Red skies.

Chapters

Red skies at night.
Red skies at dawn.
Levitate.
Double tap.
When Johnny comes marching home.
Blood on the water.
Rolling thunder.
The truth untold.
Standard Deviation.
Home sweet hole.
Border Guard.
Sometimes, it's good to forget.
Detective Work.
Negotiations.

Red skies at night.

The ceiling of the jail cell was grey, just like my old room long ago. I looked back through everything that had happened to me, almost like my life was flashing before my eyes. I remembered many things, some from long ago and some so new they could've happened Yesterday. There were some things I couldn't remember, names I got wrong, and probably plenty that never happened. So is the way of life.

They were certainly going to put me down, it was a heavy feeling. So it's at times like this that I would look to the skies and see what my options were.

There weren't many, so I just tied the bedsheets around the jail cells bars and used the bed as some sort of a stool. I made sure that the sheets were short enough to keep me off the ground, then wrapped the other end around my neck.

Something inside me died, maybe it was pride.

I leaned forwards, and began to dangle from the ground by my neck. My face went from blue to black in a matter of seconds, as I kicked around the sheets managed to turn me around, facing the rest of the prison. This was when the guard walked by just as it was almost over.

I sat quietly, as I always did. The room was dark, as if my life were filmed in black and white. On my right was the door, and on my left was a small window. It was all I had in this room. I'd given up everything long ago. I just stared at the blank TV screen, waiting for the speech to come on. I was numb, carrying myself as though I were already dead. Truth be told, I've been dead for years.

The time, as it always was when we did this, was 6:30 PM. The whole country stood in silence, to commemorate the fall of the princess and the rise of the Golden Era. That program would say the same thing ever night, that we were brought from the princesses as we created a government for ourselves. We would sit here for 30, 40, sometimes even 50 minutes at a time watching the blank TV screen. The town was silent, even bags rolling across the street could be heard.

Then the screen came on, it was black and white but all of the Steel Empire could recognize the figure well. Steel Spirit had instigated the rebellion fifteen or so years ago, and he's been in control ever since. We do not talk about the times before, such words in his eyes are evil. He opened his mouth, and the sound carried through the entire city.

"Comrades, hold steady on your course, fight for each-other. The war against inequality is soon to come to an end. We were slaves and now we're free! I brought you light in the dark, and I brought you food when you were hungry. Some say we are running on a shortage of food, I say we have plenty! Let us celebrate our liberation once more!" The TV turned off again. Nopony was allowed out after the ceremony hours and all conversation was regulated to be about the glory of Steel. To others it resounded with pride, some with fear, but with me it was regret.

I lived alone, however. So there was no conversation. I just sat quietly for fifty minutes, thinking about the times before he brought himself to this country. My regret deepened when I remembered that I was part of this, flowing freely like a bag in the wind. I recognized my sorrow, accepted my sins, and fought my remorse. It was ten minutes in when my door opened. We were not allowed to lock doors, as it goes against the rules Steel put forth. It slammed behind. I dared not stand, what if they were watching me? I couldn't see who it was, so I kept still and waited for the pony to make it's presence known. My mind was numb, and for the first time I felt that.

"Shhh."

I looked up, standing in front of me was a white on grey pony with crystal blue eyes. We had no need for wings or horns, and as such this pony had none. I remained silent, talking during this time was forbidden.

"Cover for me, if they ask I'm not here." She started.

It was confusing but I had to agree or things would only get worse, probably because if the politburo found her in MY home they'd be inclined to search the whole place. That was something I absolutely didn't want to happen. Above all that but I had a sense that we were two of the same breed. The thing is, ponies that have seen war before can instantly identify each other. It is almost as if we're wolves, part of the same pack. To be honest that holds a lot more truth than it should, we aren't ponies disguised as wolves. We are wolves disguised as ponies. It takes war to make you realize that.

That was when there was a knock on the door. I was puzzled, but the pony motioned for me to answer it. I stood up and walked to it, the room was a square with no other rooms so it didn't take long to get there. There was also a lack of places for her to hide. It'd be ridiculously easy for a guard to see her in the room, but something told me she was smarter than that. All there was is the Couch, the TV, the pictures of the revolution, and the closet. The closet was always empty, for all we had would be given up for the glory of the leaders.

I opened the door, and two members of the Politburo stood there. They wore black uniforms with cross rifles on their necks. On their fronts was the symbol of steel, three bronze bars.

"Good evening, are you housing a pony that is not supposed to be here?"

For the first time in years, I lied.

"No, anypony who isn't family is not allowed in anypony else's living quarters under order 2217 of Steel."

"Good, we're looking for a degenerate. Glory to Steel."

"Glory to Steel."

They left almost as quickly as they had came. When I closed the door the white on grey pony put her back against it. She was hiding between the door and the wall.

I nodded my head over to the couch, if they assumed we were related then there'd be no issues. There was a camera facing towards the couch from the TV. It was how they enforced the regulations of praise. I nodded to her and she caught on quick. When we had sat, she stared at the TV with me, the only thing on was the emblem of Steel, 3 iron bars. She then broke the silence.

"You fought in the war didn't you?"

I almost forgot about the two flags above my TV, they rested in a tri-fold box. One was Equestrian, the other was for Steel. They were only given to veterans. If there's one thing I'd never forget, it was the sound and smell of death. The sight of piled bodies. Those were the things that stuck with you. I was roughly forty years old at this point, and it stuck with me for the last twenty years.

"Yes, those flags are mine."

"Then I'm sure you already know something is wrong."

It was the first time I had heard this. I'd never been told the truth in years. Who was this pony sitting next to me and where did she get the authority to speak like this? So many questions, so few answers.

"I've noticed."

"You were lied to."

I responded out of fear.

"No, Steel never lied to anypony."

"You know that isn't true. The camera in your TV is a myth. They can't reinforce any of their rules, especially the time of praise. I have a feeling you only do it because you're too scared to see what you fought for, is that true?" her voice dropped in tone, it was more of a mocking yet understanding voice.

I couldn't hold it anymore, I finally snapped.

"What do you want? I've given all I can to this country."

"Well, what if I told you that there was a fifth alicorn?"

"Bullshit."

"Oh but it's real, her name is 'Flurry Heart'. She's 20 now but she was born just before the war. She is the last of her kind."

"And I'm supposed to believe you?"

"Well no, but it's probably in your best interest to." An obvious yet serious threat, she sure as hell wasn't subtle.

What was worse is that I actually believed it. I don't know why. There was a rumor of a fifth alicorn just before the war, but for it to reemerge now was beyond strange. Faith has an odd way of linking ponies together, but I still remained skeptical.

"So, can you tell me who the parents were?" A trick question, nopony can remember their names. The reason for that being was the simple fact that nopony was educated on the topic anywhere in the New Equestria as it would probably cause yet another civil war, and the mare looked to be something along the lines of mid to early twenties. Even if she was born before the war she wouldn't have ever known the names or even the rumor.

"She stresses that her father was the military executive for the Equestrian Guard"

It's now or nothing, lets see if she can get my old bosses name right.

"If I remember correctly his name was Shining Armor. The mother she knew well, her name was Cadence."

That made it two for two, I had to find another way to verify this. It just couldn't be true.

"Where did she come from?"

"The Crystal Empire."

She wouldn't have even known what it was, and her looks disproved my initial idea that she may be my age. Guess that it was time to ask.

"Where is she?"

"Hiding, but I'm interested. Why do you defend this nation still? You know it's been broken ever since the warlords split it into pieces."

I couldn't hold the supportive act anymore, I knew she was on the same page as me. I let all bets go off.

"What am I hiding? The only reason I'm still here is that I fought for this nation to keep it strong, there's no other reason to keep going. Nothing needs to be changed as long as all the ponies are safe."

"They're not safe, don't you know that?" She got up and lifted up the drapes at the window. I already knew what she was referring to.

"That is reserved for ponies that put us in danger."

"But most of them have done nothing wrong! Can't you see what you're looking at? Danger to them is decided by one stallion and enforced upon all."

She was right, once again.

"I don't defend his actions, but I understand them." I was trying to keep my restraint, I'm not going against Steel. Doing that is suicide on any level.

"But if you understand them why can't you defend them? You know what he's doing is wrong."

That was it.

"Where is this princess?"

"Depends, did you keep your weapons?"

"I'm not supposed to do that."

"So what? DID you keep them?"

We walked two blocks down, and sweat dripped from my eyebrow. I didn't want this to go south, one slip and we were both shot on the sight. I hadn't felt like this in a long time, comfortable yet worried about my position in things. I knew that the ponies in this province would either love me or hate me for what I am about to do. I felt lightheaded, excited, yet anxious all at the same time. It was an awkward feeling that I always remembered from the old days.

There was a roadblock ahead, standard procedure for the Politburo groups and militia. The idea was to keep everypony from leaving their block. We ducked into an alleyway to keep out of sight.

"Just follow my lead."

"Wait where are we going?"

"Can't say, but I will say it like this: If you really believe that we are the only two to know about this then you're an idiot. The ELM has been around since the war broke out."

"And ELM stands for?"

"Equestrian Liberation Military. You'll see when we get there."

She knocked on a brick wall, twice each second for five seconds. It was slow and steady. I recognized what she was doing almost instantly. The door opened. It was a clever paint job that added a few optical illusions. It made it look like it was just another part of the wall, but it was actually a door with the knob only on one side. I felt my pistol pressed against my chest under my leather jacket. It was a familiar comfort, knowing that if anything happened I had it.

The door swung open, and a black on orange pony ushered me us through. The mare dragged me through the hallways until we reached the roof. We weren't really on the roof but more of in the attic. There was a small window with a pony sitting next to it in a brown chair. He was reading some book when the mare kicked his shin. He looked up and opened the window, stuck his head out, and felt that the coast was clear. He then walked over to a dark end of the room and came back with two long boards. They were old and rotten, I had a real bad feeling about this. I knew that protest would be in vein but I did anyway, after all if there is a way to get out of walking across nearly collapsed boards ten yards off the ground bet your ass I'd do it.

"No, I'm not doing that." I tried to make the situation perfectly clear so that there was no mistakes. Sliding down a railing into another window is one thing, but doing it at this many feet up is a hell no. Two things could happen: The boards could break or I could just fall and slap into a brick wall. I wasn't sure that was better actually.

"Too bad, you're doing it."

As soon as they set the boards up, the older pony knocked on a window in the adjacent building. The window opened and another pony took the board.

I was about to protest when she grabbed me and slid me down the makeshift slide. I slammed my face into the brick wall. It knocked me out cold.

I had a dream. It was one I'd had for years, and each time I had it I realized more. It was in my first deployment, which was during the Equestrian days. I was part of the Equestrian Marine Corps, where we went into the far north to fight off the Yaks. The first time we had made contact with them their diplomat took offense to our culture, and decided ethnic cleansing would be a great option. He took all the ponies that looked Equestrian and brought them to a ditch they'd never come back from. When word got to Equestria the operation was a go.

What I remember the most though wasn't the first pony I'd killed, for after all the ponies I've killed I can't remember who came first, but this was just one of the only ones I ask myself about. I still remember it.

It was roughly 12 PM, midday. We were in the middle of a raid on a hostile town, Yashmal, where there had been a car bombing. There was a weird feeling about going to fight, you're more excited than you've ever been but you're scared shitless. In the end though you don't understand what it is really like to fight for you life until you get shot at, then you get what we call '7.62 attitude'. It's more of a way that you act after you realize that somepony just tried to kill you, but it doesn't matter. We took fire as soon as we drove in, the doors that were supposed to block rounds instead just let them go right through. Our driver got scraped in the face with a 7.62. It took off his left eye and ripped part of his nose off, spraying chunks of blood and skin across the windshield. It was like a big, red, dark spider web. Probably because of the broken glass absorbing most of the blood. I was in the passenger seat while the fifty on top was roaring thunder down on the target. I instinctively took the wheel and steered it manually.

"Stay on the gas buddy stay on the gas!" I shouted, he was still conscious and did as I said.

"I can't see shit!"

"I know just hit the gas!"

One yak ran out into the street blazing his AK at the vehicle, we just ran him over and kept going.

"What the fuck was that?" The blind driver yelled.

"Nothing, just a Yak." We all giggled for a second, you'll find weird peace amidst chaos. It was a difficult type of humor, not the 'Oh that's genuinely funny' kind but more of 'Holy-shit-we're-really-fucking-doing-this?' type of humor. We got used to it after a while.

We kept driving until we reached the target building, which contained 3 high ranking officers of the Yaks' organization, the TJY. When we got there I told the pony to slam on the breaks, when he did we all lunged forward and I decided to fish tail the vehicle to keep it from flipping. I tucked him in the back and we ran into the building. The only problem was, it was empty.

Bad intel, common in the military nowadays and even worse when what you're fighting is an unorganized military that has almost no ranking system except 'You get a radio, you command. You get gun, you fight'. There were two ponies, a Stallion and a Mare. They were of no threat, at least for that time. The stallion was obviously threatened, either of religious execution or of me. I still can't think of which was worse. As soon as I turned my back to leave, the Stallion rushed me from behind. I heard the scuffle and turned around in time to see a small pistol in his hoofs. I grabbed the gun and threw him against the wall, kneeing him in the stomach. He dropped it so I threw him into the corner and smashed his face with my boot. He was out cold but not dead. That was when I heard the distinctive click clack of a shotgun.

I ducked low and raised my rifle, a long and rugged Equestrian built M16A4 assault rifle. It was the mare, she was holding a child in one arm and a sawed off in the other. It was common for stallions to use their wives to fight wars, but not for the wife to willingly fight. At least so I though. I flinched at first, part of me wanted to think she wasn't going to do it. I didn't shoot, until she put a 12 gauge slug into the plate on my vest. It bounced the round off but threw me to the ground. As soon as I hit the deck I recovered my weapon and fired a three round burst into her. She dropped cold.

I didn't know how to react, so I ran towards her to check if she was dead or if the child was alright.

The first round passed through her arm into the kids head. It was like what you see when a watermelon get's cut in half, just mush out on the other end and a semicircle where it once was. The rest of his body was grotesquely deformed as the round had done enough hydro-shock to mix up the whole body. He was dead on impact. A tear rolled down my cheek, it was like what I was doing finally caught up to me. This wasn't a game, this was war. I've been stuck in that state ever since.

It's reasons like these that I am afraid to go to sleep. I still hear those screams. I still feel that slug. I still feel the warm liquid dripping down my face. It's a nightmare, a nightmare I've lived and cannot escape. It is my hell.

When I woke up, there was a bag on my head and sweat dripping from my face. I almost screamed, everything that had happened before was still blurry.

"Name." The voice was unfamiliar. It took me a minute to remember it after that bang.

"Cloud Dasher." It was a mechanical response.

"Rank."

"Staff Sergeant."

"Deployment."

"Two accounts to the east sector, one to Yakyakistan."

"Military Occupational Specialty."

"Combat Engineer, Specialist."

"Welcome to the team."

She took the bag off, and I was blinded by the lights.

I wasn't tied to the chair, which was awfully ironic considering that I was pretty much a prisoner at this point. There was the mare from before, but in front of me stood an alicorn, the light was in my face but I could only get the details of the wings and horn. I'd never seen one in years, and I almost instantly recognized that things were terribly wrong.

"I will need the caliber of your gun."

I looked to the wall, I had just realized that I was locked in a stone room. Almost like a wine cellar. The small pistol was on a wooden table by a iron door, ironically still loaded. Most ponies in this place never have seen a gun before and are too scared to touch them. It's a good fear, but misplaced. What is really deadly is the pony behind it.

"Nine by nineteen. Standard Equestrian cartridge for more than fifty years. Why?"

"I need to find more of it, we'll have a use for you."

I was unsure about what to make of this, I really couldn't turn back now since they'd probably kill me or expose me. I had to go with it. They were going to pull me into it one way or another so I might as well just sit back and do what they say. I stood up, I knew I wasn't a hostage and they knew I was here to stay. I looked into the white mare's eyes, the one that pulled me out of my apartment.

"I never got your name?"

"I am Bellona. They just call me Bell around here. I'm bad with names though, what did you say it was?"

"Cloud Dasher, call me what you want."

"How does Crow sound?"

"Why Crow?"

"I don't know, I just see you as a Crow."

"I have no idea what that is supposed to mean."

