Chapter 1 - The Fresh Recruits
The Darkest Days
By Kamitorrorga
A fiction of human aggressiveness in Equestria.
"Hello and welcome to the front, recruits! Who here joined voluntarily?!"
A brown pegasus with black hair stood on an improvised podium in the middle of a ruined town. There was a light drizzle coming down, making a sort of mist that coated water on everyone's issued coats, helmets, and pretty much everything else they were assigned.
The pegasus stallion held a clipboard in his hand, with a pen in the other. His pony adapted M-1918 stahlhelm had two holes for his ears in the back of it, while also bearing some 10 tallies etched in chalk on there alongside a shield with the image of the Equestrian sun inside of it. He looks back and forth across the crowd.
There were gryphons, dragons, ponies, and even humans mixed in with this crowd of sorry looking recruits. Some of them were female too, but that was going to mean nothing on the front. All these recruits, maybe numbering at five hundred to six hundred, would probably be mowed down at some point, only to be replaced by the near infinite reserves Princess Celestia somehow pulled them out of.
A few hands and claws went up, a bit more than last time last month. Usually, the volunteers volunteer to get into this, and often, from his experience, their simple dedication can get them to rank up fast, being competent high rankings. In battle, their dedication is in the form of their threshold of how long they can bring themselves to still fight in the hellhole that is the front.
That was something Thunder Clap always did out of curiosity. He joined voluntarily, and now, he's a corporal. Already, he exceeded expectations, including the life expectancy the staff of his regiment set out for the group he came with, which was about 10-20 days. Go beyond that, they say, and you are expected to live dramatically longer then all of the others who just came. He'd been on these battlefields for three years already.
"Alright! Roll call!" the air was pretty quiet, save for the booms and cracking of distant gunfire and artillery. He called roll for all those who were supposed to come, all of them having come by train half along the way from Ponyville, where they usually train new recruits. Then, they get off and march over, for the engineers gave up building new train tracks everytime the darned Niberian airforce bombed them to hell. It was expected that some would desert, and those that were absent in the roll call were considered AWOL and would be tried on grounds for desertion, punishment was usually being forcefully put back onto the front with a blackmark, but some others were executed.
A gryphon, a familiar one at that, came up to Thunder as he called roll. "Zunder, one of ze rekruits are zrowing up in one of ze houses, medic suspects influenza. What do ve do?" the pegasus corporal looked at one of his trusted friends, Lance Corporal Zucker. A gryphon born in the Germane region of Equestria, Zucker was also another soldier who had been in the front longer then expected, almost two years.
Currently, Thunder was incharge of the recruits, so he had to deal with whatever the fresh recruits did. "Quarantine him, or her, whatever it is. Keep the recruit away from all the others. We dont need an influenza epidemic." he gestured with his free hand, the gryphon nodding and walking off. He looked back at the clipboard, and saw he still had 300 more to go. Sighing, he goes back to the roll call.
The door closes with a slam as the wind outside, coupled with now heavy rain, sucked the door out to close. Thunder walked through the hallway of the house he was assigned to sleeping in for the duration they stayed at this town. Zucker, a gryphon, two dragons, and three ponies lived here aswell, most of them being corporals or at best, a sergeant, as in the case of Sergeant Gilda from the Gryphon Territories.
He walked, dripping wet and leaving wet prints with his boots that extended up to the bend of his legs, towards the fireplace of the house, where he saw Zucker eating out of a soup tin, along with Sergeant Gilda looking out of the window on a chair. The two dragons were sleeping on their cots that were in the living room, since there wasnt anymore room upstairs due to the other rooms of the house having been blown to pieces in an air raid on the town.
The sound of a hum escapes from behind Zuckers beak, which was full of potato soup, as he put down the soup tin and spoon and walked over to Thunder.
"Zunder! How ver ze rekruits?" his friend gave a rather rare smile in these dark days, which brightened Thunder up alittle bit. He saw Gilda snap her head to the left as she eyed him, a smile growing on her beak.
"Thunder! My favorite corporal and non-dweeb. How was the fresh produce?" she emphasized was for some reason, but it didnt matter. He liked it when she said fresh produce because of instead of the humans saying of "fresh meat", it sounded alittle less morbid and more inline with the planet's intelligent species being mostly vegetable eaters.
"It went... decent. I got the recruits into the houses, some were frustrating, some were scared, some were already exhibiting signs of trench foot. The usual. But this time... Its just..." Thunder sighs as he wiped his eye with a hand.
"I think we're getting younger and younger soldiers, guys. I met a seventeen year old in the ranks today and he was scared as Tartarus. He said he was drafted, and I tried to get him a good room and tried to get him to calm down. I set him with a few veterans I think will be able to sort him out." The two gryphons look at eachother, worried. In contrast to Gilda's white head feathers, Zucker had charcoal black feathers with red tips.
