Prologue: Hunters in the Sky
PROLOGUE: HUNTERS IN THE SKY
Long ago, in a land of peace and harmony once known as Equestria, civilization bloomed. Magical technology and cooperation between the different races ruled the land, and all enjoyed the boons of the golden era...
But that was to change.
The two rulers of the lands, the sisters Luna and Celestia, both knew it was coming, of course. How could they not? They were the ones who had sealed IT away eons before the Golden Era. And now it was time to reap the seeds of chaos that had been sewn.
Sombra, dark sorcerer turned abomination, dictator, monster, murderer- All these names applied to what was coming. And, oh, did it prove its namesakes. Coming like a blitz into the provinces who were known as the Crystal Empire in apocrypha, now known as Germanea, he brought a tide of death and cruel domination, supported by his mind-controlled servants and droves of mercenaries. He quickly reestablished his reputation, and upon achieving total control of Germanea and the surrounding provinces, officially renamed them to the name which he had once deemed them all that time ago- the Crystal Empire. War, up until then a practically alien concept to the so-called “Golden Generation”, as the time would come to know them as, soon was declared upon the Empire. Unprepared and unwilling to raise a hand against anypony, the result was a slaughter on the battlefield and a disaster in the negotiations room.
Provinces like Istally and Neighpon split from Equestria and joined with the Empire, and so many more others were overtaken by the shining tide which swept across the now destabilized Equestria. The two sisters fought over the decision whether or not to fight back immediately, and eventually split their rules across two of the most isolated provinces possible. An island off the coast of Prance, and the entire group of provinces known as North Amareica. The United Lunar States and the Solar Empire, as they were now called, could only watch as what had formerly been prime examples of the glory their rule had brought upon the world collapsed and used to make weapons of war. Prance, Ponyland, Braylgium, the Neigtherlands, Danemark, and so many more became occupied in the ‘lightning war’. Soon, the fighting spread to the massive continent of Africolt, of places like Mareocco, Zanzebrar, and it only kept getting more vicious.
Eventually, the sisters had no choice but to strike back, and the result was the most horrific, bloody war in all of Equestrian history up to then. The Solar Empire attacked first, and following a shock offensive by Neighpon upon the ULS territory, they immediately began their own offensive.
Our tale begins high above Prance, late at night, with a massive swarm of ULS bombers, and their fighter escorts, fresh out on a bombing run. More specifically, one particular squadron. The leader the renown, four-times-over ace Rainbow “Danger” Dash, and her friends (mostly rookies) Scootaloo, Lightning Dust, and Ditzy ‘Derpy’ Doo as wingponies..
“Scoots, do you see anything around here? It’s all empty on my end.” I squinted back towards my wingpony as the seconds ticked by, and waited for her reply. Did she forget where the radio button was?
“Negative, cap, it’s same-old, same old...” A thin note of nervousness threaded through her voice. I looked back, ignoring the massive formation of B-24 Liberators below (more resembling bees in force than any sort of aircraft), and tried to see if I could see her face through the darkness of the night, barely lit by Luna’s moon.
I couldn’t blame her for being nervous-- No thanks to the combined well-oiled war machines of the United Lunar States and the Solar Empire, her plane still hadn’t arrived at the base, so she was forced to keep with a practically ancient P-51B bristling with twenty-millimeter Hispano Mark IIs,(Solar Empire’s guns, and an older mark at that, as opposed to our own 12.7mm AN/M2s) which had been inexplicably sitting about within the base’s hangar instead of melted down for spare parts. This thing had been summarily nicknamed by her as the ‘Foghorn Leghorn’, as opposed to the practically brand-spanking-new P-51Ds that the rest of us were flying.
Returning my view to the front, my mind began to wander around the environment. The clouds were thick tonight, or rather morning, the sliver of moon currently visible barely lit the place up more than pitch black.. Thank Luna these B-24s were radar-equipped with their PFDs. Earlier in the war, we never would’ve been up here in the first place at a time usually referred to by ponies not in the military as ‘I should be sleeping right now.’ A crackle in the headset signified Lightning Dust’s contribution to reviving the conversation. Her plane was directly behind me and to the right of Derpy. “Kind of nice out here, huh girls?”
