Summer of My Human Soldier

Chapters

The Policy
The Pacifist
The Party
The Prompt
Pardon Committee's Background Material (Submission A)
The Pioneers
The Procession
The Prize

The Policy

The dark gray unicorn's elderly but still keen eyes flicked around the Mayor's office, from an officially-approved patriotic oil painting, to the crossed flags, to the collection of photographs and notarized party membership cards in a case on the wall. In all, the office said "We love and honor our Comrade General Secretary Luna and have nothing to hide from her or her loyal ministers." And as long as the office said that, it wasn't in Foggy Night's duty to ask whether the office had a straight face when it did so. He had seen Equestrian governments come and go, and through it all he had the bureaucrat's gift of being very useful in keeping the Wheels of the Great Machine turning smoothly, no matter whose noble visage was painted on the side of the gears this decade.

What sane mare would plot treason in Ponyville, anyway? The Princess—Queen—Comrade General Secretary—wouldn't even need to arrive in person: line of sight was all she needed to command deadly loyalty, and the Royal—People's—Ponies’ Observatory could easily do the trick to any building in this town. No, a political commissar was not somepony to be feared in Ponyville, for there would be no treason here to uncover. For this reason, the Mayor apparently felt comfortable making him wait.

He rested his eyes for a moment as the rain continued to drizzle. Canterlot was too high up to get much in the way of weather, and as his seniority often let him stay close to the central office, he could come to forget how soothing the sound of sheets of rain falling could be, particularly from a well-managed thunderstorm. The local captain of the Civil Pegasus Patrol was apparently enormously over-qualified for her duties, a promising candidate for a number of projects Foggy could imagine if only the pegasus hierarchy hadn't blackballed her for some reason.

"Comrade Foggy Night—sorry to keep you waiting."

Had he slept? No matter. He opened his eyes and leaned forward. The formerly pink-maned Mayor was now sporting a stately gray coiffure to go with her beige pelt. "Comrade Madam Mayor, did you recently cease a silly affectation, or take one up?"

"I haven't the foggiest of what you speak, Comrade."

The unicorn snorted, the only acceptable response to a variation on a pun he had heard far too many times over his very long career. "Comrade Madam Mayor, I believe you registered a request with our office to speak about the conduct of the war? And its impact on your town?"

The beige earth pony nodded. "To speak freely, Comrade—" A dangerous start, Foggy thought. "—we in Ponyville are proud to contribute so many of our stallions and volunteer mares to the front. In fact, if the reports I see are correct, Ponyville sends more ponies to combat units per capita than any town or district of the Republic save Stalliongrad."

Stalliongrad was always in a league of its own, dating back to before the First Lunar Republic, but it also wasn't the kind of city you'd want to live in—nor was it the kind of city that could support itself, agriculturally or industrially. It was a glorified training ground in times of war and rumors of war, and a wretched hive in times of peace.

"But?"

"Our generous patriotism does not appear to have translated into a lessening of the quotas."

"Soldiers need to eat as much as civilians—more, even. And there are only so many places to which the Republic can turn to meet those needs. Besides, Sweet Apple Acres is one of the best managed orchards in the Republic—Comrade Applejack's name is well-known and highly-respected among the Ministry of Agriculture. Is she no longer up to the challenge?"

"She is only one pony. Her brother, generously left with us by the draft board, is only one more." Generosity, Foggy recalled, had nothing to do with it. Big Macintosh was known to be a pacifist, and yet nopony had the guts to accuse him of being a coward, lest he suddenly discover that it were not the case after all. The farm was where he belonged. "The bachelor herds they once used to fill out labor during important seasons have all been drafted, too."

Foggy slowly nodded. "I understand the problem, Comrade Mayor, but I do not think Comrade Applejack will appreciate the solutions the Ministry of Agriculture is likely to offer once I communicate these concerns to them. The quotas will not be lowered, unicorn magic will not be allocated, and mechanization will be a long time coming. I do not think she will want to see Sweet Apple Acres assigned to a new manager, either. Not that such a thing would actually help, but it is the only thing the Ministry would find the resources to do."

"Labor," the Mayor said, quickly, almost pleadingly. "Even just a few extra hands will help."

The unicorn stared gravely. "Hands." There was a little ice in his voice.

The earth pony nodded, not backing down. "Human prisoners of war are being assigned to farm work all across Equest—the Republic! Towns with lower quotas and less severe shortages than ours are getting plenty of workers, and we haven't gotten one since this war started."

The unicorn continued to stare, now past the Mayor and to the window behind her. "Comrade, turn around."

The Mayor looked over her shoulder.

"Do you see that, Comrade? That is Canterlot. That is the Capitol. That is the center of government for the New Lunar Republic; that is the Ponies’ Palace for Comrade General Secretary Luna. It can be seen from any porch in Ponyville. We cannot place humans here."

The Mayor turned back to Foggy. "Minimum risk, Comrade. The paperwork your office sent to me says that the policy is that 'minimum risk' prisoners of war may be assigned even in Ponyville and other towns so close to Canterlot. Just send me 'minimum risk' prisoners."

Foggy belted out a laugh. "I don't do the classifications of prisoners, Comrade, but I do get courtesy-copied on them. The only human prisoners who are 'minimum risk' are the ones who can no longer move under their own power—and many of them cannot breathe under their own power, either, making them 'prisoners' rather than 'enemy dead' only in the barest technical sense."

No sooner had Foggy finished speaking than irony smote him in the form of a scroll magically appearing on the desk in front of him. He and the Mayor both looked down at it.

The beige earth pony quietly said, after a moment, "Feel free to answer that, Comrade Foggy. I think it's for you."

Ponykinesis quietly unfurled the scroll, which the elderly unicorn read quickly. Out of the scroll also tumbled a small type-written card, with hand-written ink filling in the blanks. Foggy peered at the critical part of the card—the checkbox for health. And the prisoner had indeed marked it as "good". A quick scrawled note next to the checkbox said "No thx 2 red uni LT", a cryptic passage that still probably explained as much as it really needed. The unicorn's ponykinesis quickly again rolled up the scroll, and he looked at the Mayor, smiling in a way no one could mistake for mirth.

"Request granted, Comrade Mayor. The Bureau of Mental Hygiene at the Salt Lick City Processing Center has finally identified a 'minimum risk' human prisoner, in good health, at that. I'll have him here on the next train. Will that be all?"

Investigator's note: Geneva Convention capture cards issued by New Lunar Republic appear to be photocopies of photocopies of capture cards used in earlier conflicts. Private Dexter does not seem to have been trained in properly filling them out, either. Extraneous remarks are not supposed to be added to capture cards.

"Madam Mayor, I really appreciate you stickin' your neck out and all, but honestly...." Applejack pawed at the train platform nervously. "What am I supposed to do with a human? And just one of 'em, at that?"

The Mayor replied without even seeming to think. "Show real improvements so they see the benefits in sending them to us, but not so many that they think we've got all we need."

The farm girl gave the Mayor a long look. "And how the hay do I do that? I just run a farm. I don't think about sophisticated city-pony games like that, and I'd like to keep it that way."

This, the Mayor contemplated for what seemed to Applejack an uncomfortably long time. Finally, as the rumble of the train became audible, she answered. "Applejack, I trust your instincts. Just do what feels right to you."

The two earth ponies stared in silence for a moment as the gray military train pulled up to the station. Doors opened, but there was little activity—none at all, from most of the cars. Finally, from one, two earth pony mares emerged, with "MP" bands and chains wrapped around their forelegs, and a moment after that, a silhouette of an uncommonly seen shape emerged into view: a tall biped.

It stepped, blinking, into the Ponyville sunlight, led by the chains. Trousers and shirt were both blue denim; its mane—hair—was short-cropped and brown; its skin—bare skin, such a rare sight among ponies, usually a signal of disease—was some kind of washed-out pink.

One of the MPs mouthed a clipboard out of her saddlebags and presented it to the Mayor. The Mayor signed on the indicated line.

"Your responsibility now, Comrade Mayor. Go on, you." The MP lightly head-butted the human in the small of the back. The human stepped forward a few more feet, continuing to blink as it looked around the train platform.

The other MP pulled out a key ring and tossed it to Applejack. Applejack caught it without thought, and then looked at the human. "Am ah sah—" she paused and spat out the key ring, catching it with her hoof, "am I supposed to let it out?"

"Your decision, Comrade. He's been very cooperative so far, for a human."

He. It was a him. Applejack was going to have to learn these things, she figured, now that there were going to be humans in Ponyville. Maybe Granny Smith could help—as a filly, she had been out east, hadn't she? And Twilight, the town librarian, knew all sorts of things—and the seamstress, Rarity, hadn't she been in human lands? She sure talked like she had—maybe just an act, but maybe she could finally do something useful in town.

She looked the human up and down, having absolutely no knowledge on how to judge such a beast. Time to go with her gut, then.

"Alright, y'all got a name?"

The human looked down at her. "Dexter, Christopher George, Private, 078-05-1120." His speech was automatic, canned, monotone—he had said this many times in the last few days, she could tell.

"Zero-seven-eight—slow down, now. All that your name? A lot to remember."

"Chris Dexter, ma'am. Chris or Dexter will do." This was less monotone, more thoughtful.

"Looks like you'll get along splendidly. We've got more stops to make, so we'll leave you to it." The first MP nodded respectfully to the two Ponyville residents, and both of the MPs got back onto the train.

"Well, Dexter, I'm not the kind of pony who's much for chains, but I'll rope an unruly sort as needed. How about I trust you with free hooves and...hands...for now, and y'all make sure y'all don't do nothing to make us both regret it?"

The human stuck out his hands, presenting the chains and lock that hung from them. "I can live with that, ma'am."

Applejack mouthed the key again and unlocked the human, first at his arms and then at his legs. She took a breath, waiting to see if the human would bolt. Instead, he just rubbed his wrists.

"I'm sorta surprised you ain't tryin' to get away now."

"I can't outrun a healthy earth pony. Simple fact. And you, ma'am, are definitely a healthy earth pony."

"Thanks, I think." 'Healthy' could be a backhanded way of saying 'chubby', couldn't it? Just like when that stuck-up seamstress called her 'sturdy'? Nah, that didn't fit with the first part of what he was saying. "Well...Madam Mayor, is there anything else I need?"

The beige mare pressed her hoof to her chest, cleared her throat, and eyeballed the human. "Private Dexter, as per the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Article 49 et alia, you are being assigned to agricultural labor of a non-military character. Are you familiar with the rights accorded to you by international law?"

The human slowly nodded, taking it in. "I am, Ma'am. I prefer Sundays off. How much am I being paid?"

"For security reasons, you are not permitted to carry money, but your account will be credited one quarter of a franc per working day, and eight francs per month."

Applejack was a little fuzzy on what kind of money a franc was, and completely in the dark about the currency conversion rates—the New Lunar Republic tried to keep most ponies in the dark about that, though she had a pretty good idea what a dollar was worth, at least—but that didn't sound like a heck of a lot of money for farm work. Even for a prisoner. Heck, she was trying to think of this like getting extra farm help, not using a prisoner of war. That felt too much like slavery, and that wasn't how real ponyfolk were supposed to do things.

As for the human, he moved his lips, quietly, as if doing calculations to himself, shook his head lightly, before nodding again. "Beats dying."

"Very good. Since you are to be working at Sweet Apple Acres and we have no formal facilities for prisoners of war, you shall be lodging with the Apple family."

"Beg pardon?" Applejack would've have spit-took, if she had had something to wet her whistle first.

"Applejack—”

"Madam Mayor, I can't—a human? A soldier? A prisoner of war? Just...let him stay at the farm? With my family? I thought I was just going to be—you know—can't he stay somewhere else?"

"There's nowhere else in Ponyville, Applejack."

"He could—he could board with someone in town! Or—put him in a tent or something!"

"Comrade Applejack." The farmpony lowered her eyes. 'Comrade' was code for 'discussion over'. She couldn't argue back, but she didn't have to be happy about it. "I can't speak for the rest of Equestria, but here in Ponyville, we will abide by the Geneva Convention. The prisoner will be accorded 'suitable working conditions, especially as regards accommodation, food, clothing, and equipment; such conditions shall not be inferior to those enjoyed by–' "

"Yes, Comrade Mayor." She looked up at the human. "Come on, you."

Applejack trotted off the platform, not looking to see if Dexter was following her. She hadn't liked this idea much to begin with, and even less now—it'd serve her just fine if he just ran off and—

And he was walking right alongside her. Was this his way of stubbornness? He was a captive, wasn't he? Shouldn't he be trying to get away at every opportunity?

"What kind of work do you need me for, Ma'am?"

"I—ah—" she clapped her mouth shut for a moment as she continued trotting into town, realizing her internal monologue might not have been completely internal. "—look, I'm not sure I—I don't trust—June thinnin' 's a real tricky thing, can’t just let anypony have a hoof at it—you even ever worked on a farm?"

"About a week every year for the last twelve, ma'am. Relatives out east. Not apples, I'm afraid."

"A week every—dag nabbit. Well, can you learn?"

"If you asked my sergeants, learning's about the only thing I can do."

Applejack grumbled a little more. "Shoulda sent you to the librarian. Look, just—don't make any trouble for me—or my family—or I'll make dang sure you regret it. Ah, I know." The orange earth pony looked up at a low-hanging fluffy cloud. The human followed her gaze up to it, looking in fact a bit taken aback by the sight of a cloud so close to the ground. "Rainbow! Rainbow Dash, you lazy filly!"

A light-blue pegasus pony poked her head out of the bottom of the cloud. The local captain of the Civil Pegasus Patrol was good at ignoring most ponyfolk when she didn't feel like listening, but had learned since she moved here a few years ago that this farm girl was willing to bellow as long and loud as it took.

"Hey Applejack, what's—" Her rose-colored eyes lit up, and at once she shot out of the cloud, pulverizing it, and down onto the human, knocking him on his back and pinning him to the ground with her hooves. "Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh! A human! In Ponyville! We gotta—we gotta call for—no, I can handle this! Name-rank-and-serial-number, mister, or I kick your head into—"

"Rainbow!" The human, for his part, was staying perfectly still, a wide look of fear in his eyes. Rainbow Dash had sharp hooves—not dulled by spending much time on the ground—and those hooves were pressing into him, so that was probably a look of pain on his face as well. "He's with me. The Mayor saw to it. He's a P-O-W."

"Really?" The pegasus thought about this for a moment. "That's awesome! You've got your own human now! And a P-O-W, that means he's a soldier and everything! He's seen the war!"

"And I think he'd like to live to see the peace, too, so if you could kindly step off of him—there's this Geneva Convention the Mayor says I have to follow and everything, and I don't know if y'all were mentioned by name but I'm pretty sure having you stand on his chest at least goes against the spirit of the thing."

"Oh—hee hee—" The pegasus flapped her wings, taking the weight off the human, who quietly crawled out from underneath, and back onto his feet. "—sorry. Still, this is awesome! Thanks for showing him to me."

"You’re welc—dag nabbit, you got me all off-topic. Look, I want you to know he's here, and I want you to know he's supposed to be working and staying on the farm. If something happens to me or my family, or he escapes, I need you to take him down. You're the fastest flyer around; I know you'll be able to do the job."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "Well, duh. Why do you even need to ask something like that? I'd never leave Ponyville hanging." She fluttered a bit further up, and forward, bringing her eye-to-eye with the human. "You got that, punk? Anything happens to anypony in this town, you answer to me. I might need a crash-test dummy for my next training routine—the one that ends in a mushroom cloud."

The human gulped. "Yes sir."

"Ma'am," Applejack corrected.

"Ma'am," the human acknowledged.

"And he's staying at your place? Awesome! I'm going to have to come hang out sometime now. Later, Applejack!" And with that, the pegasus dashed off into the sky.

Applejack muttered to herself again. "I don't think she even had an errand to run. I think she just wanted to go back to sleep."

"That's perfectly fine with me, ma'am."

The pegasus had seemed to scare him. That was fine, Applejack thought. She'd like all the insurance she could—her stomach rumbled, reminding her of the noon hour and interrupting her train of thought. "Let's get back to the farm. I need grub."

Big Macintosh, half a head over most other ponies left in town, still couldn't quite look eye-to-eye level with the human, but he none the less held his attention as Applejack went into the house. The red pony's emerald gaze locked with the human's own cerulean eyes.

"I'm not going to make any trouble for your family."

"Nope."

"I just want to get through this war alive."

"Eeyup."

"Doing any harm to you or your family or anyone else here wouldn't be conducive to that goal."

"Nope."

"Good talk."

"Eeyup."

Applejack walked back out of the house, her younger sister in tow, both balancing pots and baskets on their backs. "Alright, everypony, soup's on." The three ponies and the human sat down at the outdoor table to eat, with plates and food being passed around in awkward silence. Applejack watched as the human carefully looked through the serving dishes, picking out one of the four apples, and from the main serving pot, only a few greens—the dandelions. "C'mon, now. You've gotta eat more than that."

"I can't eat most of this."

She sighed, tipping her hat below her eyes. "Look, I can only imagine how hard it is for y'all, being in a strange place and who knows how far from home and surrounded by not your own kind, not being in control of what happens to you, but you gotta eat. You made it this far, it's no time to give up."

"No, ma'am, I mean I literally cannot digest most of this. Humans don't eat hay, or most flowers."

"Oh. Shoot." The orange pony narrowed her eyes. "That's right, you're predators."

"I've personally never hunted and killed my own meal, but yes, we do eat meat, ma'am."

"Have you tried...not? Maybe if you just tried hay, you'd like it." Applejack doubted this was the case, but she couldn't think of where to get meat. It was available in griffin territories, but it was for griffins—and she wasn't sure how to order it, nor if it could survive the journey to Ponyville. Besides, bringing in flesh for somepony else to eat was just—eeeeugh.

"It's possible for humans to live and not eat meat, ma'am, but I still can't eat hay. And I'm pretty sure I'd get weak eating nothing but dandelions." The human looked thoughtfully at Applejack. "At the camp in Salt Lick City, we each got a Red Cross parcel. They're supposed to last a week, and I think you're meant to eat them with other food, and they didn't serve us anything else, but I managed not to starve."

"I'll talk to the Mayor about getting those here. Anything else you can maybe eat that we'd have?"

"The apples are fine, ma'am; most fruit I can think of is. Vegetables, like carrots or potatoes; cereals like wheat and corn, but the grain, not the straw; bread, most kinds of nuts..." He pursed his lips and thought. "...mushrooms, alfalfa sprouts..." He trailed off.

"Alright, I can work with that. I'll try and get some of that stuff at the market this evening. You can help out Big Macintosh after lunch."

Dexter nodded, and chewed his dandelion greens—slowing as he felt the uninterrupted stare of the filly on him. The large, innocent, wonder-filled honey-colored eyes sapped his appetite, and he set his hands down. "Can I do something for you, my little pony?"

"How old are you, Mister?"

"Apple Bloom!" Applejack said chidingly, mostly on reflex.

"Eighteen years old."

"Eighteen..." The yellow-coated filly tapped her chin with her hoof. "I'm not very good with numbers yet. Would you have been alive in Eighteen Sixty One?" Her pronunciation underlined the capital letters in the date—she was clearly referring to a special time, not to a mere year on the calendar.

Dexter laughed softly, glancing at the two older ponies while he did so. "It's 1977. If I'm eighteen, I was born in 1959. That's ninety-eight years after 1861. I might've had a great-grand-parent who was alive then."

"Oh." The filly looked disappointed. "Darn." Dexter wondered if he needed to apologize for something when Apple Bloom continued. "Granny Smith just was telling me stories the other day about the humans she used to play with when she was a little filly, back when she lived way out East. I thought you might be one of them."

Dexter's eyes went wide. He knew ponies lived on a different scale—faster to mature, longer to live, low birth rates, low mortality (insofar as disease and age went; accident and equicide no doubt claimed their share) but for this one's grandmother to be alive for over 116 years—no, longer, because if she remembered anything in 1861, she had to be at least a few years old then...

"Because you look like one of her old photographs."

Dexter coughed up a chunk of dandelion green.

"All right—" Applejack said quickly. "Apple Bloom, help me clean up. The rest of y'all, get to work."

The marketplace was fairly sparse, but at the end of the day everypony was trying to finish unloading their wares so they wouldn’t have any spoilage or leftovers to haul home, so Applejack was able to get a decent variety of non-hay, non-flower foodstuffs at what she considered acceptable prices. Combined with the paperwork with the Mayor that said she should be getting weekly parcels from the Red Cross now, it seemed like everything on the food front was—

“Hi Applejack!”

Applejack recognized that high-pitched, high-energy voice, and sighed as she turned around. “Howdy, Miss Pinkie Pie. What can I do ya for?”

“♫ I heard there’s a new friend in town I’ve got to make! ♫” The fluffy-hair pink pony bounced up and down a few times, grinning widely.

