POV: Brigadier Sergeant Joseph "Badger" Garrance, 1st person.

I looked up as the door opened, already reaching for my rifle. But I relaxed when I saw Jake and Mike. I did stand up, however, when 8 other people came in after them.

Jake gestured for me to come over to him, so I did.

"Badger, allow me to introduce you to some very strange people, with an even stranger story to match." I raised an eyebrow. This'll be good.

"This here is Applejack," I snorted, looked at Jake, smiled, tilted my head meaningfully, and internally wondered whether he was just playing a joke or if he'd cracked somehow.

"I'm being serious. That is her name. And that's one of the less weird ones." I tilted my head the other way, curious. He just nodded.
I chuckled softly for a second, then looked at the next girl that stepped up. "Rainbow Dash" She said, smiling at me. I smiled back Friendly, I like her.

"And then," said Jake, "We have Twilight Sparkle, Firestar, Rarity, Big Macintosh, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. I have no clue what the he** is up with the names, so don't ask." I took a look at all of them.

They all looked like nice people, for the most part I liked them. They looked trustworthy, too.

"Let me get the team." I said. I walked over to the makeshift barracks we had, opened the door, and yelled "Hey! We got some new people, come meet 'em!"

I heard everyone getting up inside, so I went back to the newcomers.

Everyone introduced themselves, ranks and callsigns only.

I knew their names, though. We'd all been a group for almost 2 years, now.

Sergeant Ethan "Cricket" Harper

Sergeant Robbert "Panther" Kidd

Sergeant Bruce "Snake" Woods

Sergeant Major Johnson "Snail" "Tiger" Parrot.

"One thing I wonder, is why John still won't say how he managed to get two callsigns." I said quietly to Ethan after he introduced himself. He nodded, agreeing with me. It wasn't like we hadn't asked. Even his squad didn't know. And he wasn't saying. He just shrugged it off.

"As long as they know the dangers of the world, they could be trusted with anything I'd trust John with. Although sometimes," I said jokingly to Snake, "That's not very much" Snake snorted and laughed. I smiled. We all liked picking on each other. What can we say? We're squadmates. And friends. What else do you do?

After everyone had introduced themselves, Jake grabbed Firestar and brought him to the storehouse.

POV: Firestar, 1st person

"Alright, you look like a guy who can hear a lot without losing it, so I'll tell you this:" Stated Hector. I nodded, and listened. "None of you can be freeloaders, you all have to earn your stay here. We were low before you all got here, and now that we have about 8 more people, supplies will be getting a whole lot lower, a whole lot faster." I nodded.

"It's not like we were planning on just sitting around while you all work yourselves asleep." I replied. "We'll work. And work hard. Applejack and Big Macintosh are farmers, and they're pretty strong. Dash is pretty acrobatic, and about as strong as Applejack is, too. Twilight's got a lot of stuff in her head, and so do I. If there's a puzzle, Twilight'll usually be able to figure it out pretty quickly."

Hector nodded slowly, liking what he heard. "And what about the others? Rarity, Flutters, and the Pinkster?" I chuckled at the nicknames.

"Well, Flutters' pretty quiet, so she can usually hear things a bit before we do... Pinks is really energetic, so she can run pretty fast. Then again, so can Dash. But Pinks is more used to being on the ground than Dash is. Anyways, Rarity... Well... I guess she could make things look good?" Hector laughed.

"Well, good looking stuff is good for morale, so I guess that's useful." He said, still chuckling. I smiled, glad that Rarity had a useful skill that she was good at. "So," I looked back at Hector. "You said you and Twilight were smart, right?" I nodded, curious of where this was going. "How smart? Um... let me give you a good puzzle. And you and her try to solve it. Deal?" I nodded. He walked over to Twilight and explained it to her, and she came over.

"Alright... Let me think for a second... how about this: You're trapped together in a room. There's one window about 15 feet up. No door. You have each other, a broken ladder, and pile of wood. How do you get out?"

"Hmmm..." I thought about it. "How is the ladder broken? and how strong is the wood?" I asked.

"Strong enough for one piece to support you without nothing below it, just the two ends anchored somewhere. And the ladder's broken because all the rungs are gone. Even the slots that the rungs are normally in are empty of anything."
I thought some more. After about half a minute... "Grab the wood, form most of it into rungs, put the rungs in at an angle, so they'll go in, then use the ladder to get to the window." I said. But then Twilight shook her head. "We don't know how big the window is, or if it's closed in some way, or how high up the window is from the ground, and we'd need another ladder to get outside."

"No problem. We'll just make a second ladder out of the remaining wood. Or maybe We'd flip the ladder and tip it through the window whence we've gotten to it. Hector? how big is the window?"

"About one-and-a-half your size tall, and twice that for width. It's got a normal flip-down shutter on it. All you have to do is push it."

"Then the problem is solved!"

Hector nodded approvingly. "That was pretty quick. Alright, you can improvise pretty well." He complimented us. "Oh, and by the way, just call me Jake. Or Jacob, if you prefer."

"Sir!" Badger walked up to Jake. "We really need to get a lot of supplies fast if we want to have them all here for more than a couple days without running out of food."

Jake turned back to me.

"Feel like going on a scavenging run?"

Author's Note

Snake's callsign is not a reference to Metal Gear, but if you want to, you can think of it as one.