The Bear, The Eagle, and The Ponies

Chapters

Chrono Crunch
Where the Buffalo Roam
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Brain Freeze
Full Stop Warfare

Chrono Crunch

Disclaimer: My Little Pony is owned by Hasbro. Command & Conquer is owned by EA Games. Please support both companies.

Chapter 1: Chrono Crunch

Workers Apartment, Outskirts of Ulan Bataar, People's Republic of Mongolia

"This is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever been in! Haven't the commies ever watched a movie? We're supposed to accomplish our mission against all odds! Or accomplish our mission and then get backed into a corner but get rescued in the nick of times by the cavalry! But no… instead intelligence screws the pooch and we get dropped into the middle of what has to be the whole fucking Red Army! This is bullshit of the greatest, grandest, and most spectacular-!"

"Lance-Corporal, if you don't shut up and focus on shooting, I will save Ivan ammunition by putting my second-to-last round in your head! NOW KEEP FUCKING FIRING!" Captain Adam Gins did not silently mutter a prayer when the complaining corporal did as he was ordered. Instead, he substituted firing a burst from his assault rifle down at a squad of Soviet infantry who had broken cover to charge the apartment. Then he, and the rest of his fire-team, put as much distance between them and the window as possible, ducking behind a counter as they did so. They had been firing from that side of the room for too long.

Sure enough, the far wall blew in as a salvo of dumb-fire helicopter rockets smashed it apart. One of Gins's men hadn't been fast enough and his body was shredded by concussion and shrapnel. Given how badly the mission had begun, the Captain considered himself pretty damn lucky.

The officer and his company had been holed up in a worker's apartment smack in the middle of an industrial plant when they realized how much trouble they were facing. The building's steel-and-concrete construction might not have been very comfortable, but it held up to almost anything short of concentrated artillery fire or an all-out air strike. And since either would wreck the surrounding industrial facility, something Gins guessed (correctly, by the looks of it) that the Ruskie's did not want to do, that meant they were 100% safe from simply being shelled into oblivion.

Of course, with firepower out of the question the Soviets had resorted to their favorite stand by: sheer numbers.

The fighting had been going on for three hours non-stop. A trio of Hind gunships and six or seven T-64 tanks periodically broke cover to fire shells, unguided rockets, and missiles into the structure at whichever rooms they thought the Allied soldiers were hiding. Under the cover of this bombardment, Soviet infantry would try and storm the apartment, to be met first by withering gun fire from the Allied troops on the first-floor and then if they were lucky enough to survive that, they faced brutal hand-to-hand combat.

Already the company had repulsed five successive attempts to breach the structure, the last of which had (much to everyone's consternation) a tesla trooper. The power-armored fiend cooked most of a squad before someone managed to fire a shoulder-launched rocket at point-blank range into the bastard. The shooter was never identified… he had, after all, fired a rocket launcher in close-quarters, a death sentence even without the exploding warhead bit, because of the back blast.

A new figure that came running through the kitchen door at a crouch almost got three-rounds in the chest for his trouble. The newcomer dove towards Gins and almost slammed into a private taking cover right next to the Captain. The GI swore noisily, but Gins ignored him. "Lieutenant."

Second Lieutenant Gerard Mullivan, British Army, gave a grin at his commanding officer. "Bit of a spot we are in, isn't it sir?"

"Can't you ever stop with confirming the stereotypes?" Gins didn't wait for an answer, "What's the problem and why couldn't it come over the radio?"

"We have a Hip coming in from the north. Also, our radio's stopped working… I think there might be a tesla tank in the area."

The Captain's blood almost froze in his veins. A transport helicopter, probably with Spetznatz to finish them off in coordination with a ground assault, was bad enough. But a tesla tank? Gins had seen them burn through a M62 MBT's frontal armor with as much effort as a hot knife through butter.

"Try to hit the heli and keep your rockets ready."

"All well and done, sir." Mullivan paused and gave Gins a quick salute, "Just make sure not to die Captain."

And with that, he scurried off.

Of course, Gins knew they were all dead; he was down to two magazines and one of those was in his gun right now. As he popped out of the newly-formed hole in the wall to rake the ground with automatic fire, the captain knew Corporal Kinns was right: it wasn't goddamn fair. Intel had chosen the worst drop zone possible and now the Soviets knew that the Allies knew that the Soviets were close to copying Chronotechnology. The burning remnants of the company's IFVs a few blocks over were a testament to how badly intelligence had fucked up.

The Captain squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a dull-click. One magazine now… and two of the tanks had appeared again, pouring cannon and machine gun fire upwards. Another assault was coming…

This would probably do it.

Soviet Industrial-Military Complex, Outskirts of Ulan Bataar, People's Republic of Mongolia...

"Are you sure no damage has been done to the plant?" Major-General Gennady D. Voroshilov, commander of the 233rd Motor-Rifle Division and commanding officer of the Ulan Bataar Soviet Military Base, asked the major in front of him.

"Nothing that will affect the facility's operation, comrade general." The major's voice held complete conviction. "And the American raiders will soon be dealt with. They are using one of the on-site worker apartments for shelter and have repulsed five attempts to storm it so far, but are running low on ammunition. This next attack should overrun them."

"See that it does." Voroshilov issued a stern look at his subordinate, "And make sure to inform Moscow. Premier Romanov will need to know that the Allies have discovered our investigation of their chronosphere…" The general then gave a small grin, "And will probably be glad to also know that the disrupters work as advertised."

"At once, comrade general." The major saluted and went off at once to fulfill the order. Voroshilov glanced at his watch and stood-up. It was good to know that the plant would be fully functional again once the Allies were cleared out. So far it was the only facility in the communist bloc that could produce the parts needed for the project. More would come in the future… but only if the work at this base succeeded.

The Allied commandoes probably thought that they had been located so far away on purpose, given the way the chrono-disrupters worked. That would be a blow to their morale. No matter, the raiders were contained and if anything with them changed, he would be informed immediately. For now, Doctor Zelinsky was about to conduct a new test run of the first prototype Soviet chronosphere.

The trip to the experiment area took less than five minutes and Zelinsky, as seemed to be his habit when something important was about to occur, was a bundle of nerves. The general tried to put the scientist at ease "Calm down, Comrade Zelinsky. Even if something goes wrong, it is not your fault. This is simply a straightforward copy…"

"I know, I know…" Zelinsky muttered, "But I can't help myself."

"Just get on with it… what is the experiment procedure?"

The doctor paused, blinked a few times and then visibly forced his composure into something more calm. "Yes, well… we shall start first, of course, with inanimate objects."

The testing chamber was behind safety glass and contained what was obviously the Chronosphere experiment, the half-exposed orb glowing with readied power, and a pedestal with… "Any particular reason we are teleporting a Rubix Cube?"

Zelinsky smiled sheepishly. "I find the game to be mentally stimulating."

The general merely nodded and glanced around at the other assembled scientists, military men, and even some party bureaucrats who were here to observe the test.

"Let us begin the experiment!" Zelinsky said, "Power readings are good. Feeds are good. Tachyon output is within expectations..."

The doctor rattled off a list, sometimes containing words too convoluted for Voroshilov to understand, much less pronounce. The military men and other non-scientists also seemed completely lost.

"… and everything is good!" Zelinsky gave an awkward grin, flipping the guard to a red button and placing a slightly-trembling finger over it. "Three… two… one and-!"

He pressed the button.

On the quantum scale…

The mechanics of chronotechnology are interesting, to say the least. The first model of the teleporting device ever built, by the Allied Treaty Organization during the Great World War 2, was fraught with lethal problems when used on biological specimens. Unless a person was inside a building or vehicle, they simply ceased to exist. And even if inside a vehicle there was a small but quite noticeable chance that something bad would happen to them.

Horror stories were everywhere of teleporting tank crews fused to their vehicle's interior, aircraft suddenly exploding on arrival for no apparent reason, filled personnel carriers teleporting somewhere successfully only for their passengers to be reduced to anatomically impossible boxes of flesh, bone, and muscle. The most unique story was of the USS Philadelphia, which was to be teleported from the United States all the way to Great Britain. The ship made the transition, but when it arrived the entire crew immediately went insane and killed themselves by whatever means they could find: knives, guns, jumping from the crow's nest, drowning themselves in the ocean, even bashing their heads open on the deck. And nobody knows why.

The new chronosphere, updated and now used by the Allies, was much safer. The problems that existed with the previous version were gone, except for the lethality to exposed humans. The Soviet prototype chronosphere was a near direct copy of the Allied one and thus was supposed to be just as safe. The problem, as the Soviets were to learn later, was their new chrono-disrupter fields. Nobody had ever thought what would happen if they activated a chronosphere inside the disruption field.

There wasn't any truly grandiose explosion, no tremendous thunderclap, no shaking earth. All that happened was an odd hiss, a faint blue dome appeared over an area twenty kilometers in diameter, centered on the building where the experiment was taking place, and then vanished. When the dome disappeared, what had once been a sprawling Soviet military facility and a somewhat larger factory complex were just gone. In its place was nothing but the soil just underneath all the buildings.

At least, that is what happened from the perspective of someone on the outside. From within the affected area, everyone was rendered unconscious the moment the button was pushed.

Unknown Location...

"Ah… god… damn… what did they hit me with?"

That was the first thing Gins heard as he came back to consciousness and it barely registered in his mind as he received more sensory information. Everything seemed bizarrely quiet, save for the rustle of wind through the trees and the chirping of distant birds.

Wait one moment… where did the trees come from?

"MEDIC!" The scream was surprising, but still perversely relieved Captain Gins of the awkward stillness when compared to his last memory. "OH JESUS CHRIST, MEDIC!"

Gins opened his eyes as he rolled to his feet, glancing around. Around him, his men also picked themselves off the ground in varying states of confusion and dizziness… except for the ones who wouldn't ever move again. The captain realized his mind must have been off kilter from… whatever happened because it took him a moment to realize that the group was no longer in an apartment, or somewhere that might look like Mongolia for that matter.

Instead, the thirty or so of his men that he could see, the ones that were still alive that is, were apparently picking themselves out of a variety of bushes, trees, and overgrown grass. They were in a forest, a very dense forest.

A rustling to his left caused almost everybody in the woods to turn and aim their weapons, but out stumbled…

"Lieutenant Mullivan, Sergeant Vince." The Captain said as the two men led another twenty or twenty-five Allied soldiers into the clearing. "What's going on?"

"Thought you would know that, sir." Vince replied, leaning against a tree in exhaustion. The short, but solidly built man looked extremely tired, but then they all looked that way.

"We woke-up just a bit away from here to that bloke yelling for a medic, Captain." Mullivan added, "We just kind of… stumbled towards here." The lieutenant fell silent for a few seconds and then finally added, "I think this is everyone…"

Gins looked around. There was just greater than a platoon strength force here. Only fifty to sixty living men out of what was once two hundred, and then he looked at the bodies and realized that the numbers could add up in only one way.

The man who had been shouting for a medic earlier was still now, even though he got what he wanted. As he watched, Gins saw the medic sigh and lean down to collect the dead man's dog-tag.

"Alright." The Captain muttered, then cleared his throat. "Alright! Rally-up! First things first: we gotta grab the spare ammunition and food, these guys…" He paused, "They won't be needing it any more. Get their dog tags while you're at it!"

The gathered Allied soldiers looked at their commanding officer for a few dumbfounded seconds, the disorientation from all the rapid events delaying their reaction. Finally, with a chorus of acknowledgement, they set to their grim task. Adam watched his men work for a few moments and finally turned back to his two more immediate subordinates. "Alright… now where the hell are we?"

Chronosphere Test Observation Chamber, Unknown...

The first thing Voroshilov awoke to was something he would rather not: the bald-headed head of the base's psi-corp detachment hovering over him. "Are you alright, Comrade General?"

"Yes." The reply was snapped out. "What happened?"

"Something went wrong… horribly wrong." Zelinsky cut-in from behind. The general turned to face the doctor and in doing so caught a view of the test chamber. The reverse-engineered mini-chronosphere within had… melted, for lack of a better word.

"Comrade General." The eerily smooth voice of the psi-corp trooper cut in again. "We must return to the command center immediately… the chronosphere accident has caused a… change."

"What do you mean?" Voroshilov snapped, but the psychic (the General was having a damnably hard time remembering his name… Vladimir, wasn't it?) merely shrugged.

With that non-answer, a grumbling Voroshilov stormed out of the observation chamber and was immediately met by two soldiers who were his bodyguards. They were tense now and held their AK-47's more nervously. Ignoring them as they fell into place right behind him, Voroshilov stalked down the research facility's halls, out the main door and into a blistering heat.

Ulan Bataar, despite its proximity to the Gobi, was actually rather temperate given its location, particularly in April. So it was with no small surprise that Voroshilov looked around at his base, the structures still in a recognizable lay-out, and realized that he was looking at a desert environment.

Just what the hell had happened?

End Chapter

Author's Notes: So, when I first happened into becoming part of the herd, my first instinct was to naturally throw a modern(ish) fighting force at Equestria. I contemplated the 40K (of course), Call of Duty, and Battlefield franchises before finally settling on the Red Alert setting because it would allow me to combine three things I like: warfare, the Soviet Union, and ponies.

Of course I have a plot, I can't just toss these things into a blender and call it a day. And some modifications have been made to the Red Alert setting, modifications that you may have noticed (the Rhino tanks being designated T-64's, for instance), but it's all in line with the actual setting. Don't worry though, we will still get plenty of that zany Red Alert weaponry we all know and love.

Oh, and you might have noticed it's the Red Alert 2verse. Red Alert 3 never happened!

Where the Buffalo Roam

Disclaimer: My Little Pony is owned by Hasbro. Command & Conquer is owned by EA Games. Please support both companies. Also, translation from English has been done via an internet translator, transliteration to the English alphabet has been done manually. The author politely requests that Russian speakers (native or not) do not attempt to throttle him over the internet for any accidental transgressions against Russian words and/or grammar. It just isn't worth your computer screen.

The Eagle, The Bear, and the Ponies

Chapter 2: Where the Buffalo Roam

Over a Unknown Desert...

The disappointment inside the Mi-17 transport was so thick one could probably taste it. They had all been eager to deal out punishment to the Allied fools who dared venture so close to the motherland's territory, but the bizarre events had put a damper on that.

When the helicopter crew and the Spetsnatz they were transporting came to, they had found themselves on the ground, with the engine shut-down, and on top of some desert plateau. Upon contacting the base, they had discovered that all the units that had been sent out to attack the American raiders had likewise been scattered in the area and were promptly ordered to return to base.

"What the-!" The co-pilots exclamation cut through the dismal mood. "There seems to be a herd of animals moving on our three o'clock low…"

The Spetsnatz team jostled for position with each other and the door machine gunner for a view out of the helicopter. As they did so, the helicopter slid rightwards in the direction of the sighting. Once each member of the team found themselves settled, the Special Forces trooper's eyes were immediately drawn to a cloud of dust being kicked into the air below.

"Are those Buffalo?" One of the troopers asked, squinting down in puzzlement. The chatter over their headsets, a necessity when running about in a noisy helicopter, began immediately.

"Can't be anything else." The squad sniper said. "I thought they were endangered, but that's a pretty big herd..."

"So we are in America then?" The machine gunner studied the herd below. The stampeding creatures had apparently noticed the helicopter some hundreds of meters above them and if the man didn't know better he would swear that they looked confused.

"Buffalo come from America, yes." This came from the squad leader, a sergeant who was probably the most educated man in the vehicle. "But not from the desert part of it, which is awfully close to the front right now... and I don't hear any artillery."

After another moment the helicopter began to turn away back to its original course, the pilot probably deciding they had seen enough. It was at that fateful moment that the same trooper who had first spoken up commented: "I heard buffalo meat is delicious."

The nine-men in the compartment, eight spetsnatz and one door gunner, shared a look as the same thought occurred to them simultaneously. As the squad leader switched his headset to talk with the helicopter's pilot, the sniper slid towards the door and flipped the safety off of his rifle.

Little Strong Heart, like the rest of the buffalo in the stampede, only heard the machine a few seconds before it swept overhead. The tribe was on the move, heading for a drink out of one of the few rivers that cut through the desert. Her first thought was there was some kind of insect swarm coming from their left, but that quickly faded away as she realized the buzzing was too steady to be one of those.

Then it roared into view directly overhead and most of the stampede looked up in surprise. None of them stopped running, of course, but they couldn't help but tear their view away from the front at least temporarily.

In just one glance, Strong Heart knew it was not a pony machine. The ponies' vehicles had an intricate and almost whimsical look to them, something that was standard for many of the more tool-oriented species of Equestria. This machine… it seemed to be of a completely alien design. Its round body gave her the vaguest impression of a bumblebee, but the construction and immense moving disk that apparently held it in the air made the flying contraption look… brutish to Strong Heart, something built to achieve a purpose with little or no room for any other job.

