No peace for the weary

Rwanda, 2015, 2200 Hours.

The four men rested on the hill observing the small village. The village had been forsaken by the small team. It was a shame that the people in the village had to die, but it was for the greater good. These people had sealed their fate by killing innocents, so it was not time for them to die.

“Messiah, I need you here stat!” Called out one of the men. The leader of the group, code named Messiah walked over to the teams Marksman. He was lying down prone aiming down the scope of his black and green stripped Cheytac Intervention. He was observing the village and was tasked with reporting anything important to Messiah.

“Sir, we have lots of movement, all are armed irregulars. Orders?”

“Keep watch, don't shoot, we do not want to expose our position.”

“Roger.”

Messiah proceeded to leave the teams sniper. He was then called upon by Heretic, the teams communications specialist.

“Messiah, the Tutsi Rebels are awaiting orders. They want to start the mortar barrage, but want to make sure all innocents are out of the village.”

“Tell them that all civilians have been extracted but wait till midnight before shelling the village. By then most will be asleep and the attack will be more successful.”

Heretic nodded and then proceeded to relay Messiah's orders to the Tutsi Rebel commander on the radio.

Messiah walked over to the teams demolition expert, Lucifer. “How's it going?” Messiah asked nonchalantly.

“I'm getting antsy sir.” He racked the slide on his M240B Light Machine Gun. “We should be taking these guys out, not these Rebels...”

“Listen, this is not our fight. We are here to help these people. The Hutu are doing more ethnic cleansing and our job is to help the Tutsi people fight back.”

“But sir, what's the point of all of this? We don't know these people.”

“We're all human, and it is our duty to protect each other. We only live one life, and all of us here on this hill have devoted ours to making the lives of the downtrodden and poor worth living. A life under a gun is not a life.”

Lucifer just nodded and did a very lazy salute. Messiah never really got why his men would salute him, they were not affiliated with any nation or government. He supposed it was just the habits of a military life.

Messiah then proceeded to lean against a tree. He closed his eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep. Hopefully, this short nap would be enough to keep him awake for most of the rest of the day.

Messiah awoke to the sounds of explosions and screams. The Tutsi rebels had commenced their mortar attack, and from what he could hear, it was going to be quite a success.

As Messiah looked at the explosions going off in the village, he picked up his rifle, a Tavor Tar-21. Frankly he thought it was a little too futuristic looking, but internally the gun was amazing and that is what counts.

Messiah then walked over to his team, all of whom were in a defensive posture. All had their weapons aimed at the village, making sure there would be no Hutu soldiers escaping. As Messiah joined the squad, a mortar landed a little too close to the squad.

“Heretic! Tell the Rebels to watch their fire!”

Heretic was shouting in his radio as mortar fire was getting closer and closer to the squad mates.

“Sir! They aren't listening they ju-” Heretic was cut off as a mortar landed right in front of him, his body was torn apart.

“No!” Messiah screamed. As more mortars started to land around the squad, it seems the surviving Hutu soldiers had noticed where quite a few mortars were landing. They started running up the hill to attempt to take out the squad.

Lucifer started firing madly at the soldiers, laughing as he saw men fall down.

“Ha ha ha! This is what I'm talking about! You're dead! You're dead! You're dead! Ha ha ha!”

In a brief moment of clarity, Messiah realized that Lucifer was probably not the best person to be in charge of the teams demolitions and machine gun.

At the very conclusion of that thought Lucifer took a round to the face and fell down.

The team sniper, Jehovah, was also firing his rifle madly. He was too close to hit much with his rifle, so he gave up on that and pulled out his MP7 and was firing madly with that.

“Messiah! I'm running low on ammo! I don't think we're gonna' make it sir! It was an honour!”

“Shut up! We will make it through this!”

Almost immediately after Messiah's words, a stray round hit Jehovah in the throat. Three more followed into his chest.

Messiah was not even fazed. He had seen more death today, that in the past three years. Messiah himself was firing down the hill, hitting several men. It was pretty apparent that this was a lost cause.

Messiah decided to flee. He ran away from the scene of death at breakneck speed. He did not even look back, he could still hear the mortars hitting the village.

