Chapter 1:The Longest Day
It was long two days, course, who was I to complain, it had been a long few days for everyone. When word reached Canterlot that corral harbor had been bombed and germane had declared war on equestria in the same day. The past few months had been nothing but training and more training. However, yesterday, we were told that all our training was about to pay off. So here I am, in a metal box floating towards what I believe will be my demise. As I peered over the low wall of the boat I could see the beaches of Neighmandy, Prance.
BOOM! That’s all I heard before a shell hit next to my boat and threw me out. I should consider myself lucky because, as I rejoined the surface, a squad of germane pilots tore through the upside down boat. My attention was then turned to the beach unexpectedly as a unicorn radio pony jerked me to a boat that made to shore but got blown up. I struggled a bit out of surprise and disgust of the ponies that were torn apart littered the area around the tan unicorn.
“What in the goddess damned name of Celestia is going on?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Our standing orders are to move up the cliff face and clear a staging base for the rest of the force, I’m trying to get air support so you and what’s left of your battalion can take the beach!”, He barked back.
So, I blindly (and stupidly I might add) galloped out of cover and to a few pieces of wood erecting from the red beach. Wait a minute, I don’t remember this part of the beach ever being red, when did this happen? My thoughts were blown away, like the sand next to me lifting me into the air. As I flew, I could see the top of the bunker where the germanes were firing down at me and my comrades. I landed with a thud and a ringing in my ears. For the second time I was grabbed, but not by a unicorn this time. This time it was a red earth pony stallion with an orange mane. When we got to a piece of cover he began to speak.
“Private”, I stood nearly at attention,” I’ll cover and you move to a sand bar that’s about two-hundred meters up the beach, can you make it?” He asked, his voice calm, deep, but somehow audible.
“Yes sir!” I shouted over the fighting,” I won’t let you down, sir!”
With that the red stallion nodded and began to fire his officer issued revolver and I took off running. I saw the sand bar and a few ponies already there at the wall. As I grew nearer to the cover, so did the bullets. As I jumped into a laying down position on the mini hill of sand a bullet nicked my ear, I screamed momentarily, then shortly followed by a sergeant pony slapping me and shouting a few time to hold myself together. He was right, I put down my hoof, grabbed my rifle and put it in my back holster.
“What do you need to do, sir?” I said as I turned to face the sergeant,” to get through the wall?”
He stared at me for a few long seconds and a seemed to be shocked out a trance and starting to bark orders and turned to me,” At the end of the eastern edge of this beach is a pack of explosives, grab it and get it here now!’’
I nodded and took off, bobbing and weaving the bullets as I reached for the pack. As I reached the pack I heard a pony shout” Incoming!”
I turned and a look of horror swept over my face as I saw a Germane Pegasus-unicorn light bomber was shot down, and its flight path right at me! Out of pure instinct, I grabbed the pack and took off galloping at it, hoping it might go over me. It missed me by a little over a few meters, I was almost too late. As I got back to the spot I had been on the sand barricade and handed the explosives to an engineer who stuffed the pack into the hill and started to pull out a coil and a detonator.
“Once the wall is blown, bolt to the nearest wall under the guns, be wary of germane scum!” The sergeant shouted at the ponies on the wall.
Immediately after the explosion, everypony made a run for it. I followed behind two ponies, one, the radio unicorn I had run into earlier and saved my life, in the front was a earth pony stallion with a white coat and a graying mane. Deciding to go third probably saved my life. Not even three steps galloping, and the earth pony got torn to shreds, the unicorn in front of me stopped for but a moment, I hadn’t realized that he stopped and ran into him. The next thing I remember was a BANG! I went down with a thud with what I could see looked like blood on my snout. I looked up and saw the radio unicorn laying on the ground in agony, missing his front left fore hoof.
“MEDIC!” I screamed as loud as I could while dragging around the now present mine field,” I need a medic now, he’s bleeding out!”
Once again, I received a slap from the sergeant and told me to focus on the mission, that if we don’t finish this quickly, the medics won’t be able to get to him. I nodded and took one last look at him as I left my cover to go kill the bastards that decided to put those mines there for him.
As I cleared the mine field I came under fire from a nearby pony and dove behind a piece of wall and quickly pulled my pistol out of its holster and wrapped my tongue around the trigger. As I came around the enemy pony was dressed in a mud spattered gray coat, grey pants, and grey helmet. I had a look of rage as I kicked him in the chest and put three of my rounds into his torso. I don’t know why, but I took me a good three seconds before I looked away. I had never killed another pony in my life until now, he had a look of complete horror painted on his face, dear celestia save my soul, and he looked like he was old enough to get a cutie mark. Seeing that, I was filled with even more rage for the germanes making foals fight this damn war. Shortly after that, another equestrian pony came up to me, with two guns on his sack. He threw me an assault rifle while he used the B.A.R. (Ballistic Assault Reindeer). I put down my gun a pulled the big (and very heavy) metal door and the pony with the B.A.R. was shredded in half by the amount of gunfire. I heard him begin to reload and I grabbed the battle saddle from the B.A.R. pony and put on my body and charged into the bunker and let half the clip empty into the machine gun germane pony. I began to work my way through the tunnels of the bunker not seeing that many troops as I made my way through the bunker further.