Applejack remained stoic. It might have seemed obvious where this conversation was going—but with Pinkie Pie, you never could tell, and it helped to err on the side of keeping your mouth shut.

“You’ve got a human out on Sweet Apple Acres, don’t you?”

See, Applejack thought, while that was indeed the likely thought, Pinkie Pie could just as easily have been referring to a new woodpecker nesting in the train station. It never paid to make assumptions.

“We do indeed. I don’t really reckon a party would be appropriate, though.”

“Why not?” The confusion in the pink pony’s voice was of equal magnitude as if Applejack had reckoned that the sun might not rise in the morning.

“Well, he ain’t exactly here by choice. He’s a prisoner of war; he’s a long way from home, and I reckon—”

“That’s silly! You’re crazy, Applejack.” Applejack’s mouth gaped. Could she really not know that there was a war going on? Why that silly filly of an apprentice baker—“Who could need a party more than that? He must be terrified and lonely and not have any friends at all!”

“For the love of...” Applejack muttered, and then paused, thinking about it. “Alright, Pinkie Pie, you win. Can it wait until this Sunday, though?”

“Ab-so-lutely-dutily! Oh, this is going to be so much fun! I’ve never thrown a party for a human before! I have to start planning now! The party cannon won’t cut it by itself!”

The orange earth pony breathed a sigh of relief as the pink one bounced off and away, leaving her with at least four days of peace. “Now that I’ve got that settled—” She turned to start walking towards her farm.

“Ummm...excuse me...Miss Applejack?” A small voice asked.

“—I can get on back to the farm—”

“I was wondering if maybe....”

“—maybe get some dinner out before nightfall—”

“...I know we’ve never really spoken much but I wondered if maybe...”

“—and get an early start to the workin’ day tomorrow—”

“...if it wouldn’t be too much trouble...”

“—without anypony else bugging me about the human.”

“...I’ll just let you be.”

Applejack yawned, walking back along the roads to Sweet Apple Acres, her pack burdened by human-acceptable provisions, quite oblivious to the quiet yellow pegasus pony now fluttering away from her side.

Big Macintosh looked around the tool shed, filled with significantly cleaner farm implements than it bore this morning, the dirt floor freshly swept as well. Dexter’s hands were covered in grime, which he tried to purge with the parts of rags he hadn’t already used to clean the tools.

The big red earth pony nodded at Dexter.

“Good work tonight.”

Dexter blinked at getting a non-eeyup, non-nope statement out of the stallion. Even his directions to work were by example—the pony had started cleaning tools, Dexter had followed suit, and proven to be a bit better and faster at it, thanks largely to physiology rather than talent. Anyway, this demanded an appropriate response, from one man to another.

“Thanks.”

The Pacifist

Comrade Foggy Night,

Per your request, I have carefully reviewed the psychological and security analysis of the human detainee Christopher George Dexter. I was as surprised as you to learn that one of my subordinates, Doctor Spring Steel, had approved a “minimum risk” status for an active mobile human subject. I personally have designated no humans capable of leaving a bed a lower status than “moderate risk”. Indeed, more than half of all captured humans refuse to answer the evaluations in any way and so are automatically classified “high risk”, or even “maximum risk” if the circumstances of their capture or their behavior in the processing centers so suggest.

However, as you know, psychological examination, particularly of human subjects, is as much art as science, and there is a high level of subjectivity, gut instinct, and horse sense involved. The human Dexter’s profile is not inconsistent with criteria I myself have said constitute the approximate borderline between minimum and moderate risk. Among other factors: he is a conscript, not a volunteer; his time in service has been very brief; he does not appear to have forged particularly strong connections with his fellow soldiers; he does not seem to have fully adapted to military life; he was denied an application for conscientious objector status; he revealed under multifactor scrutiny no enmity for ponies or ponykind in general (he demonstrated some fear-aversion to unicorns, with perfectly rational explanations). His spirituality, desire for self-preservation, lack of dependents, and tendencies towards introspection and introversion are all factors that can be either positives or negatives in terms of security risk, and so required interpretation from the interviewing analyst.

Depending on how he interviewed, it is quite conceivable that under current guidelines he was indeed properly adjudged “minimum risk”. I have had no reasons to question the political reliability of Doctor Spring Steel, nor have I detected any pattern of unreasonable lenience in his security classifications.

However, for future reference, if you wish for us to make a policy of no longer classifying any active mobile humans whatsoever as “minimum risk”, please inform me promptly so that I can revise the guidelines.

Sincerely,

Doctor Mental Block
Bureau of Mental Hygiene
18 May 1977

Comrade Doctor Mental Block,

Your prompt and detailed response is appreciated.

No changes to policy are required.

Sincerely,

Foggy Night
Pony’s Commissar
19 May 1977

Dexter pumped the red iron handle a few times, and waited for well water to emerge into a bucket. With a deep breath, he felt the cool dawn air in his lungs, and looked across the horizon. One great mountain—Canterlot—dominated, but like home, dozens of smaller peaks were scattered around the horizon. A tint of pink along the eastern sky said the sun was soon on its way.

With a mechanical clunk, the bucket began to fill with cold, clear water. He splashed some in his face, a temporary substitute for the coffee he expected from the Red Cross parcels. He looked up towards the farmhouse—and saw a sleepy-eyed orange earth pony watching him from a window. Dexter waved at her, and shut off the pump once the bucket was full, carrying it towards the front door.

“Ya sleep okay?” Applejack asked, as he brought the bucket into the kitchen.

He nodded. “The pallet’s a lot better than the floor. And I can fit on it.” He warmed his hands for a moment on the heat from the stove. “Pancakes, ma’am?”

Applejack yawned. “Sounds fine.” He wasn’t a fantastic cook as far as instincts or training went, but he could do lots of simple tasks faster, as long as you told him what order to do them in. Besides, he genuinely seemed to want to help cook—not least so he could be sure that everything that went into the meals was something he could digest. “Dexter, you wake up before us every mornin’, and it ain’t like you’ve been chained up out in the barn. So tell me—why are you still here?”

“Where would I go, ma’am?” Dexter asked, matter-of-factly. “That mountain south of here is Canterlot, right? I paid attention in Geography class—I know where Canterlot is.” He cracked open a few eggs into a bowl with some flour and water, and started beating. “If I go south or west, I’m going into more and more of Equestria—and eventually the Pacific Ocean. If I go north I’m heading into the Everfree. Sure, if I kept going far enough through the most dangerous non-tropical forest on the planet, and didn’t get shot, mauled, poisoned, eaten, or blown up by a land mine, I guess I’d eventually reach American lines. And east? Over a mountain range, through a long nasty stretch of desert, past who knows how many army bases, and up into the Rocky Mountains right back to the same place I was captured.” He poured the batter out onto a hot griddle, carefully regulating the size of the cakes. “The whole time, I’m dodging pegasus patrols and hoping not to have any nasty run-ins with ponies who are frankly, on average, a lot less kind and understanding than you and your kin.”

“I see you’ve thought about this. And you don’t think you’ll give it a try? Aren’t soldiers supposed to try and escape?”

While the pancakes sizzled, Dexter started dicing apples with a knife. He sighed. “I am not a courageous man.”

Applejack regarded the human, as she sniffed the pancakes and mouthed a canister of her preferred spice blend to flavor them. “You never wanted to be a soldier at all, right?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, I can understand that. Big Macintosh is like that, too.”

“He’s one of the only stallions I’ve seen around. They didn’t draft him?”

“Well...I’ll tell you that story over mornin’ chores.”

“Y’all shoulda seen them—the three ponies from the draft board. There was an old green pegasus, and I mean old. I’m pretty sure his first combat mission would’ve been in the Mexican-Equestrian War.”

“That was in eighteen thirty-something.”

“Yup. Anyway, he didn’t say much. Then there was this fat blue earth pony, a native of these parts, always was good at kissin’ up but not much else. Finally, this real witch—tall skinny yellow unicorn gal, always had this look on her face like someone had tipped an outhouse on her mornin’ oats.”

“This is absurd,” Honey Silk said, as she trotted with distaste on the main path through Sweet Apple Acres. “He disobeyed a conscription notice, we should have just had him arrested and put an end to it.”

“I’m sure...there’s a reasonable explanation,” River Ripple sputtered, as he looked around the farm nervously. “Big Macintosh is no criminal.”

The pegasus said nothing at all. He obviously was aware enough of his environment not to trip over stones in the path, but otherwise was entirely disengaged from the situation.

They saw the big red earth pony in his field, as Comrade Applejack had promised. He was pushing with his head a cart into position underneath a tree plump with ripe apples.

“Comrade Big Macintosh!” River Ripple shouted. The red stallion turned and looked at the approaching three, putting his back to the tree. “Good afternoon!”

Big Macintosh looked up at the sunny sky, then back down to the blue pony. “Eeyup.”

“Comrade...” River Ripple raised his hoof, and coughed. “Did you, by any chance, receive a notice from us, vis a vis conscription?”

The big stallion considered this. “Nope.”

“He lies!” Honey Silk hissed sharply.

“Well, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. We’ve known for some time that the mail mares around Ponyville, while dedicated, are not, eh-heh, without their handicaps.” River Ripple coughed and chuckled all at once, doing neither convincingly.

The yellow unicorn rolled her eyes, and spoke imperiously. “Comrade Macintosh, every pony is required to give their all to the present conflict.”

Big Macintosh looked at the vast orchard around him, at the cart nearby him, and the apple tree behind him. “Eeyup.”

The unicorn’s eyes became a hard glare. “The New Lunar Republic has need of you.”

The farmpony nodded again. “Eeyup.”

“In battle.”

“Nope.”

River Ripple coughed again, in shock, while Honey Silk stomped her hoof. “Ah hah! Treason!”

“Comrade...” River Ripple tittered, “perhaps you can explain yourself in more detail? Surely you will not ‘yup’ and ‘nope’ your way to a gulag...”

Big Macintosh looked the blue earth pony hard in the eye, and then nodded solemnly.

“Y’all have plenty of ponies for yer war. ‘fact, by mah reckonin’, yah’ve drafted nine and two tenths of every ten able-bodied stallions in Ponyville, and got enough mare volunteers for the rest and then some.”

“That—”

“And them soldiers all still need to eat. Take them bachelor herds and Stalliongrad scrappers if ya must, but somepony’s got to make food happen.”

“How dare you!” Honey Silk dug at the ground with her hoof in consternation. “You think being a farmpony exempts you from service? Why, you’re not even educated!”

“Indeed, Comrade Big Macintosh, your sister is an admirable mare—she’ll certainly be able to handle things here. The Republic needs you at the front!”

“I don’t like fightin’.” Big Macintosh snorted hard, and on an only slightly cooler day one might have seen the steam from his nostrils.

“Are you a traitor, a coward, or bo—” Honey Silk started.

“I.” Big Macintosh stamped his front left hoof. “Don’t.” Then his front right. “Like.” He learned forward on his front hooves. “Fightin’.” His back legs bucked.

Two of the three draft ponies looked on in silence with wide eyes. The pegasus burst into hysterical cackling.

“Now that’s a pony who’s earned his exemption! Let’s get dinner.”

“And with that, the three little ponies from the draft board walked away, never to return to Sweet Apple Acres.”

“So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say—that was the tree he bucked?” Dexter pointed.

“Sure as sugar is.”

Dexter shook his head in amazement. “That’s a lot better than my story,” he muttered, continuing to pour out chicken feed while marveling at the tree trunk sticking out of the side of a windmill forty feet off the ground.

It was early in the afternoon, and the sun was coming down strong and hot. Without an orchardist’s eye, Dexter wasn’t much use to Applejack or Big Macintosh in assessing the trees for June thinning—so his task was weeding the fields; a task done without shade. This he was starting to feel, especially in comparison to the cool of the morning.

“Hey,” a somewhat scratchy mare’s voice called.

Dexter looked around him, left and right, forward and back, seeing no one.

“Hey!”

Dexter rectified his error and looked up. The light blue pegasus pony was fluttering above him. He twitched involuntarily.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me! As long as you haven’t done nothing.” She lowered herself to look him at eye level. “You haven’t, have you?”

“If I had, would I still be here, weeding this field?”

“I guess not. Hey, I’m bored.”

“I’m...sorry?” Dexter asked.

“Tell me about the war.”

“I’m sorry. I really need to keep at work.”

Rainbow Dash sighed exasperatedly. “Okay. I’ll make you a deal. If I bring you some shade while you work, then will you talk to me?”

Dexter shrugged. “As long as you can keep the shade up with me, I guess.”

“Great! Be right back!” The pegasus pony disappeared in a flash.

Dexter shrugged and went back to his work, attacking thistles with a hoe. A few minutes later, he involuntarily sighed in relief as the sky darkened a touch, blocking some of the sun.

“Alright! Let’s get to it!”

He shook with a start, and looked up. There was indeed a cloud—about ten feet over his head. He stepped to one side, still looking up, and saw that the pegasus was laying calmly atop it. “You...really can do that.”

“Of course! Don’t they teach humans anything about ponies?”

Dexter chuckled. “Do you want to hear what the army taught me about ponies?”

“That’d be awesome!” She grinned widely, still the embodiment of relaxation.

“Alright, here goes,” Dexter said, as he returned to his work, the cloud following him as he made his way down the rows.

Private Dexter's eyes wandered across the screen while the designated AV geek wrestled with the equipment. Somewhere behind him, Staff Sergeant Meyer bellowed encouragement. The classroom instruction was the only part of boot camp that felt at all right to him, as his curiosity hungrily devoured what little knowledge the Army would provide to an enlisted serviceman. There were more intellectual parts of the military—but draftees did not get to be officers.

Withers, back, loin, hip, croup, dock—so those were the parts of a pony...

The next slide flicked onscreen, and the sergeant strode boldly to the front of the room again.

"There are three kinds of ponies you will encounter on the battlefield—and most of them will look like this. This is an earth pony. Equus sapiens terra, say the eggheads."

The trainees nodded. Everyone had learned by now not to make sarcastic comments like "Yeah Sarge, we can read, too."

"They don't fly, they don't do anything unexpected, and they don't have hands. Consider those handicaps the only mercy they will show you. They are tougher, faster, and stronger than you on your best day and me on a bad day. Most of the ones you see on the battlefield will be wearing a Type 72-A Battle Saddle—pictured. Jaw-activated, very rugged—if the shape reminds you of anything, it should. It was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russkie responsible for the AK-47, the AKM, and the AK-74—all found in the hands of everyone else in the world who hates us.

"The 72-A has a very large magazine but does NOT reload quickly for earth pony or pegasus pony users. Take advantage of that. But do NOT close to melee range, thinking you can use a knife or bayonet or a point-blank-shot to finish the job. Any trained earth pony is capable of a quick pivot and a savage back kick. The best case scenario for you is instant death when the hoof goes through your face into your brain. The worst case scenario collapses your rib cage onto your vital organs, forcing your buddies to get you on a medevac where you probably die in agony anyway."

The next slide clicked over.

"This is a pegasus pony."

Everyone nodded.

"Equus sapiens ala. As in 'wing', not as in Arab for 'God'. The average pegasus pony is not as strong or tough as an earth pony, so on a good day even you can beat them. But they can fly, so never mind, you're screwed anyway. A well-trained pegasus pony with a sophisticated Battle Saddle can function as an air-superiority fighter, an attack helicopter, and a crack paratrooper all in one. They're the only reason our cousins in the Navy even have to think about Equestrian naval capabilities, and they give the Air Force nightmares—it takes highly specialized missiles to track a pegasus pony in flight, much less bring one down, and all the while the flier is closing to point-blank range where he can put a mini-missile straight up the engines or a burst of fifty-cals right through the canopy.

"The good news is most pegasus ponies do NOT do all three of those things—and even if they're trained to do them all, they have to run out of ammo sometime. If they've got mini-missiles to deal with air support, then they don't have as many bullets to shoot at you. The other good news is that the wings bend surprisingly easily—they don't shatter or break, so it’s damn hard to cripple one permanently, but even a bad landing can ground a pegasus for a few days. Shoot them then, before they can fly and terrorize you again. Next slide."

Now the trainees viewed a unicorn in profile. They preemptively nodded even as the sergeant read the caption for them.

"This is a unicorn. Equus sapiens cornu. And they are the scariest freaking enemy you will ever meet in your all-too short lives."

The sergeant's use of the superlative quickly seized the trainees' attention.

"That horn lets them cheat. What the eggheads call ponykinesis is nothing short of god-genuine-damn magic. For the civvies, they're mostly one-trick-ponies: they pretend they have hands—and that's good enough for them: having hands makes you a freaking aristocrat in Equestria. But you're not going to be fighting civvie unicorns. You're going to be fighting battle-trained unicorns. The only thing you do know is that you do not know what they are capable of. Force fields might appear to deflect your bullets. Enemy wounded and dead might get back on their feet. Every one of their guns might instantly reload. Your weapon might misfire for no reason. The pins might pull out of your grenades while they're still on your pack! Fighting a unicorn is like fighting a mad, sadistic, demon."

Private Dexter's eyes were wide, but he was not singled out for any abuse this time, as his were no wider than the rest of the trainees'.

"And the good news? Sorry, there is no good news. You see a unicorn, you shoot it. I don't care if the earth pony next to him has got five stars and a picture of Joe Stalin on his flank—you shoot the unicorn first."

“Wow! When you put it that way, we sound awesome!” Rainbow Dash had finally left her cloud, pulling a few loops around it. “Air superiority!” She shot forward, making ‘pew-pew’ noises with her mouth, and made a tight Immelmann back toward Dexter and the cloud. “Attack helicopter!” She screeched to a midair halt, hovering in place, pointing her hooves at an imagined tank and then waving them over her head while she made the sound of an explosion. “Crack paratrooper!” She dropped down to the ground, and trotted faux-menacingly towards Dexter. “Hands in the air, human scum!”

She stopped, seeing a distant stare in Dexter’s eyes. “Uh, I may have pushed it a little far there. Sorry. You don’t have to be afraid of me.” She fluttered upwards, and pulled the cloud—which had been disturbed by her takeoff into aerobatics—back over his head. “Sorry. So any other war stories?”

Dexter shook his head, clearing a mob of thoughts from it. “I wasn’t in long. I got drafted, had my arguments with them, lost them, trained to be an infantryman for fourteen weeks, and then they sent us right off into the Rockies. I was six days out of training when my platoon got wiped out.”

“Oh, wow.” Rainbow was silent for a while as she pushed the cloud forward, keeping pace with Dexter.

“Rainbow Dash, right?”

“That’s my name. Captain of the Ponyville Civil Pegasus Patrol.”

“Why are you so interested in the war?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s awesome!”

“But you’re still here. Why didn’t you volunteer for it, if it’s so exciting?”

Rainbow Dash blew a raspberry. “Any stallion who’s fit is drafted. But mares have to meet all kinds of standards if they want to get accepted. Especially pegasus ponies! Earth ponies, who cares, they just have to slog a battle saddle up to the fighting and then not die for a while. Unicorns, well, like you said, they got their freaky magic. But pegasus ponies! ‘Ya gotta beat these time trials!’ ‘Ya gotta follow our rules!’ ‘Ya have to actually graduate from flight school!’ It’s a load of horse apples.”

“That does sound like the military, yes.”

“If they just let me fly, and that was all that mattered...I’d be the best there was. Speed, agility, I’ve got it. More than anypony.”

“But they want warriors, not athletes.”

“Yeah. Yeah!” Rainbow Dash said brightly. “That’s the problem. But there’s not a lot for an athlete to do right now. Not cool to have a sporting event when there’s a war to fight and all, you know? So I just run the weather around here, keep an eye out for wayward humans and cow stampedes, other CPP things. Someday, though, there’s gonna be peace, and we athletes will get to show the world what we’re made of again.”

Dexter smiled, both from the turn in the conversation and from reaching the end of the field. “Peace. That sounds nice.”

“So how do you think it’s gonna happen?”

“Huh?”

“Peace.”

“Hmm.” Dexter thought for a long moment. “The last time America and Equestria went to war, you guys were allied with the Germans and the Chinese. The Chinese collapsed into civil war, the Germans starved and got rolled up when the British blockade kept your food from getting to them, and then we and the Brits and the Canadian landed a hundred miles from Canterlot. Your nobles revolted, Queen Celestia abdicated, and some unicorns signed an armistice.”

“Yeah, and?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen this time.”

“Of course it’s not!” Rainbow Dash said with pride. After a moment, she followed up with curiosity. “But why do you think that?”

“Premier Luna seems a lot crazier than Queen Celestia. Celestia made the allies she had to make and then she got dragged into a war she didn’t really want, and she didn’t do what it really would’ve taken to win it. Luna seems committed. I don’t know if Equestria has the bomb, but if you do, she’ll definitely drop it if it came down to it. And the Soviets are definitely backing her up—and they’re not going away anytime soon, not like your allies in the First World War did.”

