Come join the fun, take a journey through the night.

“Sir, you wished to see me?” I stated, before slowly walking into Commander Steed’s office and standing at attention.

“Captain Sweet Cinder…” Commander Steed started, not looking in my direction. His eyes simple trailing through the folder in front of him. “It’s good to see that you’re up and about… How is that new leg treating you?”

“Good, but not great, Sir.” I told him, still not use to the hunk of metal attached to my flank. It looked like a leg, felt like a leg, and even worked like a leg… But even with all that going for it, it didn’t seem… right.

Slowly he turned to me, before looking me in the eyes. There were bags under his eyes, but that was to be expected. It had been a week since the attack and no one got much sleep. With the occasional Bandit turning up outside the wall, everypony was on edge, and the stress was getting a bit unbearable to some.

“Now, I have a simple question for you, Captain. And I’m sure you’ll accept, because of… well, obvious reasons,” His horn glowed before the stack of papers he was reading before lifted up. “Last we spoke, you failed inspection. Then while on patrol, you were nearly killed…”

I remained quite, doing my best not to not to remember getting shot in the head… Also ignoring the slowly creeping migraine forming in the back of my head.

“Then the base was attacked while you were recovering, and… Well, let’s just say I saw first hoof what you did. It’s why I signed off on that new leg of yours, and it’s also why I’m assigning you to deal with the nearby Bandits.”

“Ah… what?” I stammered, before catching myself and standing back at attention. “I mean, what, Sir? I didn’t quite catch that, Sir!”

“At ease, Captain,” He stated, before standing up from his chair and stepping over to the window. “Now… You can find all the mission details in that file on the table. Take it, and read through it. Tell no pony, and come back to me when you get an idea for a team together.”

“Permission to speak aloud?” I asked, hoping he would say yes.

“Permission denied, Captain. I know you do not want to do something like this, but with over one-hundred of our ponies dead, I need every last one of the remaining ones to do their part, or would you rather I take back the leg I assigned to you?”

“Negative, Sir!” I stated, before standing back at attention, even though I wasn’t ordered to.

“Good… Now, my question is simple. Tomorrow morning, or the morning after?” He asked, not giving an explanation to what he was asking.

“Um… Could you provide context, Sir?” I asked.

“The mission. Would you rather start it tomorrow morning, or the morning after?” He asked again, before slowly turning to me.

“Well Sir-” He lifted a hoof as I started to speak, cutting me off mid sentence.

“Go through the files and inform me after you made your decision. Now, dismissed.” He ordered, before his horn glowed and a the file levitated over to me.

Without another word, I took the file from him and left his presence. To simple put it, I didn’t need this today... It may have only been a week since the attack, but in that time a lot of things had happened... But as I slowly made my way out of Commander Steed’s office, I had to hold a hoof up to my head to ignore the the very painful migraine forming. It would seem that my day was not going to be sunshine and rainbows, like I had hoped. But a simple fact still stood, something that I could agree upon even in the warry state that I was in... Fuck Commander Steed…

“I know you don’t have much of a choice when it comes to doing this, just please… watch yourself, Cinder. I know you’re still in pain, and I don’t want to see you get hurt again. Just watch yourself when you are out there, and take these extra painkillers when the Migraines start acting up, or if your leg starts to hurt. Just come back alive and well… Be safe.”

Grace

I let out a long sigh, before closing Grace’s message to me. Yeah… It’s been a full week since everything went down. I’m not dead, thankfully… But it’s hard for me to cope what has been going on in the last couple of days. Things have changed, and I don’t like it one bit… All I wanted to do was make sure Grace was safe, and she was, but I did a hell of a job finding out what life could throw at me while doing it. It was well… bullshit.

You’re now looking at the most well respected pony in the base. Apparently running in with only three legs, covered in your own blood and tearing through Bandits like they are paper gets you some attention. But that’s not what’s bullshit. After what I went through there better damn well be some cheering for me. No, what was bullshit was that I was now expected to do it again.

“Sir, how’s the new leg treating you?” I turned to Private Valentine and gave him a frown. Which he didn’t see under my new set of armor...

