De Luce et Tenebris Umbra

Ponyville, Equestria

(Neutral Territory)

Lt. MoonShadow

MoonShadow was pleasantly surprised at what she found in the small town called Ponyville. Greenery surrounded the area, Ponies were wandering about their daily lives as if nothing had happened, as if the war that had been raging across Equestria, had not happened at all. If not for the random guard that she passed on her to the hospital, she would have thought that everything was as it was before the war.

She would have flown straight to the hospital if not for the airspace restrictions. Ponyville was a special case and there were some special rules in place for any visiting ponies that were still actively in either military. Anypony who was in the air, either had a job that involved flying, or was a town guard, and since she was still technically an SF Operator in the Lunar Republic she wouldn’t have been allowed to fly to begin with.

Even during the Official peace treaties, the Princesses still had their differences, so although the two factions were at peace under threat of a common enemy, they were still divided for the time being.

‘I hate this gap in between both factions! I know that I remain loyal to Princess Luna and her ideals, but the two sisters should be able to come up with a compromise shouldn’t they? We have a terrible situation on our hands, and we can’t afford to remain divided!’

MoonShadow couldn’t really see what was keeping the sisters apart, especially after they held a few days of peace for their relative’s wedding. If they could forget their differences for the sake of Princess Cadence, then couldn’t they make amends for the ponies of Equestria?

Moon’s treasonous thoughts ended as she reached the front doors of the Ponyville Hospital, and she prepared herself before entering, all of the rumors that she had been hearing about the element of kindness returning to fill her thoughts.

As timid as a fish, and so shy that she would hide under the nearest table when approached. Her name even represented her personality perfectly. When caring for somepony or animal, her wings would flutter with happiness and her shyness…well her name was Fluttershy after all.

Though recently several new rumors had been cropping up all throughout the ranks of both factions. Stories of her sweet and shy personality changing in an instant to that rivaling the worst Drill Sergeant were becoming widespread. The original story began when two ponies, one from either side, had been brought into the hospital and were treated for their wounds. While in recovery they had both been brought out into the hospital gardens and, upon catching sight of each other, they began to fight and stress themselves, causing the careful bandaging and stitches to tear free.

What came next gave many soldiers an innate fear of causing trouble in the vicinity of the hospital. The two ponies had been brawling for only a short period of time before being interrupted by what they described as, ‘The Drill Sergeant from Hell Itself.’ They would not go into detail beyond that point in their experience, but the fact that they were both hardened soldiers and scared shitless was enough to quell most of the confrontations before they even began. It was said that when any of the ponies who had been treated by that mare in particular, returned to Ponyville, they would immediately snap to attention whenever she was present. Depending on how she reacted, would determine whether or not she approved of what they were doing. If she jumped in fright and disappeared, then you were safe, unless a certain rainbow maned pegasus was anywhere in sight, then you would be berated by her. If she gazed at you coolly while you are at attention and begins to approach you, then pray to the Princesses that whatever she caught you doing was not too severe in her terms.

[---------------------------------------------------]

StarWatcher

Ponyville Hospital

StarWatcher lay in his hospital bed trying to find a good way to propose to MoonShadow. Holding the case for the ring in his hands he tried to plan out their conversation. He was supposed to be released from the ward in a few days, and he was planning to continue on his original idea to have a special dinner with her. So her visit to the hospital today was the perfect opportunity to ask if she would be available for the date.

‘Idiot! If I told her right off the bat that it’s a date, then there’s no way that she’d accept! Uh..oh..here comes that mare again!’

He quickly returned the small case holding the ring to its hiding place under his pillow, and tried to act as innocently as possible.

“Um…hello again.”

‘She’s as timid as ever it seems…’

“W..would you mind telling m..me how you f..feel today..that is, if you don’t mind?”

‘Better make this quick…’

“I feel fine today…actually, I feel better than usual considering one of my close friends is dropping in for a visit today.”

“R..Really? That’s good. Spending time with friends is sometimes the best medicine.”

After a short bout of questions and a quick check-up, Fluttershy declared, or rather whispered, that he was well enough to have a visitor. As she was leaving the room she hesitated at the door and slowly turned to look at his bedside table.

‘Oh shit!’

The pills that he had been given earlier by a nurse were still there unconsumed, and by the look Fluttershy was giving him, he could tell she was irked. StarWatcher could feel the sweat slowly rolling down his back as he contemplated the fact that the rumors he had been told about the hospital were true, so rather than find out for himself he quickly downed the medicine and the water before dropping the empty cup in the nearest trash can.

She gazed at him coolly and nodded slowly before walking out of his room to check on the other patients.

‘Wheeew…crisis averted.’