Scootaloo, right on time, responded with her own quip. “Eh, reminds me of Nightmare Night. I feel like somepony is gonna jump out at me at any moment.”
Laughter rung out from the whole formation at that one. I immediately found myself reverting to a grimmer attitude. I thumbed my radio. “Well, squirt, don’t jinx us yet. We’ve still got to get back home, and I doubt the ULS will appreciate it if the Crystals scratch the paint...”
“Jeez, RD, I don’t see any ye-”
Derpy’s voice suddenly overrode Scootaloo’s, the screech of the feedback making me wince. “Dashie! Girls! 12 high!” And just as she said, there were ten dark specks barely visible in the sky. I tightened my grip on the flightstick. “Roger that, I see ‘em. Stick to the clouds, only move in if they’re going for the bombers. Got it?” Affirmation came from the three other pilots, and we moved as one.
The squadron as a whole kept back from the group for scant minutes, and I looked over the enemy as we waited for them to make their move.
My initial estimate was correct, it seems. Ten Fw 190s, all of which were done up in the black-and-red coatings that were typical of a Crystal Empire warplane. I tried to remember the hierarchy of their system- Conscripts flying the followers, while the mercenaries were the captains? Or was this all-mercenaries? Or the typical full conscript squadron? This train of thought was rudely interrupted by the first two 190s diving for the bombers, and I grinned in anticipation of the combat about to come. “Derpy, Dust, you two are up! Scoots and I will get any of the others who go after you! Get on it!”
As Derpy’s grey-and-red Mustang nicknamed the “Battle Muffin” and Dust’s own sky-blue-and-orange ‘Thundering Lightning” both tore off from the formation, I cut my throttle back a bit. Wait for it..
Just as planned, the other enemy fighters rolled and dived down towards the two pilots. Here we go.
We both throttled to the maximum and pulled hard to the left to begin our intercept course, and before I knew it, we were into the fray. Rolling into inverted flight, we joined the dive and lined up our shots. Scootaloo stuck to my wing and lined up her own shots as I pulled my trigger. My Brownings spat 12.7mm fury towards the Fw 190 in my sights, and I knew I must have gotten a lucky shot on the fuel tank, because the aircraft immediately proceeded to burst into flames. He wasn’t coming back up anytime soon. I tore off the target, pulled an inverted loop to aim my nose at another foe, both my guns and theirs blazing as I just barely avoided the collision with them.
A glint of silver caught my eye to the left, and I rolled to the right. Scootaloo’s HEF rounds ripped the opponent to shreds, and I began to turn back towards the formation. As I did, I watched Lightning Dust’s left wing burst into flames.
My second youngest pilot’s voice came over the radio, “I’m losing control! The canopy’s jammed, I can feel the fire, oh Celesti-”
A chill went down my spine as the craft blew into a shower of flaming aluminum. My grip tightened on the flightstick, and a cry went over the radio as the Battle Muffin blew apart the Focke-Wulf who had killed her friend. “No! Dash, get clear! Dive!”
I shook off the shock and immediately took my First Lieutenant’s advice, and pitched my nose down viciously, red temporarily filling my vision with the speed of which I executed the maneuver. In my rear view mirror, the plane which had been pursuing me was also pelleted by the blonde mare’s rounds, initially attempting to evade before suddenly jerking and slowly proceeding to caneer off course. A pilot shot. I’d need to congratulate her on the accuracy when we got back to base.
Time was moving slowly, and as if in a dream, my head slowly tilted down, initially not recognizing the silver speck down below. Then I snapped back to reality. I recognized that shade of aged aluminum, and even from this distance, I could see the small flames coming from the wings. Two specks behind her, black and red- More pilots!