“About as good as the migraine pills I’ve been taking... They work, but I would rather be asleep…”

You see, I got promoted. Not in rank, but in responsibility! As you know, I am now expected to clear out the nearby Bandit holds, while gathering any information they may or may not have with them. I was given one of the automatic-carriages, or to be exact a Lightweight Tactical All Purpose Piece of Shit. If you can’t tell, I don’t really care what it is... It was too tight and somehow damp! Do you know how hard it is to having something damp in the desert? I don’t, but I would expect it’s fucken hard! Seriously, the only thing that I want to be inside of that is both tight and damp is mare, but instead I have to cram my ass into this thing with three other stallions. One of which is driving…

And where were we driving, you may ask? South… Right to one of the Bandit bases. The direct approach was our approach, because most Bandits are asleep at two in the morning. Did I forget to mention that it was night time, making the tight and damp thing even more strange? No? Well there you go…

Oh and… well there was one thing that did come out of this that load of B.S. that was good… A simple kiss… By Grace… And she wasn’t drunk this time! It was her thank you gift for doing what I did. I mean, she did punch me afterwards, but hey… It was better gift than my new leg. Trust me when I say this… Having a leg is nice, but having it be an old hunk of junk that malfunctions, is not. Just because something looked like a leg, acted like a leg, and felt like a leg, doesn't mean it’s a leg...

“So yeah… Might not be any of my business saying this, but ah, Captain Sweet Cinder, that ah, that mare you did all that bad ass shit for… She put out?” I slowly turned my head to the Sergeant that was joining me in this oh so B.S. mission.

My mask hid my emotions, but if the stallion could see my face, he would have went wide eyed in fear. Luckily I still had the next best thing! Words! “Mention that again, and I’m having you clean the shitter with your muzzle,” I ordered, shaking my head, then let out a low growl. Though normally I would have said a coy comeback or something, I wasn’t really in the mood.

I was stressed out, worried, mad, sad, happy… literally every emotion you could imagine was rolling around in my head at the moment. I didn’t like what was going on, and though I could go on a rant about it, I would rather sum it all up in two words.

Fuck everything. Mostly Commander Steed, but primarily everything.

Yeah, that about does it…

“We’re about one klick away from target.” The driver stated. He had told me his name when we first started, but the lingering migraine I had kind of made me forget it… He was another Private though, and it was only thanks to the color of his armor that I knew it.

“You all know the drill… Get ready. Motion trackers on, guns hot, shields turned on…” I stated, before my horn glowed softly and I bucked everything on, before double checking to see if my shields were on. I was not going to get shot this time… not again…

Yeah, I probably should explain in detail what we were doing… Our mission was to clear out all nearby Bandit bases, to both secure the area from any further attacks and to show you don’t fuck with the Crimson Lance… Yes, those are the exact words from the higher ups, and I’m still laughing over it. But you get the idea. It was a stealth mission, and we were geared with some of the best weapons in base so that we could slaughter them all… I even got new armor, that had a working AC.

Right now we were heading off to a camp known to the Bandits as Graveyard of Scrap. You would think they would just call it Scrapyard, but no… We were going there to clean house. It wasn't the largest of Bandit bases, but it was one of the closest ones. The leader of this Bandit group was a Zebra named Hoodoo-Voodoo… An odd name, but considering he was going to die soon I’ll keep my smart ass comment about it to myself… if I had one. Really, I’m just not in a good mood to be all too funny, but once that extra dose of meds kicks in I should be fine… I hope… Just glad that Radiant Grace was able to slip me a bottle of painkillers before I left the base. She wanted to help, and knowing what kind of trouble I get myself into she knew I would need it… And… thinking of how she broke protocol just made me smile.

“So what does this Zebra look like, Sir?” I glanced to the final member of the group, and like the ass-hat Sergeant, I didn’t remember his name.

“Well-” With a quick flick of my horn, I popped open my journal and went over to the mission log I had made, before going over to the picture that I had saved of our main target. “-he’s a Zebra for starters… He’s got one green eye and one blue eye… Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that half his face looks like it was forced through a wood-chipper...” And with that, my horn glowed softly as I sent the image to everyone in the swad.

Their reactions were about on par with mine when I first saw the Zebra. Something that went along the lines of ‘Aaaahhhh, my eyes! Why Celestia?! Why?’

“Sheesh, you would think something like that would get infected,” Private Valentine stated, shaking his head in disgust. “So past him being… disfigured, any other details?”

