Luna was guiding the Element Bearers, Spike, the elder Sparkles, and her sister through the halls of the castle. An early morning chariot had collected the Bearers and Spike from Ponyville and a pair of guards had summoned the Sparkle parents from their home in the Noble District of Canterlot.

“So what is so important that you have summoned everyone together Luna?” Celestia asked.

“Be patient sister, all shall be revealed shortly.” Luna replied with an impish smile at her older sibling.

Celestia huffed good naturedly, happy that her sister was willing to let her facade down around someone besides her.

The Bearers that were present showed different states of interest. Rainbow Dash was almost bored having spent most of the last year at the castle while learning smithing. Spike was casting a bemused look at PInkie PIe who was currently vibrating vigorously as they walked down the hall, making any of the rapid fire words that were coming from her mouth completely unintelligible. Rarity, despite doing her best to not show it, had a slightly put out expression on her face at the early hour of the summons. Fluttershy was quietly chatting with the elder Sparkles, having last seen them at the memorial ceremony for their daughter a few months prior.

From around the corner in ahead of them came Shining Armour, hobbling on a pair of crutches.

“Captain Armour, how is your leg fairing this morning?” Luna inquired as they reached him.

“Still stiff, but the swelling has gone down Your Highness. Doctor says to take it easy for a few days, so I’m stuck with these. Hi everyone.” He said giving a smile and a small wave to the group.

“Shining, what happened to your leg?” Twilight Velvet asked with a hint of concern.

“Just my bad knee mom. Went out on me when I made a landing. Like I said, so long as I take it easy for a bit I will be fine.” He replied.

“If you say so. Other than that, how have you been?” She inquired.

“Good. I assume that Princess Luna is taking you to see the surprise?” He asked glancing at the alicorn.

“Indeed Captain. Would you like to join us?” Luna replied.

“Certainly. Lead the way.”

The group continue through the corridors until they came upon a door that was guarded by a pair of Night Guards that looked like they were about to collapse.

“Are you two alright?” Luna asked the pair.

“She wanted to go for a run Mistress. We accompanied her, but we didn’t know what we were getting into.” The male Saberhorn, Dark Meadow, replied.

“Her ‘short’ run was nearly 6 kilometers. And she had a vest on that weighed twenty-seven kilos! That mare is nuts, all due respect to her.” The female Nightstalker, Sapphire, added.

Luna raised an eyebrow at her normally stoic guards. She also wrinkled her nose at the smell of body odor coming from the pair.

Suddenly the door opened and Twilight Sparkle stuck her head out in the corridor.

“Are you two seriously still here? I thought I told you to go get a shower and some rest.” She said with an exasperated look on her face.

“We have not been properly relieved of duty, Your Highness. We will not abandon our post.” Dark Meadow replied.

“Seriously?” Twilight said as she looked between the two. “Get your tails in here and use my shower at least. You two reek.” She said before turning to Luna and her entourage. “Hey everyone. Come on in and make yourselves at home.” She said opening the doors fully.

The two guards looked to Princess Luna, who nodded at them to follow the order, before entering Twilight’s temporary quarters. The rest of the group soon followed and were quickly joined by Applejack and Flash Sentry.

Celestia was the first of those not in the know to find her voice, though Pinkie had stopped vibrating and talking a mile a minute, but had a massive smile on her face.

“Twilight, when did you return?” She asked as the mare dug through her bag.

“Last night around 1 AM I think? Still have to adjust my watch to the local time. But I was bloody exhausted and needed to hit the rack before I would be able to do any kind of talking. Plus I would rather have everyone that I wanted to tell about where I have been and what I have been up to.” Twilight replied as she pulled out a holster and a weapon case.

“What did happen to you dear? When you disappeared, we feared the worst.” Twilight Velvet inquired.

Twilight sighed at her mother’s question. She knew that pretty well everyone would have issues with what her profession was for most of her adult life on Earth. Putting the holster on her hip and unlocking the weapon case, she began her tale as she removed her 1911 handgun and began to disassemble it.