The machine stayed there for a good ten or fifteen seconds, easily keeping pace with the herd as it moved. Then it tilted, beginning to slide away from its overhead position. Most of the herd thought that was that and those who had not returned their attention to the ground yet did so, but Strong Heart kept watching and she saw the machine suddenly tilt backwards and slide towards the back of the stampede.

Strong Heart herself slowed, falling further back as the rest of the stampede overtook her until she dropped out behind it. In this part, there were only a few stragglers who did not keep up… not out of inability (the tribe provided for those) but out of laziness. The machine had also fallen back here and was now maintaining itself steadily even closer to the ground, but off to the left of the path.

Strong Heart squinted and was able to make out an opening on the side of the contraption's body, a bit behind a large… window on the vehicles front. The little buffalo thought she saw some kind of figure kneeling in the opening with a protrusion pointing out…

There was a flash from the opening, followed a few seconds later by a distant CRACK!

At the same time the sound reached Strong Hearts ears, Taking Easy, one of the rear-most stragglers, collapsed mid-stride. Strong Heart noticed this and thanks to her relative small size was able to break and turn towards the collapsed figure very quickly. She almost immediately regretted it.

Whatever that noise had been, it had clearly drilled through Taking Easy's head. The left side of the buffalo's head featured a relatively neat hole, but the right side… the right side had exploded into a mess of flesh, blood, bits of bone, hair and pieces of brain splattered onto the ground nearby. Strong Heart gagged and had to stop herself from throwing-up.

She was saved from losing her breakfast by the flying machine, which roared in from just behind her at an extremely low altitude. Fear welled up inside Little Strong Heart as she realized the machine was going to land! Frantically, she glanced around for somewhere to hide and almost instantly found one of the innumerable boulders that dotted the desert. From behind the rock she watched the machine land facing away from her, close to Taking Easy's body. It was then that the four creatures emerged…

They stood on only two legs and in place of forelegs they had a pair of limbs that ended in a hand, like a raccoon. The creatures were only slightly shorter than the average buffalo… or more than twice the size of Little Strong Heart, who was about the same size as most ponies! Beyond their dimensions, Little Strong Heart couldn't tell what the creatures actually looked like. Their actual bodies were hidden underneath what she recognized as these things' equivalent to the clothes that the Ponies sometimes wore.

Mottled green fabric that stood out against the backdrop of the desert covered everything up to their head, which was then obscured by strange and terrifying black masks with some kind of mouthpiece that jutted forward and large, even blacker lenses. Completing the ensemble was what Strong Heart knew was called a helmet, something the Ponies often used when doing construction… only those were bright yellow.

The creatures rapidly moved up to Taking Easy's still body, clutching some kind of… large metal-and-wooden sticks. One of them suddenly slung its stick over its haunch equivalent and strode forward, calling back to the other three. "Pomogite mne nesti eto!"

Strong Heart blinked, confused by the utterly alien sounding language the creature spoke. For a moment, she thought it was those masks that made them sound different.

Two of the other creatures followed the first's movement while the fourth looked across the plain where the stampede had gone... it would just be beginning to turn around by this point. A buffalo stampede is hard to reverse. The three creatures lifted Taking Easy's body off the ground. They paused for a moment and looked at each other. "Leghche, chem ya predpologal."

"Da."

Shrugging, the creatures began to carry Taking Easy's body back to the flying machine… back to the flying machine for what?

Suddenly, the full weight of realization came down on Little Strong Heart: one of her fellow buffalo had just been killed. Not just knocked out for a few moments by a Pony apple pie or injured from a twisted hoof during a stampede, but actually killed. He had been rendered dead from an unnatural cause, by black-masked creatures who rode in large flying machines.

And now they were taking his body. Why, she didn't have any idea but she doubted they were just going to bury it…

Desecration of the dead...

That thought initially horrified Little Strong Heart. Respect for the deceased was a concept that both the Ponies and the buffalo shared: when one of their own died, they were mourned, remembered, and honored in a funeral ceremony. If the deceased's body had been retrieved, it was respectfully disposed by burial. But the body was always handled with utmost respect, not almost-dragged uncaringly into some noisy contraption to who-knows-what-fate.

Then her thought transformed into anger. These things were desecrating the dead! Worse, Strong Heart realized, they had killed a buffalo for seemingly no purpose! That was... she couldn't think of how to express the horror of the idea.

Strong Heart had always been a deceptively small buffalo, but she was also an emotional one. For her, anger easily became action. She didn't waste another second observing the creatures and with a wild cry that cut over the roar of the nearby flying machine, she lept from her cover and charged just as the three beings carrying Taking Easy reached the strange contraption.

Those three froze, their heads whipping around as they saw the small buffalo come at them. But the fourth swung around and raised its strange stick. Strong Heart was able to perceive the brief flashes of fire from the stick, a very loud, chunky, and brief TAK-TAK noise, a series of whines and hisses, and finally felt something akin to a really dull horn stabbing into her left fore-haunch. The small buffalo managed another step before toppling forward, pain bellowing at her from the joint.

Strong Heart did a cartwheel, coming down on her back and with a wild cry of pain she twisted her head to see blood rapidly flowing from a neat hole drilled exactly where she had felt that impact. She heard the strange creatures muffled chatter but all of her attention was focused on the wound, a kind of sick fascination taking hold as the buffalo dully realized that it was her blood.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over her and Little Strong Heart looked up to see the creature standing over her, looking down at her body and with its stick, what had to be a weapon, pointed at her. At this distance she could make out details on the creature's clothes: strange folds and attachments whose purpose she couldn't figure out.

The creature just stood there, looking down at her, and for a moment, Strongheart thought she saw eyes through those black lenses. Then there was a shout, the creature turned away and moved out of sight. Strong Heart attempted to roll over so she could stand-up… only for her injury to protest so much she collapsed with tears in her eyes instead. Abruptly the roar of the flying machine increased in volume and a strong, sustained blast of wind and dirt pounded at Strong Hearts body. Now she squeezed her eyes shut until the wind abruptly stopped and the noise rapidly grew distant before vanishing altogether.

Opening her eyes, Strong Heart tried to stand once more only to stop as her haunch voiced its complaint. Lifting her head to glance around as best she could, Strong Heart noted that the only evidence Taking Easy was ever here was his trail of blood… and her of course, as a witness.

Another rumbling noise echoed from the distance, but this was much different than the flying machine sound. The stampede was finally returning. Too late to save Taking Easy, Strong Heart thought bitterly. Then the buffalo realized she was feeling a little light in the head and glanced at her wound again. An icy fear reached up into her heart and she prayed they were not too late to save her.

Taking Easy had to have someone who saw what happen warn every buffalo, after all.

"It really is lighter than I expected." The Mi-16 pilot communicated over his headset with the Spetsnatz squad leader. "Are you sure you did not grab a scrawny one?"

"I did not, comrade. Focus on getting us on back to base; I'll worry about the meat." The sergeant looked around at his team, who were all eyeing the dead buffalo with varying degrees of curiosity. All except one… "Is something wrong, Vasily?"

Vasily, a long-time member of the team and the one who had provided watch when they retrieved the buffalo body tore his gaze away from the troop bay's ceiling. "Erm… no, comrade sergeant. I was just… thinking about the small one that came at us from behind a rock."

"What about it?" The sergeant pressed. "It was actually rather good shooting on your part."

"It's not that, comrade. It's just… when I took a closer look at it… I could have sworn…" The trooper shook his head. "It's nothing, just my imagination."

The sergeant was not satisfied and kept pressing. "Then it should be no problem to share. What did you imagine?"

"That it was intelligent, like a man."

Silence for a few moments, then six out of the nine men in the bay started laughing. The sergeant simply settled for an amused grin while Vasily flushed with anger.

The last man who did not laugh was the squad marksman. Instead he coughed noisily into his headset, grabbing everyone's attention.

"Comrade Sergeant, if I may." The sniper said, and then leaned forward and plucked something out from behind the dead buffalo's ear, holding it up for the entire squad (and the door gunner) to see. "Did any of you notice this nicely groomed feather and wonder how it was inserted so securely behind the bison's ear, like a decoration?"

Everybody stared at the feather and a memory clicked with the sergeant. A movie he had seen years before, an American import... "It looks like an Indian feather, from those American westerns."

It took another few seconds before the squad fully was able to contemplate that statement.

Unknown Forest...

The remnants of Gins's company moved in a tight column. Normally, the captain would have hesitated to allow his men to bunch up so much, but this forest was too dense for armor and there was still enough spread to minimize any potential damage from a rocket propelled grenade or handheld FlaK gun. If they came in contact with enemy infantry, they could rapidly overwhelm them and then move on before hostile artillery and airpower came looking or, if the opposing force was too great, they could fall back into the thickets and disperse.

But looking around the forest, Gins suddenly doubted he was anywhere near where he should be. The forest was too swampy to be in Mongolia and some of the bird calls too familiar. But birds were not the only noises the group heard, there was the rustling of creatures in the bushes and everybody in the company could feel hidden eyes on them. Predators, most likely… If this place was as remote as Gins thought, then the predators were unlikely to have encountered humans and just as unlikely to try and eat an unknown creature.

The only man separate from the group by any significant degree was the point man, an assignment given to Sergeant First-Class Donald Burns, known respectfully by everyone else as Fallout Boy. A native of South Carolina, Burns was probably the single most respected figure in the company and simultaneously the most distant from everyone else. He rarely talked and when he did everybody listened, but most of the time he was either performing a task asked of him or listlessly staring into space with haunted eyes. Gins had placed him on point because of his experience growing up in the relative wilderness of the Appalachians.

Gins understood that Burns was not the same man he used to be and for very good reason… the same reason he had that nickname. As far as Gins knew, nobody who had survived Chicago was ever themselves again.

The company wasn't itself anymore either. Burns and Vince were one of the six non-commissioned officers left in the unit, and for officers it was literally just Gins and Mullivan… all the rest were dead. The Captain also now knew that he had precisely fifty-three men left. More positively, by stripping everything they could from the dead, the company had replenished their ammo and tripled the quantity of all their other supplies. They had also redistributed any spare heavy weapons, increasing the firepower to manpower ratio.

Suddenly Burns stopped and an instant later so did the column. Gins immediately moved to the front and joined the assigned point man. The captain didn't have to ask why Burns had stopped, it was abundantly clear. The forest abruptly stopped too and the terrain turned into much more open grassland and rolling hills, the degree of change so drastic that Gins actually found it kind of disorienting.

Taking a quick scan of the terrain, Gins located the tallest of the hills he could find before saying anything. First, he turned to Burns. "Good work sergeant, go and tell the company to rally here."

The NCO merely nodded in response before turning and moving back into the still thick forest. Barely five minutes later, the rest of Gins troops were around him, peering out of the undergrowth. The Captain pointed at the hill he had located and said, "We're heading to the top of that hill, double-time. We're in the open so keep your spacing."

There was a dull chorus of acknowledgement.

"Alright, let's go!"

The average Allied infantryman carried approximately seventy-pounds of gear, which made running anything more than short distances a predictably exhausting venture even on flat ground. By the time every one of the GI's reached the top of the hill, they were all panting from the exertion made worse by the previous weariness inflicted by combat and the modest march through the forest. But true to their training, they remained alert and did not drop down to rest until Gins gave the okay.

The Captain had taken one look around and decided that there was no immediate threat to his company. One of the first to reach the hill, his eyes had immediately been drawn to an even taller hill another five kilometers away and two very familiar structures atop it, one red and one white.

Gins made a more thorough inspection with his binoculars. Through them, he next sighted the trees with familiar red shapes a short distance from the barn and house. Even an American with no experience in agriculture would be able to tell that was an apple farm. The only life he could see was pigs in a pen next to the barn… but there had to be someone caring for them.

"Sergeant Vince." The captain said as he lowered the binoculars.

The non-com looked up from his place on the ground. "Sir."

"I'm going to check out that farm, ask the locals where we are. Take a ten minute breather, then grab nine men of your choice and come with me."

Gins waited for the sergeant to acknowledge before turning to his XO, who had set-up a little kettle. Gins paused at this sight for a few seconds before shaking his head with a sigh. "Lieutenant Mullivan, I'll be heading out in ten minutes with a squad, you'll be in charge until I get back."

"That's quite alright Captain." Mullivan replied. "If I may say sir, this place does make me feel rather comfy."

Gins took a moment to consider his XO's words. Now that it had been brought to his attention, the locale was making him feel rather comfortable too. Every which way he looked, beautiful hills of lush green rolled away, dotted with the occasional tree or shrub. The apple farm actually added to the peaceful scenery, with the only blot being the more foreboding forest his unit had come out of.

For Gins the suddenly serene setting came off as bizarre and astonishingly new. He had spent almost a year in the sterile confines of a military facility (permanent and otherwise) or the wretched hell of both urban and rural combat zones. In both locations he had largely concentrated on surviving, carrying out his orders, and monitoring the situation of both his unit and any others he was working with. He had forgotten that there was such a thing as peace… or more accurately had become too used to the strain and toil of war.

That thought was rather unsettling so Gins shoved it away, along with the feeling, and decided to grab some water from his canteen instead.

Soviet Industrial-Military Complex Headquarters, Unknown Desert

Voroshilov was a very unhappy man. Upon returning to his office, the first thing he did was order all Soviet formations he could contact back to the base. After that, he asked for information. When that came, he immediately called a staff meeting.

The staff consisted of eight colonels (one of whom was from Soviet Frontal Aviation), four majors, the divisional KGB commissar, the psi-corp detachment head, Voroshilov's aide, and Nikolai Ryzhkov.

Ryzhkov actually was not part of the usual staff. Instead he was the head of the civilian communist party representatives who had been sent from Moscow to observe the Chronosphere test. Now he was sitting directly across from Voroshilov, clearly feeling a little out of place amongst all the military men.

The 16 assembled officers sat or stood around a table that was actually meant for a little under a third of that, so it was quite crowded despite the availability of space elsewhere in the room. Seating arrangements were determined by rank and seniority, with Ryzhkov automatically getting a seat for being a guest. The psi-corp head could have taken a seat too, but had elected to remain standing. Nobody asked him twice about it, nobody ever asked the psi-corp twice about anything.

"Comrades," Despite his anger, Voroshilov kept his voice steady which was quite at odds with his expression. "You obviously know why I have called you here."

Before he could continue, Ryzhkov spoke-up. "I am sorry to interrupt, comrade general, but where is Doctor Zelinsky?"

Voroshilov nodded, Ryzhkov had been polite and it was a valid question. "The good doctor is reviewing the data, trying to figure out what went wrong with the test. Obviously, it is connected to why we are here… wherever here is. Lieutenant Ialovskii?"

Voroshilov's aide, Valeriya Ialovskii spoke up. Despite her relative junior rank compared to all of the other officers, she was the general's aide and thus actually wielded plenty of power within his command. In that context, her lack of nerves at addressing so many superiors was understandable.

"Comrades, we have no idea where we are. Our instruments are either telling us nothing or giving us nonsensical data. Ever since the test, all communications with other bases and formations have ceased. We have also confirmed that the satellites-ours, the Allies, and the independent states-are no longer there. It is as if they never existed in the first place. Additionally, intercepts show that the only radio, microwave, or other signals we can locate are those used by all formations and personnel that were stationed at this base and at the workers camp."

The 'workers camp' was the location where most of the base civilians lived. It was the living quarters for most of the scientists and engineers who worked on the base and the industrial plant that surrounded it. The apartments which existed within the facility belonged to the less-essential labor.

"Now, according to both inertial navigation and computer star charts, our location is at thirty-one-point-two latitude and negative-seventy-four-point-nine longitude."

Ialovskii gave the assembled officers a few moments to run the numbers through their heads and compare them to their education. When they did, their eyes widened in disbelief.

"You can't be serious Lieutenant." Commissar Fyedor Lyvaskov sputtered, "That's in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!"

"The Western Atlantic Ocean." Voroshilov corrected, "Almost 400 kilometers off the American coast."

"Certainly not a desert." One of the majors said sardonically, his tone of voice set Voroshilov off.

The general slammed his fist on the table and shouted, "Do you think this is funny? Without knowing where we are, we might all die out here!"

Silence followed that proclamation. All eyes were on Voroshilov as he fumed in his seat. Finally he looked up at another one of the Majors, the one in charge of base supplies. "Comrade Malashenko, I want an inventory on all water, food, and fuel supplies, in that order. Then get me the status on our spare parts."

The major nodded, "Yes, comrade general."

"Good, now the rest of you, I want you to be ready to move your forces." As Voroshilov spoke, the door into the meeting room slowly swung open and a messenger slipped in. Only the psi-corps head noticed him as he walked up to Ialovskii. "We have already placed the base on heightened alert in response to the American raiders, but that should be wound down in preparation for-"

"Comrade General."

At Lieutenant Ialovskii's interruption, Voroshilov scowled for a moment before remembering that Valeriya would not interrupt him if it was not important. "What is it, lieutenant?"

