Author's Note

Welp took me a couple months to write this but now it is done, put a lot of time and effort into it to make sure it was the best!

Special thanks to my proof readers: dzamie and Schattendrache

Chapter 1

I bolted up, dripping in sweat. The dream had come again… My body ached as it remembered the pain it had experienced. Every night since that day, the dream of the attack would invade my mind. For months now, every time I even attempted to rest, that nightmare would impose itself on me with all the tenderness of a rabid deathclaw. No matter what I did, every attempt I made to find some measure of peace always resulted in the same outcome.

I would look upon a building reduced to rubble and the faces of the dead, with their empty stares and mouths opened in shock, fear, and horror…

I sighed as I thought back to everything that had led up to this point.

“Mother of Celestia! Do you ever stop whining?!” I yelled at the whimpering unicorn. “For fuck’s sake man, take your punishment like a stallion and not a foal!” The yellow unicorn stopped his whimpering, but I could still hear him sniffle and take a deep gulp. Tartarus, I actually would prefer a foal at this point. I swear, why do we even bother keeping some of these yellow-bellied earth-bound fools around? I wondered as I walked him to his cell and double checked the magic inhibitor to make sure it was on tight.

“Hey, Flare, you done with the prisoner now?” a voice called out to me. I grinned as I turned around to see my foalhood friend, a sea-green pegasus with a silver mane and tail, walking up to me. Her name was Cloudy Serenity, and by some miracle, The Enclave had kept us together through training school and deployment.

“Yeah, Cloudy, just got done, was about to file the paperwork on him and go take a shower. Where’s Wildfire?”

She chuckled. “Oh, she’s tearing the brats a new one. Not only did they let a group that big get so close, but it seems they picked the weakest one to join us.” She said, motioning to the unicorn I had just put away.

I shook my head and chuckled. “Yeah… He would not stop crying. I give him five days, max.” I started walking to my desk. “So, how’s your day going?”

“Oh, the same as the last year or so has gone: wake up at the crack of dawn, have breakfast while the grunts moan on and on about how this is a shitty assignment and that they would prefer being on an actual mission and ‘Why don’t we just blow them all up?’, forgetting that they often carry supplies, give our scientists stuff to study, and give intel on the goings on.” She then shook her head. “Then, after breakfast, Wildfire comes screaming up to me about something that happened the other day and wondering why I didn’t tell her, when in fact I told her right after it’d happened. I swear, that crazy old mare is driving me crazy.”

I chuckled. “You know why that is, right? It’s an old military trick so we get mad at her and not each other in the heat of the moment. My dad told me all about that.”

She snorted. “Oh! Of course, Flare Chaser, the son of famed Brigadier General Ivory Spark and brother to the acclaimed Captain “Thunder” Faulkner, would know that.” I rolled my eyes, she knew it got on my nerves to mention my more famous family. “You know, if we hadn’t grown up together, I would have never believed your skinny ass was even remotely related.”

I sighed, sat down in my seat, set my black western hat and sunglasses down, and began to work. “Alright, you had your fun, now scram!” I said as I logged into my cloud terminal. “I’ll catch up with you later,” I stated as I began typing up all the necessary reports. I was almost done when I began to hear the hoofsteps of an angry, foul-mouthed mare getting louder and louder. “Here it comes... '' I said quietly as I braced for the steps to stop and the screaming to start. Time seemed to slow down as it happened.

“FLARE CHASER!!” The shrill voice screamed in my ear, causing it to ring like a bomb had just gone off only a few feet away, deafening me for a second. I turned towards the screaming mare, a fiery red pegasus with an orange and yellow mane by the name of Wildfire, and tried to collect my thoughts. “WHY ARE YOU JUST SITTING THERE AND NOT GUARDING THE PRISONERS?!” I’m pretty sure I felt several bits of spit fly into my black mane as she bellowed this.

“I was filling out the paper-” I started.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE BY NOW!” she shrieked. “GET IT DONE NOW AND GO BACK OUT AND GUARD THE PRISONERS!” Not even waiting for a reply, Wildfire turned on her hooves and stormed back out, cursing under her breath.

I simply resumed working as she walked away, shaking my head “What a hardass…” I said under my breath, After I finished typing, I ran a hoof through my mane, stood up, put my hat on, and started to walk away before stopping mid-step and looking back at my sunglasses. “Might as well grab them before I forget where they are again,” I said to myself as I stepped back and put them on. “Besides, I look cooler when I wear them.” I did a little pose in front of the reflective screen of a powered down terminal in front of me before glancing around to make sure no one saw me do that.

With that taken care of, I walked back to the holding pens. When I got there, I saw Cloudy talking with the yellow unicorn I’d just brought in. When she saw me, she immediately walked over.

“Hey Flare, what’s up?” She asked once we were face to face.