“Well, I was sent to another world by Discord. Whether that was his original intention or if I did something when I shot him with the pistols that Shining had gotten me, we will probably never know. But when I got there I discovered that I was sharing a body with a soon to be born human. Which brings me to one of the more interesting bits of the trip. I am not the same Twilight I was when I left, I am a blending of both Twilight Sparkle and the human Jason Sparks. The portion of me that is Twilight basically pulled herself into a corner of my mind and partitioned it off to keep from overwhelming and destroying the soul of the individual that was to become Jason. It wasn’t until Jason was seriously wounded while on a mission that Twilight ‘woke up’ and we began to share a mindscape. Fortunately, we were able to control the merging of the two souls and two personalities with minimal issue over the next two years.” Twilight said as she oiled and cleaned her weapon.

“So you are Twilight, but at the same time you’re not?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Basically Dash. All the memories are there, but my personality has become a combination of the two. Fortunately for you guys, most of my neuroses have been balanced out or at least tempered with the new experiences.” Twilight replied with a grin.

“Darling.” Rarity said, finally getting over her shock. “What happened to your arm?” She asked gesturing towards the prosthesis.

“When Jason got injured, we wound up losing our left arm due to the severity of the injury. We were able to come up with a prosthesis that runs off of magic and functions in pretty well the same way that our original arm did.” Twilight replied.

“How does this arm function differently?” Her father asked.

“Well Dad, have you ever seen someone whose arm could do this?” She asked before holding up her arm and moving her hand in such a manner that it allowed an eight inch blade to deploy from within. “I’ve go a few other ideas for other mods, but I didn’t have the right materials on Earth.” Twilight said after retracting the blade and pulling some magazines and a box of ammunition from her bag.

Celestia was again the first to recover from the shock of Twilight’s display.

“It appears that you lived a rather violent life on this other world.” She said sadly.

Twilight sighed as she slid rounds into the magazines.

“I did. But the things I did were to protect those who could not and to protect the interests of my nation abroad. Pretty much everything that I had to do runs counter to how we do things here in Equestria. Unlike here on Terra, the dominant race on Earth, Mankind, has been fighting for pretty much everything for its entire history, even before recorded history.” She said.

“And how long has that been?” Night Light asked.

“The human race has been around for almost two hundred thousand years and civilization has been around for about six thousand. Most of that history is stained with blood.” Twilight explained as she put two of the now loaded magazines into her holster.

“How can a race be that cruel?” Fluttershy asked fearfully.

Twilight shrugged. “Ever since humanity discovered the killing power of rock and bone, they have been killing for everything from greed to religion to just plain psychotic rage. War is a constant of humanity and something that has become something of an art. The weapons that we use have changed throughout the ages, tactics have evolved, but at its basic level, war never changes.” She said as she loaded her handgun and racked the slide.

The group was silent as she holstered the weapon and put away her supplies.

“So what did you do that you saw so much violence?” Dash asked.

“I was a soldier. The reason that the war I fought in started was because of a surprise attack by a terrorist organization that killed over two thousand innocent civilians in one morning. The day after the attacks occurred, Operation Enduring Freedom was started and troops were deployed to take the fight to the enemy and the government that supported them. Sadly, the war has dragged on for over fifteen years with no real end in sight. We trained the government that replaced the one we deposed to fight the insurgents, but it has been a process. I did quite a bit more than the average soldier in some cases because I was a member of Special Forces when I was retired, and that is mostly because due to the nature of my speciality my team and I were able to go places that we really shouldn’t have been and do things that we probably really shouldn’t have done, but needed to be done.”

“Such as?” Luna asked, eyes narrowed.

“Going into nations that were our allies, that were not active combat zones to locate and capture or kill members of the terrorist organizations that were causing so many problems. The problem with that is they operate in such small cells, that sometimes don’t know anything about another cell, that there are a lot of places they can hide. Then there is the fact that many of them are well funded, not just by individuals that support their ideals, but sometimes nations will quietly support them, or at least provide them sanctuary.” Twilight replied.

“What about the people of those countries? Couldn’t they do anything?” Velvet replied, struggling to come to terms that her youngest placed herself in harm's way the way she did.

“The problem is that these groups create fear. They would put out messages that showed them doing things like beheading prisoners as a warning. A kind of, ‘if you stand against us, this will happen to you and those that you care about.’ message. There were people who would take up arms against these groups, but they were few and though some of them do some serious damage, they are mostly untrained civilians that are doing what they can to protect their homes. And after what happened in Afghanistan when the Soviets went in and we trained and armed rebels to push them out and the rebels later turned into the group that attacked us and would use the weapons that we had provided them, we have been leery about doing so again. Plus changes in administrations has caused issues with changing how we have been fighting and what we are permitted to do.” Twilight replied.