“So you think we’re going to win?” she asked, hopefully.

“Ah hah hah. No. If General Tear’s rants back home about ‘better fried than foaled’ are any indication, I’d think any American city that falls into Equestrian hooves would vanish in atomic flame. Followed shortly by a dozen Equestrian cities.” He shook his head, laughing ruefully. “No, this war has to end in a non-stupid way. I just don’t know what that is yet. But I guess I’ve got time to think.” He put the hoe up on his shoulder. “This may be hard work, but it’s not what I’d call mentally taxing.”

The sun had vanished completely before the horizon, and the Apples, plus Dexter, were sitting down to dinner.

“I had a look over the fields. Y’all did a lot of good work today.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Also noticed a little cloud followin’ you around for a few hours.”

“You do have funny weather around here, ma’am.”

Applejack smiled. “Well, tomorrow’s Saturday. I’d like to get as much done as we can, so y’all can have your day off Sunday without no problems. Think you can fix up a few miles of fence whilst Big Mac and I finish markin’ up the trees that need thinnin’?”

“Guess I’ll just have to give it my best, ma’am.”

The orange earth pony and the human looked over at Apple Bloom, who was squirming in her chair. “Ya need something, honey?”

“Granny Smith gave me the photograph today! I want to show it to Mister Dexter!”

Dexter raised an eyebrow. Applejack sighed. “Finish your greens and at least half of the hay, then you can go get it, okay?”

The filly tore into her assigned food, choking it down with almost disgusting alacrity. “Alright!”

Applejack sighed again. “Sorry ‘bout that. You weren’t...actually alive back then, were you?”

“I’m still eighteen, ma’am.”

Apple Bloom trotted back to the table with an old black and white photograph in her mouth. She set it up on the table next to Dexter’s elbow. “So that’s not you, right?”

Dexter’s eyes were wide, though he was able to shake his head, establishing that indeed, that was not him.

The photo showed a couple of cute young fillies, including one with pigtails that seemed to be Granny Smith in her long pre-Granny days, sitting next to a couple of humans in front of a homestead. The Colorado Rockies loomed in the distant background behind them, and a couple of notes were scrawled next to the faces of each of the two ponies and two humans.

The male human, who was a little younger than Dexter, with brown hair, a stoic look in his eyes, and a nose Dexter could identify from a thousand yards, looked exactly like Dexter’s great-great-grandfather, mother’s side. The name scribbled next to it was a match.

The man was a legend in the family tree. The legends didn’t all make a lot of sense, like the time he used a sledgehammer to fix a wagon wheel and broke the leg of a witch a mile away, but there was no end to them. And apparently, as a young boy in 1861, he had been friends with ponies in the Colorado Territory.

After Applejack prodded him sharply in the side a few times with her hoof, he finally snapped back to reality, and explained as much. Except for the witch-sledgehammer thing, since even in context that story never made much sense to him.

“Well! Now you definitely gotta meet Granny! We’ll have to get you down to the Ponyville Senior Center real soon.”

“I’d...” Dexter croaked. “I’d like that.”

My Most Faithful Student,

Make contact with the human at the earliest opportunity without risking your cover. The party you describe being planned by Pinkie Pie sounds like an excellent time. Determine if he is indeed the candidate I selected and report back to me.

I must again reiterate the importance of your making friends in Ponyville. I speak not only as your mentor and teacher but as your friend. There is more to a young revolutionary’s life than study.

Finally, your equation was in error because you were not in fact assigning a prime number to the variable x but a semi-prime. That this error caused the target to explode into a pile of orange chicken feathers is somewhat inexplicable, but in any event, better factorization checks should prevent future problems of this sort.

Sincerely,
P.C.

The Party

Foggy Night cleared his throat as he trotted into the council room. Comrade General Secretary Luna was sitting back on her flank, her regal mane flowing like the stars in the Milky Way, as she listened attentively to the report of the Defense Commissar. A few other commissars were also in attendance—nowhere near the full politburo, but most of them were not night ponies, the way the Premier was. She attended morning meetings as well, of course—she attended all of them, that Foggy Night could tell—but she engaged much more intently in the dark hours.

“As before, there are no new developments in the Texan Theater. Enemy armored columns and air forces are preventing a breakout by our forces, while the unicorns are keeping the Pecos and Rio Grande as effective barriers.”

“Quite acceptable,” Luna nodded. “Our enemies doubtless comprehend they would pay a high price to enter the Corridor, and we wish to give no pressing reason to pay it.” As long as the Gulf Corridor remained open, the Republic retained access to the Atlantic Ocean, even if only theoretical, at best, given the superiority of human sea power and the high price in pegasus lives to be paid every time a convoy of war materiel needed to get through the blockade.

The Defense Commissar continued. “We’ve successfully defended throughout the Rocky Mountain Theater as well, though we have no lasting offensive successes to report.”

Luna frowned. “None?”

“Nay. But the Pegasus Fifth Recon has yet to cross into enemy territory. They may succeed where heavier units have been bogged down. And finally, the Everfree Theater continues to be a nightmare.”

Foggy Night noticed the Premier shift uncomfortably at the word nightmare, and, more to the point, noticed the rest of the committee conspicuously not noticing her do so. It was not, of course, his duty to think about such things.

“The addition of griffin units has made no effect?”

The question itself, and the tone of genuine confusion in which it was asked, contributed equally to the awkward silence among the committee. Foggy Night glanced around the room for the face of a brave pony that might speak the truth, and, finding none, sighed and spoke.

“After Comrade’s order regarding the consolidation of all civilian griffins into reservations alongside the buffalo in the Salt Lick Desert, we have not had much success in recruiting griffins to the war effort, nor in enforcing conscription. In fact, the military police have been depleted in fighting the uprisings and riots which have resulted.”

Luna frowned. That was, of course, Foggy Night thought, the only real facial expression which one could make in response to a statement like that, but the sixty-four-thousand bit question was what would come next from her esteemed tongue....

“What wastrel gave such a vile order?! And what is this profanity of buffalo relocation of which thou speakest?”

The awkward silence once more reigned supreme on its throne. The Royal Canterlot Voice and the very question itself were again the kingmakers.

“Comrade General Secretary of the Lunar Republican Party; Premier of the New Lunar Republic: these orders came directly from you.”

“Come in,” Rarity called, in response to the slight knock on the door to her shop, her gaze not wavering as she focused her unicorn magic on the next line of stitches. The gentle hoofbeats in a hesitant trot told her she had not been mistaken in her visitor’s identity, as the threads pulled together. “Fluttershy, darling, so pleased you could make it. You’re sure you can spare a few hours?”

“Oh, it’s fine,” the yellow pegasus said, as she looked at the towering stacks of khaki fabric in front of Rarity.

“Are you sure?” Rarity narrowed her eyes in concentration as she carefully aligned an epaulette to the exposed shoulder of the garment. “I know how busy you can get, without any help from anypony these days. Such an awful lot of animals and just the one you.”

“Oh, um, it’s nice this way. I’d rather work a little harder and not have to supervise anypony.”

“A little? Fluttershy, dear, I saw the lights on at your cottage at three in the morning the other night. You’ve never liked the night.” She flipped the garment over and aligned another epaulette.

“I have a lot of nocturnal creatures to take care of right now. So, I can spend a few daytime hours here. Um, Rarity—you’re going to stitch right through—?”

“Ah! Good catch, darling!” The unicorn smoothed the fabric and corrected the problem. “Well, thank you for making the time. There! Another one done.” She drew out another short pile of pre-cut fabric pieces. “Honestly, aside from a few little things, what I really need is a foalsitter.”

“Oh—is Sweetie Belle here?”

“Ah, for me I meant, dear, for me. The Mayor dropped upon me these two beastly quotas, one for pegasus dress uniforms and one for earth pony desert combat fatigues. Well, I’m weeks ahead on the dress uniform quota—fine fabrics! Bold designs, lines, and colors! Yes, they’re, well, uniform, but I can take pride in the result, at least as much as I can anytime I produce something so prêt-à-porter.”

Fluttershy beheld again the quivering mountains of simple khaki fabrics, and felt she understood the problem.

“So of course I’ve gotten rather behind on the fatigues. No flair, no fuss, no embellishment, no fun. It’s been far too easy to set these down and go work on more of the dress uniforms, but now I’m running a bit short on time. No, I need a good friend who can work with me for a few solid hours and make sure I don’t get—”

The entry bell rang on the front door of the boutique. A rapidly approaching determined trot said that the new guest had felt free to let herself in.

“—distracted.”

“Hi Rarity!” A bright pink earth pony with a cotton-candy mane strode boldly into the back room of the boutique. “Oh, and hi Fluttershy!”

A muttered greeting and a softly mumbled one came in reply to Pinkie Pie. Rarity cleared her throat after a moment of internally cursing whatever accursed spirit was responsible for the infliction of irony upon innocent ponies like herself. “Whatever can I do for you, Pinkie Pie?”

“Need your help, Rarity! Planning a party for a human, and I need your advice. I want it to be super-special and super-cultured, so he feels right at home. You studied in France, so you’re totally perfect to help me with ideas!” The pink pony plopped herself atop one of the mountains of khaki fabric, somehow balancing perfectly.

“France...indeed....” In fact, it had been a summer abroad in Des Moines, Iowa, nine years ago. Rarity had been content, however, to tell others just the name of the city and its etymology, and not to correct everypony’s assumption of its location. Only the new librarian had ever batted an eye. “Wait, a human? In Ponyville?”

“Duh! Since earlier this week! You really need to get out more. I’ll bet even Fluttershy knows that!”

Fluttershy nodded. “He’s staying at Sweet Apple Acres.”

“Ah.” Rarity quickly applied her not-inconsiderable education to the facts at hoof. “A prisoner of war, then, a captive taken from the battlefield, brought here to work on the farm so the Apple family can meet their quotas. Officers cannot be forced to work and non-commissioned officers cannot be forced to work except as supervisors, so I assume he is of very low rank. Young, certainly not wealthy, quite likely no significant higher education.” She looked at Pinkie Pie, quizzically, who was shrugging her shoulders in response to Rarity’s analysis. “And American, of course. Why would you bring up France?”

“Because it’s...sophisticated?” Pinkie Pie seemed unsure of herself. Sophisticated was not a word Rarity generally would have used to describe a Pinkie Pie party, and indeed, this seemed like unfamiliar turf for her. Fortunately, Rarity had good news for the pink pony.

“Sophisticated it may be, but the human would probably be just as uncomfortable with that as you are, Pinkie. More your normal speed will be fine. You’ll need food he can eat, of course, and music to his tastes...”

“Like this?” Rarity didn’t see where Pinkie Pie could have been carrying any LP records, but she nonetheless had produced one, and was holding it up with her mouth for Rarity to examine.

“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—oh, no, Pinkie Pie, this won’t do—not at all! Oh, the Beatles were fine in their day, but really...you could do with something a bit more relevant, a bit more modern!”

Pinkie Pie frowned as she put the record back away—to where, Rarity couldn’t quite tell. “It’s really hard to get anything more recent! And besides, I dig their sound—”

Unicorn magic dropped a shoe box full of small cassettes in front of the earth pony. “These, I believe, are what you will be wanting.”

Pinkie Pie peered at the writing on one of the tapes. “KC and the Sunshine Band—well, they sound cheery!”

“Such passion! Such pizazz! And the lyrics—so risque! ‘Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight!’ This is music, this is art! And there’s plenty more in there where that came from. Oh, and here’s a delightfully scandalous piece, a commentary on American race relations. I can only hope some talented underground Equestrian artist adapts it to our local issues soon.”

“Play That Funky Music—Wild Cherry. Rarity, where did you get these?”

The unicorn tossed her curly mane with her hoof and batted her eyes. “A lady has her sources. It’s not impossible to get a few choice pieces past the censors, if one has the right friends and the right tools. Do take care of them as best you can. Oh, and you’ll also be wanting this.” Ponykinesis carefully set another box down, atop Pinkie Pie’s back, this one containing a large mirrored ball. “Positively essential for any modern human party, I assure you. When did you say this soiree was to happen?”

“Tomorrow night!”

Rarity pursed her lips, as her attention went back to the piles of fabric that demanded attention. “Drat and blast. Not even enough time to produce a few quads of platform shoes, much less a proper leisure suit. And I don’t suppose Sugarcube Corner has a supply of amyl nitrite or Quaaludes?”

Pinkie shook her head in confusion.

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers. For now, he shall have to content himself with this much. Next time, Pinkie Pie, you absolutely must give me earlier notice! I won’t have anyone thinking we’re a bunch of uncultured hayseeds in Ponyville simply because I haven’t had the time to produce pastel bell-bottoms for your guests. Will there be anything else?”

“This has been a great help, Rarity! Thanks!” The pink pony carefully made her exit, carrying the disco ball and the box of cassettes on her back.

Rarity sighed. “Delightful. Fluttershy, darling? For future reference, that was almost precisely the sort of distraction I was hoping you’d help me avoid. Can we give it another go, now?”

“Um...will you be going to the party, too?” Fluttershy pawed at the floor with her hoof.

“Well, if I get this work done, then I rather suppose I must? And of course we must go together. ‘tis a risky thing to attend one of Pinkie Pie’s parties unescorted, she might foist all manner of madness upon you. Oh, and we can meet the human, too, see what he’s all about.” Rarity knew, from experience, that humans were all different sorts, just as ponies were, but from the look in Fluttershy’s eyes she could tell that her pegasus friend was thinking of them more as creatures. She’d likely be disappointed, but at least she wasn’t thinking of them as monsters—the poor dear didn’t need any more stress in her life, as to have some horrid beast—like, say, a dragon—living just up the lane. “Come on, dear, we shan’t have time either way if I can’t at least make a dent in these uniforms.”

A cloudless night over the Wyoming territory it may have been, but there was precious little of the waning crescent moon left to cover—this Sergeant Meadow Song (5th Pegasus Recon, Easy Squadron) appreciated. That the stars were also not bright, Meadow Song did not, because that was caused by light pollution from the nearby human town. The sooner his detachment could put distance between them and this settlement, the sooner he could breathe a little relief—but rendezvousing in hostile territory, in the darkness, in radio silence, required a careful choice of landmarks, and the Wyoming landscape was not always kind in this regard.

The pegasus ponies who had already arrived were taking their forage in silence, scarfing down local grass and guzzling from the river whose name Meadow Song was not able to find on his maps. He did a quick headcount—counting himself and the useless commanding officer he had mentally nicknamed Captain Queeg, twenty-two ponies.

Two short. And it had been long enough past the scheduled rendezvous that it was time to get concerned...the Sergeant quietly rose into the air on his wings, peering above the cottonwood trees to see the skies around him. Relieved, he saw two shapes flying towards him from the south—one the standard pegasus sort of shape, the other blocky but all-too-distinctive.

He lowered himself down, meeting Corporal Thunder Lane and Private Horse Power as they came in for their landing. The enormous white-coated private had some kind of makeshift black rubber bit lodged in his muzzle, while the gray-coated corporal merely wore an exasperated look on his face.

“Twenty minutes late, Corporal,” Meadow Song muttered. “What happened?”

“Nothing, Sergeant,” Thunder Lane sighed, as he quickly unfastened Horse Power’s bit with his wing. The white pegasus snorted irritably, spitting out the black rubber, and trotted off to the riverside. “Sarge...Horse Power’s losing his damned mind.”

“Implying he had much of one to begin with.”

“He’s getting worse. He doesn’t even form sentences anymore. Just ‘yeah’. And he isn’t even saying it at the right times. We were just flying our route, over a farmhouse, when ‘yeah’. Screamed it. Whole buncha lights came on, and we had to book it south. And when we were in the clear, invisible in the night, he saw this semi-truck driving up a back road, and just dive-bombed straight at it.”

“So you stopped him.”

“Like hell I did! I just helped him out of the rubble afterwards, while the driver was running off screaming. He still had a piece of the rear axle in his teeth, and, yeah, more shouting. ‘Yeah’. I gagged him with a piece of tire, so we could have some kind of stealth for our final approach.”

“By Luna...” The pegasus sergeant buried his face in his hoof. “He’s endangering the mission. ‘Chemically perfected super-soldier’ my arse.”

“What are we going to do, Sarge?”

“Call all the ponies—except the good Captain and Power himself, of course—to a meeting an hour before last watch. I’ve got an idea.”

Applejack squinted out the front window of her home. The sun had fully cleared the Ponyville horizon, and for the first morning since his arrival on Wednesday—which admittedly only made a three-day-old habit—there was no sign of the human in the Apple family kitchen, as a breakfast of hot oatmeal was hitting the table.

“I know he’s got to get the day off, but I’d reckoned he’d want breakfast.”

“He gets the day off? We don’t get the day off...” Apple Bloom grumbled.

“Well, we’re a family, and this is our farm. We’ve got to work all the time, and we can make a few hours off here and there when we can. But this isn’t his farm, and there are important rules that protect folk like him, and it ain’t our place to go breakin’ them.” Mildly chastised, Apple Bloom returned to her oatmeal. “Still, he can’t just run off. Big Mac, can you check up on him?”

The big red stallion nodded as he set down his empty dish, and, taking just a moment to wipe his muzzle on a towel, strode out into the farm.

The human’s pallet in the hayloft—a place he swore he found comfortable, and a place far enough removed from Apple Bloom that Applejack felt safe keeping him—was empty, though not long cold. The odor was easy enough to follow, and Big Macintosh did so, at a steady trot, down to the well, then a short hoof past a vegetable garden, and then to a pond, where the morning mist was still hanging. The human was nearby the pond, on his knees, his eyes closed, his hands folded; silent.

Big Macintosh sat back on his haunches, characteristically silent himself, and waited, meditating on the sun, the lake, the mist, and the breeze.

After about twenty minutes, the human got up on his feet. “Good morning,” he said.

“Eeyup.” Big Macintosh nodded. “Get yer’ prayin’ all done?”

Dexter nodded.

“Good. It’s a private thing, and ah didn’t want to interrupt if ya had more.” Dexter shook his head. Big Macintosh nodded again. “AJ was just worried ya hadn’t been to breakfast.”

“Ah. Sorry. In my—ah, family’s tradition—Sunday, ah, prayers, have to happen before eating.”

The stallion nodded again. “Like the Mexican humans.” He started trotting back towards the farmhouse, and Dexter was following.

“Yes. Not quite all the same traditions, but the same beliefs.”

Big Macintosh thought about this. “D’ya believe in fightin’? Ah’ve heard a bit about them beliefs, and can’t figure if they do or don’t.”

Dexter scowled. “According to the draft board, we believe in ‘just war’. That we believe that it’s okay to hurt and kill if the cause is just.”

“Sounds like ya think that’s hooey.”

“It may have been true, once upon a time. And defending your family, or those who can’t defend themselves? Absolutely. But in the modern world, with machine guns and napalm and atomic bombs and tanks and pre-emptive strikes and collateral damage and mutual assured destruction and strategic bombing and blockades to starve civilians, I can’t see that there’s any such thing anymore as a ‘just’ war.”

“Didja tell them that?”

“I did. They had one of their experts ask me a bunch of questions, and I answered them, and at the end they said my beliefs were ‘insufficiently founded in religious training and-slash-or insufficiently opposed to war in any forms’, and told me to report to boot camp.”

“And ya did.” To Dexter, the stallion sounded—disappointed, disapproving, disgusted. But perhaps that was projecting his own opinion of himself.

“I...am not a courageous man. Not all of us can kick a tree through a windmill.”

Big Macintosh sighed, embarrassed over the memory. “S’pose not.” He opened the door into the farmhouse. “C’mon, get some breakfast.”

Foggy Night came to a halt. One did not simply keep trotting down the corridors of the capitol after hearing words like “I say, is this treason you speak?” come round the next corner.

The first voice he recognized as belonging to Commissar Fancypants. A competent, effective unicorn in Foggy Night’s department; were more like him, Foggy Night would feel comfortable retiring, knowing that the nation would not fall to pieces.

“Nothing like that. My aunt is just...stressed. Exhausted. The Party may need to find interim leadership.”

Aunt? Ah—that second voice was that of Commissar Blueblood, born a prince or duke or somesuch. His title had not survived the Lunar Revolution of ‘69, though the colt himself obviously had. Foggy Night stayed and continued to listen.

“This is hardly a time to be switching leaders, chap. Bit of a war on, you may have noticed.”

“That makes it precisely the time! We’ve seen time and again what happens when mad men and mares are permitted to continue ruling in war.”

Foggy Night had enough of this. The cunning thing, he knew, was to listen for as much blackmail as it took, but he would not risk Commissar Fancypants getting swept up into a conspiracy—the Republic could not lose still more competence to these power games. And so, at this, he rounded the corner himself.

“Your language could use more precision, Comrade Blueblood.”

