Reaper's Story

My job was fueled by the second amendment. I was in a family of gunsmiths with our craft dating back to the early 1600’s. We had moved the location of our small family-owned business at least 6 or 7 times in total. The one that was most likely last ended up putting us in Ocean Shores, Washington. It was the end of another workday… my last workday. I had just sold the building I worked in. Over 400 years of work on a company and I ended up selling it.

I had nobody else in my family that could help me with the business; I was the last one left. I only had one friend to return to and he also happened to be my roommate. Jason was the last person I could count on to pay our rent. It may have been small considering the fact that the apartment building we lived in was small and shitty, but he certainly didn’t make much money. I had also just bought myself a used van a few weeks ago, not expecting to get the business shut down later, so I was almost broke too. I didn’t know what to do at this point, so I just walked the short distance between my former work building and my tiny apartment.

I entered opened the door to my musty apartment to be greeted by that old fading blue paint. Like the rest of the building, it smelled like shit. I slowly walked in as I noticed all the lights were off. “Jason?” I called out. There was no answer. I slowly crept around the small apartment until I heard a faint mumbling in the room next to me.

“It’s impossible. This can’t be happening. It- it’s not real…”

“Jason?” I called out again. “Is that you?”

“I must be going insane… It can’t be real; it’s just not possible… I gotta stop myself before I hurt someone!”

“Jason, what the Sam hell are you talking about?” I asked.

“Time to end my insanity!” he shouted as I heard the click of a revolver’s hammer.

“WAIT! JASON!” I screamed. BOOM! The gun went off and I heard something fall against the wall and slide to the floor. I entered the room and looked to the side to see Jason… dead. He was limp on the floor with his grey matter splattered all over the wall behind him. I looked down to see the gun… my grandfather’s. He made it for me before he died…

I slowly fell to my knees and began to sob quietly at the sight of my dead friend. 2 hours passed and I was still crying. I heard the door smash open and someone yell “POLICE!” I slowly lifted my hands into the air, still crying quietly. I felt the presence of two officers standing in the doorway to the room. “You’re under arrest!” one of them shouted, pointing his gun at me.

His partner tapped his shoulder and said “Kyle, I don’t think someone HERE would murder someone then cry over the body.”

The other officer, Kyle, lowered his gun and sighed “You’re probably right. What’s your name, buddy?”

“John Jack…” I croaked. “My name is John Jack.”

“We’re gonna ask you a few questions, ok John?” They questioned me for around an hour, asking about everything. What I did, my friend’s mental health, if I was legally able to own the guns I had (which I made so duh, I could own them). They didn’t stop for an hour.

When they were done, it was my turn to ask a question: “I have no money… where do I go now?”

“Hell, I dunno” Kyle said. “You could always sleep in your car.”

“I guess it’s better than nothing” I sighed. I packed all my clothes, my equipment and my really old drum kit into the back of my van and got inside. As soon as I turned on the engine, I instantly put in my Avenged Sevenfold CD and turned it to the song “Chapter Four”, a song me and Jason would always listen to together, and I could play on drums fairly well.

Give me your hand, blood is split and man will follow

Infernal man, punishment too great to bear

Raise your head and taste the courage

Fall from grace, unholy night

I've come here to kill you, won't leave until you've died

Murder born of vengeance, I closed my brothers eyes tonight

Give me your hand, blood is split and man will follow

Infernal man, punishment too great to bear

Raise your head and taste the courage

Fall from grace, unholy night

I've come here to kill you, won't leave until you've died

Murder born of vengeance, I closed my brothers eyes tonight

I had come to the very edge of the coast, where the ocean meets the sand. There was only one thing… there was some kind of a… train station. There were two strange looking, large, white armored horses standing at the entrance instead of guards. I also could see a big land mass in the distance… as if there was a new continent on the earth or something. Many things began to travel through my head. Things like “Who the hell puts a train station at the edge of an ocean” and “where the fuck did that land come from?!” I wasn’t sure what to do…

Maybe this was what Jason was talking about. I had made a single 5 minute stop at the bank to get out all my remaining money (a measly 400$), so I decided to slowly approach the station. As I got closer, I got more and more nervous. I didn’t know where this thing went! Would I really want to find out this way? It was too late then. I was already in front of the entryway. I stopped and thought for a moment. I decided on risking it and I began to walk inside when the horses stepped in front of me and yelled, in perfect unison “HALT!”

“FUCK!” I yelled, falling backwards and trying to crawl away from the white guard horses. I slowly got up as I thought to myself “this must have been what Jason was blabbering about. I don’t blame him for thinking he was crazy.” I approached the guards once again and asked as politely as I could “Could I please enter the station?”

The guards simply stepped to the side without a word and I walked inside. It was empty of any people or horses except for a horse standing behind a glass pane. He looked like the ticket seller, so I walked on over to him. “Hey, uh…” I hesitated at my question as I thought it might have been a little offensive. I finally sucked it up and asked “since when can horses talk?”

“I’m not a horse” he replied.

“What?”

“I’m not a horse” he repeated. “I’m a pony.”

“Okay…” I said awkwardly. “Since when can PONIES talk?”

“Uh…” he stuttered, looking at me as if I were crazy. “Always?”

“Okay, okay” I nodded. “Anyway, where does this train go?”

“Canterlot Station” he replied.

“Okay, where is that?”

“Equestria”

“Equestria, huh? Clever; very clever” I mumbled. “How much is a ticket?”

“50 Bits” he said.

I figured that Bits were the currency in Equestria so I asked what the exchange rate was… 10 Bits to a Dollar! I had 4,000 bits! “Alright! I’ll get a ticket then” I said, handing the pony 5$. I grabbed the ticket and got on the train. As soon as I arrived in this “Canterlot” I noticed that I was LITERALY the only human there. Everyone was whispering and pointing as I walked towards what looked like a castle. In my mind, I was hoping that Equestria’s ruler lived in that castle and I also hoped that they weren’t an asshole.

I kept walking, people (or ponies, in this case) still whispering and pointing the entire time. I finally found the front gate of the castle and the guards let me inside. I climbed my way up to the entrance to the throne room, where their leader most likely was. As I attempted to open the door, a guard stopped me and said “Princess Celestia is in a conference. You may not enter until it has been adjourned and everypony has left. Feel free to wait if you like.”

I sat down in a corner and sat there silently thinking about all the shit that has been going down. Firstly, ponies can talk here. Second, it appeared randomly in the middle of the fucking ocean. Third, it’s a monarchy, which is not good. And fourth, this “Princess Celestia” might not take too kindly to me, and that would cause a lot of problems. I continued to think about everything until I heard the huge door open and I saw several ponies that looked like they all came from different cultures walk out. Finally, a tall white pony with a heavily-tinted, multi-colored mane and tail stepped out and waved goodbye to the ponies that were leaving. As she waved, she noticed me sitting in the corner and asked “can I help you?”

“Are you Princess Celestia?” I asked. She nodded. “I have some questions to ask.”

“Okay, come in.” I followed her into the throne room, which was huge. It had a large table on one side of the room, which I assumed was for meetings. She, however, walked over to a window and simply looked out.

“I would like to know a few things about Equestria.” I said very nervously. “Namely, how it got in the middle of the ocean.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking back my way.

“Never mind” I sighed. “Also, why am I the only human here?”

“Well, your country, this “United States of America” isn’t exactly happy about Equestria connecting our borders without their government’s consent.”

“Then how was I let on the train?” I asked.

“I never said we shut down the train station” she said. “Your government has made announcements all over to make sure nopony came here.” There was a fairly long silence between us until she decided to ask a question of her own. “What brings you here in the first place?”

“My friend kinda…” I was hesitant to remember the events that had happened only a few hours ago. “Killed himself. I decided to just pack up and leave and now I’m here.”

“You have a home though?”

“Actually, no” I said sadly, looking down. “I don’t have the money to keep living there anymore, so I had to leave.”

“Well, what’s your cutie mark?” She asked.

“What the Sam hell’s a cutie mark?” I asked confusedly.

“It’s the mark you get on your flank that indicates what your good at” she stated, as if she had awnsered that question millions of times.

“Humans don’t get cutie marks.”

“Interesting” she said. “Anyway, what are good at?”

“I’m a gunsmith” I said.

“A what?”

“I make ranged weaponry. It’s a job that requires a lot of skill and precision. If I mess up one tiny thing, I could accidentally kill someb- er… I mean… somepony” I explained. “It’s been in my family since the 1600s. My family’s business just got shut down, so now I have no way to get any money.”

“Equestria’s never had a gunsmith before” said Celestia, deep in thought. “We might be able to use some of these weapons for our guards.”

“Sure, but these things cost money.”

“But of course” she said. “If I could get you a workspace set up somewhere, maybe you could make us some of these weapons in exchange for money for food and a place to live.”

“That’s how it normally works” I said.

“But where? Canterlot is too populated for anything that could be that dangerous” she thought out loud. “It needs to be somewhere where there is plenty of open space… Aha!”

“Oh!” I shouted. I just remembered something important. “I could get my old co-worker Connor O’Drake to come in and help! He can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s really a nice guy.”

“Fantastic” she said in a not-so-excited tone, as if she didn’t give a shit. “I’ll get him a house in Ponyville as well.”

“Okay, and one last thing” I said. “What about my stuff? I left all my tools, clothes, other stuff in my car back on U.S. land.”

“I’ll just have somepony send it to you. You should get it within a couple of days.”

“Works for me” I sighed.

“Alright! So it’s settled!” She nodded, smiling.

“Oh, and by the way,” I turned to face the Princess. “My name is John; John Jack.” She gave a slight not to indicate she understood.

Now, I just had to get Connor. I guessed that he was where he almost always was: his old apartment playing Team Fortress 2 and watching Tosh.0 while drinking tons of Coca-Cola. Hell, you could almost always find him there if he wasn’t at the old work building. I was betting he wouldn’t be too happy to hear he had to work again, but at least he would have some new peop- I mean ponies to fuck with.

Connor was Scottish, and he absolutely loved causing mischief. He was the kinda guy that would mess with people just for a laugh. In fact, one time he had pissed off a hair-dresser so much, that she permanently dyed his hair blue. He didn’t care, though. He thought it looked cool.

I got to him over the phone and told him about what was gonna happen, and to my surprise, he sounded happy about it. I met him at the train station and we talked a little bit before we got on the train to Ponyville. We were told we were going to be shown around by somepony who knew the town very well. As soon as the train left, Connor fell asleep. I decided to doze off myself…

Maybe things weren’t gonna turn out so badly after all!

“We’re here, dumbass.” I head the Scottish accent and I instantly knew it was Conner. I lifted my head from the train seat too see the dimly-light early morning sky as I rubbed my eyes a little before standing up to get off.

As soon as me and Conner were off the train, we heard a friendly “Hello there!” We looked in the direction of the voice to see a small, light-violet unicorn with a baby dragon by her side and a warm smile on her face. “You must be John and Connor, right?” Conner and I nodded. “Okay, well, my name is Twilight Sparkle. I’ll be showing you both to your houses after I show you around a little.”

After a short tour of the town, Twilight led us to our… single house? I thought we were living in different houses, but I guessed I was wrong. Whatever; as long as Connor didn’t fuck up my workspace, I’d be fine with it. We thanked Miss Sparkle and headed into our house to get settled in… and hopefully set up some rules so Connor didn’t go bat-shit crazy all over the place. It turned out that we did have separate rooms, which was a relief for me, but I would still have to learn how to sleep with one eye open or something to make sure that Connor doesn’t booby trap my entire room.

About two hours after we had first gotten to the house, I heard a knock at the door. I didn’t know who in the hell wanted to see me considering not a single pony here knew me… well, besides Twilight, but she seemed to have been rushing the tour, so she must’ve had something to attend to. I decided to just open up the door and see who it was. I opened the door to see nobod- I mean nopony was there. Instead, there was a huge set of boxes and in the distance, I saw a grey Pegasus in a mailm- er… mailpony’s hat. She must have just brought them there one by one.

