So our story begins in a very prosperous land. A place where dreams could come true and ponies could lead a rich and lavish lifestyle. Well, at least the ones who managed to make a fortune off of some product that was in high demand. For some it was food, others raw materials, but one young stallion managed to make his fortune in a much more interesting product. Weaponry.
The land, or country I should say was called Unicornia. And the stallion was named Flame Mann.
First of all don't ask me who came up with the name Unicornia because I honestly don't know. The one thing I do know however is that the name suits the country pretty well. The entire population was made up of unicorns. for what reason I'm not entirely sure. I think they're all extremely racist or something. Either way it was a place where industry boomed.
And now onto Flame Mann. Now I know what you're thinking. Weird name for a pony right? Ok weird name in general. Well I'm not too sure how he got his first name but his last name was something that interested him since he was old enough to think. From studying what it meant he learned of humans and their ways of life. Especially their destructive ways. He absolutely loved learning about all the wars that humans had fought and it led him to a life of weapon manufacturing.
His company Mann and sons, better known as Mann Co, Was the largest weapons manufacturer in the world and was the leading company for armies in many countries. Mann Co Weapons were used in many great wars such as the gryphon wars or the equestrian civil war.
Now before I move on I should tell about a few other important characters. First of all there was his maid, Violet. She'll be important later trust me. Then there were his two sons, Flim and Flam Mann.
Now lets just establish right now that these two were idiots. You could put a brain dead toad next to them and it would look smarter. And of course idiot siblings leads to idiot sibling rivalries. Throughout their colthoods the two fought and argued to no end.
Of course this annoyed their father but he never hated them for it. Until they made him make the worst business decision of his life.
Mann Co was growing at a tremendous rate and Flame wanted to expand to other countries. And there was one country he especially had his sights on. Equestria.
Now originally he was going to set up shop near the main city canterlot so he could be close to business opportunities. But his sons kept insisting on this patch of land that was fairly cheap.
"Just look at all that land dad!" Flim would say. "All the raw materials and space to set up our company".
"And at such a great price!" Flam would add.
It took a whole lot of persuasion and persistence but eventually they convinced him to buy that patch of land. Boy did he regret it. The "raw materials" the brothers had claimed to be there turned out to be nothing but gravel. The patch was a barren waste land of cacti and dirt as far as the eye could see. Flame hated them with a passion for the rest of his life. I'm serious, he barely left them anything in his will.
Oh yeah! Flame died. While he was in Equestria he contracted quite a few illnesses which didn't help much with his feelings towards his sons. But he did meet a good friend while living there. A stallion named Barnibus Biceps (seriously, who the hell comes up with these names?). Anyway in his will he left his company with mr Biceps making him ceo and left his sons with nothing. Except the land they made him purchase. And get this. He made them share it.
his maid Violet also got something in the will but that first requires a bit of explanation.
Ok so it turned out within that patch of useless land there was a little known substance embedded within the rock. Equestrium (Once again with the stupid names). Equestrium was a gold substance with amazing qualities it could make even the most idiotic person smart. With this sciences such as teleportation and cloaking were discovered. The one thing that it really had going for it though was that it could extend the lifespan of a pony. He gave the Equestrium supply to violet for safe keeping.
Ok so now we're at the point where the brothers are at each other's throats. Both of them want all of their father's land. And they're still idiots. So they're pretty much at a stalemate. Right? Nope. One of the brothers, Flim, decides if he wants the land he's gonna have to take it by force. So he hires a team of mercenaries to get it for him. But get this. The other brother did the same exact thing. So now the two mercenary teams keeping pushing each other back a forth. And it's still a stalemate.
this battle goes on for a long time. No, I really mean a LONG time. The brothers got to be very old, I think in there nineties, and their stupid land war was still going on.
one of the the brothers, Flim, realized that he was near death. So he hired an engineer by the name of Appleseed to make him a device that would make him live forever.
That night however Appleseed came back to his home to find somepony had snuck in. That somepony happened to be Violet. She tried to convince him not to make the device, but she couldn't. So instead, she convinced him to also build a device for Flam. In exchange she would give him a hundred pounds of Equestrium. Appleseed then used the Equestrium to make himself a genius to build the two machines.
So now it was a stalemate. Again. And the war kept going on. It kept going on until it reached the year 1968. Barnibus's grandson, Bulk Biceps, was now in charge of Mann Co. And Violet's granddaughter, Velvet, was in charge of a company called tf industries which ran the operations of the mercenaries. She also had an assistant, Ms. Yearling, who pretty much did all her dirty work. At this time though both Flim and flam needed more mercenaries, and Velvet was prepared to resupply them.
