Battlefield Equestriaby Random NameChaptersLeading the WayOver the Hills and Far AwaySSDW (Same Sh*t, Diffrent World)Universal SoldierLeading the WayAuthor's Note: I wrote this story way back in September 2011 and way before I knew about the US soldiers pulling out of Iraq. I also did not have anytime to work on this and I had to go back a re-edit a a lot of parts. I hope you enjoy and any criticism is helpful so I can improve :) BATTLEFIELD: EQUESTRIA Once upon a time, the world was at peace. There were civil disputes between several countries in the European Union, the Russian Federation was having a crisis of their own, the so-called ‘war’ in Iraq and Afghanistan still remained, and America's economy was still declining with no hope of ever recovering anytime soon. Reports of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and ultra-nationalists from several countries in Europe and in Russia vanished without a trace. But countries around the world still remained on high alert. On top of that a teleporter that was being developed in Japan, with a joint effort with the American, European, and Russian governments, was stolen buy a group called “The New People’s Republic”. It was so-posed to be a cost effective and safer way to teleport supplies and parts to the International Space Station. But it was still in its testing stage As for Captain David Cortez of the US Army Rangers, it was just another day on planet Earth. Fort Sitting Bull Eastern Georgia September 17, 2015 10:23am local time Capt. David Cortez U.S. Army Rangers A large group of soldiers sat in a dimly lit room talking amongst themselves. They shared stories about missions they went on and others shared about their families. One soldier remained quiet as he sat in the front row of desks. He was about 6’ 2 and had short, but not buzzed, black semi-curly hair. He had his helmet off as was staring at a picture with his light brown eyes. He just stared at it not paying any attention to a soldier that sat down next to him looking at the same picture. “You know Dave if it’s any conciliation it wouldn’t work out since, you know, you being in the Army and all and that little mishap in Du-” “I know James, I know.” he said as he cut him off, “I just wish that the way she called it off was under better circumstances” Several months ago David was engaged to get married to his long time fiancee but due to his tours of duty she called off the wedding because she was afraid that he was going to get killed or never come back to the States. But it was mostly due to his court-marshal. He was now battle hardened to the point where he didn’t need to be in a relationship anymore, but for some odd reason he decided to keep that picture, he says it brings him ‘luck’. “Why do you even keep it, the picture? I mean doesn’t it bring you painful memories?” He flipped his helmet over and placed it on the desktop and looked over at the lieutenant “Let’s just say it brings me luck.” He said with a smile “With all of the luck you have I’m wondering if you’re even human.” Said James Suddenly two men came in and walked towards the front of the room. One was older with brown hair with grey streaks on the side. On the side of his Army combat uniform had the ranking of general. The soldiers stood up, including David and James, saluted. Next to him was a younger man, he had black hair and light brown eyes and wore an Army combat uniform. In his right hand he held a steel briefcase. He placed it on a table in front of the room and opened and pulled out a large file. “Good morning gentlemen, I’ll make this quick. At 0440 yesterday morning, a Russian military convoy was ambushed here.” The room was lit up from a early green light of a hologram map. The general pointed to a spot on the map, “We believe they were carrying radioactive materials that was on its way to a nuclear power plant that is under construction near a small town next to the Caspian Sea.” David rose his hand, “Does this have any connection to the disappearance of the teleporter that went missing from Japan a few months ago?” “Captain, we are not sure at this point. The Russian Federation government is also questioning the Japanese government to the disappearance. Our government is investigating as well” “Can it be used to teleport bombs?” asked James “We are not sure” said the other man He stood up and pointed at a picture that was on the screen “Gentlemen this is Agent Santiago from the CIA, he’ll be attached to your company” said the general. He then sat down next to David and let the agent have the floor. “This man, General Baryshnikov, was last seen with the convoy before it was ambushed.” He said as he pointed at a picture that was on the screen, “After they were ambushed the Russian soldiers followed their attackers all the way down south towards the Azerbaijan/ Iranian border where they were shortly stopped by Iranian soldiers. The Russian government is demanding to be let in to Iran to retrieve the stolen items but the Iranian government is denying the attack. We have reason to believe that was a decoy that fled to Iran. From what little Intel that I could collect that the real attackers fled into this mountain range here in Georgia. I believe that the NPR was behind this and may use the nuclear materials to build weapons of mass destruction. Right now we want to prevent conflict between the two nations.” The general sat back up and stood in front of the room “Gentlemen, I want this done quick and clean. You are all dismissed. Hooah” “Hooah!” said the soldiers The soldiers stood up as long with David. James stood up right behind him. Just when they where about to walk out the door the general placed his hand on David’s shoulder “Cortez, I want to have a word with you.” Said the general “Yes sir.” said David David looked over at James “Stevens make sure that the men are fully supplied” “You got it sir” David followed the general into his office. The general sat down behind his desk with an ‘old man’ grunt. David sat down in one of the chairs that were in front of the desk. The general then reached behind his desk, slid open the bottem drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He popped open the bottle and poured the alcohol into the glasses. “Cortez, you’re probably wondering why I asked you to about this mission?” he said “Well I thought the original plan was for me train the recruits and- ” “Captain, that little fuck up you pulled in Dubai didn’t set well with the other generals. They wanted to extend your court-martial, throw you in the brig for more then 6 months for disobeying a direct order, and pointing a loaded gun at a pilot.” “I understand sir, but I told you in my report-” “I had to pull a lot of strings to get this mission for you. Don’t fuck this this up captain…I have faith you will get this done. You’re the best I have seen in all of my years of serving in the Army.” He held up his shot glass and David picked up his and held it in the air. “Hooah…” said David David walked out the office and out the main building that had the briefing room. James was standing in front of the group of soldiers awaiting for orders form their superior officers. They stood up straight as soon as David came into view. “We are all ready to roll out sir” said James “Everyone fully supplied and armed?” “Yes sir.” James looked at the group again and then at David “If you don’t mind me asking, what did the general say to you?” “Words of wisdom, ‘you’re the best I’ve seen’ and all of that bullshit.” he said “What would happen if you complete this mission? Will they let you go back to lieutenant colonel? Are we going to be lead by a BIGGER asshole of a captain?” “It’s not ‘if’, we ALL are going to complete this mission. We all fight as one, remember what I said to you when you where just a recruit, ‘no lone wolf shit!’ But at this point so far I am not sure if I even want to go back to lieutenant colonel, besides no one in the Army is a bigger asshole then me.” He said with a chuckle. James smiled and stood in front of the group “Alright, lets move out!” David and James walked along side of the group towards a convoy. Canterlot A white creature with wings and a horn was on top of its head. There was mark on its flank in the shape of the sun. It was lying down on soft red pillows in a room that was lit by dozens of candles. Its hair was multi-colored and was flowing in a non-existent wind. Her horn glowed slightly. There was a knock at the door and its horn stopped glowing. “You may enter.” it said, “Tia, there you are I’ve been looking all over for you!” Another creature came in that was just like the white one. She was smaller and was a dark blue color. It also had a mark on its flank but it was the shape of a crescent-moon with black background. Her hair was also a dark blue and had stars in it. She wore a tiara with a crescent-moon on the front and a necklace with the same mark. It also was wearing steel slippers in its hoofs. “What is it my dear Luna?” said the white one, “I need your help with the royal duties, I can’t take care of them all when you are not around!” she said “They are not that hard my dear sister.” said Tia “What was it about?” asked Luna “Mysterious creatures from another world will come to ours…and they will bring war with them…” “What did they look like?” asked Luna “It is hard to explain them but they walked on their hind legs and carry long metal-like sticks that shoot fire. They have large metal beasts that have a long nose that also shoots fire and destroy any thing that gets in its way. I have seen flying steel birds that destroy the sky.” “That sounds scary Tia.” “It’s nothing to worry about Luna. It was just a vision. Now what is it that you need help with?” As the two princesses talked, a green smoke came into the room and puffed into a scroll in front of Celestia. Luna looked up at the scroll. “What is it?” “It’s a letter from Twilight, lets she what she has to say.” Celestia read the letter out loud to Luna, “Dear Princess Celestia, I keep hearing strange rumors about some strange looking creatures running about in the Everfree Forest. All of the ponies in Ponyville keep hearing explosions off in the distance. The mayor is suggesting that you send some guards to investigate. I am half-tempted myself to take a look myself. Another thing that Fluttershy is finding several wounded animals near her cottage, lucky for them she is nursing them back to full health. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle” Celestia gazed at the letter, Luna looked at her with concern “Sister, whats wrong?” “I hope all of those dreams I’ve been having are not coming true.” “Should we increase security in the mean time?” “Yes and have your night guards keep an eye of the forest during the night” “I will. The night is almost over, Tia. You need to be rising your sun soon. Please get some rest” “Goodnight sister” “Goodnight” Luna stood up and walked out of the door. Celestia looked out at the night sky, she shook her head and smiled a little. Her horn glowed and extinguished the flames on the candles and laid her head down, closed her eyes and fell fast asleep. ****** A/N: I am sorry that I made this chapter so short but I promise that the next chapter will be longer. I also want to say that I have some military knowledge even though I never served I got references from books, the web and a few TV shows. I just want to say in advance sorry that I might get some references wrong. Can't blame a guy for trying :) Over the Hills and Far AwayA/N: Wow people are actually reading this? I am very happy that they are and tracking it on this site and its giving me a boost of confidence to continue to work on this. On to the story and now with 20% more awful grammar and half-ass punctuation errors! :) Ponyville Spike had a pile of books in one hand and the other he was using to climb up the wooden ladder. When he had one stack done he climbed back down and started another stack. As he did he looked over at Twilight sitting at her desk reading a book about alternate universes. “Twi, have you ever tried to read one book then put it back before you get the next one?” “Well I am sorry Spike, the princess wanted me to look up on alternate universes. I think this might have something to do with the creatures in the forest.” Spike looked at her with wide eyes “Strange creatures? Do you think they are aliens!?” “Spike don’t be silly, aliens don’t exist. Even if they do exist I doubt that they want to start any trouble” “Yeah but-” “Spike, relax” she said with a smile, “Everything will be alright, don’t you worry” He started to relax a little and walked over to her with a pile of books. He placed them down on the ground and sat down next to her “So what have you found out?” “Listen to this,” Her horn glowed and the pages turned and then stopped on a page she bookmarked, “The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain why our universe seems to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it. If there were a large number, possibly infinite, of different physical law, or fundamental constant, in as many universes, some of these would have laws that were suitable for stars, planets and life to exist. The weak anthropic principle could then be applied to conclude that we would only consciously exist in those universes which were finely tuned for our conscious existence. Thus, while the probability might be extremely small that there is life in most of the universes, this scarcity of life-supporting universes does not imply intelligent design as the only explanation of our existence.” “Wow…I didn’t understand any of that.” said Spike “There could be other worlds with life in them, other worlds with all kinds of intelligent life and useful knowledge we could learn from them!” The more she thought about it the more excited she got and grew a big smile on her face. Spike rolled his eyes and continued to get back to putting books away. “That silly filly, she really needs to get out more.” Spike suddenly stopped and belched out a flame and a scroll appeared. “Twilight, another note from the princess.” “Oh good, let’s see what she has to say.” “Dear Twilight Sparkle, How are you coming along with the research, I hope the books I sent you are more then enough. As for the creatures that have been appearing in the forest, they are nothing more then just