I grabbed one of the boxes that looked like it had my basic gunsmithing tools in it. When the top of the box was open I saw that it was some of my tools. It was my set of checkering tools, my hand gravers for engraving, and some other tools. I unpacked all of the boxes that had tools in them, and the only box left after that was huge. I didn’t know what it could’ve been… My car? “Hardy-har-har Celestia” I thought, opening the box. It turned out that it wasn’t my car (thank god); instead it was my drum kit.

I set up my drums in the corner of the large living room that me and Connor would now share. As soon as everything was set up, I started playing Almost Easy by Avenged Sevenfold. It felt really good to play the drums again. I hadn’t had the chance to for a really long time.

At the end of the song, another knock came from the door. I opened it up to see Twilight and her small dragon companion again. “Let me guess” I started sarcastically. “You’re here to complain about the noise.”

“No” She said. “I come with a message from the Princess. She wants to know what the most effective and easy-to-use weapon you can make is.”

“I’d say a M4A1” I suggested. “I’ve produced civilian legal versions of the M4, but I think I can make an M4A1.”

“What’s the difference?” the little dragon butted in.

“M4A1 is normally used by U.S. Special Forces because it’s small and powerful, as well as fully automatic unlike the M4” I answered. “It’s also compatible with a HUGE amount of different attachments like grenade launchers, sights, etc.”

“But would it work for ponies?” Twilight added.

“Probably” I thought out loud. “I’m not sure. Oh, and everypony will need a sidearm just in case!”

“Sidearm?”

“A small gun that you can use as a backup for tight spaces when things happen like reloading would take too much time or you’re out of ammo” I explained. “That’s where Connor comes in. He’s a better pistolsmith than me.”

“Is there any one in particular that you would recommend?”

“I’d say an M1911” I said. “It may have a small magazine, but it’s pretty good in power and you can tell it’s good because its model is over 100 years old.”

“Okay! I’ll tell the Princess” she chirped happily.

“WAIT” I spouted, stopping her in the middle of the doorway. “You’ve also gotta tell her that she can’t expect a lot of these too soon. Me and Connor hand-craft these things from fresh materials, so it can take longer than you’d think.”

“Okay, that’s good to know” She said. She then turned around and went into a slow trot towards her tree/house. I decided to tell Conner about our new assignment. I would be making the M4A1s and he would make the M1911s. The only issue was, the U.S. already didn’t like Equestria connecting to its borders without permission (not like they could get it anyway), and now we would be making guns for the Equestrian military that were already frequently used by the U.S. military. Would that piss them off even more? I couldn’t tell, obviously, so I just hoped for the best and went to go tell Connor.

“Yo, Connor” I greeted, entering his room.

“What’s up, brother?” he responded in his thick Scottish accent.

“We got an assignment straight from the Princess” I told him. “We gotta get her military some good weapons!”

“Then what are we gonna give them?” he asked

“I’m gonna be making M4A1s and you’ll be in charge of M1911s.”

“Those are both U.S. military weapons” he said, unamused by my weapon choices.

“Yeah, but they’re good weapons and they’ll provide a great defense for Equestria” I countered.

“Don’t you think that the U.S. already hates Equestria enough as it is?”

“I would care, but I’m all out of fucks to give! Equestria is unprotected against any other human-inhabited nation” I snapped. “Equestria goes to war, and every single pony here will die! We need to give this place good defenses, and dammit, that’s what I intend on doing!”

“Okay, okay” he said quietly.

“Plus, in exchange for our services, we get food and shelter.”

“Alright then, let’s work” he said, suddenly eager, probably at the thought of being homeless and hungry.

“Wait, dumbass” I stopped him. “We don’t have any materials to work with.”

“Okay, then tell me when we do get some materials to work with, so I can make some masterpieces!” In the meantime, I remembered that I had brought along some materials I bought on my own to make a gun for myself. I decided to get started on that, considering I would probably not have any time to work on it later. After 2 hours, I was in the middle of making one of my all-time favorite guns: The M1 Garand Semi-Automatic Carbine, the first rifle to be a standard-issue weapon to ALL infantry of a nation. It was even called “the greatest battle implement ever devised!” It was a very interesting rifle indeed!

It had an eight-round internal clip that was inserted into the top of the rifle and ejected automatically. It was also made to be gas-operated and air-cooled. I think it is by far the coolest WWII weapon out there. I hadn’t made it too far in the construction when I stopped, but I did know what I was making and I knew that gun almost inside and out.

About 10 minutes after I had stopped, I got another knock at the door. I got up and opened the door to see another package at the doorstep. I opened it to find tons of fresh ingredients for making firearms… It was time to get to work!

Me and Connor were ready to roll. It only took a few hours for Conner to complete one or two M1911s. We still needed to test them to make sure they weren’t malfunctioning, but he was done with what was absolutely required. It took me a long time to get a perfectly crafted M4A1 rifle fully made and ready for testing. It may seem like we were going really fast, and we were, but we were trying to make as many parts at a time as we possibly could. A lot of the guns were turning out very well, and by 10 P.M. we had made some good progress… kind of… Obviously, we didn’t get super far, but I got about 4 M4A1s done, whereas Connor had twice as many guns made. We decided that this was good enough for one day, considering we had been working almost all day now, and we felt like we deserved to get a break.

We decided that the next day, we would test them, tweak them and then I would get them ready to ship to Canterlot (with ammo and personally written instructions with hopes that it would help prevent any accidental casualties). I was completely wiped out from that day. I was up at around 4:00 A.M. when the train got there, and we had worked for hours and hours and hours. I was just glad we were making some pretty good progress. Something had just hit me: we were so far away from our old homes. It felt very, very strange in such a new place, but I shrugged off the feeling considering that it was my new home and I would have to get used to it sooner or later. I fell asleep as soon as my eyes closed after that…

I just didn’t know what was going to happen later…

“FUCKIN’ LAZY!” I jerked upwards, startled by the random yelling I heard from the door. It sounded like Connor, and he didn’t sound happy about something. I got up the best I could, my spinal column in deep pain from sleeping on a bed that was supposed to be for a pony, and I limped to the door.

“Connor, what the hell are you yelling about?”

“That “Princess” is the laziest ruler I’ve ever heard of!”

“What in the Sam hell are you taking about?” I nearly shouted, angry from having been woken up so early.

“She sent a letter to us saying none of her best men could figure out the instructions you gave them!”

“So?”

“SHE DIDN’T READ THE FUCKING THING HERSELF!” he hollered angrily.

“She probably has much more important things to do” I responded.

“It’s the defense of her ENTIRE KINGDOM!” he snapped. “And she still won’t take a shot at reading a little instruction sheet that would take less than 5 minutes to read! She’s also asking us to go there and teach them while she also expects us to make more weapons at the same damn time!”

“God, dude. Don’t get so pissed off!” I said.

“Fuck you!”

“Look!” I yelled at him. “I’ll go there myself and teach the highest ranked Captains how to work with the guns. Then they can pass on the knowledge to other soldiers! You just stay here, keep working and don’t have a fucking aneurism over this entire situation”

“Alright” he sighed, his Scottish accent making it sound more like “arrite”.

I walked out the door and began to walk angrily towards the train station. Twilight trotted up to fall into a steady rhythm beside me. “What’s wrong with him?” she said, breaking the silence I wanted to keep.

“He’s just an asshole sometimes” I answered.

“Does he have a hobby that makes him happy, or something to keep him from blowing up like that?” Twilight continued. “I think he woke up half of Ponyville with that outburst.”

“He fucks with ponies” I said monotonously. I looked down to see Twilight with a repulsed expression plastered across her face. “Not like that” I sighed. “I mean he messes with ponies… Like, causes mischief. Whenever he succeeds, he dies laughing.”

“So he’s like Discord?” she asked, now back to her standard, happy expression.

“Who the fuck is Discord?” I said in a voice a little louder than a mumble.

“He’s the god of chaos” she answered, as if she loved giving lectures on whatever the hell she knew. “He basically does the same thing except when he does it, ponies tend to get hurt. Fluttershy made him good, though.”

“Fluttershy?” I said, confused.

“She’s somepony you don’t know yet. You’ll like her. Everypony does!”

“Anyway, so Discord doesn’t do anything mischievous anymore?” I asked, continuing the conversation as we got closer to the train station.

“Nope!” she chirped happily.

“Well, fuck” I said. “Connor could have made friends with Discord.”

“They might still get along” she suggested. At this point, we were just standing at the train station, now in silence. We waited for what seemed like forever until the train came to a screeching halt in front of us. Twilight and I stepped onto the train, each paying the pony manning the door the cost of a ticket (considering we were both too goddamn lazy to buy them ourselves). The train quickly gave off a loud whistling noise as it began to slowly gain speed. I can’t believe I was going BACK to Canterlot. I decided to just try and ignore the whole situation and drift off to sleep. Almost as soon as I dozed off, I was woken up by Twilight saying we were there.

“Did I fall asleep?” I asked, groggy from what probably was slumber.

“Yep” she nodded. “Snoring pretty loudly, too!”

“Meh” I spouted quietly. We got up from the train and made our way off. Considering I was there the day before, I already knew the way to the castle, and Twilight obviously knew I was there before, so she didn’t decide to give me “instructions” on where to go. As soon as we had reached the castle gates, three royal guards rushed in to meet us. They turned out to be the three biggest leaders of the Equestrian Military. They explained how they couldn’t figure out the instructions and that we needed to show them how to do pretty much everything with the guns.

To start, I walked over and grabbed an M4A1 to use, as well as a mag that I put into the gun. After several hours of instruction, they finally found out how to shoot both the M4A1 and the M1911 accurately. They assured me that they could teach all the lower ranks how to use the guns, so I decided to go back and alert Princess Celestia about my success.

I walked through the door of the throne room to find a pony in front of Celestia. I stood in the back as I heard their conversation. “So you murdered him publically?” Celestia asked.

“No!” the pony said. “It was my brother, I swear!”

“I’m afraid I don’t believe you” Celestia told the pony, scowling.

“Alright”

“Say…” Celestia looked like she had just put on a happy face out of nowhere. “Do you like bananas?” The pony, who was now crying, nodded silently. “Well, you’re about to go bananas!” The crying pony looked up at the Princess as if she was a psycho. Celestia’s horn began to glow a tinted sky blue and she shouted almost happily as if she enjoyed doing this “ON THE MOON!” The pony disappeared with a flash of light and a brief, muffled scream.

“Princess” I interrupted the near-maniacal laughter that followed. “I have a question… umm… WHAT IN THE HOLY FUCK WAS THAT??!!?!”

“Please lower your vo-“

“NO! YOU JUST SENT A PONY WHO MAY HAVE BEEN INNOCENT TO THE FUCKING MOON!” I roared. “If you do that on a regular basis then you aren’t just a murderer you’re a complete PSYCHO!”

“That’s the punishment for murder in Equestria” she said casually. “Ponies who murder get sent to the moon to die.”

“That is the fucking STUPIDEST way to execute somepony!” I growled.

“You wanna experience how stupid it is?” Celestia hissed back.

“This isn’t why I came here! I came to tell you that your three leading captains now know how to use both the rifles and pistols, and they can teach the lower ranks how to use them.”

“Okay, now go!” she said as her horn grew a tinted sky blue again. In a flash of light, I was back in me and Connor’s new house. He was sitting at the table in our little “kitchen” area with a displeased expression on his face.

“There you are” he said angrily as he pushed himself back onto his feet. “Why in the hell do we have to eat this floral shit?!”

“Ponies are herbivores!” I replied, annoyed. “You didn’t know that?”

“Do I look like a fuckin’ farmer to you, brother?”

“No”

“Exactly!” he said in a smart-ass tone.