Ialovskii placed the paper the messenger had given her in front of him. "There have been further developments." She stood back-up, "First, the Spetznatz team made an unusual discovery on their way back to base and, just now, an intruder was apprehended…"

Trixie was not lost. Yes, she was hot, she was thirsty, and she couldn't find any landmarks in this desert, but she was not lost. The Great and Powerful Trixie did not get lost! It was inconceivable! Trixie paused to think, was inconceivable the right word? After a moments consideration she decided that yes it was, she had used it after all.

Trixie was happy to finally be well beyond merely back on her hooves after that annoyance in Ponyville. It had taken more work to keep showing her amazing powers, but Trixie had managed to reacquire everything she had lost.

Only a little while ago she had gotten the idea of taking her show to the more remote parts of Equestria, like the desert town Appaloosa. She had rejected taking one of the train lines, after all crossing a desert was simple feat for The Great and Powerful Trixie! And so far Trixie was right again! Just as right as she was about not being lost!

…

Oh, who was she kidding? There wasn't even anyone to kid!

With a sigh, the real Trixie, without The Great and Powerful decoration, collapsed onto the ground. The heat was getting unbearable. Making the decision to travel at night would be better since she could just follow the night lights to Appaloosa… or maybe one of the buffalo tribes. Shrugging off the harness that she used to pull her stage/house cart, she walked alongside the carriage and levitated a canteen of water for refreshment. This heat really was merciless!

As she drank, a glint of light a ways off in the distance caught Trixie's eye. After placing the canteen back, the blue unicorn turned to take a better look, shielding her eyes from the sun. Her spirits soared as she saw a pool of water shimmering in the desert heat. Quickly hitching her cart back up, she began to run towards the inviting oasis.

It was only when the oasis seemed to vanish into thin air five minutes later did Trixie realize she was chasing a mirage. The unicorn slowed down, once again thirsty. Despondent, Trixie again unhitched her cart, turned, and froze.

For a moment, she thought the massive wall a few hundred yards off was another mirage. It was only after watching the strange obstruction for another few minutes that Trixie realized it was not, in fact, a mirage. Giving one last glance at her cart, Trixie set off towards the structure for closer examination. As Trixie got closer, she realized the wall must tower over thirty feet off the ground. Its material was also strange, not even the extremely high-quality stone the structures in Manehatten were made of looked this tough!

Trixie also made out thick strands of some kind of wire on top of the wall, broken up by points where the wall jutted even higher than usual. Strangest of all were the giant vertical red stripes painted onto its side. Looking to either side, she noticed the wall seemed to stretch into the horizon on an unusually flat plain.

Trixie was pulled out of her thoughts by a scuttling sound to her right. Suddenly alert, she spun towards the sound and found… nothing except a small formation of rocks three or four dozen yards away. Cautiously Trixie crept forward, thinking that maybe it had just been her imagination. Only a few feet from the rocks, she paused and listened. Nothing but the wind, the unicorn relaxed and turned away, wondering why she had suddenly gotten so worked up.

The ground in front of her exploded.

With a shriek, Trixie leapt back, crashing into the boulder behind her as a half-dozen metal… things leapt out at her. Momentarily disoriented, Trixie righted herself and got a better look at what had burst from the ground. They were strange machines with a single round body and were mounted on four legs. Trixie further noted that each legs' end had a drill the size of her hoof attached to it. Both the drills and the section of legs they were immediately attached to apparently cackled with electricity… but Trixie could sense no magic from any of the machines.

It took Trixie another precious moment to realize the machines had backed her up against the rock she hit. She looked for a way to run, but all avenues of escape were cut-off. Before the unicorn realized she was going to have to fight, the middle machine sprang towards her.

She barely had time to even register the machine spring off the ground towards her before one of the legs made contact. Trixie screamed in pain as it felt like her central nervous system was set on fire before she blacked out.

As Trixie's body hit the ground, the Terror Drone standing over her took a moment to judge its target. The creature was unconscious, but according to the drone's sensors was still alive. If the Terror Drone were sentient and capable of emotions, it might have had concern over whether the amount of voltage from its tesla spikes would merely incapacitate the target. The amount used was a calculated guess on the part of the machine, made based on the biological data collected by the drone during its observation of the creature. Then it factored in tesla weaponry's unique kinetic and thermal effect alongside the electrical charge. The machine took a moment to request further instructions from the group controller, instructions which came only moments later.

The drones monitored the body for a few more minutes until the Soviet Armored Personnel Carrier arrived. The soldiers within were astonished when they saw the drones discovery and soon Trixie was being driven into the base, an unknowing prisoner of the Soviet Union.

Appleloosa, Painted Pinto Desert, Equestrian Frontier...

"Sheriff!"

Silverstar, sheriff of Appleloosa, stepped away from the wooden porch of the infirmary that he had been leaning on and turned towards the familiar voice. Simultaneously Chief Thunderhooves stood up from where he was resting, he had already sent most of the buffalo tribe on ahead and stayed in the town to wait for the news about Little Strong Heart personally.

"I came as soon as I heard!" the Earth Pony continued. "What happened?"

"We're not entirely sure, Braeburn." Silverstar said, he indicated Thunderhooves with his head, "The Chief here knows part of the story… but only Strong Heart can give us the whole thing."

"And?" Braeburn anxiously looked past them and into the infirmary. One of the first buildings established in Appleloosa, it actually had some bricks in its construction as opposed to the mostly wooden structures throughout the desert town.

"And we have to wait for the doctor's judgment, until then we will just get in their way." The sheriff nodded to Braeburn, "In the meantime, I think you should fill him in on what you know."

Thunderhooves sighed. Concern over losing one member of his tribe and the potential loss of another created a very anxious buffalo, concern which he expressed clearly in both his face and voice. "The tribe was moving to one of our drinking holes when this strange flying machine appeared. I had never seen anything like it before… it certainly was no pony machine and obviously could not be buffalo. It merely followed the Tribe for a bit before turning away and most of us thought that it was then harmless."

The chief shook his head and continued. "I did not see Strong Heart fall out of the tribe and the first clue that anything was wrong was a distant, unfamiliar crack. I brought the tribe to a halt and we realized two of our own were missing: Strong Heart and Taking Easy. I turned the Stampede around and we found Strong Heart… but the only sign of Taking Easy was a large…" He hesitated, "a large pool of blood. And Strong Heart, her leg… some kind- of… hole had been… I don't know. We brought her here first thing we could… your medicine is better than ours."

"So… the doctors have not told you anything?" Braeburn asked. He and Little Strong Heart were very good friends, a state which had actually made him the most trustworthy pony in Appleloosa in the eyes of the Buffalo.

"Not yet." The Sherriff repeated, "As I said, you and I would just get in their way and the chief… well."

"You need not shelter your tongue: I am too big. We are lucky that Little Strong Heart is… little."

Before Braeburn could say anything else, the clinic's front door creaked open and the doctor stepped out onto the porch. The unicorn pony was telekinetically holding something really small, which hovered next to him. Then he looked at the Chief and said, "I may not be as good with buffalo as with ponies and I had never seen something like this before but… she will live."

Thunderhooves mood visibly improved at the news. The sheriff clapped the buffalo chief on the shoulder and said, "I knew she would pull through!"

The doctor coughed, the tiny object floated forward and up to the chief. "I found this lodged in Strong Heart's knee, probably what created the hole. She was very lucky, given the speed this must have been moving, a smidge to the left and it would have shattered her leg bone. An inch to the right and it would have severed an artery… there would have been nothing I could do."

Braeburn visibly paled, but the sheriff and chief were too interested in studying the projectile. The sheriff had picked it out of the air with his hoof and was holding it so both Thunderhooves and he could examine it.

"What is it?"

"Some kind of projectile, I think." The town doctor said, "I actually took a bit longer to do some personal studying of its material. Now I don't know as much about metals as, say, Forty-Niner, but I do know enough to say that it's made almost entirely of lead… although oddly enough there are some scraps of copper around the edges. Given the way it deformed, it must have been moving at tremendous speeds when it hit the poor pon... buffalo. There was actually some damage to the tissue it passed by, it was moving so fast."

"Hm." The sheriff put it in the pocket of his forward vest. "I better find Forty-Niner then; see if he can give me any more information."

"Alright, I'll catch-up with you later sheriff." Braeburn said. Silverstar tipped his hat in response and trotted off.

"Can we see Little Strong Heart?" Thunderhooves asked next. The doctor removed his hat for a moment to scratch his mane in thought.

"She's sleeping right now, so maybe Braeburn can as long as he does not wake her up… but, Chief Thunderhooves, I'm sorry but you are… well."

"Too big?" Thunderhooves grinned as the doctor nodded. "You ponies should be more upfront sometimes."

The doctor did not know how to take that from the buffalo chief, so he just remained quiet.

"I'll wait around." Braeburn said, "Thunderhooves, go-on… your tribe needs you."

"If it was any other pony in Appleloosa, Brahburn-"

"Braeburn." The earth pony corrected. The chief paused, embarrassingly apologized, and then continued.

"If it was any other pony, I would not agree… but I know I can trust you."

"Thanks chief, that's mighty nice of you."

A few moments of stillness passed as the buffalo chief tried to figure out a way to make his exit.

Ultimately, he just said, "I go now. Tell me what Little Strong Heart says."

And with that, he departed, leaving Braeburn alone with the doctor.

The unicorn shook his head before saying, "Come on then."

Braeburn steeled himself against emotions, and entered the clinic.

Chapter Ends...

A/N: No Mane Cast yet… next chapter, I promise.

This will probably be roughly the update speed for every chapter, plus or minus a month. I was going to wait until Wednesday, when I meet with my Beta Reader, before throwing this up but then I figured I would just edit it when that day rolled around.

Any how, I'm going to push up another chapter, then I got to devote my attention back to my Touhou/40K x-over Intrusion of the Dark Stars (I never quite realized just how pretentious italicized fanfic titles actually look… ah well) which has been languishing for far too long.

You might have noticed the presence of both the imperial and metric systems. For the records, I am running on the assumption that Ponies use the Imperial system. No, it does not make much sense, but then again they are talking ponies! I also kind-of lied about the RA3 thing… I am stealing some of their better idea's (the V4's multi-warhead missile, for instance), but at its core I plan to keep the C&C-side of this fic more firmly in the earlier Red Alert games, before EA went overboard with the silliness.

A bit of a fact adventure: Nikolai Ryzhkov is a real person… which probably makes this a kind-of real person fic, but oh well! In our timeline, he was Premier of the Soviet Union from September 1985 up until just before its collapse. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the (historical) USSR's power structure, this means he was their Head of State BUT much like the recent Royal Family of the United Kingdom, the Premier was more a figure head then actual leader. The real power lay in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (commonly known as the Politburo), which was led by the General-Secretary. However, it there were a few cases where the General-Secretary too also take the position of Premier, a stunt which both Khrushchev and Stalin pulled.

Now this is in OTL, obviously in the Red Alert timeline the Soviet power structure has changed as a result of its defeat in the (alternate) World War 2, what with Premier Romanov and all being the absolute ruler (supposedly… coughYuricough). Will that become important in this fic? No.

But it might become important much later in the story.

EDIT: All but the last two sections have been edited.

EDIT2: Finished Betaing.

Next Chapter: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Disclaimer: My Little Pony is owned by Hasbro. The Red Alert series is owned by Electronic Arts. The United States was founded by a group of colonial intellectuals. The Soviet Union was founded by Vladimir Lenin (with assistance). I'm not sure who, exactly, founded Britain.

The Eagle, The Bear, and The Ponies

Chapter 3: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Carousel Boutique, Ponyville…

Rarity was facing a crisis, a crisis that threatened her home, her family, her life, and all of her hopes and dreams. It was an implacable and stubborn enemy that refused to back down, one which she had no experience with and was slowly driving her crazy. It was a horrible experience.

Rarity was in the middle of her first ever creative slump.

It had begun innocently enough, the white unicorn reflected: she decided that it was time to drum up a new design. So Rarity grabbed her dress forms, several blank sheets of paper, her markers, and a bite to eat before lying down to begin the process. Several hours later, she realized she still didn't have a clue where to start despite strenuous thinking.

Undeterred, Rarity decided to dig up her previous designs hoping that the past might give her inspiration. First, she got out the designs from the year before, then the year before that, then the year before that. The next thing she knew, she had dug out all her designs since she had first acquired her cutie mark, some of which had actually made her cringe on reflection. After another day or two of sorting through them, mixing-and-matching patterns, the unicorn still came out with nothing.

Now feeling a little concerned, the fashionista resorted to her trump card: her friends. While Twilight had gone off to visit Canterlot for several days, the rest were still around. Whenever Rarity managed to convince them to spare the time, the other four ponies helped her out by modeling. But as session after session passed with no results, Rarity became more and more anxious. She even had Sweetie Belle and her friends model at one point, a task they actually leapt into eagerly… at first. Since the three fillies had already attempted to get their 'modeling cutie marks' , the Cutie Mark Crusaders were intractable from the start.

When Twilight came back, one of the first things Rarity did was ask her to model in hopes that maybe salvation would be in a fellow unicorn with a different style. But that did not seem to be the case…

"No, no, no, no…" Rarity muttered, as she threw various costumes onto Twilight at an astounding pace. By this point, she was well beyond pointing out just what she thought was wrong with each attempt.

"No, no…" She paused, tilted her head at the Crowned Equestrian Statue costume she had placed on her best friend and thought for a moment. "Maybe it could…" Rarity perked up, "Yes!" Another pause, then she deflated again, "No, just no." And took the costume back off.

Twilight Sparkle, for her part, had gained that nervous smile of hers as the session wore on. She had noticed Rarity's behavior and was trying to figure out how to bring it up.

"So, Rar-" That was her first attempt, and it was interrupted as the other unicorn telekinetically shoved a bright red clown nose onto Twilight's nose. Rarity took a moment to do a double-take at the nose, the clown costume in her hooves that she did not remember ever having, and the fact that she had just interrupted Twilight.

"No." She said at the clown costume decisively, then turned and levitated the fake nose off of Twilight's snout rather more gently then it had been shoved on. "I'm sorry about that dear."

"Oh, no. It's fine." Twilight said, rubbing at the odd feeling the presence of a foreign object on her face had left behind, "It just seems you are rather… more intense than previously."

"Oh, really?" Rarity asked, laughing nervously, "I'm so sorry about that, it's just that I have been having such trouble coming up with a new design recently… I'm afraid it's made me a little frustrated."

"Trouble coming up with…" Twilight paused and raised an eyebrow. "Are you having a… I don't think the term is artist's block, is it?"

Now Rarity's laugh had much more humor in it. "Not really. But the problem, I believe, is still the same." She sighed, "And yes, I am in a slump, my very first."

"Well, I can understand how that feels." Twilight said, stepping down from the modeling plateau and placing a sympathetic hoof on Rarity, "Sometimes I get writer's block, but I have some tricks that I think can help."

"Really?" Rarity inquired, interested and hopeful of a way out of this terrible situation.

"Yeah. The first thing I try is to take my books, pens, and writing paper to somewhere scenic and try to draw inspiration from around me."

"Oh, I wish I had thought of that!" Rarity said. "Do you have any suggestions on where to go?"

Twilight thought for a few moments. "Well, Sweet Apple Acre's has a great view of the mountains… and there's this hill further out that has beautiful scenery! Although… it's a little close to the Everfree forest."

Rarity didn't seem the slightest bit affected. "That's just fine. Honestly, that place has never been quite so frightening ever since we met Steve."

"Steve?" Twilight asked, not sure what Rarity was talking about. Did she mean Zecora? "Who's Steve?"

"You don't remember Steven Magnet? That fine water serpent back when we first met?"

"Oh, him! I didn't really ever see him again…" Twilight said, somewhat embarrassed. "So wait, you go and meet him?"

"Why yes. He recalls you, although he doesn't remember your name either. We actually just talk about the latest trends… hmm, I wonder if he could help."

Twilight thought a little. The serpent had actually been rather nice. "Next time you go, can I come? I never really had a chance to talk with a Sea Serpent before."

"Why most certainly, but first that hill… let me go get my things and we can be off."

"Oh, yes… that." Twilight said as Rarity trotted off and ducked into her storage closet, she had almost forgotten about their outing after Steve had come up…

Seemingly Random Cloud, Just Over Ponyville…

Rainbow Dash had an odd way of napping. Unlike most ponies who fell into heavy sleepers, light sleepers, or some position in between, Rainbow Dash was all of them. Simply put, she would sleep like a log unless some rather specific audio cues caught her subconscious's attention.

Pinkie Pie's voice was one of those cues.

"HEY DASHIE!"

At that horribly familiar call, Dash's eyes shot open and she leapt to her feet, head whipping around in an attempt to locate Pinkie Pie. It was then that the Pegasus remembered that she was napping on a cloud and there was no way for Pinkie Pie to be on a cloud with her unless…

For a handful of seconds, the pink Earth Pony's head burst through the cloud in front of Dash.

"You're awake!" Was all Pinkie Pie managed before she fell back through the cloud. A few seconds later, her head was back again.