“Nothing much, what were you two up to?” I asked, gesturing to the prisoner who, by now, had slunk back towards the farthest corner of his cell.

“Nothin’ much, just a bit of intel gathering,” she quickly blurted. That caused me to raise an eyebrow.

“Usually we leave that stuff up to the higher ups…” I said, a hint of concern in my voice. Over the last couple of weeks, I had noticed she had been talking with various prisoners, and it had started to make me uneasy. Not only could she be reprimanded for doing this, but she was probably getting wild and crazy ideas from the ponies we were capturing. She knew that we weren’t to leave the base, let alone go home, for fear of getting “contaminated”.

She shrugged off my concern. “Well, I figured I’d be a bit proactive. Besides, we’re just shooting the breeze. No biggie, Flare,” she said, patting my cheek with one of her wings.

“Serenity…” I started to say, but she cut me off.

“You worry too much, man,” she said nonchalantly as she walked past. “‘Oh, I’m Flare Chaser! I take everything too seriously! I look deeply into everything!’ That’s what you sound like,” she said with a chuckle as she saw my unamused face. “Come on, I’m going on break, let's hit the decon showers.”

Not seeing a point in staying, I followed her. As I walked behind her, I quickly noticed that my eyes were being drawn to her flank, and it didn’t take long for me to start admiring said view. I blushed slightly and averted my gaze when my rational brain finally caught up. I liked her, but not like that! Besides, even if I did, I doubt she would share those feelings.

After a couple minutes, we arrived at the decontamination showers. After removing everything we were wearing, the two of us began to shower in neighboring stalls. We had just begun washing ourselves when I opened my mouth. “I know we just talked about this, but you seriously need to stop talking with the prisoners. You could get reprimanded, or worse…” I said, which only elicited a loud huff from the next stall.

“It’s nothing, Flare! You seriously need to stop worrying, man. Honestly, the worst they can do at this point is send me back up.” She said with a snort.

“No, they could put you in the ground or have you work with these fools.” I reminded her, my concern building with how nonchalant she was with this.

“Nah, I would be free if they did that.”

I was gonna comment on the stupidity of that statement, but before I could, there was a loud bang that shook the whole building. “Mother of Celestia! The fuck was that?!” I shouted as I stopped the shower and rushed out. Almost as soon as I did this, sirens began to blare from every speaker in the facility, and with them came the sound of more thundering explosions that vibrated the entire base.

“We’re under attack! Go secure the prisoners, I’ll get some weapons!” I told Serenity, who nodded before running towards the cells. I turned on my hooves, nearly slipping in the puddle of water I’d created from not drying off, and sprinted to the armory after collecting my sunglasses and hat. When I got there, the quartermaster pointed towards my battle saddle, already prepped with a sniper rifle we’d confiscated a couple months ago. Nodding, I quickly strapped in and made sure everything was set up to my liking. Putting the trigger line in my mouth, I dashed off towards the walls of our compound, finding Wildfire and Serenity at the steps leading out to the battlements.

“Guard Serenity! Status report!” Wildfire barked, looking everything over.

“All prisoners accounted for and locked up, ma’am!” Serenity barked back, saluting our boss. “No need to worry about them!”

Wildfire saw me running over before turning and nodding to Serenity. “Good. Now go get yourself armed and defend this place, and until this skirmish ends, don’t salute anyone, please.” Serenity started to salute, but caught herself, simply nodding instead before heading towards the armory. Satisfied, Wildfire turned towards me. “Follow me, Flare, and stay close. We gotta defend our home.” I watched as she opened her desk drawer and grabbed a pistol. I strained to get a good look at it, but when I did, I saw it had a particular emblem carved into the barrel.

“Uh, Chief, where did you get that pistol?” I asked curiously as I strained to remember where I had seen that emblem. It looked fairly zebric in nature, but that was all I could tell, as Wildfire looked back at me with a menacing glare. I suddenly forgot my question and focused on the task at hoof. She put the mouth trigger in and sprinted towards the gunfire. “Damn, Chief must have been a top tier athlete in a past life,” I said to myself as I found myself barely keeping up, and once again found my eyes wandering over her rear. I silently cursed and shook my head. She did have a nice rear, but dammit, she was as old as my mother! “Sisters, I need help…” I said to myself as we reached the battlements.

The battlements of our fort were the perfect place to watch the sun rise and fall. From what I had been told about the fort, it had been built during the Great War by the Ministry of Morale as some sort of relocation center for zebras and a few other non-ponies living in Equestria at the time. I had always wondered if the designers had any idea what, exactly, this place would be used for all these years later, or even if it was meant to last this long. Looking around at the chaos happening before us, I had a feeling they had. The walls, to this point, had held up remarkably. I watched a rocket smash into the wall, causing it to shake slightly, but still hold.