“Well I have to live with it, too so don’t you be complaining!” We got back to work after we got done arguing. It was late, so I only got started on 2 rifles, 1 that I was already more than halfway done with. That night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I kept thinking about why Celestia would kill a pony by sending them to the moon. Didn’t she do that to her younger sister? Well, they are pretty much gods, so I guess they can live without breathing… or heat… or water…

Eventually, I just got sick of sitting there in bed, so I got up and went to my workspace and pulled out my M1 Garand. I continued to work on in through the rest of the night. I finished it after a few hours and then I started customizing it. I put a scope on it, made a bayonet (I knew I wouldn’t use it but what the hell!) I even decided to paint “Born to Kill” on it, because Full Metal Jacket is my all-time favorite war-based movie.

Right as I was completely finished and the sun was just beginning to rise over the rolling green hills, I heard a frantic knock at the door. I raced over to open it, since the knock sounded urgent. It was an out-of-breath Twilight. She tried to speak but only managed to squawk out a few words that were impossible to make out and wheeze a lot. She finally gave up and used her magic to toss me a piece of parchment-like paper. I picked it up and began to read it. As I read on and on my facial expression grew more nervous.

Connor came in to see what was going on…

I told him straight out: “Equestria is at war”

“Hehehe… uh… what?” Connor stuttered nervously.

“It’s the U.S… I don’t know why they did but… just…Here, read for yourself” I said, handing him the letter. His eyes traveled down the page and he got more and more nervous as he read.

“Fuck this shit” he yelled running to his desk. “Let’s make some fuckin’ weapons NOW!”

“Thanks for alerting us, Twilight” I spouted then I turned and ran over to get down to business. Several days passed and Connor and I had kicked into high-gear with our weapon production. We had enough M4A1s for about half the Equestrian military by the end of the month, as well as having more than enough M1911s. Our sleep time was reduced to only about 6 or 5 hours every other night.

After about a month and a half, we had supplied weapons for the entire Equestrian military. Sadly, the same day we finished, Twilight came back to inform us of something else that had happened…

“The city of Manehattan is now under U.S. control.”

“Fuuuuu…..” my voice trailed off as I fell into my own thoughts. “I still don’t get it… I know that the U.S. and Equestria were on bad terms, but normally the U.S. doesn’t just start something for no apparent reason… This war must have been some kind of a set-up or something…” And Ponyville was one of the more valuable cities in Equestria. They’d probably come here pretty soon, so how could I prevent the U.S. gaining control HERE too? The answer was so obvious, I’m surprised I even had to think to get it. Arm the town.

“Connor!” I yelled to the other room. Connor came running out to see why I had called him. “Let’s get to work! We’re gonna arm Ponyville to the teeth!”

“Hell yeah, brother!” he shouted. In about 2 or 3 weeks we had some pretty good weapons issued to every single pony in town, as well as teaching everypony how to use them. As soon as thoughts of being finished entered our minds, a knock at the door came around midnight. We opened the door to see a white stallion with an Alicorn beside him. In front of the two of them were Twilight and a blue Pegasus with a colorfully bright mane. We had learned that this was Rainbow Dash. I thought she was a little bit annoying, because when we gave her a weapon, she requested that we make it about “20% cooler”.

“John” Twilight spoke up. “This is my brother Shining Armor and his wife Princess Cadence.”

“Oh!” I squeaked at the word Princess and attempted a small bow. “What brings you two here?”

Shining Armor was the first to speak. “Our kingdom, the Crystal Empire, is now under control of the United States.” My jaw dropped.

“I know. That was my reaction” Rainbow Dash giggled while looking at my reaction.

“Shit, we gotta do more” I thought out loud.

“What?” Cadence interrupted, confused.

“We’ve been arming Ponyville as much as possible, but if they can take over the Crystal Empire, we obviously haven’t done enough. We need patrols, guard towers…”

“We’ll do our best to help” Shining Armor said, probably trying to calm me down. Me and Connor managed to gather around 7 ponies that were willing to work as guards for the time being. We made some fairly unstable guard towers out of any scrap we could get, and we set up patrols and guard times and such for our seven pony army. In the last while, Connor put the finishing touches on a Light Machine Gun that he had been working on while I made sure I had enough ammo for my M1 Garand. We were completely prepared…

I was scared of what was going to happen. We may have been ready, but I knew that the U.S. Military was powerful, especially compared to Equestria. Not only that, but we still had the question of why the war started on our mind. So many problems and questions… But we’d just have to find out later…

Now we wait…

Past midnight… couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t feeling very good ether. I sat up in bed and immediately grabbed my head which was throbbing really heavily. With a good force, I pushed myself off the bed and began to slowly walk towards the bathroom in order to wash my face, hoping that the cold water would do something about the splitting headache ravaging through my skull. As soon as I had reached the bathroom, I turned on the water and began to splash really, really cold water on my face. The faucet turned off but instantly afterwards, a sound echoed from where I kept my computer (it was pretty much a rock with wiring in it, so it was only used for recording orders, keeping records of what parts are needed to make which gun, etc.), so I went to investigate.

I drew the loaded M1911 that Connor had made me as I moved slowly into the room. The monitor of the computer was light up and there was some random guy in a U.S. army uniform sitting there typing away. I gulped, because I knew this wasn’t going to end well. I snuck up behind him as quietly as I could, and I grabbed the computer’s plug out of the wall. He simply turned around to see me holding the cable up right in front of his face. I lifted the gun so the barrel was pointed directly between his eyes. I squeezed the trigger and a gunshot went off, sending a bullet directly through the soldier’s head and into the computer. I didn’t care about the computer, I just had to be sure that there weren’t any more of these soldiers around here. I went over to my workspace that only had my M1, and I grabbed the M1 and loaded a magazine into it.

I fixed my bayonet on the end as well. Connor came running into the room with his giant LMG. We both gathered at the sides of the door. I whispered over to him “They’ll die by the gun,” and I opened up the door slowly to peek out. I saw a few soldiers gather around the buildings, probably drawn by the sound of my gun. I instructed Connor to go first and use his LMG. He kicked out the door and opened fire. The soldiers fired back while the tried to get into cover. He managed to get most of them, but 2 got away. One was almost instantly taken down by a guard in one of the towers, and the second one was just hiding behind cover. As soon as we thought the coast was clear, he popped out with his rifle and opened fire, but I was close enough to lunge my gun forward, stabbing my bayonet straight into his neck.

We thought it was over, but a few others opened fire from another side of the town. We heard some of the ponies firing back using the firearms we had given them. Me and Connor rushed over to help out. I quickly saw 2 soldiers and managed to kill both of them using my M1. Connor went around to assist from the ponies’ side. I continued to creep closer and closer to the soldiers’ position, taking them out one by one as I went. When there were only a few left, one saw me and turned his fire to me. One bullet grazed my leg, while another hit me in the arm. I still managed to take him out, regardless of how much pain I was in. Finally the gunfire stopped and I yelled out for somepony to help me. Shining Armor and Cadence came over to help. Shining Armor ripped the bullet out of my arm (which sure as hell didn’t feel good) as Cadence closed the wound. I got up and thanked both ponies for helping me.

“We gotta tell Princess Celestia what just happened” I said, turning to face Connor.

“Oh hell no, brother” he retreated hastily. “I wouldn’t talk to that lazy bitch if you paid me.”

“What if I were to tell you there was a certain being there who likes to fuck with people as much as you do?”

“Okay, when do we leave?” Connor asked in a completely normal tone.

I rolled my eyes. “As soon as we can!” I said. “We gotta let the Princess know what just happened.”

“Well okay” he agreed. “Let’s go; onward and upward; tally ho!”

“Typical Connor” I mumbled, letting out a sigh. Another train ride that took what seemed like forever passed and we were at Canterlot. It was closing in on midnight, meaning everypony had abandoned the streets and went home, leaving the entire city quitter than what I thought was comfortable. Connor and I walked at a faster pace than normal, as I was anxious to let the Princess know that we were in bigger danger than we thought, and Connor was anxious to meet Discord. It wasn’t long before we had reached the castle’s very large front door. Standing on each side of the entrance were two stallion guards with their M4A1’s on their backs. They didn’t even bother to ask who we were because they already knew (we were the only humans that lived in Equestria, after all).

Connor and I raced up the stairs into the throne room where Princess Celestia and another Alicorn, who looked similar but shorter and dark blue, stood side-by-side.  “Princess, we have a bit of an issue” I said in a slightly hesitant voice.

“What is it?” Celestia asked turning around. The dark blue mare still stood facing the window looking out as if she was mesmerized.

“The Crystal Empire is under United States Control” I said. Celestia’s eyes seemed to grow to the size of dinner plates. “And Ponyville would’ve been next if we hadn’t armed every single pony and got some ponies to act as guards.”

“This is a problem” Celestia whispered, turning her head towards the ground. “Also, we’ve been informed that there was an explosive set off in the United States. It was traced back to Equestria somehow.”

“I KNEW it was a set up!” I mumbled angrily. “Someone’s gonna get a bullet to the brain for this!”

“What is the next town they are most likely to invade?” asked the other Alicorn in a strict tone.

“Perhaps Cloudsdale” the Princess replied.

“But how?” the blue one responded, turning around to reveal an unusual amount of resemblance between the two Alicorns. “Only the Pegesai can walk on clouds”

“Perhaps they have some way to put Pegasai’s DNA into humans” Celestia suggested.

“That’s it!” I interrupted! “The U.S. could do that using Pegesai from Manehattan or the Crystal Empire, and then use air transportation to get them there!”

“That would make sense” the blue one said. “I don’t believe I have made thy acquaintance before. I am Princess Luna.”

“My name is John Jack. It’s an honor to meet you Princess.” I replied while politely taking a small bow. “I think I should go to Cloudsdale for the time being. Connor should stay here at Canterlot until I return… I don’t trust him.”

“Very well, but how would thou go about walking among the Pegesai of Cloudsdale?” Luna asked.

“I will need some kind of Pegasus DNA” I answered.

“Okay, John. We’ll see what we can do” Princess Celestia nodded. “You can stay in the castle until we find the solution to our little “Cloudsdale” problem.”

“Thank you Princess” I smiled, giving another polite bow. I turned and began to walk back towards the door to tell Connor about what was gonna happen, but I heard him talking… I went into the hallway and hid in one of the shadows to the side of the room.

“I’m talking about doing things just as jokes!” Connor said. “You don’t have to hurt anypony.”

“I still think it’s a bad idea” replied a serious male voice. It came from a tall, snake-like dragon with long arms and legs as well as wings.

“Here, pick up some of the dirt in that flower pot” Connor commanded.

“Okay” I saw the mysterious figure pick up some dirt from a flower pot using magic. “Now what?”

“Throw it at one of the guards at the front door.”

“What? No… I can’t” the voice withdrew.

“Come on” Connor urged him. “I promise the reaction will be hilarious. Just aim for the side of his head and watch what happens.” The figure did as he was asked and the guard that got hit began looking around in confusion. Connor and the shadow began to snicker as he continued looking around until he zeroed in on the guard at the opposite end of the door. He accused the guard of throwing the dirt and they began to argue as Connor and his new friend burst into hysterical laughter. Connor got up off of the ground and said through his laughter “You see? It’s not destructive, but it IS fucking hilarious!”

I popped out of the shadows and interrupted. “I’ll assume you’re Discord.”

“Your assumption is correct” Discord answered, turning around to reveal his big yellow eyes.

“Anyway, Connor, it looks like you’ll have to stay at the castle for a while, while I go to Cloudsdale to make sure the U.S. doesn’t take control of it.”

“Alright” he agreed. “As long as I don’t have to stay in a room too close to Princess Ce-lazy-a.”

“I would care about that, but I’m afraid I’m all out of fucks to give.” I told him.

“Oh, and another thing” he continued. “I contacted an old friend of mine Afanasai Aleksander Chechnoi, because shit has definitely gotten real.”