That was probably the polite way of putting it, since I knew just what she meant. Ponies like me are very much like a crow, nopony sees how useful we are and inevitably wants us gone. That is, they want to keep ponies like me out until their garden is ruined from the unsavory ones that came and ate everything else. We are the ones that, as much as ponies hate to admit it, keep them alive. Their metaphorical garden would die if it weren't for ponies like me.

Bellona led me out of the chamber after I grabbed my pistol. It was an old Italian pistol, the Beretta 92FS. It was just what I liked, compact and powerful. It held a higher capacity magazine than most handguns of it's type, so it had that going for it as well. The only problem with it was that firearms are becoming increasingly less common. They're banned in the Steel province, which didn't stop me from owning one. The only place with working manufacturing for these types of weapons, however, is the Brotherhood of Blood, run by the prince himself. If I ever had to transition myself into old weapons I can always use hoof to hoof or improvise. On top of all that it's relatively easy to homemake ammunition if I ever need to.

I was in a daze thinking about how it was long ago, where many ponies owned guns. Now they're outlawed. Bellona had woken me up from this and dragged me back to reality.

"Were you even listening?" Her nose was scrunched up a bit, and there were noticeable red spots under her eyes. To be fair any emotion was easily noticeable on her white coat.

"Nope, say it again."

"You need to prove your worth." This didn't sit well with me. These ponies are technically terrorists, and if they have a use for me it can't be good.

It was then that I was no longer a pony, but I was a tool. An instrument of change, where one bullet can change the face of the world. In this life that I had wandered back into after being away so long I remembered the one thing I was told by my brother.

"Open your eyes wide, the truth will come to you."

Author's Note

WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME! This is a rewrite of the old story 'The hunter and the hunted'. Bear in mind the only thing that'll be reused is some of the names and Cloud's identity. Everything else is new! If you want to read the older (cancelled) version by all means!

Welcome to Red Skies.

Red skies at dawn.

I'd like to say it had been a day after I was taken into the ELM, but through the dark brick box I had stayed in it became very hard to tell what was night and what was day. The building itself was, as previously mentioned, essentially a bricked up shell of an old store. I could see the cash register and the counter still intact, although they were both layered in a thick snow of dust and cobwebs. However tonight came the criminal exposition. A time the government takes advantage of ponies that may or may not have committed a crime (sometimes even as small as stealing candy) and turning them into a public example. This left a dark air in the room, especially for the ELM soldiers that were on defense.

On the topic of the ELM, they were mostly either too young or too old. I am probably in the latter of the two so it didn't surprise me that I fit in nicely. Some ponies were as young as fourteen, and the oldest was seventy-three. I recognized the oldest from just before I had my head smashed against the corner of a building. He was the one that got the boards. Now he had a different look, an old Prussian Amoeba camo uniform and an old Prussian Ssh. 40 helmet. It was practically eighty years old at the point he was wearing it, and the wear on it showed that. On his back he had an old Mosin Nagant bolt action rifle, although he had crudely turned it into a sawed off with what looked like a manual saw. It was missing it's stock and most of the barrel, making it the size of a small pistol. It looked painful to hold, and much more painful to shoot.

"We know you trust us to some extent, but we need to know if we can trust you." Bellona's voice was always slow and methodical, every word was spoken with a purpose. It made me all the more anxious to know that even she had an issue with this.

"Is this going to be like an oath or something?" I spoke without thinking, for I already knew that it wouldn't be that.

"No, actions speak much louder than words. The exposition is tonight, I'm sure you know what that means."

"They're going to kill criminals in front of everypony as an example. It's meant for entertainment but the real purpose is clear. They'll generally torture or just kill everypony on the stage."

"Well remember how I said 'Actions speak louder than words?"

"Of course that wasn't even thirty seconds ago."

"Well you're going on the stage."

It was relatively stressful that day, relatively as in every day is stressful when you risk execution for hiding a pistol under your couch. It was just slightly worse considering that I'm being put on the criminal exposition. Something wanted to tell me that they lied to me and were with the Government, but I couldn't quite believe it. I don't know why, but the look in Bellona's eyes when she told me the news was that of honest fear and concern. I probably even knew the logic behind choosing me, they knew I was new to everything but a brawl. The youngest of the soldiers were around me, all lofting where they can with whatever weapons they'd get ahold of. Mostly the weapons were older semi auto handguns or revolvers, things that could easily be salvaged.

One of the soldiers kept quiet as he sat next to me, probably gauging the new guy. I spoke up to break the silence.

"I never got your name, mind telling me?" I started off kind. Don't know what type of a pony he is.

"Broad, Broad Side. I work on planning here and run security from time to time. You're new so I'll give you some slack."

"I'm new to this group, not to fighting if that's where you're taking that."

"Sure, old stallion is going to fight an army on his own, I like the sound of it."

Cocky, I didn't like it.

"I'm not that old and you damn well know it."

"Gramps you're starting to get on my last nerve."

I looked over at him, it was now I noticed that he was actually roughly 18, too young to be running planning. I got up and walked over to another table, I hadn't done much walking in their safehouse so I thought that now would be a great time for sightseeing. The place I was in looked like it was once a bar, they managed to brick off all the windows to make it look empty from the outside. I was actually impressed with the construction of it.

There were tables leading down the probably 20,000 square foot compound. Some rooms were just bunk beds and others were simply empty. The one I came from was a freezer. There was, however, one small room at the far end of the building that had light seeping from the hinges. The building was dark and wet, which made the oasis of light even more noticeable. I opened the door, and I was greeted by something I was certain wasn't real.

It was real, which was what threw me off. It was the alicorn. She was a pinkish white on the coat, and a mix of pink and blue in the mane, her eyes were a light diamond blue. She wasn't expecting me and looked up from her desk. She was reading some book, decided I might as well know the last remaining alicorn.

"What's the book?"

"It's called 'The Prince.'. It's a philosophy book about how ponies think, but I'm sure you may already know of it given your age."

"Philosophy? That's something I haven't heard about in decades." Goddamn does she really think I'm old enough to read literature from the early sixteenth century?

"Sounds like something I'd expect you to say. You're a fighter not a thinker."

"Who said a fighter can't think?"

"The Stallions that run with guns prove it over and over again, they can't do anything but listen to somepony else. Somepony who might not be able to think either."

"That's because you're looking at foals, not Stallions."

This caught her off guard. She wasn't expecting me to say something that made sense. She knew it was right too.

"I was born long before this war, I was trained to fight when I was about your age. It makes me sound old when I say it but it really wasn't that long ago. Back then fighters like that militia were curb stomped by ones like me. We used to run around in countries that looked just a little better than this one and turn them into empires. That was the idea at least."

"I thought you were lying when you said you were a Marine."

I looked her in the eyes, with a blank expression on my face. The faces of the ponies I've maimed and killed flew past my mind, alongside the ones I saw maimed and killed on both sides whether they had anything to do with the war or not. I said the only thing I could think of.

"We aren't foals disguised as wolves like those militia are."

"Then what are you?"

"We are wolves disguised as stallions. The phrase is more true than I think you'd understand. We hunt ponies, maim and kill them, and forget their names after we're done."

"You've killed before?" She was actually surprised, I guess some ponies are still jaded to reality. I simply nodded in response.

"Then tell me, what do you feel when you kill a pony?"

"Recoil."

We got the bad news by word of mouth that day. Bellona had gotten captured by Politburo Military Police when she was trying to tamper with the blade on the guillotine. From the sound of it she tried to make a block out of concrete just big enough to fit in the slits that hold the blade against the boards. It was a smart idea, but I think I understood how she got caught, as concrete isn't exactly the easiest material to work with. Ironically enough even though I was a combat engineer I never touched it, mostly because combat engineers don't engineer anything but actually blow shit up and kill anypony that survives. The criminal exposition wouldn't need ordinance of that type, so I just loaded the pistol with whatever ammunition I could find, which was a mix of standard ball, full metal jacket, and hollow point. I felt awfully bad for the pony that got the last one on the list. There is a siren that plays classical music whenever it starts, so I just waited for that.

When the siren finally came, it was 9 PM. I shoved the compact Beretta in my SERPA Holster, a small plastic holster that makes somepony stealing your firearm out of the question. It was mounted on my right hip, an extra magazine loaded with whatever we could find was in my pocket. I made my way to the area they were doing the show. They didn't check who was going beyond having patrols look through all the homes, probably because they expected everypony to show.

I watched the games for half an hour. They went one by one, shooting the 'criminals' in the head, quickly and mercilessly. Then it came to the actual torture. This was where they always said the game began. They dragged a stallion out from the bottom of the stage and beat him with a hammer. The strikes were directed towards the legs, to keep him from running. They slowly bludgeoned him to death after they crushed every bone in two of his legs. The next pony they pulled was Bellona. I put my hoof on the pistol, waiting for the right moment to do this.

The pony took the blade from the guillotine, then he spoke.

"This degenerate is under suspicion for terrorism. She fights the authorities and goes against the direct orders of Steel. Think, everypony, what it'd be like without him? Would you even be alive?"

The crowd started talking among themselves, they didn't have the right to disagree.

"She was trying to sabotage our game here, what does that make her?"

The crowd responded in unison, not a happy unison but a trained and tired one.

"A degenerate."

I waited for the right time to strike. It was coming.

"So we shall send her off!"

He raised the blade, in turn I pulled a black balaclava over my face. I hadn't done this in years.

I fired a round in the air, then went deaf. The shell tapped the top of my head and rolled to the ground. The crowd parted like an ocean, some hit the ground others ran for their lives. The pony on the stage turned and stared. I walked my way towards the stage, pistol raised at center mass of the executioner, who was easily two to three feet taller than me and much better built. I was silent, waiting for him to move. He put the blade down and raised his hooves. As soon as I stepped on stage I made way to the back of Bellona. She had obviously been beaten before this. there was brown blood stains going down her white coat, and some newer wounds splattered across her face. It was clear the bridge of the nose was broken, which was the least of my concern as I didn't know how long she'd be unconscious.

I pulled her with one hoof while using the other to keep the pistol pointed at him. I looked away for a second. That was his chance. He charged at me so quickly I couldn't put a shot out. I got tackled off of the stage into the dirt, ponies circled us as they watched in horror. The executioner threw the first swing. A hard right hook that missed me by an inch. I ducked under when he threw an uppercut. It was sloppy and just hit my chest. It went right into the sternum, which could've been deadly had he been more precise.

I ran into him, pushing him to the stage, and threw punches to the gut and abdomen. Ironically you can find peace to get your head together when you are pressed against your opponent. He tried pushing me back but I fought my way to his left side. This gave me the chance to prepare a shot to the head, as normally he would've seen it coming and dropped me while I swung. I had to swing high. As soon as I jumped I swung a hard straight punch directly into his nose. It broke with a splash of blood. He stumbled back a few steps then got on one knee. I ran towards him and kicked him in the face, spilling blood on the top of the stage. The executioner tried to get up, that was when my pistol fell onto his chest from the stage. He was quick to pick it up.

He raised it to me, obviously not used to the feel of a real firearm. I jumped over him and landed on the stage, scared as hell I did the first thing I could think of. I grabbed the blade form the guillotine, it was roughly thirty pounds. I ran back that way, he was holding half his body out of the stage and raised it to my face. I dropped the blade onto his chest from roughly a five foot drop. The blade tore its way all the way through his torso. He fired a round from my handgun, but it went wild.

He was trying to get away by dragging himself, but instead he was pulling his intestines all over the grass. I walked over to him, surprised he was alive let alone conscious, and picked my blood soaked pistol up. I put a shot in his head, which made a clean hole right through the back of his head and took a portion of his face off on the other side, must've been one of the full metal jackets. Dirt and blood had sprayed up at me when I did this, but I didn't mind. I grabbed Bell and made my way through the alleys. The crowd followed me, some cheering, others crying. Some were even cursing me out, I didn't care however, I knew I did the right thing.

I fired a round in the air to get them off my tail. Then I made my way to the fake door.

She was unconscious when I got back to the safe house. I thought it was probably oxygen asphyxiation, but further examination showed a swelling goose egg on the back of her head.

"Thank god it's swelling outwards. If it swelled inwards she'd be dead." I thought silently. I don't know why I was worried about her, it was an odd feeling. I don't even know who she is more than a name and a face, there was no reason for me to care. Yet something told me we were two of the same breed.

There were twenty ponies here overall I had figured, one of which was a doctor. She had a red cross as her cutie mark, white coat, and red hair. The overall doctor-like look made it way too easy to notice her, I waved her over. She was working on removing stitches from above somepony's eye, which were without a doubt from a fist fight. She came over and wheeled the unconscious Bell out into somewhere else.

I walked back up the stairs towards the offices, I was curious to if I could find an unoccupied bed to rest in. On the way up, however, somepony called my name. They more of yelled it, which made me jump out of my skin. I was quick to turn around, and find the candy colored alicorn staring at my back.

"How did you do that?" She started.

"What? How'd I do what?"

"How did you make it out alive? We try to get ponies out of the exposition every month and each time we lose one. How'd you make it back?" She still didn't see the difference between me and anypony else. Can't blame her, though it was a bit disappointing.

"You like to think a pony my age has never seen blood don't you?"

"Well, of course not but I just don't know how you learned this?"

"You want a story or an explanation? I prefer the story."

"Alright, well what is it?"

I marched her back into the room with the desk, the one I met her in, and began to explain what she was too young to have seen.

"Equestria used to be ruled by four princesses, you know that much don't you?"

"Well yes, but nopony ever told me what happened."

"Well we always thought that they were immortal gods, something that was put into being to rule over everypony. We kept that idea, we loved that idea, we killed for that idea. Through a faith built government we became the strongest military on the planet, nopony had ever seen a military that could match ours. Then, one year, we're sent to Yakyakistan. Yakyakistan is a cold, then incredibly warm, country to the far north of Equestria. When we got there we caught a glimpse of reality, we found another alicorn."

"But there's supposed to be five, including me?"

"That's what we thought, science liked to say otherwise. Alicorns are actually a subspecies of ponies, so in essence they're exactly the same. This means that they can die too. Our orders were to find the alicorn and kill it. At first we took the orders with grace, that is until we got time to think about it. If alicorns are gods, why are we being ordered by alicorns to kill another alicorn? It made sense. They aren't immortal, they just live a bit longer. When the word got home, the world took a dive to hell. Civil War burst out about where our country was going to go from there. Some wanted the alicorns to keep ruling, others wanted an election, and some wanted the country all to themselves. The warlords are of the last one."

"So what'd they do?"

"Got a bunch of confused starving ponies, offered them food if they shot somepony, and followed through. Eventually the three came to a stalemate. The Brotherhood of Blood took the east, led by a pro-Equestria prince that wanted to maintain power. The center of the lands got controlled by Steel, and I'm sure you know a lot about him. Lastly the east went to 'The Banner', ruled by a Yakistani warlord that believes in ethnic cleansing. Make sense?"

"But those were peaceful times before now, what made you who you are?"

"Somepony had to do the dirty work, that job went to me. I think you're taking the title 'Equestrian Marine' too lightly when you compare me to some militia. It's not a good mistake to make, but it is an understandable one." I walked towards the barracks and found an empty bed.

I was once again thrown into my own personal hell. A punishment for the sins I'd committed.

We were on the firing range, in the middle of the blistering heat at that. In order to get to the range in the first place we needed to run roughly nine to ten miles, as moving fuel and vehicles through the mountains was a dangerous and tricky business. The runs were constant, with short brakes to allow for some water, but we knew that if we stayed to long the blood flow would lessen and cause cramps. We generally skipped the water breaks and just held our canteens in our hoofs. The formations were tight, and the vision in the goggles was minimal since the sweat tended to fog them up. I generally put them over my helmet, a small plastic Bump helmet. They couldn't stop a round but I wasn't planning on getting shot in the head.

Once the runs were over, that was when we drank from rivers. We carried purification tablets with us, so there wasn't any worry about disease. I never trusted those tablets though, they left this odd trace of iodine and didn't take dirt out of the water. Normally we'd have a steady brown stream flowing when we tipped the canteens over. I remember some ponies dropping entire packs of iodine into their canteen, hoping that it would wash out the aftertaste of dirt and sand. Instead it just made the taste of the water unbearable.

This was eighteen years ago, and this day I'd never forget.

We were settling along the firing range, starting with handgun training runs. They generally consisted of running fifty meters forwards then dropping to one knee to put accurate fire out at a few targets that were something like twenty feet away. It was almost ritualistic, we knew every step to take and moved like machines. From there we went into medical evacuation training, something we hoped we would never need to use. We'd drag a unit back one hundred meters, they would be shooting from their AR15 using one arm. I always doubted the realism of this exercise, as if I were shot I don't think I'd be able to lift my arm and keep firing. That was something I'd never wished to know.