Scootaloo yelled into the radio as she jinked the plane around while still maintaining the dive, attempting to avoid having the twenty-millimeter Minengeschoß of the Fw 190s deal even more damage to her wings. “Hey, cap! You still with us? I could use a bit of help!”
“Roger that, squirt!”
“Don’t call me squirt!”
Ignoring that last comment, I banked my plane just in time to see the bombers heading for home. Their mission was done. But I still had to get my remaining pilots back home, safe and sound. I again pitched down towards the fighters, the gyroscopic sight automatically displaying the lead amount. I didn’t need it.
I squeezed the trigger as hard as I could, and the guns spoke my rage for me. One of the Fw 190’s wings vanished in a hail of armour piercing incendiary tracer rounds, and I winced as I felt the impact of a few of the other one’s rounds on my own aircraft. I pulled my stick back hard and clenched my teeth at the high-Gs, praying like Tartarus that the P-51 wouldn’t fall apart under the pressure, and climbed away. Thankfully, Scoots managed to get out of the line of fire with that bit of interference, and turned around to pay back in kind.
It was about then that I noticed the hostile reinforcements. More enemies had shown up, and the count now rested at roughly twenty Bf 109s and the remaining five Fw 190s. We were in for a fight.
Derpy ripped into them from above and to the side, startling me with the speed of her assault, pumping two of the 109s full of her own omni-purpose ammunition belt (consisting of a delicious mix of M8, M20, and M23 rounds) before they could even blink. Scootaloo played chicken with a Fw 190, and her 20mms ripped it to shreds, but not before they took her rudder, I saw a 109 coming in to finish the job, and I desperately swung my plane in so I could wound the damn thing before it could attack.
But the BF 109’s rounds struck true, even as it dove to avoid an additional punishment for daring to attack my sister in all but blood. I watched the flaming P-51B go down and down, one of the wings losing structural integrity and falling off. All I could do was blink back tears as the world once more turned to the consistency of mud, and watch as the now uncontrollable P-51 spun and spun, and felt a breath I didn’t realize I was holding go out as the canopy fell away and and a grey-suited form followed by a parachute immediately ripping out from the confinements of the pack. Scootaloo drifted down towards a hostile territory, and I once more snapped back to reality. We still had a battle to finish.
My mind sprung into action as I swung hard to the right, narrowly missing the majority of the sickly-green tracers which had previously been about to hit me, and I thumbed my radio. “Hey, Derpy, your captain needs some support, if you don’t mind!” I fought for space, trying to pull back on the stick. “Derpy? This isn’t fun-” It was about then that I looked back and noticed there was a gaping hole in the fuselage just about where the radio equipment would usually be. “Uh oh.”
The mare in question dove out of the sky and scored two more kills (she’d be catching up to my kill count before this is over) before pitching up once more and angling her nose towards me. I knew this tactic- Meet head on, and I’d check out so she could blow my pursuers to pieces. Righting myself, I punched the throttle in preparation for the move.
Of course, that was about when Murphy took his time to enforce his laws.
The previously uniform buzzing of my engine, and all of the sounds of my aircraft in general, went completely silent. The P-51D sailed through the air as I watched my prop seize up. For the third time that day, the world seemed to slow down. Everything seemed hazy. Through the blades, I saw Derpy’s shocked face as my nose began to pitch down, and time began to return to normal as a few more green tracers rocketed past.
This final leisurely moment was violently interrupted as several of the 13mm bullets ripped their way through my back, out my stomach, and into the gauges of the dash. My world shrunk down to a space of approximately the size of the cockpit, as the only sense that could even be processed anymore by my body was PAIN. Blurred vision guided my shaking, blood-covered hands as the plane recovered from the loss of control usually associated with a blackout. albeit still falling out of the sky at a rate that most would find alarming. At this point, where it hurt too much for me to speak, think, or just do anything in general, I saw bright orange ahead of me.
The once-proud Foghorn Leghorn, pride of Scootaloo, now sat ripped to shreds and set ablaze, having torn a jagged scar across the land as it dragged to a halt. All I could hear was the rushing wind, and thank Luna that I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Wait, no, that’s a bad thing. Oh, there it is.
