This group of rebels, rogues and race traitors did have some very good equipment. For a start, her standard issue rifle had no wood; it was solid metal. Called an M4, it was apparently full auto - impressive for a standard issue. It looked a lot less sleek, but it was more black and gray metal instead of wood - Trixie liked that look. She was also given four “pineapple grenades”, a suit of extremely thin armor called kev-lar, and a huge ass knife. Her rifle had a scope that had a little screen on it, allowing for easy viewing of enemies - her kin in this case. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and gave the sergeant filthy earth pony a killing glare as he walked up to her. “How’s the weapon soldier?”

“Ready to use on you,” Trixie muttered.

“What was that?” The sergeant leaned up to Trixie’s face.

“I said, ready to use on you,”

“I think you mean, ‘ready for action sarge!’”

“I meant what I said, ‘sarge’,” Trixie gritted her teeth as she spoke.

“Ah, so you’re still brainwashed, eh? Shame, you look good otherwise,” The sergeant gave her a flirtatious wink and walked away.

Trixie stood there, mouth agape. What the fuck was that? Did he just... “We’re going, private, get in the APC,” Trixie walked in, noticing the covered top and the rifle slits. There were quite a few ponies in the wide space, all talking with one another. “Real beauty, ain’t she?”

“I’d say so sarge,” a new voice said. Trixie turned to find a pegasus, gold and tan. He was carrying some sort of green tube along with a much smaller, all-black weapon - similar to the thompson sub-machine-gun-thingy in size. Her left wing was missing a few feathers, and the right one had a bandage in the middle of it.

“Who the fuck are you?” Trixie asked, practically spitting the words. The APC roared to life underneath them and started to go to God knows where.

“I’m Fortune,” The pegasus extended her left wing before wincing, then sticking out a hoof in it’s place. “Who may you be?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie. What’s it to-”

Sarge snorted. “With that anti-magic ring? Yeah, good luck with that whole schtick,”

Rather than respond to the filthy non-believer, Trixie watched as a blue haze set over the sergeants knife. The knife slid out and pressed against Sarge's throat. “What was that?”

The whole APC went speechless, the talk dying down. The only sound for the next few seconds was the nearly-silent humming of the APC. Slowly, the sarge said “Y-you truly deserve that title, great and... magica-”

“Powerful,” After a second more, Trixie returned the knife to where it belonged. “Great and Powerful,”

After a few seconds where no pony talked, Trixie started to rifle through her uniform. Her eyes first set on a black box with a stick pointing out of it and a bunch of small pane of glass in the front. "What's this?" She hooves towards the object.

Fortune responded with "A r-radio. It allows for communication between us and sarge,"

"How does this radio work?"

Fortune tapped the box on his chest with his hoof. As he said "Testing testing one two three", his voice echoed out of all of the other boxes, though a hit scratchy.

Woah… "Useful…"

"More than you think," a unicorn, carrying some long green box on their back, commented. "I'm Glare,"

"Glare? Nice to meet you," The ponies held out their hooves and shook.

As Trixie was about to comment on the diversity in the APC for the tenth time, the aforementioned APC screeched to a halt. A black box in the corner screeched out We're here, similar to the radio. "Alright, get out and get sharp!" Sarge yelled. The doors slammed apart and the ponies started hopping out.

Trixie dashed out and took cover behind what appeared to be an old apartment store. Now that she looked around, it seemed… rural almost. But not rural like she knew. It wasn't a town, full of homes, but a few smaller buildings… below rural but not some desert hellhole. The scenery was nice; all sandy and warm, with a couple shell holes here and there. She pulled up her rifle and looked around the corner. From across the street, Glare called out "No tangos he-"

A bullet dinked her helmet, causing her to fall back around the corner and wince. "Bastard shook me. On the right,"

Trixie's eyes flew to the right, and as she brought her rifle over and looked into the box mounted on top of it, the ponies - earth - appeared a solid red within the sight. Everything else had a haze of green. As she swept the looker around, it detected no one more, until

"Is that… a tank?!" Trixie quickly pulled back behind the corner, terrified. Holy fuck we are sooooo dead.

Trixie heard a low fwoosh, followed by a loud bang. Turning the corner, she saw the tank... eviscerated. It was just a pile of scrap metal. It wasn't resemblant of a tank, or... anything. "What in the..."

A group of earth ponies started running down the street. Trixie heard the sarge shout "Switch to shock rounds!" Trixie inspected her gun, and indeed found a switch on the gun that had three options: 'lead' the active one; 'shock', the requested one; and 'safe'. She flipped her gun to shock and aimed at one of the ponies and pulled the trigger.

The gun had almost no kickback. There was a tiny jolt against her shoulder. The bullet hit the running filth, causing it to crash into the ground, but there was a little thing sticking out of him.

The other two runners hit the ground at the same time. "Good shots everypony! Now get to work with entrenching!" Trixie looked around and saw the other ponies pulling shovels out of their backpacks and starting to dig. Sighing, she pulled out her shovel and joined in.

Author's Note

Been some time, eh?