“He’s a sadistic… Murderer… The list goes on...” I mumbled, before closing my journal. “But past that, we’re here to do a job… Let’s finish it and get back to the base quickly. I don’t want to get into a full blow firefight, and I don’t want to fill out paperwork if one of you dies. So in short, watch yourselves, and when we get back to base I’ll make sure we all can get a cold beer.”

“But Sir, all the Alcohol was destroyed in that fireball explosion you caused back in the cafeteria.” The Sergeant stated, and I could do nothing but lean back in disappointment.

“Shit…” I mumbled. “Forgetting I did that...”

“What part of stealth didn’t you not understand?!” I yelled, before jumping behind cover as the Bandits riddled my shield with bullets. “It’s not that hard of a concept!”

“How was I supposed to know those red-barrels were explosives?!” Sergeant what’s-his-name yelled, while diving behind cover.

“What do you mean you didn’t know the red-barrels would explode! Where you not loved as a child? Did you never get to play video games as a kid?! I was a fucken orphan and I still knew that shit!” I screamed, before pulling a grenade out with my magic and throwing it. The explosion came with from screams of Bandits, but even though I had just taken the life of one or two of them, I knew that this whole damn place was going to come down on us soon…

“Well excuuuuese me Captain for having a life that didn’t involve-” Before be could finish his statement, he was cut off by a ear shattering horn being blown. Yes you read those seventeen words right… These fuckers had a massive blowhard that was just used to wake up the full base.

I should probably back up some and tell you what’s going. Simply put, the Sergeant-Fuck-Up and I were going to break off from the group to take out Voodoo while in his sleep, while Private Valentine and the other Private who’s name I don’t remember went off to plant some explosives. It was up to them where those explosives went, but you would think that the team that was PLANTING EXPLOSIVES would start with a bang. Not the stealth team…

We weren't even close to our target, though we were in the same structure that he was. See, the base was laid out like a small fortress. Walls made of junk on each side, and a large tower in the middle. Sure, there was a chance that the crazy ass Zebra was not in the tower, but… Look, we’re here to kill everyone. If he was there then good, otherwise we would have to go on a stallion hunt. And in the end it didn’t matter if the sneaking part didn’t work, because at this point I was more concerned about not dying.

Speaking of not dying, my eyes went wide as a grenade (for the third time in my life) landed next to be while I was hiding behind cover. It was kind of funny that Bandits always have the same idea, it also showed that they went entirely idiots. But considering how they didn’t cook the grenade they found it being thrown back at them.

KABOOM

But the explosion that came from the grenade was much larger than I had thought it was. It made the base shake… For a moment, I was dumbstruck over it, but after glancing out of a nearby window and seeing smoke rise up from one of the side buildings, I had to kick myself over being an idiot. The explosion came from team two, setting off their explosives.

“Yeah…” I muttered to myself, looking down to the ground. “Looks like it’s going to be one of those days…” Then without thinking, I leaped up from cover and started to dash to the Bandits.

This entire time I had been hiding behind a tractor that someone made into a king sized bed. How they lifted it up three flights of stairs I’ll never know, but at least it made for good cover. My shields thought took a beating as I charged, and all the while my rifle let out soft thap-thap-thaps I went. The Bandits that I encountered were a mix of all the pony races, and there was even a Griffin or two, but with them not having a child, and me taking cover and letting mine recharge, they all gave little to no resistance as I blazed my way through them. That was until I small filly came charging at me with a knife in his teeth. I hesitated, because well… he was a kid. You don’t really shoot kids. You let them grow up first, then you shot them. That’s how it worked…

“Aaaaahhhhhh!” He squeaked through the knife, before leaping up and slashing me across the chest. It did nothing more but bounce off of my shields, but then he slashed again. Same result. He then went for a thrill slash and… His head exploded.

My eyes widened, before I turned around to see Sergeant holding one of the bandit shotguns. He no longer had his helmet on, and part of his armor looked shingled. As if he suffered an from explosion.

“Dow’t wowwy, Sir. I got wou!” He stated through the shotgun, giving me a wink.

And… And I didn’t really know what to do… I mean our orders were to come here and finish all of these Bandits off, but kids… It was at that moment that I was shot out of my stupor, as my head violently whiplashed to the side. It was the result of a Sniper round shattering my shields, and out of instinct, I found myself leaping to one of the dead Bandit bodies, and hoisting it up with my magic as a makeshift meatshield.