We were about to go into explosives, throwing grenades roughly ten yards into windows that we had set up, when things went downhill.

"Now, grenades aren't armed until the safety lever is r-" The shot rang out from a distance, and the instructor's body dropped. He was holding a grenade in his hoof, the pin pulled but safety lever still intact. It fell off when his hoof hit the ground. Nopony save a few had seen blood before, so I tackled the two next to me behind a pit of sand, and when the grenade went off I was deaf.

It was almost peaceful, not being able to hear. The two stallions I grabbed were okay, one bruised in the face but other than that okay. I couldn't feel my leg, and that was when I noticed something. A sharp stab of pain.

I looked down, my right leg was bleeding profusely. Shrapnel had entered my leg, but the wound was almost immediately seared shut. I got up, then started stumbling on one side. Some of the ponies, miraculously, were okay. The instructor was no longer an equine, he was a ball of burned flesh and some clumps of his coat and bones. It was a grizzly sight. I remember feeling light headed, something between scared and dead inside, and pain. It was more of a dread than anything else now that I look back at it.

The ponies on the firing line were riddled with shrapnel and burns, some were alive, but most were not so lucky. One of them had managed to be okay, only because he was in the back of the group when the grenade went off. His buddies took the shrapnel and he just took the concussion wave of the blast. He was unconscious but still breathing.

The ponies that managed to survive that were close to the blast had permanent disabilities, ranging from loss of limbs all the way to permanent paralysis from the neck down. I remember walking towards the range to check for casualties when I stepped on a missing hoof and a bunch of scorched teeth on the ground with a pool of blood.

It was about that time the Humvee's wheels screamed to a halt in the back of the firing range, the medical officers unloaded and began grabbing the bodies. I couldn't hear them, instead I was entranced by the serenity of the incident. It was surprisingly peaceful. They ran past me, grabbing the dead and leaving the hunk of meat that was the company firearms instructor. They loaded them back up, before they left one grabbed my shoulder. He screamed something at me and I couldn't hear it. I made out something along the lines of "We're not leaving you" from his lips.

"What?" I shouted back, I couldn't even hear it but apparently the staff caught on pretty quick. They ran over with a map and flipped it to it's other side, where they wrote their message.

'We're leaving this location for four hours in order to return the wounded to the base and have most either pronounced dead by the medics or stabilized. We are not abandoning you.'

I was a little stunned and yelled something at the officer, a tear rolled down his eye as he went back into the Humvee, which sped off into the distance. It was a long four hours, sitting with nothing but blood and gore. There were limbs left on the ground, cut in ways that couldn't be reattached. Some charred like an overcooked stake. I leaned back, and the ponies I tackled regained consciousness. For them it was an intensely harsh reality, did this really just happen?

When they brought me back they had me write out everything that happened. One of the ponies radio'd in for reinforcements before passing out, and they sent a medical team to see the issues. They assumed it was an accident. I recited what I knew on a sheet of paper, as I still couldn't hear. I wrote down what I remembered, the instructor getting shot, his body dropping, the grenade rolling to the sandbags, then stopped when I tackled the two next to me. They gave me a bronze star on the spot and waited a few weeks for me to regain my hearing. They were supposed to discharge me from the military for my wounds but instead decided that it wasn't worth the trouble and kept me.

Author's Note

Execution by guillotine. Fun isn't it?

Levitate.

Whenever I wake up after a nightmare, I forget where I am. It was especially terrifying here since the beds and dingy surroundings reminded me too much of Yakyakistan. I was almost convinced I was still there. I reached over for my M16, but instead my hoof fell short upon a night stand. I remembered everything and was brought back into reality.

Bellona was already awake, I'd slept until the next day. Luckily she wasn't in a coma, but she still looked pretty banged up. I still remembered last night, the one shot that rang out and split the crowd all the way into the run back to here. I don't know how far they followed me, but if anypony kept going after that they were either stupid or had a death wish. She shook me again, must've fazed out.

"Are you even listening?" We seem to have this same conversation every day.

"Nope, say it again."

"Nopony followed us back. Also, thank you."

"No need, but I guess your plan didn't quite go your way."

She giggled at that, which was odd considering the fact she was almost beheaded after being beaten out of consciousness.

"You could say that, so I got something to thank you."

She flopped a cardboard box down on the bed next to me, it was probably the only one that was empty in the entire room. The rest were in use by the old, the weak, the young, and the sick. The box, however, was roughly four feet long. One could guess what was in it. Bell nodded over to it, almost like a foal wanting his parents to look at his refrigerator art. It was almost cute. Almost.

I slid upright and reached over to the box, lifting it up with both arms. It was unusually heavy, which only added to the obviousness of what was inside it.

"What's in the box?" the pony in the bunk above it said.

"No clue. Wanna guess?"

"I got fifty bucks on a dead body."

I opened it carefully, then slid out an M16A4 rifle. It was brand new, I could even smell the cosmoline. It was a weird feeling, finding comfort in something familiar like this. The rifle was in a coyote tan paint scheme, with laser engravings etched into the side. It was the same rifle I used years ago, just in a fancy color. On the bottom of the box was a classic Ka-Bar combat knife, which generally wasn't supposed to come free. I wasn't arguing though.

'Colt armory, Fillydelphia. Caliber: 5.56x45.

FOR USE BY GOVERNMENT AND LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY.'

I remembered that name, and it'd been years since I'd seen one.

"Where did you find this?"

"We actually have had it for a while, but nopony knew how to use it so we left it alone. Figured you knew how."

"You seriously can't use one of these?"

"Is that a bad thing?"

'Very, very bad thing. If you cant use basic military equipment you've already lost.'

"Give it a shot, I want to see what you've been trying." To not know how to operate a basic rifle platform is a problem, I needed to teach at least one of them and the word would pass on.

"Well from what I understand you put the clip-thing in." She picked up the magazine to the rifle, she was off on a good start.

"It's called a magazine."

"Whatever, then you stick it in here I think." She slid the magazine in but not to the click, when she moved her hoof it just slipped out and clattered on the floor. She picked it back up and then tried to put it in backwards. It truly was hopeless.

"Let me see it, you're on the right track."

She was confused and skeptical, probably still doubting that these things could even be used even though they're so goddamn simple. I picked up the magazine and flipped it the other way and slammed it in the magazine well, she was being far too gentle with it.

"Are you not scared of breaking it! We literally just gave it to you and I already heard a crack!"

"That was the magazine going into the magwell and getting locked in place, you're too kind."

I then handed her the rifle, just checking to see if she knew what to do next.

"Charge the rifle."

"Do what?"

"Cock the gun."

She put her hoof on the charging handle, which was better than I had expected, but then she pulled it back and couldn't get it out of the safety switch. It actually made me burst out laughing, more than I had in a long time. She was literally the equivalent of a foal picking up his daddy's gun. She was getting stumped by the foal safety.

She gave up, perhaps it was a bit over the top to start laughing. I took the rifle and grabbed both ends of the charging handle with the same hoof, making sure to press the lever on the left side of the handle down. This disengaged the foal safety. I pulled the handle all the way back and then let go, it slammed forwards, but the bolt stayed open. It was a sign that there was no more ammunition and it even made loading faster. I pulled the magazine out and used the hoof that was on the pistol grip to flip the safety off and pull the trigger. The bolt slammed forwards with a click. I then reinserted the magazine and aimed down the rifle's sights. It was familiar, the three bars, two curved and one straight sitting gently in the center of a wide circle.

To be fair the circle wasn't actually that wide, it was just an optical illusion that the rifle sights made to make them more accurate to the shooter by keeping the eyes focused on the front sight.

She stared, something between amazed and confused. She'd never seen anypony familiar with a rifle like this. It was awkward considering that she didn't even know the name.

"So what's the gun called?"

"The civilian name for this is AR-15, but this is a military model so it goes by the name M16A4."

"Let me guess, AR stands for Assault Rifle."

"Nope, Armalite Rifle. It's a company that went under long ago and got bought out by Colt."

I guess it's understandable that the guns had weird names to her, there was no businesses or corporations to name things after themselves here. Steel was a hardballer communist, so everything was owned by him. Logically this made him a rich pony in the land of his starving ponies. Irony is a bitch.

Something told me there was another reason they were showing me this, considering the move yesterday there had to be a problem coming up. I looked at her, and her body language just let me know that she was thinking exactly what I was.

"What's the next job?"

"It's the chief of Iron's police force in the area, he's giving a speech about this tonight and we think he knows where we are. If he does we can expect his other officers do too. We need to get them in one clean sweep. Seeing as you know how to do this I'm trusting you to it."

I expected this, it was obvious that they knew where we were after a show of force like that, and obviously they wouldn't move on to fight without giving public statement first. My stomach churned at the thought of killing a few more ponies, but it wasn't churning because of the fact that I had to kill them but the fact that I was comfortable with it.

"So any ideas Crow?"

I thought about it, there's a way I'd much rather do this than up close and personal. I'd rather this be a long distance affair.

"Do you have any optics for these rifles?"

"Like a scope?"

"Exactly."

"Only things we have are for older rifles, they can't work on this."

"Well that's a shame, looks like we're up close and personal again right?"

"Unfortunately so."

In all honesty I was fine with this, it was better than any other option. The information about this was already news across the nation, meaning that taking a shot close would give a bigger impact on the locals and maybe cause a divide in the populace. This is what we wanted, because change doesn't happen until there are numbers upon numbers of ponies that see the light. It was time for the M9, this time with the M16 coming with it. I've got my ten cents on there being a good number of ponies that want to see this world go back to how it was but are too scared to stand. This is more of a trigger for a bigger event.

In hindsight, that was almost spot on with what was going to happen. The world would never be the same.

I was lightheaded again, and the rest of my body was a frigid cold. I didn't feel any remorse or regret about what I was going to do, only what would happen if I was caught. The image of the M9 to my temple was so close I could almost grab it in my head. If it came to it, I wouldn't hesitate.

The speech was supposed to be broadcasted instead of Steel's normal timely message of denial. My watch gave me the reassurance that I was early, the time was 6:00, when I was looking at my watch waiting for it to start. I was standing at the local capital, where thousands of ponies were standing in the frigid cold waiting for the Chief's response on the topic in light of the shooting (if that is the right word in the first place). Some of these ponies were from other countries, and it was easy to tell which ones were foreigners. Most of them were either news reporters or camera ponies, broadcasting live. In the center, however, was Steel's news team, the ones broadcasting it to ponies everywhere. What was awfully weird was looking at the difference in the cameras, the ponies from Prussia and New Griffonland all had top of the line HD cameras whereas the Equestrian's had something from fifty years ago.

The crowd got more and more dense the closer you got to the front. I was only scared of anypony bumping into the backpack I had on, as I had broken the M16 in half by taking the upper receiver off of the lower, which made them both fit in a schoolbag if they were put side by side. If anypony bumped into the backpack something in the rifle might go out of place, luckily there was nopony trying to grab onto me so I didn't need to worry too much about that.

To say that was all I was afraid of, however, may have been a lie. I was terrified of the security. Although sure they were mostly just teens on crack with guns, there was a lot of them. Numbers can outdo skill any day. I just needed to find a hole in it, or just take the shot from a distance and hope nopony looks at me while I'm putting the rifle together. There was, however, other buildings I could take a shot from, as the procession was essentially on the front steps of the congress building I could easily pick them off from a distance. My only issue would be if the target moves, that much distance between us will make it so it takes a quarter second for the round to hit target. A lot can happen in one fourth of a second.

The procession was starting, the police chief was moving to his position in the stage, and his advisers were sitting behind him, one directly behind him to be exact. That would make it easy to take two birds with one stone, or two ponies with one shot. I waited until they were all seated, and looked for a way to get around the crowd instead of pulling the shot this close. My chance came when the guards parted the crowd to make room for a VIP to move to the stage. That was my chance. I made my way out of the crowd away from the VIP row, then stopped to look around for a building. Luckily there was a restaurant across the street, but it was roughly two hundred yards away. A shot from there could be a challenge, but it was nothing I hadn't done before. In the EMC we trained by taking shots with iron sights from 300 yards.

I walked smoothly, casually, almost normally. It was the lump in my chest that made it difficult. I was so anxious I couldn't breath. I already could see it, I'm about to line up the shot, then right when I pull the trigger he moves. The shot hits the deck, security rushes to my position and get me on the ground. It was something I didn't want to have happen.

I actually bumped into the restaurant door while I was lost in thought. It more of creaked open when I stepped back, the doorknob was broken and the hinges were old. The restaurant, however, was closed. Out of business in all reality, it'd been years since anypony could afford to eat anywhere, or anything but the handouts. The thick layer of dust was a nightmare for anypony with allergies, even as I walked a thick cloud of smoke pilled up behind me. The restaurant was ransacked long ago, I remember when it was open nineteen years ago. It closed when the war started.

I faintly remembered the sound of laughter at the bar, the old clink of mugs. Years ago, too many years ago. I stepped forward and crushed what was left of a broken bottle under my boot. It almost brought me back to what was, as much as I wish it wasn't, real life. There was a second story to the bar, but the door to the stairs was locked. Most ponies who have ransacked this place probably did it in the night, and didn't want to make noise by kicking the door down. I could bust right through it with one solid kick. I drew my M9 out of my holster and racked the slide, even watching the nine millimeter chamber the first round. It was about to start, before speeches like this they always start with a national anthem, which was essentially a quartet and a blaring row of trumpets.

I waited for it to get loud enough, since the quartet builds up in volume until the trumpets start. As soon as I heard them start I turned over to my shoulder and slammed full speed into the door, tearing right through it. My pistol was steady at the top of the stairs, which led to a room that faced away from the crowd. I made my way up the stairs and turned around, and then...

'You have got to be fucking kidding me.'

The room faced the wrong direction. I had mistaken a rotten tile for a window from the distance. I needed to think, and fast. I had a few ideas, all of them were no good. I first punched through the wall to see if there was another set of rooms through the drywall. I was instead greeted by the sour sensation of punching a brick wall covered in white wallpaper. I turned around, the room was tightly spaced, which ruled out there being another staircase in the room.

Then the worst idea of all of them hit me, yet it probably was the only one that'd work. I opened the window and looked up, I wasn't that far off from the roof, and the bricks stuck out enough to be grabbed onto, sorta like a windowsill. I was halfway out the window when I started having second thoughts, but the music was at it's climax so if I needed to make any noise now was the time. I threw my backpack over both shoulders and went through the window.

I held on with the tips of my hooves, and then slowly reached up to the next jutting brick. It was working nicely, I was actually almost to the triangular roof when the bricks broke. Both of the ones my bottom hooves were on fell off of the building, slamming fifty feet below. I used my front hooves to fling myself onto the edge of the roof, then pushed myself up to the top.

My heart was racing, it occurred to me that I almost died. I just needed to keep living to make that close call worth something. I made my way up to the highest point of the roof and set my rifle up against it, waiting for a clear shot. I couldn't make out anyponies details. I could only wait for the speaker to start and introduce himself. I knew the police chief's dark, rustic voice. I looked at the flag above the town hall, it was motionless. No Kentucky Wind-age to take into account, so I just aimed center mass. If the chest goes down the head comes with it.

I was lightheaded, cold, and utterly terrified. Instinctively I slowly pulled the trigger, the sights adjusted to the '3' on the lever and the target in the dead center. He was in a brown suit, and right when he opened his mouth I knew it was him. Subconsciously, I pulled the trigger all the way. The gunshot scared me more than anyone else, as the round ripped through the air at supersonic speeds, you could hear the 'Peckew' the round made breaking the sound barrier, it took less than a quarter of a second for it to make contact, the round hit high, directly through the neck. He put his hoofs on it, blood splattered across the stage, as he collapsed silently. It obviously ruptured the windpipe and arteries. He was on his knees, looking towards the crowd, nopony had gotten time to process it other than the guards, who attempted to secure the stage and get the crowd out of the area.

He fell to the side, his hoof reaching towards me.

'Did he see me? There's no way I'm too far.'

The pony directly behind him was untouched, but covered in blood, a guard came to shake him back into the moment, then I adjusted for elevation and shot him square in the chest. The more of the ponies on stage that were dead the less control the police had. It ripped through his chest and flew into the concrete building behind him. The guard stepped back, obviously in shock, and tripped over a running senate member, they both tumbled off of the stage. Another senator tried to help them up, I shot him twice in the chest. He fell on himself, as if his legs just gave up. To the right there was the secretary of state, I could easily recognize him from anywhere. He was a fat pony, sticking out of a crowd like a sore thumb.