I pulled the stick back, barely able to maintain a grip, every twitch of a muscle causing my entire body to scream out in anguish (my own screams were masked by the wind, thankfully; I doubt Scootaloo would’ve been very proud of me if she had heard me right now), and miraculously managed to pull the aircraft level.
Well, almost level.
My right wingtip hit the ground just as my nose barely missed it, I had the feeling of simultaneously getting kicked right in the spine by a member of the Apple family and being hit by a freight train propelled by an extremely angry dragon at the same time, everything went red-pain-oh-please-why--
Then, everything went black.
Author's Note
So I figured that I would try something new, actually got a bit of inspiration from an old Black and White movie with Kennedy in it depicting a WWII nighttime bomber crew getting shot down over Germany made back in the 1950's.
Hope you all enjoy it, I tried to hit the emotional cords, I may have under-used Lightning Dust but I didn't want to drag out the chapter with more aerial combat than necessary. And thanks to the fine editing skills of Tackheart and his technical know how behind WWII aircraft (Though that isn't all he knows)!
Chapter 1: Stranded
“Hey Rainbow, Rainbow!” I heard Scootaloo yell as she ran up to me with her wings buzzing behind her.
“Hey squirt, what’s up?” I asked as I came out of my near nap, completely dumbfounded and half in a daze.
“He replied, that’s what!” She screamed, causing me to have to poke my ear to equalize the pressure.
“Okay, okay, settle down and spill, preferably with less volume.” I ordered as I pointed to the spot next to me under the mighty oak tree.
“Remember that bomber pilot I met awhile back, during the Hearth's Warming Dance?” She asked, to which I nodded in reply, stifling a yawn. “Well, he said that it’s a date!”
“Wait, what? Date?” I asked sitting up a bit more as I turned to face her.
“Yeah, a couple of months ago I told him if he ever got the time off that I’d love to go on a date with him, and well, look!” She resumed shouting as she bounced with joy.
“I took the paper from her after she settled down a bit and stopped vibrating,
‘Dear Scootaloo,
It would be my utmost pleasure to take you into town this coming Friday for that date we had talked about. I’ll meet you at the south gate to Air Base that morning, if you are available and nothing comes up for my crew.
Yours,
Rumble’
I re-read it a couple more times before handing it back to my young friend who had a massive smile plastered on her face, “How did the letter get here?”
“He was already here this morning before we got up, his crew had to land and refuel, so he left this note where I would find it.” She replied, her eyes practically pleading with mine.
“We’ve got an escort op scheduled three days prior, after that nothing.” I said, neither confirming nor denying her the ability to go on this date.
“Understood, so if nothing comes up?” She asked, and yet again I nodded.
For a time we both sat there saying nothing, her barely containing her glee, and myself letting Celestia’s midday sun warm me thoroughly as we both watched a flight of P-47s take off. I smiled to myself and gave a small wave to a dark grey and electric blue one piloted by the second best in the squadron and a dear friend who I had a plan for later that night.
“Captain!” A voice yelled in a near begging tone, I felt myself being tugged on as warmth spread through my body. “Cap….? Rainbow Dash………..?” The voice repeated this time with much less vigor, “Dammit, why, oh Luna why?” I recognized the voice now as belonging to Scootaloo as I moved to pat where I thought her head was, only succeeding in finding air.
“Scoots?” I moaned as I opened my eyes to a terrifying sight. I had managed to crash land in a rut, both my wings were missing and the prop was a good four or so feet closer than I would have liked. Directly above me with a look of pure joy was Scootaloo with a large rock in her hands, “Whats up with the rock?”
“Rainbow… You’re alive!” She yelled as she threw the rock away and gripped my shoulder, “We need to get out of here before they come looking!” She said, trying to unbuckle me from my seat.
“Where…? Oh… Yeah that would be a good idea squirt.” I said as I tried to help her help me.