“Ya’ dare come into the resting place of my brood, bringing the sin of the world on your backs!” A Bandit yelled, before another shot rang out and I was splattered with the blood of my meatshield. “I Hoodoo-Voodoo, arbiter of the spirit of Chaos, cast thee into the sea of blood, for the sins that you wear!”

If it weren’t for the fact that he just shot me, I would have bursted out laughing. Mr. Voodoo was the textbook definition of what some would say Stereotype. I wish I had my camera, for Radiant Grace would find this very funny… On second thouh, no. He was even uglier in pony? I wouldn’t want Grace to see him.

“Ya’ think hiding behind cover will save you from the gifts of the Spirits,” Hoodoo-Voodoo yelled, before firing again. To my surprise part of my cover was disintegrated, and shrapnel buffeted my armor. “Ya’ can’t hide from the Spirits! They will find you, and they will kill you!”

Yeah… It was at this point that I didn’t really know what was going on anymore. Didn’t really care either. Not because I just didn’t care, but because my migraine started to kick back up again. It came in a pain wave, hitting me over and over. Still, I would rather be hit with the pain of the migraine than a sniper round. But if I wasn't careful, and if I don’t watch myself, I would have to deal with both pains. And that was kind of hard at the moment, considering that my vision was starting to get blurry!

“I need cover fire!” I yelled, before lifting my rifle up and blindly firing at Voodoo.

“Sir, I’m a bit pinned down myself!” The Sergeant yelled. “Ah shit! GRENA-” I glanced to my right only to see a wall of fire rapidly approaching me. I couldn't move out of the blast fast enough and found myself being blow back. I didn’t even have time to raise my hooves to protect myself…

“Aaaaahhhhh!” I screamed as I was blown through one of the metal walls, before plummeting down three stories. It was just my luck that I landed on an old portapotties. I would have rather preferred landed on a pile of scrap metal…

With my back now killing me along with my head, I slowly pulled myself from the literal pile of shit that I landed in. I was just glad that my armor had an air filter, so that I didn’t have to smell myself.

“Ya’ think running with save you from the spirits?!” I glanced up to see Voodoo hanging out of the hole that I made, his sniper pointing at me. “The spirits don’t have restrictions to range!” He then pulled the trigger and… missed. The round hit the ground next to me, and I quickly scrambled to the side for cover.

“Aaahhh! Servants to the spirits! We have intruders! The sins of the Crimson Lance can’t be tolerated! Wipe them out for trespassing!

I couldn’t help but bite my lower lip. Things were NOT going to plan. In fact, I just wanted this whole thing to be easy. I wanted to just get into the basin and deal with the bandits while they were asleep! But no! I can’t get what I want! Pulling out my guns magazine with a little more force than I should have, I angrily tossed it aside before putting in a fresh new one.

Shit has hit the fan, and I’m not talking about the shit I’m covered in. My ears flicked as I heard a pony running to my right. Turning quickly, I found an Earthpony charging me. He had makeshift armor made from the very scrap around me, but armor was useless if you weren't covering your whole body. Reacted quickly, I turned my gun to him and fired. His head popped, and my eyes widened as I saw several Bandits behind him. All charing me.

“Oh for fuck sake! Can’t I have a bre-” I was cut off as the Lightweight Tactical All Purpose Piece of Shit came crashing through one of the outer walls. It than started to do a power side, and hitting a few of the Bandits running at me. “Oh… Well that’s one way to do it!”

“Sir! Brace yourself!” The voice of Valentine called out, originating from the Lightweight Tactical All Purpose Piece of Shit. And without another warning… The bombs went off.

KKAABBOOOOMM!

When I was told that they were of a high yield, I expected something along the lines of… Well the explosion that blew me out of the scrap metal fort. Something that would hurt, get rid of my shields, and blow me back a good ways. Not something along the lines of a full blown mini-magical-warhead!

My ears started to ring as the twisting of metal SCREAMED out. My heart glowed quickly as I quickly turned off my audio broadcaster before the sound made my head bleed. But where did the sound come from? The answer was not that hard to find, and as I looked up at the metal fortress I couldn't help but wince as the colossal structure started to tilt to one side.