He was laying down on the stage stairs, trying to look dead. I shot him through the head, which busted open like a watermelon. I pulled the rifle back, any more shots and the guards would get a beat on me. Then something that should've occurred to me earlier just hit me.

"How the fuck do I get down from here."

I looked around, and directly behind me was another building, and a window if I could hoof it enough to make the jump. I ran towards it, and then slipped. My M16 flew in front of me, and we both slammed into the tiles. I rolled off the roof, holding tight to my rifle. I felt the drop when I slipped off of the roof. The whole scenery changed from black tiles to the open alley way from above. I caught a glimpse of a guard running through the alley, he clearly saw me.

I slammed against the building adjacent to the one I slipped off of and fell backwards, scraping myself against the jagged bricks. I slammed right through the dumpster, which actually did a semi decent job at breaking my fall. My M9 landed right next to me. Which would've been convenient if that wasn't on the concrete. It broke in half and became a pile of scrap metal and loose springs, the M16 was in better shape even though the color was a bit scratched from the bricks since it was on my back the whole time.

The guard rushed to the dumpster and stuck his rifle down on me. I grabbed it with my hoof and twisted it off of me. It was an old bolt action rifle, so when he instinctively shot he couldn't shoot again. He tried to pull the rifle away, instead I lunged it forward into the garbage, giving me a view of his mane. I grabbed it and slammed his face against the dumpster. He let go of his rifle and backed up.

I pulled the bolt upwards and backwards on the rifle, and he was alerted by the shell tapping the earth. I ran towards me and grabbed the rifle. It was facing horizontally between us, and we were pushing against eachother. It was vastly one sided though, I had him against the wall and was pulling the rifle into his neck. He was on his last legs, but that was when he thrusted the rifle to the side. It slammed the stock across my face.

Instinctively I let go, and then he pulled the bolt forward and down. I went back to the game of horizontal tug of war by pulling the barrel above my head. He shot that round then, which caused my vision to blur slightly. I slammed the barrel against his face, playing by his rules this time, and then thrust the stock into his stomach, he let go and I drew back the distance.

I ran towards him, using the rifle as a golf club, and slammed it against his head. He was down.

My problems, however, changed. Hoofsteps rounded both corners of the alleyway. I was practically eye to eye with guards. They looked from the unconscious body to me, and then to the M16 on my back. I bolted the rifle, time slowed down for some moments. It was a psychological effect of stress, which was oddly convenient for me. Right when the shell tapped the ground, I ran towards the guards to my front and dove low. The shots that rang out from both directions made impact with their shooters, causing friendly fire.

It was minor, however, only one or two of the five on each side were shot. I rushed through the hole in the confusion and turned to fire a blind shot, which missed by a few feet. I kept running, guards calling my location, and then the faint sound of an engine rumbling. It was getting closer, and fast. The technical rounded the corner, carrying a few troops and a browning. It screeched to a halt, which threw the gunner off target. The shots he fired at me went high. It was then I recognized that I was in the open. There was a field between me and the next set of buildings. This made getting away from fire that much more difficult. Then I felt impact in my back left boot.

I quickly looked at it for a second, and it was ripped from the bottom up to my mid shin. It was hit by a small rifle round, which had been so old and rusted that it couldn't supply the force to go through the leather and just caused tearing. I did have this stiff blunt pain running up and down my calf, but it was probably nothing.

The truck was gaining on me at an alarming rate, I needed to think fast. The first thing that came to mind was drop and roll, I didn't have time to think about it. I threw myself into the field and rolled away from the vehicle. It tried to follow me, leaving a scorched trail in the tall grass. It lost control and spun out at the other end of the field. They didn't have enough ponies to follow me into there, so they waited for me to come out. It was a dead end at the other side of the forest. If I had tried to go that way I'd only be greeted by a large concrete wall.

The grass, however, proved to be an odd combination of a bittersweet success. When I moved they could see it, but due to the monotonous color of the grass they probably couldn't make out how far away I was until I was close. There was also random breaks in the grass for me to peek my head out of. I crawled slowly, like a tiger stalking it's prey, towards the nearest open patch, which was the one the truck had made. When I peaked my head out I could tell that nopony was looking in my direction, there was only five guards, not enough to scour the area. I waited for one to go into my direct line of fire while I pulled my M16 off of my back and faced it down across the trail made by the full size truck.

The color scheme blended well with the grass, almost like a painting where a single brush stroke was made. If only it were half as artsy and subtle as that. This was a war, the only thing that should be fluent and graceful is the trigger pull. I kept my eyes forwards, there was what looked like one of the security guards standing just in the corner of my vision. I didn't want to take the shot until I knew for a fact it'd make solid contact.

He started backing into my line of sight, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, waiting for him to move into the open. Another second passes, he is getting closer to the center of the path, he turns and stops. He is looking directly at me. I fired one shot through his chest, it went right out the other side of his body as he dropped to the ground.

The rest of the group caught on quick and opened fire in my general area. The rounds kicked up dirt right in front of my face, so I backed up some bit, they were shooting into that path I had used. I poked my head up from the brush and fired two shots at one of the four remaining ponies. The first round went wide and passed between a gap in their diagonal line they'd formed. The second hit one of them in the leg.

It's a weird feeling, getting shot at. You feel the dirt kick up in your face and you just don't feel any pain or fear, instead you feel this overwhelming urge to keep living. Well, it isn't really that surprising that you would want to keep living but most ponies would imagine it as some terrifying event that feels like a horror movie. I just looked at it as what it was. Reality.

I pulled myself back, the fire had stopped and I heard a magazine clatter against the pavement. These guards were some of the few with automatic weapons, mostly rusty Prussian AKs. I peaked up from ten feet back on the location I was at before, this time set to 3 round burst. I stood up and ran towards them, emptying three into the bodies of the remaining guards.

The one that was wounded was clearly out of the fight, there was no need to waste any time with him. I just ran my way back to the safehouse and slammed the door. They weren't able to follow me through alleyways and rooftops, so it didn't take long. Things, however, didn't feel even close to over.

Author's Note

Kill me please ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

No seriously please fucking kill me.

Double tap.

It's the dead hours of the night when things like this happen. The witching hours, as they're called. It's the time of night where everything is incredibly still, as if the world had died. It was a blanket of darkness, and it had truly earned the phrase 'Dead of night'. It took them some tracing, but they figured out. I'm not sure if I left a trace of boot prints or what, but they followed me all the way back. It was on these witching hours, that things tended to go to hell.

They breached the door with explosives, which shook everypony awake, We all quickly grabbed our weapons and started the fight. The lights had gone out, they must've found which set of power lines went here, which was impressive in of itself. The old stallion in his old Prussian uniform Waited at the door, his sawed off bolt action rifle glaring past the barracks and at the top of the stairs. The rest of them simply ran by him, armed with pistols and all. I wasn't one of them, I was more focused on getting out alive than going out in a ball of fire. I grabbed the old stallion on his shoulder, his expression was blank. There was almost nothing but darkness in his eyes.

"Staying is suicide, don't you know that!" I shouted at him, he was unshaken however.

"Then tell me, would you rather die on your hooves or on your knees. I've been here for too long, it's time I end this."

"What do yo-" It caught up with me. He didn't want to live, he just wanted to pull his neck out for somepony else. We were the same like that.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Just go, you grab the princess and Bell and get the hell out of here."

That's when the grenade went off. A deafening roar of phosphorous, must've been a flashbang. There was the relentless blast of automatic rifles immediately following it. This was no doubt a Government SWAT team, not the average militia. There were brief shots from pistols to be heard, but they were drowned out by the screaming. Blood seeped up and down the stairs as the bodies rolled over. The nurse was leaned up just ouside of the room we were in, which was right down the hall from the princess. I knew exactly what to do.

"Well listen old Stallion"

"Rose"

"What?"

"My name, it's Thorn Rose, you don't need to tell me what to do I already know."

He set his rifle up against the door, right when the doorknob started to turn he fired a shot through the wall, which was met by the ping of a bullet ramming it's way through a steel plate. We heard a thud, must've fallen. That was when they slammed a sledge through the door, hitting him in the ribs. He coughed up some blood, there was no way he'd survive. I ran under one of the bunks before they could get in. The SWAT team breached the door and five ponies in black uniforms rushed the room, the first one to come in shot Thorn Rose three times in the chest. He fell over to the side and just bled, slowly and silently. I was under one of the beds, they hadn't seen me yet.

I pulled my Ka-Bar. Waiting for the opportunity. If I was going to get out of here alive, I needed to make this fast. I saw hoofs stop by the bunk I was under, my heart sank. I left my M16 sticking out slightly from one end. The pony bent down, right when we met eyes I swung the knife right into his neck and twisted it out. I was emotionless, it was almost identical to the years I was fighting before. Once a wolf always a wolf I guess. The guards secured the bunk I was hiding under. So I rolled out and shot a three round burst at one of the ponies feet, which he backpedaled out of harms way. The shots just bounced off the ground and hit the bricks against the wall. They started shooting at all the beds, I was already next to the door.

It was nerve wrecking, knowing that I probably wouldn't live after today. But that didn't stop me, I slid out from cover and shot a three round burst into one of the remaining four ponies chest plates, then two rounds into the one next to him. One shot landed in his plate carrier and bounced off, the other went right into the neck. He collapsed and rolled on the floor as a gurgling mess. The last one fired at me and missed, I in turn shot him in the leg. I was on my hooves now, so I ran towards him and bashed him with the stock of the rifle. Now I just needed to rally up whoever survived and get out of here. The princess was top priority.

When I walked out the body of the dead SWAT officer was there, his helmet just slung over his head, a bullet right through the front of his chest piece.

I ran down the hall, only to be greeted by an open window and a note.

"Oh yea she can fly." I said it bluntly, only to realize that all the bloodshed was for nothing if she could just fly out into the night.

"1437 Cheswick Road, house number 3." At least she was polite enough to tell us where she was going, and dumb enough if we had lost to have given the Government her exact location. I guess it worked out alright though.

I made my way past the nurse's lifeless corpse. Her eye was wide open, and so was her mouth. Her one remaining eye was as wide open as could be, stuck in a state of horror. The other eye was gone. I kept moving, the piles of bodies over the stairs was overwhelming. I saw the hoof of the stallion that was on planning before, piled under the bricks and a few dead bodies.

Behind the bar was a dead body, a bullet had gone right through the bar and hit him in the chest. I just walked past him. I almost didn't recognize this as reality anymore, it was just another piece of me. The freezer door was locked shut. I knocked on it, to which the door fell of the hinges. The shock of the explosion must've dug out it's hinges. A shot rang out, missing my ear by millimeters. I ducked down and lifted my rifle. Bellona was in the corner with a revolver. I picked her up and carried her. She was in shock, and clearly not in the right mental state to go on her own. She kept mumbling things incomprehensible to me, although I could make out some names and 'They're all really dead now.' in the mix of alphabet soup that was the words coming out of her mouth.

I picked up a SWAT officers machine pistol off the ground, alongside a few magazines. It was an old Czech Vz-61, an under-powered .32 submachine gun that was so tiny you could hide it anywhere. In turn broke my M16 down and put it in the bag, the march was on.

The whole fight took place in the course of four minutes.

Author's Note

Off to God knows where, why do all my stories end up doing this?

When Johnny comes marching home.

We had made our way out of ponyville using the abandoned buildings, from here there was no help in getting us where we needed to go. Help died back in the last hideout. The march was long, and Bellona still couldn't walk. It was shellshock, perhaps although she had seen death she had never been awake to see her life in danger. I know of at least one time she has almost died, but of course she was unconscious. To be fair, I wasn't mad that I had to carry her. She was light and nimble, so on the occasional time I had to prop her up on something or pull her over something it was relatively easy. We had made our way into the nearby everfree forest, which was regrowing on the ruins of prewar Ponyville. It looked like something right out of a movie.

I propped her up against the inside of a building that was long reduced to rubble. The rebar was jutting in dangerous angles for ponies that wouldn't look, but it held a sorta tent together, it was freezing, but I didn't start a fire. The smoke would surely bring unwanted attention. I just sat in the cold silence. Bellona had fallen asleep, and her constant gibberish simply dulled down to a slow inhale, followed by a silent exhale. She was calm, which was an improvement. I laid back, the backpack against my neck, and closed my eyes. I had an uncanny ability to sleep literally anywhere and this was no exception.

I was a classic Equestrian melting pot when it came to where I was from. I had most of my family come from Prussia and Trotland, but along the way my family managed to get Germane blood in me. It's probably a good thing that I didn't have an accent, because then my voice would sound like complete rubbish. I remember the mornings waking up as a foal, my father was almost always gone working the lumber business, but my mother was still around. She wouldn't do anything for me, the most she did was tell me that I needed to make breakfast.

For some reason even Today that seems weird to ponies, and to me back then it seemed weird too. Now that I look back at it, they were teaching me to function on my own. It's something I would've thanked them for. I haven't seen them in years now, but I can only assume they're doing somewhat well. As of now they'd be in the far South Western end of Equestria under Blue Blood's jurisdiction.

This was probably one of the nicer dreams I've had lately. It's ironic how whenever I'm actually working I can get a break from hell. I suppose it isn't a punishment to have those nightmares, but simply a motivation. If I don't want to go to hell, I need to keep protecting these ponies.

This I will do.

I woke up early morning, startled by a clank coming from out of my vision. It was far off to my rear, but still close. I drew the machine pistol and poked my head out, and beyond the darkness of the morning was a light gently suspended in the air. It bobbled up and down, giving the indication that it was a head mounted flashlight. I tucked my head back into the rubble and put a few rocks in front of Bellona, who was still asleep.

I waited, listening to hoofsteps. Whoever was walking towards us was wearing a backpack. I raised the machine pistol up to my eyes, then something occurred to me.

'We're still close to the town, a shot here could spread alarm, if I'm going to do this it needs to be quick and quiet.'

The hoofsteps were close, almost past the barrier. Then a mare walked into my field of view, she looked in the other direction of me at a building that was still somewhat intact. She wasn't military, but she was armed with a baseball bat. The clanking was a pan and steel mug on her rucksack. She looked no older than fifteen, when she turned towards me I could make out facepaint on her. This wasn't good.

Not every town got under someponies control, as a matter a fact it was quite the opposite. Lots of the forests and ruins that nopony was interested in became breeding grounds for tribes and bandits. This pony was tribal, and they don't take to lightly to ponies that aren't tattooed and painted. The only thing that was clear on her face was the light above her head, which was a lightbulb with bent glass over it to extend the reach of the bulb. The very wires that powered it were what kept it on her head.

She didn't catch sight of me, since it doesn't cast enough light to reach me. She turned her back and kept walking. That was when the rock by Bellona fell. Time stopped, and the tribespony turned around, looking at the pile of rubble. She pulled her baseball bat out and slowly made her way towards us. Now or never. She walked right past the enclosure and looked around the rubble. Her legs were right outside the entrance, so I ran out and lifted her up, slamming her into the building behind us.

She jabbed me in the stomach with the bat, I backed up while she swung it high towards my head, I ducked under the swing and threw two quick swings into her body, then backed up and threw a straight punch to her face. She fell back, unconscious. I stomped on her head, which cracked the skull open. I couldn't stay here long. I ran back and woke Bellona up, who was luckily no longer in shock.

"We need to go, quickly and quietly. I'll explain later."

She nodded, I pulled her out of the rubble when another light was approaching from the same direction. It was coming at us fast, I looked at the tribespony's light and smashed it. The other light only came faster, and was followed by three more.

"Bell, run."

"What?"

"Run."

I bolted in the other direction and Bell followed, the sun was coming up, so I could make out slight differences in the land and some buildings. I ducked into an alleyway, but two lights came from the other end, I turned to run the other direction but the three following me were there too.

"Well what's the call?" Bell hesitated to say out loud.

"Duck."

"You like confusing me with one word sentences don't you?"

"Just get down, now."

She crouched down, confused. I pulled the machine pistol and leveled it to my eye at the three ponies. I could make out their features now, they were all tall stallions, so dirty that I couldn't make out what they looked like without the paint and light. They were armed with Reinforcement Bar spears, and one with a sledge hammer. They were scavengers no doubt. I clicked the pistol onto full auto and let out a burst in their general direction.