rumors. I have dispatched my best guards to look in the forest to make sure nothing is off. I am sorry to hear about the injured animals, Fluttershy is the best and she will heal them back to full health. I also to ask you if you stay out of the Everfree Forest until the guards come back with their report Sincerely Princess Celestia.” The Everfree Forest The Everfree Forest, where the weather changes on its own, the animals fend for themselves, all kinds of strange creatures roam the forest. Every pony knows it’s a dangerous place for any pony but yet very few venture into it. But three brave Royal Canterlot Guards had nerves of steel, laughed at danger, faced danger head on. “Why are we doing here?” “We’re here to find the pony eating monsters!” “Pony eating monsters…really?” “Will you two pipe down, were on a mission. The princess wants us to find out about the creatures that been appearing in this forest!” “Is it true that these creatures walk on their hind legs?” “We are here to confirm if the reports are true." The three pegasi walked down the dirt road and heard a strange sound coming from down the road. It sounded like metal slashing against itself, the sound made the two guards cringe with every slash but the lead pegasus stood his ground. Suddenly the source if the sound came into view. To them it looked like some kind of monster with a long nose with a head that looked like it was swollen. The color if it’s skin was a mixture of green, brown, and black. The tank stopped in front of the three pegasi, their wings spread wide trying to intimidate the large metal beast. The leader stepped forward. The other two guards looked at each other and stepped forward next to him. The three of them huddled with their wings covering each other’s backs. “Is that the pony eating monster?” “Of course it’s not, it doesn’t even have a mouth…does it?” “Look how long it’s nose is.” “Seriously, will you two dumb-asses shut up!” “What now, sir?” “We have to establish communication with them in order to confirm if it’s are hostile or not!” Suddenly the hatch of the metal monster popped open. “(Whoa, horses with wings cool! Hey check this out they are wearing some kind of gold like armor!)” Their language they spoke was strange to the pegasi. “(Horses wearing gold armor?)” “(They are horses with wings!)” “(The correct word is pegasus, didn’t mother read you any fairy tale stories with pegasus?)” “(No, but your mom did!)” “(Oooo, so original…asshole…)” The three guards looked at each other and shrugged and then focused their attention back at the creatures. The soldier hopped down from the turret and started walked over to the lead guard. “(What the hell are you doing, we have to meet up with the others at the cave!)” “(Animals like me…I want to pet it.)” “(Stop fucking around and get your ass back here!)” “(Come here horsey...)” the soldier slowly walked up to the lead guard. The guard had a confused look on his face as he got closer. When the soldier had his hand right to his face the guard bit it. “(Ow, the little fucker bit my hand!)” “(Aw, it likes you. I’ll get some rope and then you can take it for walks and feed it hay and comb its hair and name it Sprinkles.)” he said as he started to laugh. “(Fuck you, it probably has rabies!)” As the two argued, one of the guards leaned into the other, “What a strange language they speak.” The two soldiers looked at him then back at each other. “(What the fuck? Did it just talk? It talked!) The other soldier jumped down from the tank and walked over to his comrade with rifle in hand. The soldier walked past him, knelt down, and took off this helmet. “You, horse creature, say something else” the soldier said The three looked at him. After what seemed like forever the lead guard spoke up, “You two are to come with us by order of the princess. If you do not come with us peacefully we will do it by force!” said the leader The two Russians looked at each other then back at the Pegasus and pointed their rifles at their leader. The three pegasi took this as a threat. Two of the guards flapped their wings and charged at them. The second soldier was knocked down to the ground the lead soldier grabbed the pegasus by the wings and threw him to the ground hard. He then pulled out his side arm pointed and fired at the pegasus he took down. The lead guard watched in horror as his fellow guard was executed in front of him, he charged at the soldier who killed him with full force but he was too slow. The soldier slammed the butt of his rifle on the back guards head. The lead guard tumbled across the ground. The Russian walked over to the injured pegasus, his helmet was off and was bleeding from his head. “Get back...to the princess...tell her we need back up!” he said The guard flapped his wings and flew into the air as fast as he can and didn’t look back. The two humans looked up as the guard flew away. “(It’s getting away.)” “(Not for long.)” The lead soldier pointed his AK and fired several rounds. The royal guard felt the bullets shred his body and wings and came crashing down in the trees. “(Lets go make sure its dead)” “(No time, we are already late as it is)” The lead soldier walked back to the tank and climb up onto the turret “(What should I do about this one?)” His comrade looked over at the pegasus and then back at him and climbed back into the tank. “(Kill it, we can’t let anything know we are here.)” The soldier pulled out his side arm and pulled back on the slider and pointed it at the guards head. The pegasus knew he was going to die, with his last ounce of strength he flung his left wing at the Russian and cutting him on the arm. “(Ow! You little piece of shit!)” The soldier pointed his sidearm again at the pegasus and fired several shots *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* Eastern Georgia David looked out the window of the Humvee. Watching as the scenery passed by. At first David was happy to be on his first mission since his ‘little mishap’ in Dubai that left him on probation, but then he started to realize that the CIA agent was probably there to keep an eye on him. To make sure that he doesn’t disobey any more orders. “Hey Dave, is there something wrong?” David continued to stare off into the distance. “Something about this mission just doesn’t sit right with me. I mean why would Iran steal nuclear materials when they already have a shit-ton of their own and why does Russia have nuclear shit of their own in the first place? I am pretty sure that Russia is planning something!” “Come on Dave, don’t think too much into it. This is guy we’re getting is probably some NPR nut-job who thinks he can ‘take over the world’, gave some bullshit speech to a few ultra-nationalists that are willing to give their lives to a false cause, and promise them money and power. But in the end, we’ll come in and kick their asses” David looked at him with a cocked look “Now who's thinking too much into it” he said with a chuckle James chuckled with him and smiled “Well at least you are off base on a mission and finally away from the general. I mean I’d be happy to be doing something else besides the same old boring shit day in and day out.” he said The