“Okay, but who exactly is this guy?”

“He’s was a Russian Spetsnaz soldier for a while. He was discharged after a boarder clash between Russia and China.”

“What happened?” I butted in.

“A few grenade fragments got lodged deep in his eye, which made him lose all sight in it. He decided he just wanted it out of there, so he got it removed. He also got shot a few times here and there. Anyway, he’s been deep in history and the like since then and he was always pretty quiet, but he’s still got his instinct. I know he’ll be really helpful to us, but he may not get here for a while.”

“Okay. Well I’m gonna leave you two to… whatever the hell you were doing.”

“Hey!” he called as I was walking away. “They’ll die by the gun, right?” I nodded, smiling.

“This potion should work” Princess Celestia said, taking a test tube filled with a bubbly purple liquid from Luna who stood beside her and handing it to me.. “This has several things in it that should allow you to walk on clouds just as well as any Pegasus.”

“Okeydokey” I said. I grabbed the test tube, popped off the cork and chugged it all instantly, almost like it was the best thing I had ever tasted, where in reality it tasted like a garden weed. I cringed at the horrible taste, but I knew it would be worth it in the end. My vision was slightly distorted for a few minutes as my body registered the changes. My physical state was altered, making me feel very, very light. It also altered my mental state so that I thought more like a pony would. That was an obvious effect, because when my vision came back into focus, I looked at Luna… differently. It was strange, but it made sense at the same time, because I had just drank something that added Pegasus DNA to my body, meaning it WOULD alter my mental state in addition to my physical state, and that meant also altering my physical attractions… uh… well… shit happens. “I should probably get going” I suggested.

“Very well, tell me when you’re ready to go.”

I grabbed my rifle, pistol and a bunch of ammo then said “ready!” the Princess’s horn began glowing a light blue once again and in a flash of blinding light (and some slight burning) I was standing on a sea of clouds in front of a bunch of Pegesai in flying gear as well as tight blue flying suits that had bright yellow lightning bolts on them. A very military-official-looking Pegasus pushed through to the front. She had yellow and red mane, making it look like fire. She was also wearing sunglasses.

Her eyes travelled up and down as she inspected me carefully, which made me quite nervous, honestly.. Finally, breaking a long silence, she spoke up with the question she should’ve asked before she started sizing me up, “who in the hay are you?”

“My name is John Jack. I’m here to help protect Cloudsdale from the U.S. army’s incoming attack.”

“How do you know they’re coming here” shouted one of the ponies behind the fiery one.

“Shut your trap back there!” the fiery one (who I assumed was the head of operations here) yelled back.

“We don’t know, but it’s highly likely” I explained, answering the question anyway because I knew they would be curious about it.

“Whatever” she replied. “How can someone as… flightless as you protect Cloudsdale?”

“Give me a moving target” I demanded. “A cloud, a coin, a leaf, anything. Just give me a moving target.”

“Alright… SOARIN!” she roared. Another one of the suited Pegesai popped up out of the front and flew to the nearest cloud that wasn’t a part of Cloudsdale’s architecture.  He quickly tore it into a disk as I loaded my M1 Garand carbine. The cloud disc flew at a pretty steady speed allowing me to get a good idea of where it was gonna go and when. I got my sight positioned as I heard a few of the ponies in the background betting on if I hit it or not. I breathed out and gently squeezed the trigger at the exact right time and the rifle blew back and let a bullet casing fly out as the actual bullet flew from the barrel straight through the cloud disk. The cloud disk poofed into thin air (which it kind of was anyway) making the small gathering of ponies erupt in small cheers and clapping. I looked over and saw the fiery leader’s mouth hanging open.

“Does that answer your question?” I said smiling as I tried to hold back laughter from her reaction.

She closed her mouth, and shook herself awake, then proceeded to introduce herself. “The name’s Spitfire. These are my elite squad of flyers: The Wonderbolts.”

“Nice to meet you miss Spitfire” I said awkwardly. “It looks like everypony here is good on the whole weapons thing?” I looked over to one of the Wonderbolts, who had one of the M4s I made on his back.

“As a matter of fact, we do” she answered. She looked back and saw the same Pegasus I had and barked “Fleetfoot, that rifle better have its safety on!”

The rest of the day was a tour of the Wonderbolts’ training facility, then being dumped into one of the Wonderbolts’ barracks (or as Soarin called them, the “Wonderbarracks”). For the next several days, I just practiced my sharpshooting and preformed some maintenance on some of the rifles that had any defects. After a few days, I heard a helicopter outside, so I got up and grabbed my loaded rifle. As I slowly opened the door to the barracks, I saw a bunch of U.S. soldiers getting out. It was almost morning time, so I didn’t think Spitfire would’ve cared if I woke everyone up. I walked over and shook Soarin awake. “The U.S. army is here.” He nodded and grabbed his M4 from under his bunk. I raised an eyebrow, because I was pretty sure that wasn’t where that was supposed to be, but I ignored it and proceeded to gently open the door more so I could creep out while Soarin woke up the others.

My hands got sweaty as I grew nervous. I remembered the system of a down song

Welcome to the soldier’s side

Where there’s no-one here but me

“So this is what they meant” I thought. I saw them advance on the barracks, and I knew Soarin was still probably in the process of getting everyone up and alerted of the situation. I couldn’t let them get inside. I lifted my M1 once again and I aimed for the guy who was going for the door. A bullet flew from the gun and went clear through the soldiers head and into the one next to him. The other soldiers started looking around as I heard scrambling inside the barracks. I managed to get another soldier, then the barracks’ door burst open and three Pegesai burst out shooting down the rest of the soldiers. I hopped onto my feet and went over to talk to Spitfire who had come running out after hearing the gunshots. “Don’t worry! We took care of it.”

“Not quite, Mr. Jack!” she spouted frantically. Spitfire and I (followed by the Wonderbolts) ran to the other side of the Wonderbolts’ facility to see dozens more soldiers approaching.

“Damn!” I mumbled. “Me and a few guys will hold ‘em off from this side. You take the rest and go around to hit ‘em from behind.”

“Got it” Spitfire agreed. She took several of the Wonderbolts and flew of the edge to go under the clouds. Me and Soarin got our guns ready as they closed in, and as soon as they were at a good range, we opened fire. We managed to hit several of them very quickly, but the rest got behind cover. However, their cover quickly died along with them as soon as a bullet hit it, so we kept firing. After 2 or 3 minutes, fire came from behind the soldiers as well. A few more of them dropped through the clouds dead as a doornail. A bullet suddenly whizzed straight past me and another one tore some skin from my shoulder. Soarin got hit directly in the shoulder and he fell back onto the cloud quietly moaning in pain.

The last of the soldiers dropped, so I rushed over to aid Soarin. “Is the bullet still in there?” I asked frantically.

“I’m pretty sure” Soarin croaked quietly.

“Okay, I’m gonna see if I can get it out as soon as I find something to ease the pain.” I got up and ran to Spitfire. “Spitfire! Tell me you have some kind of first aid nearby.”

“Of course. Why?”

“Soarin got shot” I said. We got back to Soarin with some painkillers and he happily accepted them. “Now, those will take effect in a little while, but for now, brace yourself. This will hurt an ass-load.” I looked into the bullet hole and saw the blood-covered bullet. It was almost out the back of his shoulder, so I knew the easiest way to get it out would be to push it out the back of his shoulder. “Strike that” I said. “this will hurt more than an ass-load” I gave him a countdown from 3 and then I jammed my finger into the bullet hole.

Soarin screamed in pain as the skin and fur at the back of his shoulder ripped open and let the bullet fall through the clouds to the ground below. I yanked my finger out of the hole and tried to calm Soarin down. Finally, his screaming came to an end. I instructed two of the Wonderbolts to pick Soarin up and get him to the Hospital ASAP. “You‘re good in these kinds of situations, huh?” Spitfire said, looking over at me

“Not really” I sighed. “I guess it’s just instinct.”

“Well, it seems your instinct is pretty good, then”

“I guess” I muttered. “Now… how in the Sam hell do I get back to Canterlot?”

“A message should get to the princess before morning” she answered. “She’ll have you outta here then.”

For the rest of the night, I sat on the edge of the clouds just thinking. Who had set up Equestria and why would they want to? It still didn’t seem right to me. I guessed I’d figure it out later. For now, I’d just remain on the soldier’s side.

Welcome to the soldier’s side

Where there’s no-one here but me

“It’s time to go” I jerked up at the random voice coming from outside of my sleep. My vision came into focus and I saw who was standing over me. It was Princess Celestia with Spitfire by her side.

I sat up and gently rubbed my eyes. “Hi Princess. Hi Spitfire. What’s going on?”

“I heard about last night” Celestia explained to me. “It seemed like quite the experience.”

“It was” I chuckled, knowing she didn’t even know the half of it.

“You’ve done Cloudsdale a huge service” Spitfire added. “Without you, not only would Soarin have died, but probably everypony else, too.”

“Well, I don’t know about that” I said, blushing slightly.

“Never mind all this” the Princess interrupted. “We can get to this kind of thing once the war is over. For now, we should go back to Canterlot. You’ll probably want to get back to work, as our number of soldiers has started rising.” Before I could respond, the blinding light came up again and we were standing in the middle of the throne room of Princess Celestia’s castle.

Connor turned around to greet me. “Welcome back, brother! How was this “Cloudsdale” place?”

“It was fine, I guess” I said. “We should get back to Ponyville soon. We’ve got some work to do.”

“Sure thing. Oh and by the way, Discord’s coming along to help us.”

“I guess I can get you three back there right now” Princess Celestia interrupted. Once again, I had no time to respond before she teleported all of us to Ponyville in a flash of light. We were right in front of our house, but we could hear a loud and somewhat familiar banging sound coming from inside… my drums.

I ran through the door to see three small fillies messing with my drum kit. “WOAH, WOAH, WOAH!” I yelled. “Who are you and what in the Sam hell do you think you’re doing to my drum kit?!”

A light yellow Earth Pony with a vibrant red mane and a bright pink bow stepped up first. “I’m Applebloom!”

Next was a white Unicorn with a gigantic smile and a very happy aura coming off of her. “I’m Sweetie Belle!”

And last was an amber orange Pegasus with stubby little wings and a appearance like she was the daredevil of the group. “And I’m Scootaloo!”

All three then yelled loudly in unison “AND WE’RE THE CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS!”

I quickly checked my ears for blood, and then asked the second question again. Applebloom stepped chimed in with an answer. “We wanted to know what they were, an’ then we found out they made sound, so we started seein’ if we could make music with ‘em.”

“Okay, I’ll show you a quick demonstration, but then me and Connor gotta see if anything major has changed in town.”

“YAY!” they squealed in delight. I sat down and began to think of a song that had a good drum track to it. I decided to do

Forest by System of a Down.

Come with me my little child

Through the forest of denial

Speak with me my only man

Walk with me until the time

Make the forest turn to wine

We take the legend for a fall

You saw the product

Now why can’t you see that you are

My child

Why don’t you know that you are

My mind

Tell everyone in the world that

I’m you

Take this promise to the end

Of you

As soon as I was about a third of the way into the song they were bouncing along with the beat. When I finished they squealed in joy again and then asked me if they could join me while me and Connor got info on what we missed in town while we were gone. I sighed and gave in, because I knew that they would whine their goddamn heads off if I said no.

The second I stepped outside I noticed that several of the buildings had collapsed. “This is not good… We gotta end this war soon” I sighed.

“For now, we’ll just have to wait until we know what in the hell happened” Connor said.

“But there’s gotta be a way” I said back. “We both know there’s gotta be a way to end this war. I mean, who was the heartless prick that set up Equestria? Why would anyone in their right fucking mind start a war with a place as downright innocent as Equestria?!” By this point, I was yelling. I realized that I was probably scaring the girls, so I took a deep breath and said “We just need to find a way to end this. For now, let’s just keep to our original plan, then we move on to that.”

