Somewhere over Thundera

“Alright, who the hell are we?!” I shouted to the crowded troop compartment.

“We’re Marines!”

“I can’t fucking hear you!”

“WE’RE MARINES!”

“Now then, does someone want to tell me what the hell we’re gonna do?”

“We’re gonna go kick alien ass!” One of the Marines shouted.

“See, this guy gets it!” I said, pointing at the soldier.

“Ten seconds to ground!” The pilot called over the intercom.

As the door opened I made sure to click off the safety on my SAW. “Alright, get tactical Marines!”

We hit the dirt in the central market district of Thundera, and we quickly saw it was profoundly deserted. “Akright, let’s secure this landing zone! Spread out and find cover!” Pumyra shouted before grabbing the machine gun team as it hopped off the Pelican. “See that flat-roofed building off in the center? Set your guns up on top, I want fields of fire covering this whole plaza!”

“I didn’t think you were a soldier…” Tygra observed as he and Lion-O joined us.

“Had to take a crash course in field command once we finally got to Canterlot… That is of course on top of the training I already had.”

Right, Pumyra was one of Mumm-Ra’s generals before we met. “Well this just got awkward.” I observed.

“Little bit painful too…” Pumyra muttered.

“I take it you don’t like thinking about… You know, it?” Lion-O tried to diplomatically observe.

“Ya, you’re right. I don’t like thinking about how I got wound up and sent to try and kill the leader of my people. Don’t worry though, I’ve already got a way to cope.”

“Damn right you do love.” Said a red fox as he stepped in and literally swept Pumyra off her feet.

“Felix? The fuck are you doing here?”

“Uh, what does it look like?” The fox replied rather blank-facedly.

Pumyra roller her eyes and got back to her feet. “Now’s not the time to flirt… Not that I mind, it’s just that we’re in a warzone.”

“Ah, and here I was worried that we’d never get to another date.”

Ok, I’ve just about had enough of the flirting. “Alright you two delinquents I can smell the hormones over here. Felix, keep it in your pants for now. And Pumyra… Really?”

“What?”

“You know what, we’ll talk about it later. Felix, what are you actually here for?” I asked.

Felix unholstered his target designator and twirled it around in his hand. “I’m your JTAC for this one Dusk. Someone has to tell the Paris what to shoot at.”

“This is Noble Five, anyone read?”

“Go ahead Jorge.” I replied.

“We’re on top of the outer wall. We’ve got a number of dead soldiers from both sides and signs of struggle, but no signs of friendlies. We’re going to sweep the interior of the wall and see if anyone got cut off from the rest of the Thunderans.”

“Copy that Jorge, keep me informed.” I clicked off the radio and looked around the plaza. There was no signs of life aside from the Marines, and in a city that could be somewhat nerve wracking. “Lion-O, Tygra, did you have some sort of evacuation plans in place?

“We did.” Tygra replied. “The units on the wall were meant to act in a delaying action during a civilian evacuation.”

“Yeah, well they probably bugged out… At least that’s my guess.” I muttered.

“Paris to Alpha One, be advised we have eyes on friendly forces engaged at the palace gates not far from your position. You should be able to come in from behind and catch the enemy in a pincers. We’re sending the waypoint to your HUD.”

So the city isn’t deserted then. That’s good to know. “Copy that Paris, we’ll move to engage. Alpha One out.”

“Alright Marines, let’s get the lead out! Double time!” Pumyra shouted.

“We’re taking point.” I said to the cats. “If your soldiers are still engaged, seeing some friendly faces before a bunch of alien soldiers will probably help us avoid some friendly fire.” Both Lion-O and Tygra nodded.

It took the better part of ten minutes to maneuver through the city towards the palace gates, all the while the din of energy weapon discharges kept growing louder and louder. Just before we rounded the corner to the main gate, Jorge finally arrived on the opposite side of the intersection with his fireteam, and a large contingent of Thunderan soldiers. “Sorry we’re late!” The Spartan called out.

“No, you’re just in time.” I called back as I peered around the corner. “I count twenty lizards in the open.”

“Copy that.” Jorge said as he hefted his new chaingun to the ready. “Alright Noble, on me!”

“Alpha, let’s rock and roll!”

By this point one of the lizards must have heard us, because some of them immediately started shooting as we rounded the corner to engage. Jorge immediately cut loose with his chaingun at the crowd of soldiers, and at least half dropped to the ground in bloody piles once his burst stopped. The other half? Well they decided to charge. That was their first, and subsequently last, mistake. Lion-O speared the first one that got into reach, while Tygra proceeded to blast the next closest one with his pistol. I pulled my knife and proceeded to stab the third lizard in the gut, while the soldiers moped up the remaining lizards in a din of rifle fire.

“We’re clear!” Jorge called out.

The Thunderan soldiers that were being besieged by the Lizards definitely looked like they were happy to see us. And considering Dawn was with them, and that she looked utterly exhausted, I’d wager we showed up at just the right time. “Hey Dad, thanks for coming. I’m just gonna-” Dawn suddenly started falling to the ground before one of the soldiers grabbed her.

“What the hell happened?” I once I took Dawn away from the soldier.

“No clue.” The soldier admitted. “I know she was doing something in the archives, but when the attack started she came out looking exhausted.”

“Must be something to do with Faust then…” I muttered.

“It was something to do with me.” Faust said, having finally made her way through the line of soldiers carrying an odd looking lantern. “I needed her help to finish the urn in time, but Dawn still doesn’t have the reserve strength to handle such a massive use of magic.”

“Well was beating my daughter up worth it?” I asked.

Faust nodded. “We’ve got the urn, now I just need to unleash it on Mumm-Ra.”

