"Follow everything I say and you'll make it through. I'll get its attention, if you see an opening stab it with your spears," Jumper 0007 said.

Both of Red Rapid and Sunset Sarsaparilla looked at each other, the looks on their faces told them that they wanted to interject that the idea of following a human but between letting go of their pride for a while or becoming manticore food they're forced to choose former. All three combatant tensed their muscles as the manticore barrelled its way towards them. When the manticore was halfway from where it stood before it lunged with its maw opened wide.

"Scatter!"

Red dodged to the left while Sunset dodged right. 0007 on the other hand stood his ground. The manticore didn't seem to care for its two other preys moving at both sides of him, instead, it was more focused on the biped. 0007 timed it right and jammed his shield in the monster's mouth, preventing it from closing. For any normal shield, it would've already collapsed sure to the bite strength of the manticore. Fortunately, the Hylian Shield isn't just any normal shield. When the manticore realised that crushing the shield was impossible, it decided to start crushing 0007. Of course, the Jumper already had a counter for that: Spider-Man's incredible strength. Jumper 0007 faked a grunt to make it sound like he's trying is hardest to keep the manticore's attention focused on him.

"Any time now!" he sarcastically called out.

This seemed to jog the ponies out of their stupor, seeing the vulnerable sides of the manticore they charged and stabbed the creature. The manticore roared in pain, this made it open its mouth wider allowing 0007 to retrieve his shield from the monster, without missing a beat, he slashed diagonally, earning a large gash on its face. This prompted the manticore to back away. Red and Sunset wer about to give chase only for the Jumper to yell at them to form up behind him. Showing lesser hesitation than before, they did just that.

"Good job, on my 'go' I want both of you to back away,"

He looked behind him, looking for confirmation. They both gave him a determined nod. Turning his attention back to the manticore, it shook its head succeeding in ignoring the pain that resonated from his sides and face. It glared at its opponents making the two ponies falter a little. It charged at them again, this time turning it's whole body around, it's scorpion tail whipped towards them in a low sweep. Jumper 0007 didn't even have to call it out as all three of them avoided the tail by jumping up. When they landed back on the ground, they were forced to think fast since after the tail sweep the manticore followed it up with a claw.

Quick on his movement, 0007 parried the claw. It roared in pain again as blood spurted out of its wounded paw.

"Get back!"

Both ponies moved back letting Jumper 0007 follow through with his plan. Taking one step forward, he spun the Master Sword in a wide circle cutting through anything that it made contact with. Fortunately, for the manticore, it managed to avoid this attack by rearing up both of its front legs.

"Now!"

Not missing a beat, both Red and Sunset emerged from 0007's sides and thrusted their spears at the rearing manticore. Once they lodge their weapon deep enough they pulled back yet again and formed up behind the Jumper. Another roar of pain escaped from the creature. When it landed back on its hind legs its started backpedalling, both 0007 and the ponies could already see the rage that was in its eyes but unlike last time, it's eyes now had a tinge of fear in them. It sent them another glare but this time they did not falter. Now with confidence the ponies awaited for the next order.

"On my go, we push,"

"Alright!"

"Sure!"

Red and Sunset replied respectively. When 0007 took one step forward, Red and Sunset would do the same. Meanwhile the manticore slowly backed up whenever they tried to gain ground. Now feeling cornered, the manticore started contemplating on whether it was a wise decision fighting the three. Its rage suddenly disappeared when 0007 gave out a war cry, this sound made Red and Sunset also scream out from the top of their lungs. Finally understanding as to who is the better warrior, the manticore lowered itself in a submission stance.

"YOU BROUGHT IN A WHAT!?"

Twilight's hooves were on the table, her chest was heaving up and down as she tried to process what was just told to her. On the other side of the table, Jumper 0007, Red Rapid and Sunset Sarsaparilla gave varying expressions from a stoic look to bashful and regretful respectively. Behind these three a manticore sat, and was being treated by a pony with buttercream fur and pink hair.

"Princess Twilight, trust me, this manticore will be useful in the future,"

At this point the Princess of Magic looked like she was about to pull out her mane. "I specifically told you to scout the cottage! Not bring in a manticore!"

Without missing a beat, 0007 answered back. "And we have scouted the cottage you told me. Aside from there being two guards in the front we've also received crucial information about a hunting party coming from Manehattan in a week,"

That seemed to have enough impact that her stressed look turned to one of confusion as she tried to process the information given to her. She wasn't the only one to show a reaction to this; the orange pony beside her seemed to have wide eyes while the pony treating the manticore behind them tried to make herself as small as possible and hide behind her long pink mane. Afterwards, there was a solid five minutes of Twilight walking around the room, doing this weird gesture with her hoof as she inhaled and exhaled, muttering 'what do I do?'. The Jumper gave out an annoyed sigh which was missed by the other ponies.

"Don't worry, I have a plan,"

Every pony in the room stopped and all stared at 0007. A look desperate look on their faces with a tinge of hope but at the same time there was doubt in those eyes of theirs. He stood up from the table and looked towards the orange pony wearing a Stetson hat and asked the if they had any wooden boxes around.

"We have a few.. why do you need to know?"