“Alright, then let’s go!” Connor replied. We began to walk down the street towards the town hall to talk to the mayor. The three small fillies were bouncing happily around us as we walked. We all pushed open the door to the town hall and waltzed on inside, ducking because the doors were only pony-sized. The secretary didn’t even bother asking us who we were there for, since it was fairly obvious to her who we were and that we had come to see Mayor Mare. Inside the Mayor’s office was really only a desk with two chairs, one for the Mayor and the other for a visitor. I didn’t bother sitting down and nopony else did either.

“Mayor Mare, what in the Sam hell happened while we were gone?” I asked almost angrily.

“A few buildings caught on fire and collapsed, but that’s about it” she returned calmly.

“Is that it?” I asked skeptically.

“Just about” she said. “We’re pretty sure it wasn’t an accident, but we aren’t too sure. Oh! And we fended off another attack while you were away.”

“WHAT?!” I yelled.

“It was a small one” she assured us. “We did lose quite a few ponies, including all 4 of our tower guards, though. They probably learned from last time.”

“Okay… I think we should go talk to Twilight next” I suggested, taking a deep breath to calm myself down and turning to face Connor and Discord (who had decided to come along as well).

“Whatever floats your boat” Connor said sarcastically.

The front door of Twilight’s tree made a blunt sound as if the tree wasn’t hollow. It turned out that Twilight was trying to open it. “Oh, hi there John! Hi Conner! What’s going on?” she asked cheerfully.

“Not much” I said. “Would you happen to know somepony that’s wise? Like, extremely wise?”

“Do I qualify?” Twilight asked jokingly.

“Shut up and answer his fucking question, Twi” Connor barked impatiently.

“Alright, alright!” she withdrew. “I would say Zechora might be able to help you.”

“Zechora?” I said, very puzzled by the strange name.

“She’s a Zebra” Twilight explained, “a very smart one, too. She tends to speak in a lot of metaphors, and she always rhymes her words.”

“Sounds like kinda wise I’m lookin’ for! Where would I find Zechora?”

“She has a little hut out in the Everfree Forest” Twilight said.

“Okay! Does it need any special directions or anything?” I asked.

“Nope. Just follow the path and you’ll get there pretty fast.”

“Okeydokey! Thanks for the help Twilight.” I turned to go to the Everfree Forest. Connor and Discord decided to go home, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders wanted to come with so I allowed them as long as they sat outside the house while I talked to Zechora. They weren’t exactly happy about it, but I didn’t want a hurricane inside the hut while I tried to get advice on how to end the war. I walked down the small dirt path until’ I reached the forest. Like usual, my brain made the connection back to the S.O.A.D song I had played earlier for the “Cutie Mark Crusaders.” I started singing it to myself quietly.

Come with me my little child

Through the forest of denial

Speak with me my only man

Walk with me until the time

Make the forest turn to wine

We take the legend for a fall

You saw the product

Now why can’t you see that you are

My child

Why don’t you know that you are

My mind

Tell everyone in the world that

I’m you

Take this promise to the end

Of you

I was not even into the second verse before I almost walked straight into a pole… pole? What the hell is a pole doing out in the middle of a forest? I realized it was one of the supports for a hut…

Zechora’s hut.

I opened the door slowly and walked inside to see a very… African looking Zebra (I realize how racist that sounds, but I don’t really know how else to describe it.) She simply looked up and smiled at me. “My forest home I see you have reached and what you need, perhaps I can teach.

I looked around the small, gloomy-looking hut. It looked like the stereotypical African tribal hut. I decided to ignore the way it looked and focus on the matter at hand. “I will make the assumption that you’re Zechora?” I said raising eyebrow. She simply nodded and sipped from the small cup (that looked like it was half of a coconut) she was holding. I decided to get to the point as soon as possible, so I just asked “you know about the war that is going on, right?”

“Many soldiers from each side flock. I live in a hut, not under a rock” she chuckled.

“Indeed. Well, I need to find a way to end this war soon, or it’s gonna end up destroying Equestria.”

“If they are blowing down all walls then, perhaps it is time to begin waking the fallen.” Her words echoed in my head as I silently tried to make sense of them. What could she mean by waking the fallen? Raise the dead? How would I do that? Or… she could mean… bring back… It hit me.

“Thank you Zechora!” I spouted. Before she could open her mouth to respond I was already out the door. The Cutie Mark Crusaders trotted up beside me to find out what went on in there. “I found out how to finish this all!” I said with a smirk. I ran back to the house to tell Connor and Discord about my solution. I nearly broke down the door while trying to scramble in. “Connor! Discord! Get your dumb asses out here! We’ve got a HUGE change of plans!”

“What?! What is it?!” Connor yelled, nearly tripping on his slide around the corner of the hallway.

“We’ve got the way to end the war!” I shouted. “It’s simple, but it’ll still require a shit-load of work!”

“Then what are you waiting for! Tell me so we can get started!”

“We’ve gotta make WWII weapons!”……….

There was a massive silence in the room until Connor finally spoke up. “What are you smoking, John, and can I have some, ‘cuz it seem pretty effective if you’re tripping balls THAT much.”

“I’m serious!” I told him. “We have to “wake the fallen.” We’ve gotta use what hasn’t been used in a long time! The weapons from WWII. Anything farther back and we might as well be throwing rocks at ‘em.”

“Waking the fallen?” he questioned. “Couldn’t that just mean to raise the dead?”

“Well yeah, but how in the Sam hell would we do that?”

“Good point” he agreed. “Alright, but you better be right about this!”

“Trust me Connor, It’ll work.”

“Time to get back to the old O’Drake family trade” he said walking over to his desk. “You gotta guide me through some of these, though, ‘cuz I haven’t got the slightest idea how to make these.”

“Okay. You three!” I said pointing over at the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “I need you three to go get Twilight as soon as you possibly can.”

“On it!” they all yelled before dashing out the door at an amazing speed. Good that they were on that, because now I could get to work. After 2 hours or so, Connor and Discord both knew what to do and were making their first guns. I made sure to check Discords work for his first ones, because he had never made guns before.

After the first 4 hours, Connor and Discord were close to done with their first ones, where as I was done with a Thompson and I was in the middle of working on a Trench Gun (or a shotgun for those of you that have no knowledge of WWII). It was then when Twilight knocked on the door and I rushed from my work to open it. “Twilight!” I greeted her. “No time for small talk. You need to send a message to the Princess ASAP. We’re re-arming the entire Equestrian military! It may take a while, but I swear to god, I won’t sleep until we’re done!”

“Okay, but before you get working on that, we figured out that those burning buildings weren’t an accident” Twilight explained. “We found this in the ashes.” She gave me a partially burnt piece of paper.

It said this:

If you’ve found this letter, that means I haven’t done a good enough job burning down those buildings. I know that I wasn’t supposed to burn down any buildings on my mission, but I think you bastards deserve to die. One sentient species on this planet has already fucked up everything beyond all possible repair. Regardless of how FUBAR our planet has gotten, my point is that we don’t need another sentient race contributing to the shitstorm that we’ve created for ourselves. Plus, we also already have horses AS WELL as ponies on this planet. The good part about those ones, though, is that they do what we tell them to. Feel free to try and find me, but even with my signature, you never will. Shit will keep going your way as long as I’m here, too!

Signed

Ltc. McMarland

P.S.: I managed to spark the war! I’ll give you a hint: Legs without feet on a creature with four and faking the ignorance of extreme destruction.

“What… in the Sam… hell…”

“What do you think that riddle means?” Twilight thought out loud, interrupting my shock.

“Well, for legs without feet, I think he’s talking about hooves, and on a creature that had four meaning he used a pony to do it, must be how they traced it back to Equestria. Faking the ignorance of extreme destruction…” I trailed off into deep thought for about 10 minutes until I put it together… “I GOT IT!” I yelled. “Ignorance of extreme destruction! The first letters of all those words (excluding “of”) spells IED! Faking it meaning he used a fake IED!”

“But how would they know about it if it was fake?” Twilight stepped in once again.

“He set one off, then had a fake one set up. That’s why the U.S. sees us as enemies. That’s why they think we set off explosives inside their territory!” I had just had one of the greatest realizations of my life, but there was still something we hadn’t figured out. “How do we find this Ltc. McMarland?”

“Well at least we know his name and rank” Connor butted in. “He could be leading one of the teams that will attack Canterlot”

“What if he isn’t” Twilight asked.

“If wishes were fishes the world would be an ocean, but that’s just not the goddamn case now, is it?” I retaliated sarcastically.

“Come on, brother” Connor said, patting me on the shoulder. “We got a lot of work to do.” I turned around and got back to my work. I knew that if we were gonna kill this “Ltc. McMarland” guy, we were gonna need a lot of guns. It was a good thing that making WWII weapons was a specialty of mine (sort of). So that’s what we did for over 2 weeks straight… with only about 6 hours of sleep every other night… we just kept on working. We kept on waking the fallen.

Weak from my work, I sat down on my drum stool. Lucky for me, my work was over. We had finished ass-loads of weapons in a mere 2 months. Both me and Connor were completely wiped out from our excessive amounts of work, so I decided to force myself to push off the stool and limp slowly to the pony-sized bed where I decided to lay down and sleep. When I woke up, it was already the next morning. I pushed myself out of the small bed, feeling a LOT better now that I had slept from about noon to 8 O’clock the next day. It took a little while to get out of the house and on my way to Twilight’s, but I did need to know what had happened recently. I did this every fortnight to make sure neither me nor Connor missed out on something very important. I knocked on the door, and the usual Twilight shouted “It’s a public library! You don’t need to knock!”

I shrugged and busted through the door. “So what’s happened in the past weeks?”

“Well, nothing really. I haven’t heard anything from the Princess lately” she said calmly.

“Well, that works for me” I shrugged. Those three small ponies came back to mind and instantly struck my curiosity. I hadn’t the slightest clue where the hell they were though. I decided it would be the quickest solution if I were to just ask Twilight. “Hey, Twilight? Do you know where those three little fillies that are always together are?”

She looked slightly puzzled at first, which I don’t blame her for considering I was so vague. Suddenly, a lightbulb seemed to go off. “Oh! You mean Applebloom and her friends! They’re normally up at Sweet Apple Acres. That’s where Applebloom’s sister Applejack lives.”

I remembered where Sweet Apple Acres was from when I was going around arming everypony in town. I walked up to where the front of the barn was and my nostrils were instantly filled with that fragrance of apples. I saw a big red pony pulling a cart alongside a much smaller orange pony. I approached the two and gave my introduction. “Well, howdy there!” the orange one spouted enthusiastically. “Ma name’s Applejack! This here’s ma big brother Big Mac. What brings you ta these parts, Mr. Jack?”

“I haven’t got much to do today, so I was just trying to find something interesting to do” I answered.

Applejack burst out with hysterical laughter and her brother simply started giving off very low-pitched giggles. She got up and through her laughter said “well, ya sure didn’t pick the most interesting place to be for a city colt!”

“Oh, well it’s not the whole “apple orchard” part of it” I explained, “it’s just that I remembered that your little sister and her friends seemed to be the kind to get into a lot of trouble and I haven’t been out of my house except to get updates on anything important for over 2 months, so what they’ve gotten themselves into has peeked my curiosity.”

“Okeydokey then Mr. Jack! They’re almost always back there in that lil’ ol’ wooden clubhouse.”

“Thank you, Applejack. Nice meetin’ you both!” I said walking off. I knocked on the tiny front door and one of them bounced over and opened it. “Hi there, young ones!” I greeted them.

“Hey, Mr. Jack!” Applebloom said cheerfully. At those words my head started pounding and my inner process of rational thought turned off as music started playing in my head. I fell to my knees and bent forwards on all fours. I swung my head up fast and hit my head on the frame of the tiny door. My body regained control and everything went back to normal with the exception of my head throbbing really hard. “What was that?” Applebloom asked curiously.

