Cowardice

Muddy, clay filled water flowed throughout the trench, coating all the now completely bedraggled ponies. At knee height, it glued to fur and matted in, flooding clothes, boots and pores alike. Uncomfortable, cold and wheezing, the unit stood, milled about and chatted, trying to create some semblance of normality within this absurd situation. Some played cards and dice on the few tables they had and on small makeshift shelves dug into the trench. Others who had brought small instruments like harmonicas played them, while others sang along to the tunes, off-key and cautiously optimistic. In essence, it was a subconscious group effort to keep morale up, and to an extent it was working.

Haze leaned vertically against the trench wall, upright, trying to keep as much of himself dry as possible. So far he had failed spectacularly; his coat, like everypony else's, was encrusted with dirt; his uniform was soaked and caked in mud; his hooves had already started to split. To put it lightly, he was in a rather bad way.

His psyche was not faring well either. A powerful and paranoid melancholy had settled in on not only him, but the whole unit. The days of inaction, imposed on by looming walls of mud, the familiar faces that would occasionally slip back out of their shallow graves. It had all taken its toll. Haze particularly though, was in a very bad way. His brain was wracked with guilt. He knew she was trying to kill him, he knew she would have done the same if she had been in his position, but he couldn't assuage his conscience of the mutilation he had imparted.

He was weak, he admitted to himself. Anypony could see it. He had nearly been beaten down by a warrior in some kind of mechanical armour and had managed to come out on top; he should be proud. Yet, deep in his heart, he knew it had been a fluke. A slight hesitation on his assailant's part and the tables turned in an uncontrolled flash.

Coal, huddled down beside Haze, trying as best he could to burrow himself into the mud of the trench wall and hide from the rain, but he had only succeeded in creating a sloppy pile around his hooves. Minutes passed as he scraped, drawing soft earth away from the trench, but it was too wet to cling together and kept on falling, much to Coal's dismay.

All too suddenly, several hollow clunks were heard amidst the silence, and the group of unaware troops looked around in confusion. Heads moved left and right, eyes darted from side to side, but nopony could locate the source. Two, maybe three seconds were spent, searching, preparing to scramble around in the mud to find what had fallen. Then, without warning came four distinct pops, followed by a soft hissing. Quickly the trench began to fill with wispy yellowish smoke, and the source of the noise became apparent.

"Gaaaaas!" came the guttural cry of one soldier.

Hurriedly, the troops struggled into their masks as the had been taught to. The masks were stored in containers, which one merely needed to shove one's muzzle into to apply the mask.

Haze, now in his intimidating gas mask looked around at his comrades through the orange tinted glass of the eye pieces. All seemed fine, bar one. A young colt, short, thin. He looked weakened, and a bloody bandage around his midsection confirmed this suspicion. Due to the large area of bandage, it was evident that he had taken shrapnel a short while previous. Starting to cough, he looked down with tears in his eyes at his broken mask, the casing in two, the glass shattered, and the filter in more pieces than he could count. It must have got hit when he did, Haze thought to himself.

Even after just a few seconds exposed, his mouth had already begun to drip with bloody froth from his burning lungs. A handful of soldiers picking the retching, shaking pony up, started to take him as quickly as they could towards the infirmary. Their faces didn't look hopeful as he screamed in agony, ravaging the ears of all in the vicinity.

Haze found himself shaking at the scene. It occurred to him, that with his previous combat encounter the exact same thing could have happened to him. He hadn't even looked at his mask, or any of his equipment since first going through it before deployment. His heart began to pound again, his throat beginning to rasp. Before he knew it, he was on his ass, panting and trying desperately to calm himself down. Haze was beginning to sense that these short, sharp attacks were becoming a regular occurrence, and he wasn't too happy about it.