agent leaned forward and tapped David on his shoulder. “The Dubai mission was the only negative point against you. I’ll do whatever I can to make you look good again in front to the other generals and even the president.” “…Yeah, thanks” David rolled his eyes and reached for a small AM/FM radio that was sitting on the dash. He pulled out the antenna and started to fiddle around with the dials and held it close to his ear. “Hey Santiago, I was just curious do you know anything about that teleporter that the Japanese had?” asked James “All that the Pentagon knows that it was stolen by the NPR but there are conflicting reports saying that some another group stole it. All we know that it has to be found before it can be used as a weapon.” “A weapon? How?” asked James “It can be modified to teleport a bomb, or bombs, all over the world. But we haven’t heard any reports of attacks yet. Either they are testing it or can’t figure out shit how it works. Once it’s located it has to be destroyed properly.” “But how are they going to transport supplies to the ISS since it been stolen. I doubt the government wants to spend more tax payer money to re-build another one.” “Well for now they have to do it the old fashion way, with rockets.” David turned around with the radio still close to his ear. “Tell me more about this General Baryshnikov.” said David “Baryshnikov is a former KGB and was appointed by the Russian president to train men to become soldiers. He also captured a very important Al-Qaida leader that tried to blow up the Kremlin in Moscow a few years ago.” “Why is Russia rebuilding their armies again?” “They want to take on all terrorist that threatened their country, but as of right now Iran is on the top of their list” “I’m assuming that the Iranian government to stepping up their game, huh?” asked James “The Iranian government is not too happy with the Russians blaming them and they will attack first without hesitation if Russia does not back off” “Goddamn, finally…” David said as he finally found a signal. He put the radio back on the dash and turned up the volume. The song on the radio was playing ‘When the Levee Breaks’ by Led Zeppelin. The convoy consisted of a small company of Rangers, two tanks, one APC, and three Humvees. The general gave David the extra fire power since he knew he needed it to fight off any heavy resistance but the one thing he was wondering why he need it all. A gun and a few brave men is all he needed. It was only a few minutes when they reached the foothills. David held his finger to his ear and pushed the button the comm. “General, this is Cortez we have reached the foothills we are now preceding into the canyon.” “Cortez your call sign will be ‘Echo 1-0’, you and the rest of your soldiers are ordered to find General Baryshnikov alive.” “...roger that.” “Oh and one more thing Cortez, you are clear to neutralize any enemy forces that you encounter. Grimm Reaper will cover you from the air if you encounter heavy resistance.” “10-4 Echo-Actual, moving in.” “Why the hell do we need so much damn fire power?” he thought to himself The foothills were a dense forest of evergreen trees. There were also some narrow canyons that the road they were on ran through but David gets a little paranoid when he goes through a canyon or even narrow city streets he is always looking up to see any suspicious activity. Not too long ago he ordered several soldiers out of the APCs and walk along side of the convoy. The area that they were in hand them venerable to attacks from the cliffs to their right and a sudden drop to their left. “Hey Santiago, you know how to use a gun don’t you?” David said as he rolled down the window and had his M4A1 rifle pointed out. Alex cocked his M16 and pointed it out the window. “I took three and a half years of gun combat training; I can shoot a bug from a mile away.” In the distance, a soldier wearing a green digital camouflage looked through binoculars and watched and the convoy drive through the road. “(They are getting closer, everyone get into position.)” He ran past a tall man with a shaved head standing at six feet with his arms crossed looking down at the same convoy. “(Sir, the Americans are getting closer. Are you sure that he will direct them to the right spot?)” Said a lieutenant that was next to him. He uncrossed him arms and walked back down the hill. “(Make sure our spy doesn’t get injured.)” As James carefully navigated the Humvee down the dirt road, small rocks fell and landed on the hood of the Humvee. All of the soldiers pointed up towards the source of the movement. David looked up, “I want eyes looking up at all times, the rest of you watch their backs.” A man peered over the edge of a nearby cliff. He waved his hands signaling others that where the other side. The man pointed down at the convoy and then pulled out an RPG launcher. “RPG, RPG!!” Said James The RPG struck the rear Humvee and exploded killing the soldiers that were inside. Several soldiers ducked behind the tank and the machine gunner opened fire. The man ducked back behind cover as another one popped out from cover and pointed another RPG at the gunner. “Incoming!!” The gunner quickly took cover in the tank just as it struck. David aimed his rifle at the man while he was reloading another rocket. He pulled the trigger firing three shots into his chest and head. David, the two PFC, James, and Alex jumped out the lead Humvee and ducked behind it. “Tango down!” Suddenly, two Russian APCs came from around the corner and enemy soldiers came running out weapons drawn. “Grimm Reaper this is Echo 1-0, are you in the air?” “Echo 1-0 this is Grimm Reaper, we’re right above you. You’ve got 2 enemy tanks closing in on your position.” “Roger that, bring the rain.” he said The AC-130 quickly banked and fired its heavy machine gun and a 120 mm shell on the opposing forces. From the ground David continued to fire back and heard the large shell hit their targets. Dust kicked up on the battlefield, he couldn’t see anything but heard gunfire. He thought about the fallen soldiers in the Humvee that exploded, he couldn’t do anything to help them. His guilt was shadowed by eliminating the enemy. In the AC-130 a bright flash consumed the cabin. “The fuck was that?” said the gunner The other gunner looked at him and shrugged. He picked up another shell and was about to reload and noticed a large metal tube with a timer on it sitting amongst the ammo. His eyes grew wide, the timer reached zero and then exploded. The explosion caught David’s attention he looked up at the falling debris that was Grimm Reaper “Echo-Actual this is Echo-1-0, Grimm Reaper has been shot down I repeat Grimm Reaper has been shot down!” “Copy that echo, general is giving orders to fall back.” “…Shit, Roger that” David came from behind cover and fired back then another bright flash came from underneath the Humvee. Alex fired several shots at the enemy that was trying to flank them. “The hell was that?” James looked underneath and saw metal tube with a timer. “Fucking run!” David said as he pulled Alex to run. He turned to the soldier that was still manning the 50 cal. On the Humvee. “Get the fuck out of there