“It’s hard to explain” I said. “Whenever somepony says “Mr. Jack” after saying hey, I kind of lose control. It’s something that just happens. It gets worse if you say a few other things after that.”

“Okay” the three said together while trying to put a blanket over something behind them.

“What are you hiding from me?” I asked.

“Nothing” Sweetie Belle yelled quickly.

I brushed the three of them out of the way because I noticed that the things under the blanket looked strangely shaped. I swung off the blanket and saw under it… “WHAT THE FU-“ I stopped myself mid-sentence. Under it was a bunch of weapons. There was a Thompson, a Trench Gun, a BAR and 3 Colt M1911s. All of which had plenty of ammo neatly packed in magazines placed around them. “Why in the Sam hell do you girls have these guns?!”

The three of them started awkwardly laughing. “We wanted to see if we could be-“ Scootaloo was in the middle of a sentence, but I interrupted her.

“Dead? Because that’s what you’d be if you messed up on one tiny thing while using any one of these!”

“We’re sorry” Applebloom said giving me a puppy-dog face.

“I’m not so much of mad as I am surprised that you three managed to get your han- er… I mean hooves on these!” I said.

“So you’re not mad?” Scootaloo asked looking up at me with sparkling little eyes.

“No” I laughed. “I did this same thing when I was around your age. You just need to know that this is not a good thing unless you are 100% properly trained to use guns. If you aren’t, you will be in a lot more danger than you’d think. People and ponies in the military are trained how to use guns and accidents still happen all the time!”

“Yay!” Sweetie Belle squealed in rejoice. “We thought you would kill us!”

“Oh, don’t worry” I assured them. “I did my share of stupid shit when I was your age. Just make sure you don’t do anything that’ll kill you.”

“I think that’s kind of self-explanatory” Scootaloo added sarcastically.

“Alright, Ms. Sarcastic, I think it’s best I take these back with me.” The three made a cute little “aaaaawwwwwwww” in unison. I sighed and said “okay, okay, I’ll tell ya what. I’ll teach you how to use the guns as long as you 3 keep your miniature-sized traps shut to your sisters, parents and whoever else about this, alright?”

“It’s a deal!” Applebloom spouted, hopping as she said it.

“Okay then, I’ll start off by showing you the most important part of the gun: the safety. You don’t keep this on and you can have a random bullet go off and hit Applejack or some other innocent pony. It may be an accident, but the law won’t care.” I continued on my lecture on how the guns worked while the Cutie Mark Crusaders watched and listened intently. After what was about an hour or so, I took the girls out and set up some old rotting apples Applebloom found as targets.

At the first shot, Big Mac and Applejack came running faster than I thought they could run. “What the hay is going on here!” Applejack yelled.

“Don’t flip your shit woman” I returned, annoyed. “They’d need to learn how to shoot sooner or later. You never know when they might need to defend themselves.”

“Eeyup” Big Mac agreed.

“Alright, but if they get even a scratch on-“

“Applejack, I know what I’m doing. The first thing I taught them about was the safety. If I didn’t know what I was doing then why in the Sam hell would I be teaching them?” She backed off hesitantly and angrily, whereas Big Mac just sauntered away casually.

I watched the three fillies as they got more and more accurate. “You keep it up and you’re gonna go far, kid!” I said. The three of them put their safeties on and turned to me.

“You really think so?” Applebloom squealed excitedly.

“Of course!” I replied. “I might actually use you girls for any kind of recon or information gathering we might need to do later.” They all let out a loud happy “YAY!” and went back to shooting at the rotten apples.

After a long day of target practice instruction, lectures on how to properly use guns, and Applejack repeatedly coming back because of her extreme concern, I went home to Connor and Discord sitting and talking about who they had pranked and what happened.

“What’s up, John?” he greeted me.

“Not much” I replied. “I just spent the day instructing Applebloom and her friends on how to use guns. I think it went pretty well, to be honest.”

“Fantastic” he said before turning back to Discord and continuing to laugh their heads off and then back onto their bodies. I dragged myself back to my room where I laid down and… just laid there.  For about 20 or 30 minutes, I just laid there. I couldn’t tell what was going to happen next. This war was unusually unpredictable, as if it was some kind of a written story or something. It was only the question of what would happen next…

There was a knock at the door, and since Discord and Connor were still dying of laughter, I got up to answer it myself. I opened the door and it was… Princess Celestia and Luna… “Canterlot has been taken over.”

“… Well, we’re fucked.” I turned around and walked back inside. “Come inside if you want. I’ll be sitting here thinking of an idea that won’t get us killed.”

“Thou art not out of all options” Luna said, interrupting my self-directed anger. “If we keep calm and develop a plan, perhaps we can overcome these hardships as Equestria has overcome problems before.”

“Thank you for your suggestion, Princess” I replied, “but I’m afraid this is something too big for anypony here to handle.”

“I wouldn’t say that just yet” Connor yelled, while behind him, a man stepped out in an old military uniform, but it wasn’t U.S. He was holding an assault rifle that looked similar to an AK47… But it was noticeably different. He also had a holstered pistol that looked (from what I could tell) as if it was a P226. My eyes traveled up and I saw his face. Short black hair with several large scars along his nose and left eye. His right eye was missing, though… It hit me… this was Afanasai Aleksander Chechnoi. “Our salvation has arrived!”

“You must be Afanasai” I greeted him. He nodded, remaining silent. “You were a Spetsnaz soldier, right?” He nodded again. “What’s that weapon you’re holding?”

“AK103” He answered in a very deep voice with a Russian accent that was as thick as a bank’s safe door.

“Well, it’s great to have you aboard, Afanasai” I said, sticking my hand out as he shook it. “As you heard, we have a problem at hand. I assume you’re staying in the empty room right there, so you should be fine for accommodations. We also need someone to help me and Connor come up with a plan that won’t kill everypony here.”

“I’ve also got other news” Connor interrupted once again. “I’ve managed to remember an old WWII pistol that is VERY quiet.”

“Well what in the Sam hell are you waiting for, Connor. Spit it out!”

“It’s called the Welrod. It’s an old British weapon” he explained. “Only about 2800 were made officially. There is a catch though… It’s bolt action.”

“Bolt action… Are you fucking kidding me?” I growled at him, quite annoyed with his statement.

“It works! Trust me, I’ve made and tested one of these before! They work like a charm!” He seemed intent on this so I told him to turn out 4 or 5 of them ASAP.

I turned back to Afanasai. “Our target is Lieutenant Colonel McMarland. We’re not sure if he’s actually in Canterlot, so if we just barge in and mow people down, it may be a wasted effort.”

He looked at me with a skeptical look, as If I should know what our first move should be. “Recon” he finally said.

“Ah” I sighed. “But who is small and agile enough to be able to sneak around Canterlot unseen…” I had an idea… but Applejack wouldn’t be too happy about it.

“NO!” Applejack was so angry her coat looked as if it would go from bright orange to red. “If ya’ll think I’m gonna risk ma little sister like that, yer outta yer pony picken’ mind!”

“She’s small, she’s agile and goddammit, she’s well trained!” I argued. “There’s no way that she could get hurt. Hell, she could pass off as a Canterlot citizen.”

“I don’t give a flyin’ feather!” she yelled. “I’m not lettin’ ‘er go, and that’s final!”

From behind me came a deep and robust voice. “He’s got a point. And plus, she’s obviously not gonna be on ‘er own. Doin’ that’d be like tellin’ a fish to run a race!” It was her brother, Big Mac.

“Ya’ll stay outta this, Big McIntosh.”

“I have just as much of a sayin’ in this as you!” he shouted back.

“She’s not gonna go alone. I’ll be there with her and we’ll have her two friends there, too!” I added.

“Have fun tryin’ ta get Rarity to let HER sister go!” Applejack responded in a smart-ass tone.

“Look, little sis” Big Mac continued. “I’ve made ma decision, and there ain’t a thing you can do ‘bout it! She’ll be perfectly safe, and so will all her little friends!” Applejack let out an angered snort and stormed off back to her house. “No need ta thank me. I know that the fate of Equestria rides on yer shoulders, so you should get all the help you can” Big Mac said, smiling at me. “I also trust ya ta take good care of Applebloom, seein’ how well you an’ her seem ta get along.”

I nodded and took my leave. There was only one more angrily over protective big sister I had to deal with… Rarity.

“Not a chance!” she spouted, turning away from me.

“Applebloom, Scootaloo and I are all already going! I guarantee that Sweetie Belle will NOT get hurt AT ALL!

“It doesn’t matter to me” she retaliated.

“Look here! This is the fate of your fucking existence we’re dealing with!” I roared, having just snapped. “I don’t give a fuck if you want to be “super safe” about her safety. I know she won’t get hurt! She’s coming along. I don’t care what your decision is, because I think that a one in a million chance of her getting hurt is better than a one in one chance of everypony in town dying! She better be over at my house tomorrow night, completely ready, or I won’t be responsible for the shit that I’ll do!”

Her eyes were the size of dinner plates. She gulped and squeaked out “she’ll be there.”

“Thank you” I sighed. I went back home and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t manage (like usual).

I got up and went to see if Connor was still at work. Sure enough, he was working away. “You can’t sleep either?” I asked him, walking into the room and probably scaring the living Christ out of him.

“Not at all” he replied.

“What do you think is gonna happen?”

“Well, we have a home field advantage, so if we get a good plan then we may be able to find and kill this McMuffin guy.”

“McMuffin” I laughed to myself. “Well, we still need to know if he’s there. That’s why I’m going on some recon with the CMC tomorrow night.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“What do you mean?” I asked as a response to his question.

“I mean, this is the U.S. Military we’re talking about. Super advanced shit, right? Don’t you think you’ll get… you know… obliterated?”

“I would care, but I’m all out of fucks to give” I told him. It was silent for a little bit after that. “Look” I started up again. “This is the only way to figure out if he’s ACTUALLY there. We don’t want to barge in and figure out he’s not there, and we sure as hell can’t just walk up and ask them.”

“I suppose you have a point” Connor agreed. He picked up all 5 Welrods in his arms and carried them over to a little target he had set up for this. “Let’s make sure these work, though.” He tried to fire one, but it jammed instantly. He started mumbling what was probably endless cursing as he struggled to release the jam. Once he had released the jammed bullet, he tried to fire again… it jammed. “What the fuck?” he muttered angrily. He turned to me. “I don’t get it! These should work!” He picked up a M1911.”I mean, these work perfectly! Not a single problem!” He turned to fire, but when he did, it backfired. He stumbled back in pain, but tripped over the 4 other Welrods on the ground beside him. One of them fired off into his leg. “AAAARRGH!” he yelled in agony.

“Oh my god, are you Okay?” I asked frantically, racing over to his side.

“Oh I’m just fine” he said sarcastically, “except for the fact that I have a FUCKING BULLET INSIDE MY LEG!”

“Shit, uh… we gotta get you to one of the princesses. They can help.”

“Sure, just get this bullet out of my flesh!” he begged.

I ran to Twilight’s and got Princess Celestia (who was staying there along with Luna for the time being). She teleported us over and took a look at Connor. “I can handle this” she assured me. It was so fast I couldn’t tell what she did, but she sure fixed him up pretty well.

“I can’t walk, though!”

“That tends to happen when you get shot in the leg” I replied.

The rest of that day, I was stuck working on those Welrods all on my own. I had never made them before so it was complete trial and error on the troubleshooting. It took me all day to get all 5 of them to work properly and by then I had probably wasted a good 100$ or so in ammunition (considering 9mm ammunition is a cheap handgun bullet [thank god]). Night was closing in and it was almost time to go on recon with the CMC. I had all the Welrods ready and loaded. It was tonight when we found out if McMuffin was there or not.

