me move on through the front gate of the camp. Well, I was in...didn't feel any different, honestly. I remember standing there for five minutes literally looking around me. Recruits, officers, and barracks. This is what I would see everyday for the next year. Upon realizing that, I became rather disappointed, but after awhile, I would get used to it.
One of the first things I was supplied with was a dog tag with some general information about me on it. Gender: C., Species: Peg., Weight: 120 lbs., Height: 3''2', Eyes: Blue, Color: Golden Peach, Mane Color: Yellow, Cutie Mark: Music Baton. Another item they gave me was a green uniform with my name "Peachie B. Lane" in bold white letters, and under it the word "Cloudsdale" in a smaller sized font, signifying my hometown.
One thing I was sure of was that my name was the most pathetic thing about me. Peachie...ugh! That name was given to me by my parents because of the color of my body. Golden Peach is a great color in my opinion...but the name could go away. I love my parents though, so I respected their "interesting" name decision for a colt and kept it. Throughout the years have been teased and even physically abused because of it, but I never broke completely. Eventually, I just adopted the nickname "Peach". This was mainly because of my newfound friends at the camp began to call me that, but I also took it on because it still held on the the respect for my parents, which I valued greatly.
Another pathetic thing about me was my weight. I was never a muscular pegasus and also didn't care much for physical activity. This resulted in me being a pretty thin, fragile pegasus. All that "doing nothing" should've made me a...let's just say larger pegasus, however, the reason I stayed skinny was become of my metabolism, a blessing and a curse. I would always be hungry, but then again, I would never be fat.
My cutie mark I was proud of. All my life I had a deep love for music. I listened to every genre imaginable, from country to the heaviest metal you could imagine. However, my deepest respect for a genre was for classical, orchestral music. The sounds! The emotions! The stories! I loved it all dearly. All this lead to my cutie mark appearing one day while listening to the Canterlot Orchestra on the radio. From that day on, I thought my future would hold nothing but music. That changed however.
The reason: high school.
You see, when you reach a certain age, you realize that mares aren't icky and you really want to get to know them "better". When this hit me, I realized that I needed to look better than I currently did. So, for the four years of my high school career I planned on what I would do to get in better physical shape. What I should've been doing was working out then, but I was to naive to realize that. After four years of planning, I figure out what I was going to do. I was going to join the Equestrian Battalion. So after graduated, I applied to join, and the application was accepted.
The greatest friends I met at boot camp, they were all from my barrack too. The first one I met we all nicknamed "Weezy" because of his habit of hyperventilating. His real name, however, was Tweezer (which also helped with his nickname). He was a semi-husky earth pony from Fillydelphia, but in the span of six months, he would be a ripped earth pony from Fillydelphia. Colored a magnificent shade of sapphire blue with a white mane, he would strut through the camp like he was "all that", which was rather funny to the rest of us. In fact, the only reason I met him was because I ran into him when he was strutting.
My other good friend was a unicorn from the big dandy itself, the city of Canterlot. His full name, as he would always state, was Sir Francis Blackhoof...we called him "Frankie". The "sir" part of his name came from his claim that he was knighted by Princess Celestia herself, which was a big lie. Weezy eventually told me that, along with the fact that Frankie wasn't really rich either, which he had also claimed. He was, in fact, raised in the Canterlot Slums, which isn't even within the walls of the city. It's just outside the walls, inside a cave that lies to the east of the gate some 300 yards. Frankie would never confirm it, but we can see it in his eyes that it's the truth. Another thing he would always do was wash his shiny, white coat very thoroughly. He took great pride in it, along with his jet black mane.
The last great friend I met was another earth pony, but he was from the arctic region of the country. The first time we saw him, he was wearing a giant fur coat, which was weird because we hadn't seen a pony not in uniform for the longest time. At first Frankie teased him, but in the end, we all came to love each other. His name was Scales...which is all we really knew him by really, he never did tell us his real name. We had also never met a purple colt before, but it worked well with his ice blue mane. His eyes were gray, which surprised all of us, however he was nowhere near blind, he just called it a "birth defect".
