Broken Hearts And Broken Minds

The Army took until 2106 to return to Appleloosa. As they marched closer, I noticed that there seemed to be fewer ponies than when we started the day. They looked beaten and bent up, and I could see that something definitely had happened to them, but they were still waving an Equestrian flag, so they hadn't been defeated. They silently walked into the camp and started cleaning the turquoise blood off of everything.

I saw Purple Quartz lying on a tarp, being carried by four pegasi. I immediately ran over to them and made sure he was ok, crashing through the ponies in front of me. I was told he had been bitten in the face by a Changeling during a fight, but not before killing six of them first. I decided to offer him a chance to join the skirmishers, knowing how difficult it would be to kill six Changeling soldiers alone, especially in the middle of a battle. Anypony with killing skills like that could be very useful in a small team. I followed the medics to the tiny, insufficient hospital and waited around for him to notice me.

It took him about five minutes to finally realise that I was there. He turned his head to look at me, and I saw the injury. There were two grooves from his ear to his jaw, and a clean area where his helmet was protecting him.

"Oh, it's you. Hi." He greeted me.

"That looks comfortable." I said sarcastically.

"The injury or the bed?" He asked, smiling. "I don't know which is worse."

"In that case, I'll avoid the hospital and just wrap my wing up and hope it heals." I said back.

"So what are you here for?"

"I heard that you killed six changelings."

"It was more like four, but I'll let them believe that."

"I remember how you said you wanted to be in a flying unit, so as the new leader of the skirmishers, I wanted to invite you to come fly with us."

He paused for a moment, a smile stretching across his face.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Now I have permission to pull you out of your current unit if you want me to, so if you don't want to be on the ground, you can come with us instead."

"Well..." He stuttered "...Sure. That would be great."

"Most excellent." I told him. "If they let you out of this place today, We'll be in the tavern anytime we're not working or sleeping. Meet us there, then you can take me to your commanding officer, and I can tell him the great news.

"Thank you so much... Uh." He stopped. "I forgot your name." He whispered embarrassedly.

"Air Marshall Wing Nut." I told him.

"Sir." He finished, smiling as I left the hospital.

My wing began to sting, and I remembered why I left the tavern in the first place. I ran over to Total War's tent and entered without warning, a sudden and intense lust to accomplish something engulfed me. There were no guards outside.

"Wing Nut?" He asked, noticing me immediately.

"Sir, when you were gone, a group of five Changelings attacked Appleloosa. They had spears."

"I know. We ran into a lot more than five when we were out in the desert today. Is this what you stormed into my tent for?" He asked with displeasure.

"Yes, sir. We killed them." I responded, straightening my neck and looking ahead.

"Ok. Then get out."

"Yes, sir." I said, running out of the tent and regretting my decision to enter it in the first place.

I wandered around in limbo for a bit before thinking of something else to do. I trotted over to Appleloosa's general store and bought Wanderlust a tacky new green and white tent. I made it just in time too. They closed at 2130, and I left at 2127. I brought the tent over to where Wanderlust's was and pitched right up against it. It may have been an ugly green and white, non regulation tent, but it was certainly better than having the entire roof torn in half. I moved my things into the sleeping space, and I felt the urge to accomplish something go away.

I relaxed on top of my sleeping bag for an hour or so, hugging the photo of Aerodrome, and relaxing in the lamplight before finally physically crashing after this long day. My wing no longer hurt, they must have barely wounded it at all. Suddenly, Wanderlust poked her head into the tent and looked at me. I put the photo down and sat up on my bag

"I got us a new tent." I said proudly and simply. "I didn't know if you wanted me touching your things, so I left them in the old one."

"No, I don't want you touching them. But thank you for the tent." She said, leaving, grabbing her things, returning, and dropping them on the tent floor. A trumpet brayed, ordering everyone to go into night time awareness mode, where we can do anything we want, as long as we're not emitting overly bright light or making loud noise. She lay down on her sleeping bag across from me, as I picked Aerodrome's photo back up and continued to hug it. I eventually drifted off to sleep.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by a series of distant explosions. I recognized the sound from the airfield back in Cloudsdale. It was the sound of an autocannon. A short while ago, weapons designers came up with this awesome side-mounted projectile launcher. You would wear a harness with the cannon on your left and a case on the right, and you would pull a short string attached to the weapon to fire it. It would launch 30 mm wide metal cones at over two hundred miles per hour. Hearing them being used outside of a testing area made me very nervous.

Wanderlust woke up at the sound of the fourth explosion.

"Is that an autocannon?" She asked after stopping to listen to the booms for a moment.

"I think so." I whispered back. "Do you want to go check it out?"

"You mean try to find out where it's coming from?"

"Yeah."

"Is your wing okay?"

"There is a tear in one of my feathers, but I can barely even feel it. I'll wrap it in a cloth."

"You do that. I'll gather everypony." She said, leaving the tent to go find the rest of the team. I grabbed a long red strip that held the tent in a tight bundle in the packaging when I bought it, and wrapped it around my slightly damaged feather. I assembled my armor around my body and slipped my helmet on, noticing how well the red strip went with my armor's colors.

