The smell! That was the biggest thing Star Strider would remember from that day.
The concrete dust was the most affronting olfactory offender out on the street. Thick, caked dust expelled from the burning rubble and collapsed buildings she wove her way around. Few of the buildings that lined the main street of Vesapolis had failed to fall under the sway of the intense shelling the day before. The ones that did remain standing were empty, soulless, looking out across the wide main street of the hive-city.
Every one of them looked on at the street with blown-out windows, destroyed floors, splintered doors, and scorched bricks. Even the ground itself had fallen victim to the Equestrian artillery strikes and strategic bombings, with mud-filled craters covering the street, the pavement previously inhabiting the crater now lay strewn across the path.
Smoke billowed ferociously from the raging fires that still consumed the collapsed buildings and ruined apartment blocks. The heat scorched Star Strider's flank as she walked by, the flames grabbed at her coat as if consciously searching for more victims to claim. The choking clouds of dust and debris, poured out from the flames. Floating embers landed on her beige uniform as she walked by, and she shrugged them distractedly off her shoulders.
Ahead, the shadow of the Queen's Tower marked the end of the street, meeting up with the square that held the much envied center of attention for the capital. If her comrades' stories were true, the tower had seen many better days. It barely stood upright now, with holes blasted through its sides, and debris crumbling from its steel-reinforced crown. It looked despondent, defeated. The Equestrian banner of the sun and the moon had been raised on its peak, the flag of Queen Chrysalis having been cast off mere hours ago.
Yet, as she looked away from the defeated tower and the grey, tangled skies, her pale blue eyes came back down to the corpses strewn along the street. A few were ponies, most of them were changelings. Mercilessly gunned down by the frontal divisions that had assaulted the city before her own platoon came.
Every single changeling had been out to meet Equestria as it knocked down the gates of the city. The wounded and weak had been sent out to fight in craters and from behind barricades erected from the trees that used to decorate Vesapolis's streets. Civilians had fired from buildings and thrown Molotov Cocktails at the Equestrian troops, with the words desperately scrawled in Changeling on the walls:
"EVERY CHANGELING CITIZEN MUST RISE UP TO STOP THE SUN AT THE GATES."
She gulped, trudging forward as her boots brushed up against the fins of a changeling with only half a head, whose blood had long dried against the pavement. She squeezed her eyes shut as she moved on past one of the log barricades, its defenders long dead and strewn over their own barbed wire as the stains of green ichor; foul remembrances of a M1 Lavender round through the helmet.
Aside from the trudges of her own boots, and the trudges of the boots of the squad that trailed far behind her, the street was quiet. The fire formed a bloody ambience, an overture of a battle that had passed. A battle that had passed for good. The guns had stopped. The streets were quiet...
Yet, for some unfathomable reason, she felt the world had never been more tense.
Star Strider's bloodshot eyes opened, weary from days on end without sleep in her tent. Her ears perked up at the sound of a hoof scratching against the cracked cobblestone, drawing her attention. Black hooves, covered in chitin and a layer of concrete dust, lead up past a grey sleeve that covered a leg that was no doubt full of holes.
Her eyes met his.
He couldn't have been more than a year out of his nymph phase. He was young, horribly young. No more than a ten year old foal in pony standards. He wore the Changeling uniform, the huge overcoat looking comical on his small form. The material was ragged and torn, and caked with dust and blood. A few bullet holes even adorned the chest area, telling the tale of an inherited uniform.
His age held Star Strider distracted for long enough as his green magic gripped something in his coat, and he whipped out the metallic form of a machinepistole. The weapon bobbed left and right, betraying a weak telekinesis and an unstable spirit. As Star Strider's magic instinctively gripped her rifle, the young changeling colt thrusted the pistol towards her, threatening a spray of lead.
Two tiny fangs poked out from under his snout, curled into an uncertain, quivering snarl. There was a small fin atop his head, and his ear-tubes flattened against his skull as if expecting a sudden blow. A pair of light green, shimmering, composite eyes looked at Star Strider dead on.
The wind whistled between the ruins. The boots of her squad behind her had stopped in place. The crackle of fire seemed distanced from them as they faced each other in a stand-off. Star Strider's heart thundered in her ears as adrenaline made the ache of the long march into the city dull, and her pupils shrunk as she looked between the pistol and the changeling wielding it.
Star didn't doubt her reaction time on the trigger. Two years of fighting the Changelings from Shire to Vraks had taught her a split second of hesitation could mean the rest of your life was spent watching the enemy fire first. The child wasn't trained or disciplined when it came to the weapon he bore. She could snap her rifle out of its harness at her side and put a bullet in his head before he could get off an accurate shot. Yet, as she looked up at the changeling, she saw into his reflective, composite eyes, and all that was there was anger and strife.
At one point, Vesapolis had been bustling and vibrant. The sun had shone, and an empire, once defeated, had been up and running again. The hive-city was crowded, but Changelings were used to it. Victory was in sight. Equestria was weak and decadent. Changelings would live free. Love would be abundant from a submissive pony populace. The oppression of the Sun and the Moon would abolished, and the nation would be complete once again.
