A Tiger in Equestria

"Well this is boring, and the wedding is in a few hours." Then again, what could these ponies have as entertainment anyway?

"You could go for a walk around Canterlot?"Eh why the hell not.

"Sure." I grabbed my guns and checked if everything was there. I walked out into the hallway, Midnight following behind me.

"Crew, let's go for a walk. It's too damn boring in here."

They shrugged and grabbed their weapons from their rooms, then they formed themselves behind me in an arrowhead formation. Why an arrowhead? Wait, why not an arrowhead?

"Alright, let's go. You do have everything right?" They nodded.

I opened the door and went for a nice stroll in Canterlot.

Mirror had moved away from the palace in order to avoid suspicion by the guards. They were giving her funny looks after they had seen her staring through a window. She needed to keep her existence a secret, if word got out, the entire invasion would fail. And she couldn't possibly live on, knowing that she had destroyed their species's only chance of getting more love. They had been running out and desperate times call for desperate measures, and so the plan to invade Equestria had been born. It had been going well, but the aliens were a wild card. They could just as easily help Equestria or the Changelings. What if they decided to help Equestria? Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the palace doors opening, and she got a good look at the aliens. They were walking on two legs, each wearing some variation of black clothing, while the one she had seen on top of the metal contraption was who she assumed as the leader. This was further reinforced by what looked like medals on his chest. Along with his position at the front of what appeared to be an arrowhead formation, the guards assigned to them trailing behind them. The aliens all had a cross between gazes of suspicion and curiosity, while the leader seemed to take it all in stride, you would have thought that he dealt with being teleported to an alien planet every day. They started to move down the street she was in, and she made sure to pay attention to them.

Well this was horribly boring too. I couldn't possibly think of anything more boring down a damn street than fashion stores, clothes shops, fabric stores, fashion stores, jewelry stores, fashion stores. Did I mention fashion stores? The entire street was packed with them. The amount of them seemed to suggest either the people here were stupidly wasteful and wore one outfit per day, or fashion trends were a high-speed roller coaster that switched every single day. Both were unappealing to me, and probably my crew as well. We really never understood how women like going shopping so much, the depressions and war didn't help much. Even worse was the fact that half the ponies on the street were stark naked, so it meant that even less ponies were buying these. This is a broken economic system. Someone's gonna run out of money someday, and when that happens, it all comes crashing down.

There was one that didn't have fashion-related objects on display, and when we walked closer we found it was a bloody casino. Add gamblers to the list of pony types. Must have too much money or something. Oh Dietrich is going to have a field day with this. We found two guards standing outside, with the usual stupid gold armor that was forever impractical.

"Look, a Casino. Why not we set Dietrich loose on them, and we have some drinks in the bar that they're bound to have somewhere." They agreed, especially Dietrich, the man took pride in breaking casinos within a day. The guards tried to look more intimidating by making themselves look taller, but it didn't matter in the slightest when we were at least twice as tall as them.

"Hello guards, me and my friends here would like to have some fun." They looked at each other for some reason, then they looked at me again.

"Uh, we've never had aliens before, no foals allowed."

"Do we look like children to you!?"

"Uh no sir. It's just that—"

"Good, then let me in." I cut him off before he could go on about regulations and the lot. I had enough of that back in the army. They reluctantly stepped aside, and we walked into the casino. Boy it was packed. Slot machines, Blackjack, Poker, the lot of them, all arrayed neatly in sections. I gave Dietrich all of our money, I trusted him since he's never ever lost money before at gambling. He walked over to the nearest table, while the rest of us walked to the bar nearby, finding a booth to sit at to watch the eventual loss of all the money in the casino. We decided to get some drinks, not like we had anything much to do. I noticed a newcomer come in through the door, she seemed to be looking for someone. Eh, none of my business anyway.

