Chapter 2:
Civilization

Smoke rose from the few houses that formed the outpost, our group had travelled for almost two days to reach this little settlement. The journey had been relatively quiet, not because Twilight lacked questions to ask but because she looked to be too afraid to ask them. I didn't fully trust Griselda either after the first day so the tension in the group hadn't really settled.

“Our contract is completed, feel free to not approach me for a new one,” Griselda growled, marching off towards the outpost and leaving me with the two ponies.

“Charming griffin she was,” I muttered.

"Yeah, no offense but Griffins seem to all be like that," Rainbow agreed, making me frown.

Wow, racism much.

"None taken. Not my kind anyway remember," I casually brushed off the comment, looking at Twilight behind me as I’d figured out she was obviously the leader of the two ponies. “So what are you two going to do?”

“Well… I’m not sure,” Twilight admitted, “I was sent here to figure out what caused the magic pulse, but if what you said is true… well… could you come back to Equestria with us?” Twilight progressively made herself smaller as her voice lost power, looking at me as if I was going to explode into her face for no reason. Raising an eyebrow, I thought over her proposition.

I mean, do I have anything to lose from this? Either I’ve gone insane or I’m genuinely stuck in some land with colourful mythological creatures. Assuming either is true following one who seems to want to help me and knows what she’s talking about doesn’t sound like a bad idea...

“Alright, that sounds acceptable,” I replied, the unicorn immediately bloomed up and smiled.

“Really?! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” She hopped around in the snow in her excitement, I couldn’t help but smile at the display.

“Calm down there, I’d like to keep moving so we need to restock our supplies,” I told her, getting her back down to earth.

“Oh yes, I’ll go do that. We might be able to reach the train station by nightfall to take the morning train that way!” Twilight happily made her way into the outpost while Dash and I looked at her go.

“You really made her day with that,” Rainbow commented as she smiled up at me, I chuckled in response.

“I’ve honestly got no clue what I’d have done otherwise,” I admitted as I started moving towards the outpost as well, Rainbow remained close by me and with the way she was glancing at me constantly it was pretty clear she wanted to ask something. “Ok, ask what you want to ask but stop looking at my butt like that.”

The blush that formed on the Rainbow’s face was positively adorable to see as she stumbled over her own hooves.

“I wasn’t looking at that! I was just looking at that thing strapped to your backpack!” Dash immediately stopped and held her hooves over her mouth.

“You mean the rifle?” I replied with a raised eyebrow.

“Y-Yes,” she stammered, looking afraid of having asked something inappropriate. “All of those strange tools you have actually.”

“Maybe I’ll tell you later, let’s focus on getting away from this remote place first.” I really didn’t know if I really wanted to tell her about the workings of the guns so I was just pushing it back to think about later.

“Ok, I guess that’s cool I guess...” Rainbow replied, following me the remaining distance to the outpost where we looked for Twilight, finding her in the little store where she was already paying the griffin store owner for the supplies she’d gathered.

“Ah, Jack, I got enough food to get us onto the train tomorrow, is there anything you might need?” Twilight asked as she stashed the items into her bags with her magic.

That’s going to remain freaky as hell to see in the flesh.

“No, I’m good. We can get going if you two are ready?” I told Twilight to her satisfaction.

“Of course, we'll head out right away!” Twilight confidently strode back out while the griffin at the counter murmured something and stored away the bits. The unicorn led us to a marked path that led even further away from the mountains that lay behind us. I glanced back to see Griselda scowl at us for a last time but mostly didn’t pay it any mind as it wasn’t my problem anymore.

“Jack, would you mind if I asked you some questions?” Twilight asked, finally having built the courage to approach me. Not having the other griffin around to build tension probably helped as well on that front.

“Fire,” I simply replied, only for Twilight to rear back and shrink. “I meant go ahead.” clarifying this seemed to bring back Twilight’s cheer as she levitated a quill and parchment. I couldn’t help but snort in amusement.

“What? Did I do something wrong?” Twilight immediately thought she had done something offensive but quickly noticed that I was smirking. I pulled a ballpoint pen out of a pocket that could hold four of them on my upper arm and presented it to Twilight.

“Use that instead, you’ll be much easier off.” The unicorn picked the pen up in her magic and inspected the little device, clicking the button multiple times before testing it by writing on the parchment.

“T-This is amazing! The ink dries so quickly!... and it replenishes from an inkwell on the inside?!” Twilight was completely captivated by the minuscule device as she used it to write down her observations on the parchment. Rainbow, on the other hand, burst out laughing at her friend’s antics.