Voodoo, who had been standing near the hole that I had made, tired to brace himself, but as the structure started to tilt farther and farther to one side, he quickly lost his footing, and came tumbling out. And… And then it hit me. The structure was falling towards me.

“SHIT!” I yelled, before taking off to one side and getting out of the way.

Voodoo on the other hoof was not so lucky. He hit the ground with a heavy crack and screamed in pain, but before he could get up and move the whole thing came crashing down on him. And… Even thought I had turned off my audio broadcaster, I still heard the impact…

Dust and sand bucked up in all directions, and the whole Bandit camp quickly became a dust storm of pain and suffering. Mostly my pain and suffering, but don’t worry. I know how to share...

It didn’t take us long to finish off the rest of the Bandits. There were roughly fifteen of them all together, and that wasn’t counting the ones now buried under the pile of scrap or killed in the explosions. None of them had shields, all of them had guns, and none of those guns could break our shields. I don’t really need to give you the details because I’m sure you’re smart enough to put one and one together… So long story short, it was a bloodbath.

And the only problem we had to deal with now was getting information… All of the Bandits were dead, and there wasn’t really any working computers to use, as most of them were scrap. So it came down to scavenging around for anything useful. Which was a pain in the ass, considering that half of the base looked like it was blow to hell, which it was. And there wasn’t really any specific information we were looking for... For all we knew Hoodoo-Voodoo could have been a stamp collector, and the information we were looking for was his secret stash of rare collectible stamps. But if I were a betting Stallion, which I sometimes do in my spare time, we were here to find any information on the Bandits that attacked us, or that Vault thingy.

Either way, Celestia forbid General Steed from telling me exactly what we’re looking for...

“Sir, I found some Audio longs from that Voodoo guy!”

Pulling myself away from a dirty magazine that I found under one of the Bandit beds, I stepped out of the tent I was in and turned to the other Private with us, whose name I forgot… “Good work, Private. Now bring it here, I’ll take a look at it.”

“Oh, wait. I just found another one!” He stated, before starting to laugh. “Oh wow, Sir! There’s a whole box of these! I think we found what we came here for!”

“Good work, Private. Get the box and bring it down here. I’ll start taking a look through them,” I paused, before looking over to Private Valentine who was standing on one of the walls, keeping an eye out for any Bandits that we may have missed. “Private Valentine, get ready to move out! I’m going to run on over to their water tank and use the thing to clean off. I know you guys can’t smell the shit I’m in thanks to your armor, but I would rather not give General Steed a debriefing of what happened while smelling like Bandit crap. I already have to tell him about the death of the Sergeant, I don’t want things to get worse...” My comment made him chuckle for a moment, before he started to leap down off of the wall.

Simply put, I’ve never been more wasteful when it came to water. We were in the desert, and doing what I was about to do was along the lines of heresy to anyone who needed water or they’ll die. Ok, that was a bit of a redundant statement since everypony need some water every now and then, but you get the idea.

Thap-Thap-Thap went my rifle as I punched holes into the Bandit’s water tower, and quickly a spray of water came showering down on me. I just stood there, letting the water do it’s work. Thanks to having a working AC in my armor, I didn’t really need to drink any of it since I wasn’t really sweating and/or delirious. Then the water tower started to creak, and as I looked up, I could only utter one word as the bottom half of the water tower shattered.

“Fuck…”

The water tank was about one story tall, and a good nine or so meters in diameter. And all that water came crashing down on me... If what little water came out before didn’t clean me off, this did. It also blew me back several Meters, and I found myself at the hooves of both the Privates with me.

“You alright, Sir?” Private Valentine asked, offering me a hoof.

Taking his hoof, he helped me to mine, and I let out a long sigh. “Let’s just… get the hell out of here. The sun is coming up, and I just want to get back to the base. I’m tired of this shit.”

“Well, the day’s not over, Sir. It just started.”

“Yeah, don’t tell me about it…”

To be continued...

Author's Note

References

“Chapter’s name song found here!”
“Dead Island theme song, Hoodoo-Voodoo.”
“Two face, the Batman villain.”
“Spongebob's MY EYES! guy!”
“The Legend of Zelda, Excuse me Princess!”
“Taken’s I will find you, and I will kill you!”
“My Little Ponies, Trouble Shoes catch phrase. Just my luck!”