But this story isn't about any of that. It's just for context, you know? No. This story is instead about nine ponies who couldn't be more different from each other and somehow manage to find a connection. This is Pony Fortress 2.
Author's Note
My plan is to do nine chapters introducing each of the characters and then go on with the story from there. Hope you enjoy it!
scout chapter 1: play ball!
There was a tense feeling in the air, or maybe it was the smell of the sewers. Nopony could ever pinpoint this stuff. Especially in Manehattan, where the streets were full of homeless ponies laying on the sidewalks, not having taken a shower in months probably, while rich and middle class ponies walked by. It was practically a cesspool of half the problems in the world today and unless you got lucky. It wasn't fun
A certain cyan pegasus however wasn't focused on any of that right now. Instead she was focused on the dark grey pony with a jet black mane as messy as hers on pitching base in the middle of the sandlot. He had a baseball in his mouth and was giving a death glare to Rainbow.
Is this guy for real? She thought with a smirk. The colt out there wasn't doing a very good job with his intimidation tactic.
Still. He seemed to be taunting her out there, making it seem like he was going to pitch, only to prepare just a little bit longer. She couldn't really blame the guy though. It was bottom of the ninth inning and there were already two outs. The teams were extremely close with rainbow's just one point behind the other team. Rainbow's team had one pony on second base so all she had to do was hit a home run and they won. Likewise, all the pitcher had to do was strike her out and they lost.
Hurry it up! Will ya?! She thought to herself annoyed. It. Seemed like he had been there for an hour getting prepared.
Then, like he had read her mind, he spat the ball at ground and it bounced up to about chest height. He then proceeded to turn around and kick the ball towards Rainbow. It came in pretty fast, probably about seventy five miles per hour, which threw rainbow off. She swung too late and immediately began cursing herself in her head.
come on dash, you can do this. She thought as she she put the bat back in position. She looked back out onto the mound to see the pitcher cracking his neck for another pitch. He'd obviously gotten a bit more confident as she could see a tiny smirk on his face.
oh I am gonna mess you up. She thought while another pitch came to her. This time she swung too early and almost threw her bat on the ground.
For fucks sake dash, GET IT TOGETHER! She told herself mentally and quite furiously.
She looked back out to the mound to find the pitcher's smirk had turned into an all out cocky grin.
She prepared her bat again and this time did nothing but focus on the pitcher.
this is do or die dash. She reminded herself. She couldn't miss this swing. After all she had a reputation to keep.
That's when the third pitch came and time seemed to slow down for rainbow dash. Like she'd just drunk some seriously powerful energy drink and now she was moving faster than everything around her. The ball came right into the middle of the strike zone at what seemed like the speed of sound. She closed her eyes and swung the bat.
CRACK
She opened her eyes to see the ball flying high through the air. The pony on second ran to third base and had a sure path for home. The teams were now tied.
Rainbow couldn't help but smile a bit. She'd won it for her team. Or at least she thought she had as she then saw the ball fall into the outfield, just short of a home run, and multiple ponies from the other team were scrambling towards it
"crap" she said the realization hitting her
She immediately bolted towards first base and was there in a matter of seconds. She managed to get a peek of towards the outfield to see one of the outfielders picking up the ball with his mouth. She was almost to second when she saw him begin to throw to it to second. She Ran even faster and right before the pony on second could catch the ball she tackled him and both ponies rolled along the dirt ground as the ball went away to left field.
"Sorry about that" she said as she made a beeline for third base. By the time she was there she noticed that the ball had been picked up by the pony in left field.
This was it. She thought. She turned her head to home plate and ran as fast as her legs could carry her. By the time she'd made it halfway to home the pony in left field had thrown the ball and it was coming in fast. She made a final attempt by diving into home plate and dust flew up from the dirt blocking everyone's vision.
Now before you go saying how cliche this is, allow me to explain how it ends. Most would assume the catcher caught the ball and as the dust cleared rainbow would've had one hoof on home plate. No, what actually happened is quite a bit funnier. Rainbow didn't touch home plate with her dive. Hell, she was like 5 feet away from it where she landed. But the dust that made everyone not able to see what was going on also affected the catcher. So much so that he couldn't see the ball coming right towards his face.
boink!
"GAH! SON OF A BITCH!" he said as he covered his muzzle.
Dash looked up from her dive to see the cursing catcher holding his rapidly bleeding nostrils. He should've been wearing a catcher's mask but to hell if anyone could afford one. She looked around a bit before beginning to awkwardly crawl to home plate, trying to not bother the colt in front of her.
Both teams watched the strange set of events go down. As soon as rainbow touched home plate her team began celebrating and throwing it in the other team's face. The other team however, was just confused.
Rainbow let out a sigh "well that was anti climactic"