The first one stumbled to fall, his light smashing against the rubble and concrete. The second took one right through the head, entering into his jaw. The third took two shots to the chest. I turned around, and the other two were so close to my face I could almost smell their breath. They tried to stab me with the Rebar, but I backed up and fired a shot at the ground, to which they backed up and bumped right into Bellona, who they apparently had run right past. Bell grabbed the nearest brick and slammed it right into one of their foreheads, crushing the skull. The second readied a swing, but I unloaded the rest of the magazine into his back. He fell to the ground, Bellona was splattered with blood, making her coat even less of the angelic white it was when we first started running. We were on the edge of the Everfree Forest, so I backed my way into it before the rest of those ponies would get here.

The Everfree was dark as ever in this time of day, as what little sunlight there was had been blocked out by the trees and leaves. I kept moving, feeling my way around with Bellona holding my other hoof to make sure we didn't get separated. We kept walking, that is until we heard the howl of the wolves. Timberwolves were abundant here, and widely contributed to the reasons that nopony settled this land other than the tribes or raiders.

Their howl spread through the morning, like a shrill reminder that death is around every corner. We'd step slowly, each move calculated to perfection. A wrong step, especially here, could kill you. The air was thick with the smell of rotten wood, most of the trees were gnawed to the core by the timberwolves. They can't reproduce, instead they would just build another one. We stepped cautiously, trying our hardest not to hit any twigs on the way. We knew this would take a very long time to get to Canterlot, normally it was a train ride away but with the times being the way they are that wasn't really an option.

Something cracked behind us, it was a treebranch off in a direction we hadn't traveled in. Something was stalking us. We kept moving, but the unnerving sense that whatever, or whoever, was out there was following us. We started seeing more and more signs, more gnawed trees, dung (which was mostly warm, meaning they had to have been there recently) and paw-prints were evident in the surroundings. We were halfway through the forest when the split was evident. At first we thought it was a patch of empty space, that is until I stepped on it. It was a solid circle of bones, rotting flesh, wood, leafs, and dung.

It wasn't a timberwolf, we figured that out by the half dead timberwolf laying split in half in the center of the pile. This was at one point Timberwolf den, but something big came. The timberwolf let out a barrage of sounds that nopony ever had heard before. I put the M16 together and walked to the center of the circle, something was watching us and it was close. I could hear it's breathing comeing from behind me. I swung in an about face and fired a three round burst into the forest.

I expected it to scurry off. Instead a full grown Ursa Major burst from the dark brush. The Timberwolf tried to move, but just waddled in a circle. It got stepped on by the Ursa as it charged me. I rolled out of the way of it's first swing.

"Bell! It hasn't noticed you yet run to the brush and hide!"

"Like you needed to tell me!"

She charged full blown into the brush and laid there, watching the ongoing fight. The Ursa swung hard at me, I couldn't back up in time. It clawed across my face, cutting a good chunk of skin off. It swung again, this time downwards, I stuck my knife forwards, stabbing it a solid five inches into the paw. The Ursa howled and backed up. It wasn't hurt, just pissed off. I moved forwards, keeping my back straight with my M16 level. The Ursa swung sideways and slammed me through the brush. I rolled down a steep hill and slammed against a tree, which stopped me with a thud.

I reached for my gun, when I realized I lost it while I was falling.

The Ursa charged at full speed, behind me was nothing but a jagged cliff rising roughly a couple hundred feet. The Ursa swung hard at me with both of it's paws, But I stuck close enough to the tree that it couldn't get a hold on me. The tree bent backwards with a thunderbolt's crack. My eyes were shut, I expected to be dead, but instead, when I opened them I was sitting against a rugged tree stump. The Ursa plummeted into the depths below. It had slammed into the other edge of the cliff, breaking off massive boulders from the top.

The Ursa howled the whole way down. When it landed the tree stabbed through it's right paw, it tried to get up but it just pushed the tree further in. Then the boulders hit it. The dust went all the way up to where I was standing. What was left of the Ursa was unrecognizable. I looked up, there was a whole pack of Timberwolves on the other side, looking off the cliff and then at me. I didn't have my rifle, I was defenseless.

They just stared at me, then they sat. They stayed there for a few minutes as if they weren't bothered by me. Then they stood up and went away.

I guess I am like a wolf after all.

Blood on the water.

The M16 was in good shape for flying twenty yards to smack against the rocks. There was a few scratches and a ding on the rail system, but other than that nothing was wrong. I took the magazine out, I needed to start reserving ammunition. I had roughly five shots left, and I needed to make them count. The rifle wouldn't do much against a timberwolf, not quite because it was a big creature or anything but moreso because they're just a pile of wood with a bunch of holes throughout. The likelyhood of me doing any damage was little, a good swing is a different story though. With that said I traveled with my M16 broken down and my Ka-Bar close by.

Each creak induced a jump, at least when you could jump. The water rose to knee height as we moved farther through the forest. That was probably because the waters used to be regulated by an environment protection agency, those times however were long gone and now the Everfree Forest is more of the Everfree Swamp. The subtle creeks that we once saw consumed the forest to a horrific extent. Making the whole environment more deadly than it was before. The water turned black before we knew it, potholes. I was backing up when I bumped into Bellona. I looked back at her, eyes wide and face pale.

"Bell, are you okay?"

"Something brushed me."

"I bumped into you, just back up the way we came we nee-"

"No, I mean something brushed my shin."

I didn't understand her at first. Then it hit me.

"Just walk back slowly, there's bass in this swamp."

"No, that isn't it."

"What do you mean?"

My eyes shot open, fully dilated. Something brushed my leg. It was long and rough, almost six feet. I lifted my Ka-bar, I figured out what it was pretty quickly. I looked around for dry land, there was a small patch just behind her.

"Bellona, listen to me carefully. Back up slowly, don't make any sudden movements. It's focused on me."

"What is it?"

"Crocodile."

She followed orders, and backed her way into the center of the patch of grass. I waited for it to brush my leg again. The crocodile was feeling me out, trying to figure out what I was. I waited for it to touch me again, I was just worried about getting blood in the water. Crocodiles can smell blood from quite a distance, and if there was one there was bound to be a dozen more somewhere close. It brushed my back left leg, I whipped around and dover hoof first into the water, grabbing it's tail.

It tried swimming way, and almost slipped from my grip, I plunged the knife downwards into it's spine and twisted it viciously until I could slide it out. The crocodile slowed to a halt and rolled over, but when I looked up a shadow plunged towards me at full speed. It's jaws were open and closed on the hoof my knife was in. Instead of closing all the way, it's jaw was impaled by the Ka-bar and the crocodile tried to pull away. It just ripped a long sturdy gash through it's upper jaw.

I pulled the knife out quickly, and swam my way to the closest shore I could find, but when I got there Bellona was gone. I could hear scremaing to my left, so I bolted over, only to be separated from the source by the crocodiles. Bellona was backed in the center, a few dark circles moving closer and closer to her. She did, however, have my backpack.

"Okay Bellona listen carefully: Take both halves of the rifle out of the bag!"

She followed quickly, she made every move count.

"Take the upper half and put the hole in the front lined up with the hole on the front of the lower!"

She looked at it, but figured out what I meant. She first tried just sliding the top on.

"No roll it on roll it on!"

She figured it out and put the top vertical to the lower, and clicked the holes together.

"Now push the pin on the lower through both holes!"

She pushed the pin until it clicked, good thing she wasn't gentle this time.

"Now rotate it downwards!"

She did as I instructed quickly, the Crocodiles were getting onto the shore now, she needed to act fast.

"Press the pin in and grab the magazine, then put it in vertically and pull the T shaped handle back while gripping both of it's sides!"

She did it right and racked the slide, I didn't think she needed to be told what to do next. I told her anyway though.

"Just pull the trigger they'll run!"

She shot a round straight downwards, the recoil throwing the rifle out of her hoofs and onto the grass. The alligators scurried away, startled by the noise. We needed to leave fast though, the blood in the water was sure to bring more. We kept moving through the water until we reached dry land, and then came the overwhelming feeling that we were being watched once more again.

I wasn't worried, however. We were almost out of the Everfree.

The fire crackled in a calming aroma. The feeling that we were being followed, however, was unstoppable.

That feeling persisted throughout the night, we had set up camp there to make sure that we were well rested for the mountain hike that would take us to the front door of Canterlot. The city was largely in ruins, but the palace was in tact and occupied as a military stronghold. The state of the city made it too dangerous for a VIP like Steel. The real perk of holding that location, however, was the ability to regulate trade and the amount of still functional artillery. If it came to it they could just launch a barrage anywhere within a 20 mile radius.

That was the least of my worries, I was constantly looking outside of the tent, my M16 assembled and ready to fire. My lack of ammunition, however, did make it pretty useless. There was probably two shots left. This was probably more of my fault, partially because I had gotten myself in a few too many shootouts and that I hadn't been collecting the shell casings.

Making ammunition was relatively easy, so long as you had them. To be fair, however, there hasn't been much of a way to get the phosphorous that I'd need in the first place and much more the lead to make the actual bullet itself. in all honesty I could make something that worked like a shotgun out of it, but it'd ruin the barrel. I'd just keep it how it was for now.

I looked up to see two sparkling red lights in the distance. They were a small twinkle, almost peaceful. I knew better, this was a Timberwolf. More of them started coming from my right, there was three of them. I drew my Ka-Bar and tapped Bellona until she was awake.

"Pack your things, we're leaving."

"What do you mean?"

"Wolves, they're all around here."

"I didn't bring anything, don't worry about it."

I don't know why, but that was the first time it occurred to me that I didn't have any food. That was first order of business when we get out of this forest.

"Alright, let's go."

I pulled her up and swung the rifle around my back, slowly pulling out of the forest. I left the fire going, it wasn't safe but I needed to be able to see those wolves eyes, I needed to know how close they were. The wolves backed off, scurrying deep into the Everfree. I ran my way out into the open field, to see the lights of the Canterlot palace glowing off the mountainside.

"She's there. Somewhere."

I pulled the card she wrote and walked forwards. There was no going back.

Author's Note

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THAT STOUT!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvemPyOJZEY

Rolling thunder.

Author's Note

Just wanna say: The shameless self promotion group may be the most 'friendly' group ever. Posted my fic and got 5 dislikes for self promotion and got called a racist for basing the Yaks off of Pakistan. (Even though in the show they obviously are. Because after all YakYakistan is literally Pakistan with one letter changed. I mean it doesn't get much more obvious than figuring out what the red button does.)

Rolling thunder.

Food was the first thing on the agenda. In open fields like the outside of the Everfree, food was plentiful. Whether it was good or not wasn't exactly the point. Grass, leaves, bark, and insects made for a meal when you were stuck in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't that long after I had left the Everfree that we were in the grassland between Canterlot and Ponyville. Patrols here were only done by air, which meant that avoiding detection was a matter of duck and cover. The helicopters were primarily older Prussian ones, or Gyrocopters occasionally. We kept it on a low, making sure that whenever we moved there was something we could get under, normally trees would do but we needed to see the trajectory of the aircraft.

The distant sound of the rudders always kept us on high alert, so we moved carefully. The M16 was empty so I figured it was best used as a walking stick. The slow pace we kept made catching up easy if we needed to break off, which was common for Bellona. She had never been outside of Ponyville and tended to stop and stare.

"You know if you keep stopping like this I might as well pick you up and carry you. It'd probably actually be faster."

"Sure it would, I'm only stopping for a second."

"If by second you mean fifteen minutes than sure you are. It's a problem and we need to keep moving."

That low and sturdy rumble of propellers was growing less and less distant, and to me that was an issue. We weren't in a need for a rescue, and most certainly not by them. I don't even think it'd count as a rescue, since I'm pretty sure a rescue needs to take you to somewhere better (to any extent) than the danger you are currently in. I'm no Voltaire, so I don't know.

It was at this point that Bell's constant stop and go began to annoy me, and I actually found that dragging her by her tail was faster than waiting. This worked for a little while until we stated going uphill. Once the hills started, the dragging stopped. There wasn't much to look at anymore, and we weren't that far from Canterlot anymore, one day at the most. My guess was that we'd be roughly three quarters of the way there by nightfall. From there we'd gather some time to find other ways into the city than just strolling through the front door and then we'd move at that nightfall.

The fast beat of rudders was still audible in the distance, telling by the bass they were certainly moving away from us. I had no doubt in my mind that there would be foot patrols sooner or later, so I always kept an eye out for places to scuttle into and hide. The mountain became steeper and steeper as we walked up it, rocks tended to jut along the way. That was when we ran into the wall.

More of a cliff, but it was still a problem. The Earth had given out right on the railway. It was old and weathered into place, it must've been done during the war to cut off supplies in and out of Canterlot. It was a smart move, but now we needed a way around it. My first idea was to see if I could get up and just vault it, but that didn't work. I waited for some time before it hit me. There were toppled trees, which had been down and rotting for a long time. I slid one over to an angle against the boulder. I climbed right over and Bell followed.

There was a tunnel on the other side, which probably was the reason they chose here of anywhere to blow the line. I could see a light at the end, so I knew that there was an end to it. We walked down the dark, cold, and damp tunnel for what felt like an eternity. Each step echoing back and forth through our ears. It was, other than that, silent as hell. It reminded me of something.

The worst word by far in the English language is 'Alone'. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is a bad synonym.

I kept moving, thinking that at least I wasn't... alone. I had somepony with me, and that was what counted. The tunnel, however, gave the illusion that I stood in the middle of nowhere with no way but forwards. It was pitch black save for the few yellow reflective signs. We pushed on into the dark as we walked towards the light. I was uneasy with the affair, I knew that this cave would collapse on my head in a matter of minutes. This fact hadn't occurred to my companion. She acted just as she did before we walked in.

Her face was stern, looking forwards. The light struck only half of her face, exaggerating the light under her eyes and creating dark black blemishes that were not there. It was like looking at a painting, a moving and gentle painting of a pony staring forwards. I almost felt like she was scared.

No, she was more than scared, she was terrified.

She was talking to herself, generally comments like 'It feels like there's no end'. My thoughts were something similar, but more along the lines of 'If we spend too much time in here there won't be an end'. The rudders, however, ran directly over us. It small rocks fell from the ceiling of the cave, it'd come down soon. We were close to the exit, then the side we came from caved in. I made a deadbolt and didn't even have to tell her to do the same. We were out of the cave in a second, and it fell all the way in.

The truth untold.

Introspection, the act of looking into oneself to see the subconscious reasons behind why one does a certain thing. It's an interesting process, as with me there is more than enough to go through. I looked deep into my mind, there was a question bothering me. That question was only one word, but it spanned a universe of questions bouncing in and out of my mind. The question: Why? Why did I go along with this group? Why did I continue to fight? Why did I join Steel's militia? Most of all, however, why am I alive?

It was weird, how this kept me up. I was just looking at the dark fall sky, bleeding stars bore through the black silk that is our sky. In the West, however, there were no such stars. The lights that came from Blueblood's factories and cities were so bright that they blotched out the night, putting them in an everlasting day. We slept on the ridge of the mountain, just under a big oak tree, with carvings written in it from decades long gone. I faced that everlasting light as I rested my back against the tree, but Bellona was on the other side.

'Why am I alive?'

I've seen so much, through both peace and war I've seen the best and worst of ponies. I've seen good stallions die in ditches as if they were dogs, and I've seen the worst of all rise to the top of the world. At least the top of the world I fought for. I had felt many things, love, hate, fear, sorrow, and pain. Why was that? So many questions, so little time. None of it had answers, but when I looked around that oak tree at Bellona, I think I found my answer.

'The job isn't done. You still have work to do and ponies to save.'

The answer satisfied me, and I drifted off to sleep.

A rogue bullet broke the silence that was in the helicopter, an odd and awkward silence took it's place.

'From one world, into the next.'

We had gotten tipped off to a weapons cache in the widely torn streets of Ishmail, we weren't sent until we confirmed that the intelligence was good. To do this we had an agent head down to the area under the guise he was a transfer from a nearby village. The first place they took him was the cache, and it was exactly where we thought. Old warehouses in the fifth block towards the town square. We needed to do it by the book, a daytime helicopter drop raid to cut off all streets around the warehouse so that we can make sure nobody got in or out. From there (at the same time we were getting dropped) they would drop a small ranger detachment directly on top of the warehouse, who would then breach through side windows and the ceiling.