Another thing I remember about boot camp was the food. Simply, it sucked. Not even that, it should've been burned at the stake. Being basically force fed "food" wasn't a great experience. Of all the things we ever ate, there was always one thing that was on the menu...stale bread.
This bread was very stale...so stale that the first time we had it, we were all convinced we had been served rocks from the quarry not that far away from the camp. After being informed that it was actually bread, we all just looked at it with bland expressions. Finally, one brave soul decided to bite in, and of course, the rumors were true, it was indeed bread...from satan's personal table. Frankie once stated that the bread "would sink if thrown into a body of water."
We even used the bread not just as food, but making it serve as other devices. Sometimes we would let it harden even more and use them in mock fights we held every Wednesday for bets. We would even use them as male-shift seats if they got that hard. Of course, in order to do that we would actually have to freeze the bread first after it had hardened to its maximum. It served as a great tool at times, but as food...we would rather eat nails.
Another thing I remember was the rather unusual punishments for not following orders. When I had failed to comply to an officer's order during exercises once, he sentence me to carpet scrubbing. Now at first this seemed funny and rather pathetic, but after I had started, I realized the error of my ways.
You see, the carpets at that particular camp are renowned for being the absolute worst carpets one could find anywhere. They are rough, extremely dirty, and cause the most painful rug burns. After scrubbing for only ten minutes, I must have burned myself at least 15 times, and every single one was very painful. A couple even caused me to bleed, which would get on the carpets, which I would then have to clean...again.
In the end, I learned my lesson to always follow orders given, and so did my friends after they saw what had happened to me during my punishment. It looked like I had been in a small skirmish, armed with a branding iron.
Soon, the year had passed and we were moved to an actual Battalion base. The base was named Fort Starswirl, after the infamous wizard Starswirl the Bearded. We were assigned into units, and I somehow remained with my good friends from boot camp.
That was a good thing too, cause the next two years we would really need each other, more than we could ever ask for.
The unit I was assigned to would eventually be known as one of the most elite units in the battalion, but at the time it was a very young and new unit. The battalion's name for it was unit 42, and I somehow ended up with my good friends. This surprised me, seeing as the unit selection was generally at random, so my guess was we got really lucky. In fact, we were very lucky, because we would be lead by one of the greatest sergeants the battalion and myself would ever know. His name was Sgt. Marker.
Sgt. Marker already had an interesting reputation. It was rumored he had once tortured a private for taking too much rations. this, of course, wasn't true, but it scared the hell out of us the first time. What he had actually done to the private was take out back and show him his place, simply by beating him. This action nearly got his ass discharged, but his superiors decided to spare him. Nopony knows why, but one thing is for sure - no private ever messed with him again.
That was the problem too, cause we were all privates since we had been shipped in from a boot camp. we had heard coming in that higher ranks ate privates for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This didn't phase me, but when I saw Sgt. Marker for the first time, I began to believe the stories. He was a rather fit, muscular earth pony with an unusual gray color. His eyes were a rather piercing green - literally, he could stare into your soul. His cutie mark happened to be an infantry helmet, signifying that his talents were currently at their best use. His mane, a very simple black. His appearance did intimidate us, but then he spoke to us for the first time.
"Looks like they really scraped the bottom of the barrel this time, eh?" He looked at us with his sharp eyes with a grin. he pulled out a cigar from his from breast pocket and placed it in his mouth.
As he lit it, we all stood there with sly little smiles on our faces looking rather stupid.
"Cut that out," he said, " no place for that shit here." He puffed at his cigar to make sure it was in proper condition, then continued. "You're in my company now, and I'll make sure your broken and battered by the end of the week."