"It's an emergency!"

That caught Rainbow Dash's attention... well, even more so than already. An emergency? Was there a fire? A creature from the Everfree forest attacking? Or was Equestria being invaded by technologically advanced bi-peds from another dimension? Dash struck the last possibility from the list before asking, "What is it?"

Unfortunately, Pinkie Pie had already fallen back to the ground, so Dash had to wait a few seconds before she appeared again. When the Earth Pony showed up, however, all she said was: "What did you say?"

And then she was gone again.

With an annoyed sigh, Dash took off and landed on the ground next to the trampoline Pinkie Pie had been using to jump through the cloud. She waited for Pinkie to descend, brake before hitting the trampoline again, and hop down next to Rainbow Dash.

"I said," Dash continued as if nothing had happened, "What is it?"

Pinkie gave her a perplexed look, "What is what?"

Dash face-hoofed and said in a strained voice, "The emergency..."

"Oh, yeah! Well, I was working and-WOOOOOOAAAAHHH!"

Pinkie bounced, but not the usual bouncing as in terms of hopping up and down. No, instead every part of her body simultaneously and individually wobbled up and down as if they had minds of their own. Dash widened as she recognized the motion.

A few seconds later, Pinkie stopped bouncing and grinned sheepishly, "Erm… that's the emergency."

"Oh great, a doozy." Dash said, dreading what was coming next. The 'doozy' was the most serious of Pinkie Pie's 'Pinkie Sense'. Unpredictable and often dangerous, the last doozy Pinkie Pie led to several of her friends running from a Hydra in the process.

"Yeah! It's the doozy!" Pinkie said, "And whatever it is, it's going to happen at Sweet Apple Acres! I tried to find Twilight, but she wasn't home and Spike said she was at Rarity's, but neither Rarity or her were there and Applejack already left to go home and Fluttershy's home is too far away and then I saw you on top of that cloud, but I needed a trampoline to get up there and Mr. and Mrs. Cake's trampoline was busted so I had to go to that sports rental store with the strange-"

"ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT!" Dash pleaded, "I get it… look, we don't have time to waste with this Pinkie. We have to get to Sweet Apple Acres!"

"Oh, yeah ri-IIIEEEGHT!" Pinkie Pie bounced again as her Pinkie sense went off… again.

"Let's go!" Dash cried, taking to the air with Pinkie bouncing after her… both against and then under her own control once the 'sense reaction' wore off.

Countryside, Just Outside of Ponyville…

"So, which sounds better?" Scootaloo said. "Cutie Mark Miners and Crafters or Cutie Mark Minecrafters?"

"Cutie Mark Minecrafters," Sweetie Belle replied, "definitely."

"Yeah, I thought so too." Scootaloo turned back to Applebloom, who was leading the trio to their 'secret' clubhouse. "So where did you get the tools for this anyways?"

"From the barn, of course." The young earth pony replied, "Big Mac always keeps shovels, picks, and axes around in case he and Applejack need to clear some rocks, dirt, or dead trees out of the orchard."

"I can buy that okay. But what if we encounter…" Sweetie Belle's voice dropped into a whisper, "Diamond Dogs?"

"Really, do you think they would go to the same place twice?" Sootaloo asked, as she rolled her eyes, "Besides, your sister came out just fine, all we got to do is what she did."

"Whine?" Applebloom asked.

Scootaloo shook her head, "No, complain."

Applebloom nodded in understanding and returned her attention to getting to the tree house. In the meantime Scootaloo got into a good-natured argument with Sweetie Belle on whether Rainbow Dash was cool or way cool. When Applebloom abruptly froze in her tracks, Scootaloo ran into her.

"Oof!" The small Pegasus muttered, "Applebloom-"

"Shhhh…" Applebloom muttered, Scootaloo was taken aback for a few seconds and was about to object at getting hushed when her friend continued, "Something's coming…"

"What?" Sweetie Belle piped up, "What's coming?"

"I don't know…"

The ground the three fillies were on was adjacent to Sweet Apple Acre's orchards and therefore had been given a light foresting of regular trees with attendant bushes for appearance's sake. Now, as the first hint of voices began to reach the three, Applebloom was happy for those additions.

"Hide!" She whispered to her friends before diving into a nearby copse. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle followed, any questions quelled by the urgency of their friend's voice.

A few moments passed and the voices came closer and became quite audible… kind of. Whatever the oncoming group was, they were speaking in a strange language with very mushy sounds mixed in with a few hisses and what the three could only describe as sudden 'spits'. Scootaloo leaned over to Sweeite Belle and whispered, "Have you ever heard anything like that before?"

Sweetie Belle shook her head and continued to peer through a small opening in the bush.

Then the group of creatures came into sight. There were ten of them, tall and thin, standing only on two legs like Spike and with hands, again like Spike, clutching very large metallish sticks. In the few places where their body was exposed, the Cutie Mark Crusaders noticed they didn't appear to have hides, although a few of them had some minor hairs growing on their faces, and none had a tail. The creatures' faces were flat and had their mouths set into them with the noses protruding a little above them. All ten of the creatures wore dirtied clothing in a very dull green-gray fashion and similarly colored helmets. With just one look, Sweetie Belle knew her sister Rarity would have fits over these creatures' dress.

The dresses also contained numerous pouches and objects hanging off of them. Additionally, Applebloom noticed that no matter how the creatures moved, they kept those sticks angled at the ground… never at anything else. The creatures moved in a slightly staggered file, apparently engaged in casual conversation with each other. One of them, towards the front and with a pair of bars barely visible on its fore-haunch, was engaged with a somewhat smaller and wider one who had a series of stripes instead.

The group passed by the Cutie Mark Crusaders, one stepping so close that the three had to hold their breath as they caught a whiff and had to hold off coughing from the terrible smell of the mysterious group. The creatures passed by and moved off into the light woods, heading the way the Cutie Mark Crusaders had come.

After waiting a few moments to make sure they were gone, Applebloom leapt out of her hiding place and stared off at the way the creatures had left.

"Did you see them?" Scootaloo asked excitedly.

"It was kind of hard to miss 'em." Applebloom replied. "What were they?"

"I don't know." Sweetiebelle said, "I never heard of anything like those before."

Applebloom began to reply when something about the creatures' path clicked in her mind. "They're heading for the house! Only Granny Smith is there right now!"

"What?" Scootaloo looked at Applebloom, then back where the creatures had gone off. "But… are we sure they're not friendly?"

"Are we sure they're not friendly?" Applebloom asked, "There's only one place they could have come from…"

"Zecora lives in the Everfree forest too." Sweetie Belle pointed out, somewhat regretfully at the way the town had treated the Zebra.

"Maybe we should follow them?" Scootaloo suggested.

For once in her life, Applebloom thought the suggestion over. If the creatures were friendly, then it would be okay, but if they were hostile…

"Big Macintosh is in the orchard, inspectin' the trees." Applebloom said, "We should go get him first!"

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle considered it themselves before nodding in agreement. Big Mac was a tough pony, surely he could handle whatever those creatures could do if they were bad… right?

Sweet Apple Acres, Ponyville Outskirts…

"Picturesque place, isn't it?" Vince observed.

"Yeah, real comfy..." Try as he might, Gins couldn't force himself to inject the sarcasm he wanted into that sentence. There was no way around it: the little farmstead he looked over right now did feel remarkably comfortable.

Strangely though, the pigs in the sty seemed to have backed away into a corner and were watching the group of humans with a clear expression of wariness…

He rapidly realized another oddity: the buildings were rather small. Gins realized the barn was only something like 2/3rds the size of even the smallest model. He would know: he had spent one of the earlier defensive actions against the Soviet invasion using one as a command post.

The third oddity to leap out at the Captain and his men was the decor. As far as they could figure out, whoever ran the place was probably less an apple farmer and more an apple fanatic. The barn was covered weather-vane-to-foundation in cutesy decorations that made Gins feel like brushing his teeth by just looking at them.

The squad had emerged from the tree line and into a small vegetable field, which turned into a dirt path. To the left of their entrance, the house sat at the end of a dirt road, which the men first had to reach by lugging themselves over a white fence.

"Sir!" One of the soldiers spoke-up as they observed the surroundings, "I think I see a town."

Gins turned in the direction the man was pointing and, sure enough, he could make out wooden roofs poking out from another light forest downhill from where they stood. "Alright then, if no-one's home here, we'll head there."

Gins was pretty sure someone was home… there was a small light in one of the windows, barely perceptible (especially in the day) but there. As they approached the homestead, the squad instinctively fell into a semi-circle shaped formation, a bizarre feeling of apprehension suddenly welling up inside them. It was a wild contradiction from the previous sense of peace and relaxation they had been in…

"Sergeant Vince, on me..." Gins said once the group came close enough. "Everybody else, hold here."

And so he went forward, that strange apprehension only growing… and the captain finally identified the source of it. It was goddamn quiet, he would even say too quiet but this level of silence ran beyond merely 'too quiet' and straight into 'ridiculously quiet'. Gins reached the door, which was so small that he would have had to duck down if he was going through it, and finally knocked.

To Gins, the sound of his knuckles rapping against the door broke the silence as surely as an artillery barrage. The captain knocked twice, one of those polite, business-like knocks that were rapid and clear while still being unobtrusive.

From inside, a voice called out in a language that Gins did not understand or even recognize. Even though the voice was muffled by the door, it still sounded so sweet and syrupy that Gins unwillingly found himself thinking of maples. But it was hardly a viscous sort of syrupy, the language flowed as smoothly as a stream. But even in its light-hearted tone, Gins could tell the speaker was female but old… it had that weight of gravity that age seemed to lend to peoples voices.

The door opened and Gins had already inclined his head forward expecting a midget to be answering, albeit a foreign one. He was not expecting a small, greenish horse to do so instead.

Gins had to blink to make sure he was not hallucinating, but sure enough a small horse… no, he realized that a pony with a green hide and an apple pie… brand? tattoo? symbol? was staring up at him with an oddly expressive face… one which seemed to be just as shocked and surprised as he was. If it weren't for the fact that the pony was, impossibly, holding open the door with one of her forelegs, Gins would have thought there was some kind of joke being pulled on him.

If Gins had looked over his shoulder, he would have seen Sergeant Vince and eight other US Army soldiers with their eyes threatening to fall out of their open sockets.

Then the pony, which now Gins noticed had a number of wrinkles in her hide, said something in that same syrupy language… Gins didn't know what she said, but he did know it was short and rapidly followed by the creature making one unmistakably clear sound: "AAAAAAAHHH!"

And then the pony slammed the door shut in his face.

Applejack whistled as she trotted down the road linking Sweet Apple Acres to Ponyville. The orange earth pony was in a good mood and anyone looking at the cart she was towing could figure out why… she had finally earned enough bits to replace the old plow! It was about time too… if it hadn't been for those Parasprites forcing the family to replace the entire barn they could have bought the plow ages ago!

Applejack was enjoying the satisfaction that the payoff to weeks of hard work brought about when she heard somepony calling her name. Slowing down and twisting her head around for a better look, she saw two familiar faces coming towards her. "Twilight, Rarity… how y'all doing?"

"Oh, we're just going out to take in some scenery." Twilight said. "I suggested it to Rarity, it might give her some ideas."

Applejack switched her attention to the other Unicorn, "Still havin' trouble with the new dresses?"

"Yes…" Rarity sighed and pawed at the ground a little anxiously, "These things happen…"

Twilight, on the other hand, was eyeing Applejack's cart and the pile of bits in it. "Good day at the market?"

"The best!" Applejack grinned, "There was a big group in town, think they were some kind-a political types meeting with the mayor, sold me out at lunch time faster than you can say 'new plow'!"

"Lunch?" Twilight and Rarity asked simultaneously, followed quickly by their stomachs growling at the reminder.

"Oh…" Rarity said, "I guess we lost track of time in there."

"Ya'll hadn't have lunch yet?" Applejack gave her friends a grin "Come on, I'll give ya a treat at the farm."

"Oh, thanks a bunch Apple-" Twilight was interrupted by a shout followed instantly by a rainbow blur barreling into the trio. Rarity and Twilight took the brunt of the impact, sending the two unicorns sprawling to the ground, while Applejack staggered, her cart rocking alarmingly. When the dust settled, a furrow had been dug into the dirt road and at the end of that furrow, sprawled on her back, was Rainbow Dash complete with an awkward smile on her face.

"Oops… sorry."

"You know Dash," Twilight said as she picked herself off the ground and shook off the dirt, "For a racer you really do crash a lot when flying low to the ground. I think you should fly above tree-top level, at the very least… less ground clutter that way."

"Silly Twilight!" Pinkie Pie broke in, seemingly appearing out of thin air, "Rainbow Dash isn't a radar station!"

"A what?" Twilight asked even as she, Applejack, and Rarity jerked back in surprise. Even though she was one of their best friends, they still had trouble getting used to Pinkie Pie's ability to instantly sneak-up on anypony she wanted.

Pinkie Pie never got a chance to answer as Rainbow Dash cut in, "Pinkie! We don't have time for this, remember?" Without waiting for a reply, she addressed the other three friends, "Look something's going to go down at Applejack's farm."

"What?" Applejack said in alarm, then she added "What is it?"

"I don't know, Pinkie's Pinkie Se-"

"TH-TH-TH-THERE I-I-I-I-I-I GOES AGAIN!" Pinkie Pie shouted, as the doozy shook her up and down.

"Oh no." Rarity gasped, recognizing the motion.

"That's right, the doozy!" Dash said, "And Pinkie Pie says whatever is happening is gonna happen at Sweet Apple Ac-"

"AAAAAAAHHH" A shriek cut through the air, its voice very familiar…

"Granny Smith!" Applejack's eyes widened, "She's all alone at the farm!" Then the Earth Pony took off so fast that she broke the harness attached to the cart of bits. "I'M COMING GRANNY!"

"Applejack, wait!" Twilight shouted, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie immediately began to follow after her, but Twilight only got a little distance before she realized something. "Rarity! Come on!"

"But Applejack left her bits!" The white unicorn said, indicating the cart, "Someone might steal them!"

"Then we report it to the local guards! And Applejack can always earn more bits, Granny Smith is much more important!"

Rarity hesitated, clearly disliking the idea of leaving so much money out alone on the trail. The fashionista knew that money was important to one's survival, but a Pony's life was even more important. The Unicorn nodded and finally made to follow Twilight, the two leaving the cart behind for now.

In the end, nopony ever did steal the bits, but even if there had been a case of theft, the events that followed would likely have pushed the cart well out of Twilight and her friends' mind.

"What the fuck?" Was the first thing anyone uttered after recovering from the shock, "Was that a pony?"

"It certainly wasn't a snail…" Sargeant Vince said to the man.

"It was intelligent…" Gins said, "It was speaking a language…"

"And we scared the piss out of it," Vince said. "Do we go into town now sir?"

Gins stepped off the porch, Vince following, and turned his attention to the roofs in the distance, bringing his binoculars up to take a better look. The designs were just as whimsical as the barn… Gins noticed a sinking feeling in his chest "No, sergeant. I don't think we're on Earth any more…"

Vince obviously did not follow and was about to ask something when a VERY angry voice, again in that cavity-inducing language, yelled out at the group of Allied soldiers. They turned fast enough to process the sight of an orange Pony, obviously a different one from before charging down at them.

The troopers leapt out of the way in the nick of time, but the new pony rapidly halted and spun around, its posture obviously aggressive. The GI's, for their part, snapped their weapons up, taking aim and fingers a breadth away from the trigger, but waiting for the order before firing. The pony said something sharply, in a much younger yet obviously feminine voice.

Now that the two sides had a moment to pause, they took stock of each other. Gins and his men noted the pony's braided hair and cowboy hat, clearly something a pony usually does not do on its own. Applejack, after demanding what these strange two-legged creatures had done with Granny Smith, noted the group's filthy appearance and the posture they had taken. The earth pony was not sure what those metallish sticks were, but from the way the creatures held them they had to be some sort of weapon.

The impasse lasted for only a few seconds, because that was when Applejack's friends arrived on the scene.

Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie arrived in quick succession. Dash took one look at the situation and let out an impromptu war cry before diving at one of the creatures. The Allied trooper, a one Private Werve, spun around, saw a blue blur bearing down on him, and let off what was a short burst for a M60E4 medium machine gun.

It was not an aimed shot so none of the six rounds actually hit the oncoming Pegasus, but the rattle of the gun immediately followed by the series of hisses and snaps that came from the bullets shooting by her head at various distances caused Dash to involuntarily jink in shock. She instinctively attempted to correct, but still disoriented from the noise, she misjudged and only her left wing collided with Private Werve. As a later comparison in physical qualities would show, this was very fortunate for the soldier.

The pegasus pony and the human were knocked off their feet and tangled together, a rather awkward situation given the human's greater size. Gins, making a snap decision, rushed in to help Private Werve. Six of the other GI's, including Sergeant Vince, took this as an indication to follow the captain's lead and also rushed over to help.