“FLARE!” I snapped back to Wildfire, who had apparently been yelling orders. “GIVE OUR BOYS IN THE AIR SOME COVER FROM THESE FUCKS!” She then pointing down at the attacking forces. “AND TAKE OUT THOSE DAMN LAUNCHERS!” I nodded and set to work.

Taking aim at a unicorn about to throw a grenade, I squeezed the trigger and watched said grenade drop to the ground and begin rolling now that its owner had a distinct lack of a face. The pin must have already been pulled when I shot the stallion because a moment later, there was a puff of smoke followed by a mangled corpse being thrown into the air like a foal’s doll.

“Celestia fuck! How many of these fuckers are there?!” I heard Wildfire shout over the report of her pistol. I had to agree; ever since I was assigned here, we’d never had an attack of this magnitude, let alone this well coordinated.

I shouted back to Wildfire, “Ma’am! I think we’re gonna be overrun! We should pull back to a more defensible posit-“ Suddenly, I felt a hot pain in the back of my right rear leg. I let out a scream of pain as I collapsed to the ground. Wildfire looked over at me, then up. Following her eyes, I saw a griffin flying above me, aiming his machine gun at me. He grinned and I realized, in horror, that he was about to kill me. I then heard what could only be described as a roar of pure anger and fury, accompanied by several shots. The griffin burst into bright red flames, then screamed for several seconds as his wings failed him and he went crashing into the hard concrete floor of the battlements with a sickening crunch.

Fighting the urge to throw up, and tearing my eyes away from the still-burning corpse and towards the roar, I saw Wildfire standing there, steam shooting out of her nose as she glared at the corpse before quickly reloading and rushing to my side. She looked over my wound and started to help me up. “You’ll be fine, I’m sure it’s just a flesh wound, just need to bandage it for now,” she said, grabbing a bandage and taking care of the wound before helping me up. She glanced at the corpse of the griffin, which was now just a smoldering pile of ash, and spat on it.

“Damn, Chief, where did you get that pistol?” I asked, changing the subject as I leaned on her as we hobbled through the gunfire.

“My son gave it to me before he…” She bit her lip and stopped herself. “That doesn’t matter.” I nodded as she looked around, observing the situation. It was painfully obvious, we were fucked. “Come on, kid, I’m not gonna help you all the way. We gotta get going. We’ll fall back inside the keep, entrench ourselves there, and fight till the last bullet,” she instructed as I began to take steps under my own power, rather gingerly with the shot leg.

“What about Sereni-“ I began, when suddenly, there was another explosion, and the wall behind us began to crumble.

“We can worry about her later! Let’s worry about us! MOVE YOUR ASS, FLARE!” She shouted as she took off. Ignoring the pain that pulsed from my wounded leg with every step, I did my best to follow behind her. It seemed, now, every bullet had our names written on them. “DO NOT STOP! KEEP YOUR HOOVES MOVING!” Wildfire yelled, and I obeyed. I kept my eyes forward and focused solely on escaping the nonstop cacophony of munitions screaming, cracking, and exploding all around us. Suddenly, a rocket impacted the section of wall just below our position. The shockwave knocked me off my hooves, and I watched in horror as the ground beneath Wildfire gave way. She didn’t even make a sound as she disappeared.

I scrambled to my hooves, rushed to the collapsed section of the wall, and looked into rubble. There was no sign of Wildfire. I pondered for just a moment as to what to do before another explosion resounded from below, this one louder than the last, causing the wall to convulse so strongly that I was knocked off of it. I extended my wings to slow my fall, but that only succeeded in making my situation resoundingly worse.

Unable to properly orient myself before I reached the ground, the first thing to connect with it was my left wing, and, with the entirety of my body weight following behind it, I both felt and heard a good number of bones within it snap. I quietly screamed into the ground as I laid there in excruciating pain, not only from the broken bones, but from the agony of several of them doing so in a way that they had pierced through my skin and were now clearly visible among my feathers.

When I opened my tear-filled eyes to get an idea of what my current situation was, the first thing I noticed was that my sunglasses had been shattered in the fall and my hat was a couple feet in front of my face. As my adrenaline kicked in and the pain subsided to a dull throb, I began to curl into a ball. However, as I was doing this, my eyes caught sight of something moving in the distance beyond my hat. When my mind began to correlate just what I was seeing, I realized it was Serenity rushing towards me. Seeing her, I began to stagger to my hooves. When she got within one-hundred feet of me though, she was enveloped in a yellow aura of magic and pulled back. Looking just beyond where she was now hovering, I saw the yellow unicorn we’d just captured, his horn glowing. Suddenly, there was a loud boom as the tower above me exploded before beginning to collapse. Too disoriented and weakened from everything that had just happened, the only thing I could manage was to raise my right wing up in an effort to protect myself.

“Today has not been my day” was my last thought as several hundred pounds of rock and metal landed on me.