“Don’t move, your wings are both broken and I think your legs aren’t in much better shape.” She said in a panicked tone as she managed to undo the harness holding me in place and began to pull me out of the plane wreck.
I immediately felt pain in my right leg, but chose to tough it out and walk on with her supporting me on my left side. We both managed to get to a cluster of nearby bushes a few seconds before Crystal Soldiers converged on my former craft.
“Überlebende?” I heard one yell.
“Wo ist der Betreiber?” Another asked as we both tried to lay as flat as possible on the hard ground under the bush.
“Suche in der Nähe!” The first one said, this time moving his boot a mere two feet from my face.
The other boots in my vision clicked together as I heard four separate footfalls begin fanning out in search of us,I also knew that if they found us we would be dead, or worse. Looking over slightly I could see Scootaloo silently mouthing a prayer that they wouldn’t find us as she remained stock still. Slowly, ever so slowly I placed my hand on her back and gave a small reassuring smile to let her know that all would be well.
We stayed like that for hours, neither one of us daring to move as my fighter sat before us in its crater. The last soldier had left a few minuets ago, but we didn’t want to push our luck. Looking again towards Scootaloo I saw that she had a multitude of small scrapes and bruises on her face and tearing through her flight suit.
“Hey, you doing okay?” I asked in a near whisper.
“Yeah… yeah.” She replied as she got up slowly and checked around us before standing up fully, “Doing fine, just found a tree on the way down and got stuck for a few minutes, by the time I got free you were falling out of the sky.”
I nodded in a silent reply as I too got up slowly, though my speed wasn’t so much for caution as it was the total amount of pain I was in.
“Question is though, how are you holding up Cap?” She asked, a omnipresent frown upon her face as she helped me out of the bush.
“Aside from the obvious I’d have to say that something is wrong with my right leg, hurts when I put pressure on it.” I replied, wincing as I did just what I said.
With her support we both hobbled over to my fighter, two minutes later I had the rear compartment open and was grabbing what emergency supplies we had to our names.
“Think we could get to the Foghorn Leghorn?” I asked, though to my surprise my friend shook her head.
“On my way down I think I saw a barn close to where it hit, I don’t think so, not in our condition.” She replied as she checked the supplies.
Together we had two loaded .45 cal M-1911 pistols, a couple of knives, four spare ammo clips, two MREs, A flashlight, one canteen filled with water, a first aid kit, compass, and a map of the Crystal Empire. It wasn’t much, but if used properly could very well get us home, or at least to friendly territory.
“So, which way?” I asked, leaning on my plane.
“We need to go south east, I heard that we have a small armor division courtesy of the Solar Empire trying to grab a foothold in the Crystal Empire’s territory, last I heard they were doing fairly well.” Scootaloo responded as she put the map in its holster and strapped the pack on her back.
“Sounds like a plan.” I smiled, a little grim, but it was a smile nonetheless that she gladly returned before supporting my side. I turned my head one last time to my fighter plane, grateful that it had managed to save my life before we hobbled along towards what we hoped was a friendly controlled area.
We had been hobbling along for a couple of hours through whatever kind of foliage we could find. Neither of us had said much of anything else, both in fear of getting found, and out of the sheer concentration while we walked on to not fall. Everytime we came across a road we would find a spot where we had good long stretches on either side, so we would know that we had enough time to cross without getting plowed over by a motor car.
Eventually we came to the edge of the populated area, though scarcely so as it was mostly wooded, and found a rather large stream. When I said stream I should rephrase, it was a raging river, far too deep for us to cross on hoof and in our current conditions. Thus we had to use the small covered bridge and pray that there were no soldiers or anyone else around to see us.
Unfortunately for us, there were two guards walking up and down the bridge.
“Cap, wait here, I’ll take one out nice and quiet and when the other comes to check on him, well, you get the picture.” Scootaloo said as she and I both hobbled at a quickened pace down the side of the river bank and laid on our stomachs.
“And if this fails?” I whispered to her as I tried my best to get even lower than her since I couldn’t very well fight or even stand on my own..