Knock…Knock

StarWatcher returned his gaze to the door to his room to see MoonShadow slowly walking in. He swallowed and tried to remember his plan of attack on their conversation, but it was lost in the nervousness of the moment.

‘Oh buck it! It’s time to finally grow a pair an’ go for it!’

[------------------------]

Ghost

Location:

Est. 8 Miles from intended Destination.

4 Miles from nearest Settlement.

‘Argh…my head…’

‘Wait a sec…’

My eyes flashed open to see myself face down in the dirt as I remembered what had transpired in the events that led to this point.

‘That damn machine…damn thing sparked up and just had to suck Char’ and Dan in didn’t it? Then Pick and I…well that’s not correct. Pick jumped in right after them, loyal comrade as he is, and I couldn’t let my mission go FUBAR without me involved so I followed…that, and I couldn’t just let them go into an unknown area by themselves, they’re too young for that.

Wait…too young for that? Where the hell did that come from?

I shook my head as I slowly lifted myself from the ground, and took a cautious look around. All I could see were trees and masses of vines and really, I mean ‘really’, colorful plants.

‘That can’t be right though, the other side of the portal was supposed to be a clearing. Great…another mission that we’re going to have to salvage as we go along.’

I couldn’t help but let out an exasperated sigh as I did a quick check of my equipment and my armor. Surprisingly enough the only things that I was missing were a few external clips for my pistol, which I had duct-taped on at the last minute, and my extra duffle was only a few feet to my right. That’s when I noticed a slowly blinking icon in the corner of my HUD.

I watched as it slowly changed color from amber to yellow and sailed from the top right corner of my HUD to the bottom left, before resolving into a small box with the number 118 above it. I immediately recognized it and watched as two more appeared right next to the first one, both were yellow as well, but they all pointed in the same direction.

‘They’re alive! And not too far from me either.’

“Pick, do read me? Char’…Dan?”

‘Ssss…ssss…sss’

I could hear the crackling of my radio but it wasn’t from my team’s personal channel, but rather from the companies’ open channel.

“Gho…port…at is…situ…”

‘Rex?’

“Rex? You’re breaking up; our communications must be really stretched on this side.”

I wasn’t worried at the thought of communications being cut off, I’d worked in plenty of situation like that before, what did worry me, was the fact that my whole team remained at a yellow status, or ‘Incapacitated’.

“Can…ear…ust…ine.”

That was a bit odd, but it had happened to me a few times before.

“Then the problem must be just on my end.”

“Do…eed…rein…ments?”

“No, hold off for now. My team’s scattered and we’re regrouping right now, we’ll be comm. silent until we’re all together to prevent the possibility of a tap.”

“Ro…r”

I quickly picked up my duffle bag and pulled out my modified Tavor GTAR-76. It was a beautiful weapon with a Bullpup design, and solved the problem of Bullpups not being able to hold under-barrel attachments. It fires a 7.62x51mm round, a happy median, literally, between the x39mm and the x59mm. An added bonus was that the ammunition can be of multiple types with only minor affects on performance, and I had brought a bit of all of them, but they were mostly of two types, cased and caseless. I had mainly brought caseless in case we didn’t want to leave to traces of our firing positions, and cased for when we did.

I loaded my weapon with a magazine of caseless FMJ and the under-barrel with a miniaturized version of the SPAPFSDS or Self Propelled Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot, capable of punching through 50mm of steel plate at 400 meters at its maximum velocity of 1,200 m/s with its super-hardened tungsten tip, or 3 Renton Van if they were kind enough to stand in a row. I had also ordered a box of 6 of an experimental round called (FAPDS) or Frangible Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot. It's essentially the same thing as the former except that during penetration, the frangible core fragments into many high velocity incendiary fragments. The effect of a frangible projectile on a lightly armored vehicle is much the same as a high explosive incendiary round, so it would work as the blast-radius anti-personnel weapon, much like the 40mm grenades of the past.

I strapped the duffle to my back and began a quick march towards my team as I had my suit retrieve the vital sign of my teammates.

118

Unconscious

212

Unconscious

318

Unconscious

‘Well that's good, at least they’re not injured.’

I continued at a steady pace of about 8/mph., until I was within 25 meters of them. Then a few things happened. My motion-tracker picked up three yellow dots. Two grouped together and the third about 3 meters from them, plus about 4 slowly moving hostiles in a circle around them. Well…it wasn’t so much a circle as a square, but it didn’t matter much at this point.

There were unknowns surrounding my team, and the red meant that they had no IFF’s which meant either ‘Van, or a hungry pack of whatever predatory animals live in this forest. I dropped my duffel and slowly rooted through it for a pair of silencers for my rifle and my pistol, and since I didn’t want to drain too much of my suit’s power too early, I activated my visual camouflage only to the degree where I looked like a semi-solid shadow, a semi-solid shadow with a very big knife.