Messiah must have been running for at least a mile before he decided to look back. As he looked back he saw the mortars still hitting the now, empty village. More and more mortars were falling until he saw some thing that took his breath away.

“What the...was that...a rainbow streak? No, I must be going crazy.” Messiah then turned around to continue running away from the violence.

He did not now how long he had been running, but the sounds of the mortars could no longer be heard.

He looked around and decided to sleep under some brush until daybreak. Come daylight he would return to the hill to retrieve some ammunition, weapons and his friends dog tags. Even though they were not in any military, they still had ID and Dog tags worked really well for that purpose.

Messiah checked his digital watch and noticed that is was nearly 3:00 AM in the morning. If he wanted any sleep before the daylight came, he would have to do sow right away.

So after he was able to make up some decent camouflage consisting of sticks, leaves and grass. Messiah fell asleep. He did not dream as he so often did, it was simply black until his eyes opened.

He awoke and immediately checked his watch. It was 10:00PM, he had overslept. Still he had to get back to that hill, the mortars would have stopped by now and the Tutsi Rebels would only reach the village by afternoon. Still, no need to waste time.

With that Messiah broke out into a run. Now that he was not worried about getting chased by soldiers, he had some time to enjoy the scenery. Africa was a truly beautiful continent. It was a shame so much blood had been slip over it.

The sky was clear, and crystal blue. There was a slight breeze and it was not too hot. Overall, it was an amazing day. A shame that he would ruin this day by walking to a hill with his friends dead bodies resting on it.

Messiah noticed that the hill was coming up, there was a small plume of smoke rising from the village behind it.

“I hate war...” He muttered to himself. “But this is the life I have chosen.”

As Messiah climbed the hill, he felt his heartbeat quicken. His best friends, no, they were more than that. They were family. They had lived together, trained together, fought together and died together.

“With the exception of me...” He grumbled.

As he reached the top of the hill, it was much worse that he had seen last night. There were bodies everywhere. The white faces of his comrades stuck out easily enough to find, although they had so much soot on their faces, it was still a challenge to spot them.

Messiah looked for Heretic's body, as he had both the radio and Tar-21 Ammo. Heretic was the one who had convinced Messiah to use the weapon. When he actually found heretics 'body' he had wished he hadn't.

Both of his legs were ripped off, one arm was hanging on by a thread and his chest was so mangled it almost made Messiah sick. As he looked at Heretic's holsters, saw both ammo and the radio.

Unfortunately the Radio had been crushed. The ammo was still okay though. After he finished robbing his comrades body, he snatched his tags. He then proceeded to do the same to the same rest of his small team.

Once he had finished grabbing the tags, he looked down at the burning village. There were bodies everywhere. Fires still raged from last night.

As Messiah's well trained eyes scanned the village, he noticed something strange. He had spotted some thing cyan moving slowly.

“What the...” What could be be still alive in that village? Let alone one that had a colour as vibrant as that.

“Well, lets see what it it then...I have to stop talking to myself...”

Messiah walked down the hill with his rifle raised. You cannot be too careful. As he neared the object, he saw it was not moving, but rather writing. In pain possibly? He would soon find out.

He had finally made it into the village and the smell was overpowering. The combination of dead, decaying bodies, cordite and smoke was almost too much. Luckily, he was used to the smell.

As Messiah moved through out the village, he saw a few still surviving Hutu soldiers. He did the humane thing and shot them once in the head, putting them out of their misery. It was hard, but it was the right thing to do.

But now that blue thing, where was it again?  His thoughts were interrupted by hearing a groan of pain. It sounded...female? Female? But the Hutu only have male soldiers. There were more groans and Messiah was determined to find out, if it was female it would be a civilian so he decided to speak out.

“Hello, is anyone here still alive? I'm a friend!” He then remembered that most Rwandans could not speak English.

“H-Hello? Could somepony help me?”

Okay, so not only is there a female but she speaks English? Something is wrong here...and did she say somepony?

“I am here to help! Please tell me where you are.”

“I-I don’t know! T-there a-are bodies everywhere!”