The younger unicorn gave a start at Foggy Night’s appearance, though Fancypants seemed quite unfazed, as he did at most things. “Comrade—”

“You are concerned for Comrade Luna’s health? As we all are—long may she live!” All three unicorns, on instinct, raised their front right hooves in salute. As the salute ended, Foggy Night came closer still to Blueblood. His horn warmed with a black ponykinetic glow, and then a field appeared all about Blueblood’s body, drawing the young unicorn’s face directly next to the elder’s, providing a suitable space for the low volume in which he spoke. “You little foal, keep your treachery out of my department. We may just about get around to being able to run this nation if you nobles could stop trying to overthrow it!” The elder’s magic, like his mind, was an ability undiminished by age, and he casually hurled the former Prince against the wall. Foggy Night’s voice rose anew. “Come, Comrade Fancypants. I need to have words with you about Ponyville District.”

Trotting down the hallway, the two paid no heed to Blueblood as he staggered back to his feet, and similarly ignored his muttered promise of vengeance.

Sergeant Meadow Song and his wingpony came in for a landing at the reservoir, pleased to see twenty ponies—including Corporal Thunder Lane—waiting for him. Most of the pegasus ponies were drinking their fill from the lake, though a few kept their heads up, keeping watch for any humans who might chance by.

“A hundred and sixty miles of nap-of-the-earth in eight hours,” the sergeant said, satisfied. “We didn’t set any records, but not bad. Still,” he coughed loudly, approaching the drinking ponies. “We’re going to have to get a move-on again, quickly. It’s a hundred miles to the armory in Scottsbluff, and we need to hit it while our intel is still valid.”

“But Sergeant,” Thunder Lane asked, in an exaggerated tone, “Captain and Private Horse Power haven’t made rendezvous yet.”

“Well, Corporal, that’s terrible, but our mission is critical. Fortunately, I fully understand our mission parameters and am capable of serving in the officer’s absence. We’ll just have to hope the two of them can catch up to us in due time.”

One of the drinking pegasus ponies lifted his head. “Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

The troops shared a laugh.

“Now then, let’s move, fillies.”

“Thanks for humoring us and comin’ along on your day off,” Applejack said, as the three Apple siblings and Dexter walked through the streets of Ponyville. “Pinkie Pie can get a bit—well, silly, with her parties, but she does really mean well. Probably just some balloons, plenty of cake and punch, a few old records, maybe bobbing for apples.”

“Bobbing...for apples, ma’am?” Dexter asked. “That a normal pony game?”

“Yep, we play it often enough at parties.”

“It’s kind of cheating for ponies to play it, isn’t it? You lift everything with your mouths, just about. It’s only really a challenge for humans to play.”

“Well, now—” Applejack pushed open the door to Sugarcube Corner, and the group froze to a halt under an assault of light and sound.

“♪Whatchu doin’ in the back? Aaaah!
Whatchu doin’ in the back? Aaah!
You should be dancing, yeah!♪”

“What in tarnation!” Applejack held her hoof in front of her eyes, blocking a strange glare. A blast of fog rolled out the door, at about Apple Bloom’s level, sending the filly into a coughing fit.

An ominous shadow appeared within the fog.

A pink head emerged from the shadow.

“You made it! Welcome! Come on in! Ooh! You’re the human!” As the farmponies stumbled into the fog-choked room, averting their eyes from the glinting, rotating ball, Pinkie Pie bounded up into the air, bringing her momentarily to eye level with Dexter, and then did so again. “I’m Pinkie Pie!”

“So I gathered,” Dexter said, dazed. “Chris Dexter. Nice...discotheque.”

“Oh, you recognize it! I was worried it wouldn’t feel enough like home for you!”

The human walked in, taking the place in. There was a disco ball, there was a DJ booth consisting of a card table with a tape deck on top and a row of woofers and tweeters beneath, there was a banquet table loaded with snacks and punch, there was a fog machine, and there was a dance floor; and he could see that, if the lights were on, it would be a perfectly normal room—the storefront for a family business. If not for the fact that the DJ was a sunglasses-wearing unicorn with an electric blue mane, he easily could have pictured himself in the basement of his best friend from high school.

“It…it is home. Thank you.”

The pink pony gave a mighty squee as she leaped up again, her impossibly fluffy mane somehow acquiring even more bounce. “Now come on! I’ve got to see you dancing!”

And that was how Chris Dexter found himself under a disco ball, in the fog, surrounded by the onlooking faces of a dozen curious ponies, with nothing left to lose.

Never known among his human friends for the smoothness or rhythm of his moves, only for the confidence and determination which he put into him, he found himself with one advantage: ponies were, on average, far worse dancers than even he. He did benefit of course from having arms, which, as agile as the front legs of some ponies could get, were far more suited to the classic moves of the disco hustle.

What felt like an hour and was closer to two songs later, he leaned against a wall, drinking a tall glass of punch—improvised from a measuring cup, as pony cups were impossibly shallow for his use (being meant to be carried and drank directly with the mouth, rather than with hands). Setting the cup down for a moment to wipe his brow, he noticed the gaze of a purple unicorn mare. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she started.

“Oh! So sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.” She trotted closer to him, gazing carefully at his face, despite her words. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I’m the librarian here in Ponyville, and it’s so good to finally meet you.”

“Is it?” Dexter scooted his back down the wall, so he could bring himself closer to eye level with her. “Miss Applejack mentioned something about how I should’ve been working for you instead of her.”

“R-really?” The unicorn seemed taken aback. “Why?”

“Oh, just about how I’m probably better at learning than farm work. Still, I think I’ve been a bit of a help to them.”

“Oh...” She laughed weakly. “That’s good. I haven’t gotten to know her as well as I’d like.”

Dexter thought he saw her horn glow, and twitched. “Do you…need something?”

“Me? Oh, no—no, I just...do you mind if I cast a quick spell on you?”

“Very much, yes.” Dexter climbed to his feet.

“It’ll just take a second, I promise!”

“I’m really not comfortable with—”

The horn flashed, and his vision was filled with white.

The Prompt

He felt weightless, drifting, but not aimlessly. There was a direction, a purpose, which he could feel, but not understand.

A tall, regal figure—a pony, of course—alabaster in coat, mane flowing in at least four colors that he could count, with a tall pearl-white horn and vast-spread wings: this stood, or hung before him, in space.

He felt an urge to kneel, but suppressed it.

And then she spoke.

“Do you know who I am?”

He again suppressed the urge to kneel. He knew not from whence it came. But he did reply.

“You are Celestia. I don’t know what title to give you—Princess, Queen, Empress, Exile, Goddess—but you are Celestia.” Every mortal fiber quivering within his flesh was telling him to use the title Goddess, but his mind and spirit resisted: he had made his bets in that department, and she wasn’t part of them. “And what am I, that you would send for me?”

Her wings folded back, and she stepped forward. Her countenance became softer.

“You are the human I need.”

She did not wait for him to say that he didn’t understand. Instead, she spoke, and he listened.

Sergeant Meadow Song, Fifth Pegasus Recon, Easy Squadron. Formerly of the Equestrian Republican Guard, now of the New Lunar Republic Pony’s Army. Graduate of Shadowbolt Candidate School. Decorated for Merit in both the Fifth Griffin Rebellion and Gulf Corridor campaigns.

Defeated by Nebraska grass.

Meadow Song leaned forward, desperately gagging. Ponies, unlike most other equines, could vomit, but it was not by any means a natural or comfortable experience. His vision blurred, and he desperately willed that the poison leave his body, as he sprawled all the way out.

“Sarge...c’mon....” Thunder Lane rubbed Meadow Song’s back with his hoof. “You’ve gotta beat this. You’re not the only pony who got it.”

One of the last patches of grass—Meadow Song couldn’t be sure which one—had been poisoned. It made sense. Humans didn’t eat grass. Their livestock did, but the livestock could be taken inside and eat from silage. Easy Squadron didn’t have that option unless it wanted to lose the element of stealth.

“Must’ve...eaten...more.” He belched, which brought him no relief. “Wanted to save the supplies for the return leg. Aw hell.” He tried to get on his feet, and felt his hooves slip on the dirt. Weakness, not a lack of traction, he blamed. “Not like this. Not like this. Figured I’d die out here. Figured it’d be a bullet. Maybe eighty of them. Not like this. Not like a...like a Diamond Dog.”

“You’re not going to die, Sarge. The Republic needs you alive. We need you alive.”

But dying just seemed so much easier. “You ponies’ll do...fine...you know the mission.”

“Your kid needs you, Sarge. There’s a little orange filly in Ponyville waiting for her dad to come home.”

“I...don’t...have...custody.” Finally his gut heaved, and a few blades of grass came out. Not near enough.

“You think that matters, with her mom in the gulag? Come on, Sarge, you’re all she’s got, and she needs you to live, dammit!”

“I...” He closed his eyes, and awaited the icy grip of whatever next awaited.

After a minute or an hour, something sharp poked into his hide, a pain he was prepared to ignore, until his eyes peeled wide open. Nearly electric hyperawareness coursed through his nerves, and his muscles twitched. Uncomfortably energetic, he found himself back on his hooves, trotting in place.

“I think I’m going to live. The hell was that?” He focused his vision sharply on Thunder Lane, who was now pulling the syringe out with his mouth.

“The last of the Compound C. I can’t read most of the words on the ingredient list. Somepony said it could help.”

Meadow Song laughed long and loud; likely too much of both, as Thunder Lane winced. Finally, he spoke again. “Never mind! I’m still dead. Compound C can’t do horse apples for the poison. Just enough painkillers to ignore it and enough adrenalin to take down an Ursa Major before I check out.” He laughed again, continuously, until Thunder Lane stuck his hoof in Meadow’s mouth. The sergeant explained himself again, once his face was free: “Corporal, this is what Horse Power feels like all the time.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Filled with chemical vigor, the sergeant turned to his concerned squadron. “All right, my little ponies! We’re thirty minutes out of Scotts Bluff, and I don’t expect to see another hour! We’re making a crater of that armory if it’s the last thing we do, and it probably will be! Saddle up!”

“Yeah!” was the hurrah from Easy Squadron.

“Yeah!” was the distant echo over the Nebraska prairie.

Goldengrape had to admit—there weren’t a lot of responses to his angry question of “who the hell are you and what are you doing in my office?” that would have satisfied him, but this one did the trick. The earth pony gulped and nodded, as the unicorn’s ponykinesis retrieved the Lunar Republican Party Membership Card from in front of Goldengrape’s face. Goldengrape summoned his courage and spoke.

“Commissar Blueblood—we certainly weren’t inspecting an official inspection of our facility!”

“Then I have succeeded in making it a surprise inspection, Comrade.” The unicorn’s magic threw a set of files across Goldengrape’s desk. “Strike one is having no one present in the office of the camp warden. Imagine if I had been a traitor? Every detail of the operation of the Baltimare Human Detention Camp would have been available to me.”

“Well—ah—” Goldengrape stammered.

“Strike two is the sorry state of these files. A list of the names of prisoners, and nothing else. How is this record-keeping? If I had intelligence that a human prisoner from a specific unit posed a security risk, these directories would be useless.”

“We have—in other files—”

“You know what strike three means, Comrade. For both our sakes—for I never relish the paperwork involved with the gulag—see to it that the rest of the inspection proceeds flawlessly. Now, let me pose a hypothetical. If I had information that several humans from an American light infantry unit trained for mountain combat possessed critical intelligence which we required, how would I go about quickly and accurately learning their identities with this mess of a file system?”

Now that it was time for the attack run, Easy Squadron was moving forward at full speed—at least, the fastest it could go and still remain a cohesive unit, which was significantly less than the top speeds of some of its members—sweeping quickly over the last few miles of Nebraska prairie.

The pegasi fanned out to a wide formation as the armory came into view—less aerodynamic, better munitions saturation—as their Battle Saddles unfolded their mini-missile launchers.

“All fliers: Golf One!” was Sergeant Meadow Song's voice over the headset radio, and Thunder Lane clamped his jaw on the left side of the bit in his mouth.

With shrieking cries and a trail of sparks in the night, twenty-two mini-missiles shot forth from the advancing Easy Squadron towards the American base.

Before the missiles were ten yards out of their launchers, the base's defense sirens came to life, wailing in the night, as did the defenders' miniguns, filling the sky with tracers.

Even before the next orders came, Thunder Lane dropped his altitude, jinking out of his prior flight path.

“Did they know we were coming?” somepony asked over the radio. Thunder Lane didn't waste his breath responding—the answer seemed obvious.

“All fliers: stagger formation, wait for effect—”

The rumbles of thunder and the flashes of flame pounced forth as the warheads detonated against the row of buildings in the night. At this range, the extent of the damage was not yet apparent, but—

“Cobras! Nine o'clock!” somepony screamed.

“Three o'clock too!”

Flanked between American attack helicopters on their north and south, with active defenders on their east, the unit followed its training and scattered. Thunder Lane pulled in an arc to his left, wanting to get a look at the Cobra helicopters nearer him—shooting buildings when he wasn't sure what was in them seemed like a waste of his last missile at this point, when he could be absolutely certain that an attack helicopter was a worthy target. He jerked his jaw and grabbed a control bit just to the left, flipping a set of sights down in front of his eyes—and, if the Soviet-designed technology all worked properly, switching his last mini-missile from dumbfire to optical guidance.

He tried not to notice the screams from his comrades as the deadly fusillade worked its way through Easy Squadron, but he could not miss seeing his wingman auger in right before his eyes. He pulled up instinctively to dodge the spray of earth, and attempted to get the Cobra helicopter in his sights.

Over the clatter of gunfire from both sides, he heard another series of great shrieks in the night—he cast his glance to his left, towards the enemy base, and saw a row of slow-moving rockets coming the way of his squadron. With their low speed, he easily dodged over their flight path—in fact, he thought for a moment, he might have been able to shoot them out of the sky if he had thought to try and had had his machine guns out instead of his missile.

“Hah, what was that?” Somepony asked over the radio.

Thunder Lane smiled, and got the Cobra in his sights. “Golf Three,” he muttered into the radio, and clamped the left side of the main bit. His second, last, mini-missile launched, and he jinked, though still trying to keep the enemy vehicle in his crosshairs.

His nose twitched involuntarily as he lowered altitude, into the flight path that the slow enemy rockets had taken.

“Gas?” he muttered.

He glanced to the side, merely shifting his eyes to the right, not moving his head as the guided missile continued its path to its target—and he saw the rockets, having reached the end of some predetermined fuse, begin to burst in the air.

It was impossible for him to have seen the approaching fuel-air blast quickly enough to react—that he did indeed dive downwards could have been a testament to some raw prescience on his part, as a shock wave rumbled through the sky.

He felt the air leave his lungs and his eyes bend in ways they were never meant to, and he fell limply towards the ground. His ears ringing from the explosion, he did not hear his mini-missile strike the earth harmlessly away from his target as his head and the attached sights lolled wildly during his descent.

Nor, after he hit the ground and let himself give way to darkness, did he hear the triumphant cry of a single white pegasus, still airborne as it streaked in from the south:

“Yeeeaaaaaah!”

Private Horse Power, one might say, was created rather than born—though he certainly had parents, they had little to do with the state in which he found himself now: his brain swimming in a vat of hormones tailored for aggression, bulky muscles layered upon still bulkier muscles, bits of his commanding officer's flesh between his teeth, and a burning desire for battle brewing in his belly.

So, naturally, he flew straight into the first thing he considered a target.

The human pilot screamed in a way the sadistic part of him—a tinier part than one might imagine, as the chemicals ruling him did little to permit so subtle a trait as sadism to dwell in his mind—found amusing, as Horse Power continued to force his way through the canopy and into the pilot's cabin. He flexed muscles along his sides, and the canopy shattered completely, enabling him to step directly onto the human pilot. It struggled for a moment, so he head-butted it, and it ceased to be a problem.

Shouts of human profanity came from a few feet further forward, as the side-gunner realized what was happening and drew a sidearm to fire at him.

The bullet hurt, he supposed, in a far-off way. He stepped forward, and found himself pinned between the seats. He flexed again, but the seats had more give than the glass canopy, and they didn't instantly break apart as he would like.

The next bullet hurt, too, and he was tired of these seats getting in his way. He clamped his jaw, hard, on the main bit, directing it to fire both of his machine guns. He ripped his jaw upwards, the main bit coming with it, leaving those guns locked in the firing position. Possibly permanently.

This was not the effect he intended, but he did not have a great deal of time to comprehend this. Hundreds of bullets fired in seconds, some sticking in leather, some in metal, some in flesh, and many ricocheting everywhere. Some of them hit him, too, but that was not the reason he lacked time to comprehend—mere bullets were unlikely to kill him quickly enough for him to realize that he was, in fact, dead.

He struggled forward, out of time only when the helicopter, auto-rotating from a very low altitude, struck earth and exploded.

“..oo...kay...rdner?”

Dexter tried to focus his eyes, finding the rotating lights of the disco ball to be far from helpful for this purpose. The voice repeated itself.

“You okay, partner?”

The orange earth pony's face, upside down, looking into his with concern. Dexter squinted.

“...guess so.”

He pushed himself off the ground to a seated position. The purple unicorn was nearby. He glared slightly at her.

“Don't ever do that to me again.”

“I'm—I'm sorry—” Twilight Sparkle stammered. “But did you see—”

“I saw what you wanted me to see. But don't ever do that to me again.” He rubbed his forehead.

“Twilight Sparkle! What did you do to him?!” Applejack demanded, pressing her face into the unicorn's. “He's my responsibility, you hear? And he's a—he's protected! International law! What're you thinking, using magic on him like that?”

“Well,” Twilight began, taking a step back. “I was just—” She looked around the room, seeing all eyes on her. “—I mean—” She looked back towards Dexter, but found Applejack interposed between them. “—I'm sorry!” she cried, running towards the exit without another word but with a few tears.

There was a silence following, and those who were not simply confused felt awkward, so it could have been reasonably called an awkward silence.

“Honestly,” Applejack snorted. “I don't understand that unicorn.” She looked back at Dexter, who now was on his feet. “I think we need to get going. I'm real sorry, everypony. Maybe another time, we can do this up right. Sorry, Pinkie Pie.”

Thunder Lane's eyes did not heed his directions to open, even as his hearing recovered. There was no more gunfire, only chatter and the sound of engines.

Footsteps—human—drew near him. He felt a cold metal point poke into his side. He wheezed, but could do nothing else.

“Another live one, Sarge.”

“That's what we get for using 'humane' weapons. Alright, get 'em on the truck.”

Three pairs of footsteps, he thought. One approaching his front legs, one his hind, and the third—
He heard a pistol cock.

“I don't know if you can hear me, little pony, but by all means—gimme an excuse to blow your brains out.”

Thunder Lane elected to remain perfectly limp.

Rough human hands grabbed his legs, lifting him slightly, and dragged him across the wet Nebraska grass. With a muttered heave-ho, he was risen up again, and then his flank and shoulder slammed onto a cold hard metal surface.

He slipped away into the blackness, his body having deciding it was not yet ready to be conscious again after all.

Dexter and the Apples found themselves out shuffling in the summer night.

Applejack nudged Dexter with her head as they walked down the dirt trails. “You sure you're okay? I've never really had much unicorn magic done to me, but—it ain't natural, is all.”

“Not gonna argue with you, ma'am. My head is—swimming. Still, went better than my last encounter with the stuff.”

“You reckon?”

“I can still speak and swallow food, so yeah, I reckon.”

tap tap tap...tap tap tap.

Michael Kurier (United States Army, Corporal) listened for further taps through the cell wall, but that was the end of the message. He tapped the center square of the five by five grid he had drawn on the dirt floor of his cell, decoding it as the letter 'n'. Filling in for the missing letters and expanding the abbreviations—

Senior Ranking Officer in isolation, still looking for next in line.

—which was not as responsive an answer to 'who is in charge here' as he would have hoped, but it was good nonetheless to know that the tap code was in use here and that there was some kind of organization among the captives, even in the heart of enemy territory.

He rubbed his head. Ponykinesis had apparently patched a crack in his skull, left there by a pony bullet when his platoon was overrun, and that had been all the medical care the ponies had deemed necessary before packing him onto another train with dozens of other soldiers who had held to the Code of Conduct and given only their names, rank, and serial numbers.

”If you do not answer my questions, I will be forced to classify you as a high risk prisoner. The conditions of your confinement...will not be uplifting.”

Yeah, right. Answer their shrink's questions and get next in line for brainwashing. He had offered the doctor the answer it deserved: the bird.

The food had been—well, from what he had heard in training, definitely better than non-collaborating American POWs had eaten since 1945. The dishes were completely vegetarian, of course, but there was at least enough of it. And compared to Fort Jackson, the climate was comfortable—a dry heat, at least, and he was in the shade of a tin roof.

Small kindnesses next to forced isolation, or at least the enemy's best attempt at it. Still, he expected, this was part of the brainwashing effort: let prisoners taste the carrot, before brandishing the stick.