It was late… almost time to leave. I was pacing, wondering where in the Sam hell Applebloom and her friends were. I noticed there was some chatter from outside the door. After a little bit, I heard the voices yell “CUTIE MARK CRUSADER RECON FORCES!” It was obvious who was outside the door.

I opened the door and sure enough, Applebloom, Sweetie Bell and Scootaloo were all standing there, eager to get going. “You girls ready for this?” I asked.

“YEAH!!!!”

“Remember, though!  This is a stealth-based mission. We want to remain as hidden as possible” I reminded them.

“Oh yeah, sorry” Sweetie Bell apologized.

“It doesn’t matter right now” I laughed. “Come on girls, we got some work to do!”

Applebloom walked up to me and nervously said “Is it true that Manehattan was taken over?”

“Yeah”

“I hope Babs is all right” she sighed, looking down.

“It’s ok” I assured, kneeling down next to her. “This war was a set-up. It wasn’t meant to happen. That’s why we’re going on recon. We know the guy who set us up, but we need to know if he’s at Canterlot right now. If we go in without info and it turns out he ISN’T there, we’ll have just wasted ammo, effort and most of all, lives. That’s why we’re gonna do this.”

“Let’s go!” Applebloom shouted enthusiastically.

“That’s the spirit!” We walked off down the road to get our transportation to the castle… Twilight’s magic.

We were in front of the castle gates. I thanked Twilight for her help and she promised she’d wait hidden in the bushes. All 4 of us were wearing the most naturally-dark clothes possible so we could blend in with shadows. Me and the girls approached the locked gate and tried to look for a way in… nothing. But then Sweetie Bell spotted a piece of the wall was missing and it was covered on each side by bushes. It happened to be just big enough for me to squeeze through. I managed to get through, and so did the CMC, so we were in.

There was a slight lack of patrols and such. Two soldiers were standing near the drawbridge which was closed and there weren’t too many more that weren’t stationed in specific areas that allow quite a clear view of most of the courtyard of the castle. We traveled, carefully using the shadows as our cover until we had reached the side of the castle. I spotted a suitable area to climb up to a high window that would look directly into the throne room. “Alright, girls” I said turning my head to them. “I’m gonna climb up there and see if I can’t spot the target. I need you gals to cover me the best you can. If any soldiers come close enough to see me, knock them out unless they see you. In that case, just shoot them and drag the body into the bushes.” They nodded and I quickly ran over to the side of the castle with the climbable area. Lucky for me, Luna had done a kindness of making tonight a little darker than usual, so I blended in with the side of the castle much more.

I made sure my footing was stable, and then started climbing as fast as I could. It was a really long way up to the window I was trying to get to. After a while, I looked down and saw the three fillies sitting there watching out for any soldiers while watching me intently at the same time. It was about 10 minutes of hopping around like I was in Assassin’s Creed before I had reached the window I was trying to get to, but it was worth it. Inside the window, two officers were conversing about the war.

One of them mentioned that the other one was the Lieutenant Colonel we were after: Ltc. McMarland. I knew his face now, but before I went, I realized that the other officer had found out about McMuffin’s betrayal. A soldier (supposedly working with McMuffin on this) came up behind him and used a silenced pistol to put a bullet into the back of his head, spewing blood onto McMuffin’s face. I shook off my shock and began my descent. As soon as I made it down, the girls were looking at me with hyper expect faces… I sighed “he’s there.”

We began making our way back towards the hole in the wall that we had come through. Once we reached it, the girls started to pile through. Before I went through, one of the soldiers out and about managed to spot me. He got a little skeptical, so he walked over to check if anything was there. In the time it took for him to walk, I slipped through the hole in the wall and moved out of the line of sight he would have if he looked through the hole. After about 5 minutes, I assumed he was gone and I got up to go rendezvous with the girls and Twilight. Once we were all there, we teleported back to the front of my house. “Great work girls. We got what we needed and didn’t have to kill anyone!” I stated happily. “Mission accomplished!” They let out a loud “YAY!”

The next morning, I walked out into our main room to see Connor sitting next to Afanasai on the sofa. They weren’t talking… in fact, Connor was sleeping. I greeted Afanasai and sat down on the opposite side of the room. “We need a plan” he said almost monotonously.

“Tell me about it” I replied. “We know he’s there, though. We found him there. Now we just need a plan and an army.” Afanasai and I started plotting on how to get to McMuffin. It was the most Afanasai had ever talked since I met him. Our plan was complex, but it was very doable and it was absolutely foolproof. “I think we’re ready” I chimed in after a while. “Now we just need to gather enough ponies and weapons, split them into teams and give them a rundown on how we’re gonna do this.”

It took several hours to get all the weapons rounded up (especially because Connor was a complete slowpoke with the limp he had from the gunshot in his leg), but we were able to tell ponies to wait at the front of my house while we worked. “Alright everypony!” I shouted to address the crowd. We had also gotten Princess Celestia to contact any of the ponies from Cloudsdale that wanted to help, and obviously the Wonderbolts responded immediately. “As you should know (if you haven’t been living under a rock), we are at war with the United States of America. What you probably don’t know is that this war was a set up!” Quiet chatter began to resonate from the crowd of now surprised ponies. “I know it’s hard to believe, but we have proof. We received notice that an Improvised Explosive Device was set off inside of the United States, and it was traced back to Equestria, leading them to believe it was us. Then, after those buildings burned down and collapsed, we found a letter from a military officer named McMarland. He got somepony to set up one live IED and one fake one. He believes that a second sentient species should not exist on Earth, so regardless of what may happen to him, he decided to take matters into his own hands. We have confirmation that he is at Canterlot, and that’s why you’re all here.”

The crowd began to erupt with chatter once again. Afanasai fired a few shots from his AK103 up into the air, shutting the crowd up almost instantly. “Look, we’ve come up with a plan, but we need all the help we can get. First, we’ve gotta divide everypony into teams. Team leaders will be me, Afanasai, Spitfire, Connor (if his leg doesn’t get in the way), Shining Armor, Rainbow Dash and Big McIntosh. As soon as we break everypony into individual teams, I’ll give you all your instructions separately. For now, stay with your assigned teams and just talk, sing, do whatever you want to do. Just stay in your groups.”

The groups got assigned. I went around to every group and gave specific instructions on how the operation would work. I also asked Princess Celestia to do something else to help out. Eventually Connor limped over to me and asked “why are you doin’ this all today?”

“Because we leave tonight” I answered. I armed all the groups according to their assigned tasks, and Afanasai managed to get his hands on some… special grenades that we gave to The Wonderbolts for their task. Me and Connor each got one as well. My team was “Equipe Um.” Connor’s team was “Equipe Dois.” Afanasai’s team was “Equipe três.”  Spitfire’s team was “Equipe Céu.” Shining Armor’s team was “Equipe Magia.” Rainbow Dash’s team was “Equipe Asas.” Big Mac’s team was “Equipe Escavadeira.” All team names were in Portuguese just to be safe. We were all ready… we just had to wait for the right time now.

Me, Connor, Afanasai and Discord all sat talking. “So what is this operation entitled?” Discord questioned curiously.

“Operation Ground and Pound!” I stated proudly. “It’s foolproof, trust me!”

“How doth thou know?” a voice interrupted. It was Princess Luna. She walked from the hallway over to me. “Thou art risking thy life for a single man.”

“Truth resonates of thy words like light from a mirror” I replied, trying to speak as Shakespearian as possible. “Care has been taken in analyzing every detail of this plan and I assure any and all that it will not fail. That said, what is thy question’s purpose? Doth worry for me gather to you?”

“Thou art a brave young soul” she said nervously, looking down. “I have appreciation of that. There is also many other things. One of many is thy comprehension of the forgotten speech of the ancients.”

“From my home and birthplace, we call the speech thou speak of “Shakespearian”.”

“So it is a commonality from thy place of birth?”

“Not quite” I replied. I noticed that everyone around me was gawking in awe at how well I was communicating with Luna. “Mr. William Shakespeare was a playwright. Perhaps the world’s most famous at that. His speech was always constructed in this way. My spare time was often spent reading the works of Shakespeare. His mind was irreplaceable as well as incomparable to others.” Something slipped out after that. “His knowledge almost matches thy beauty.”

Luna’s face went from dark blue to bright red. “Wha…?”

I heard Connor mutter “What the fuck have you done, brother.” Afanasai was simply shaking his head in disapproval.

I noticed that my eyes had just widened, so at least I was shocked, too. “Did I just that out loud?” Everyone in the room nodded awkwardly in unison. “Well… this is… awkward.”

I expected Luna to erupt in anger but she just stood there. She said nothing; her face remained as red as a rose covered in blood and Connor and Afanasai continued to disapprove while Discord just sat there uncomfortably. After what seemed like forever, Luna finally spoke up. “Doth thou speak those words truthfully?” I nodded. “Thy bravery has been proven once again, John, and has also shown thy kindness. I admire you on the same level.”

It was my turn to turn red now. “Yo-… thy words are truthful?” I stumbled to keep speaking in Shakespearian. She nodded. “I’m… I’m honored.”

“I believe ending this war should be what we worry about first” Afanasai interrupted with his tainted-glass-dark voice.

“This one…” Luna started. “He speaks the truth.”

“As thy wishes command me” I said, smiling. “But I may not come back with breath in my lungs nor blood in my veins.”

“When doth the end begin?” she asked.

I looked over at Connor. “We need to get going in less than an hour. Not any magic can teleport groups of ponies this big, especially all the way to Canterlot” Connor told Luna. “We also can’t use the train system, so it looks like we have to walk, and that’s a damn long distance.”

“Then I shall give a farewell now and hope you remain alive later” she replied almost sounding sad regardless of her smiling. Before I could get anywhere close to saying anything she rushed over and kissed me… It went on for what seemed like forever, but it eventually ended. Afterwards, she looked at me with her face once again a deep yet bright red. She then simply ran out of the room.

“Well, that certainly was interesting” Discord spouted randomly.

“Yeah… Interesting… Let’s go with that” Afanasai added sarcastically.

“Alright, let’s get ready to take this shit head on!” I chimed in. “Get your groups ready and let’s all start moving to our designated locations around the castle. Let’s bag ourselves Lieutenant Colonel McMuffin, boys!”

“I’ll go gather the groups. You wa-” I cut off Connor remembering something that would help… possibly.

“I think I should listen to… that song” I hinted.

“Nonononononono. You can’t do that” Connor pleaded. “You’ll go crazy.”

“I don’t care” I said. “I’m gonna do it” I walked into my room and got out of one of the boxes that had my stuff… an IPod and speakers. I turned up the volume to maximum and put on the song “Mr. Jack.” As it started, my head began to hurt and my eyes started to water… It was coming back

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the mouthwash in your eyes

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the cause of your surprise

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

I began to uncontrollably throw up as I remembered what had happened. Outside, I could hear Connor telling Afanasai and Discord what happened. “He went into the back room of the shop to grab something, and this song was playing. He came back to see both of his parents dead. There was a guy standing over his mother’s corpse and the guy was… let’s just describe it with the word “necrophilia.” He picked up an old revolver that his grandfather made him and blew the bastard’s brains all over the wall… then he emptied 11 more bullets into his corpse. He was proven innocent and the killing that guy was considered justified, but now whenever John hears that song, he has a relapse of everything that happened.”

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the trick of your disguise

Hey Mr. Jack,

Is that the cause of your demise

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

Hey where you at

On the side of the freeway in the car

I started to regain my conscious thoughts, regardless that all of them consisted of unbelievable amounts of anger

. Your prospect of living is gone

You ran the light at dawn

Protectors on your back

Lights are on their track

You must now face authority

You’re nothing like me

You must now face authority

You’re nothing like me

Put your hands up, get out of the car

Put your hands up, get out of the car

Put your hands up, get out of the car

Fuck you pig

Fuck you pig

Fuck you pig

Fuck you pig

Put your hands up, get out of the car

The song finally came to an end after four minutes. I burst out of the room, almost breaking the door down. Connor was about to ask if I was okay, but I reacted before him. “Before you say something fucking absolutely pointless, let me remind you dipshits that we need to gather our weapons and leave, because the sooner we make it to Canterlot, the better chance we have of ending up alive after this, so don’t say a fucking thing, grab whatever shit you need and move.” All three of them were staring at me with wide eyes. I ignored them and stormed out the door with my equipment.