“I know.”

Messiah kept walking towards to voice and what he saw took his breath away. There, was a cyan blue...pony? With a rainbow mane. It was also apparently a Pegasus, although it would not be flying for some time. A large piece of shrapnel had pierced its wing and there was quite a bit of blood around it.

“What the hell?”

The pony looked up and was visibly terrified.

To be fair, she had ample reason, Messiah was not exactly a welcoming sight. He was 6'1ft tall and was incredibly muscular. He was clad in digital woodland camouflage. He had green and black stripped face paint on and a digital woodland camouflage boonie hat. His body armour also made him look even larger. His weapons both in his hands and on his hip made Messiah the very image of intimidation.

“Please don't hurt me!” The pony shouted and then went into the foetal position.

“Y-you just talked! Animals can't talk!” Messiah was flabbergasted. This thing had just talked!

The pony was starting to cry. She was clearly terrified. She had seen a battle and was now seeing a person who was literally ready to kill.

“Hey” He cooed. “ I am not here to hurt you okay?” He started to stroke her mane. “You're not from here are you.”

“Geez” She sniffed. “What gave you THAT idea.” Messiah lightly chuckled.

“ I think the mane gave that away.” He then turned his attention towards the damaged wing. “ That looks pretty bad, come with me and I'll fix it up so it does not get infected.” Messiah then got up and started walking. The pony did not follow right away.

He couldn't really blame her. She had seen so much and was hurt and scared and here some big guy tells her to follow him.

Messiah put on a warm smile. “ I'm not here to hurt you, I just want to help.”

The pony slowly trotted over to him, she had a pretty bad limp. After watching the pony imp towards him for about thirty seconds, Messiah gave in. He went over to her and picked her up.

“Hey! I can do it my self!” She protested.

“No you cannot. You clearly hurt your leg and walking on it is just going to make it worse, besides it's not like you weigh much.”

She lightly blushed at the comment.

“So, what's your name?” Messiah asked.

“I'm Rainbow Dash. And I'm the fastest flyer in Equestria.” She looked at her wing. “ Or at least i used to be.”

“Don't worry about it, we're gonna' fix that right up. My name is....Messiah. And did you say Equestria?”

“Yeah, I'm from this place Equestria. It is NOTHING like here. First off, the colours here are all to dark. And we've never had a war. At least not in my life. But this...” She was pointing towards the village. “ Pain like this is unheard of.”

Messiah just chuckled. “ This is nothing. Stuff like this happens everyday, this war you are seeing, is nothing compared to some of the wars we have had. But lets not worry about that.”

Rainbow looked so shocked at this thing telling her what she had just seen was routine and mundane.

“So Equestria seems nice.” Messiah said nonchalantly

“It really is.”

“You have any idea how you got here?”

“No I really don't. There I was going to do a sonic rainboom. Right when i was about to break the sounds barrier, i saw a white flash and i ended up in that village.”

“Did you just say you could break the sound barrier? That is impossible. No organic thing can go past the sound barrier. You would need a Jet to get that fast.”

“Yes I can break the barrier. I would show you if weren't for my wing being all messed up.” Rainbow shot back. “ And what's a jet?”

“Jets are these big metal things that have rockets at the back. They are essentially rockets with wings to control them. The fastest one we ever made went like 3.36 times the speed of sound. So that's like three of your supposed 'sonic rainbooms'.”

Rainbow's jaw dropped at the idea of such speed. It seems these things were able to not only top her speed, but exceed it. And they didn’t even have wings!

As Messiah walked up the hill with Rainbow, who had not moved to his back and had her hooves wrapped around his neck. Messiah then went into detail about how he was a Human and how humans lived in cities and fought and all of that fun stuff until he heard voices.

As the two of them reached the top of the hill, Messiah saw five soldiers, all holding AK-47's standing there waiting for them. They looked on at the Messiah with surprise but their eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets as they saw the Dash on his back.

Messiah slowly reached for his pistol as the men were transfixed on Rainbow.

“Dash, you might want to close your eyes for this.”

She really wished she had listened to Messiah.