I eventually grew to get used to the faded sound of machinegun fire from above. I was making my way up the bunker when I heard an explosion of static and a deep voice, then no static and a second voice. I froze, checked the amount of ammo I had left in my clip and crept forward to the radio and the radio op. As I rounded the wall, the radio pony seemed to be listening to the first voice, seeing that, I crept up and slowly and quietly took out my knife. I then sprang at him and stabbed my knife through his throat and put my hoof in front of his mouth. After I removed the knife from the corpse, I wiped my hoof on his uniform to get the blood he had coughed up, and began to move on towards the top of the bunker. After dealing with a few other ponies I finally came to the final set of stairs. Only one problem, the thing my way was a, at least I think it was a pony, his muscles were bulging out of his uniform to the point that the only thing on him was his hat, even that had a tear. I was going to just shoot him and move on, but I needed the rest of my ammo to clear the gun deck. So, I’ll admit, it wasn’t the smartest thing ever, but I took out my knife and charged at him, hoping to catch him by surprise, but instead he smiled and growled. That’s right the goliath pony growled at me! I tried to stop but only managed to trip over myself and land right in front of him, great. He sat down, which seemed to shake where we were, and picked me up with his forehooves, like a doll. He looked straight at me, still with smile and spoke with a heavy germane accent,” You vittle pony, dinking vat you can come in here and blow us up?” His voice was loud and very deep,”Ve are za Germanes! You cannot ope to defeat us zilly pony!”
With that, he tossed me across the room, my head hitting the wall, with a resounding clang through the metal walls. As I got up and opened my eyes, I screamed as he ran straight at me, so I did the only two things I could think of, jump out of the way and cuss, so, as he charged, full bore at me, I jumped out of the and shouted,” Luna damn you to the moon!”
That seemed to work, because he seemed to get mad, and I mean really mad! Luckily, I landed a couple meters from my knife! I jumped up and scrambled for the knife, as I grabbed it in my teeth I felt a pain in my back left hoof and was being pulled backwards. I was then thrown into the air and hit the ceiling, knocking the breath right out of my chest and left me scrambling for air as I tumbled toward the ground. My fall was interrupted by even more pain to my gut when he gave me a swift buck to the stomach, I felt my crappy breakfast about to become even crappier.
Somehow, I don’t know how, I got up, knife still in my mouth and again charged at him. I shouted with rage and he just smiled and charged at me. I began to prepare to jump over him, but anticipated that and jumped up. However, I didn’t jump, I stayed on the ground while he jumped, exposing his whole body. I used this to my advantage and charged up to him and drove the knife into his stomach and then pulled the knife. As he collapsed to the ground, splayed out, but not dead, he began to get up. I stopped him right in the middle of it by giving him a swift kick to his stomach and he tumbled down again. I then turned back around to face him, an once massive pony, filled with power, towering before me, mocking me, and nearly killing me. I took my knife and wanted to drive it through his throat multiple times, until he stopped moving or breathing, whichever came last. However, I couldn’t do it, he was however, still able to fight, so I let him live, but I sliced his hooves so he couldn’t get up to hurt more ponies, but would still be alive.
After that whole ordeal, I finally took a bit to breath. The massive pony I spared was now unconscious in the middle of the room. I then took a look at my battle saddle that I just remembered I had been wearing and seemed like it still worked, a bit broken but was in enough working condition to empty my ammo on these ponies ahead. I had to use my entire weight to get the door open. After I opened the door, I saw three unicorns and one earth pony. One of the unicorns was using a radio, shouting into it, the earth pony along with a unicorn manned the machine gun, while the third unicorn spotted for machinegun earth pony.
“Die, you sons of bitches!” I yelled as I swept the entire landing, left to right, after I ceased fire, the unicorn pony was slumped up against his radio, the unicorn fallen out due to the gun fire, the half of his body hanging out of the wall, and the third unicorn had fallen into a heap in the far corner.
After I cleared the gun deck, I heard shouting from my right, it was few of the ponies from the sand hill back on the beach
” Hey!” they shouted,” Use the explosives ya got ta blow this sucker to the moon! There are unicorns down below that will catch you!”
“Eyup” The red earth pony from before said.
“Okay” I shouted back.
With that I dropped the leftover explosives that weren’t used to clear the sand hill and set them down in the middle of the bunker and set the rest around the room. Then, after I set the explosives down and were all set, I remembered that I didn’t know who to use explosives. So, again, not the smartest thing, I took out a grenade, held it for about two seconds and dropped it. I then ran my flank off to the edge of the gun deck, jumped, looked down, and was then pushed by a sudden burst of intense heat. When I looked down, there was a sigh of relief because, I saw two unicorns down on the ground, next to the unicorn that had fallen off the gun deck earlier. My attention was then caught by a second explosion from the other bunker, then a resounding cheer, that could be heard all the way to Germaneigh, to complete the whole scene, an aerial squad flew in formation across the length of the beach. While I was happy, I still had a perfect view, while I was being levitated down, of the blood red and body littered beach.