Unable to sleep, Michael began to repeat to himself again the Code of Conduct. “I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense....”

He jumped with a start as the door to his cell burst open. There was barely room to lie down; that an earth pony could insert himself as well was a bit tricky to comprehend.

Enforced silence? Now that's a bit—

“Prisoner Kurier Michael 457-55-5462,” the pony said, dripping with menace, “you have an appointment.”

Michael supposed that he might have been able to wrestle the pony in front of him—in this tiny space the guard couldn't effectively deliver a rear buck—but he spied another guard in the hallway behind him, with a locked and loaded Battle Saddle.

This, then, did not count as an instance in which an escape attempt was reasonable. At least, not yet.

A pair of shackles were dropped on his wrists—he pressed as he could to get space to work within them, but didn't think that was effective—and the guard led him out to the corridor.

Quiet, as it reasonably would be in the dead of night. A string of lights provided little illumination of the thin metal walls and dirt floor as guards and prisoner trotted along. After a hundred feet, the party turned into a much nicer part of the facility—wood floors, even—and then Michael Kurier was pushed into a small room—still much larger than his cell—facing a mirror.

Presumably, one-way.

A voice from a speaker indicated that he had correctly presumed.

“Michael Kurier, United States Army.”

Michael himself continued: “Corporal, 457-55-5462.”

“Captured in the Rocky Mountain Theater of Operations, just west of the Continental Divide. Wearing the uniform of and in the presence of soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division. Shot in the head by the proud earth pony soldiers of the 23rd Stalliongrad, who informally estimated that they were only returning the favor for three of their own. Survived medical treatment at the Salt Lick Processing Center, refused psychological screening, and transferred to the Baltimare Human Detention Facility.”

The corporal didn't answer, as he didn't hear a question in there. He remained silent, standing, staring straight at the mirror.

“You're just a regular American hero, aren't you?”

You're not going to break me, you pony bastard, so don't even—

“Shame that you're not going to be fighting in this war ever again. No one can escape from this camp. Even if you did, you're a human in a nation of quadrupeds. You'd be recaptured instantly. And even if you evaded recapture for a few days, you're hundreds of miles from American soil and nowhere near any interesting targets for monkey warfare.”

The corporal snickered, speaking to his captor for the first time. “'Guerrilla' warfare, you pompous ass.”

“Monkey, gorilla, baboon, you can't expect me to keep all your ancestors straight. No, Corporal Michael Kurier is done fighting in this war as long as he stays here in Baltimare. Of course, if he were to be transferred much farther north, say, to Fillydelphia, well, there'd be all sorts of opportunities for him to escape even before his arrival—with Discord's own luck, he might even be able to escape within a few miles of the capital. Who knows what kind of trouble he could get up to there?”

Michael kept a stoic look on his face, while his mind swam. SERE didn't cover this—at least not the levels I took—when does the torture start? Or the humiliation? Or the propaganda? Is this ego-feeding, a lead-up to something else, or...?

“And even more hypothetically, if he were to be transferred in the company of other surviving members of his platoon, just one car in front of captured human weaponry and a cache of classified intelligence—can you imagine the kind of havoc they might wreak?”

This was too good to be true— And yet he could not resist from replying: “Yes, I can.”

“Superlative,” came the voice from the mirror. The light behind it shifted, rendering the mirror transparent and allowing the corporal to look at his 'interrogator'—a white unicorn stallion with a long blond mane and a smug grin. He looked every bit like a romance novel cover model—assuming an equine audience—and certainly not a hardened interrogator.

“You are the human I need.”

Pardon Committee's Background Material (Submission A)

Investigator’s note: the following testimony by GRU Colonel Stanislav Lunev was not disclosed to the Senate Subcommittee on Equestrian Relations until after his defection to the United States in 1992. Several congressmen have noted that Colonel Lunev, while suspected of being generally truthful, has a reputation for exaggerating certain facts. It nonetheless is useful context in understanding the case.

Senator LUGAR. Thank you again, Colonel. You may proceed.

Colonel LUNEV. You must understand, I was not personally acquainted with these operations. I was still in military academy in 1969. This is only what I learned second-hand, a decade after the fact, from those who were there.

Senator PELL. We understand. Please continue.

Colonel LUNEV. It was the policy of the Soviet Union throughout the 1960s to conduct operations in the Western hemisphere intended to alienate the United States’ allies, and if possible, to bring them into the Soviet sphere of influence.

Senator LUGAR. Wasn’t this your policy in the fifties, too?

Colonel LUNEV. Yes. And the seventies, and the eighties, and if there were still a Soviet Union today, in the nineties. Anyway, the grandest prize, and what we imagined the hardest target, was always Equestria. No other nation could pose as great a military threat to you—without the use of nuclear weapons—as the land of the ponies. There were many unfriendly nations with stronger armies, of course—our own, the Chinese—but after the Second World War, there was no chance of landing on mainland American soil in any numbers. Thank your navy for that.

Senator LUGAR. We do. (Laughs)

Colonel LUNEV. Equestria, however, shares a long land border with America. Not an easy to defend one, either—a border marked as often by watershed lines as by rivers. Of course, infiltrating the land of the ponies would be difficult, to say the least. America may be diverse and multicultural enough for our agents to operate with impunity, but no Soviet agent was going to be able to pass as a pony. Nor did we find any Soviet horses of even remotely comparable intelligence. I am not proud of the experiments upon which Soviet scientists embarked to try and create such a beast, but of course the CIA was dabbling in that field well before we were.

Senator PELL. That’s ridiculous.

Colonel LUNEV. Oh? They haven’t told you about that yet? (Laughs) We had only a few ponies who had emigrated to our nation and to other fellow-traveling nations at the end of the Second World War. They were...not well liked in their homeland, and so turned out not to be such good agents. But they provided valuable information about the ponies that their nation tried to keep secret.

Of course, we verified what was common knowledge: that the ruling Canterlot nobility that called itself the Equestrian Republic was less than popular among the people. Was the unpopularity rational? Probably not. Their capitalist policies and free trade agreements with the West made winners and losers, but most ponies were doing on average better than they had been before. Local elections were fair and free, and the quick turnover in ruling parties meant national democracy was something like real, even if it produced one faction of weak rulers after another. There was a surge of patriotic fervor during the Second World War, when they worked more closely with Americans—and the British and ourselves—than they ever had before, but it faded quickly afterward.

Really, it was a problem of legitimacy. Queen Celestia had seen the expansion of the empire into many new lands, into the Pacific, the Far East, even briefly into the Middle East—and she was, in pony beliefs, the immortal ruler of the sun.

Senator LUGAR. The Japanese said that about their Emperor, too.

Colonel LUNEV. The ponies believed it. The Japanese believed, at best, that the emperor was descended from the mythical goddess of the sun. The ponies believed that the sun literally rose and fell at the behest of Celestia.

In any event, Queen Celestia’s only sin, in the eyes of the common pony, was letting herself get trapped in a terrible dilemma: breaking her word and betraying her allies Imperial China and Imperial Germany in the First World War, or going to war with the United States and its allies. Like most of the participants in that war, she must have genuinely thought that the web of alliances would serve to keep the peace and couldn’t figure out how to stop them from turning into war.

The Canterlot Revolt may have saved the capital from attack by the Allies, but every pony who lived outside it was less than impressed, especially when the new Republic began collaborating with the Americans to rebuild their economy and infrastructure.

Senator PELL. We were there to help. We were friends then.

Colonel LUNEV. And America, like the Soviet Union, has a mixed record of being very convincing when it says things like that.

Anyway, ever since then, the Equestrian Republic was...tainted, weak, illegitimate. But we had found no useful revolutionary tools to subvert it with—no pony Che Guevara, and believe me, we looked; hundreds of dossiers were built in the search. Ultimately, a drawn-out revolution would have been impossible—America would definitely have intervened if a civil war lasted any length of time, just as the ponies intervened in yours. The subversion would need to happen very quickly, and there were only two ponies in Equestria capable of uniting the nation—traditionally treacherous Canterlot nobility aside—that quickly.

The first was Celestia. Of course, no one seemed to know where to find Celestia after 1918. The ponies all talked as if she were still around somewhere, doing her royal duties, but no one could give us her address.

The other was Luna. And every pony knew exactly where she was.

Senator PELL. What?

Colonel LUNEV. Don’t you Americans read your own history?

Senator PELL. I do, and I still don’t follow.

Colonel LUNEV. When the First Lunar Republic was foolish enough to interfere in your own Civil War, they caused you some trouble, but you eventually were able to close on them. Celestia and her loyalists rose up and brought down the government, sued for peace with the Americans, signed a treaty setting the borders between your nations—

Senator PELL. Yes, yes, I know all this.

Colonel LUNEV. (Continuing)—and banished Luna to the moon.

(Laughter)

Senator LUGAR. That was just a metaphor.

Colonel LUNEV. Really? Because that was where we found her.

(Laughter)

Colonel LUNEV. In 1966, a Soviet satellite flying by the far side of the moon obtained high resolution imagery of the, ah, ‘South Pole-Aitken basin’, a twenty-five-hundred kilometer crater that had been unknown to astronomers before the space race began—and certainly had never been observed before her banishment in 1866. After months of examination, we located a trail of hoofprints, wandering all throughout that crater.

Luna was on the moon, alive.

(Long pause here. Lunev appears to have been expecting to be interrupted by the Senators.)

The decision was made immediately that the subversion of Equestria was to take priority over the moon shot. That is, over a public Soviet victory in the moon shot. I do not believe all of the Politburo was aware of this decision. It may in fact have been a decision made solely by the GRU without consulting. That was often the Soviet way.

A team of cosmonauts was arranged, in secret. The death of Vladimir Komarov, due to the failure of Soyuz One, was staged as well. Alexey Leonov we needed for the public face of the program; Komarov we used for our mission. We permitted to let the Americans think they were taking the lead, and with the way our rockets were exploding even on accident, they may not have been wrong.

But Komarov’s rocket, which launched on July 3, 1969, at the same time as the one we actually intended to let the Americans see explode—Komarov’s rocket launch was a success.

Senator LUGAR. Are you saying—are you claiming that the Soviets actually beat us to the moon?

Colonel LUNEV. It is funny, but no. Komarov’s rocket needed to take a special trajectory. We wished for the operation to happen without detection. We certainly did not wish to be mistaken for a missile or anything like that. His lander did not reach the lunar surface until July 21, 1969—some hours after your Armstrong had taken his giant leap for mankind. Eighteen days aboard that capsule could not have been comfortable. (Laughs) But it gave him time to catch up on his reading! (Laughs)

Senator PELL. Reading?

Colonel LUNEV. Komarov was a fine cosmonaut, but not an agent by training. Because we were expecting the lunar lander to have an extra occupant on return, we could not spare the mission mass for anyone specially trained to do what we needed him to do.

Senator LUGAR. And that was?

Colonel LUNEV. Convert Princess Luna into Comrade Luna. (Laughs) We did not think it would be too hard. Komarov had, as you might say, her only ticket off that rock. Besides, even when she had last reigned in Equestria, a little more than a hundred years prior, she had at first been a leftist. Expansionist ambitions and corrupt noblemen got the better of her in the end, and she made the mistake of getting involved in America’s Civil War, as we’ve said, but in her early years her heart was for her people—democracy, perhaps even proto-socialism. We just needed to make her an offer, and convince her of the merits of Communist ideals.

Senator LUGAR. Apparently it wasn’t difficult.

Colonel LUNEV. We never heard from Komarov the specifics.

Senator PELL. Why not?

Colonel LUNEV. Because Comrade Luna returned from the moon alone.

(Another pause here.)

We were quite startled. That a pony could even operate the lunar lander, much less the orbiter, and of course the fact that she had apparently left Komarov, either dead or to die, on the moon’s surface...and that she had successfully deceived our mission control into thinking that Komarov was still present and in control of the vessel up until the landing.

When we realized what had happened, we were expecting disaster—the standoff was quite tense, I understand—but ultimately Comrade Luna proved surprisingly cooperative. We had our misgivings of her, and she of us—apparently, in a certain light, she did not quite match the old photographs and descriptions of her, seeming rather taller, and jet black in color rather than the dark blue she had once been—and she seemed at times quite insane—but when we explained our objective, she was most sympathetic. Over several months, we taught her the pattern of Soviet government, the ideals of Communism, and the methods of revolution. Under the cover of America’s free-trade pact with the ponies, we smuggled in arms caches of modern battle saddles to arm the followers she insisted would rise up on her behalf, and then finally, on October 31, 1969, we sent Luna herself.

The rest, Senators, I believe you already know.

The Pioneers

“ 'mornin', pardner—didya sleep o—” Applejack stopped, interrupted by the sight of the state of the barn loft. Dexter, bleary-eyed, was on his knees with a bucket and a scrub brush; piles of sawdust had been made on different spots on the floor. The odor in the air told its own story as well. “I reckon no, then. Were ya sick?”

Dexter looked up from his scrubbing. “I—uh—yes. I was ill. Didn't want to bother you. Thought I'd just clean it up. Lost track of time.”

The sun was indeed rising, which made it quite late by their standards. Applejack sat back on her haunches, and set a hoof gently on Dexter's back. “The party food? Pinkie Pie put in something y'all couldn't eat?”

The human closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. After a moment, he croaked. “Nightmare.”

Applejack was startled. “Nightmare?”

“Flashback, rather. You ever been strangled by a unicorn, ma'am?”

“Can't say that I have. Like to keep it that way, if'n I could. I thought you were okay after last night?”

“Thought I was too. Tried to sleep. It all came back. I'll—I'll be fine. Just let me finish cleaning this and then I'll get started working.”

“No.” Applejack adjusted Dexter's head with her hoof so that he was looking at her. “You're a wreck. You're not doing any farm work for me today.”

“Please.” Dexter's face was in need of a strong wash. “I need to be doing something. I can't keep thinking about—”

“Tell ya what. Apple Bloom's class is havin' a field trip today—y'all can meet up with them, and finally meet Granny Smith, like Apple Bloom's been askin' about. C'mon. Come get breakfast. We can worry about this mess later.”

“Comrade Foggy Night—a word?”

As a younger pony, less composed, the Commissar might have dropped a few horse apples at the icy tone in his ruler's voice, but he kept himself collected to merely a cold sweat, as he remained behind in the council room. The rest of the ponies filed out, leaving him alone with Premier Luna—or perhaps, indeed, Nightmare Moon, as in this light, she looked taller and darker, and her voice had a sinister depth to it.

The tall winged unicorn looked down at him, and he gulped. “How may I be of use, Comrade Luna?”

She walked behind him, beginning to circle as she spoke. “Comrade Foggy Night, I do believe I some time ago directed that you organize a search for the Elements of Harmony, did I not?”

The wingless unicorn kept his muzzle shut.

“That was a question, Comrade. Questions should be answered.”

He cleared his throat one more time, and spoke quickly. “Yes, Comrade Luna, I do recall receiving such an objective.”

“‘Do...recall...receiving...’” She chuckled. “And do you recall acting on such an objective?”

Foggy Night considered his position, and the relative survival value of honesty.

The princess's voice whispered sharply in his ear as he thought this through. “I am waiting.”

“No, Comrade Luna, I have not taken meaningful steps on this objective.”

A dark purple field of ponykinetic energy shimmered around his body. “I thought not. Shall you explain yourself?”

He didn't bother to press against the field, knowing that the princess's magic was far greater than he could possibly approach on his best day. “Having many objectives, including the suppression of treason among the old nobility, I did not believe the search for a mythical superweapon was a high priority.” He did not expect to survive the next minute.

Nightmare Moon began to validate his expectation, as the energy field blasted him back and pressed him tightly against a wall. The pressure relented after a moment, allowing his hooves to touch the cold stone floor again.

“'Mythical.'” She chuckled again, and Foggy Night felt no better for it. She stalked forward, towards him. “Comrade, a history lesson, if you please. Before I came down to lead the Lunar Revolution, where exactly was I?”

“The—the moon, Comrade.” Though he was no longer pressed against a wall, the ponykinesis still saw to his having no freedom of movement.

“And how did I get there?”

Foggy Night did not answer. He had not been in Canterlot in 1866.

“Do you imagine, Comrade, that my dear sister concealed a cannon in the throne room, by which means to hurtle her unsuspecting foes to the moon? Perhaps she also left me with a supply of some of her favorite colonial fruit, the noble banana, as rations for the journey? Is this what you think happened?”

He gulped. “Nay, Comrade.” The absurdity of the suggestion would not make him laugh until quite some time later.

“Of course not. No, she used the Elements of Harmony—a weapon of cruel mercy, so like her, that will do everything except kill their target—for she demands suffering and calls it repentance, and will not content herself with mere annihilation. I know, Comrade, that they are real. Do you know how I know that?”

“Because—because they were used on you, Comrade?”

“Well, you are a quick study! And also, because my sister and I employed them ourselves against the great elder enemies of ponykind. They are the truest symbols of power most ancient. It may be the Elements of Discord—deceit, selfishness, treachery, cruelty, self-importance—that time and again topple the throne, but it is the Elements of Harmony which properly fashion the new one.”

Foggy Night rose up on chains of ponykinesis until his eyes were level with hers. Her face now neutral, she stared hard into his soul, awaiting his response.

“Your Majesty wishes to first root out those who have the power to raise a credible opposition government, before disposing of traitors more generally?”

Nightmare Moon chortled. “If that is the only way your impoverished mind, shackled by the mundane and devoid of faith in the greater magic of the universe, can comprehend this command, then yes, My Majesty wishes this.” There was a hint of sneer as the pretense at camaraderie was, for the moment, abandoned. “How will you carry out my will?”

The chains began to loosen, and Foggy Night began to breathe easier. “By executing, with utmost diligence, a search for the Elements of Harmony.”

“Then I believe I am keeping you from your work.” The chains released at once, dropping Foggy Night onto the floor. His aching hips strained to preserve his dignity and balance, as he did not stumble and his hooves did not slip. “Go.”

“Well now, whippersnapper, ain't you just the spittin' image of Jack.”

Dexter was fairly impressed than this elderly green-coated earth pony was herself totally unimpressed by him. Apple Bloom, sitting on the disinfected tile floor of the senior center, looked up eagerly at her grandmother. For the human's part, Dexter had just sort of knelt in front of her, so as to speak more clearly into her ears, as the senior pony rocked in her chair.

“I hope I'm not, ma'am. We spent a few generations trying to breed that nose out of our family.”

“Whaa...? Oh, oh, right, that schnozz of his. Always thought he might have a bit of pony in him. But you've got the same mane, the same eyes, the same voice....” Granny Smith patted Dexter's shoulders with her hooves. “The same strong body. Did I ever tell you about the adventure we had together?”

“I've never met you before, ma'am, so no.”

“Well now—”

“Jack! Jack!” The young man lifted his maul, leaving the wedge in the stack of firewood, and looked from his work to the little girl running towards him.

“What is it, Annarose?” He asked, in the accent of a first-generation Hessian immigrant.

“The Apples need our help!”

“Our help?” He smiled, patting the six-year-old on the head.

“Yes! I help by bringing you! You help with the rest!”

“Very good. Go tell papa. I will go to them. Their homestead, yes?”

The young man walked alongside a small creek, heading upstream—it would not be hard to pick out the ponies' homestead on the Colorado prairie: while his family struggled to grow wheat for selling to gold and coal and silver miners, the earth ponies had somehow managed to make healthy apple trees emerge from the sandy loam.

As he neared the farm, he felt growing concern when only two of the Apples were out—the young Fraulein Smith, and her mother. He picked up his pace to meet them.

“Guten morning, Apples. What is the matter?”

The green pony with pigtails answered for the marefolk. “Father and the brothers—they are missing.” She pointed with her hoof west, towards the mountains.

Jack nodded. “How long?”

“They left yesterday morning to meet a new homesteader and help her find her way—”

He nodded again. “Too long.” He hefted his hammer across his shoulders, and looked at the matriarch. “Madam Apple, I will need Fraulein Smith. My nose is not nearly as sharp as it should be by rights. You should remain here, in case they return.”

The older mare looked displeased. “Do not presume to order me, young man. But...” She sighed. “Please, help bring back my family.”

Smith and Jack headed west and, generally, upwards, making good progress through foothills. “Fraulein Smith, I do not believe your mama likes me.”

“She just wants you to be more respectful to her. Ponies are not humans. Mares are not submissive to stallions. Our goddesses see to that.”

Without a priest of his church within a hundred miles and not being on friendly terms with the Methodist preacher a few miles away, he didn't feel this was a good time to argue religion with his pony friend. He changed the subject. “So who is this homesteader they were going to find?”

“Her name is Minuette. She's a dentist.”

“Hold on,” Dexter said, interrupting. “A dentist? Just how many ponies were there in the area, that they could need a dentist that early?”