“Really Twi, of all you’ve seen of Jack the thing that interests you the most is a special pen?” She rolled in the snow out of laughter to the embarrassment of her purple friend.

“It’s a magnificent piece of engineering, Rainbow!” Twilight exclaimed, her cheeks burning.

“So magnificent my kind makes millions of them each day,” I chuckled, adding fuel to the fire of Rainbow’s laughter and Twilight’s embarrassment but it also gave her a nugget of information to work off.

“You make millions of these?! Why would you need so many of them?!” Twilight exclaimed before a much more pertinent question came to her mind. “What is ‘your kind’ for that matter?”

“Ever heard of humans?” Twilight shook her head to no surprise of mine. “Wasn’t expecting you to anyway. We are… well… I was, but you know…”

Rainbow immediately got up next to me, having gotten out of her fit of laughter and caught back up with us, nudging my side with her wing. “Hey, you’re handling this whole change of species much better than I would have dude.”

“Heh, thanks Rainbow,” I smiled at the pegasus, picking up the briefest hint of red on her cheek. “Anyway, humans are essentially really evolved apes who use tools for just about everything they do.”

“Is that why you carry those… things?” Twilight eyed the rifle that hung against my side and the pistol strapped against my chest.

“Yes, they’re part of my job, I’m a soldier,” I answered to Twilight’s widening eyes.

“Y-Your kind was at war?!” Twilight exclaimed in utter astonishment. I just shrugged in response.

“It’s kind of foggy, I can’t really remember what happened directly before I came here but I’m pretty sure we were only running the usual counter-insurgency rather than all-out war.” Of course, I knew what I used to do but I was pretty sure that there was a whole swathe of memories missing.

“So you have a standing army even though you’re not at war?” Twilight still couldn’t get herself over that fact, sounding as if it was a horrible thing.

“Oh come on, Twi, What’s the big deal? You of all ponies should know the old Pegasi used to do the same thing. Even now Cloudsdale has a small militia beside the guard just in case!” Rainbow interjected, coming to my defence.

“Prepared for the worst and hope for the best,” I nodded in agreement to Rainbow. Twilight sighed in resignation, as she had to admit to herself that it wasn’t really that bad to have some kind of standing force after all.

“Alright, fine, but that still doesn’t explain why you have such destructive tools to do so!”

“Look, my world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows so some measure of force needs to be applied every now and then to keep us safe. And when your enemy has weapons like these too you don’t go against them with worse equipment.” I gave her a look of finality that the conversation on this topic was over, Twilight shrunk down immediately under my gaze and looked ready to bolt. Rainbow, on the other hand, did not notice this and happily continued on.

“Soo, how do they work? It can’t be that the loud sound alone is dangerous, right?” she wondered to my annoyance.

“It uses an explosive charge to propel a projectile to high speed,” I stated, “The sound is just because the little explosion and the bullet breaking the sound barrier.”

“Like when I do my sonic rainboom then… huh, neat, I guess that’s pretty fast.”

Stopping dead in my tracks I stared at Rainbow in disbelief, my entire previous train of thought disrupted as I burst into laughter. “You can fly faster than the speed of sound?” I snickered, “Come on, you’re joking right?”

Rainbow did not look at my reaction with the slightest bit of amusement, accusingly stabbing her hoof into my chest. “Hey, watch it! I’ll even prove it for you!” she growled before shooting straight up into the air, my laughter dying down slightly as this crazy female actually seemed to be serious.

“Now you’ve done it,” Twilight casually said as she sat down to look at the display Rainbow was going to give. I could still see the little speck that was Rainbow pretty clearly as she got to the zenith of her flight up and now barreling straight down to the ground. My jaw dropped as I faintly saw a mach cone forming around her,

No way... She was being serious, wasn’t she?

KABOOM!

A ring made of rainbow barreled outwards, lighting up the sky and pushing any clouds that were present in the air out of the way of its path. Dash herself was trailed by a sparkling rainbow as she corkscrewed through the air, and made turns that must've been putting immense g-forces on her body.

“S-She… She… WHAT?!”

“Oh yeah! Whatcha think? Am I awesome or am I awesome?” Dash had landed in front of me with the biggest shit-eating grin on the planet while I was still struggling to find the right words.