We called these types of things Cowboy Runs, mostly because of the fact that very few shots were fired and most of the time there would be a lot of captured Yakistani insurgents. I was dropped one and a half blocks away dead center in the street. The helicopter rocked to a stop before we dismounted, sliding down the metallic rope all the way to the bottom. The spot we dropped on was the real issue, the rope landed right on a car. This caused a weird bounce that put a shock right through your calves. It wasn't anything painful, but just a bad start.

Right when we all touched down, we ran to cover, we needed to stop anyone and everyone no matter how difficult. This should only take an hour so I knew that it would be easy to hold them off. At least it would've been, had insurgents not figured out what we were doing as soon as we pulled the helicopters out. The shots started coming in from directly behind us, the first of which breaking through the window of a car next to me. Our medic got cut with some glass from that, but he returned fire at no direction in particular as he made his way behind it's engine block.

I was looking down the road, nopony in the streets. That was when one Yak popped his head out of a corner and made a quick burst, which all flew wild and made it's way nowhere. I readied my M16 at the same corner waiting for him to pop his head out once more. Instead of his head, however, he showed his rifle and hooves to send out some blind fire. It was surprisingly accurate, hitting another window out of the car, just passing a radiopony by a couple of inches. Our SAW gunner had just set up and started opening up in automatic bursts at the young Yak, who got frightened and ran away.

We were pretty good so far, only that medic had gotten hurt and two windows had gone out. Still could've been worse. That was until the few bystanders peeking out of their windows and apartments became a mob, all approaching the same location. The crowd built up quickly, soon enough men women and children alike were yelling and screaming at us. I couldn't make out what they were saying even if I did speak the language.

A few shots rang out from within the crowd, they were small shots that sounded like a small pistol. Some of the crowd broke off, but most didn't even hear it. The ones that did fled into alleyways or into open doors. The doors would then, presumably, be shut and locked. We heard a car in the mix, I directed our SAW gunner into a nearby building, we were in a one way road and there were small two story buildings on each side. He made his way to the roof and set up his machine gun , staring down the sights. He looked up off the roof and shouted something at me.

"What?" I couldn't hear him. He shouted again but I just read his lips.

Truck... too many...

"Could you say that one more time?"

He scoffed and pulled out his map, which he wrote a note on the back of and tossed it down to me. I opened it and read it.

'There's a truck just down the road, it's carrying armed stallions. I can't take the shot there's way too many civilians in the way.'

"How many of them are there?"

When he shouted this time I could actually hear him, faintly but enough to know for sure what he was saying.

"We're looking at maybe twelve, but there's a lot of them piled on that thing, probably a machine gun too."

"Keep an eye on it will you?"

"Wilco."

I looked forwards, I could see what he was talking about. The crowd was dying down with that truck pretty much plowing through it. I could see one of the Yak's heads, poking just above the rest. He was small, skinny, and bloodshot. He looked tired as he approached, not quite physically tired but emotionally. He was sick of fighting, and I could see it. Moreso I could see it through the ACOG I used on my rifle. I had it centered right in his center mass, I didn't know if he was a threat or not, but more heads slowly came into view above the rest. Another pistol shot rang out way too close to us, it wasn't fired at us but it was still close. The crowd parted, except for a few, the yaks got off of the truck and opened fire. It was a plain white truck, I don't know why that was what I remember the most clearly but it is, that oddly clean color that truck had in such a poor country. I never understood it.

They were using whatever they could find, some even throwing rocks. I looked over to the radiopony, I didn't need to say it.

"Light 'em up!" He screamed into his radio.

The SAW gunner let loose hellfire into the trucks windshield, blood splattered all over it and the glass pane fell into the chassis of the truck, he rerouted his attention to the sidewalk. Someone else took the shot before him but there was a Yak firing his pistol from the sidewalk, he lay dead leaning his body off of the road. That was three down, one wounded. The wounded rolled his way out of the passenger seat of the truck, leaving a smear over the dash and the side door.

We kept our rifle steady, there was a few still lingering about. Going by our initial estimate that there was twelve overall, that made probably seven left. I moved my headset off of my ears and looked towards our medic. He was horrified. Our medic was a corpspony named 'Aishika'. He was a small set zebra that had just gotten out of high school. He joined to be a doctor, but never wanted to have to pull a trigger. When he first told his family he was joining the Navy (As he had learned the Marines did not have any medical positions, and instead relied on the Navy for such services), their initial reaction was shock.

He didn't have a normal upbringing for a soldier, but to be fair there really isn't a 'normal' for these types of ponies. His parents were adamantly against all Equestrian wars, since they were survivors from the Equestrian occupation of Morocco. They almost disowned him had he not said he was to be a doctor. The issue was sometimes you aren't at leisure to decide what you will be doing when you join the military. Although he was a corpspony and technically not supposed to even hold a rifle, due to lack of medical experience among soldiers led to a serious gap in ponies that knew how to use a pair of scissors. They threw all the corpsponies into the fray.

He was young and terrified. Most of all, however, he was never going to be the same.

The simplicity of life was a bit astounding actually. I woke up just before dawn, and as always Bellona was still asleep. I got up to gather firewood, it was getting cold and we needed to have heat. The cedar wood rolled off of it's branches the way you would peel a fruit, it took a gentle pull to get the tinder separate from the dead tree. Once I had a nice pile I went back towards where I rested and laid rocks around where my fire was to be.

It wouldn't be a large fire, and thus the circle wasn't going to be large either. I put some of the dry cedar in the center and lit it on fire with my knife and a flint. It kindled after about twelve minutes of trying. When it did burst into flames I just looked down into the fire, staring blankly as I waited for it to grow. Once it went from a tiny candle to a small and respectable flame I used twigs to keep it going and bade the fire to gain size. Bellona was now awake and looking at the fire over my shoulder. I never understood what was so intriguing about fire, but I suppose it's a universal fascination. I threw the rest of the sticks in until I could get at a higher body temperature, Bellona was fine already so she stayed back, we didn't speak but just looked into that burning pit.

The fire danced in the morning light, and as soon as it rose above the rocks I put more rocks in on top of the fire to smother it. It died quietly, and it was time to move again. Our path that lay ahead was steep uphill with roots jutting out from the hillside. It went like this for a solid 100 feet or so. I was up first, so I put my hoofs against the wall (it wasn't entirely vertical, it was roughly a 80 degree angle so there was space to move) and grabbed the first strong root.

It was a tree root from long ago, but it was pinched into the ground and secure to be pulled on. I used it to help me gain some altitude, Bellona followed my every step. She even mimicked the way I stepped on the spaces, gently prodding the ground to get rid of any doubt that I had tried to clear for her. I grabbed at everything I could, and eventually made it to the top. As soon as I climbed up I turned around and reached for Bellona's hoof. Then a booming crack came from the mountain. The root under her hoofs had given in, causing a dirtslide on the small cliff. I swung towards her and caught her by the forehoof and threw her up onto the top of the mountain. I was still holding onto her, and when I felt the land under me start to slide I didn't hesitate to drag her up the hill. We made it to the top of the mountain, which made me somewhat glad we didn't try to go around. The other half of the mountain was a death range with steep drops every few yards. The way down the mountain would be much easier, as it was all clear land and prairies.

Standard Deviation.

We quite literally slid our way down the mountain that morning under a red sky. It's gentle crimson glow was almost soothing, as the sun made its was over the hills. It peaked over the distance, hiding out of sight. It's yellow peak slipping through the sky. I looked up at that sky, the pollution from Blueblood's side of Equestria tended to sink over and leave this residue on the clouds, in turn making the sky red.

The rose pedal sky was something that got my mind off of the fighting. It was weird how that works, something so simple can pull away all of life's cruelty. We kept moving through that harsh and bitter cold that sent shivers down my spine. We hadn't heard helicopters yet so we figured we needed to take advantage of that. The good news, however, was that Canterlot was almost in sight. We marched on, the cold morning blocking all thought, killing all doubts. We moved without thinking. It was automatic. There was no thought.

I didn't think about what may await me, instead I just kept marching. I never could remember what it was really like to be a soldier again. There was no merit, no glory, just marching. We marched back from the Karkhan Province all the way down to the streets of Bakanor. Yet nothing made you feel more alive, that feeling of being a machine. I almost forget the faces of the stallions in that war. Ponies I never thought I'd ever think of again. It was weird, what marching brought you to. I remember marching just like this over the gravel, dirt, sand, mud, shit, bodies, blood, bones, gore, I almost forgot. Something had changed. I still remember the idea that I thought I was fighting for something. Hell, that'd never be true no matter how much I twisted it.

Did I even fight to protect ponies? Or did I fight for the blood? Maybe it was the adventure, the endless monologue racing in my mind was not silenced by the birds singing around us. Things wouldn't change for me, but maybe if I just understood those gentle songs I might find peace with myself, that child I killed might be swept out of my mind and instead I might be brought back out of the hell that confines me. Maybe one day I'd pick up like one and fly away. Go somewhere so far away I forget even who I am. I knew it'd never happen but I felt that I just wanted to go back.

"You ever heard the phrase 'sins of our fathers'?" Bellona wasn't used to this whole marching in silence gig, no surprise.

"Yep, something about how we're guilty for what our parents did right?"

"I don't know if that's true, I mean everypony thinks their doing good. Path to hell is paved in good intentions you know?"

"Well there's always people that just want to hurt others."

"I'm sure they had their reasons."

"Yea, sure they did."

We knew where this conversation was going, so we just kept quiet until we reached the main road that led to what was left of the gate. However this 'highway' was pretty problematic when it came to crossing into the city. Open ground and plenty of places for thieves.

"Keep off the road, it's safer that way."

She just nodded, totally defeated by the legwork we put into getting here just to be told that we can't take a hike on the only flat and decent ground. She did understand though, whether she agreed was beyond me. With that we marched into the unknown.

Author's Note

Yea I'm not even a brony anymore yet I still work on this. Odd right? Anyway I just figured I'd put this out there to end a wait and then keep on going with it later. Shortest chapter there will be I promise.

Home sweet hole.

Author's Note

Anyway I'm back from my haitus. Had to get life in order.

Home sweet hole.

There's plenty of camps between Ponyville and Canterlot, most of them relatively unsafe if the timberwolves are of any indication. However nonetheless they do make the march easier. We hadn't seen any thus far, mostly since we'd taken the direct rout to Canterlot. They like to avoid the road, military has a field day raiding those settlements for food and weapons. Of course they'll only mention the latter, although the food is more or less the incentive. We had happened by one of these settlements on a detour around a broken bridge.

The little commons was by a river that ran directly south from Canterlot. Most of the water, however, was undrinkable as it was because of the pesticides that plagued the few farms that operated under the Steel flag. However there was a large boiler in the center of the town, which was used to purify all that they could for drinking. None of it, however, was used for anything other than that. There were no baths or lavatories, all the business there was done in bushes or said river. This didn't exactly solve the problem with there being no baths, as the pesticides were not very friendly to the mane and coat.

There were guard posts set up around the area, most of which manned by scrawny young colts. None of them were older than 18. They all carried rusted rifles that appeared to be toys. Upon walking towards the gate they promptly turned me away, or attempted to.

"Look pal we don't want trouble, you just take yourself and the broad far away from here. If we see you again it'll hurt you much worse than it does us."

They sure were friendly, and Bellona certainly appeared to have a problem with the word broad.

"Look 'Pal', we're just travelers. We need a place to stay for a few days."

Noting the tone, one of the two guards seemed to ease off the trigger. The other was as steadfast as always. He was the one doing all the talking.

"Yea sure you are, and what's next you're gonna butcher us in our sleep?"

"How about this instead?"

I dropped the M16 in the dirt, they both now had eased off the trigger.

"You take it, so long as I get it when I leave."

They did a bit of a double take at eachother. Then somepony in the back began to shout.

"Green! Trance! What the fuck are you doing!"

It was a mare, an old one at that. However she seemed to be the one in control.

"Mama he was armed! We didn't know what to do!"

"Well did he make a threat!"

"No ma'am."

Like foals (which they pretty much are), they were back to being looked after by their parents.

"Then let the poor fellow in! He must be starving!"

"Yes mama."

They opened the gates, and behind it was an old mare with a bum leg. He had a hoof on a cane to make up for that. When she motioned for us to get in we were certain to follow suit. So with that we took our first step into civilization for a little while.

The towns name was 'Thronwahl', an interesting name to say the least. And telling by the looks of it, it'd actually been somewhat bustling. There appeared to be no more than 300 ponies living here in sheds and shacks, most however in tents. More than a few of these ponies looked to be other militants, hiding from their political machines. None of them batted an eye at us. I just kept moving forwards, I was told by the mare that most of the ponies here would be glad to have us if we made it worth their time. Bellona was less than thrilled, she didn't seem to be interested in living off of anypony.

However the old mare seemed to know her way around the place. Everypony just called her Mama and I suppose it'd have to suffice for the time being. She said there was a commons down the road. Anypony could stay so long as they didn't cause trouble, there was plenty of beds and food. Considering the town was a straight dirt road with a large wooden structure at the end, finding the commons was an easy task. We passed shoddy bars and restaurants, a few stores, and even a weapons shed. That was the interesting part to me, pretty much screamed 'Hey! We don't have any regard for our life, so come and take it!'. I suppose it was more or less meant to show the message 'We're armed, keep out of our way and we'll keep out of yours.' Both seemed like a poor choice.

"Hey Bell, wait here."

"What's up Crow?"

"I thought you had forgotten about that nickname..."

"Mare never forgets hon, never forgives either. What's going on?"

"The rifle we have won't cut it, not for long. It's running dry and the chances of finding shell casings or ammunition is slim to none for this thing. The machine pistol we found is the same story, .32 ACP doesn't show up a lot. We need to ditch these for something more practical."

"Hey, you know that thing was expensive right?"

"Look, I don't like it any more than you do but ask yourself this: What's the price of a life?"

She was silent to that, time to kill the mood with pointless facts that mean absolutely nothing nowadays.

"The price of a life, as agreed upon between the Equestrian Alliance, was 20,000 dollars. Your life is worth only 20,000 dollars. It won't even buy you a nice car if you think about it."

"Times have changed eh?"

"Sure have, now they're only worth a bowl of soup. Probably less."

The booth in question was a rugged shack on it's wits end with life. It was about to collapse and end it's miserable existence at any moment. It wouldn't take much for it to just go away. The pony that ran it was similar. An old stallion with a rust colored beard. His fur and mane were almost completely gone, he was completely bald.

We walked right towards that little booth, and I immediately realized that this would be a very unfair trade on my end.

"I'm looking to trade in these, what do you have?"

He did a bit of a double take, then looked from me to the weapons. It was a look of 'Where the actual fuck did you get this shit?' and 'Is this fucker serious?'. I was certain he was going to have a heart attack. He gave me this weak smile and nodded.

"Take what you like, what you see is what you get, I'll give you all the munitions I have for whatever you want as well."

"You really don't have to, just a bit is fine really."

"Oh no, I insist."

More than a weird tone, however moving down the aisle I realized there was some things that interested me. A wide variety of pistols, ranging in caliber. I saw a number of revolvers in the stake, mostly military surplus from over a hundred years ago. Another interesting find was certainly the one I was going to get. A old Prulish Makarov, essentially just a cheaper Walter PPK. It was just the right size, and 9x18 ammunition was increasingly common with steel. I knew my first purchase.

I kept looking around, I needed a few more things. Something for when things got personal. I was looking through when I found just the thing. It was on the shelf and I was certain it wouldn't be missed. It was a tiny 12 Gauge sawed off shotgun. I couldn't tell a make or a model, it was worn down but seemed to be in good condition. I pressed the lever and broke the shotgun, it worked nicely. The trigger was crisp as well, appeared to be a duel stage that started it's hammer on the left barrel and moved to the right, waiting to be reset by that lever. Shells for these were common so I took my guess that I'd like that as well. Not to mention it fit real nicely in my leather jacket's side pocket. If anything got nasty I'd have it on me.

The last was a full rifle, 5.56 was hard to find. 7.62 was another story. I looked along the walls and I found an AKM rifle right from a Steel armory. It was in relatively good condition to my surprise. Plus there were magazines a plenty for these. I depressed the button on the back of the dust cover and lifted it off. There was no rust on the spring or the bolt. Looking into the trigger assembly it looked relativity well kept, that is for both an AK and a rifle owned by Steel. There was dings in the stock wood, and a sling behind the counter. I made my trade, and the old stallion was generous in what he offered me.

"You're a soldier aren't you?"

"Excuse me?"

He caught me off guard as I turned my back to leave.

"Before the war, or perhaps during it. You were a soldier weren't you."