“Oh...” Granny Smith, said, rocking thoughtfully. “Probably less than a hundred, that year, that was just before the Great Settlement—but she could work on any kind of teeth, even human teeth. And there were enough of you around, weren't there?”

“Oh no—” Smith started in shock as they crested a ridge, to see a wide swath of spruce and fir trees knocked over.

“This is fresh,” Jack said, nodding to himself. “My friend the wood-collector would have already picked these up otherwise.”

“What could have made this?” Smith asked, as she took in the scope of the damage.

“Many angry beavers?” Jack asked back.

Smith thought about this, and then shook her head. “No, see, the trees have just been snapped; they have not been gnawed on at all—”

“That was only a joke, Fraulein.” Jack sighed. He wasn't certain if his English was just that bad or if ponies just didn't get jokes. “It looks like something very large.”

Smith nodded. “And it seems to have followed papa and my brothers. We have to hurry!”

“And then, from out of nowhere—timber wolves!” The young fillies on the floor hushed in terror.

“Wolves?” Dexter asked.

“Timber wolves!”

“Dogs made of wood—” Jack said, incredulously, backing a step up as he gripped the maul with both hands. “I blame you ponies. This is the sort of silly thing you bring with you.”

Smith mouthed a rock off the ground and bounced it up in the air with her nose. “And we can raise apple trees upon earth on which you cannot grow wheat.”

“That too is silly.”

One of the three growling timber wolves took the first step forward—Smith turned on her legs and bucked the falling rock, sending it hurtling straight into its face. The wolf whimpered and beat a retreat, while its two fellows leaped forward.

Jack unleashed a cry—“Gott mit uns!”—as he advanced to intercept, swinging his hammer. The head of the maul he connected with the head of the right timber wolf, and he tried to carry the momentum to the side to strike at the other one as it continued to move.

A mere glancing blow he managed, as the third timber wolf continued well past him, towards Smith.

The pig-tailed earth pony didn't have the time for another rock, so she quickly launched another buck—she didn't squarely connect with the wooden dog, but deflected its charge to an angle.

Sprinting quickly, Jack raised his hammer and bellowed again. The timberwolf stopped on its heels to meet the new threat, spinning and snarling as the hammer dropped.

One pony, one dog, and one human cried out—two in pain, one in fright.

Jack pulled the wooden fangs, and the skull still attached to them, out of his side. “This wound will need whiskey when we get back. Too bad it is not yet cider season.”

The rest of the wolf body was more tinder than timber at his feet, and Smith looked around. “We need to move quickly, Jack. The timber wolves might come back with the rest of their pack.”

“It was not my intent to dawdle, Fraulein. Do you think your family is close?”

She sniffed. “Yes. And something else.”

“More timber wolves?”

“They are hard to smell. They smell like wood. No, something else. Something...strange.”

“Stranger than dogs made of timber?”

“Yes.”

“Well.” Jack tested the weight of his hammer again. “I am glad you interrupted me in firewood splitting, and not cow milking. A bucket would not have been of much help, I think.”

“We kept up through the hills for a few hours more—oh, we saw a few more timber wolves, but they smelled sawdust on Jack's hammer and kept their distance—the wind was doing funny things, and that's why I thought we were so much closer than we were. But finally...”

”Smith! Jack!” A voice hissed quietly. “Over here!”

They turned their heads to see the Apple patriarch crouching under a small natural shelter. “Quickly!” He hissed again.

The pony and human complied quickly, squeezing under the rock.

“Herr Apple—what is going on? Where are the others?”

“Hiding as well, I hope.” The father shook his head. “We had just met up with Miss Minuette when we heard this terrible roar. An Ursa.”

“Ursa—a bear?”

“Not just a bear—an Ursa, maybe minor, maybe major, not sure.”

“I do not understand, Herr—”

A peal of thunder echoed through the mountain valley, so terrible and mighty that it took Jack a good ten seconds to realize that it was not, in fact, thunder. Further rumbles followed, as the origin of the roar stepped into view.

From under the shelter, Jack looked up. A long, long way, up.

“—Scheisse.”

The shape of the beast suggested a grizzly bear, with rather more pronounced fangs—the ones jutting out of the front of its maw probably longer than Jack was tall, if his depth perception was not deceiving him. As for the texture, it was rather like looking into the night sky on a clear dry night, with just a shade of glowing purple to set the fur apart from the sky. As for the size—Jack had nothing to compare it to. It was smaller, perhaps, than the mountain on which they were standing—but smaller than nothing else of which he could readily think.

Granny Smith stopped and looked at Dexter. Dexter's attention was rapt. “Well, young'n? Aren't you going to interrupt me with somethin' or other?”

“No. Go on, ma'am.”

Jack crossed himself. “What is our plan, Herr Apple?”

“You think I have a plan for an Ursa? I was thinking that we cower in fear until it gets bored and leaves us alone.”

“Maybe that is not a bad plan.” The two ponies and the human breathed quietly, watching as the Ursa swiped a massive claw at some of the few spruce trees still standing. “Are these Ursas always so angry?”

“How would I know? Yesterday was the first time I saw one.”

“He has been so angry all this time?”

Herr Apple nodded, and Jack gulped.

“Hey—can I join you guys?”

The three under the rock jumped only a few inches, since the shelter didn't leave much more room than that. A minty-blue unicorn mare squirmed under the rock with them, squeezing Jack between Smith and herself.

“Ah, good day, Fraulein. You must be Fraulein Minuette? I am Jack. Welcome to our rock.”

The mint unicorn nodded quickly. “Nice to meet you, Jack. Listen, I've got a plan.”

Jack nodded earnestly himself. “Good. We already have a plan ourselves, but maybe your plan is better. I am always open.”

The Ursa grabbed the last spruce tree still erect, and screaming deeply, ripped it straight out of the ground.

“See? Right there? That's the key!”

“Yes.” Jack nodded again. “Indeed, his ability to uproot an entire tree with one paw will surely prove his undoing. I look forward to hearing this plan in detail.”

“No, no—look at his face! Look at the way his mouth is lopsided when he roars!”

Jack looked at it. He couldn't really see past the teeth, but supposed the bear's face might not be quite symmetrical.

Minuette sighed at not getting through to the others faster. “The Ursa has a toothache!”

“A toothache?” Apple Bloom interrupted. “Granny, I think I've heard this story before.”

“Oh, I bet you have, half-pint. This part of the story got around quite a bit afterward, don't you know, but they didn't mention Jack's involvement, or usually even mine.”

”You know,” Jack said, “I like this plan.”

“You do?” Herr Apple stared at the human incredulously.

“Yes. When your plan, Herr Apple, kills me, it will be after a long time, when I am weak and tired and hungry and cursing Gott for leading me here. When Fraulein Minuette's plan kills me, it will be very quick and very soon and while I am still praying to Gott in a good way. So I will do Fraulein Minuette's plan.”

“Well, you won't do it alone,” Smith said, fiercely determined. “I will do what I can on the ground to keep it looking the other way.”

“Don't get it too riled up,” Minuette cautioned. “We don't need any sudden movements screwing us up.”

“Right,” Smith said, getting out from under the rock shelter, and mouthing some pine cones for ammo. “'et's 'et 'oo it.”

Smith charged off towards the Ursa’s side; Jack and Minuette themselves scrambled up from under the rock, and sprinted towards the back of the Ursa. Minuette's horn glowed as they charged, a field of ponykinesis making Jack's body a bit lighter and his pace a bit faster, as they dashed through the shattered forest.

The first pine cone bounced off the nose of the Ursa, and it looked at the green earth pony in the debris, rubbing its face in as much bemusement as anything.

Reaching the back of the great bear, Minuette shifted the glow of her ponykinesis, no longer lightening Jack's body but her own—it would take hands to quickly climb the furry, starry, body of the bear, and the human could not move quickly with the full weight of the unicorn—she leapt onto his back, in what would in happier moments have been called a glomp.

Jack tightened his grip around a knot of fur, and began to climb. There were more handholds than a boulder scramble or a cottonwood tree, but climbing in general was still not the kind of work he was used to, and he wished he had a free hand to cross himself again as he began to ascend. Instead he just started a murmured prayer—“Heilige Maria,” he began.

Smith darted to one side as the Ursa took a leisurely swipe of its claws, and launched another shot—it didn't quite hit the Ursa's left eye, but was close enough to get it to swing a paw to block. Bemusement had now turned to annoyance, and it stomped forward after her.

Carrying the weight of both the unicorn and the sledgehammer—which the unicorn had insisted they would need—Jack was feeling the strain, and relying on little more than faith and adrenaline to press forward—at last they had advanced far enough up the back to be able to peer over the shoulder and see the face.

Minuette waved her hoof over the shoulder, getting Smith's attention. The earth pony on the ground nodded, and knocked the largest pine cone she had straight at its nose. With more accuracy than she had intended, the pine cone landed directly with the beast's nostril—far too small to block it, but apparently just large enough to—

Oddly, Jack thought, the sneeze hadn't seemed to make any sound at all. He realized later that this was because he had momentarily gone deaf. A great storm of dust and wood chips was blown up on the ground, swirling in a storm, and Smith had been toppled end over end, sprawled in a pile of tree limbs.

(“Now”), Minuette mouthed, as the Ursa held its mouth open, perhaps about to sneeze again. Jack ran across the shoulder of the beast, and at the last moment, jumped, feeling the unicorn's magic boost him across as well. An impossibly wide span later, they landed on the tongue of the Ursa, and rolled forward, catching themselves at the very front of its jaw. Jack couldn't hear anything yet, but saw another blast of air pummel the ruins of the woods.

Smith looked up in panic, trying to untangle herself and get away, as the Ursa lurched forward at her. One step, a second step—she just managed to pull herself out of one set of trunks when another one pinned her other leg—and a great starry shadow loomed overhead, and then fell.

“And then I died!”

The fillies, and Dexter, blinked.

“Well, no, I suppose I didn't. But I would have, if some human hunter hadn't dug some kind of pit trap there a long time before.”

The fragile covering of dirt-and-leaf-caked sticks crumbled under the pressure of the earth pony and the Ursa pushing down on her, and she fell into a dark hole—she grunted in pain as she struck the earth, but was alive, which was more than she was expecting. She looked up at the stars of the Ursa's fur—the beast's foot was clearly much wider than this hole, and that meant, for the moment, she was safe.

“Fraulein Smith!” Jack cried out in panic, starting to hear himself again.

“C'mon! We've got to do this before it starts to chew!”

Jack looked up at the ceiling of teeth, and remembered why he had signed onto this plan: the promise of a quicker death. It indeed looked pretty quick at this point.

He worked his way between the edge of the teeth and the tongue, while Minuette perched atop the teeth, leaping from one to another, illuminating the cavernous mouth with her horn. “No—no—not that one—oh! There!” She cast her light onto one specific tooth, snaggled and rotting. “That's got to be the one. We need to extract it.”

Jack beheld the tooth in question. It was definitely larger than he was—it was larger than any two cows on his family's farm.

“Extract, Fraulein?”

“Extract!”

Jack didn't know precisely how dentistry was supposed to work—but when all he had was a sledgehammer, this problem looked a lot like a pile of wood that needed splitting. He hefted his hammer, and breathed deep, even on the pungent air of the Ursa's maw.

“You work on that! I'll go block his nose so he has to breathe through his mouth!”

“That sounds like a very terrible idea, but okay.” Jack dropped the hammer.

“And then what?”

“How should I know, young'n? I wasn't there; I was in a hole in the ground!”

Dexter stammered angrily. “You—you've been telling about all kinds of things you weren't there for!”

“Relax, relax, young'n, I'm only teasin'. So, I imagine Jack hit the tooth with that hammer quite a few times, until finally it broke apart, and the rotted pieces came loose. The beast roared again, and—”

Jack opened his mouth in a voiceless cry of pain as he hit the ground below, smeared in the Ursa's blood, the wind knocked out of him from his sudden ejection. He tried to lift himself up, but found that the strength hadn't yet returned to him—

Far above him, Minuette ducked back inside the beast's roaring mouth, her ponykinetic glow illuminating her, and vanished.

(“Please,”) Jack prayed, unable to give breath to his voice. (“Let this work.”)

The Ursa roared one more time, and then stopped, patting at its jaw with its paw. It seemed confused for a moment, and looked around at the wrecked landscape, as astonished as a drunkard might be to wake up in someone else's family room.

Just before it turned around to go wandering off elsewhere, Jack saw a minty-blue shape slip out of its mouth and slow its descent to the ground with a ponykinetic glow.

Smith grunted as she finished crawling out of the pit, and onto valley floor, where she sprawled. Jack looked at her; she at Jack, both sighed, too tired to smile at being alive. They laid where they fell, focusing on breathing and little else.

Minuette walked up to them, beaming happily. “Thank you, you two. You've helped me save the future.”

Jack pushed his head and back up off the ground, though he still was seated.

“We have what?”

“Saved the future,” Minuette nodded again, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Her horn glowed again, and behind her a glowing portal in the air opened up, as if swung by the advance of a clock's minute hand. “I'm sorry; the communities around Boulder Valley will have to wait a little longer for a dentist. But I'm sure you'll do fine.” And with that, she stepped into the glowing portal, vanishing.

“And so it was that our very first dentist was also actually a time-traveler! Isn't that something?”

Apple Bloom stared at her Granny in some amazement, some confusion. “I—I don't remember that part of the story.”

“Oh, that's another one of the parts that didn't make it in the common rumor mill.”

The fillies looked skeptical, and did not notice the look of amazement and understanding on Dexter's face. He muttered to himself, time and again—“She was telling me the truth.” Finally Granny Smith noticed him doing so.

“Pardon, young'n?”

“She—she told me the truth.” Dexter stood up. “Apple Bloom—I'm sorry—tell Miss Applejack I went to the library. I need to talk to Miss Twilight Sparkle. I need to apologize to her.”

And completely swimming in the past, the future, and in anything but the present, the prisoner of war rushed out of the Ponyville Senior Center.

The Procession

The chariot descended through the clouds, borne aloft by the two pegasus ponies in gray uniforms.

“Where shall we set down?” asked the senior of the two, to their unicorn passenger.

“The library. Ah, it is…” Foggy Night peered down at the town below. “…that large tree, there.”

“A library, Comrade Commissar?”

“Yes.” The old unicorn frowned. The Golden Oaks Library had once been an annex of the Royal Canterlot Library, sometimes holding rare books for it—and the Royal Canterlot Library was not in good shape. Revolutions, lost records, lost personnel, deliberate sabotage—no evidence of the Elements of Harmony was to be found in Canterlot anymore. But simply saying that would not be enough to satisfy ~~Her Majesty~~ Comrade General Secretary ~~Nightmare Moon~~ Luna.

Wheels touched down on the grass, and Foggy Night disembarked.

“Do you require an escort, Comrade?”

“In a library? I should hope I can handle myself. Keep watch over my chariot, Comrades.” The pegasus ponies saluted, and the unicorn trotted up to the door of the great tree, adorned with windows and greenery and balconies and other expansions—a product of a much older time, fashioned as much by earth pony magic as by nature, given that the tree still lived despite being hollowed out.

He pushed the door open with his hoof and trotted right in.

“Uuuuwaaaaah!” a small purple unicorn mare cried inarticulately, jumping up onto her hooves. Next to her was a human, brown in mane, clad in denim blue garments. It stood up, quietly, respectfully. They had apparently both been seated at a low table; there were two cups of some hot drink between them.

Foggy Night peered at the human. “Identify yourself.”

After a moment’s hesitation, it blurted out: “Dexter, Christopher George, Private, 078-05-1120.”

He blinked, recalling the name. “You were assigned to labor at Sweet Apple Acres. Why are you here?”

The unicorn mare started speaking quickly. “Comrade Applejack simply sent him over to retrieve a reference guide on orchard management!”

“This required tea service?”

“No, we just—I had never had a chance to—I mean—”

Foggy Night smiled, though more like a wolf than like a pony. “At ease, Comrade. This is not an inspection. Have you gotten the human his book?”

She stammered. “Er, no, not yet, I just—”

“Then provide him with it, so that he will not keep Comrade Applejack any longer.”

The mare hurriedly ran to a shelf, summoning a book down and letting the human take it. “Oh! And she’ll want these other materials, too….” Another pile of loose leaf documents was set atop the book, which the human was holding up too high for Foggy Night to see clearly. “That…should be everything! Okay, bye!”

He watched as the human carefully stepped out, and then turned his gaze back to the mare. “I will aim to make this quick, Comrade. Provide me with all materials this library has regarding the Elements of Harmony.”

She smiled nervously. “I’m…not familiar with those.”

“Then check the card catalogs. I can wait.” He sat, and stared at her. She gulped, and moved to the card files at one end of the room, opening drawers with her magic. As she flipped through them, he nodded, speaking. “You are Twilight Sparkle, are you not?”

“Um…yes,” she said, distractedly, as she magically shuffled through the cards.

“Your older brother was…a Shining Armor, I think. Perished during the Revolution, no?” He didn’t wait for a confirmation. “I remember now, yes. Cadet Shining Armor; killed in battle by revolutionary forces while failing to defend Princess Cadence from her deserved fate. His parents—your parents—met a similar end, I recall?”

His eyes were not strong, but he thought he could see the tears in hers, as she lifted out a card and walked to a shelf.

“I am not my family,” she said, her voice thick with stress, as she pulled down a thick tome. “I am a member of the Lunar Republican Party in good standing.” She plopped the book down in front of him.

“Of course you are, Comrade. Hmm. Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide. How shockingly convenient.”

“It was under ‘E’.”

He flipped through the book’s pages, finding where the last known location was—a former royal palace, now located within the Everfree Forest. If it were there, wouldn’t Luna have already found it? “I will be checking this out, Comrade Sparkle. I expect my Commissar status will adequately substitute for my lack of a library card?”

“There you are!” Applejack cried, trotting up the lane to Dexter, as he approached, carrying a book. “I heard you ran off, so I was gonna send Rainbow Dash after you, but then I heard you were gonna go see Twilight Sparkle, so then I was just mighty baffled. What happened?”

“I…” he began, walking alongside her back towards the farm, “…have had a very confusing day.”

“You’re a thousand miles from home, a prisoner of war alongside a species that ain’t yours, and talking to Twilight makes it a confusing day.” She puffed her cheeks, and then exhaled. “Yep, I could see that.” She looked up at his face; it seemed still contorted by thought. “Well, did it all make y’all feel any better?”

“Not so much better as different, ma’am. But I can work, ma’am.”

“Then help me work on some fences and talk to me about what happened,” she said, worried. She herself couldn’t nail down why—maybe he was in danger, maybe he was the danger—but she at least knew that she was worried about him.

“You are the human I need,” Celestia said, as the two stood weightless in an endless field of twinkling stars.

She waved a wing, and a pool of stars began to swirl in many colors, and then within that pool images began to take shape. He knelt by the pool, and peered into it, as she continued to speak.

“If humans and ponies did not share a world, then your problems would be yours and pony problems would be ponies’, and each of us we would solve our own. But we share a world, and there are no human problems and no pony problems: there are only our problems. And to our problems, there can only be our solutions. Time and again and again.

“Sometimes, your role is very great indeed.” Her horn glowed, and the pool showed a world of centuries past—tree-covered hills surrounded by red badlands, and zooming into that image, a great battle taking place—thousands of humans against hundreds of dragons. Dexter peered closer, and he began to hear sounds, as well, coming from the pool.

The largest dragon snarled, slamming a great claw on the ground, which narrowly missed a man, dark-skinned and dark-haired, clad in light hides for armor and wielding a long spear. “You treacherous human! You dare attack us during our sacred time, during the Great Migration?”

The human danced to one side to avoid a breath of flames. “You did not leave humans alone during their sacred days, their seasons set aside to peace, diplomacy, marriage or birth!”

He rolled underneath the dragon’s belly, and then all the way out the other end before the dragon’s claws could pin him there. “No longer will we stand aside, Thunderbirds, giving you leave to make your nest in the lands of our children’s children while you ravage the villages and camps of innocent people in faraway lands.”

With one strong hand, he grabbed a horned scale on the dragon’s side, and hurled himself up onto its back. “Remorseless, destructive, and greedy, no spark of conscience moves your stone hearts.”

The dragon thrashed, but he held on, methodically working his way up to the back of its neck, still holding his spear. “Every living Thunderbird is gathered here this day, and I swear this, Eldest One: every living Thunderbird will fall this day at the hands, arrows, slings and spears of the Seven Council Fires!”

“Were it not for humans,” she said, as the image dissolved, “such an extreme measure may or may not have been necessary—but were it not for them, such an extreme measure certainly never could have been possible. At other times, your role has been smaller, though necessary: buying us time, for instance, against some great evils.”