A few minutes later, we were low above the ground flying Southwest, towards the sound of the autocannon fire. Wanderlust was on my right and Grayscale was smiling over to my left. None of us saw anything on the horizon in the bright moonlight. We circled the desert once, flying around a huge rock before the firing stopped, the last boom echoing through the desert. Then Shellshock saw something.

"Hey!" He said to us quietly, pointing over at a unusually steep sand mound.

"Good catch." Wanderlust said back. I adjusted my heading and flew over to it, the rest of the team following closely.

We landed ten yards away from the mound, all of us flipping our blades out except Light Wind, who instead chose to stand behind everypony and do nothing. That was ok though, he was very young. We walked around the mound to discover that it was emitting a horrendous smell, and jabbing it with a blade only got my weapon covered in a green gel-like substance a few inches under the sand. The six of us began to dig at the mound and after a moment, uncovered what looked like a changeling egg sac.

"What the buck..." I said, leaning in to take a closer look at the green pouch. I found a window on one side, and inside was not a changeling. It was a pony.

I stabbed the pouch and slashed a hole in it, the mare inside crawling out to the sand clumsily. She was shaking and gasping for air, and had an expression that thanked us for saving her before she opened her mouth.

"Are you okay?" I asked, crouching down in front of the unicorn.

"Nobel... gas..." She said, still catching her breath.

"Take your time." I told her, trying to be as comforting as possible. "You're safe with us."

After a minute of silence, the mare caught her breath and began to speak smoothly.

"Nobel Gas." She said. "My group leader was killed by a changeling spear just South of here. I was magically incapacitated by them. I called for help, but everypony else just left me for dead. It's so hard to breathe inside those things, you should get everypony else out." She said, pointing to the mound. We dug up and cut them out carefully. One pony in particular caught my eye. She was a blue mare with a white mane. It was Flying Vee. I cut her out and helped her stand up, while the rest of the team freed more of them at a fast pace.

"We thought you were dead." I told her. She ignored me. "You were replaced by a Changeling..." She ignored me still. "It tried to kill us." She turned and stared at me with distain.

"What do you want?" She asked me angrily.

"To know what happened to you!" I yelled in response. The desert insects around us seemed to silence completely. It became unnaturally quiet.

"Finish getting them out." I ordered the team.

"Stop. That's my team." She said to me. They ignored her. "You have no place telling them what to do." I looked at her with an expression of disbelief.

"I am a high ranking officer." I said to her in a poisonous, quiet voice. "If I-" She cut me off.

"I don't have to listen to-"

"I am still talking!" I screamed in her face, interrupting her back. In Equestria's Royal Army, you could only interrupt an officer once. After that, the officer would be allowed to kill you, so she had no choice but to listen. "If I feel like I need to take over this team, I can. I don't understand why you think you can treat me like this, especially after I saved your life."

She picked up a rock from the sand and bashed me in the unprotected part of my nose suddenly, knocking me sideways. I felt my snout crush and blunt pains shot up into my head. The unicorn we freed first went into alert mode and restrained her. It took a moment for me to reorient myself.

"What in the name of Celestia is your problem, mare?" I asked her as she thrashed against the magic holding her back.

"You are my problem!" She yelled. "I hate you Wing Nut!"

"What did he ever do to you?" Wanderlust yelled from behind me as I wiped the blood from my snout with my hoof.

"He showed his perfect, skilled, little flank to me! And he only uses his skills to benefit himself! When I was getting captured by the Changelings, I yelled and cried for help. And nopony came!" She yelled. The cannons began firing again, surprising a recently freed earth pony, and making me uneasy as if something was moving in on us from a distance.

"We have to go." I announced to everypony, including the recently freed soldiers. We all took about ten seconds to prepare to leave. the soldiers simply stood up, and the skirmishers only had to flip their blades in. I counted the number of ponies we had after all of the pod breaking. We had six more pegasi, one unicorn, and one earth pony.

"Alright, Shellshock and Over-G, you carry that unicorn. You two..." I pointed to two of the freed pegasi, who were still catching their breath. "You carry the earth pony." They stared at me pleadingly. "C'mon, just this last stretch and I'll personally request that you go home." They still silently stared at me. "...I'm an Air Marshall." I finished. They both sprang up into the air immediately, knowing that I may actually be able to send them home. The cannon booms seemed to get closer.

"Let's go." Wanderlust said just loudly enough for everypony to hear.
We took off into the night and flew low over the sand dunes and around the massive rock back towards Appleloosa. The flight back was uneventful, despite us all being nervous about and searching for the source of the autocannon fire. We landed at the campsite after a brief three minutes of arguing with a night watch pony that was standing guard. Flying Vee had stayed behind. I showed the soldiers where my and Wanderlust's old tent were, inviting them to sleep anywhere they could fit in either of them. Three of the pegasi found their friend's tents to sleep in, three of them fit in the old shredded tent, and the other two ponies slept in the big green and white tent in my sleeping bag. I had to fit into Wanderlust's with her.