I turned and looked at him, right in the eyes. Something was off about this pony. I didn't understand his question.

"What does it matter nowadays?"

"Me and you, we are not so different after all are we?" He motioned to a chair, it was behind the counter and he asked me in. Even allowed Bellona. A surprising amount of trust for a pony he just met in a town like this. To be fair everypony was armed. An armed society is a polite one I suppose.

"What's it to you?"

"What it is to me is a legacy. You see I was a soldier for Equestria before the war."

"We're like wolves, aren't we?"

"Yes, I can smell you from a mile away."

"I was a Equestrian Marine back in Yakyakistan."

"Interesting. I was in the Equestrian army. I built wells for villages. I'm sure you saw us around."

"Yea plenty of you, hell five of you for every one of us. Celestia was on full damage control that whole time."

"Fuck, double damage control after we found that alicorn. Who would've known it'd end the world as we knew it."

"Tell me about it, this chat is nice and all but is there another reason you brought me back here?"

"Yes actually, I have a gift for you. You see we're not that much older, I'm probably only a few years more than you. The years, however, have been cruel to me. I want to give you something. You'll need it more than me."

He reached into a chest and scooted it over to me.

"Don't be shy, open it."

I pulled the chest open, a heavy and thick wooden lid protecting it from the elements. I looked inside and shot back up to him.

"I'm sorry, I can't accept this."

"I am insisting you do. Weapons were made to be held, to be used. I want you to use this."

"Are you sure about this?"

"One hundred percent, I've been waiting for a colt just like you."

I stared inside it. There were four grenades, a gas mask with a few filters, one pair of Multicam ACU pants that looked to be tight, and a CIRAS vest with wide pouches for most magazines. I looked back at him and down to the chest.

"Take it, do what I can't." There was a tear in his eye.

"The years have been rough haven't they?"

"You have no idea how much I want to leave this little shop and go with you wherever you are headed. Just to grab my old rifle, or any old rifle, and go back to soldiering. Some things were not meant to be, may God bless you son."

I looked back at him, right into his eyes. We were wolves, and wolves know their type when they see it.

The Multicam pants did, in fact, fit a half inch tight. This was, however, better than half an inch wide. I could make do. They did blend very well, making me very comfortable with the idea that I might need to scuffle with another pony soon. They were generation 3 style, built in kneepads for durability and safety. That was something I could appreciate. The CIRAS fit nicely too, however there were no bullet proof plates in it so I didn't count on it to save my life. Upon inspection of the gas mask there was a minor crack in the plastic on the left eye, however no abrasion that would stop it from functioning.

The Makarov pistol was relatively basic, it was essentially a simplified and smaller Walter PPM. Needless to say it did, in fact, deserve its praise for being a decent weapon. The Sawed off, upon closer inspection, really did not show any sign of where it was produced. It was certainly prewar, the machining of the barrels was rifled impeccably. There were, however, plenty of dings in the barrel and sand grains in the wood furniture. It did not feature a front sight, as that'd been lost when they cut the barrel off.

The AK was in decent enough shape. There was apparent rust on certain ends of the barrel and the front sight was chipped on the upper left end. The wood had heavy sand wear all over it, as if someone had dropped it out of a moving vehicle onto a desert. The charging handle had so much wear that it'd turned from a dark blued finish to a light grey.

I was already in bed by the time I'd inspected all this, and a nights sleep at the public inn was in order. There was food here too. As soon as morning would come that would be on it's way.

Border Guard.

The beds were comfortable to some regards. Mostly because I hadn't slept in a bed for a number of days. However with all that in mind I needed to make the most of that. All I had to do was hope I didn't sleep. However sleep always finds me.

You know sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by the calmness of war. It's between those breaks of fighting that you really remember what you did had some impact. You just see people smiling, at least for the most part, things seem safe for once. It was one of those times again. There was an overcast sky above our heads, gently rolling over the sky.

The overcast did give the world a dark tint, turning the sand from a bright white-yellow to a dark orange. There was a gaggle of foals in my direct line of sight, kicking a ball against a wall. They were between the ages of 5 and 9, however the winner appeared to be an exception at 11 years old.

Sometimes they'd come up to me for candy or something, any food in general. The Army was out building wells in a nearby town and it was our job to make sure there were no insurgents left in the area, so the foals had to ask us. If I had been eating before I would give them the gum or one of the sides out of my MRE. There were rumors that the gum was a laxative that gave you the shits real bad. I still don't think that's true. The older mares that would come to us would want the napkins and packaged toilet paper that came in them.

Occasionally when supply trucks would come through they'd actually give out MREs to mares and foals. We ended up having to stop that since ponies started clustering around the trucks, creating countless safety hazards for both the crew and the food-ridden ponies. We still didn't stop, and nopony was harmed until we got this story from another region about a suicide bombing involving one of the foals approaching the vehicle.

Well that was the end of that I suppose.

There was this one foal that always stuck eerily close to the unit I was in. He wasn't a threat, at least not from what we could see. Normally he'd just ask for candy and run off. Then he started sticking around longer, we could tell he had nothing on him so we let him stick around so long as he didn't touch anything.

He was around for like a week and then just poof, he was gone. I remember we all just had questions over that little rascal. Nopony knew his name so that only made it more difficult. It wasn't for a few weeks that we learned his father brought him and his family deeper behind the TJY's lines in Kharckal. I still get this feeling the kid was trying to send us a message. He wanted to get out, his father just wanted to be accepted in a place where being cast out meant being killed. There was obvious pressure from locals to continue to support the ideological battle that the TJY was on, and sometimes if you spoke out you were never seen again. I still don't know what happened to that kid.

It wasn't until after I ate that the food wasn't free. They just slapped a bill down in front of me and didn't say anything. The mare stared contently int o my eyes as if they'd pay her instead of me. I didn't have any money so it went from a discussion to an argument in a matter of seconds. My side of the point was that she didn't have the prices labeled so it was immoral to charge someone for it, and she just shook and demanded her money. It seemed everyone else in the commons agreed with her. So it was out to manual labor we went. The labor in question was consistent of guarding the the front gate from timberwolves and ponies.

Yea this was probably a scheme from the start, however I needed to finish it so I could get moving. Me and Bell decided that the best way to patrol the area was, rather than put our backs to the walls, was to circle around the area in the opposite directions and meet up at the end of our half circle routs, report our findings, then regroup at the front. There were four other ponies that were on the front gate so it wasn't as if we were leaving it unattended. It was about on the second march that I came across a group of ponies creeping across the ridge about two hundred meters out.

It was more than unusual, because what they were doing was obvious to anypony that knew how gunfights worked knew that these ponies weren't travelers. They weren't moving, they were still, just watching. One appeared to have a telescope set up on a tripod, and the other had something slung across it's shoulder, no doubt a weapon. The thing about gunfights is that the battle itself only takes about a few minutes normally, maximum ten to twelve. Full scale operations are a whole different story. Both, when it came to time at least, had something in common: In order to win you need days, even months, of planning. The only way to win a gunfight was to out-think the fucker on the other end. If he moved you best move with him, that sort of thing. The best way to win, on the other hand, is to know the floor plan of where you are so well that you can perfectly choreograph their movements before it even pops into their head and anticipate their next move before they even know they'll make it.

This was exactly what they were doing. They had chosen the largest nearby mountain to try to get a look at the street plans for the area and see if there were weak points in the walls that they could use to their advantage. Smart colts, I'll hand it to them. They hadn't noticed me even when Bell bumped right into my hind. She was distracted by the scenery, I was by the potential threat.

"Didn't you say we should always keep moving?"

"Bell, take a look on over there. You see what I'm seeing?"

She took a glance then turned her head back.

"Where?"

"Over there, don't you see them?" I had pointed my hoof in their direction, however the look she gave me showed it was to no avail.

"Yea, I see nothing. The trees look nice here though, something I could put a hammock in you know? I think we should totally do that later!"

At this point I wasn't in the mood, I grabbed her head and forced her into the direction the ponies were, now she saw them. She did shake her way out of my grasp though.

"Crow, never do that again I get the point. I see them, but where is the big deal? They're just traveling."

"You think so? Look closer. They're watching us."

"And? Why wouldn't they be?"

"You need to start asking relevant questions, like 'Why would they be' or 'What do they want from us'. You get what I'm saying?"

"You think they're after something?"

"Yea, exactly. There's a reason they're sticking that far and watching us through a telescope. They don't want us to know they're there."

"Well shouldn't we bring this up to the town?"

"Nah, can't say we can just yet. We don't know who they are exactly but I can almost guarantee it isn't good. We should keep this between us and Mama. Catch my drift?"

"Yea I understand, lets keep it on the low."

The rest of the day had gone smoothly, but that one pony had definitely seen me. When he did, he lowered his telescope and turned back. He was planning to strike sometime and I could tell. They were not in the mood for tea and crumpets. They were out for war, and if they struck here they were bound to get one.

Sometimes, it's good to forget.

Mama had already been made aware of the travelers beyond that ridge, and she gave it no thought.

"They're much too young, you know? Lots of em are just travelers that need a place to stay. If they mean trouble they'll get more than they bargained for."

"Mama, I'm not asking for much. I just think we should get a few of your colts over on that ridge just to see what they find. If they're really travelers they probably would've left some kind of track behind. Travelers don't watch their backs."

"Yea well in this day they do. Steel hot on their hinds sometimes."

She had a point.

"Look Mama, I'm not asking for much. They'll just trot up that way and be right back down the hill in time for dinner."

This didn't seem to convince her very much, she'd drawn her hoofs up to her face. She was visibly upset by the proposal. She'd sat there and took three or so deep breaths, just her face in her hoofs. I was never a father, let alone a mother. I'd cut her some slack.

"Here, I got a deal for you if you're welling to at least lend a hand."

"Yea what've you got in mind?"

"If you give me and Bell one of those unused shacks to stay in until we are gone, I'll search the area myself. If I run into any trouble you'll hear it."

Her head shot up and stared me down, joy filling her eyes. She'd been crying silently.

"I'll take it as a yes. I'll check it out in a few."

The walk wasn't too far, but the hill had divot after divot dug into the side, so I had to watch my step rather carefully to not twist a hoof. The grass had started to turn a brown color, fall had started and the leaves had created a crimson canvas on the ground. It may fill in these holes with them, but at least it was a gorgeous sight. Its at times like these that I almost forget I'm carrying a weapon. I just want to sit down and look out upon nature's own watercolor painting. I want to take it in.

I don't want to have to take a life again.

Bellona seemed to feel the same way, I could see her cradling her rifle loosely against her chest, gazing down from atop the hill. I made it up to her, and saw exactly what she did. Letting this image seep into my mind like a fine wine, or a good song.

The whole mountain had turned red and orange, like a waving ocean of fire. The grass leading to it created a beautiful foreground of a mixed green, yellow, brown, and red splotches all the way to it's base. Halfway there was a river, which forked towards the swamp we'd come from. The swamp was, from this view, a dark mess, like a black ink stain upon a perfect painting. Looking opposite from it was a lake, it was small, almost like an oasis amongst a desert of red and brown. Looking down upon this was almost like a brick road, leading straight to Canterlot.

"Looks like nopony's here." I'd broken the precious silence, which was as fragile as a wine glass.

"Looks like it alright." Bellona quietly muttered, she'd knelt to the ground, water pooling in her eyes.

"You know, when I was a kid, I remember places like this. I used to pick up a leaf and crinkle it in my hoofs. My father was a soldier, not like one of those mercenaries you've been fighting, I don't remember him much but he promised he'd be home by fall. I remember when we got the news, my father wouldn't be coming home."

"Yes, I know what that's like. Ponies like me can't keep those promises all the time. God wants us back and he'll take us back if he pleases."

"My Dad though, he had so much to do, left so much behind. Why would God take him?"

A tear welled in right eye, and passed it's way to the left. A glistening stream making across my face.

"I don't know your Dad, but soon enough I might know God. Before he sends me to hell I'll ask."

Author's Note

I think it's important to see what happens between war. War may be a living, breathing, and bleeding battlefield, but the world turn anyway, almost without a second thought to the people who inhabit it. I wanted to capture how this world can stay so beautiful, even in a time where people are struggling to survive. This isn't a real chapter, but I'm getting back into writing.

I'm working on a novel right now, I'm toying with the idea of people learning to love their captors, that and the human nature behind war. Obviously it's not pony related, but that's because I've kinda moved ahead of horsewords.

I promise I'll keep you guys in the know, whenever I upload something I'll put a note.

Detective Work.

We'd gotten back from sightseeing to take a look at what Mama had given us. We were promised a new hut to stay in, rather than the public housing, where we constantly worried about robbery. The hut, however, was nothing too fancy. A one room log cabin with a small firepit in the center, it'd have to do for now. There was enough space for our rucksacks to make a good wall between us for some limited privacy. We set up sleeping bags on either side, and just began to relax. There was a sort of bench and table set up in the corner of the 20 by 20 room, so I layed down my weapons and began to clean them.

First off was the makarov. I removed the magazine and broke the weapon down by pulling its disassembly lever in the grip. From there I pulled the slide and spring off. It'd been awhile since anypony cleaned it, so I used some spit and worked it into the spring and slide. It was an atrocious lubricant, but it was better than nothing. The handgun was in good condition, and as such I put it back together. I then moved on to the shotgun.way.

The shotgun ended up being rusty in the barrel, however I could make do. It's not going to be shooting slugs very far anyway. I pushed a cloth through the barrel, clearing out a good bit of dirt and debris. I then pulled the two pieces apart and took a look at the inside of the weapon. It was rather basic, and seemed alright. I put it back together and decided I wouldn't mess with it for a little while. Then it was time to look inside the AKM.

The AKM had been through literal hell and back. It hadn't rusted, but it was surely worn. The finish of all the parts had been so heavily damaged it looked as though someone dragged it behind a car. The fire selector had a nasty habit of falling from full auto to semi, but tightening it fixed that. It did, however, reassure my fear that somepony dropped this from a vehicle of some sort. I pulled the cleaning kit out of the stock and removed the cleaning rod from the barrel. I gently ran a cloth through the barrel, there was no rust but certainly dirt. The sight on the front had been bent, so I used the cleaning rod to bend it back into place. The warps in the stock weren't significant, but even if they were the most I could do is find a new stock.

I put them all back together, and slipped them into their compartments. My CIRAS vest was empty, but I placed that along with my pants in the bottom of my sleeping bag to ensure that they'd be warm by the time I awoke the next morning.

It was getting late, and I needed to go back to my own personal hell once more.

Yep, hell was the right word to describe it. This was sometime when I was fighting for Steel. We were in the streets of CloudsDale, and he could only send pegasai up. This was before they had my feathers clipped. I'd been equip with some old Chinese vest and rifle. A Norinco copy of the SKS. It was outdated sure, but it worked as an assault carbine. This was one place that Celestia was not going to give up without a fight. We suspected that she'd been hiding here, as we'd captured Canterlot a couple of months prior.

There were already militants there, so recruitment and transport wasn't the issue. I happened to be one of them. Locals were pretty good for this job, as it wasn't like any earth or unicorn could have known the layout of this place. Plus getting guns up here only required to have a group of ponies fly down to the terrain below and grab them from the mountains. Ammunition was the same story. We would, however, have no medical supplies as Steel had nopony trained to use them up here.

Because of the issue of flight, however, weapons were generally light and shipped in crates. Most of the other ponies here were armed with light submachine guns, putting us at a disadvantage to the well oiled Equestrian war machine. The streets of Cloudsdale had made that belief much more obvious. The Equestrian military had been on high alert in the area after a few anonymous tips, and they had even began arming the local militia. The disparity between the two factions was more evident when we saw that they'd given the militia body armor.

The fighting broke out at nightfall on a full moon, we had no night optics so we decided that the more moon we had the better the fighting chance. However almost immediately after the first gunshots were fired, we'd been surrounded by militia. Unbenounced to us the location we were using to stage the battle had also been surrendered. It was over before it even started.

I'd managed to avoid arrest by jumping out a window and flying cross roofs. Nopony else was that lucky.

We couldn't afford to stay in this location all fall, so we broke the news to Mama. She hadn't been surprised, neither did she ask where we were headed to. There was, however, a last favor she needed done. There was a unsavory part of town that'd started a few weeks back, they'd managed to have been under the radar but now they were bringing too much attention. It was a skin joint, a nameless one at that. If there was one thing Mama didn't need, it was those ponies attention.

They worked in a hut a little down from that commons area. The crowd seemed to make it hard to miss, and surely to some of the locals they would be indeed missed.