“That, sounds very complicated darling.” Rarity replied.

“It was. But as a Tier I operator, my job was not to think about the why of things, but think about how I was going to do the job and get my team back safely.” Twilight replied.

“Did you lose anyone?” Spike asked quietly.

Twilight looked at her adopted son and took in his change of appearance and his change in maturity. Nodding she replied.

“Unfortunately, yes. Sometimes it was someone in another squad that I knew, and others it was one of my team that died next to me or in my arms as we tried to keep them alive until evac got there. That is the one part of the job that I did not miss, having to say goodbye to one of my brothers and then go home and see their families and sometimes not even being able to tell them how and where they died depending upon the nature of the mission. Sadly that happened quite a bit in the last eight years or so of my career.” Twilight said, her eyes gaining a distant look as she remembered the losses.

Fluttershy moved forward and enveloped Twilight in hug, causing the mare to stiffen for a moment at the surprise, before returning the hug gently.

“How can you live with that much pain? Seeing all that horror and death?” She asked quietly.

“Because I know that if I and my brethren did not go and do the things that we did, then there would have been and has been untold suffering. A couple of good quotes that I can remember that kind of sum it all up is ‘People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf’ and ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’ The last is contested as to who said it first, but it is true. My own sense of honor is what drove me to serve. I was able to find a place as a soldier, as a warrior, that let me be apart of something that truly mattered, even if what I did is never known, whether because it was a small part of the whole or if it was something that was classified.” Twilight replied.

“So you were like a secret agent?” Pinkie asked.

Twilight chuckled a little. “Kind of, but not like in the stories. Rarely is the life of a Special Forces Operator that glamorous. Most of the time we are on mission constantly and when we aren’t we’re training so our skills stay sharp. Our downtime though, it could lead to some interesting times.” She said with a smile.

“Oh, like what?” Spike asked.

“Well, believe it or not, I was actually pretty good with the ladies. But then again, some ladies have a thing for a man in uniform. So it might not have been all me. But, in the end I found happiness with an old friend of mine who helped me with my transition back to civilian life and later my shift back to this form.” Twilight said with a sad smile.

“You had to leave her behind didn’t you darling?” Rarity asked.

“I did. Hurt like hell to do it to. But I wasn’t sure what would happen if she were to come here and I wasn’t sure what the situation would be like when we got here. That and I wasn’t going to ask her to leave her family. As much as I love her, I can’t and wouldn’t make her leave them for me.” Twilight replied. “That said, I do want to try and send her a messenger journal like the one that you and Sunset have Celestia.” She added, looking to the Solar Diarch.

“I’m certain that can be arranged to have a new one crafted. Though I have to wonder, have the leaders of that world tried to do things peacefully?” The alabaster alicorn replied.

“They have, but as one of my former nation’s leaders once said ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Which was his way of saying to meet the one threatening you first with words is fine, but make sure that the alternative is not something that they want.” Twilight replied.

“How powerful militarily was the nation that you served?” Luna inquired.

“The United States can bring a military force to bear in any region of the world and begin raining destruction down upon an enemy within hours of getting intelligence. We have bombers and crews that can fly non-stop for something over forty hours. They can take of at their home base in the middle of the country, and with the aid of aerial refueling, can fly to a target, drop its ordnance, and return to base without landing. Plus with our aircraft carriers, we can generally have warplanes on station within hours. The main limits are fuel, oil, and pilot endurance. The newer aircraft can fly for longer, but right now there aren’t as many as we would like to have.” Twilight replied as Fluttershy sat next to her and began to examine her prosthesis. “Add to the fact we are one of nine nations that had weapons that were so powerful that a single warhead could destroy an entire city, and we have shown that we will use those weapons. Granted, that was over seventy years ago, but it still shows that we will use them if pushed.” Twilight replied.

“What kind of weapon is that powerful?” Velvet asked.

“A device that splits the atom. It can cause the area that is bombed to be unlivable for quite some time and will vaporize every living thing within nearly a mile of the hypocenter.” Twilight replied. “They have only been used twice in anger, and the after effects were enough that they became a political weapon, used more to posture and threaten than one that would actually see usage. Which is fortunate, as the only strategy for their using in war is MAD.” She finished.