Mirror felt a barrage of lights and sounds when she walked into the casino. It was so goddamn noisy in here, with bets being called out all over the room and the ringing of slot machines. She scanned the area and found that one of the aliens had detached himself from the group to walk to a Poker table. She walked over the same table, but then she found out that particular alien couldn't speak Equestrian, since he seemed to be using hand gestures to communicate. She looked around for the one she knew for sure could speak it, their leader, and found him in a booth in the bar. Mirror went over to the barkeep and asked him for a glass of beer. Technically Changelings were not allowed to drink alcoholic beverages, but it would be used to not draw suspicion to herself, after all, how many people do you see in a bar without a drink? Grabbing the drink with her hooves, she walked over to the booth with the aliens, and used an old trick to get him to talk to her. She pretended to trip, and bumped into him, spilling parts of her drink.

"Oh I'm so so sorry!"

"Nah, it's fine, you didn't get it anywhere important anyway." She felt relieved that she had found the right one, imagine the awkwardness if they couldn't understand each other.

"But still—"

"It's no problem, alright?"

"Okay, I guess."

"What's your name? You're the first local pony that's dared actually approach me. Most look like they wouldn't touch me with a ten feet pole."

She guessed that their feet meant hoof in pony language.

"My name is Radiant Flare."

"So, if my experience is correct, you have something to do with fire?"

"Uh, yes. I'm the local pyrotechnician."

"Ah. I'm Hauptmann Schmidt of the 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion, part of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany. You probably won't understand anything past Schmidt."

"Uh... Yeah. So, Schmidt, what is the meaning of the rest of those?" He put down his drink and leaned slightly forward, strangely enough, he had barely touched it.

"Well, Hauptmann means Captain, 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion is the name of the battalion I was in, Wehrmacht means our Military, and Nazi Germany is the name of our country."

She made mental notes in her head regarding the definitions of the words.

Midnight was astonished by how easily Radiant Flare had just simply waltzed up to him, spilled her drink over him, then engage in a conversation that allowed her to know what those weird designations mean. She was slightly jealous of the fact that she dealt with it with such ease, but then she thought that she could get some good out of this, since Schmidt hadn't bothered to keep his voice down, she could report on this information too. Neither of them maybe thought that Schmidt didn't care about said information.

Wow. These ponies are really really bad intelligence agents. I mean seriously, Radiant Flare's doing it slightly better than just straight up asking me, but I guess the peaceful lifestyle really doesn't develop spies.

I looked over to the crew, they were all engaged in some weird drinking contest, they all seemed seriously drunk, and the answer was found when I noticed the large amount of empty glasses. Thankfully, no one should know about German so they could speak with impunity, which was weird since Bernhard was on yelling about how his father had been breeding horses. That would've been a weird conversation.

Dietrich came over, I had originally given him about 100 bits. He returned with a humongous sack filled to the brim with coins. He grabbed a handful of coins, walked up to the bar, and made gestures towards some of the bottles on the shelves. It was like a game of Charades, but this time it was hilarious since the barkeep was much shorter than Dietrich, and the fact that the table had been designed for ponies, which meant that it only came up to Dietrich's hip at best was quite an amusing image. With much gesturing and throwing up his hands, he got what he wanted and came back over. Only to join the rest of them in their insane drinking game and promptly got drunk. They now had all put their hands on each other's shoulders, and were singing the German national anthem. It was quite beautiful, if you could get past the fact that the words were slurred and some parts were left out. Though in their drunken state I'm surprised they pulled it off. I joined them in the second verse.

Mirror was surprised when the aliens started singing some weird song in an alien language. But what was weird was that there was a small trace of love from it. She guessed that it would probably be the national anthem. Schmidt joined in after a while, and he also started to leak love. The five of them combined was essentially a small snack for her, and she drunk it eagerly, the shortage of love meant that she barely got enough to get by. This was also a hugely important fact to the Changelings, the fact that the aliens did have love, and thus could become food sources. After a while they stopped, and they looked quite sad. They got of the booth and left, but not before Schmidt left a generous tip. They all started to return to the palace and when Mirror excused herself, they seemed like they didn't hear her.