The Lost Soldier

Nothing to say so I'll just start the chapter.

Ray thought about how he would tell the ponies about being a soldier. Did they even know the concept of war? How will they take this information? Would they just hate him? Thoughts like these flashed through his mind as they neared the library. He briefly thought about not telling them but that wouldn't be very brave of him. Besides that had been fairly nice to them and he owed them an explanation, or at least a brief background of him. He realized that they probably didn't know much about him, nor he about them. Ray sighed as he entered the tree.

"Let me change out of these burned clothes then I'll tell you what I need to" He said dully.

Ray went downstairs and changed into the tan digital camouflage and grabbed the rifle bag. He would need to show it to them as well. Ray checked one last time to ensure that it was on safe and unloaded and walked up the stairs. He grabbed the door knob and turned it, feeling more nervous than the first time he had jumped out of a perfectly good plane with a backpack with a piece of cloth in it.

"What an… interesting design" Rarity commented.

Ray couldn't help but grin. He sat down on the floor with the six ponies and took a deep breath.

"I have a confession to make. Back where I'm from I'm a soldier." Judging from the blank looks on their faces they probably didn't know what war was. "Umm do you know what war is? ... Well let me begin with saying Twilight was partially right, humans are generally violent people, and are capable of horrible things. You see war is when one faction fights another faction for some reason" Ray said "and this fighting is done by soldiers like me" At this a scared look came across Fluttershy and she slowly started to scoot away from him and Rarity and Apple Jack had worried looks on their faces. He had been afraid of this. "Don't worry I'm only violent when I need to be" This relaxed Rarity and Apple Jack but Fluttershy still looked a little scarred. "You see though, as like all job's there are other 'sub-jobs' like in when running a restaurant there are chefs, and there are waiters and so on. Anyways some jobs in the military are generally non-violent, like doctors, engineers, and chefs. However my job is to be a sniper. What a sniper is, is basically someone who specializes in killing others long distances away, they also have to know other stuff because they generally operate alone or in pairs." Ray explained "In fact, do you know the saying 'jack of all trades, master of none'?" Ray asked "snipers can be described as 'jack of all trades master of one. Also, these are called guns, they are what I use when I'm doing my job." Ray pulled out the M4A1 and the M40A5. "The way they work is when you load one of these:" Ray picked up one of the .338 rounds "into one of the guns and pull the trigger, the gun powder in the combusts, the resulting expanding gasses push this upper part of the bullet out the end of the barrel. It then flies into whatever or whoever I aim this that's what I needed to tell you." Ray concluded.

The deafening silence followed was easily one of the most terrifying things that Ray had been through, and he had been through many terrifying events.

"Heh that's ok, you are generally act like what you have been for the past few days then I'm confident enough that you're ok" Twilight finally broke the silence.

"Ya, you even saved my life and that makes you cool in my book any day." Rainbow Dash followed up.

"Thanks girls" Ray replied "Actually, do you want to see what I do? I mean I'll shoot an apple or something, not a pony." Ray said.

"Sure" Apple Jack replied.

"Cool, ok so all I'm going to need is an apple, can you go get one Apple Jack?" Ray asked.

"Sure thing Ray" she replied and went off to grab an apple.

"Ok the rest of you follow me" Ray continued.

He grabbed a spotting scope that had a built in range finder and the sniper rifle and set off to find a nice clear area. A few minutes later he found a large open area surrounded by hills and went to the middle of it. He began to use the laser and range several of the hills.

"750 yards, perfect" Ray murmured to himself as Apple Jack came trotting up with an apple.

"Here ya go Ray" she said.

"Thanks" Ray replied and put it on the ground "This way everypony"

Ray led them up onto the hill he had found and set up shop on top. He turned towards the apple and got into a solid prone shooting position, put his eye to the scope and clicked the safety off. The ponies were quiet as Ray ran calculations through his head for different variables such as wind, humidity and bullet drop. Normally he could use a ballistic computer but he wanted to challenge himself. After zeroing the scope for all the variables he put increased the magnification until he could clear see the apple.

"Somepony want to look through the scope and watch the apple?" Ray asked.

"I'll do it, but I don't know if you can hit that, it's very far away" Twilight said.

Ha! 750 is nothing! Try an apple at 1000 yards plus then it starts to get tricky! Ray thought to himself.

"Ok I see it" Twilight said.

Ray slowed his breathing and his heart rate dropped as he slipped into an icy state reserved for sniping. He transformed into a killer before the pony's eyes and they didn't even know it. Ray slowly pulled the trigger back. Crack! The silenced rifle spat out a supersonic round that reached its target in two seconds. The apple promptly exploded as the supersonic piece of metal hit it dead center.

"Wow" was all Twilight could manage.

Ray ejected an empty cartridge from the rifle and put it back into the case. He would clean it later but first he was going to show the ponies what was left of the apple. After a short walk they reached the unfortunate apple's remains.

"Pretty good Ray" Rainbow Dash said.

"I sure would hate to have you point that at me" Rarity replied.

"Oh my, you have to do that to other humans?" Fluttershy asked.

"Sadly yes, it's not easy to take a life, but sometimes it's necessary to save the lives of others"

With that the group broke up to go their separate ways for the rest of the day and Twilight, Ray, and Rainbow Dash were the only ones headed back to the library.

"What am I gonna do?" asked Rainbow Dash "I can't fly back home"

"Twilight can't you just fix her wing like you did my arm?"

"I guess but I must warn you Rainbow Dash, it will hurt"

"A lot" added Ray.

"It's ok can't be worse than not being able to fly" she replied.

The trio reached the library and went inside, Ray went to go grab a cleaning kit as Twilight prepared to fix Rainbow Dash's broken wing. He started to disassemble the rifle when he heard a pained yelp come from upstairs. He walked up to investigate.

"Rainbow Dash? Are you alright?" He asked

"I didn't know it would hurt that much!"

"I told you it would hurt" came the reply.

"Ok whatever, see you tomorrow everpony" and with that she took off.

"Well I'm going to finish cleaning my gun, I'll be downstairs if you need me" Ray said.

Hi again, I'm back, I hope you enjoyed this brief bit of sniping, and I cannot confirm, nor deny that there may or may not be bloodshed. Also sorry to all you reading this on FimFiction. The only reason this wasn't up earlier was cause i couldn't figure out how to wrok the bold XD.