soldier!” David was about to pull him out but he wasn’t fast enough. The explosion threw him several feet and into the APC injuring him and the wind was knocked out from his lungs. For several minutes and there was ringing in his ears drowning out the gunfire and explosions. He started to fade in and out of conscious as James was running towards him. “…Dave…” James was above him, “…we have to…” He started to blackout, “…fall back, get up…” James slapped him awake. “Get your ass up!” David quickly sat up and looked around. “We’re out numbered, out gunned, and more and more enemy forces are coming out from every damn hole in this canyon.” David looked around as he tried to figure out a way out. He looked at a large cave across from them. “Everyone move into the cave now, move, move, move!” The few remaining soldiers ran into the cave as the fire fight continued. David quickly ran with James and Alex right behind him. As they ran in the cave the entrance collapsed almost burying the three of them alive. The soldiers quickly helped to their feet. “Are you alright sir?” asked a soldier. David looked around the cave and turned on his light on his rifle. The narrow passage had very little lighting and dust was kicked up from the collapse; There was a humming coming from the end of the passage and David aimed his rifle forward. “…Move up…” When the group reached the source of the humming, they couldn’t believe their eyes. A set of three large metal rings where carved into the wall with a medium sized pad in front of it, a large wire leading from the outer ring lead to control center that was on a elevated platform that was off to the right. To the left racks full of bombs where in the corner, two tanks, and an old Soviet APC. “Is that the teleporter?” asked James, “Sure looks like it, get command on the horn. Let them know we were ambushed and send reinforcements.” Said David as he walked up the device. James placed his finger on his comm mic “Echo-Actual this is Echo-1-0, come in!” James heard nothing but static. “Echo-Actual, do you copy!?” More static. “Fucking hell, the military spends billions of tax payer dollars on satellites and advance weapons and where stuck using this antiqued shit!” He threw his hands up in the air in disgust David looked around the cave and the racks of bombs as Alex went on the platform and inspected the control panel. He plugged in a flash drive and typed on the keyboard. “I got to shut this thing off, give me a second.” said Alex “Can’t we just plant C4 on this thing and blow it up?” “If you do that it will be like a nuke going off…except worse.” “How can anything else be worse than a warhead?” “Well you know a black-hole works? Time and space will collapse on each other and we’ll be sucked in and then the whole world will be fucked.” “I doubt it really works like that...” David thought to himself, “I should of fucking stayed in college..." David started to get concern on how the agent knew so much about this teleporter, how he obtained so much information about the Russian general, and where exactly he would be. His ‘sixth sense’ was telling him that was bad ever since he left base. “Sergeant Parks, I want you to see if you can get radio HQ from the APC!” “Yes sir!” “The rest of you try to find a way out of this hole!” “Sir, yes sir!” David saw something sitting in the back of the cave was a large truck that had a tarp covering the bed. He then walked over to the truck and pulled back the cover. “Mining equipment? What the fuck are they trying to mine in these mountains, gold?” At first he thought it was used to carve out the caves in the mountain but then let the thought leave is mind. “Alright, upload is done…” Alex said as he walked down from the platform. “Upload? I thought we…” With David and James had their backs at the agent, they heard a clicking sound. They both turned around and saw that the agent had his gun pointed at them. David looked over at James that was standing next to him and closed his eyes “…Goddamn it…see James this is exactly why I don’t trust the government. They send assholes like this fucker too keep an eye on us soldiers.” said David with his back still turned at the agent Alex smiled an evil grin and fired several rounds from his rifle at the soldiers that were at the APC, killing the one that was standing in front of it. The others ducked behind cover. David’s eyes grew wide and felt hatred started to flow through his veins. He came towards Alex and was about to swing at him with a right-cross when suddenly a large Russian blocked his arm and punched David in the ribs. David recognized him from the picture. David staggered a few feet back dropping his rifle kicking it into the pad. He quickly tried to throw another punch at him but blocked it again. When he tried to punch David again, he tried grabbed his arm. But he threw David to the ground hard. He was still in a lot of pain from the hit to the ribs. The general grabbed David by the collar of his Kevlar vest and dragged him to the teleporter. “Dasvidaniya...” He threw David onto the pad. Looking down at him James came up from behind and tried to hit him in the back of the head with his rifle, but he punched him in the face. He grabbed him by his arm and threw him into the pad. In the corner of his eye he saw Alex at the control panel again. He waved goodbye at the captain, with a flick of a switch the pad fired up and huge ball of energy consumed both David and James. David felt electrical surges flow through is body. He looked at his hands and they started to disintegrate, his whole body started to the same. Tears started to flow from his eyes as he fought back the excruciating pain and then suddenly vanished. David suddenly woke up gasping for air as he rolled onto his side coughing and wheezing. After he caught up breath looked up at a bright blue sky. He had a sudden bad feeling that it wasn’t the same blue sky that he always seen before. It was different somehow. He stood up and dusted himself off and looked over to his right as saw his rifle. He picked it up and inspected to make sure it wasn’t damaged. He surveyed the landscape and noticed that he was in a lush, dense green forest. “Wait, wasn’t I in a cave…?” A/N: I know this will never EVER make it to Equestria Daily but I can say I enjoy doing this for fun. Thank you all for reading! SSDW (Same Sh*t, Diffrent World)SSDW (Same Sh*t, Diffrent World) Ponyville Twilight quickly rose from her bed and galloped out the door of her bedroom. She ran downstairs and got her saddlebag and placed books, paper, quills and her binoculars in it. Spike came downstairs rubbing his eyes. “Morning Twilight…” Twilight continued to pack. As she ignored him Spike continued sarcastically, “Good morning Spike did you sleep well? I did Twilight thanks for asking! Oh it’s no problem Spike, Rarity thinks you’re very handsome I think you’ll…” Twilight looked at him with a funny look then he blushed from embarrassment. “I’m going into the Everfree forest and observe those creatures.” she said as she put on her saddle on her back. “I should go with you, it's too dangerous to go alone. What if they are aliens and came here to destroy Ponyville…? *gasp* What