“What about his soldiers? They’re still in the city.” Lion-O pointed out.

“Please, that’s mop-up for the Marines. You’ve already taken out half of them anyway, considering they happened to get behind the wall by using some sort of airship.”

“Then where’d the civilians go?” I asked. “The whole city is deserted.”

“They’re hiding in the caves in the hills around the city waiting for the all-clear signal. There’s a number of underground escape tunnels that have been built since Thundera’s repopulation.” Faust explained.

“That assumes that any of those scalies are even left in the city, the main gate was wide open when my team swept the wall.” Jorge added. “Either way, we need to secure the city.”

I nodded. “Agreed. Jorge, organize the Marines and the locals into mixed search teams. I want one Thunderan with each team if possible. They know the city, so they’ll be the best to lead the security teams.” As Jorge began ordering the soldiers about, Pumyra stepped in. “What’s up?”

“Something’s off…” The cat whispered. “It feels like we’re being watched.”

“How would you know that?”

Pumyra shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s just a nagging feeling I’ve got. Look, I got the same feeling every time I turned my back on Mumm-Ra.”

“Alright, give me a hand with Dawn then.” I said as I hosted my daughter up over one of my shoulders.

Pumyra quickly got under Dawn’s other shoulder. “So what do you think?”

Normally I wouldn’t know what to think, but with a big grey warship floating overhead, it didn’t take much thought to come to the conclusion of what we had to do. “Isn’t it obvious? We’re going to the one place that can confirm whether you’re crazy or not.”

***

HMS Paris, Half an Hour Later…

“So what exactly are you looking for?” Baxter asked as he finally came in over our shoulders.

“Wish I knew Tim.” I admitted. “So far we haven’t seen anything unusual using the external cameras.”

Baxter studied our screen for a moment before saying anything again. “Did you try using the FLIR systems?”

“What’s FLIR?” Pumyra asked.

“Forward looking infrared.” Baxter replied as he turned on the thermal imaging equipment. “Now if you give me just one second, I’ll try activating the old security protocol…”

Now it was my turn to ask a question. “What security protocol?”

“Remember how we first met years ago? Paris was in the middle of some god-forsaken rainforest and you and your team came in on that ship of yours? We only saw you coming because we wrote a motion tracker program to tie into the FLIR on our external cameras and got the alert.”

Huh. Just over ten years and I never knew that. “That’s helpful… Now what are we picking up?”

“Mind if I get in here?”

Pumyra and I both moved off to the sides to let Baxter at the computer. “Lets see… Marines, Marines, Marines and… Wait, what’s that?”

Sure enough there was a figure tailing one of the security teams in the slums of Thundera. “What team is that?”

“Can’t tell with this system, hold on.” Baxter flicked a switch on the side of the screen, and the image was replaced with a map of the city, with all the markers the motion detector program was picking up superimposed over it. Almost immediately he hit the transmitter. “India 1-1, this is Paris. Check your six, we’ve got an unknown contact trailing you.”

Suddenly Pumyra pushed Baxter away from the transmitter. “India 1-1, get out of there now!”

“Pumyra, what the hell was that for?”

“Shit, Paris we’ve got trouble! Large thunderan carrying some sort of axe, he definitely ain’t friendly!”

“We need to get down there!” Pumyra insisted.

“Pumyra, we don’t even know who that is that India-”

“It doesn’t matter Dusk!” Pumyra shouted. “Whoever that is, Mumm-Ra brought them back and sent them with the raid.”

“Woah, back up. Brought them back? Pumrya, you’re making it sound like Mumm-Ra just pulled someone out of thin air.” Baxter said as he butted in.

But it made sense, for some reason. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s how Mumm-Ra got control over you. He crafted a new body for your soul… Son of a bitch, you died didn’t you?”

Pumyra started looking a little bit teary-eyed, but she nodded. “Look, I think I can sense Mumm-Ra’s magic because of what he did to me. When I was looking at that screen something in the back of my head was screaming Mumm-Ra.”

“In all fairness, this hard for me to believe.” Baxter admitted.

But I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter Tim, my gut is telling me she’s right.” Without much thought I grabbed Pumyra and pulled her in close. “Tim, get everyone you can to India’s position. We’ll try hold that axe-toting psycho off!”

“Dusk, what are you-”

POP!

“-doing?”

“Teleporting us.” I said, turning down the street to see the broken bodies of India on the ground, with one massive cat standing over them with a bloody axe. “Fuck, we’re too late.”

The cat turned to face us, hefting his axe over his shoulder. “You dare challenge Claudis?”

“Oh shit, Dusk we should run.” Pumyra said, sounding somewhat panicked.

“So he’s big. Whatever, we can still take him Pumyra.” I retorted.

“No you don’t get it! That’s KING Claudis! We’re strong enough to take him on!”

“I don’t care if he’s the King of Trottingham, we’re-”

“Look out!”

Pumyra quickly tackled me out of the way of Cladis’ axe, and it lodge in the cobblestone where we had just been standing. “Oh come on, it’s a just a fucking axe! I can take him?”

“Father?!”

Suddenly, as I looked down the street to see Lion-O and Tygra standing there it hit me. “That’s their father… Fuck!”

“Dusk? I think we’ve got a bigger problem.”

Pumyra was right. Standing over us was Claudis, and that axe of his was held high. And judging by the murderous look in his eyes, we were in the worst place in the world to be.

Author's Note

Well, they're fucked. At least by all normal measures. But that's not going to stop us, because the big battle is still down the road!

Anyone got questions? Like what you're seeing so far? Hell, maybe have some gripes? There's a comment section and the Mirrorverse Codex. Read and comment away, because I want to hear from you fellow denizens of this corner of the internet. Until next time gang!
-Striker