Applejack saw one of her best friends entangled amidst the group of creatures and came up with an improvised plan. First, she made as if to charge straight ahead but then took off at more of an angle instead. Fortunately for her, the two soldiers with their weapons still aimed were beyond confused at this point. Too much had happened too fast for these men and they didn't know whether to follow the rest, keep their attention on the orange pony, or aim at the new pink pony who was just standing there, gaping in surprise.

It was the scene of Applejack and Rainbow Dash caught in a confusing tussle with a small group of unknown bi-peds that met Twilight Sparkle and Rarity when the two finally caught up. They stood there, mirroring Pinkie's reaction, as they fully lacked even the slightest context that could help.

Finally, the two sides managed to disentangle themselves, neither ever figured out exactly how, and both groups fell back from each other.

It was at this point that Big Macintosh and the three Cutie Mark Crusaders arrived. Applejack's older brother had been listening to Applebloom hurriedly telling him of their encounter in the orchard when Granny Smith encountered the humans and he had taken off immediately at her scream. Since Big Mac and the three fillies came in from the right of the homestead's front, the group of GI's belatedly realized that all of their routes of escape were cut-off. Behind them were a fence and the slope of a hill, to the squad's right was the house, to their front and left the strange sentient ponies.

Before the squad could make any decisions, the final event of the crisis occurred: the house's door opened and Granny Smith cautiously poked her head out. Upon seeing her, Applejack, Big Mac, and Applebloom all made for the door, shouting with great relief "GRANNY!"

And just like that, the crisis diffused itself. The humans didn't know what was happening, but could feel the previous tension vanish and relaxed, while the ponies noted the creatures less aggressive stances and followed suit. Then the aftermath began…

"So do ya know what they are Twilight?" Applejack asked a few minutes later. After getting the story from Granny Smith, Applejack had left the old pony in the care of her capable big brother and put her foot down with the Cutie Mark Crusaders in ordering them to go with him. Scootaloo and Applebloom complained, but Sweetiebelle seemed a little shakened and Applejack worried about that… she would have to tell Rarity about it.

"I've never seen anything like them." Twilight and her friends looked across at the creatures with a mix of wariness and awe. A short distance away, the creatures gave them the exact same looks. A few of them were muttering to each other in their unfamiliar language.

"More importantly, what are they doing here and what do they want? Are they hostile?" Rarity whispered, "I mean, they tried to attack Rainbow…" Her face scrunched up, "And those clothes are a travesty."

"I don't know, but there's one way to find out." Twilight replied before beginning to approach the creatures.

On the other side of the homestead, Gins' squad watched the strange Ponies. The captain himself was discussing the strangely bizarre situation with Sergeant Vince… or more likely ranting at him.

"A civilization of ponies… not just ponies, but goddamn pegasi and unicorns!" Gins paused to wonder why he wasn't more shocked by this. Maybe the sheer shock of everything had yet to settle in? He continued on, "There's no way we are on Earth…"

"Sir," Vincent said formally, his voice completely at odds with his pale look, "What are your orders?"

Gins thought about it. What were his orders? What kind of orders should he give? The military academy had not exactly taught him how to deal with sentient, talking ponies… silently, Gins thanked himself that Werve had missed the blue Pegasus otherwise the others would likely have attacked and his men would have had to kill them too.

… And he had never imagined being thankful that one of his men missed shooting what was a mythological creature. Before Gins could come to a decision, the purple unicorn (goddamn, what a crazy day he was having) began to approach them. The soldiers tensed but Gins rapidly divined her intentions.

"Steady." He ordered.

The Unicorn paused about six feet away and muttered something in that language of theirs… a feminine sounding voice, again. Were all of these ponies female? Although that big red one looked a little different…

Gins was not prepared for the Unicorn's horn to be enveloped in a dancing aura for a few moments and he actually blinked in surprise. For a few moments, he was entranced as the light brightened and then dimmed. At the edge of his consciousness, the captain thought he felt a moment of pressure against his mind… but that vanished immediately.

Then the Unicorn looked at the squad and said, "Umm… hi."

All ten allied soldiers proceeded to do their best imitations of a fly catcher.

"Sergeant," Gins' voice held every inch of disbelief he felt, "Did that pony just speak in English?"

The reply was an oddly slow, "Yes sir…"

The unicorn looked a bit put-off by that exchange, clearly not expecting it.

"Oh…" Gins' paused, "Holy shit."

End Chapter

A/N: Man, Toy Soldiers Cold War is awesome!

Now where were we? Oh yeah...

Anyways, you might have noticed I changed the scene breaks a little. Suffice to say a line break indicates a time or minor perspective shift while a big bold location descriptor thingy indicates a major location switch… obviously.

No, good news/bad news time. Good News: This story has really grabbed my muse something fierce. That means I'm going to keep prioritizing it rather then switch back to Intrusion of the Dark Stars until I lose it. Bad news: A new semester of college has begun, which is going to cut rather severely into my fic writing. Expect updates to take longer. I will say we won't be going back to the Soviets quite yet…

Also, pony pun: Coltistan Desert = Cholistan Desert, which is on the border between Pakistan and India.

EDIT: I made a decision, we're going back too the Soviets next chappy. The below has been updated too reflect that.

Next Chapter: Brain Freeze

Brain Freeze

Disclaimer: My Little Pony is owned by Hasbro, Red Alert by EA. Also: Britain was founded by King Alfred the Great, or at least that's what Numbuh Six-Sixtysix told me. Cheerio old chap.
THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN BETA’D NOW!

The Bear, the Eagle, and the Ponies

Chapter 4: Brain Freeze

Barracks-8, Soviet Military-Industrial Complex, Painted Pinto Desert...

When the squad had left, the barracks had its heater running on low. Now the heater was off and instead the air conditioning was running at full blast. But the mess hall was still filled with roughly a hundred men, all of their conversation drowning out the AC’s noise. The conversations were also different from when the Spetznaz had left. The voices had a more nervous bent to them and there was an atmosphere of uncertainty hanging in the air.
One thing that had not changed was the noticeable space the regular enlisted gave their Spetznaz counterparts. The average Soviet conscript respected the special forces men for the risks they took and the skills they possessed. The few soldiers who did not, often wound up in one of the medical wards, recovering from a bar brawl.
Senior Sergeant Orlovsky was glad for that space, it let him think. The moment the helicopter had touched down on the pad, they were confronted by a mix of KGB troops and men from the divisional headquarters who confiscated the buffalo body, debriefed them, and then quite pointedly told the squad to keep their mouths shut.
Now Orlovsky mulled over it all. The Indian feather had caused a mix of reactions amongst the squad… confusion, horror, and disbelief. There had been arguments over whether the feather was an indication of the buffalo’s intelligence, a decoration from a different creature, or just random chance. But now, reflecting on it, the sergeant found it odd that there had been an argument at all.
“A ruble for your thoughts, comrade sergeant?”
Orlovsky looked up to see Gennady, the squad marksman, standing before him. The sniper had withdrawn back into himself after the initial revelation…
“Possibly.” Orlovsky replied, and then a thought occurred to him. “How are you, Gennady?”
As the sniper sat down across from his squad leader, an odd expression passed over his face. “I am… a little saddened by events. It is unusual.”
“How so?”
Instead of answering the question directly, the sniper asked one of his own: “How many men have you killed, comrade sergeant?”
Taken aback, Orlovsky considered his answer before giving a guesstimate, “A few dozen, I think.”
“Ah… I have killed eighteen.” The sniper paused, as if mentally confirming the number, before speaking again, “Do you remember the first one?”
“No.”
“I do.” Gennady took a long drag on his cigarette, “He was an engineer. Probably some kid drafted out of one of the American’s technical schools. I remember the look in his eyes… and I remember feeling nothing but the recoil of my Dragunov.”
The sniper gave Orlovsky a hard look, “You and I are killers, comrade sergeant. We are trained to kill and willing to kill. We kill for the motherland, for each other, and for ourselves. We kill because our enemies wish to kill us as well. And we don’t feel anything… or if we do, we justify it.” Another pause to take a drag on his cigarette, “So what if the buffalo was an intelligent creature… and I don’t know how that line of thought started… with family, hopes, and dreams? That is no different from the Allied soldiers we have killed, from the Allied civilians who might have been caught in our crossfire or executed for partisan activity. So why does this bother us?”
Orlovsky stared at the sniper as the realization dawned upon him that Gennady was right. The entire squad was composed of combat veterans, even the newest of them had fought and killed at least once before. And they were not bothered by it... or at least not enough to noticeably affect them. So why should this kill be any different?
Gennady had apparently finished and was watching his squad leader expectantly, as if waiting for a reply. The sergeant gave it: “I don’t know.”
“I know.” The sniper said nodding, “And neither do I.” He stood up, “By your leave, comrade sergeant.”
Orlovsky looked at the table, developing a sudden interest in considering its properties. “Dismissed.”
The sniper left his commander with even more unanswered questions… even more troubling questions.

The Salt Block, Appleloosa, Painted Pinto Desert…

Only a few ponies glanced up as Sheriff Silverstar entered the Salt Block. Like most towns of its size, Appleloosa was a tight knit community where everypony knew every other pony on at least some level beyond just their name. One result of such a set-up was that there was rarely any alarm at seeing persons of authority entering a bar, another result was that news travelled fast.
The latter fact was made abundantly apparent when the owner and bartender of the Salt Block, a big mustachioed stallion named Morton Shaker, immediately greeted Silverstar. “Howdy Sheriff, is Strong Heart going to pull through?”
“Doctor says she’ll make a full recovery.” Silverstar replied, wholly unsurprised by Morton’s knowledge of the event, “But have you seen Forty-Niner? I’ve got some metal-related questions I need to ask him about.”
“I think he went prospecting.” Morton shrugged, “I haven’t seen him since this mor-“
“MORT!” Everypony in the bar turned just in time to see Forty-Niner, a dusty-green coated unicorn just beginning to show his age with a cutie mark of a rock of ore wrapped in some measuring tape, come through the door. He was dragging another, even older earth pony behind him. “I need a lot of water!”
“Is that Old Salty?” Morton said, “He still hasn’t paid his-“
“Not now Mort!” Forty-Niner shouted, “He’s badly dehydrated and needs water right now!”
Spurred to action, Mort immediately began to fill a pitcher while the other patrons began to crowd around the unconscious form of Salty. Since the Salt Block was rather empty in the middle of the day, the crowd was by no means a big crowd but Silverstar still felt the need to break it up as he approached Forty-Niner. “Alright now, we’ll get him some water, move along little ponies.”
With some minor muttering, the small gathering dispersed somewhat more slowly than it had gathered. Mort brought the pitcher around, along with a few cups, and Forty-Niner telekinetically poured a few glasses of water into Salty’s dried mouth. In the meantime, Silverstar began questioning, “Where’d you find him?”
“On my way back from the desert… I had run out of water myself.” Forty-Niner set the cup down and turned to give the sheriff his full attention, “It looked like he had been running in a bit of a panic and had collapsed from exhaustion.”
“Well I’m glad he made it.” Mort added, “Salty was always a few screws short of a full bolt…” The bartender’s voice dropped to a mutter, “Not to mention a good bunch of bits short of a paid tab.”
Silverstar ignored him. Certainly, Salty was the town weirdo… not only was he a seapony, that is a salt-addict, but he also had all of these crazy theories. Still, the old stallion was harmless.
“Welp, we’ll be sure to ask him about it.” Silverstar said, turning to Forty-Niner and producing the lump of metal he had been handed at the clinic and proffered it. “In the meantime, can you take a gander at this?”
The unicorn pony telekinetically lifted the metal and held it in front of his eyes. “It has some lead… no, a lot of lead. Hmm, bits of copper… brass… that is some good quality brass. Now then…” He frowned, “Residue on this, seems like remnant of some kind of powder.”
“You could tell all that just by looking?” Mort asked in surprise.
Forty-Niner laughed, “Nah, the horn does most of it. Special talent and all…” He looked back at Silverstar, “I got the metals figured out, but the powders throwin’ me for a loop. Awfully similar to the stuff they use in fireworks, but it seems far too…” The stallion seemed to struggle for the words, “Clean. Where did you get this?”
“From the doctor,” Silverstar replied, “He dug it out of Little Strong Heart’s leg.”
“Wait? The little buffalo?” Forty-Niner said, “What happened?”
“Apparently that hit her leg and embedded itself by her bones, according to the doc.”
Forty-Niner whistled, in a tone that indicated simultaneous amazement and sympathy, as his attention turned back to the item. “Must have been moving really fast for that. How did that happen?”
“Something about a-“ Was all Silverstar got out.
“METAL BOXES!” Salty cried out, leaping from his previously-unconscious position, “METAL MONSTERS! There are metal monsters out in the desert! They gonna get us all!”
“Woah there!” Before either Silverstar or Forty-Niner could react, Mort had already jumped Salty and had the old pony pinned against his porch.
“That was quick.” The sheriff observed.
Mort snorted, “I have to deal with him every evening… and I believe ya’ll have seen me throw him out of the bar on a number of occasions.” He turned his attention to the still struggling Salty, “Calm down ya old foal! Snap out of it!”
Salty did seem to calm down somewhat, in that his struggle declined and he seemed to breathe easier, but he looked up at Silverstar and the Sheriff could see genuine panic in his eyes. “Sheriff! We’ve gotta evacuate the town! There’s metal monsters out in the desert!”
“Let him go Mort.” Silverstar ordered and the bartender complied. The sheriff knew Salty wasn’t a threat, despite the rather wild eyed ‘moods’ he sometimes got into. “Salty, what is this talk about metal monsters?”
“I was out in the desert when I heard a horrible rumblin’ sound and saw this great cloud of dust comin’ down on me.” Salty said, genuine fear in his voice, “I hid amidst some boulders and saw the… the metal monsters rolled by!”
“Roll by?”
“Yeah!” Salty was now shifting on his feet as he spoke, working himself up. Behind him, Mort tensed in case the old pony went nuts again. “They didn’t walk or slither like any ordinary ground creature, but they rolled on these great, big… tracks, I guess. But they were almost as big as Mort’s saloon! And they had huge bulbous metal heads, with great long snouts! And they belched black smoke from their rear ends!”
Silverstar got the impression that ‘belched’ wasn’t the right word, but he stood there taking in Salty’s words for a few moments. “Did ya see any kind of flying machine that looked like a bumblebee?”
The old stallion stopped in his tracks, his nervous tension rapidly replaced with confusion. “Uh… no, Sheriff. What kind of machine is that?”
Silverstar sighed, he should have known better than to take Salty at his word. He also knew better than to argue with the old pony. “Alright Salty, thanks for the tip. I’ll get word down to Salt Lick on the next train.”
Salty nodded rapidly at the sheriff, a new sense of urgency apparently taking over him, before he broke into a gallop with a speed that surprised even Mort.
“What was all that about a metal flying machine that looks like a bumblebee?” Forty-Niner asked.
“The Buffalo Chief said they saw one before Little Strong Heart got hurt.”
“Well, Salty’s always been a few horseshoes short of a complete set.” Forty-Niner said, “I reckon there ain’t anything to worry about from his little tale.”
“I suppose.” Silverstar said. He thought himself convinced enough, but something else was nagging at him… what was Salty doing out in the desert in the first place?

[SCENE BREAK]

Salty wasn’t an idiot. He knew what the townspeople thought of him, of his ideas. He didn’t fault them… most of the stuff he said he didn’t believe himself. He knew what was wrong and he didn’t really mind, at least not until now. Now he knew, he knew that the Sheriff didn’t believe him, he could see it in the stallion’s eyes. Salty cursed himself, he had been the foal who cried hydra!
He also realized that the sheriff knew more than he let on. That question about a flying machine, for instance. His old conspiratorial mind realigned with the extra information and came to a new conclusion: they were being invaded by aliens!
Salty ran out of town, back into the desert. When he had first seen the metal monsters roll by, he had tried to make it for the town taking the scenic route. This time, he would take the shorter route…
He knew those old weapons would come in handy one day.