“Well, then we can consider ourselves SOL…” She whispered back with a sly grin before she reached for her knife.
In a span of seconds the first soldier, a buck with a tarnished green crystal hide, had received a face full of cold steel. He never even got the chance to scream before she quickly yet quietly lowered him to the ground and crouched in a ready position. I gave her a nod of approval before grabbing the dead soldier and rummaging through his equipment, one can’t be picky when it comes to survival.
“Quarts wo bist du?” The second soldier asked, her voice taking on a tone of worry.
When she rounded the corner and saw us it seemed as if time itself had slowed to a crawl, her eyes were wide with fear as she reached for her pistol, but she didn’t move nearly fast enough.
“Guten abend” Scootaloo said as she jammed her knife into the side of dark blue crystal mare's head and gave it a twist, killing her before she could scream. “Kinda feel bad about that.” She added as she closed the mare’s eyes before looking at me.
“Why?” I asked, probably the most stupid question I ever could.
“Well, they were just kind of minding their own business, what if that had been us?” She asked, frowning in thought.
“Simple enough, for one it wasn’t us,and for two… they would have killed us if they had found us and we hadn’t, well, you hadn’t killed them first… Survival.” I replied as I slowly closed the eyes of the first dead soldier.
“Reasons I chose to be in a plane instead of on the ground…” Scootaloo added before taking what she could from the mare and helping me up. “Let’s get out of here.”
I nodded my reply as we hobbled back up the small slope and managed to make it halfway down the bridge before we noticed lights coming from behind us. From what I could tell it wasn’t too bright so they had yet to lay eyes upon us so we hobbled as fast as we could before jumping off the side and onto the opposing bank of the river, luckily going under the bridge and providing ample cover.
“Think they saw us?” Scootaloo asked.
“Think they will check for the bodies?” I asked giving her a worried look as I drew my pistol.
We watched with held breaths as the car drove over the bridge and stopped on our side of the river. Three pairs of boots hit the ground in audible haste as the three pairs began to walk around in search of the pair of soldiers we had already dispatched.
“Wo sind die Wächter?” One voice asked as we heard the hooffalls halt above us.
"Ich weiß nicht, Herr, können wir sie nicht finden." Another voice replied from nearby, close enough for both of us to try and squeeze as far into the shadows that we could manage.
“Melden Sie dies ihren Vorgesetzten , wir haben keine Zeit mehr , hier zu verschwenden.” The first voice stated before they all audibly turned and marched back to the motor car and drove off.
We sat in silence a moment praising Luna for her glorious dark night concealing us from our foes before we climbed back up the slope and hobbled our way to the tree line and agricultural areas beyond it. It wasn’t even a full thirty minutes later that Celestia's sun began to rise over the horizon.
“Hey should we stop someplace that they won’t look, you know so we don’t get spotted in the middle of the day?” Scootaloo asked as she paused a moment when we reached a small secluded clearing.
“Yeah, that’s actually a good idea.” I replied, my breath having left me during the crash had never actually returned, thus I was panting slightly.
“We are fairly far from any roads from what I can tell, in fact so long as we stay in this forest we should be alright.” She added as she helped me sit up against a tree without squashing my broken wings.
“Can you take a look at my wings Scoots, I think they may be worse than I initially thought?” I asked, not even trying to look at them myself as I merely looked at her.
What I saw however almost made my heart skip a beat, the look of apprehension on her face and sorrow spoke everything I needed to know.
“Thanks squirt, you can forget I asked.” I said as I closed my eyes, “I’m just going to sleep a bit, wake me up in a couple hours so I can take over watch.” To which the world instantly faded away.
Author's Note
Okay so this chapter was fun to write, though admittedly the German was difficult to add as I tried my best (Sorry if I got any of the translations wrong, I took Spanish when I was in school). Will Dash ever fly again? Where are they going to go next? Will they find friends or only foes? We can only read on to find out!
And now we welcome chaospaladin as my new editor/Proof Reader