if they eat ponies!?” he said as he covered his head with his blanket. “Don’t worry Spike, it will be OK. I’m pretty sure they don’t eat ponies. Besides I’m sure it’s all just a rumor, if they wanted to destroy this land they would have done it a long time ago.” Twilight gave him a smile and patted him on the head with her hoof. “But didn’t the princess say that you should stay out of the Everfree Forest?” “She did, but she won’t know that I will observe them from afar. Besides the only way to get blah blah blah is to see it first hoof.” Twilight picked up her saddlebag with her magic and placed it on her back. She opened the door and walked out towards the forest. Spike stood at the door watching walk away “Please be careful, Twilight” The Everfree Forest David sat down on a nearby tree stump, he took off his helmet and started to drink from his canteen. Unfortunately it was empty and this made him a little upset. “…super...” He looked around and noticed a large tall grassy field in front of him surrounded by tall green trees. A dirt road separated the grassy field with the rest of the forest. David suddenly noticed the sound of running water. He sat up and followed the source of the sound. After walking through the trees for a short distance he found a fresh water river and he walked over to it, rolled up sleeves on his uniform, got on his knees and put his hands in the water and splashed water onto his face and washed off the grime and dirt. He put his canteen in the river and took a big chug. After he took his well deserved drink, he looked at his reflection. “They gave me a second chance and I fucked up big time. I should of never have accepted this mission.” Suddenly he heard a faint voice, he quickly ran through the trees and back to the area where he first woke up. There he found the lieutenant laying on his back moaning. “James, are you hurt?” David said as he knelt next to him. “I feel like someone punched me in the face and then tossed me into a microwave…” James said as he rubbed his eyes. “So pretty much the same after you take one too many shots of Jack.” he said with chuckle, “Yeah, except usually I’m not in this much pain.” “Walk it off soldier, give me a sit rep.” David helped him to his feet. James took off his helmet and ran his fingers through his dark blond hair and then put his helmet back on and looked around. “Permission to speak freely sir...?” “Permission granted.” “I have no clue where the fuck we are, we lost our unit, that bastard CIA agent betrayed us and I forgot to call my girlfriend before we left base…she’s going to be so pissed.” “You still got your sidearm?” “Yeah, but I only got about two clips left and…” A bright flash appeared from the dirt road. A vortex opened and out came some soldiers wearing hazmat suits with rifles drawn. “Quick into the trees!” David and James ran to the tree line and hid in some thick bushes. Two soviet jeeps came out and stopped right in front of them. James had his sidearm drawn. The jeeps where followed by two US Army tanks, the APC, and a large truck carrying mining equipment. The back of the APC opened up and several Army Rangers piled out, stripped of their Kevlar vests and guns. The soldiers lined up the Rangers side by side and told them to get down on their knees with their hands behind their head. Sergeant Abraham Parks was struggling with one of the enemy soldiers. He broke free from his grip but another one came up and hit him in the back of the head with this rifle. He stumbled a few feet and fell onto his side. The soldier pulled him up to his knees by the collier of his uniform. The lead jeep had four soldiers wearing hazmat suits. The two in the back seat stepped off the jeep and looked around. One of them looked down at its wrist and pushed several buttons and then the vortex closed. The two took off their helmets, one was the CIA agent and the other was the Russian general. “You had the chance to kill him, why didn’t you put a bullet in his head instead of throwing him onto the teleporter?” The general took in a deep breath and with a medium Russian accent he spoke, “I heard so much about this Captain Cortez, I wanted to see if the stories about him where true. But I guess he wasn’t as tough as I thought he would be, too bad. My question is why do you have so much hatred to Captain Cortez?” “I hate him because he left my two younger brothers for dead in a war in Dubai. A war, which I might add, you started!” “Brothers?” David thought to himself as he continued to peek through the bushes “I didn’t start it; I merely helped out a certain group. Besides one shouldn’t have so much hate for one person in turn you’ll end up destroying yourself.” “As long as he’s dead and I get my money.” “Comrade Alex, you’ll get your money soon enough. But you realize that you can never go back to your home country and you’ll be labeled as a ‘turncoat’ or what’s the word I am looking for, oh yes, treason.” “Fuck America, they screwed me over for the last time! It’s time for a change and the American people need to wake up! They need to realize the corruption that surrounds the government. My brothers died for nothing and Cortez failed as a leader!” Alex handed him a small USB drive. “All of the targets are in there, and make sure you get his hometown first. I want to make his family suffer the same way he made mine suffer.” The general put his helmet on and climbed back into the jeep. He held up his wrist and pushed several buttons and the vortex opened up again. The captured Rangers looked away from the bright flash. “I am leaving you in charge of the mining operation. Kill the rest of the inhabitants in the caves. We may have alerted the locals and we need to wrap this up soon before they send more of their guards.” He whistled, the soldier in the driver’s seat started the engine and drove back into the vortex and then vanished. One of the soldiers walked over to Alex. “What should we do with the captured Americans?” asked a soldier who was standing next to him Alex looked at them and then back at the soldier. “Kill them and dump their bodies…” Alex climbed back into the jeep. “Take me to the cave.” the driver started the jeep and drove off down the dirt road. David and James looked at each other. “They are going to execute Abraham and the others, we have to hurry and think of how we are going to free them!” said James “I got an idea, I’m going to run across to the other side and flank them. When I give the signal I want you to throw a flash bang. You know what to do from there on out.” David said as he cocked his rifle. “Roger that…” James said as he cocked his M9. David looked around and grabbed a big rock. He slowly crept along the tree line. He held back his arm and threw the rock as hard as he can into the big grassy field. The sound of the rock landing in the grass was enough of a distraction for him to run across the road and to the other side. A few soldiers looked out in the field and pointed out the location. “(Go see what that was!)” Said one of them. A few started to walk out to the field to locate the source of the sound. Twilight was always nervous whenever she went to the Everfree Forest alone and