"You're leaving, so it shouldn't be a problem. Just remember that some ponies won't take kindly to me shuttin down their whore house. You be careful there okay?" She'd warned me.

I had told her I would, she'd described the guards as being punks, but this town was filled with punks, so for a punk to be a punk to a punk he'd really need to be a... well... punk. Anyway, approaching the place sorta made that previous statement make some sense. The guards were two stallions, roughly my size and build, armed with baseball bats. I marched inside, and they didn't bother patting me down. They'd try to pat Bellona down, but I'd catch the stallions wrist and give him a stare that'd kill if stares could.

He looked me in the eyes and returned the favor.

"You got some balls old man."

"I've been told. You won't be touching her though, capiche?"

"She's not for sale?"

"You got it."

I drew my kabar and put it to his chest, concealed by my jacket.

"And you best believe me, touch my property and I'll touch the other end of your spine."

He got the message, and let us through.

"You called me property, the fuck's that for?"

"Well I mean, I have dragged you around for a few months, might as well take up the formality."

"You know I outrank you in this right?"

"I haven't exactly been run down on the rank structure here. We'll do that later. Anyway it got you in unmolested, you want Mr. 'I have 13 STDs and have not been tested' to be the good young stallion groping you or do you want to be called property?"

"Gotta point, but I'm still holding this against you."

"Feel Fr-"

We'd just stepped through into the shack itself, only for memories to flood back to me. I knew this mare. She was behind the bar, a couple of stallions staring at her thinly veiled rack. It was a weird sight. The memories, however, flooded back. She hadn't aged a bit.

It was mid August, and the Yakistani summer had died down considerably already. My unit had been calm, we'd wound up guarding a field hospital in the middle of Ramsgyisti, a small city in the northernmost region of YakYakistan. The snow had already piled upon the ground, creating a vast ocean of white. In the center of the camp we had made a firepit. I sat there most of the day. I didn't really have much to do, and the days would go by slow. I'd just sit by the fire, the other soldiers who would walk by may sit back and chat, others though had work to do. Not me, I had a nice little fire.

When I'd met her, the snow had piled up over the brim of my helmet, and packed its way into the crevice of my uniform collar. I'd had a cigar in my mouth, which I'd lit using a piece of plywood that I'd set fire to. She sat down beside me, her grey coat somewhat blending with the snowy backdrop. Her tan MARPAT uniform, however, created a contrast with the rest of the ground. She was, at the time, a floating uniform. She was an enigma that'd manifested itself by the warmth of my fire. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, but she hadn't moved. She watched the fire dance in it's aura.

"You know, this is normally the time a stallion asks if I want a drink."

"Way to break the silence. It was comforting."

"Really? I thought it was boring." Her wide eyes managed to make a distinct difference in the background, yet her black hair, now that I'd turned my head, was visible.

"Well, I mean that too. Boring is good sometimes."

She traced the rim of her canteen with her hoof delicately, as if it were a fine glass.

"I don't drink anything the ponies here have to offer anyway. I'm a wine mare myself."

"Classy."

"Very."

"I was being sarcastic."

"I know."

She was no fun. Well at least in the short term. She gave me a sly smile.

"You?"

"I prefer brandy, straight or on rocks. That or whisky on the rocks. It's an acquired taste."

"So is wine, but that's something I could never do."

The conversation on beverages carried on for a considerable amount of time, the snow had began piling up on her hair as it did my helmet. I inspected her more thoroughly when I realised what was in her pocket. A pair of bloodied gloves. Latex gloves.

"What's with the gloves?"

"I'm a surgeon here. Needed a place to relax."

"Work never ends for a surgeon, even when you're out."

"Especially with dumbasses like you smoking your fucking cigar."

That one made my cough, I was mid draw when she had to point that out. I tossed the cigar into the fire, it was out anyway.

"What's with the attitude?"

"You ever seen a surgeon who liked tobacco?"

"I mean, no."

"Drop it, work isn't done cause ponies like you just love your cancer sticks."

"Got the point hun, you don't kill your liver with that wine and I won't kill my lungs with my cigars. Deal?"

The pact had been made, but I'd never asked her name. The emergency room alarm sounded, and she got up to leave when I stopped her by grabbing her sleeve.

"I didn't get your name, I'm Cloud Dasher. I'm stayin in barracks East 3 if you ever want to stop by."

"I'll neglect the information of my quarters, but my name is Octavia. First name should be sufficient?"

"Guess it is."

"You know, your name sounds like a mare I used to know, Rainbow Dash. Any relation?"

"Never heard of her."

"Huh shame, she got shot down a few weeks ago. Don't think she made it. You just reminded me of her somehow."

Guess that's nice, somehow.

I walked to the bar in a march, Bellona following me. She had no idea what was going on, and neither did she have any form of indication. I'd made my way over to the seat on the far left end of the bar, she'd had her back turned to me. Between the scars and the color of her coat I couldn't tell if she really had aged as well as she looked. It wasn't until she turned around and looked me in the eye that I realised just how little had changed.

"I never did tell you where I stayed did I?" She said, making full eye contact.

"Guess I found it right?"

"Well now that you have, if you ask for a goddamn show I'm gonna put your balls through your throat you hear me?"

"Never planned on it. Why aren't you doing doctor'y things?"

"Most doctors are workin in Canterlot, sorry old man but I don't want to be working in a place that reminds me of up North."

"I never really moved away from that." I gave her a flash of my sawed off. I'd left the Ak at home to stay inconspicuous.

"You better keep that thing holstered old man."

"We're practically the same age, good try though."

"You know you don't say stuff like that to a mare. What're you doing here?"

"I guess you could say that my Sabotage job just turned to hostage recovery."

She cocked her head at me and mumbled something incomprehensible to me.

"Look, you just get under that bar when you hear shots. That thing bulletproof?"

"I got two things to say. First: What you're thinking is a horrible idea. Second: No it's not."

"Well get as low as you can. You know the drill. We're Marines."

"I was Navy, good guess."

"Whatever, just get on the floor."

There'd been no music here, all the light came from candles and there was no electricity. Nonetheless the place was packed. The bar had been full except for the seat I'd taken. The dance floor (which was really a bunch of people jacked up on LSD pretending to all hear music) was packed as well. Guess they all took a ride on that blue bus, if that was even still relevant these days. I walked up to one of the colts with the guns, I had a bit of a question for them.

"Hey kid, who runs the place?" I tried to sound aggressive, but the small colt responded in a voice that caught me off guard.

"Oh you mean daddy? My dad is real busy yes sir. Should be out back talking to some ladies that's him. Daddy is a strong stallion yes he is."

This was, literally, a filly. I had absolutely no idea how to react to this.

"So your daddy runs this place?"

"Yessir!"

He almost seemed proud to be a pimp's son.

"Alright, you said he was behind the place?"

"Yessir! Daddy's on business though he said not to be loud or he'd not give me supper."

I'd made my way outside, sure to avoid any unnecessary attention. The guard who'd tried to grope Bell had made his way elsewhere. So I maintained my course. Surely enough I'd heard a stallion with a Fillydelphian accent voice up.

"Look here broad, if you ain't gon collect the gold the way I tol ya to you best get a new line of work hear me?"

She was quivering, something wasn't right.

"I know you gotta foal of your own out home but you best trust me I'll let you go if you been rippin me off."

I turned the corner, he was talking to a young mare, maybe 18 best. Sad world these days. Sad world. I handed Bellona the shotgun in case things got rough and held the makarov in my right hoof under the jacket.

"Hey buddy got a minute?"

I called over to him, he instantly dropped the tough guy act without even seeing the gun.

"Oh hey, don't think we've met. I'm Peach Cobbler, local businessman. Waddya need?" The way he said 'Peach Cobbler' was more like 'Pich Cobblah'. His parents must be real proud.

"I was told that your business ain't welcome here. Move it."

"Woah woah here look dude, let's not jump to conclusions here, I just run the bar. The boy who runs the gals is inside. You best be talkin with Beans inside."

"Beans?"

"Yea, Silver Beans, heard of him?"

"Nope, can't say I have."

"Well I'll cut ya a deal. Talk him into leavin and I'll make it worth ya while."

"I got a question."

"Blast my dude."

"If he runs the skin, who's the mare you were talking to."

A young, orange colored mare poked her head from around a corner.

"Oh her? She's Orange Blossom, she's a bartender. I'm trainin her, that skin guy got the gal inside to do her job and he got a cut of the gold. Not my choice but those guards he got don't leave room for negotiating."

"I see, well here, I got a way you can pay me to help you out here."

"What's that?"

"Bean's bartender. I want her."

"Well whatever floats your boat. You can take the deed if you can convince him to let that fine little thing outta his hoof. Hear she's his personal favourite out of the bunch. Whatever that's worth to a colorful character like him."

"Huh, guess I'll do some talkin."

I walked back inside, the guards were back. This time the one I pulled the knife on was a little less kind. He pulled a revolver to my head.

"Look buddy, you're gonna let me do my little pat down or I'll blow your fuckin head cross this shithole you hear me?"

I simply put my hooves up, looked like he forgot a hole in his plan.

He moved his attention to Bellona, who promptly pushed him to the ground. The weapon flew from his hoof. She had already stomped on his head before he knew what had hit him. He forgot that he would need to stare to do what he wanted to her. With him outta the way the other guard went on his own route to Celestia-Knows-Where.

"He slipped, didn't see nopony." He said as he walked by. Least he knew what was good for him.

I walked inside, time to do my job.

Author's Note

Guess who's back cyka.

Negotiations.

We'd reentered the shack, this time to actually look for the pony running the show. I could just tell by taking a good stare at the ponies that none of them were this 'Beans' guy. I decided I'd secure the 'hostage' before I walked the town. After all, a pony like him is pretty bad at the low profile gig. I made my way up to the bar and casually slipped between two gruff Stallions with a few chips on their shoulder.

"Hey... Octavian was it?"

"Octavia, good try though you'll get it one day."

"Thanks I'll keep swinging at it till something sticks. Looks like we gotta head on out of this rodeo forever."

"What?"

"You heard me, we're goin out of here. See that thing out there?" I put my arm around her shoulder, albeit there was a literal and a metaphorical bar between us that made this position very uncomfortable. "That's the world, and there's plenty of it out there."

"Look, Cloud was it? I can't just get up and go just because I want to. I got a contract to fill."

"I mean, under what law?"

"Thats..." She was completely perplexed, she had absolutely no idea how to respond to the observation. "Thats... a really good point."

"Laws been gone for a while, you're off with me now. Get all the money you can and I'm payin Beans a visit. Besides, he won't be paying you for very long. We'll just say I gotta contract of my own."

Silver Beans had owned another joint on the other end of town, closer to the front gate. Actually, it was right next to it. Considering that I was getting rid of the bastard, I need to wait for those two guards to be gone. The brother's were not exactly in the know about what I was doing, since the idea was that I'd take this guy out and ride into the sunset before anypony knew what was happening. They'd probably do a switch at nightfall or something, and luckily enough the shack Mama had given me had a good little view of the place Beans ran, it also was a nice place to drop off the supplies I didn't need and pick up the big guns.

I brought Octavia in and gave her the grand one room tour. She'd been less than impressed, however she had made a remark about how it was better than the commons. I set her up a little spot to stay and picked up a rucksack and sleeping bag from the stallion that ran the gun store. While I was at it I grabbed a few boxes of 7.62x39 for the AKM. I now had something over 300 rounds of ammunition in my backpack, enough to last me some time if I didn't dump mags.

I'd caught wind that Beans stayed holed up in the club when nighttime came around, apparently there was a little bed he used for sleeping and sleeping, since he'd have to walk by the shack it'd be a good time to nab him then. The idea was real simple. Octavia would run into the street when he'd pass by, and Bellona would make some noise behind him and his guards (I'd counted two of them). Between the two distractions, I should be able to go in and stick Beans in the dirt before the guards knew what was going on.

There was a few problems with the plan though, for one they didn't actually need to walk by the place, they could use back roads. I made the assumption they'd use the front road just because it was much quicker. I'd already actually prepared for another possible hitch, which would be the blade not going into him all the way. I'd sharpened the blade with a whet stone, as it'd lost some of its edge over the past months. Now that it was in good shape I had no issue believing that I could put it through him.

Guns were off the table. We were in a area with a high concentration of innocent ponies, and a shot in him could easily be a shot going into somepony else. The last thing I wanted was unnecessary injuries or fatalities. I was only after the buck and his guards. I'd already finished planning, now all I needed to do was get a good look at the guy so I knew it was him. Didn't want to put a knife in the wrong bastard.

The other place he ran was actually a sorta makeshift restaurant, and I was pretty famished. The chef was doing his business on a propane stove, although it seemed he may have to switch to wood burning just because of the abundance of wood. The chef's coat and mane were a matching off blue tint, however due to the unkempt nature of his hair the top of his head had become more of a white doormat than a hairstyle. There was a mare running orders up in the front, if you could say there was a front. It was more like a foal's lemonade stand, but instead there was a middle aged stallion doing some cooking in a ditch behind them. Whatever it was I hoped it was good. I looked through the menu, which was etched in pencil on a sheet of college ruled paper. I was caught between 'Chicken Croquettes' and 'Beef and Bell Pepper'. I picked the latter.

"Beef and Bell Pepper? That's a popular one. that'll be 15 bits."

I almost bit my tongue at the price. I hoofed the money over anyway though. It was then that I noticed out of the corner of my vision a pony sitting in the shade in a lawn chair. On his leg was a baseball bat, outfitted with barbed wire. No mistaking it, that's our Stallion. Just had to be sure though.

"So, who's the guy on third base?"

"Oh, that's Remmy, he makes sure everypony pays. You don't need to worry about him he's pretty chill."

Well fuck.

"While I'm waiting, mind answering a question?"

"Well, long as it's not personal sure."

"Do you know where I can find a pony named 'Silver Beans'? Heard he had some work."

"That's me." The middle aged pony on the grill chimed in with a thick backwoods country twine. "And by the way, I got nothin fit for a Stallion. Sorry pal."

"It's fine, I'm only stopping by."

"You sure you're stopping by? I've seen your flank around here for quite some time."

"You might've, I consider how long I've been here to be stopping by thank you."

"You sure overstay your welcome. Foods ready."

He tossed a plate of bell peppers in front of me. I didn't see any beef. I wouldn't have exactly named this 'Beef and Bell Peppers' if I was not ready to provide the beef portion. I didn't complain. I chowed down and waited for night.

I'd watched him from that window for just over three hours, and the sun was finally going down. The ponies had settled in before nighttime in the commons or their tents already since the only lights they had was the sun and candles. The ragtag restaurant had closed down after a dinner rush of three ponies that had completely exhausted their single grill and pan. After they'd packed their stuff up and counted the bits, they walked towards the club and commons. It wasn't payday yet I guess, since I didn't see any of the workers get any dough.

I'd already prepared by changing my clothes out for some scraps I got in the trash bins. I'd gotten a white hoodie and some sort of sweat pants with a drawstring. Both were long sleeved. I didn't bother with wearing my gloves, nor did I wear boots during this, I wanted to keep as much blood off of my real cloths as possible.

He walked along the main road with his baseball buddy and some other stallion who I hadn't gotten a good look at. Just as he passed my door I did a signal for Octavia, which she botched horribly. Instead of walking out of the corner she tripped and fell flat on her face in front of them.

"Octavia. You're supposed to be working, you lookin for a beating? Or you looking to get shafting?"

Well, he wasn't covert about his desires. Octavia had become completely red, probably not used to this in public. I quickly got Bellona to start screaming behind them. This worked at diverting all their attention and confusion in two directions. It was my time to shine. I bolted out from the door and knocked both guards in their faces with my outstretched fists at head level. They were both down cold. Beans had caught on and tried to run in the opposite direction, but instead he bumped into Bellona and fell to the ground.

On his way to get up, I decked him and punched my knife through his neck before he even hit the ground. He hadn't even screamed. As soon as we made contact with the deck I pulled the knife from his neck and stabbed him a couple of times in the torso, making sure that he was down. When I was done, I wiped the blade off with his shirt. It wasn't like it mattered, since the scraps I was wearing had become completely red. The guards saw literally nothing, so I quickly changed and tossed the cloths on one of the guards, who was still out cold.

I gathered my things, paid Mama a visit, and was off to Canterlot.

Author's Note

Decided to start shaping Cloud Dasher into the character that he was back a in the older work I did with him. I always intended to give him a sense of vigilante justice.