“Okay, even I caught the acronym in that one. What does it stand for?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight chuckled. “Don’t sell yourself short Dasha, you’re actually pretty intelligent. Just need to find the right things to catch your attention. But as for what MAD stands for, it is Mutually Assured Destruction. Basically every major population center and important military target would be hit with nuclear warheads and the entire planet would be plunged into what was termed nuclear winter due to the projected ash clouds that would be kicked into the upper atmosphere due to the yield of the warheads which would blanket the earth and block out the sun.” Twilight said as Fluttershy continued to manipulate her arm to and fro. “Are you amused Fluttershy?” She asked with a smile.

“Oh yes. I have seen a few ponies with prosthesis before, but never one that had this kind of quality…” The normally shy mare said before realizing she was rambling.

Twilight smiled at her friend. “It’s okay Fluttershy. If you want, I still have the earlier models that you can look at. Though replicating them will be hard to do with Equestria’s current level of technology.”

“So you are saying that the world you went to is more advanced than Equestria?” Celestia asked, intrigued at the notion.

“Considering they went from thinking heavier than air flight was a pipe dream to landing men on the moon in less than fifty years, I would say so. Plus the fact that computers have gotten so small you can carry one in your pocket.” Twilight replied.

Luna spoke up next. “They sent someone to the moon? For what possible reason?” She asked heatedly.

“Because it was there. Humans are inherently curious. They are explorers, always looking for something new to discover. The Apollo missions were the culmination of nearly a decade of space flight. Apollo 11 was the first to land men on the moon and bring them back safely. After that there were six other missions, though Apollo 13 was aborted due to an accident on the spacecraft. The crew was able to make it back safely and the cause of the accident was identified and corrected for Apollo 14.” Twilight replied. “The main reason, aside from beating the Soviets there, was science. They brought back a lot of moon rocks for study and left some scientific equipment to run long term experiments like seismic studies and such. They wound up crashing some of the spent upper stages into the moon for those tests. Rang like a gong according to reports.” Twilight explained, satisfying the dark alicorn.

Suddenly, before anymore questions could be asked, a surge of magical energy erupted, causing the alicorns to stagger and drive the unicorns to the floor.

Applejack was the first to shake of the feeling. “What in tarnation was that?”

Twilight shook her head to clear the cobwebs, but only succeeded in making her migraine worse.

“Some kind of magical discharge. Way more powerful than anything we have seen and I had a few massive surges when I was a filly.” Twilight said as she slowly made her way to a window.

Looking out the window, she saw the top of a massive mushroom cloud over the mountains to the east.

“Celestia, what city is in that direction?” She asked.

The alabaster alicorn made her way to the window. Her eyes widened as she saw the shimmering cloud.

“That would be Baltimare or at least one of the smaller neighborhoods around it. What could have caused that?” She inquired of her former protege.

“Most likely, a megaspell. Something that was held in a phylactery until the right conditions were met. I would have to say that if the Ligers really wanted to get our attention, that is one way to do it.” The lavender alicorn replied.

“Perhaps it was whoever was sending these machines into space.” Luna replied as she showed Twilight some photos that she had brought with her.

Twilight looked at the photos and her eyes went wide.

“No, we wouldn’t have felt that kind of backlash if they had dropped whatever that was. Where are these being launched from?” She asked.

“Somewhere in the Badlands. We haven’t had the luxury to go out and find out what is happening out there at the moment.” Luna replied.

Twilight raised an eyebrow as she rubbed her head around her horn.

“Given the threat from the Ligers I would have sent a small team to check it out. Have you gotten an emissaries from groups you haven’t heard of before?” She inquired.

“Yes we have. Yesterday as a matter of fact. I told them that I would sit down with them later today to discuss their requests.” Celestia inquired. “Do you know who they are?”

“Personally? Most likely no. But judging from the fact that this picture is most likely of a Delta IV Heavy Booster, they are from Earth. These boosters are used to but satellites in very high orbits or putting bigger satellites in lower orbits.” Twilight replied. “Let’s go meet them. Might be useful allies to have.”

With that the alicorns, after instructing the others to take the unicorns to the castle infirmary, headed out to meet the visitors.

Author's Note

Whew, that is a wall o' text. But things are starting to pick up, and there are some possible allies on the horizon. Stay tuned for more.