This frightened us all. It's bad enough that this big, ripped sergeant was our leader, but his low, demanding voice sold everything he said. We knew then that the next week was going to be full of pain and suffering of the worst kind. However, it wouldn't compare to the suffering poor Weezy would suffer within the next few months.
After we had met our superiors, we retired to our new barracks. We expected new, refreshing accommodations...were we ever wrong. The barracks were the same, if not worse than the ones at boot camp. The carpet inside looked even worse actually, which got my heart racing. No breaking orders around here! The beds...oh, the beds! Hard as rocks and cold as the deepest parts of the ocean. In fact, the first pony who laid down on a bed shot up in the air at the shock of the cold mattresses. Funniest damn thing I've ever seen, I swear!
Still, this would be home for the next couple months, so we tried our best to get comfortable...which never happened. The night was full of empty dreams and lost sleep. That would be only the second worst night of sleep we would ever have. The next would come soon enough.
The surprise of a rather blaring alarm woke us at six in the morning. And so day one begins, I remember thinking quite groggily. Sadly, that grogginess would not leave me that entire day, Sgt. Marker had devised hell on earth for our first day of training. Let me clarify - warm-up was 250 push ups, followed by a mile sprinting in which if you slowed down Marker would make you start over, not just the mile, but the entire warm-up! This colt was out to kill us, then kill our souls as they tried to escape. At least, that's what it felt like.
The rest of the rest of the work out consisted of running, more running, and guess what? Bucking a sand bag 50 times then more running. By the end of the day, we were all seriously thinking we needed to be carried back to our barracks. Weezy fell to the ground at least six times on the way back to the barracks, Frankie had puked twice, and Scales was incredibly light headed. As for me, I suffered from pain - terrible pain which we all suffered from that day. When we entered the our barrack, the cold rocks they called "beds" seemed like a gift from Celestia herself. This wouldn't be the only time that would happen either. In fact, it would happen the next day, and the next...and the next.
Truthfully, that same pain visited us for about three straight weeks every night. Just as we would all seem to get used to a certain exercise, Sgt. Marker would throw a new, insane work out in front of us. Every time it was something we knew was guaranteed to bring our bones to near breaking points, and our tendons and muscles to new levels of burning sensations.
"Keep moving your asses," he would scream at us, "this will benefit you in the end! Curse me all you want, you will worship me in the end for this!"
He was right, we just refused to agree at the time. Our flaming legs would give us enough evidence for that standpoint.
The work out pattern continued for the next two months, and by the end of those two months we were all ripped. It was fantastic! Never had I been in such great shape! Of course, I wasn't the only one happy, my friends were as well. We reveled in the fact we looked at good as we did, and as Marker had predicted with his sly tongue, we did begin to worship him somewhat. Well, we had at least developed a great respect for the guy. However, our happiness would soon turn into dread.
To the northern edge of the country, trouble was brewing. The problem was on the other side of the border, in the Griffon Kingdom. A new, radical king had risen from the lower ranks of the Griffons and gained a huge following. He had gained power after he slaughtered the present king in a battle of honor. The stories that we heard at the fort was that he hung the old king's corpse by its bowels from the grand tree in the castle courtyard. To defile that tree in the Griffon law meant death, for it signified the unity between all Griffons. However, the new king had gained so many followers that they simply ignored the fact that he had desecrated it. The king's name was Salazaar.
Salazaar was quickly known to have a great hatred of all pony kind. He claimed that Equestria was rightfully Griffon land, and with his silver tongue, slowly all the Griffons believed him. Pretty soon he had the entire Griffon army on his side, not a single soldier was influenced by anything else except Salazaar. This became a serious problem very quickly.
The Griffon army attacked a town near the northern border of the Equestria, decimating the population and sacking the town. The even sent a letter to the Princess herself, declaring war on all pony kind, as well as claiming rights to the lands under Equestrian rule. The battalion was notified very quickly and it was time to deploy to northern Equestria.
We didn't have the foresight to know what would happen next. If we did, we would have never left the fort in the first place.