Interrogation Block, Soviet Military-Industrial Complex, Painted Pinto Desert…

“So…” Doctor Zelinsky said, as he observed the unconscious unicorn through a one-way window. “It is indeed intelligent?”
The room was only attached to the cell by a shatter-proof one-way window and a second hallway antechamber. Zelinsky had been called here with one of his assistants and the equipment he had just finished setting up because of an intriguing feature noticed by the scientist who had studied the unicorn. It was an incidental discovery and the data behind it was so incomplete that Zelinsky was partially convinced that it was balderdash.
The unicorn lay there a bandage added to its abdomen. The Terror Drones had accidentally inflicted some burns, but those were quickly treated.
He and his assistant were not alone in the room, of course. Commissar-General Lyvaskov was there as well and a third technician was monitoring some recording equipment, aided by a linguistic specialist. Standing guard at the back of the door were a pair of combat troops, one KGB and one army. In the connecting chamber waited two more men, one KGB and one Psi-Corps, who would conduct the actual interrogation of the creature.
“Your colleague, Doctor Barisov said as much.” The Commissar replied. The KGB General seemed to be staring at the prisoner as if he wasn’t sure that it was actually there. Zelinsky didn’t blame him, he was still having a hard time believing that there was a small azure unicorn in that room himself. “Surely you have seen his results?”
Zelinsky fidgeted unconsciously as he returned his attention to his equipment, “Barisov is a biologist. I am a physicist. My knowledge of his field is… incomplete.”
“I’m sure.” The Commissar replied.
Despite himself, Zelinsky flinched. Of course the scientist knew enough about brains to check through Barisov’s data, but he hadn’t had the time, the commissar had to know that. Fortunately, Lyvaskov didn’t appear keen to press the issue.
“The Psi-Corps confirmed it.” Lyvaskov added, off-handedly.
Ah yes, the Psi-Corps… those wonderfully secretive and vaguely-sinister bunch. If anybody knew everything humans needed to know about brains, Zelinsky reflected, it would be them. The thought turned his attention back to the features of the interrogation room: it was a standard interrogation room, although the chair that the prisoner would usually sit in was replaced with a small mattress. There was a question that Zelinsky had wanted to ask about the upcoming interrogation, but his squeamishness…
“So…” The scientist said, before pausing and starting again, “So are you going to be harsh with… uh, it?”
The Commissar gave a humored snort, “Are we going to torture it, you mean?”
Again, Zelinsky cringed, even as he nodded.
“No.” Lyvaskov said, taking a moment to light a cigarette. “You have seen too many bad American action dramas. Information gathered from physical torture is only to be considered reliable if the torture is applied with little-to-no-warning, the question is a yes-or-no one, and the answer is given inside of the first five minutes of the session starting. Otherwise…” The KGB man shrugged, “There is, of course, psychological manipulation. That works better, but takes time, which we don’t have… oh, and it assumes the target has the same psychology as humans.”
“I… uh… I see.” Zelinsky said, regretting ever asking the question. The way the Commissar had spoken about the subject was far too calm for his tastes. Looking at the unconscious unicorn in the interrogation room, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the creature.
He sighed, it was through his intellect alone that he had managed to rise so high in the Soviet scientific community and intellectually he knew he should be swelling with self-esteem on that fact. But he was a nervous wreck, lacking ambition and completely devoid of self-esteem. The only advantage of it was that he was perceived as such a non-threat by his potential enemies that they never quite realized what had happened when he sped by them up the hierarchy. It was rather similar to Premier Romanov during the Great Purges, now that he thought about it… although the personalities involved were different, they were both misinterpreted and underestimated.
The door to the observation room swung open and Nikolai Ryzhkov entered the room. The civilian looked around for a moment before asking the obvious question, “Where are General Voroshilov and… the Psi-Corps man?”
“The General is busy getting some things coordinated.” Lyvaskov finished his cigarette and stabbed it out against the wall. “As for Comrade Vladimir… I do not know.”
“I… see.” Ryzhkov walked over to the observation window and looked through. He stood there for a good long time in disbelief. “Its… like something out of a fairy tale.” Zelinsky saw the Commissar roll his eyes at that.
Ryzhkov turned to the scientist, “Is it going to awaken soon?”
“She.” Lyvaskov pre-empted Zelinsky’s reply. “And I believe she is waking up now.”
The other two men turned to the window and realized the political officer was right… the unicorn was beginning to stir. Lyvaskov crossed the room and punched a button on the intercom. “Captain Chernov and comrade Lebedjev… you may proceed.”

[SCENE BREAK]

Trixie did not remember waking-up, so there was some confusion when she realized that she was currently staring at a simple, white wall. With that mental double take, the memories from earlier came flooding back and the show pony’s head shot up in alarm. She only breathed easier once a quick look around showed that there was no creature other than her in the room.
With her alarm subsiding, Trixie examined the room more thoroughly which, since there wasn’t much to look at, didn’t take long. She was sitting on a simple bench, which rested in front of a plain wooden table. Across the table she saw a chair… except its surface area seemed a little small for a pony to sit in.
It was then that Trixie noticed the bandage around on her side. They had been carefully applied right at the spot where the… thing had struck her.
What drew Trixie’s attention next was the lights… they weren’t the magic bulbous ones most Ponies used in place of candles, but some kind of big white strips built into the ceiling. Trixie quickly found that, also unlike the magic lights, they hurt her eyes and she averted her gaze, preventing any further examination.
Beyond that, the only other thing of any interest was the door in the left corner of the room on the other side of the table from Trixie. It looked oddly big to Trixie and she couldn’t make out any opening mechanism.
“Hello?” Trixie said stupidly and an instant later berated herself for the call. It was the kind of instinctive call that most people who just woke up in a strange place said even when they were blatantly alone and it made the show pony feel dumb.
Deciding there was no point in hanging around, she was about to hop off the bench and head for the door when she was startled by a loud, mechanical buzzing sound. The noise lasted for a second before being followed by an audible click and the door swung open.
Trixie stared at the two tall, bi-pedal creatures that entered the room. The first was clothed in some kind of vaguely bluish clothing with further… decorations pinned to its left upper section and wore a somewhat-peaked cap which was topped by a red star and what Trixie recognized as a hammer and sickle crossed over each other. The creature seemed to regard the unicorn with something akin to wary bemusement, as if it wasn’t entirely sure this was real… at least, that’s what Trixie thought. The creature’s face was unexpressive, from her perspective.
But it still showed much more emotion than the second, which wore clothing that hanged down from its body, the coattail lending it an intimidating appearance. But what Trixie found much more intimidating was that the creature had no apparent mane atop its head. Instead, some kind of strange metal contraption was attached to that part of the creature’s body and the unicorn could see some of the metal sinking into the creature’s… skin, if she remembered correctly.
The first creature sat down across from her and Trixie noted that it sat more like a dragon: with its back straight against the chair. Well, the creature was bi-pedal…
And it spoke to her, slowly, carefully, deliberately and in an utterly alien language. Trixie desperately tried to remember a translation spell and failed, instead just returning an incomprehensive look. The creature apparently noticed her look and sighed, turning to the other one, which had remained standing. The two conversed for a moment and then the standing creature looked straight at Trixie.
A shiver ran down her spine as the creature appeared to be staring right through the unicorn and into her very being. Yet Trixie found she couldn’t tear her gaze away…
“Greetings.” A stale voice in Trixie’s mind said.
Trixie literally leapt up, startled. The creature sitting across from her looked more alert but didn’t make any more movements. Instead, Trixie looked at the creature that was standing and voiced out loud, “Was that you?”
“Yes.” The voice in her mind… the creature’s voice… replied.
“What is this? Telepathy? How can you understand me?”
“Yes, this is telepathy.” The creature replied through her mind. “As for how… the language of the mind is the same no matter the animal in question. When you speak, you think directly of what you are saying and those thoughts become clear to me.”
“So-“ Trixie began.
“What is your name?”
“Eh?” Trixie blinked, surprised at being interrupted. Surprise turned to anger and the unicorn huffed as she finally began to adjust to the situation, her old arrogance reasserting itself. “I am Trixie! The Great and Powerful! Famous through all the land of Equestria as the most powerful Unicorn to have ever lived!”
To the show pony’s chagrin, the creature ignored her for a moment and spoke to its comrade. They underwent a brief exchange before the bald-one turned back to her.
“I am Lebedjev, of the Soviet Psi-Corp.” It… no he, Trixie could definitely identify a male touch to Lebedjev’s voice, said. “This is Chernov, a Captain in the Committee for State Security. Now: you say this land is Equestria?”
“Yes!” Trixie said.
“You said you were the most powerful Unicorn to have ever lived?”
“Yes!” Trixie said, getting carried away with herself as usual. So what if it wasn’t true? She had an audience and she was a show mare… and the show had to go on even if it wasn’t a grander event! “The Great and Powerful Trixie’s magic has defeated even the dreaded Ursa Major! Only the princesses possess more magic!”
Instead of pressing any further Lebedjev immediately turned to Chernov and apparently translated what she had said. Something she said must have come as a surprise because the two became engaged in an apparently heated conversation. As they talked, Trixie found her more logical mind asserting itself with its own questions, discomforting ones: where was she? What were these two creatures, apparently named Lebedjev and Chernov? What was the Committee for State Security? Why had they apparently brought her here?
The discomfort only grew when Lebedjev turned and asked her: “You mentioned Princesses, as in more than one?”
“Yes…” Trixie replied, wondering why they were focusing on that.
“Who are they?”
“Well… wait…” Trixie said, looking at Lebedjev squarely, “Trixie has questions of her own! Like what kind of creature are you, and why have you apparently brought me here?”
Lebedjev turned and conversed with Chernov for a moment, annoying Trixie even more.
Finally, Lebedjev turned back and transmitted: “We are sure you have many questions, and you may ask them when we are done asking you. To answer your first question quickly: we are humans. But please, try and help us out.”
Trixie sat there for a moment, her nervousness fading a little at the reassurance. Somewhere in her subconscious, a piece of her mind told her that she was accepting this too easily but it went unnoticed to the unicorn’s attention. She gave an annoyed snort before speaking, “Very well, ask away.”
“Again, who are the princesses you mentioned earlier?”

[SCENE BREAK]

Trixie didn’t know how long the question session went on, but she very rapidly came to realize that her audience was completely ignorant about Equestria. It was as if they didn’t even come from this planet! They asked her about the kingdom, about the various ponies, about the governments, about the economy, and quite a bit about magic.
She struggled with some of the questions and every time she tried to interject or ask a counter-question they would deflect it with something like “We will answer later” or “Please focus, there will come a time for your questions.”
And she accepted it, despite a growing unease, she accepted it. She answered to the best of her ability and when they presented a question that she didn’t know the answer to, she said as much and they moved on to another question.
Finally, after a non-stop flurry of questions, there came a moment of silence as the human named Chernov leaned back and seemed to consider something. Then, like before, he spoke to Lebedjev.
“Thank you Trixie, for your cooperation.” The human transmitted.
Trixie gave a self-satisfied smile, “You are welcome. Trixie is pleased she could offer her significant knowledge… now, if I may-“
“I think not.” The human interrupted.
Trixie barely managed to process that message before something seemed to metaphorically come down on her conscious like a ton of bricks. Whatever it was, it didn’t hurt but suddenly Trixie felt herself bombarded by thoughts as if her brain had decided to go overtime on her memories. She froze up for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually two or three seconds, before the chaotic flood was replaced with one, simple command: “Sleep.”
And with that the unicorn fell over, instantly unconscious.

[SCENE BREAK]

“And no other objects allowed.” Lyvaskov finished, speaking into a landline, attached to the intercom. It was a short while later and a group of soldiers had carried off the unconscious Unicorn… ‘Pony’…. to a detention cell. The KGB man had called ahead, issuing further instructions on modifying the cell’s set-up based on the interrogation.
It was bizarre how quickly he was coming to terms with the situation, but maybe that was because he had already become gripped by a more serious crisis looming before him: the issue of authority. The job of the KGB agents attached to the
Soviet military was to act as watchdogs, to ensure they remained subservient to the civilian authorities. Of course, this meant that the KGB had power to and was a partial reason behind some of the… excesses of the Stalin-era. But the Psi-Corps was a new and frightening counter-balance to both the KGB and the military, even though they were technically part of the latter.
The political officers attached to Soviet military units were much less powerful now than they were under Stalin, but they still could investigate possibly treasonous activity by an officer and, if the evidence warranted it, bring him to the attention of the rest of the Soviet security apparatus. But it was a system that required the support of the rest of the Soviet Union and Lyvaskov had rapidly realized during the interrogation that the rest of the Soviet Union was no longer available… quite likely permanently.
In the face of that problem, even the Unicorn couldn’t hold the commissar’s attention for long. He didn’t let on the slightest bit about his worries to those around him… no use giving Voroshilov ideas. Lyvaskov knew of Voroshilov’s history, he knew about the picture of Ivan Konev, the infamous ‘Butcher of Hamburg’, which the general had hung up in his private office. The man had all the signs of a monster every bit as ruthless as Konev… the last thing the USSR needed was this man in a meaningful command. The history of Stalin and the current association with Al-Fulani in the Middle East and that Gaddafi figure in North Africa casted something of a bad mark on the Soviet Union. It was a mark that the Chicago fiasco only cemented, bringing the otherwise neutral Europeans and their associates into the war.
“This is… astonishing, comrade commissar.” That was Ryzhkov. The civilian seemed overwhelmed by all the new information. Lyvaskov was a little overwhelmed himself for different reasons, but he schooled his appearance carefully… there was a kind of social art to being a political officer.
There was another worry reaching into the commissar’s mind now and it was one they would all have to face. He waited to see if the party man would get it.
“Indeed?” Lyvaskov said, “What do you make of it all, comrade Ryzhkov?”
“Well, it’s clear that we have a whole new civilization in front of us!” The civilian said, apparently missing the blatantly obvious, “This is momentous! A whole new civilization, of aliens, on an entirely… new… world… oh…” Now he got it, “But… our home.”
“But our home indeed.” Lyvaskov turned towards Zelinsky. The scientist seemed to be overly focused on his machinery, muttering something with his assistant. The political officer took the opportunity to walk unnoticed directly behind the man and loudly cleared his throat. The sight of seeing him jump a little brightened Lyvaskov’s otherwise grim mood by just a smidge. “And what do you make of it all, comrade Zelinsky?”
“I-uh…” Zelinsky’s nervousness had apparently reasserted itself in full. His eyes darted in both directions as he tried to reply, like he was expecting to be attacked from the side. “I was… intrigued by some readings in the cell… I hope to look over the data and-“
“Look over the data all you want.” Lyvaskov cut the doctor off, “You have plenty of time now.”
And then without waiting for any reply, the political officer simply strolled out of the observation room as if nothing was wrong…
But so much was.

Clinic, Appleloosa, Painted Pinto Desert…

Earlier…

Braeburn sat silently at Little Strong Heart’s side like he had for… a few hours now, he supposed. The only further company was the doctor stopping by, asking them how they were doing. The cowpony was actually starting to ache a little and just considering laying down when Strong Heart stirred.
“Strong Heart?” Braeburn asked as the buffalo in question looked blearily around, “You feel alright lil’ missy?”
Strong Heart chuckled, a number of Appleloosans called her that and she found the nickname rather amusing seeing how she was actually slightly bigger than a number of them. “Yes, a little stiff, but otherwise I am fine.”
“That’s good.” Braeburn nodded. “Doctor said you’ll be up and moving by tomorrow…”
A few moments of silence passed between them as the initial well of conversation dried up. A kind of awkward tension hung in the air, something Braeburn had not felt since the build-up to the incident with the grove.
Strong Heart was the one who broke the silence and in a quite surprising manner: by bursting into tears. Alarmed, Braeburn shot to his feet but before he could take any more action, Strong Heart burst out, “They killed Taking Easy!”
The amber yellow pony was completely unable to react as the buffalo immediately launched into a tear-filled explanation: the flying machine, the strange creatures within, the fate which befell the body of Taking Easy. When it ended, Braeburn was left sitting there, having to play mental catch up as Strong Heart cried.
Finally things set in and Braeburn’s emotions turned from shock to anger. But it was an anger tempered by the need to help a friend. He wrapped a hoof around Strong Heart and carefully pulled her into a hug, letting her cry into his shoulder. “There, there… it wasn’t your fault at all. Those… critters, which you said rode in the flying machine, those are the ones you should be blaming.”
“But…” Strong Heart said through her sobs, “I should have done something more! I should have knocked Taking Easy out of the way or-“
Braeburn was not just going to let Strong Heart drive herself into despondency like that, “There was no way you could have known. It can be tough to lose somepo-somebody you care about, but it happens.”
“Not like this.” Strong Heart muttered, her voice muffled by Braeburn’s shoulder “Buffalo are supposed to go peacefully after a good life, in the care and company of their tribe. Not... cut down violently.”
“That is how things should be, and how things are supposed to be with us Ponies too. But things do not always turn out like that… I’m sorry.” Braeburn paused as he recalled a bit of buffalo lore, “I’m sure Taking Easy is stampeding towards the herd of his ancestors, even now.”
Braeburn was silent now and remained so for a few more seconds, then she settled back out of the hug and into her bed. Braeburn let her go, seeing that even though her face was matted with tears, Strong Heart now had a little smile. “Thank you, Braeburn.”
The Earth Pony grinned, “Not a problem at all. After all, what are friends for?”
Strong Heart looked like she was going to reply with something witty, when it happened. A strange humming sound, almost halfway to a constant groan had started to intrude into the room as Braeburn had spoken, but only now had it risen to a noticeable level.
“What in tarnation…” Braeburn breathed as the humming sound seemed to reach a zenith, then receded even more quickly than it had arrived. Strong Heart and Braeburn looked at each other, the same thought running through their minds: that was odd.