He didn't answer, he then turned his attention towards Twilight, "Could you gather all of the in the main hall?"

"I-I could...," Twilight said.

Jumper 0007 nodded, "Alright, we have a week but that's more than enough time to prepare ourselves before the hunting party arrives,"

"What's this plan of yours?" Twilight asked her worries quickly replaced with curiosity.

"I'll explain later once you've gathered the ponies in the main hall," 0007 said before asking the orange pony to lead her to the wooden boxes that she spoke of.

As they made their way towards the storage room, Jumper 0007 had been introduced to the orange pony which goes by the name of Applejack. The storage room contained twelve boxes with eight of them completely empty. He nodded to himself and left the room with Applejack in tow. She didn't bother hiding her curiosity and from the looks of it, she wanted to ask him what he's got in store for them. She didn't answer though and kept quite throughout their small walk towards the main hall.

When they both reached the location, a large number of ponies, probably ranging from fifties to seventies, stood with curious looks at their resident princess. The main hall was a large open space, it's tall ceilings were gone due to the passage of time. A staircase lead upwards towards two seats, one had a faded emblem of a sun while the other had the moon. He walked around the large crowd though that didn't stop one from looking at his general direction and started to spread his discovery. When he finally rounded to the foot of the staircase, a large number of them had already been eyeing on him.

There was a moment of silence. Not a single one made a move, some gave 0007 scared looks while others glared at him with hatred. He didn't care, what matters to him right now is to make sure that these ponies survive long enough to spark a rebellion. He started off with a small cough just to make sure that he had grabbed every pony's attention, which wasn't hard since most of them already had their attention on him.

"I'll keep this brief... a few hours ago, Princess Twilight Sparkle had ordered me and two other ponies to scout out the cottage that's just on the edge of the Everfree Forest," This elicited a couple of murmurs from the crowd. "Aside from spotting two guards outside and potentially more inside the cottage, we've also overheard a conversation from the two guards talking about a hunting party coming all the way from Manehattan in a weeks time, sent here to finish off the last ponies,"

There was a long and deafening silence as Jumper 0007 purposely allowed that to sink in, he could see a large number suddenly sitting on their flanks, the look of hopelessness in their eyes. Of course, while there were some who looked like they had just gave up on their lives, there were a few, particularly a rainbow maned pony who voiced out how he was lying and that he's just doing it to scare them.

"You don't have any reason to believe what comes out of my mouth, miss," he said as he gestured towards the pony who voiced out, "but you can believe Red Rapid and Sunset Sarsaparilla, the two guards that were with me in the event that I run away during the scouting mission, they too have heard the conversation and can vouch for me,"

After that, she quieted down, a frustrated look on her face, knowing that she'd been cornered. He didn't paid her any attention and continued his speech.

"Now, there are two things that all of you can do while the week progresses. One would be to give up right now, so that when the hunting party arrives they'll show some mercy. Perhaps they'll make you slaves, if you're lucky you'll get a handler who only tells you to do tasks, if you're not... well, some of them are pretty pent up during this war, you'll be providing them with some stress relief," That made the ponies grimace.

"Or if they choose to, they can just outright eat you," he added nonchalantly.

The alarm on the ponies' faces were now prominent, some of them even started crying on the spot, others glared at him with a new level of hatred. Beside him, Twilight was even glaring at him.

"Oh, don't tell me that none of you had seen this coming. We humans are omnivores, while we do eat vegetables, meat is also important in our diet, our canines aren't just for show you know," the tone of his voice when he said that was more like he was stating the obvious. After that small jest, which he personally found a little funny, his facial features returned back to a neutral look.

"Option two, would be to fight- and I don't mean your conventional fighting of pointing you spear at the enemy and just blindly charge. No, I'm talking about a different way of fighting: guerilla warfare,"

Ponies who were crying their hearts out had momentarily stopped and looked at him with puffy eyes. The ones glaring at him retained the glare but this time they were at least listening instead of just shouting at him. From the looks of it, they've never heard of the concept therefore he explained it to them. A way of fighting where even the smallest of groups could topple the largest armies, through a mix of hit-and-run tactics, raids, sabotages and ambushes.

"The hunting party doesn't know where we are, so were going to use that to our advantage. We lure them in deeper in the forest and let the traps that we set up do the work and if you're feeling lucky, you might just have the chance of stealing some of their weapons. You have roughly three hours to consider your options, if you're not going to give up easily then meet me and Princess Twilight so that I can teach you how to make these traps,"

After that, Jumper 0007 walked off. Nothing could be heard except for his boots on cobble, a few seconds later Twilight followed him leaving the ponies all alone to ponder their choices. Leaving the main hall, both Twilight and 0007 were now walking down a dark, damp and mossy hallway.

"D-Do you think, they'll agree into helping you?" She asked, concern on her face.

Jumper 0007 shrugged, "It's their choice,"

"What kind of traps are you talking about?"

Jumper 0007 looked at her, "The Vietnam kind,"

Author's Note

Now, for those who don't know much about the traps that were used during the Vietnam War here is a link that I recommend watching as I will be using some of these traps in the next chapter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg9GZPRjL4o