Then, the tides of war had changed. Food rations became more and more strict. Changelings were told to dig bomb shelters beneath their homes. The Eight Armed Sun blazed on the wings of bombers, followed by the thunderous applause of a thousand bombs. Everything had been torn asunder. The achievements of the city had been turned to ash, and the dreams of every single changeling had been squashed under technicolor, iron hooves.
Ponies had spared not a single ounce of mercy to their enemy. Cities were scorched, homes were burned down, brood families were torn apart and executed. Drones collapsed at the overworked assembly lines, jellied love became equivalent currency to lifetimes of savings, and corpses piled up on streets. Vengeful, the Changelings had fought to the last barricade. Clawing at dreams as the thunder of guns destroyed every last trace of mortar and brick.
Star Strider looked up into his eyes, and all she saw was her own reflection.
Changelings had destroyed everything Equestria had stood for. Harmony was lost as the dark shadow of war struck through the heart of every last citizen. Friendship was broken as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, neighbors, besties, and special someponies separated at train stations.
Ponies were forced into factories, working long hours as others reported for their uniforms of mud and blood and shallow graves for mere inches of ground. Changelings pushed them back at every turn, refusing to face them head on as they outmaneuvered and infiltrated their way through pre-planned defensive lines. They slaughtered surrendering ponies, forced civilians into camps, and laughed as Equestria's cities burned.
The Equestrian populace, fueled by hatred, lit by the fires of napalm, pushed back. The war turned in their favor as the main force was repulsed at Las Pegasus and Ponyville. With just as much vengeance, they met Vraks with tanks as battering rams, then sieged the towns and provinces all the way up to the gates of Vesapolis. Armed with shotguns and gas masks, they brought the starving populace to its knees, slaughtering them in the streets.
Star Strider stood stock-still before the changeling. The grey uniform of an army that had destroyed her foalhood home, her dreams, aspirations, and brought down everypony she had called friend. Yet, as much as her mind told her she should reach for her rifle, her instincts told her she should brush aside the young devotee to join the corpses of his fallen comrades, she still stood there, silent.
As if a fog had lifted, the detail of the young changeling's hide came into focus in the dim light of the clouded skies and burning buildings. Burns ran up his leg from the balefire of Equestrian napalm bombs Scratches from barbed wire ran down his flanks, and the starvation present on his boney legs and the widened cavities that all changelings had.
Star Strider stood, fur covered in ash, mane trapped under her helmet, mud covering her uniform, and a mind remembering her home. Did this changeling have any place to go back to? No... obviously not. This was his home... and it was burned down at her own hooves.
She licked her lips, looking away from the barrel of the Changeling's gun and towards his eyes, before taking a breath to say:
"I'm sorry."
He didn't understand. He couldn't have understood. There was no way for him know Equestrian. There was no way to apologize for a nation of heartbreak and destruction. Her last enemy stood before her, an enemy of the world's own twisted creation.
A bullet whizzed by Star Strider's helmet and her breath caught. Her horn glowed as she grasped the buckle that fastened her pack to her back. Trying to seem unphased, she looked down the smoking barrel of the young changeling's weapon as it continued to sway off course. She unfastened the metal clasp. With the scrape of fabric, she shrugged the pack off, along with the rifle on it.
A billow of smoke passed over Star Strider's form as she stepped forward, advancing past the corpses and the rubble. Despite how many times it looked like the child wanted to shoot, it simply aimed at Star as she came forward. Only the clop of her hooves steadily moved across the pavement to accompany the overture of burning buildings.
Star raised her hoof to rest on the top of the changeling's pistol, forcing it down and out of his weak telekinetic field. The piece of metal fell to the floor, clattering as its interior parts rattled around.
The changeling colt squeezed his eyes shut, lowering his head and trembling as he let out a whimper, ears firmly pressed against his skull. She wrapped a hoof around his neck, pulling him into an embrace as their uniforms brushed up against each other. Grey on beige. Eight-Armed Sun by the Queen's Coat of Arms.
There was silence. The thunder of guns was absent, the sharp retorts of rifles and rattlings of submachineguns missing from the streets of Vesapolis, and the whine of bombers purged from the sky. The war was over. The Queendom was no more, and harmony had prevailed.
There was no weeping as Star fell to her haunches, the changeling leaning onto her chest as they rested on the cold pavement. They were both fresh out of tears to shed. Tired of fighting, tired of losing, tired of death. They sat, clothed not in uniforms, but in pieces of cloth. Coats that were meant to keep one warm on bitter mornings and frosty evenings. The symbols they held: meaningless. The times in which they were born: over.
A pillar of light shone through a break in the clouds, looking down upon the Queen's Tower. The cyan colors of Equestria's flag flapped once again in the ray of sunshine.
At that one moment, the fires seemed to leave them alone. The bodies blended in with the streets. The bitter wind pounded helplessly between the two warm bodies of the two, once opposing, sides. It was time to go home, to where the winds came from. To where the sun shone brighter. To where there could be peace.
But for now, it was time to rest.
And so they rested, with nothing but peace in their time.