"What was the youngest last time?" asked Gilda, who kept her arms relaxed at the sides of her chest. Thunder tapped a finger on his chin, as Zucker pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, lighting the cigarette and mounting it between the top and bottom of his beak.
Sighing, Thunder resigns his reluctance to say it. "About, the same ish, seventeen, but this time, there were ten others with him. Not all of them were as scared, and this one was a special case, but it shows we are beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel. He was a pony too, while the others were gryphons, dragons, humans, even a donkey, which is rather rare." Thunder groaned as he walked over to a camp chair, sitting on its canvas seat that was above the air between the crossed legs of the chair.
There was a pot hanging nearby the fireplace, filled with soup as evidenced by its open top. The potato soup was probably Flash's work, one of the dragons sleeping on the cot. Thunder looks back at Flash, a female dragon who was primarily green on her top scales and light green on her belly.
She was a corporal, like Thunder, but had served longer and was almost as experience as Gilda. She had served 4 years in the war, while Gilda served all five of the war, which is a number that is inevitably going to rise, and also already had served about 5 more years outside of the war.
Thunder reached behind him, unclipping his soup tin with the spoon attached and walked over to the soup pot, which had a ladle inside. He grabbed the ladle, pouring a full load of soup into his tin, walking back to his seat as the two gryphons went to sit by him on other chairs. Zucker threw his cigarette down, smashing it and rubbing it into the floor with his boot sole. He took the soup tin he used to be eating out of, resuming what he used to do.
Gilda got some soup as well, sitting back on her chair. Silence, except the snoring of the dragons, the sipping of soup from spoons, the crackling of the fire, and the constant drone of rain outside were the only things there.
"Say, Gilda, whats our next move? Have you heard anything?" Gilda snapped her head towards Thunder, smacking her tongue within her beak. She sighs, taking another sip of soup.
"From what I got from a higher up, we might be pushing towards a Niberian weakspot, but I dont trust em. Apparently, the Niberians are just waging a war of attrition, waiting for us to charge forward, encircle us, and then either starve us or kill us like dogs. The dweebs are immoral, I tell you what." Zucker put a claw up, only his index claw as a sign of agreement. Thunder mumbled his agreement as well, taking another sip of soup.
"Zose rekruits von't last against zose Niberians. Zome say zere are zese special Niberian divisions called ze "Blackwatch" that exhibit no mercy and mow down divisions like a combine on a field." Zucker threw his right claw up, balling it in a fist as he mentions the combine simile. An "oof" escapes the muzzle of Thunder.
"Poor bastards get drafted and its almost guaranteed that they'll die." Gilda commented on the recruits, then looking up, as if waiting for an idea to come up.
"Yeah, but thats life, and life isnt fair. My question is, why dont the princesses, them being gods an' all, come down and send the Niberians to kingdom come?" Thunder asks as he takes another sip of soup. Gildas head comes back down, her idea gone and killed by practicality.
"The reason is is because its a liability. The princesses may be strong, but a good sniper could kill anyone of them at almost any moment. Also, having those four princesses against armies of soldiers is a tall order, and they do get exhausted like we do." Gilda explained, the gryphon looking at the rest of the soup in her tin and chugging it down. Zucker and Gilda yawned, almost within seconds of eachother as the rain seems to come down harder.
"Well, Im going to sleep. Good night, Thunder." Zucker grunts as a way of saying "Me too.", both gryphons getting up and heading up the stairs of the home, heading to their rooms.
"Its barely 6:00 now, you have no right to say "Good night" now, I think its---" Thunder is interrupted by a groan from Gilda.
"You seem to know how to ruin everything you dweeb. Good night." Gilda walks over and playfully punchs Thunder in the arm, the pony rubbing the place where a bruise will now form.
"Euaagh. Good night." Thunder groaned, rolling his eyes while still rubbing the area from where he was hit. Sighing as he hears the sounds of their boots hitting against the wooden staircase, going up to the three remaining rooms where they can sleep. The other side of the house got blown up, as mentioned before, but a good repairing fixed up the holes in the house and effectively sealed off the rest of the intact house out from the outside world.
Thunder looks at his soup, then at the fireplace and the pot there. There was just alittle bit of soup left in the pot, as well as in the tin. Now that he thought about it.
The reserves were the soup in the pot, quickly draining from this costly war, while the ones in the tin were the ones at the front. The little bits and pieces of potato soup left in a tin after one is done eating it are the veterans, the ones who survived.
It scared Thunder thinking about that, that they were just soup in the sights of a hungry eater of whatever species the Niberians had, be it human, gryphon, dragon, donkey, or pony. He took another sip of his soup, thunder now cracking outside, lightning flashing light inside of the house through the windows.