In the midst of a great desert there was a great white city—the humans who lived there were fighting and fleeing a great swarm of winged and horned quadrupeds, perforated and glossy black. Looking closer, at a great square inside the city, at the center of an arrayed horde, there was a raised dais—and on that dais, there stood a tall bearded man in a long white robe; beside him, picking herself off the ground, was a woman dressed similarly in white.

The tallest of the glossy black quadrupeds, wearing a mane of sickly blue, stalked towards him, licking her lips with a forked tongue.

The man clutched his heart and spoke, glaring into her eyes. “Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, once allowed the lands of His children to fall into the hooves of the faithless ponies, to test our commitment to struggle in His name. He has allowed this day to come—for me to be surrounded by my foes, and foes wearing the faces of my friends—and this test I will endure.”

He turned for a moment and looked at the monsters swarming over the city, the fires growing. “You have taken from me my army, my fortress, my city, my sword, and my rifle all. But you have left me armed still with three things: Allah; my faith in Him; and my love. In this, you have erred fatally, O Evil Queen.”

He clenched the hand of the woman, and together they stood, looking fiercely into the eyes of the queen.

“My bride, stand beside me: together, our love shall see an end to this foe.”

“Did that work?” Dexter couldn’t help but ask, softly, as the image faded.

“It…delayed the changelings. Sufficiently. And, at other times still, humans are catalysts—the problems would be solved entirely by ponies, but the presence of humans helps to cause ponies to solve them faster.”

In the midst of a vast, ice-covered cavern, three ponies—one earth, one unicorn, one pegasus—walked free, while many others were trapped frozen in wintry prisons of ice as cold as their hearts. And among the three ponies who still roamed free, there stood one man, pale in skin, blond of hair, wrapped in furs and laughing uproariously, as he looked upwards—upwards, at a circle of ghostly horses, their every hoof beat and every snort pushing out a deadly chill.

“Scream all you like, beasts, stamp at the sky with your flint hooves and snort your fire and frost—for I am Norse! The winter’s breath and death did not frighten me when I was an outlaw among my own people! Nor when I came viking in the distant shores beyond Greenland! And it frightens me still less now, surrounded by good friends as I am—talking tiny horses colored like the spring flowers though they may be—with mead and cider sufficient to see me and us through the final twilight.”

He heaved with breath, and threw back a tankard of cider, wiping it off his beard and laughing. “So rage on, you beasts! Your fury brings me laughter! Smart Cookie, stoke the hearth; and Clover the Clever, another round—the Sagas say this night will last three years, and we will not spend another moment of it cold or sober!”

“Those three ponies would have come across that solution sooner or later, but the human’s presence brought them to it much faster, saving them all a lot of pain.” Celestia waved her wings, and the pool dissolved back into colors. “When ponies already have all the pieces to deal with a problem, sometimes a human is needed to make them come together to solve it before there can be too much more pain. Sometimes I need a catalyst.”

“You need…me?” he asked, quavering.

“You will make something happen that otherwise would take too long.”

“No—no, that’s not me. I’m…not a courageous man.”

She smiled softly. “You say that as if to convince yourself. I have used your family before, and the blood of Jack Hartmann still runs in your veins.”

“You what?”

A fresh image conjured in the pool, one Dexter could scarcely understand—a giant bear and a time-traveling unicorn seemed to be involved. He shook his head.

“There have to be thousands of other American prisoners of war. You want a warrior, a hero like Jack—look to them.”

“If I needed a warrior, I knew where to find one.”

“Well, if you want a man of peace, you need to look somewhere else, too! They called me a pacifist, but I couldn’t stand up for those beliefs; I was too afraid of prison and I couldn’t convince them that my beliefs were sincere.”

Her wings pushed strongly on his shoulders, twisting him in the weightless ether so that he was staring eye to eye with her. Celestia’s eyes burned deep into him, and her voice became stronger, less of air and more of fire.

“If I needed a true pacifist, or a charismatic and convincing speaker, I knew where to find one of those, too. I am here to call you, Christopher George Dexter. You are the human I need.”

He very likely shouldn’t have told Applejack all of that, but he was a long way from home, a long time from seeing a face he considered friendly, and though he was no stranger to keeping his thoughts to his self, the isolation had pressed deeply—and this orange earth pony seemed a friendly enough ear.

“But y’all didn’t believe it?”

“It was unicorn magic. That could’ve been anything, I guess—hypnosis, mind control, whatever—I wasn’t going to believe it until your grandmother started talking about the exact same things Celestia showed me.”

Applejack quietly regarded whether the word of Granny Smith would be enough to get her to believe something really strange, but decided not to push it. “So whaddaya reckon Celestia wants from ya?”

“The first thing is simple,” she said, trotting through a hall of mirrors, each showing other places, times, and worlds. “A world with humans is necessarily a world without dragons. In a world without dragons, my most faithful student lacks an important assistant. Without that assistant, she struggles to make the friends she needs to do something important.”

“She wants y’all to help Twilight make friends,” Applejack deadpanned. “Princess Celestia, Goddess of the Sun, had to personally come and talk to y’all so our librarian could make some friends.”

“Probably not,” Dexter admitted, twisting wire through a fence post. “She said that was the ‘first thing’, implying there are others—but she doesn’t want to tell me them yet, or maybe at all—whatever it is she really wants, I do this first and that probably puts me in place to do what she really wants.”

“And are y’all gonna do that?” She tested the tautness of the wire with her hoof, and smiled briefly in satisfaction.

“If you let me.”

Applejack paused, taken aback. “What? What’s my say-so got to do with anything? I mean…oh, right. Well, yeah…we still got work to do and all, but I guess in your free time…shoot, I hate this.”

“Ma’am?”

She took off her hat and spat on the ground. “This stupid arrangement they’ve got. Why can’t y’all just be a farmhand, live-in hired help here for the season? Why you gotta be a—dagnabbit. Why’s there gotta be a war to make things all twisted up like this?”

“Rise and shine, my little ponies! Welcome...to the Ranch!”

Light shone into the darkness as a human guard pulled down the back flaps of the truck. Two others extended the back ramp and let it slam into the hot dust. A fourth waved the ponies forward, and one by one they got to their feet and trotted out. One loud, chubby human in a white cotton suit spoke lazily from his shaded porch as the guards maneuvered the ponies into line.

“Y’all are Uncle Sam’s personal guests at the world’s first and only facility capable of hosting pegasus ponies, earth ponies, and unicorns alike.”

Thunder Lane stumbled in the dust, trying to keep his balance with a set of leg chains.

“Now, I don’t know how well y’all got along with each other back home, but we got all kinds here, and you’re going to fit in real good. Of course, in case you get rabbit in your blood, and you decide to take off for home, you get shot at until we catch you, and a quad of leg chains to keep you slowed down just a little bit more. Now, for your own good, you’ll learn the rules. It’s all up to you—I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean son of a bitch. It’s all up to you.”

A prod with a rifle evened up Thunder Lane’s place in line, and he idly tested his wings—he could move them, barely, but he couldn’t spread them properly, feeling some kind of resistance.

“Rule one, no flying, no magic. If you’re of the pegasus persuasion, y’all might’ve noticed some little metal bands on your wings. Now, the feel of them will get familiar real fast, but even if them come off, it’ll take a little while for you to bend them back into flying shape. We’ve lost one featherbrain already—fella didn’t realize that, jumped from the water tower trying to escape, thinking his wings would still work. Or, hell, maybe he was trying to end it all. We’ll never really know what went through his mind—except the ground itself.”

He glanced up and down the row—other pegasus ponies, but only a few from his unit. No sign of Sergeant Meadow Song. Thunder Lane wouldn’t have figured on his sergeant, already weak from poison, to have survived, but he quietly hoped that he at least took a few more bastards down with him when he went.

“As for the unicorns—not that we’ve got any on this bus—well, we’ve got a little something for them too, that works wonders. Suffice to say, we catch any of y’all trying to get them rings off their horns, we call that an escape attempt, and that...well, that just ain’t healthy.”

That…is really bad, Thunder Lane realized. If the humans have developed a countermeasure to unicorn magic…that’s really bad news.

“Rest of the rules will come. You just pay real close attention to them, and you’ll get through this war all safe-and-sound. And ain’t that just what we all want?”

The white-suited human took his seat again, and the line was set to moving again by the guards, towards the third of a row of low, squat stables.

Thunder Lane marched with the rest of the ponies, panting through the sweltering heat—parts of Equestria got this hot, and parts got this humid, but he didn’t think anypony lived somewhere that was so bad on both ends. The shade of the stable, while not air-conditioned and thus as humid as the outdoors, was a positive relief.

Here, along with the guards, another chubby human in a white suit was waiting—Thunder Lane assumed it was a different one, though it could be hard to tell humans apart; they came in so few colors—and tossing folded clothing at them. Striped, cotton, light blue: shirts and pants both.

“Them clothes got laundry numbers on them. You remember your number and always wear the ones that has your number. Any pony forgets their number spends a night in the box.”

107459, Thunder Lane tried to memorize, as the human threw a set of gray towels down on a wooden table in the stable hallway.

“These here towels you keep with you to wipe your muzzle after chowing or drinking. Any pony loses their towel or shows me a dirty muzzle spends a night in the box.

“There’s no playing buck-ass or fighting in the buildings. You got a grudge against another pony, you fight them Saturday afternoon. Any pony playing buck-ass or fighting in the buildings spend a night in the box.

“First bell’s at five minutes of 8:00 when you will get in your stall. Last bell is at 8:00. Any pony not in their stall spends a night in the box.

“There is no smoking over any straw-covered surfaces, in or out of doors. To smoke you must be over a solid cement or asphalt surface. Any pony caught smoking over straw-covered surfaces spends a night in the box.”

Thunder Lane wasn’t aware, personally, of any ponies that smoked. But apparently it was something very important to the humans; they always made provisions for it: even their Red Cross parcels had has cigarettes.

“Your stalls get two sheets. Every Saturday, you put the clean sheet on the top, the top sheet on the bottom, the bottom sheet you turn in to the laundry colt. Any pony turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box.”

One of the other pegasus ponies from Thunder Lane’s unit began to speak, apparently confused by the sheet-in-a-stall concept—sheets went on beds, straw went in stalls—but the human’s speech plowed straight ahead.

“No pony’ll sit or stand in the stalls with muddy hooves. Any pony with muddy hooves sitting or standing in the stalls spends a night in the box.

“Any pony don’t bring back their empty cider bottle spends a night in the box.

“Any pony loud talking spends a night in the box.

“You got questions, you come to me. I’m Carr, the floor walker. I’m responsible for order in here. Any pony don’t keep order spends a night in...”

The human glared at Thunder Lane, who had started to mutter the end of the human’s sentence for him, and walked right up to him, hard-eyed.

“...the box. I hope you ain’t going to be a hard case.” He blew a puff of cigar smoke into Thunder Lane’s face.

Thunder Lane silently shook his head.

“Where the hell are we?” he managed to ask one of his fellows, as the chubby human walked out of the stable.

“America?” the orange pegasus colt replied with a shrug. “And they called this place ‘the Ranch.’”

“Right but—it’s a big place, America.”

“Florida,” was the reply of a big brown earth pony, trotting into the room. “And past the fences, there’s a swamp full of lizards that can eat a pony in two bites, in case you aren’t clear on what kind of place Florida is.” The pony, a stallion with a steel I-beam for a cutie mark, eyeballed Thunder Lane. “Sergeant Beam, Second Mareland Heavies; captured four months ago in Texas. You?”

“Thunder Lane, Corporal, Fifth Pegasus Recon.” He glanced around. “Raid on an armory in Nebraska. It was either a set-up or the humans have some new sensors we weren’t briefed on, because it was a slaughter. How bad is this place?”

Sergeant Beam gestured with his head, and Thunder Lane and the orange pegasus pony followed him to the stable’s back exit, out into the yard. “The weather would get pegasus ponies brought up on charges if it ever happened back home, the wildlife past the fences would fit in the Everfree, and you’ll be pulling a plow for Uncle Sam six days a week, eight hours a day, sunshine permitting. The food’s pretty bad, but there’s plenty of it; nopony goes hungry unless they’re just that picky an eater.”

“Anypony ever escaped?”

“A few cleared the fences back when I got here. The lucky ones got caught by the guards. The unlucky ones got caught by the ‘gators. The really unlucky ones got caught by the guards’ dogs. Word of advice: stay clear of the unicorns. The humans don’t have a handle on what all unicorns can do, so they get pretty jumpy.”

Thunder Lane snorted. “Hell, I don’t even know what all unicorns can do.”

“Whatever it is, it’s not enough to get us out of here—past whatever trick the humans did to them—but it’s enough to make them nervous. You won’t get tagged for a ‘special security interview’ if you’re never seen talking to a unicorn, I’ll put it that way.”

“And if I want to escape?”

“Then leave me out of it; I’m more a fan of surviving until a prisoner exchange. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to some of the others.”

“Move it, human!” shouted a guard, unnecessarily, as Michael Kurier jumped up into the train car. He nodded at the five men already seated, and sat on the bench next to them. The guard kept his battle saddle trained on them, while another earth pony in uniform checked the cuffs on their hands and feet.

“All secure,” the second guard said, while eyeballing Kurier. “They’re ready to move out.”

The two ponies stepped out of the train car, and a third guard on the outside shut the side door of the train car with ponykinesis.

The six men sat for a moment in the dimly-lit train car; it was meant for cargo, not passengers, with the benches clearly welded in later.

“Anyone know what the hell’s going on?” another man asked—David Portillo, one of Michael’s fellow corporals from their unit.

“We’re being sent to Fillydelphia,” Michael replied, testing his cuffs. “They think we might be a security risk.” Click. “Looks like they might have been right.”

The wheels of the train whined on the track as the distant engine began to chug to life.

David stared at Michael’s cuffs, now clearly undone. “We got a plan?”

“We sit tight for now. Let the train take us north for a while, while we get everyone quietly unshackled. Sometime tomorrow, we should be near Canterlot.”

David nodded. “You’re senior here, and you know what you’re doing. Lead on, Mike.”

The Prize

“I assure you, the defense of this city from the pony menace is absolutely my utmost priority.” General John Tear straightened his tie on his uniform and looked into the camera. “We know that the enemy possesses a ponykinesis capable of completely overcoming the will of man. Therefore, the loss of an American city, even temporarily, to the enemy is completely unacceptable: they could create tens of thousands of fifth columnists to subvert our Republic. So do not worry, Denver: this city will not fall to the ponies. But we need your cooperation with all wartime measures. I will summarize them briefly….”

“ ‘Better fried than foaled’,” someone behind the camera muttered, repeating Tear’s signature line. This was edited out before the broadcast.

“Impossible,” Lightning Dust (Lieutenant Colonel, Second Cloudsdale Squadron, Shadowbolt Candidate School Graduate) whispered to herself as she flew over the valley. She turned a tight arc for another flyby, looking closer; her hooves were just over the ground. The path between the two rocky ridges was narrow and winding, cut by an ancient stream that was now little more than a creek after the spring runoff had faded, but it was there, and it was empty. The enemy had been here, the tracks were obvious, but that unit had moved on—and nothing had yet replaced it.

“Hawk Four, report in,” was the call on her radio headset. She was quick to reply.

“Command, this is Hawk Four. Valley Seven-Four is empty. No human defenders, no mines, nothing.”

“…are you sure, Colonel?”

“Positive. Command, if we push through here now….”

“Understood. Keep the area under surveillance; we’re moving some units up now!”

“Double-time, Command! Opportunities like this don’t come twice!”

A radio operator confirmed what he was hearing, verifying the authentication of the sender, before shaking his head and sliding a marker out onto the large map table in the Denver Defense Command Headquarters. “Contact report, major Papa unit, possibly division-size and growing, combined arms, at grid square T7-43.”

General Tear set down his handset, looking in horror. “That’s inside our lines. That’s…they’re out of Clear Creek Canyon! That’s not possible! Check-ins from all line units!” He glared at the map board—all of his units were where they should have been; small pegasus units might have been able to fly over or around the defense lines but no major heavy unit could have possibly bypassed them unnoticed.

The radio operators hurriedly contacted the American units the map table said should have been handling the defense of all possible routes through the mountains in that sector. After a few minutes of this, one of the operators used a long forked pole to move one of the American units from its place on the board to a location five klicks south. “Navigational error; this combat brigade took the wrong exit on the highways and reinforced the wrong valley.”

The resulting hole in the lines made it very clear how so many ponies could have gotten such a large unit so far in.

“Goddammit! Get a pocket around these assholes, we’ve got to keep this contained.” He looked again at the map. Too many of his forces were too dispersed, engaging other pony units at what had been the front line of battle—at least twenty klicks to the west—and couldn’t be safely pulled back to join the defense. What he had left on the ground might be able to stop a combined arms division—if he could enough of it there in time.

While his operators began to coordinate the defense, he strode quickly to his office, just down the hall, and opened the safe under his desk. Checking his watch, he flipped through a certain unlabeled notebook from that safe; he checked his watch again, and scribbled a note on his desk. The bomber will take forty-seven minutes to arrive. It can be recalled at any moment, but for safety’s sake the abort code should be issued no less than forty minutes after the order is given. If recalled, it can stay…, he paused, jotting more notes down on his desk, checking numbers. …on station, ready to complete the attack run, for up to six more hours, by which point its relief will be airborne and available to make the attack run in its place. That seemed, to him, like adequate time to get the measure of the defense and determine whether the most drastic action would actually be necessary. He picked his desk handset up, and adjusted the dial. “Flash. Starling Command, this is Delta Hotel Quebec. Transmit to Crane Two the following: Code Charlie Four Charlie, Foxtrot Golf Delta, One Three Five; I say again: Code Charlie Four Charlie, Foxtrot Golf Delta, One Three Five.” He waited for confirmation, and set the handset down, closing his eyes for a moment. “May God have mercy on our souls.”

A bit less than five miles above sea level, near the border between South Dakota and the Wyoming territory, there flew a large aircraft. Its crew called this class of aircraft a “Big Ugly Fat Fellow”, or words to that effect; they named this particular bird the “Lady Eunice”, after their old commander’s fiancé.

Captain Kubicki, the electronic warfare officer, glanced at the CRM-114, the readout of which was quickly flipping, settling on a received signal of C4C-FGD-135. Coded orders over the CRM-114 were routine for a craft such as this; he checked the codebook for this entry.

The command prefix checked out for the day, which would authenticate the veracity of the orders; there was about a one in forty-six thousand chance of the enemy guessing the correct prefix, and the CRM-114 would have alerted if there were a rapid series of incorrect transmissions. Captain Kubicki noted this and moved onto the mission code.

On seeing it, he dropped his pencil and swore.

“Major Heinz? We’ve just got a message on the CRM-114. It decodes as an attack run.”

After a few seconds, the reply came back on his headphones. “Goddamn, Kubic, you sure?”

“Yes, Major.”

“Well, shit. Looks like our war with Papa finally got hot enough. What’s the target?”

“I don’t recognize the profile code, sir—135.”

“Shit, well that ain’t Canterlot or Salt Lick or nothing. Hold on, I’ll be back to check.”

“This isn’t going to work, Colonel,” a golden unicorn said, shaking his head at Lightning Dust. “We’ve been detected too early.”

They were out of the valley, spreading out onto a mesa that overlooked a substantial portion of the city, but were already under fire by human infantry—the emerging ponies and arriving human reinforcements had caught each other by surprise, and the long lines of both units were shooting at each other.

“You want the enemy to just give us victory, sir?” she asked him, annoyed. He may have had the one star of a brigadier general, but it was for political reliability, not for guts, or for that which distinguished stallions from geldings.

“This is too risky—we’ve got to—”

And then he stopped complaining, a stray bullet which whizzed from the American lines removing the obvious physical distinction between unicorns and earth ponies; his consciousness and heartbeat as well were also rapidly removed.

There was, strictly speaking, a full rank between Lieutenant Colonel and Brigadier General, and Lightning Dust wasn’t even a particularly senior Lieutenant Colonel.

In the chaos of the battlefield, the opal pegasus found it difficult to care about these little details.

She screamed at the captains of two earth pony units nearby that didn’t seem to have caught on. “B and C Company! Push hard and get up close! We’ve got the advantage at close range and they’ll call down fire missions on their own heads!” She spun to a group of unicorn staffers. “You four! In about a minute there’s gonna be an artillery barrage and a lot of us are gonna die! Triangulate the origin batteries if you survive!”

“Yes ma’am!” was the only reply.

Lightning Dust pulled down her headset microphone and pushed to talk. “Baker Squadron, Oboe Squadron, Victor Squadron—you’re my fastest fliers. In about a minute you’re gonna get triangulations on some origin batteries—when you do, you go after those damn guns, wherever they are!”

“Acknowledged!”

She turned and galloped towards a rear unit just pulling up into the staging area. Dozens of large earth ponies were pulling two-ton weapons—quadruple-barreled heavy machine guns—behind them. “Get those ZPUs ready to fire! Enemy air support is coming!”