I watched the four dots for any indication that they were going to near my team, and lo’ an’ behold one of them did. I used my helmet’s zoom function to get a closer look and I saw made me want to shoot it immediately. It was either the ugliest looking dog that could walk on its hind legs, or it was a werewolf, but lacking the longish snout it was most likely a dog.

It carried a long freshly branch and began to slowly nudge one of the prone figures that lay in the small clearing, which my suit promptly identified as Char’. I almost started shaking with laughter. There was no way in hell that a puny piece of wood would get through our armor, but it would probably wake her up, and I almost didn’t want to be around when she did.

I allowed myself a small chuckle as I worked my way through the sentries, finding that they too, were also these dog-like creatures. I almost felt sorry for them as my knife slipped between their cervical vertebrae.

When I looked into the clearing again, I was surprised to see that the thing was still poking Char’ with a stick. Actually, I wasn’t surprised to see it still poking her with a stick, I was surprised that he wasn’t lying in pieces over here, over there, and up in the canopy. Now I was getting worried, usually all you have to do is just breathe near her and she’ll wake up. I checked her vitals again to see if she was faking…nope.

‘Shit…oh well at least I can get some Intel now can’t I?’

I opened my external comms and let out a dark laugh as I put the thing in a choke hold, and waited ‘till he passed out. After dropping its body I quickly did a manual check of all my teammates, and found…nothing. As far as I could tell they were just unconscious. I shook my head and had their suits give them a small stimulant, then I noticed progress as their vitals rose slowly.

‘Hmmm…better get the info before they wake up…’

{-----------------}

Diamond Dog

Rustle...

He jerked his head upward as he woke up from his forced slumber and stared into the face of the demon itself. His yelp of terror was quickly blocked off by an armored gauntlet.

“Hmm… So you’re the local species huh?”

The demon seemed to take an interest in the bandanna around its arm and tightened his grip around the throat of the beast.

“Now you’re going to tell me everything you know about this insignia you're wearing.”

The Diamond Dog knew that his only hope of survival rested in the fact that he wouldn’t tell the demon anything.

“Tell you nothing!”

“Oh...,” the demon released a dark chuckle, “...resistant little fella' aren't ya?

“Don't worry...I'll get the information I need one way or another.”

{-------------------------------}

Ghost

I slowly walked away from the patch of blue flowers that I had dumped the dog into. Towards the end of my interrogation, I had grown tired of listening to all of the useless info that it had, lifted him up to my face-level, and almost threw him into them when he started begging and spilling everything. It only took me a few seconds to determine where his fear was allocated, and that led me to do a quick biological test on the flowers, and they rated as a Class-5 Toxic Substance. In other words, they made Potassium Cyanide look like table salt.

After getting all the information that I wanted out of him I did the kind thing, I untied him and once his back was turned, I gave him a kick that both knocked him out cold, and tossed him into the flowers.

What? It’s better than stabbing him in the throat and leaving him choking on his own blood in a dark forest.

As I neared my team, I watched as the little yellow boxes slowly turned green and I heard the low moans and groans of my team as they woke up.

“Ghost…”

“Yeah Char’ I’m here.”

“Ugh…my aching head…”

“Good morning to you too Pick.”

“Damn…you didn’t let me do anything stupid last night did you?”

‘Weird…sounds like they think that they’re waking up from a hangover.’

“Dan what about you?”

“ ‘Ang on mate, let me get my thoughts straight…”

I cut off my comms as I ran some more invasive scans on their bodies and minds, but found nothing more than the typical signs of a bad headache.

“What the hell guys? I don’t even drink…”

‘That’s true, so I can’t really pull anything over Char’.’

I quickly had their suits give them a mild painkiller and decided to wait until their thoughts cleared up.

(----------------------)

We were sitting down by a stream refilling our canteens as I tried to explain what had happened to them, or rather, I tried to explain to Char’ and Dan. Pick had removed his helmet and was currently trying to drown himself in the freezing water.

“BRHGPRBGHORHGPH!!!!!”

The three of us just watched as he tried unsuccessfully to off himself because of the headache. It had already worn off for Dan and Char’, and I hadn’t even had one to begin with! I wasn’t about to give him anymore painkillers ‘lest he start to wobble on his feet. Besides I knew the trick that he was doing. The freezing water would create a headache more powerful than the original and when it wears off, the original will wear off with it.

I sighed and rooted through my duffle for some of the rations that I brought with me as well as keeping an eye on the sensors that I had placed around us. I heard someone gasping for air and looked up just in time to see Alex plunge his head once into the icy water…

“BRHGPRBGHORHGPH!!!!!”

And yell his head off under it.