1318 hours
Ten (10) days after first contact
Gerald R. Ford

"Captain, confirm lost contact with ground units." Captain Henderson's first officer said as the Captain himself sat in his chair, putting his head in his hands.

"Make the response team throttle it... And get some air units over that area... Track their 'Net' devices." Henderson said, barely aware of his own words, and the affirmative response to them. He had failed. Even if he wasn't the one on the ground, even if he hadn't been able to do anything, he had failed.

"Sir, I've got Captain Volkov on the line." An ensign said, holding out a headset for him, which he numbly put on.

"Captain Henderson." The rough, accented voice on the other end of the line said, "I have heard that you have suffered a... Tragedy of sorts."

"Correct." Henderson said, his throat dry, "We have indeed suffered a setback... Damn it all, we've lost a full company. That's not a setback; that's a disaster."

"May I render assistance? I can have units on-site within the hour." Volkov said.

"I would appreciate that, yes..." Henderson replied, trailing off, "... Volkov, we need to end this war, soon. I know that we have a plan to hit their capital city, shut their entire command structure down at once. We need to speed it up and get it done."

"I'll alert the proper units, respond to this crisis, and then get to work on that. You should get some rest, American. You seem tired." Volkov notes.

"No rest for the weary, I'm afraid. Good day, Captain Volkov." He said, mostly ignoring the farewell on the other end as he slipped the headset off, standing up and beginning to issue orders, barking them out with what energy he could muster. "Recall all flights to refuel and rearm. I want a round-the-clock surveillance of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles on the city known as Canterlot. Issue orders to forward units to begin a push across the countryside towards planned positions."

"Sir, most units are in the middle of a rearming phase from the end of the takeover of Manehatten. They won't be able to move out for another twenty hours." One of the women in the communications section said.

"Tell them they have ten. I want them rolling out as quickly as possible." Henderson ordered, "We can always resupply them with more ammunition as they continue. Now, on to the problems with fuel supply..."

SPC Olivia Hall grimaced, holding her head as another headache ran through it.

"Damn it... I feel like I'm losing my damned mind..." She mumbled. It wasn't helped by that incessant, nagging part of her brain that seemed to be acting up.

'Take another break. Deal with the outcome later.'

To be honest with herself, she was really, really thinking of just giving in to the damned voice. However, the thought of further punishment from the LT - in addition to having to drag heavy crates of equipment from one end of the room to another under the direction of the techies - remained on her mind.

"Damnit, brain, work with me here..." She said to herself, walking out of the small room she had been exploring and down the hall, emerging back into the room she was supposed to be in.

"Took a little break?" One of the other soldiers asked.

Olivia shook her head, "Headache. Feels like I'm taking a load of seven-six-two against my skull."

"Go see the doc after we're done, then." He replied.

She grunted, going back to 'her' crate and beginning to drag it again. Along the way, she was pretty sure she had invented several new forms of cursing, in addition to likely offending most of her ancestors.

"You're done." The tech guy setting up some kind of station said when she finished, barely glancing at her.

"All right, all right..." She grumbled, going over to a corner and picking her rifle back up, leaving the room as quickly as she could and moving through the castle towards her unit's lodging in the 'residential section'.

From what she knew, this location was pretty desirable. Other than being a fortified location with very few ways of entry, it was on a high cliff on a point overlooking a (probably panicking) village, had a clear line-of-sight to their capital city, and had plenty of room in which to set up a control center for the likely-soon attack on 'Canderlot' or whatever the name of it was.

Upon arrival, they had wasted little time, running power cords along the floor as banks of equipment were set up, and the former castle had quickly turned into a well-defended fortress. She had even heard that attempts were being made to patch up the wall and holes in the building, and to wire it up.

With such events outside of her area of concern, she didn't really care much about them. She just wanted this damned headache to stop.

1400 hours

As the Mi-24 he was in flew above the forest below, Lieutenant Vasilyev was left to his thoughts. That, and the unstopping complaints from Sergeant Petrov. But he tended to ignore those anyway, so his thoughts kept him occupied.