Tu-94, 30,000 feet, Painted Pinto Desert…

Loud. There was really no other single word that could describe the experience of flying in the Tupolev reconnaissance plane so succinctly. The Tu-94 was loud, the noisiest aircraft on the face of the planet. It was easy to see why: its pair of contra-rotating turboprop engines rotated so fast that the propeller tips literally broke the sound barrier. If it wasn’t for their ear protection, the entire crew would have been rendered stone deaf in seconds.
But even through the headsets, the crewmembers had to shout into their mouthpieces to be heard and hearing problems among Tu-94 crews were endemic.
Still the Tu-94 could fly high and was the fastest propeller-driven aircraft in the world. Outfitted with some of the most sophisticated electronic warfare equipment Soviet industry could manufacture, the aircraft was an ideal reconnaissance platform that could only be reached by the Allies latest interceptors.
Like the rest of the base personnel, the Frontal Aviation personnel had been surprised by the strange and sudden transfer. However, the crew of this particular aircraft had taken things in stride until they were ordered into the air. From the moment they left the air strip, they immediately realized something was very wrong; the clouds were far lower than they appeared from the ground, far lower than they should or even could have been. A conservative estimate had the lowest one only a dozen meters off the ground!
The aircrew had grown ever more astonished as they continued their flight path. The desert was completely unfamiliar and unmapped, with only the way-point beacon of the base serving as an electromagnetic landmark. At first the towns were a welcome relief to the crewmembers… until the reconnaissance specialist saw their inhabitants through the aircraft’s observation scopes.
The word had spread fast amongst the crew: a town of ponies! With a railroad showing signs of even more! It was ridiculous! At first, many of the aircrew refused to believe it even after seeing the feed from the plane’s cameras. But as the aircraft, on orders from base, followed the rail line, they came across more and more towns, some smaller and some larger than the first, but all inhabited by ponies.
The crew was both fascinated and confused as they watched these ponies go about their lives, and they observed the supposedly mythological versions working with the regular-looking ones; Pegasus flying through the air and unicorns chatting on the ground. Many of the ponies would glance up, probably at the noise, as the airplane droned overhead, but the aircraft was too high to be seen as anything but a pinprick in the sky. Only contrails could have really given the plane away, but the conditions were not right.
The airplane had come across its first real city, although compared to Soviet cities it was still rather pint-sized, resting at the foot of a large mountain range and made a large number of passes before they were ordered back. The aircraft had only flown a fraction of the distance it could have and there were still enormous quantities of fuel left in the tanks, but the crew didn’t voice even a grumble, they were too overwhelmed for that.
Of course, even as the aircraft turned for home, the images and other sensor information it gathered had been transmitted back to the Soviet base in real-time. The combined info of the interrogated Unicorn, the biological examinations, and now an actual reconnaissance flight very rapidly led to another meeting called by General Voroshilov.

Headquarters, Soviet Military-Industrial Complex, Painted Pinto Desert…

Oddly enough, General Voroshilov was not there when the various commanders and Nikolai Ryzhkov turned up. Lyvaskov kept his appearance straight while his mind roiled, Voroshilov was not the only one missing… the Psi-Corps Head and Doctor Zelinsky were also absent.
When Voroshilov finally showed up and Lyvaskov had a new piece of trouble to add to his state of mind: the General had entered with Doctor Zelinsky… although the Psi-Corps Head remained strangely absent. “Comrades, at ease and be seated.”
The salutes dropped and the various officers sat down as Lieutenant Ialovskii, who had arrived ahead of the General, passed around copies of paper. The various men frowned when they saw the labels, it was a recent report from the local observatory.
“Comrades, I am afraid it has been confirmed… we are no longer on our home planet or even in our home universe.”
One of the colonels didn’t even get past the title page, instead he looked up incredulously, “With respect… how can you be so sure, Comrade General?”
“Because the sun does not orbit around Earth, Comrade Colonel.” Voroshilov replied evenly.
Perhaps the only way he could have gotten a greater reaction was if he had shot one of them. In spite of all their discipline, that absurd tidbit was too much for the assembled men. The room broke out into arguing and shouts of disbelief.
“QUIET!” Lyvaskov yelled, immediately silencing the furor. “You are officers of the Soviet Red Army! Act like it, not like a bunch of squabbling children!”
“Thank you, comrade Commissar.” Voroshilov said, “Whatever you may have believed previously, the evidence is overwhelming. I understand that our… unexpected guest was enough of a shock, but it has also provided the brilliant Doctor Zelinsky with a means to see us home.”
He nodded towards the scientist, who hesitantly stepped forward. “I was observing the data collected during the interrogation of the… intruder when I noticed an unusual reading.”
The explanation took a while, but long before it was done, the alarm bells were going off in Lyvaskov’s head. When the doctor finally finished, silence held for only a few moments. Major Malashenko was the one to speak up and ask a rather obvious question.
“How… how many of the…” the Major paused to shake his head, “Unicorns… do we need?”
“Impossible to say for certain without much more study and a wider sample of, ah… specimens,” Zelinsky took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt nervously, “At least a few hundred, likely more.”
“A few hundred…” The Frontal Aviation Colonel said in disbelief. “Probably more… and we should just expect a few hundred to just wander in here. I read the second report, there is an entire civilization of ponies out there. Are we to kidnap them in the dead of the night like some crackpot American mid-westerner’s tale?”
The man must have been deployed in the United States, Lyvaskov thought.
Then finally General Voroshilov threw down the gauntlet. “Of course not… our only option is to take them.”
And the Commissar pounced. “I’m afraid, Comrade General that is out of line.”
General Voroshilov had not been expecting that from the Commissar. After he recovered from the surprise, his face grew heated. “This is not 1939, Comrade Commissar. The dual-command system-“
“The long dead dual-command system is not relevant here. You are overstepping your authority, Comrade General, you are making policy. That is not the job of the military… that is the job of the State.”
“Oh… well then I suppose I’ll ring Moscow for instructions.” General Voroshilov’s sarcasm was thick, “Use your head, comrade! This is the clearest shot we have at going home! Would you deny our soldiers from seeing their country and their families again?!”
Lyvaskov was actually taken aback. He had not considered the soldiers’ view on things. Most of the scientists, engineers, and officers’ families lived on base… but the rest of the personnel’s families lived back in the Soviet Union, including most of the KGB troops.
The Commissar’s position was even weaker than he thought. Instead he fell back on older communist ideology… a bad choice.
“Still, we cannot have instruments of the State make decisions on its behalf.”
Voroshilov glared at him, but the glare subtly changed after a few moments and the general looked at the ignored figure in the room. “Comrade Ryzhkov? What do you think?”
The party-man had been quiet this whole time. The emotional and mental toll of all of the revelations made had left him stunned. Hence, he was wholly unprepared to be the sudden center-of-attention. “What?”
“You are the highest civilian representative of the Soviet Government, and hence the Soviet State, we are in contact with.” The General stared down at the man, “Do we go to war with these Equestrians or not?”
“Ryzhkov is-“ Lyvaskov began.
“RYZHKOV IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN MAKE THE DECISION!” Voroshilov bellowed, leaping up. For a terrified moment, Lyvaskov was concerned the General would draw his sidearm. But instead the man reigned everything in and looked at Ryzhkov. “Comrade?”
The party-man looked desperately around, only to find all eyes on him. Finally, he slumped down in his chair and sighed. “Fine… Comrade Major-General Voroshilov… I agree to your recommendation and instruct the forces available to the Red Army to take the necessary measures you request to fulfill this… plan.”
“Thank you, Comrade.” Voroshilov looked over the assembled men, “We will meet back here at first light. Do not be late. Dismissed”
As the meeting broke-up, nobody saw the silent, robed figure standing in the corner of the room. The Psi-Corps Agent’s eyes tracked Lyvaskov as the group exited the room, silently analyzing the KGB man…

End Chapter

A/N: Well after much distraction from that computer virus, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Saints Row the Third, an obscure-but-addicting game called Anno 2070, and plain old procrastination, I present to you chapter 4 of this story!
You guys are still following this, right? Right?
The Tu-94 is, quite obviously, based off the Tu-95 bomber/maritime patrol aircraft/recon plane/ cruise missile truck. If you’ve played Yuri’s Revenge, it’s the plane that does the over flight when you use the Soviet reconnaissance ability. That isn’t its actual in-game name, just one I came up with on the spot.
Well I must say that season 2 has been causing me to go a little nuts in regards to screwing with this stories fanon (notice how I said ’this stories’ fanon and not ‘my fanon’), but I have everything ordered out now. Suffice to say, ponies do not know of the same bullets as humans.
Their tanks are also different… and cannons are more recreational… Yes, I am aware of all the stuff from the latest episodes. Everything will be explained when the time comes.
If the time comes, I still have a lot more to get out of Skryim.

Full Stop Warfare

Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony or Red Al-YURI OWNS EVERYTHING! ALL HAIL YURI!

The Bear, the Eagle, and the Ponies
Chapter 5: Full Stop Warfare

Ely, Nevada, United States of America

The noise was almost unbearable. The very air itself seemed to shake with the pressure and every blast kicked up torrents of dust from the cellar floor. But as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t run. As much as every bone in her body told her to go and find a new hiding place where the noise and dust and shaking could not find her, she refused to obey.

She refused to obey her mind because she was too terrified to obey it. She was too terrified to obey because rationally she knew she would be exchanging fear and discomfort for certain death. But most of all she refused to obey because she refused to abandon one of her dearest friends. The rabbit she cuddled against also shook with the same fear. She could tell it too wanted to run and hide but wouldn’t because of that same fear… and because of her, just like her, he wouldn’t run because of her.

Instead, she tried to keep the rabbit calm. Even though she couldn’t hear a thing over the roar, she felt her lips move as she sang the lullaby she learned so long ago and the words echoed as loudly in her mind as the roar of the bombardment…

“Hush now, quiet now… it’s time to rest your sleepy head. Hush now, quiet now… it’s time to go to bed.”

A shell landed particularly close, the noise of its detonation echoing off the basement walls. Masonry cracked under immense pressure and the floor shook so violently that she almost fell. Steadying herself, she noticed the rabbit wasn’t shaking anymore… but she could still feel him breathing and moving in her arms. He wasn’t panicking. In fact, he seemed rather calmed. It was so strange and yet so comforting.

Then the barrage stopped. The shaking and noise ceased so suddenly that the following silence was equally discomforting. The dust however remained drifting in the air and irritated her nose. But the girl didn’t move, instead she continued to hug her little rabbit and sing softly to him.

It wasn’t long until voices, soldiers most likely, loudly echoed upstairs alongside the boots hammering overhead. They were speaking, shouting in urgent and clipped tones. They pretty much barked at each other… her breath caught as she heard the basement door fall off its hinges, but no one came down the steps and all the noises remained upstairs.

She literally jumped when the first weapon went off, a single shot that instantly grew into a fusillade of gunfire from upstairs. The soldiers’ shouting became even more urgent, desperate even. Their voices melding with the gunfire until one became indistinguishable from the other. In her arms, the rabbit started shaking again.

Her only warning of what happened next was a single shout from one of the soldiers above, a scream of alarm that in spite of its brevity conveyed the message perfectly: “TANK!”

THOOM!

The explosion above finally dislodged her from her crouch, the rabbit falling from her protective embrace in the process. She looked over just in time to see him mere feet away, just glancing around in bewilderment… then a groan overhead announced new danger.

“Run Angel!” She shouted irrationally, given that he was a rabbit, as the structure gave way. It was the first time she was able to hear her voice since the bombardment began, the first thing she had decided to shout…

And the last thing she was conscious of before the ceiling collapsed.

And Fluttershy shot awake with a gasp, tumbling off her couch in the process. Disoriented and scared from the nightmare and getting shocked awake, the Pegasus Pony scrambled to her hooves. “Angel?!”

The panic began to subside as the Pegasus’ pet rabbit appeared, at first with a look of annoyance on his face but that became one of concern when he saw the genuine distress his owner was in. Quickly hopping over, Angel nuzzled Fluttershy’s cheek. The larger mare closed her eyes and sighed in relief. “Just a dream… thank you Angel, I’m okay now.”

The rabbit in question backed away and watched with skepticism as Fluttershy got back up and oriented herself. She was still in her living room, where she had fallen asleep. There had been an emergency with Bruce the Bat late last night that had kept Fluttershy awake into the early morning and she had tried to use some of her free time to make up for the lost sleep. The couch had been a logical choice, but she never expected to have a nightmare.

Fluttershy’s sudden awakening had thrown the well-ordered pillows around and the Pegasus immediately set about sorting them out before she moved on to other chores. Angel, seeing his owner functioning as normal, hopped away to resume whatever he had been doing. But the young mare was not okay… not really. The dream remained in her head, foggier than when she first awoke but still quite vivid. As she worked, Fluttershy pondered over it…

She had been herself, that’s what she remembered. Except she wasn’t a pony… what her dreamself was, Fluttershy couldn’t puzzle out. The dream had felt so real that she could remember the overall feel of her dreamself’s body, but she couldn’t place it to any species. There were also things in the dream that Fluttershy recalled, things which her dreamself understood perfectly but which she couldn’t figure out in the slightest.

Deciding that dwelling on the subject further was something she would rather not do, Fluttershy told herself it was just a dream, even if a particularly realistic feeling one, and she moved towards her door to check on the animals outside. And, as if on cue, somepony knocked.

Still caught in her thoughts, the sudden noise took her by surprise. Like many things that surprised her, Fluttershy reacted with a short, quick, and very quiet shriek before diving behind the nearest piece of cover… a table in this case.

The knocking came again, along with the familiar voice of a hyperactive Pink Earth Pony. “Fluttershy! Are you alright in there?!”

Fluttershy blinked a few times, before quickly getting up and opening the door.

“Oh, Pinkie! You startled me…” the Pegasus paused as an odd sense of deja-vu passed over her. Or would have, if Pinkie Pie were so inclined to let her have a pause.

“Fluttershy! Come on, you have to come quick and meet them!” The Earth Pony was excited. Fluttershy could tell by how frequently and how high Pinkie jumped about.

The Pegasus, on the other hand, reacted with more trepidation. “What? Why?”

“Some new creatures came out of the Everfree forest and there was a misunderstanding, but they talk and actually are pretty nice and-!“

There was a blast of dust and when it cleared, Pinkie Pie saw she was alone. For a moment, the normally up-beat Earth Pony frowned in annoyance. “Hey! That’s my gag!”

Sweet Apple Acres, Ponyville Outskirts, Equestria
Earlier…

“Holy shit…”

Twilight and her friends reacted in different, if predictable, ways to the strange creature’s words. Both Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash burst into laughter, Applejack cast an alarmed glance towards the door to make sure that none of the Cutie Mark Crusaders had wandered back out, Twilight herself blinked in surprise, and Rarity was both shocked and horrified. After a moment, the creature shuffled awkwardly, clearly embarrassed.

“Sorry about that,” it said. “It’s just Ponies suddenly speaking English… took me by surprise.”

“You cursin’ as a reaction took us by surprise!” Applejack replied angrily, “Don’t ya know there’s children about!”

The creature looked at the Earth Pony in clear surprise, “Is that a Texan accent?”

Applejack scowled in annoyance, “Acksent?! What acksent?! And I ain’t ever heard of this ‘Texas’!”

The creature seemed to start getting angry, but then it shook its head and took a deep breath before exchanging a look with the second creature standing next to it. The rest of those creatures were a ways back, their own expressions a mix of confusion, wonder, and silent amusement at the situation. In this interval, Twilight mulled over the creatures’ appearances.
The creatures’ voices, when gone through the translation spell, had a lot of similarities to a stallion’s so they were probably male. Their appearance made Twilight think of Spike, although these creatures didn’t have a tail or scales. The unicorn could also tell that they were heavily clothed, which was not common for Ponies. And they smelled! Twilight’s nose wrinkled, although she did her best not to show it. Although even visually, she could tell they were dirty… grime covered their clothing, their equipment, and the strange items they carried.

Twilight was brought back from her reflection by the apparent leader, the one who had been talking so far, clearing his throat, “Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. Can we try this again?”

“Of course.” Twilight said quickly, eagerly smiling. “I suppose we kind of misunderstood each other…” She looked over her shoulder, “Right girls?”

“Ah guess so, Twi.” Applejack muttered.

“Are you kidding?! Getting to meet somepony new… well, you aren’t ponies of course, but still you’re new here and-“ Pinkie gasped in excitement, “That means I’ll have to throw a PARTY! With balloons and streamers and-mphlmph!” Pinkie was somewhat put off to find Applejack’s hoof in her mouth, but accepted the signal to be quiet with a mere pout.

Dash frowned and crossed her forehooves, she was giving a hard look at one of the creatures… the one she collided with. “I guess…”

“I think we really should hurry along with a proper greeting…” Rarity eyed the creatures, “What have all of you been doing?! It can’t have been hygienic!”

Twilight gulped, worried that the creatures might be insulted. But to her surprise they all laughed a little.