The enlisted ponies nodded, and began shifting the levers—in thirty seconds the area was bristling with anti-aircraft guns.

Major Heinz had not liked the result the first time he checked the page he had pulled from the commander’s safe, so he placed a ruler on the grid and ran his finger down it again.

“Captain, you’re sure that was mission code Foxtrot, Golf, Delta?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well that doesn’t make any damn sense! Don’t those idiots know what we’re carrying?” He shook his head, swearing. “Of course they do, that’s the mission code for our arsenal, all right.”

“Major Heinz, sir,” the navigator asked, “what’s the problem? What’s our target?”

Heinz didn’t answer directly. “Kubic, patch me through to SAC somehow.”

The mesa was rocked by blasts as American shells burst, and a few seconds later, large ghostly green arrows appeared in the air, gesturing towards distant targets. Lightning Dust picked herself out of the dirt and smiled with satisfaction as her squadrons jumped into the air and zoomed off on swift wings to attack the human artillery.

“Warthogs coming in from south!” was the warning on her headset, and she turned to see the ugly, low-flying American guns with planes built around them. The tracer fire from the anti-aircraft guns under her command danced against their approaching silhouettes…and as far as she could tell, did absolutely nothing, as the pair of planes flew past, leaving a sound of ripping, a cloud of dust, and untold numbers of her ponies so much dog food behind them.

“Those things are like tanks,” she muttered. She jumped into the air, looking around on wing, surveying her options. Finally, a least-worst appeared to her. She dashed down to a small group of pegasus ponies—four of them.

“Ma’am?” they asked, saluting.

“You all ready to earn a Hero of the Lunar Republic?”

The honor vested in the HLR was great, greater still the pension. The former attached to the awardee themselves; the latter, usually to the next of kin.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Then each of you grab a mortar shell and save the lives of this whole division before those Warthogs come back.”

Lightning Dust held out her hoof expectantly. Understanding came quickly, as the four ponies each nodded, removed their dog tags with their wings, and laid them across her forehoof. She slid them in the front pocket of her uniform and saluted. She hadn’t had time to check for their names or ranks, but between the four of them there weren’t more than five stripes. It was still only their due that they be saluted for what they were about to do.

She watched them take off, each clenching a heavy mortar round between their legs, and she herself flew back towards her field command station—which was to say, where the former commander’s body was still lying and where some unicorn staffers were hastily performing battlefield calculations and monitoring enemy transmissions. In her short flight she caught a glimpse of a row of approaching APCs, and diverted her course to the nearest artillery group she could find.

“We’ve got a line of Green Dragons coming up the highway—get some shells down on them before they roll us up!” She tapped the side of her headset radio. “Gimme a flyer up by the highway, need them spotting for…”—here Lightning Dust stopped to actually check which earth pony unit she was talking to—“…C Battery, that’s C as in Charlie. This you, Parasol? Great, stay alive out there.”

She stopped and looked up, as the earth ponies cranked their guns to wheel around into firing place. She had been listening for the sound through the chaos, and thought that she heard—yes, the Warthogs were coming back. And streaking towards them, flying as fast as they could manage with their loads—for three of them, barely faster than a Warthog’s stall speed; for the fourth, impressively near their cruise speed—were her heroes.

The first was in and in fast; an explosion blew apart the left engine of the left Warthog. The realization of what was happening gave the other Warthog enough warning to get its gun firing at the approaching pegasus ponies, instead of at Lightning Dust’s ground troops—which was half her goal anyway—but the guns were not designed for air-to-air combat against targets like these.

Of course, it only took one bullet to take out one of her ponies, especially when that bullet was more than an inch wide, and the Warthogs could put more than a thousand of them out in twenty seconds. One of her fliers disappeared into a blast of pink chunks and bloody feathers, leaving a falling mortar shell somewhere over enemy lines, and the last two—

Success. Two more explosions cost one Warthog the last of its engines and the other its first. The merely wounded Warthog shot past her unit, smoke trailing, and the other was coming down fast—very fast. Lightning Dust cussed up a blue streak as the Warthog plowed straight into the ZPUs she had deployed a few minutes earlier, destroying the only anti-air cover she currently had and crushing the guns and their operators under twenty tons of airframe and unused ammo. She slammed the headset of her radio. “If that human’s still alive, somepony get him out of that cockpit and make sure he stays that way! And get me some new AA ASAP!”

A radio crackled in a small, dimly-lit room in a non-descript building of Offutt Air Force Base, on the eastern edge of Nebraska. Its designated user leaned forward, and turned up the volume.

“This is Major Heinz of the 843rd Bomb Group. I need verification of an order.”

The operator frowned, flipping through his notebook. “Major, stay in your chain of command. We’ve got enough going on.”

“I’m looking at orders from my chain of command, and they look defective. I need verification.”

“Do they authenticate?” The operator found the listing for Heinz and the 843rd; his aircraft should currently be flying in the Rocky Mountain sector, which was in the midst of a major battle.

“Yes, they authenticate.” The voice on the other end of the radio sounded irritated. The other men in the room stood, looking on with interest, but not enough interest to set down their cups of coffee.

“Then carry them out, Major.” The operator took a long sip of his own bitter drink.

“Look, I’m about to go drop twenty-five megatons here, so maybe you can take twenty-five seconds to verify my goddamn orders!”

Of course the coffee was sprayed across the room, though fortunately, not into the radio or the notebook. “What the hell are you talking about, twenty-five megatons?!”

“We’ve got an order on the CRM-114, decodes as a nuclear attack run using my primary on the city of Denver! Now, take a few seconds and tell me whether I’m really supposed to go kill half a million people, most of them still Americans!”

“NO!” he croaked into the microphone, as the other men in the room quickly scrambled to check their files, radios, and teletype machines. “That is not, I say again, not a valid order! What code did you get?” He flipped open his notebook to the command codes, locating those that would be valid for the bombing group in question.

“Charlie Four Charlie, Foxtrot Golf Delta, One Three Five.”

“MotherFU—” he cut himself off. “Major, bring your bird into Offutt, we’re gonna have a technician check your CRM-114.” He turned to the other men in the room. “No orders from up there, right?” Shaken heads were his response. “We’ve got a goddamn unicorn playing games on our radio….”

“Games, nothing!” his superior replied, approaching from his desk. “They’re into our nuclear command and control network. Where could that order have originated?”

“On a CRM-114?” The operator grabbed a compass and scribed a quick circle on his map. “…half the transmitters in the Central Rocky Mountains or High Plains sectors.”

“Goddamnit. Until a tech can look at that CRM-114 to source the order—shit. What’s the ETA on that?”

The operator pushed to talk. “Major Heinz, what’s your ETA to Offutt?”

“Forty-four minutes.”

The senior winced. “There’s nothing for it. Until we can narrow down the rogue operator, we’ve got to impose E-EMCON. I’ll get the warning to NACOM—the President’s got to know this.”

“Sir, one of the A-10s is out an engine and most of his wing and making an emergency landing at Buckley. His wingman went down in a pegasus suicide attack.”

Tear’s scowl did not lift. “Really needed more than one pass out of them.”

Another radio operator had slightly better news. “Ground spotter reports that the A-10 pilot managed to bring his plane right down onto Papa’s mobile AA.”

This did the trick, at least briefly, for the general’s expression. “Then we can get the gunships on them while the rest of the A-10s get refueled, reloaded, and sortied. Call up all available Cobras and—” He stopped short, as his operators all flinched in unison. “What? What’s wrong?” He pulled up one of the headsets to listen.

“—we say again, radio silence is being imposed throughout this sector. Emergency Emissions Control protocols are in effect.” The announcement ended, replaced with a high-pitched squeal.

General Tear’s eyes widened. “Every frequency?”

The dials on the radio controls were already being spun by his staffers. “SAC is completely jamming us, sir. We’re blind, deaf, and mute.”

Lightning Dust narrowed her eyes. While the infantry were still fighting her ponies hard, if she didn’t know better she would almost say that the artillery seemed to be stepping down—“Colonel!” one of her unicorn staffers cried. “The enemy’s being jammed!”

“What?” She dashed over to her magical intel unit, a group of unicorn specialists who did things she could never comprehend with their horns. “What’s happening?”

“Broad spectrum, full jam, all of their frequencies. A lot of ours, too, except the magically shielded ones.”

“Just this area?”

“No, ma’am. Sounds like region-wide. I think they think we’re in their system, giving bogus orders.”

Lightning Dust bit her lip. “Are we?”

“Not that I know of, ma’am.”

She turned around, back towards the enemy lines. “No radio means no more fire missions, unless the enemy has line of sight or is going to just keep shooting at our last-known.”

“We could withdraw to more defensible positions in complete safety, ma’am,” a very senior, and therefore confident, unicorn staffer offered.

“Yes, yes we could.” She smiled. “Or we could win.”

“Ma’am?”

“Get the order out on our shielded frequencies.”

The static of the radios, the pacing of his guards on the roof above him, and the humming of the air conditioner—these things General Tear knew he heard. The drone of large aircraft overhead he only thought he heard.

General Tear checked his watch and paled. “Goddammit! Aren’t we back in contact yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, get the EW boys together and patch me through some kind of landline to SAC. If this doesn’t lift we’re all dead.”

“Sir?” His most senior staffer hesitated. “If SAC imposed radio silence, there’s got to be a good reason.”

“Landline doesn’t break radio silence. Look, Major, if this silence doesn’t lift in the next eight minutes we’re dust, and in the meantime our boys are getting their asses kicked.”

This statement demanded an explanation, the major thought, but the explanation could probably wait, given the strictness of the deadline.

Lightning Dust hooted in delight as more screams arose from the American lines, and the rifle fire became more erratic—the quick panicked spray-and-prays of infantrymen trying to hold off charging earth ponies at point-blank range.

“Command, this is Victor Squadron.” She smiled again, that being the last of her three artillery-chasing squadrons she was waiting to report in. “Target neutralized; we’ve got four guns still functional.”

“Anypony know how to work them?”

“No ma’am.”

“No worries, we’ll get a prize crew up there ASAP.” She laughed, flush with victory. “Good work, Victor. Stand by for further orders.” She quickly surveyed her surroundings. So far, all she’d managed to do today was slip most of a combined arms division past the enemy’s main line of defense, down a Warthog, and annihilate one or two human infantry battalions. It was a good day for the war…but it had the chance to be a great day, if she acted quickly and decisively.

She set her frequency, and pushed to talk. “All units. The enemy remains on radio silence. We are going to break with tradition a little here and actually win something that matters.” A more discreet pony—or even Lightning Dust herself, when a little less drunk with success—would normally not have dared to say such things. “I want the 14th, 15th, and 17th groups giving me an assault on Buckley. Get me fuel depots and munitions bunkers. You see a chance to keep any aircraft on the ground, take it. 13th, 16th, and anything left of the 18th, same thing, do it to Lowry. Second brigade, you’re going north. Give me Boulder if you get that far. Third brigade, finish killing those bastards and get going east—put half your survivors on Buckley and the rest on Lowry, the pegasus ponies aren’t going to be able to actually hold that ground for long. Fourth brigade, you’re galloping double-time after me and the 19th group.” She took a deep breath, let it out, and grinned, before finishing her order. “19th group, we’re going downtown.”

“I say again, this is General John Tear of the Denver Defense Command, and I need you to end this goddamn jamming! You have my authentication!” Sweat rolled down his face as he checked his watch again. Death, by his measure, was already thirty seconds late.

“I’ve got your authentication, General,” the voice on the other end replied, unimpressed. “Emergency emissions control will be lifted when our situation is resolved.”

“What ‘situation’ is worth the defense of an American city?”

“Papa running amok in our nuclear command and control, General.”

Tear blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“One of our nuclear-armed bombers received a coded order to make an attack run on Denver. Until we can determine the source of that order, we must suppress all communications in your sector.”

That explained, at least, why he wasn’t dead. “That order was legitimate.”

“What.”

“I placed that order so that, in the event the city fell, it would stay out of the enemy’s hands. If the defense was still ongoing I was going to order a standby!”

There was a new voice on the other end of the line. He knew that voice, and knew its owner had one more star on each of its shoulders than he did. “John, you ordered a nuclear attack on an American city? How did you even—that is beyond your authority—how did you even get the codes?”

“I extrapolated. I’m in the group with command codes for a nuclear reprisal in the event of a decapitation strike, and it wasn’t hard to work out the profile code for Denver.” There was no reply on the other end. “Look, I’ll answer for my actions later—but if you don’t lift E-EMCON, we’re losing this city!”

There was another long pause. “John, if you had nuclear attack codes—and the situation was that desperate—why didn’t you at least order an attack on Papa himself?”

“Shit, I didn’t want the Russkies getting in on this.”

The pause was shorter. “Lifting E-EMCON.”

General Tear hung up on the handset, and looked to his radio operators.

“How bad?”

Before his operators could reply, the rattle of machine gun fire on the roof of his headquarters gave some hint of the answer.

The 19th Pegasus Group was dividing—the downtown area of Denver had at least four convenient buildings Lightning Dust wanted, and three of them were on the same block. While one detachment had split off to take the city’s police headquarters, the rest of the unit came down into Civic Center Park and headed off in three directions—some for the state capital building, some for the city hall, and the bulk, including the Lieutenant Colonel herself, for the office building that had been appropriated and reinforced for use as the headquarters for Denver Defense Command.

“Don’t care about anyone with a rifle,” she said over her headset as her group of forty-odd pegasus ponies bore in for a first strafing run to clear out the defenders on the roof and the building’s front, “but if they’re only shooting back with a pistol, think about taking them alive.” She looked back at the end of the first strafing run—she’d lost maybe seven flyers, and in exchange had emptied the roof of living souls. The headquarters building, as she’d guessed, was comparatively lightly defended—without radio contact they hadn’t been able to divert any other forces for their own protection.

“No more preliminaries, fillies. We’re storming it!”

Now windows were breaking, and he was hearing gunfire inside the building. Inside!

General Tear opened his safe, and set an incendiary grenade inside there. He didn’t pull the pin yet. He set another such grenade inside the file cabinet of his office; he didn’t pull that pin yet, either. He checked his Colt M15 General Officers’ pistol—seven rounds, plus one in the chamber. He set the dial on his radio, and spoke into the microphone.

“All stations, this is Delta Hotel Quebec, I say again, Denver HQ. General John Tear speaking. Papa is overrunning our position, I say again, Papa is overrunning the Denver HQ. We will not be able to destroy all of our files and codes. All units must therefore assume that the enemy is going to have our codes. Until trust can be properly reestablished, I am devolving command authority onto local units which can operate without use of radio. No remote fire missions should be carried out until trust can be reestablished. Local commanders have full discretion: you may continue to engage Papa as you currently are, you may join up with other commands, or you may break off and assist the civilian populace in resisting the enemy.” He blinked, refusing to acknowledge any wetness in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, boys. Denver HQ signing off.”

He pulled the pin on one grenade, and shut the safe; he pulled the pin on the other, and closed the cabinet, and drew his gun to the sound of hoof beats approaching down the hall. As white hot flames began to burn, he opened fire at the first head to pop into view—a red-maned green-coated thing. One, two, three, and the pegasus was sprawled, its head a bloody mess. Another figure dove through the door frame, and he squeezed the trigger. Four, five. Though wounded, it lifted itself up, training its battle-saddle on him—Six, seven. It fell, its purple mane and coat now as bloodstained as the other.

More hoof beats approached, from both directions down the hallway.

General Tear raised his gun a little higher. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his name engraved on the walnut grip, but then it was no longer in sight, even in his peripheral vision. One more pony popped into view, this one with a fiery mane and an opal coat.

Plus one.

“Coward!” Lightning Dust muttered as the human fell to the floor, the left side of his head sprayed across the far wall. She sniffed the air, and looked towards the growing flames—incendiaries. Not worth finding a fire extinguisher for the files being destroyed; nothing could put them out that she knew of. But if she acted quickly—she grabbed the file cabinet, which looked a lot lighter than the safe, and pushed it away from its neighbors. The safe might’ve been a lost cause, but it didn’t look like the fire would spread to the desk. She fluttered to the desk, looking for documents, anything she could use.

No, no, nothing…oh. She smiled.

This she could use.

“We are live in three, two, one…” The pegasus pony waved her wing, while another began rolling the camera. This was really more a unicorn’s work, but they weren’t here…yet.

Lightning Dust looked solemn, as she sat at General Tear’s press desk with her fore hooves pressed together. “Attention, people of Denver. I am Colonel Lightning Dust of the New Lunar Republic Pony’s Army. This city has fallen.”

Outside, flights of pegasus ponies were moving to the flagpoles of the major civic buildings—including the four that they had just captured. In moments, the forty stars and thirteen stripes of the American flags were hitting the ground, while the three stars and crescent moon of the New Lunar Republic began to rise in their place.

“I have with me the governor of Colorado, the mayor of Denver, the chief of the Denver Police, and the adjutant to the general of your failed defense command.” She let the camera shift focus, revealing the four men in the background, standing behind her, their hands on their heads. The camera did not reveal the pegasus ponies just to their left and right, battle saddles aimed and ready to fire, but it hardly needed to do so. “Your legislators and city councilmen are also under my control, but they would not fit into this studio. I am presently cooperating with all of these men to ensure a safe and peaceful end to the chaos in your city. As long as I continue to get this cooperation, utilities and emergency services will function and fires will be put out.”

Miles south, flames burned unchecked on Buckley Air Force Base while all personnel took up defensive positions, firing on the advancing earth pony attack force. Artillery shells exploded nearby, as their own captured guns were being turned on them, the bursts walking closer and closer to their munitions bunkers.

“I assure you, I have no intention of interfering with your way of life. I am a soldier, not a political officer. My priorities are: the safety of the ponies under my command, the safety and security of all humans within the confines of the new military government, and adherence to the laws of war such as are recognized by all civilized peoples.”

On the bank of Clear Creek, far downstream of where the original breakthrough had happened, two police officers had taken up positions behind their car and were unloading everything they had. The shotgun was already out of rounds, having taken only three ponies down, and now they were down to their pistols. As they continued firing, a red ponykinetic field appeared around one of the cops, and he struggled. The magic pressed, harder and harder, and he found his gun arm pointing at the back of his own partner’s head. A moment later, after his finger had twitched despite his will, he was made to look into the barrel of his own gun.

“And, I must admit, those priorities are in that order. But as long as you comply with all directives of the military government, no harm will come to you, and those directives will be strictly confined to ensuring the safety and security of all people, equine and human alike. I urge all civilians to stay indoors and continue to monitor this station. There is for the time being a mandatory curfew from sunset to sunrise for all humans, and for all ponies of American citizenship, except for on-duty emergency services workers.”

Lightning Dust wasn’t sure that any such ponies were present in Denver—it seemed foolish for the enemy to let them live so near the front—but it couldn’t help to plant the seeds that maybe such ponies existed. There would be a resistance, and she might as well make suppressing it easier on her successor.

“And I must beg all emergency service personnel, police officers especially, to please stand down at once. If you resist, you will be killed, and then you will be unable to provide the essential, life-saving services your fellow Americans are counting on.”

The people of the downtown area who had not gotten the message screamed and ran as a long column of earth ponies marched up Colfax Avenue, just behind four Patton tanks—American tanks, yes, but American tanks with armed ponies riding atop them and unicorns at the helms, even if their new operators had not yet had time to paint out the American flags on their sides. Some scattered citizens drew what weapons they carried in their day-to-day lives—primarily handguns, here in the urban core—and took up firing positions behind dumpsters or the corners of brick buildings. Response volleys of superior firepower left the alleyways and side streets strewn with blood and debris, and the survivors of a mind to bide their time.

“I know that you’re frightened. These are strange and confusing times. The path forward, the light at the end of the tunnel, the road to a safe and happy ending for you and your loved ones, is this: cooperation. We have no intention of holding this city forever.”

Just south of downtown, heavier earth pony and unicorn units began to make fortifications out of whatever they could—which, given unicorn magic, was quite a bit, including chunks of buildings whose current occupants rather mistakenly thought were still theirs to use. Large guns, for anti-personnel and anti-tank and anti-aircraft purposes, were towed into position against the expected counter-offensive from the American military bases at Colorado Springs.

“When your leaders come to their senses and meet us in peace at the negotiating table, this war will be over. And those of you who stayed calm and cool and rational will be alive and well to see that day.”

The commander of the Second Brigade trotted towards the barricades at the perimeter of the city of Boulder, where a human military officer seemed to be lying, dead or seriously wounded, and a human civilian standing just behind him was waving a white flag. The other defenders all seemed to be civilian militia, with no uniforms to speak of and irregular armaments—but, strangely, the commander thought, they all seemed happy to see him.

“I look forward to speaking with you again. This is Colonel Lightning Dust of the New Lunar Republic, Military Government of the Denver Region, signing off.”