He had hesitantly concluded that he might be part of the cause for this whole conflict. Although the ponies took their own steps in fueling the fire, frightening a guard, stealing a train, and then shooting a guard with rubber bullets in front of their ruler before threatening them, running off, and then opening fire later on was probably not a good idea.

The entire situation was 'fucked up', as the Americans would say. As he had said far too many times for his own comfort, both in the company of his squadmates and by himself.

In retrospect, he was rather glad the majority of them spoke English. While an annoying necessity in the modern world, Russian being a far superior and beautiful language of course, it did have its' uses. Such as in understanding what most of the Americans, British, and so on were saying. Right now, a heated argument was occurring between two of their attack chopper pilots over whose mother had been with whom. While he very much wanted to interject and tell them to stow it, he found it mildly amusing.

"Settle down." Another voice said over the radio, that of Captain Volkov. "You are three minutes from entering the area. Rescue any prisoners, if possible, and punish them for what they have done."

Vasilyev liked the Captain and respected him. However, he felt that going after the ponies was foolish. It wasted valuable avgas in what amounted to a dick-showing contest. They would overrun their capital city within the week. Why waste the time?

He pulled the bolt back on his rifle, chambering a round. He still had a job to do, and whatever his feelings, he would do it.

"Half a minute out!" Their pilot said a short time later, "I'm tracking numerous heat contacts... Equines, definitely. Yeah, we've found them. Prepare to disembark!"

"All right, you heard him." Vasilyev said to his soldiers, Novikov being halted in the middle of a joke, "We go down there and complete our mission. No planting explosives on trees to play lumberjack." He said with a pointed glance at Kozlov, who snorted and loaded his own weapon.

"My father was an excellent lumberjack. Don't fuckin' forget it." The private replied.

"You inherited none of his skills, and probably not his genes, either." Petrov retorted, silencing him.

"Just... Shut up." Vasilyev interrupted, sighing, "It's like handling a school filled with children, I swear..."

The helicopter shook as they touched down on the ground, Vasilyev immediately sliding the door open and looking around. They were in a small clearing with enough room for three other helicopters to set down, the thick forest of the 'Forever Free Forest' around them. What caught Vasilyev's attention was that the forward elements of the pony group were only a short distance ahead, moving parallel to their position, as marked on his HUD and broadcast through the 'Net' system.

"If only I had one of those strength-enhancing suit things..." Kozlov grumbled, looking uncomfortable with the RPG 30 slung over his shoulder, the launcher having proven effective in blasting apart the strongest shields by sheer force... And often knocking out the unicorn making them.

"You're not in a video game, a novel, or a movie." Vasilyev deadpanned, "Let's get going. We have work to do."

Captain Gale of the Lunar Guard was having a bad day. Five minutes ago, he would have described it as 'decent', but being attacked by flying contraptions that never seemed to be harmed by his efforts to bring them down hampered his enthusiasm.

Again, he rose from behind the fallen log and fired a crossbow bolt at one of them. Again, it merely bounced off, continuing to attack his soldiers with its' weapons. The projectiles fired from it even seemed to explode from some kind of spellwork, wreaking havoc among his weakened forces.

What remained of his company was pinned down, the equipment and prisoners they had taken useless, as the projectile-spewing contraption seemed to aim directly for his soldiers, even through thick foliage.

The sound of the weapons that these beings had came from somewhere to his right, alerting him that they were closing in. He re-positioned himself on the log, firing a crossbow bolt at a bipedal-shaped blur between several trees, missing.

He figured it was time to cut his losses and run. To Tartarus with the prisoners, if he got back with a bit of the equipment, that would be enough. With a gesture, the pony next to him sounded a small horn, and his company began to pull back, minus the small vehicle that had managed to haul with them, along with all of their prisoners, simply left on the ground as they retreated.

Olivia groaned as she held her head. The pain hadn't gone away, why wouldn't it go away?

Author's Note

I am back!