“You broke him, Dash,” Twilight giggled at the sight of my complete cognitive dissonance. “Come on, we’ve got quite a bit to go before we arrive at the train station if we want to get there before dark…”

We had a little campfire going a couple of dozen meters away from the train station where we’d set up a single tent to be able to sleep under some cover. Twilight had divided up the food she’d gotten in the afternoon between the three of us which we ate while we still had a bit of sunlight left. I’d, at least partially, recovered from the fact that a being existed that could crash through the sound barrier without the help of a fighter jet, Rainbow was still smug about the fact that she could do it.

“Hey Jack, can I ask you something?” Rainbow asked after finishing her own meal, giving a nod in return as we had been exchanging knowledge and facts about our worlds all day anyway. “Back at the outpost you said you’d tell me about those rifles of yours later, could you do it now?”

“Rainbow!” Twilight exclaimed immediately, “What is up with you?!”

“Oh come on Twi, he’s got these awesome tools and you just want to ignore them! And besides, it's not like he's a real griffin, just has the body of one,” Rainbow groaned exasperatedly.

Again, what in the world is wrong with griffins?... wait, is it because they're herbivores and I'm an omnivore?

“They’re weapons Dash, not toys!” Twilight argued as I saw Dash looking at me in an attempt to get my support in the matter.

“She’s not wrong, Rainbow. They’re indeed not toys, they’re tools to be respected and cared for,” I told her, not taking the side she’d hope I take, “But I guess I can run you through the basics, not like I haven’t done that for interested parties before.”

And it’s not like she can pull the trigger with her hooves anyway.

Twilight groaned and shook her head while Dash beamed. Grabbing my backpack I procured a set of earplugs and picked my helmet that also had active hearing protection integrated into its headset. “I only have hearing protection for two people so we’ll take a bit of distance from the camp.”

“Awesome, lead the way!” Dash beamed as I grabbed the C7 and led her a good hundred meters away to where we had a good view of the decently sized field bordering the train station.

“Alright, first things first, some rules. This is a live firearm, you don’t do anything without my express permission, understand?” Rainbow calmed down a bit as she listened carefully, giving a nod to me that she understood. “Second, you never point the business end at me, Twilight, or anyone else for that matter. If I catch you doing that, I will knock you off your hooves and end this demonstration immediately.”

Pulling the C7 in front of my chest I presented the assault rifle to Dash for her to look at, pulling one of my extra mags out of the tactical vest. “These are the projectiles that get fired out of the rifle, the brass at the back is the cartridge that holds an explosive while the front bit is what comes out of the rifle.”

I continued to explain the basic operating functions of the rifle to make sure she had remembered the entire sequence before placing her behind the weapon in a prone position. “Place it into your shoulder like… that. Now see that particularly tall tree over there?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Aim the scope’s dot dead centre and pull the trigger.” I waited for Dash to face me and tell me her hoof didn’t fit in the trigger guard, but what I did not expect was for the rifle to produce a loud report.

Crack!

WHAT?! How… Oh screw it, she can break the sound barrier and probably do some other freaky magic shit, why in the world would I not expect her to be able to pull a trigger?

Rainbow meanwhile was shaking slightly from the adrenaline rush in awe from the loud bang and recoil, her wings fully extended as she looked past the weapon towards the tree. “That was AWESOME!”

Shaking my head I sighed and smiled, nothing I could change now. “That it is, but let’s leave the shooting for another time when we have light,” I pointed out before she would force me to go through more irreplaceable ammo.

“Right, of course!” Dash handed–hoofed?–the rifle back to me, careful not to point it at anything important as I told her. I picked up the cartridge and stashed it away as well.

“Let’s go catch some sleep then so we'll be well-rested for the train tomorrow,” I chuckled making our way back to the tent where Twilight was already laying in her bedroll, not that she was asleep after the previous gunshot, but she didn’t really speak as she tried getting rest. Getting into my own bedroll, I said my good-nights and listened to the calming sound of the forest lull me to sleep.

Author's Note

There's chapter two a little earlier than I said I would release it! Hope you enjoyed!

A short while back I found this pre-alpha game I've been following and I really look forward to getting my grubby hands on it. It's stupidly gorgeous and, from what has been released, is a fresh take on RTS being less focussed on rush and more on building your strength.

Remember: This is pre-alpha!

Shoutout by Upper Eschelon:

Shutter Fox Studio youtube channel
14 months of development:
*uploaded 8 months ago

State of the game - August 2020:

It's one game I'm truly looking forward too, something not a lot of games manage to do nowadays.

Remember that comments are like authors' food, we gain energy from them. Constructive criticism is welcome.