I only had one thing on my mind:

KILL LIUTENANT COLONAL MCMARLAND

It took hours and hours, but we were finally in position. “Equipe Dois and Três, are you in position?” I called the teams angrily over our earpieces that Afanasai had generously let all the team leaders borrow.

“Waitin’ for your call, John” Connor replied.

“Ready” Afanasai uttered.

“Good” I said, still blinded by my own anger. “Equipe Céu, are you ready for your task?”

“Anytime” Spitfire responded.

“Equipe Magia and Asas?”

“Waiting for your mark!” Shining Armor chimed in.

“Me too!” Rainbow Dash added.

“Okay” I thought, remembering the last team. “Equipe Escavadeira?”

“Eeyup.” I think you can guess who that is.

“Alright, Operation Ground and Pound is all set up” I told everypony, cracking a viciously evil smile. “Let’s get this bitch rollin’!” Connor and I moved (along with our teams) through the crack in the wall me and the CMC found and we all moved onto our separate sides of the building, readying ourselves for whatever might happen.

Connor beeped in on my earpiece. “Hey, do you have your FB?”

“You think I’m that fucking stupid?”

“No, I’m just making sure” he withdrew hastily.

“Get your FB ready” I commanded. “Céu! How many soldiers are guarding the entrance?”

“Uh… a lot” Spitfire hesitated.

“Okay…” I pulled the pin on my FB. “THROW IT NOW!” I barked into the earpiece. Me and Connor let both of our FBs fly to the front of the castle and we covered our ears, closed our eyes and turned away from the blast. BANG!

“SHIT!” we heard come from the soldiers.

“The Flashbangs worked!” I informed everypony. “Plan is in motion. Connor, get your lazy ass up and open fire! Três, you come in in about 3 to 5 minutes.” Me and Connor got up and opened fire on the soldiers as well as our team joining us with their rifles. At least 4 or 5 dropped down, but the rest of them remained standing, but still a little disoriented from the unexpected Flashbang. It wasn’t long before they had regained their full orientation and we all had to reload. Connor and I managed to reload quickly, but about half of each of our teams got shot, most of them dying. “FUCK! We’ve got multiple dead already! Três, where the fuck are you?!”

“Right here” Afanasai interrupted, opening fire with his AK103 from in one of the bushes, while the rest of his team fired from other bushes around the courtyard. They took out another 2 or 3, but most of them were behind good cover now. All gunfire ceased for a moment, but before long another 2 soldiers popped out and managed to shoot down a few of Afanasai’s team before both got wounded. The drawbridge lowered to let out more soldiers. All was going right as I had hoped.

“Céu! Solar rain! Now!” I yelled. The Wonderbolts flew overhead, dropping numerous Flashbangs onto the bridge the soldiers were on while everyone else changed to a full magazine along with dodging the effects of the Flashbangs the best we could. 4 of the Wonderbolts got wounded and began falling out of the air. Lucky for us, they made it over to the other side of the wall. We all came out of cover and opened fire on the stumbling and blinded soldiers. The majority of them went down, but 2 managed to get behind cover. Once again, we had luck on our side, as Afanasai was a dead-eye shot and took out both of them quickly. “Let’s move” I demanded. “The longer we wait, the better chance that fucker’s gonna get away!”

We all rushed into the castle, which is when Equipes Magia, Asas and Escavadeira were all supposed to come into the castle courtyard. I heard an explosion from the back wall, which was a little IED of our own, only being used by Equipe Magia to breach the thick wall. Asas could fly over and Escavadeira would just go through where Magia did. Inside the castle, dozens of soldiers were waiting for us, all behind cover and waiting for the time to catch us of guard.

We waltzed right in, making us all a little skeptical and right when we thought the coast was clear, one of the royal guards on Connor’s team’s head exploded, spraying grey matter all over his other team members. We all dove into the best cover we could find, but when Connor dove, he hurt his leg and wasn’t able to get back up. I knew it was going to be a problem. “Escavadeira! Come in!” I growled. “Get your stupid asses in here and mow these fuckers down!”

There was a short silence and then from the door came a deep and familiar “Eeyup.” Big Mac and the rest of Equipe Escavadeira popped out, all armed with their LMGs. They let out a huge stream of bullets as if they were all carrying garden hoses that spewed bullets instead of water. The majority of the soldiers dropped dead, but several of them were still standing and managed to shoot down one of the ponies on Big Mac’s team. I dove over and got the dropped pony’s LMG and went and gave it to Connor for his M4A1 and its ammo which I kept just in case. We moved up again, but this time, the throne room doors were locked.

It looked like we would have to go through the vents or something… I kept thinking. We had no explosives, no lock-picking equipment, nothing that could help us with this. “Fuck it” I snorted. “I’m goin through the vents.”

“Are you sure?” Connor asked doubtingly.

“Shut the fuck up and wait for me to open the doors.” I found no ventilation (not a surprise if you think about it) but I did remember my Assassin’s Creed-style climbing. “Wait here” I demanded. I ran out the door and dashed over to the side of the building, proceeding to climb upwards towards the window I was at before. This time, it only took me about 3 or 4 minutes to get to the window, considering I was kind of in a hurry. As soon as I reached the right window, I held on the best I could and grabbed out my M1911 and then blew the glass out of the window frame. Dropping to the floor, I noticed that no one had noticed my entry. They probably thought it was a window on another floor or a stray bullet hit the window or something.

As quietly as possible, I unlocked the door from the outside and let everypony in. We all marched inside as we raised our weapons at the unsuspecting soldiers along with a few officers, one of which was McMarland. “Do not shoot any of the officers” I whispered. “Get ready to fire…… now!” Sound waves resonated across the room as bullets flew from all of our guns. Some of the soldiers had already taken cover behind 2 wooden tables that they tipped over and so had all the officers. The only soldiers that went down were the ones standing up.

We all stopped not to reload, but to trick the soldiers into standing up. A few of us DID reload though, like me because I was using my M1, so I had to reload every 8 shots. Sure enough, the soldiers stood up and those of us who weren’t reloading shot the standing soldiers. All of them were down. I looked around us, only seeing a few ponies wounded and 1 or 2 dead. We all approached the covered officers with caution, knowing that these guys didn’t get to be officers because they paid for it.

We got only close enough so that we were about a foot or 2 away from the legs of the two wooden tables they were using as cover. I had just come down from my fantastic rage, so I said in a much calmer tone “get up with your hands up and empty and we won’t shoot you.” They all stayed where they were. I spoke up again, “we only want Ltc. McMarland. He’s a traitor.” They then stood up with empty hands in the air as asked. “Thank you, gentlemen. Now if you would kindly tell me which one of you is Ltc. McMarland so I can blow his brains out, this would end much faster. They all started quietly talking among each other. I thought I could hear them doubting if McMarland was really a traitor.

Twilight suddenly burst racing into the room holding a rolled up piece of parchment. “STOP! John! The war is over! They verified the evidence!” All of the officers looked a little confused. “We sent the handwritten letter that McMarland wrote to the United States’ government telling them of the situation. They’ve verified the evidence and declared that the war is over.”

“Is it still okay if I shoot him?” I asked.

“Yeah, probably” Spike said, who had been riding on Twilight’s back when she ran inside.

“Good, ‘cuz I would’ve done it anyway!” I turned back to the officers. I spotted one who had something in his hand… oh shit…

He began casually walking forward until he was only a few inches away from me. “EAT MY CORNBREAD! ALLAH!” the officer screamed as he clicked a C4 detonator. The huge explosion blew off the back of the castle and sent everyone in the room flying.

The smoke cleared out slowly as I opened my eyes to a blurry view of the cracked and partially charred ceiling. My ears were still ringing from McMarland’s C4 explosion, but I still managed to get to my feet and start trying to look around. My vision slowly came into view as I saw that all the other officers were nowhere to be seen. They must have been blown up by the explosion. I stumbled over to Connor who was lying against the wall on the left of the throne room, still breathing but unconscious. McMarland raised his head to look around from where he was on the right side of the throne room, and he almost instantly spotted me.

He slowly, carefully and quietly got out his pistol and checked that it was loaded and the safety was off. He apparently wanted my attention when he killed me because he shouted the one thing he shouldn’t have… “Hey, Mr. Jack!” My ears started ringing again, but not from the explosion. I knew the bastard was wishing for his own death on this one. He yelled again “hey, Mr. Jack!”

I back onto my feet and turned to face him. My anger was so strong it felt as if it were giving off some kind of heat. I slowly started to walk towards McMarland. He aimed the best he could and shot. The bullet hit me in the shoulder, but I was too enraged to feel pain, I just kept walking. “What? Why aren’t you dying?! You’re supposed to die when I shoot you!” he yelled, shooting me over and over in the chest. Nothing worked, because I just kept walking casually towards him.

A barely conscious Twilight and Connor started calling me to snap out of it, but I didn’t care. I finally reached him, and I proceeded to crush his ribs with a quick stomp. He screamed loudly in the pain as I bent down and picked up his gun, which he had dropped. I checked the magazine. One bullet left… that’s all I needed. “I believe you need to die now, McMarland.” I took direct aim at his forehead…

“I can’t believe I’m gonna be killed by some guy who’s friends with a bunch of talking horses!” he coughed.

I laughed, regaining my train of rational thought. I kept my aim at his head and looked at him with a devilish smile.

“What are you, some kind of a cowboy or something?” He asked.

“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”

With a gentle pull of the trigger, a bullet was blown straight through his head and into the floor… McMarland was dead. I stepped off of him and turned back to my friends. “A dose of lead can be fatal, especially when it’s issued from the barrel of a gun!”

Then the lead that hit me kicked in and I fell to my knees in blinding pain. Connor and Twilight raced over to my side. “Don’t you dare fucking die on me brother” Connor ordered frantically.

“Me and my big mouth, huh?” I joked. “Connor, I want to make sure you know that you were my best friend. I trust you to take care of Equestria while I’m gone. Twilight, make sure everypony knows to never fear the unknown like McMarland did.”

“Okay” she squeaked, tearing up.

“And Connor” I said, turning back to him. “Tell Luna I said goodbye, okay?”

“I will, brother” he sobbed. His tears began to drip onto my bullet wounds, making them burn.

“I think it’s time for me to take my leave” I sighed. As my last breath of life escaped quietly from my lungs and my vision began to fade out, I saw a peculiar sight… two scythes… one was steel with a wooden handle and the other was… Obsidian? With an iron handle… I wondered what they were for… but then my thoughts faded for the final time.

I jerked up gasping for breath… then I looked around. I was… nowhere… Well, I mean, obviously I was somewhere, but everything around me was blank white. I kept looking around until I looked behind me. I saw a grey and black pony with wings as though he had been crossed with a bat. He probably sensed me looking at him because he lifted his head and looked over at me. I spoke first, “who in the Sam hell are you?”

“I might ask you the same question” he answered.

“I’m John Jack” I told him skeptically.

“I’m Reaper.”

“So…” I started awkwardly. “where in the Sam hell are we?”

“Welcome to a little piece of heaven” He quoted.

“You listen to Avenged Sevenfold?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Me too!” I laughed. “Why are we here anyway?”

“Equestria’s gonna need us again pretty soon, so both of us and all memories of us are being preserved here for the time being” he explained. “Brightside is you don’t have to eat or drink. Downside is that there’s not a goddamn thing to do around here except sleep and you can only do so much of that.”

“So I guess we wait then” I suggested.

“I guess so”

So we waited

We waited for something to happen.

THE END