“That tends to happen in our line of work, unfortunately.” The leader said, “Anyways, if we are introducing ourselves…” He stiffened straight up, impressive looking despite his otherwise ragged appearance, “I am Captain Adam Gins, United State Army,” He motioned to the creature standing at his side, “And this is Gunnery Sergeant Carl Vince…”

Twilight grinned, happy to have names to give the individual creatures, “A pleasure to meet you! I am Twilight Sparkle-” She was interrupted by a few snickers from the other creatures standing further back, but those fell silent immediately when Carl Vince shot a look over his shoulder.

“Uh, and these are my friends,” Twilight continued, pointing at each in turn with her hoof, “Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and-“

“HI!” The last of Twilight’s friends bounded the distance between her and Gins far more quickly than anypony anticipated. “I’m Pinkie Pie! I’m a pony, just like Twilight and the rest! What about you? And you introduced yourself and that Carl guy but what about your other friends here?” Without missing a beat, Pinkie Pie gave a tremendous gasp, “Oh my Celestia! Fluttershy isn’t here, she should be here, she loves meeting other creatures! Well, kind of but still Igottagogetherbye!”

And just like that, the hyperactive Earth Pony zipped off as quickly as she had talked, leaving a bemused crowd behind.

“What… what just happened?” Gins finally said after the long awkward silence.

Twilight sighed and gave a nervous smile, “You just met Pinkie Pie…”

“I… see”

Twilight paused as she tried to bring the conversation back on track, “I‘m sorry if it’s rude, Adam, but I have to ask… what are you? I haven’t heard of any creatures like your group in Equestria before…”

“Equestria? Is that what this place is called?” Once again, there were a few snickers from behind Gins, which he duly ignored… although apparently Carl didn’t. “Well, we’re humans or informally “men” or “people”, with man or person as singular. Homo Sapiens is the technical name. And before you ask… we’re lost. We were on a mission and… well, we’re not sure what happened but the next thing we knew we came to in a forest several klicks that way.” He waved his hand back.

Rainbow Dash perked up at that, “The Everfree forest?! Man, you must have been some lucky humans or something…”

Twilight ignored Rainbow’s outburst as she connected a different set of dots, “You said you are part of the ‘United States Army’? Is that like the Royal Guard?”

The human didn’t seem to know how to reply for a moment, “I guess so?”

“So why the hay did you come bargin’ in on my farm?!” Applejack finally joined her. Her temper was still somewhat hot from the scuffle earlier and she wasn’t a pony who believed in dallying.

To his credit, Gins kept his cool and answered straightforwardly, which Twilight found herself immensely glad for. “This farm was the first location we spotted and we were hoping to find some assistance. So I grabbed a few of the men and hiked over here. We were expecting other humans not… ponies.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow, “A few of the men? There are more of you?” Now some alarm entered the unicorn’s voice, “And you are all in this condition?!”

This time Vince replied, simply echoing his Captain, “We were on a mission.”

Rarity gasped, “Oh you poor little things!”

That brought a rather mixed reaction from the humans, mostly surprise and confusion although Twilight did hear one of them mutter “Who is she calling little?”

Fortunately Rarity didn’t hear him, “We are perfectly willing to help! I’m sure the mayor wouldn’t mind providing some assistance…”

“Uh, Rarity…” Applejack quickly cut off the white unicorn, “Doesn’t that strike you as a little presumptuous? I mean, I don’t think the mayor is really all about just taking in any creatures that have come out of Everfree.” The apple farmer glanced over at the humans, “No offense.”

“No problem.” Gins nodded back.

“Oh dear, don’t worry about it. After all, I know the mayor would love some positive attention from Canterlot,” None of the ponies noticed one of the humans gag, “after all, first contact with a new civilization of creatures will attract all kinds of attention! Speaking of which, Twilight… you might want to write to Princess Celestia.”

Twilight blinked as the implications of everything clicked in her mind. “Ohmygosh! You’re right! This hasn’t happened in hundreds of years! Oh I wish Spike was here, then I could-“

Gins decided to interrupt, but not to ask for any clarification although a number of what had been said between the ponies did raise questions in his mind. “Excuse me, but I have to go get my men and explain to them what is going on. I think that would be easier if one of you comes with us…”

Twilight glanced over her shoulder at her friends, “Uh… well, I think I should. After all, I’ll have to be there in order for us to understand each other. I may have casted the translation spell on you but-”

“Wait,” Again, Gins interrupted, “A translation spell? As in a magic spell?”

Twilight replied with all the confusion she felt, “Well yes. Magic was the most efficient way we could quickly communicate…”

“Magic?” Gins repeated.

“Magic.” Twilight confirmed.

“Magic.” Gins said one last time, his voice filled with doubt. He turned to Sergeant Vince, who just shrugged.

“You are in a conversation with a small talking purple unicorn, sir.”

“Right.” Gins turned back to Twilight and her friends, “Very well, I accept your offer of assistance.”

“Magnificent!” Rarity exclaimed before Twilight could get over her bemusement, “Oh there will have to be arrangements made, you will all have to be cleaned up, oh and there will be Pinkie Pie’s party of course…“

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, sugarcube.” Applejack warned, but Rarity didn’t seem to take notice.

One of the soldiers sighed in exasperation and said to another one, “Isn’t this just a strange day? We’re getting fussed over by a unicorn who reminds me too much of my mother…”

“I always figured your mother was like a hor-“

For once, it was Gins who cut the conversation short by rounding on his troops. “Alright, that’s enough! Stow your crap and prepare to move out!”

“Ah best check on the family.” Applejack said quickly, “You sure you can handle this Twi’?”

“Of course she can!” Dash grinned, landing next to the unicorn. “Especially since I’ll be with her!” She turned to the humans and grinned, “Besides, these guys actually seem kind of cool.”

“I guess we shouldn’t keep the others waiting anymore, if that is alright?” Gins interjected.

“Certainly, lead the way captain.” Twilight replied, before glancing over at Applejack, “I’ll be fine. It was all just a misunderstanding... I suppose you should be ready when we come back.”

And with that the group split, Twilight and Rainbow Dash headed off with the humans while Rarity made back for Ponyville to inform the mayor. Applejack was just stepping up to the farmhouse when a familiar voice broke the silence.

“Umm… Applejack? Pinkie Pie-“

“I brought Fluttershy!” The interruption of the second voice was much less welcome than the first and after Applejack had recovered from the surprise, she managed to explain to the uncharacteristically eager pegasus that the “new creatures” had gone off but would be back.

“Oh...” Fluttershy said, looking a little disappointed before perking back up. “But I can’t wait to meet them!”

“Especially since we can use this opportunity!” Pinkie Pie said, “Applejack, you get the girls and Big Mac! We’re going to need their help. Fluttershy-

“Hold up there sugarcube!” Applejack sternly looked at Pinkie, “Just what in the hay are you talking about? What opportunity is this?”

Pinkie looked at the farmer like she had just asked what color the sky was, “Why the Surprise Welcome to Equestria Party of course!” And with that, the pink pony pulled out her signature party cannon from… somewhere. “This’ll help, but we also need a lot more! Like apple pie and cake and…”

As Fluttershy silently enjoyed Pinkie’s familiar antics, she paused as something niggled at the back of her conscious. Something recent that had happened but she forgot, a nightmare of some sort? The Pegasus shrugged it off… it probably wasn’t that important.

“Sir…” Vince said soon after the squad, with their two new additions, had left the farm, “Shouldn’t we radio the lieutenant and let him know we are coming?”

“Shit.” Gins muttered, almost stopping in shock. He had completely forgotten to even have his radio on… Lieutenant Mullivan would undoubtedly have heard the shooting! Such a stupid cadet mistake!

Twilight Sparkle, trotting alongside the two humans, merely tilted her head at the exchange.

Gins quickly checked his receiver… he even had left the damn thing off! With a short scowl at his own stupidity, he flipped his combead on and rapidly switched to the company’s channel.

“Hotel-2 this is Delta-6, how copy?”

There was only a moment’s static before the familiar clipped tones of a British accent replied. “D-6, this is H-2. I read you five-by-five. We heard automatic fire earlier… what happened?”

“Hotel-2, Delta-6. We ran into the natives, there was something of a misunderstanding but no casualties. Area is friendly but hold position until we get back. Be advised, we’ll have two guests.”

“Who are you-?“ Twilight’s question was cut off by a raised finger.

“Roger D-6, we will hold position until you get here. Interrogative, did you find out where we are?”

Gins chuckled as a preface to his reply. “Kind-of. You’ll see in a moment Lieutenant. Delta-6 out.” He glanced over at Twilight, “You were asking a question?”

“Well… I just wanted to know who you were talking too.”

“Ah, that was Lieutenant Mullivan.” Gins shrugged, “I left him in charge of the rest of the company where we were camping out.”

Twilight frowned in confusion, “But how were you talking with him?”

“You don’t have radio?” Gins asked. When Twilight shook her head, he elaborated, “It’s a means of short to long distance wireless communication.”

“Like a telegraph?” Twilight’s eyes lit up, “How fascinating! How does it work? Is it magically based? No… wait, your reaction earlier to my explanation of the translation spell indicates humans have never encountered magic. Let’s see… oh! Does it use one of the electromagnetic wavelengths on the light spectrum?”

Gins looked down at the pony in surprise on two counts. First: he had just learned that this pony civilization had telegraph. Second: he had never thought he would ever meet a talking unicorn much less one who might have an idea how radio worked! “Yeah… that was a really good guess. Are you some kind of scientist?”

Twilight blushed at the complement, “Oh no… I just remembered reading about the latest theories on the light spectrum in last month’s Canterlot Natural Sciences Update. They were talking about experiments in testing the higher wavelengths in the spectrum, which many of the writers thought could be used as a means of non-wired communication, although they were still thinking in terms of telegraph transcribing onto paper.” Suddenly, she perked up again and Gins swore that at any moment she was going to start jumping in circles excitedly. “Oh my gosh! You already have a practical means of using electromagnetism for similar purposes! This is big! It could revolutionize the telegraphing and mail-service industries!”

“Uh…” Was all Gins could say. His thoughts were rapidly veering between how this pony knew so much, about all of the diplomatic challenges and policy decisions looming ahead that were most emphatically not his to face, and how absolutely adorable Twilight Sparkle looked all excited like that. He would never admit that last one out loud, but damn! He felt like he was on the verge of having a sugar-induced heart attack!

Fortunately, he was saved from the sweetness attack by a chuckle from above.
“That’s Twilight for you!” Rainbow Dash said, swooping down from her overhead eavesdropping to land to the right of Sergeant Vince, “She’s Ponyville’s bona-fide egg-head… has a degree and everything!” The Pegasus grinned at Twilight’s scowl, “Hey, Twi dont get me wrong. You may be an egg-head but you’re also awesome.”

“Thanks Dash…”Twilight sounded more sardonic than thankful.

“Don’t sweat it.” And with that, Rainbow Dash took off again and circled around. The humans didn’t stop walking, but their heads turned to follow her. The sight of a genuine flying pegasus was still extremely novel.

Dash glanced over the crowd and quickly spotted the human she thought she was looking for. Swinging in next to him she spoke up. “Hey, you were the one I ran into right?”

Werve hesitated a moment before speaking, still unnerved by technicolored equines “Uh… yeah.” He unconsciously lowered the barrel of his M60 machine gun further towards the ground as he spoke, “Sorry about shooting at you.”

“Hey, it’s cool. You were looking out for your friends, right? Same with me.” Dash said, looking down at the weapon. So the metal sticks shot stuff? The pegasus considered that… obviously they were nothing like bows-and-arrows or slingshots. Maybe they acted like the spell bullets some Unicorns could use? She certainly remembered a lot of light and noise when that… thing was firing. That was good, if the projectiles were anything like magi-bullets it meant she wouldn’t have been killed by the weapon. With that settled, Dash added, “Sorry for jumping to conclusions and charging at you.”

“Hey, it’s alright. We just had a misunderstanding” Werve replied awkwardly. It was an accurate way of phrasing his motives, although the actions hadn’t been anywhere as conscious as the words implied. He just quietly thanked god he hadn’t hit the Pegasus… he wouldn’t have known what would have happened had he killed her. A part of his conscious asked him why he had started to worry about who (or what) he killed now, but it was quickly lost amidst the more frenetic activity of his mind. “It’s Rainbow Dash, right?”

“Heck yeah!” Dash puffed up her chest in pride as she hovered in mid-air. “Fastest pegasus in Equestria!”

“James Werve,” The soldier said, “Private in the US Army.”

At that moment another trooper from the squad broke in, “Hey, how fast is the ‘fastest’?”

“Heh, well… I don’t like to brag.” Dash said loudly, ignoring the burst of laughter from Twilight Sparkle further ahead. “But you’re looking at the only pony that can pull off a Sonic Rainboom! All 800 miles per hour of glory! Although I only need to reach around 770 for the Rainboom to actually go off...”

“Bull!” A third GI suddenly came into the conversation, “That’s impossible!”

Dash scowled and moved towards the challenger, “You calling me a liar, chump?”

“Damn right!” The soldier said, “Hell, if it weren’t for the fact you were hovering in mid-air in front of me I would have laughed at the idea of you flying! Your wingspan shouldn’t even make you able to fly! And you are telling me you can move almost four times than the fastest previous known living creature? I call bullshit!”

“Christ, Pat.” The soldier who had asked “how fast” said, “Why don’t you pack that biology stuff away?”

But Dash was not the kind of pony to take a challenge to her title lying down. “Oh yeah, you can’t even fly! What would you know about pegasus flying anyways?!”

The challenging trooper was about to reply when Vince entered the picture from seemingly nowhere. “Goddamn it private! Don’t antagonize the locals, even if they seem to be making an absurd claim! Or are we going to have to play a game of BOMBARDMENT?!”

The soldier visibly paled and muttered a quick “No sarge, sorry sarge.”

Rainbow Dash was confused. She turned back to the human she first came back to speak to “Hey, James… what is bombardment?”

The private shook his head, “It’s the Sergeant’s way of punishing the bigger troublemakers while in the field. It… well, don’t worry about it.”

Dash seemed curious but let the matter drop. James was happy about that, he couldn’t dredge up the heart to tell her that ‘bombardment’ would have never been permissible in the army just a year ago and that it involved the use of rather hefty rocks…

Captain Gins had already been anticipating the look on Mullivan’s face halfway through the trip back to the hill. As the squad, and their ‘guests’, approached the hilltop, the eyes of the entire company turned on them. At first, most of them just gave a mere glance. But those that remained widened in surprise and disbelief and the watchers nudged their less attentive comrades. Those comrades looked more closely now, saw the two ponies, and then nudged their comrades.

It wasn’t long before Dash and Twilight Sparkle were feeling a little uncomfortable under the gaze of 40 humans…

Gins was initially denied his enjoyment when the lieutenant met them. The British officer couldn’t seem to settle on an emotion and his first words after he saluted were: “Sir, forgive me if I may sound a mite daft… but do you see a small purple unicorn standing to your left?”

Gins gave a wry grin, “Yes, yes I do. I don’t even have to look to know she is there.”

“She?” Mullivan said, horribly confused.

Gins ignored him for a moment. “If you would, Miss Sparkle.”

For a short few moments Twilight Sparkle’s horn glowed that strange color and all of the humans, except for the just-arrived, felt that slight pressure in the backs of their minds. The glow from her horn died down and Twilight opened her mouth to speak…

Only for Rainbow Dash to shoot forward and loudly proclaim: “Hey! Can you hear me now?”

Now Mullivan’s face settled on an expression and Gins found himself wishing the British officer wore a monocle.

A/N: Fin-uh-fucking-ly! Yeah, this took me ages… but not only do I find “lotsa talk, little action” pieces kind of tough to write, I’m also unsurprisingly horrendously lazy. I mean: 4.7 thousand words? I’ve put out chapters twice as long as that in a few weeks! Granted, I don’t recall that story actually being any good and I think I tore it off the web in shame, deleting it totally from that old computer. Suffice to say, I’m not entirely pleased with this chapter but I believe it is much better than my past attempts at writing “talkity-talk, not shooty-shoot” kind of pieces.

But hey! Set-up, exposition, and introduction of characters who will play roles later is always good, right? Right? Where are all these crickets coming from?

Anyways… now that season 2 is over I can safely declare that from here on out, this story will run largely with canon elements from then. If (as is eminently likely) this is still going when season 3 (and 4 and 5 and how many more there are) come out, then I’ll be picking what fits and discarding all the rest.

For those of you who might complain about the whole “Sonic Rainboom at mach 1 and this scientificy aerodynamic yada-blah contradicts it”, I am going to remind you that My Little Pony is a kids cartoon while this fanfic certainly isn’t. While there will still be cartoony elements and plenty of humor (both dark and otherwise), this is mostly a serious fic.

Here is a nice rule of thumb for this fic: the “strength” of the rule of funny will usually be inversely proportional.

Anyways! Next time we start the steamroller with our frontier!ponies and ruskie friends in…

Dark Night, Red Light