she was half tempted to walk back and forget about the ‘mysterious creatures’ but her obsessive sense of knowing everything that the universe had to offer stopped her from turning back. After walking for several miles she noticed a bright white flash appear from down the road. “What was that?” she said to herself. She trotted down the road to the source. As soon as she came around the bend she suddenly stopped in her tracks as if she seen a ghost. Her mouth was open and eyes wide. She wanted to run but she couldn’t move her body. There they were...the creatures. It was nothing like she would of imagined. Suddenly she spotted another creature running across the dirt road. As she watched it run by everything seemed like it was in slow motion. The way it moved it’s hind legs, the look on it’s face, she was mesmerized to see the strange creature run upright. She quickly jumped into some nearby bushes. She peeked out with her horn glowing, a scroll and a quill came out from her saddle bag. “I’ve spotted the creatures. They seem to travel in large packs and they have some type of strange looking metal wagons. Two of them has swollen heads with long snouts, and another looks box shaped. Some of the creatures look like to be wearing some kind of strange looking yellow armor. One of them just ran in front of me, it was wearing a different type of armor then from the others. From the looks if it, it seems to be sneaking around them. But why? I will continue to observe.” As the enemy soldiers stood out in the field they couldn’t find what they been looking for. “(Did you find anything?)” “(All we found was a fuckin’ rock)” “(Get back here we are going to need some help dragging their dead asses)” The enemy soldiers started to laugh as they started to walk back David crouched along the tree line and then found a good enough spot. Then he pointed his M4 at the lead soldier that had his sidearm pointed at the Sergeant’s head. He held up his hand and waved at James, he waved back. David had his five fingers extended… Then four… Then three… Two… One… David closed his hand and pumped his fist once in the air. James nodded his head and grabbed a flash bang from his vest, pulled the pin and tossed it. One of them looked down as it landed in front of them and took a second to realize what it was. “(What the fu-)” *BANG* James came out firing at the enemy soldiers as the captured Rangers broke free and fought the other spetsnaz. James picked up an AK and fired at the enemy soldiers. David came out from behind the tree and fired at soldiers that were in the field. The turret on one of the tanks turned and had it's howitzer pointed right at him. “Aw fuck!” David said as he dove into the grassy field. *BOOM* The tank fired leaving a big smoking crater where the trees once stood and rain down debri on David. He shrugged it off and continued to fire Twilight was in shock as to what she was witnessing. The other Rangers freed themselves from their captives. The sergeant quickly tackled him and grabbed his rifle and fired at the enemy soldiers. Another Ranger quickly got on top of the other tank and shot the enemy that was inside. “These creatures are completely hostile to each other, are they at war? Why are they here? Do they plan on taking over Equestria? I know I should not make any contact but if I can just talk to one of them maybe I could-” Before she could finish writing, a bullet broke through her scroll and causing her to jump out of the bush leaving her exposed. She just stood there watching as the firefight unfolded before her. She looked out into the field and David popped out and fired a few rounds. “Secure those tanks!” he yelled out. James quickly climbed up top on the tank and forced open the hatch. And threw another flash bang and closed the hatch. *BANG* The hatch opened and two of the enemy soldiers came out, James pulled out his side arm and pointed at them. He pulled one out and then the other. The other Rangers came running up to them and made them get on their knees with their hands behind their heads. David came running up and slung his rifle around his back. He looked at the both of them with an upset look on his face “English?” They remained silent “Why are you here?” “We’re not talking, you American pig!” said one of them “Are you with the NPR?” David yanked off their helmets and balaclava. The two Russians gave David and the other Rangers a scowl look. “I’d say we put a bullet in their heads to save us some time, they aren’t going to say shit!” “Relax Parks” said James “Tell me what are you planning? Give me a fucking answer!” David’s voice started to get louder. He grabbed one of them by the collar of his vest and really got into his face. “Don’t fuck with me! Tell me everything or you are going to end up like your comrades!” With a straight face he stared back into his eyes trying to intimidate him “We will burn down your cities, destroy your homes, nothing will stop us!” the other soldier grabbed a two grenades from his vest and pulled the pins out. “Grenade!” The Rangers quickly ran in all directions and ducking down behind the tanks as the grenades exploded killing both of them. David ran back out into the field and turned his head around after the explosion “…goddamn it…” David said Abraham came up to him “What do we do now sir?” “Hide the bodies in the field and take their guns and ammo.” he said “What’s our next move Dave?” asked James “First off, we need to secure Santiago. Once we secure him we can head back to base and tell them what just happened. As much as I want to put a bullet in his head we have to bring back alive to he can stand trial.” The Rangers dragged the corpses into the grassy field and lined them up side by side. Then they took their ammo, guns, grenades and anything they could use. Twilight quietly peeked through the bushes and slowly made her way to the grassy field without being noticed by the hostile creatures. She found one the dead bodies and poked at its cheek with her hoof. Her horn glowed and she used her magic to pull out the quill and scroll. She then continued to take more notes, “Why would these creatures kill each other? Let alone kill themselves…” She looked down at the body. “This is sad that these creatures would just leave these bodies in the open instead of burying them. This…this is disrespectful…” “Saddle up, we’re Oscar-Mike!” yelled out Abraham The engines on the tanks fired up causing a sudden shock to go through Twilight’s spine. “The steel beasts have awoken. Not too long ago one of them breathed out fire with a loud bang and destroyed a tree. I am starting to guess that maybe I shouldn’t find out who or what these creatures are.” Twilight shook her head and held her head up, “No, I have to find out. I am not going to let the Princess down!” she said to herself. As David was about to walk away, his so-called ‘sixth sense’ kicked in. He turned around and walked to the dead bodies were. Twilight quickly crouched down into the tall grass in hopes he won’t see her as he came closer. He was only a few feet away, she wanted to use her teleport spell but she was too scared and couldn’t concentrate. “Dave where are you going?” said James “Thought I seen something moving in the field…something purple…” David said as he looked around the field James gave him a confused look and blinked several times “…something purple…right.” he said “I think we are not alone, someone or something maybe watching us.” Said David as he continued to scan the field. James rolled his eyes and put his hand on his shoulder “Come on Dave, I think the teleporter must have fried your brain.” David looked at him and then back out at the field, “I want eyes watching our six, whatever I just seen I want to make sure it’s not hostile!” “You got it. Hey the Captain wants eyes watching our asses! You two watch our six!” James said. David and James walked away and jogged up as the tanks started to roll away. Twilight peeked up and started to write down on her parchment, “I’ve just now noticed something they speak the same language as we do. From what I heard the alpha asked the other creatures if they speak ‘eingelash’. What a strange name for a language. I will continue on.” The captain was in front of the small convoy. He looked around the forest and noticed the wild animals peering around from behind the trees. Another thing he noticed that the air was much cleaner and fresher then is was out in Georgian mountains. “Hey Dave, I just noticed something.” “What?” “You’ve noticed the trees, the ground, and the sky right? Well they look completely different than usual…like they are out of a fucking cartoon or something…” David gave him a cocked eyed look. “…Just saying.” James said “That untested teleporter is now fully operational. It must have sent us random location some place god knows where. Right now we need to locate Santiago and get the hell out of here fast before they send reinforcements.” “Yeah but I’m just saying that…” “Zip it Lieutenant!” As they continued down the road, David suddenly he noticed black smoke billowing up from behind the ridge not to far away. He held up his hand and knelt to one knee. “Stevens, Parks, up front!” The three of them crouched down until they got closer to the edge. Abraham pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked down. It was a mouth of a large cave at the base of a large mountain range. In front was a large dirt field with small patches of grass all over the place. The one thing he did noticed was large mounds of dirt also scattered around. A large fire was off to the side with bodies burning in it “What do you see?” asked David “Let’s see…bad guy, bad guy, bad guy, machine gun nests, bad guy, bad guy, bad guy, guns, guns, and more guns.” David looked down at the small camp as Abraham handed him the binoculars. He looked through them and spotted a pile of dead bodies in front of the fire. “James down there.” David said as he pointed down the hill. “Holy shit, they killed civilians!” said James, “They don’t look human, they look more like…dogs?” Said the sergeant, “Is that one is wearing red vest?” Said James. Two soldiers dragged a large grey dog out into the open. It had a black collier around it neck, its fur was unkempt, and its upper fore legs where skinny and got bigger towards it fore paw. But looked like a hand then a paw. A man walked up to him and pulled out gun and tapped its forehead. immediately David knew who that man was, it was Alex. “Just so you know, the more you keep sending your troops, the more of them are going to die. Now tell me once more where are you keeping those diamonds I keep hearing so much about?” “You ugly creatures will never get our diamonds!” As it spoke it was like a medium pitched scratchy voice The three Rangers on the ridge looked at each other “…did that thing just fucking talk?” said James. “...this, just got weird...” said Abraham “Give us those diamonds or you will end up like your buddies over there.” “NEVER! You come into our den and kill everyone! You too will know what death will be!” Alex chucked a bit “You see this is what happens when lower sentient beings do not cooperate with higher beings with a weapon! Once again, where the fuck are they?” It stared at him with a scowl look “…Wrong answer.” He held his gun to its forehead and pulled the trigger. *BANG * Its lifeless body slumped over and fell to the ground. The two soldiers dragged the lifeless body over to the fire where the rest of them where being burned. James had a puzzled look on his face, “...so let me get this straight, that thing he just killed was a dog, a talking dog mind you. Russia has some wired animals...” said James, “What do we do now, sir?” Asked Abraham “No body here just seen that talking dog?!” “Calm the fuck down lieutenant...sir” said Abraham David looked at James and Abraham and stood up “James, do you remember that thing we did in Karkand A few years ago?” “Yeah how could I not remember, we nearly look out half the damn city” said James. David looked at him with a slight smile and nodded slightly “Sir you are not going to do what I think you are not going to do, are you?” said Abraham David got up and started to walk back down the road, “Oh god Dave, please tell me you’re not…” said James “He is…he is.” “…fuck, I just hope I don’t get a small helmet again.” “Parks, you stay here and keep an eye on them. Stevens and I are going to get that truck with the mining equipment down there and take them by surprise. One we neutralize and eliminate all enemy forces, we secure Santiago and radio base for an ex-tract. Hooah?” “Hooah…” Said Abraham David and James ran back to where the truck was. They took the uniforms off the dead bodies and changed into the ones that were not covered in blood. Hiding not too far away was Twilight with parchment and quill ready. She continued to take notes, “The two creatures are taking off their clothes and redressing themselves as the other creatures. I overheard the one they call ‘Dave’ talking about ‘neutralizing’ and finding ‘Santiaigho’. Also from what I can tell, they almost have the same body structure as primates at Fluttershy’s cottage. The only difference is that they speak the same language as we do, have very little hair, they are taller, and they can walk on their hind legs with no problems.” Twilight finished up and placed her parchment and quill back in her saddle. She brought up her binoculars with her magic and continued to observe them. A few minutes passed by and both James and David were fully changed. “Oh great, now I got helmet that's too fucking big” “As long as its on your head it fine, and besides you are not going to be wearing for long anyway” As she continued observe them, she suddenly heard some heavy breathing from behind her. “What is thaaaaaHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” she looked behind her and there stood at Manticore staring down at her. She came out from the bushes screaming. She wasn’t paying any attention to where she was running, all she knew is that she had to get away from the Manticore fast. She looked back to see if it was still following her, suddenly *THUD* She ran into the back of David’s legs. He turned and looked down at the purple pony. She stood there looking back up at David wide eyed. She didn’t realized how tall he was up close. As for David he was also in slight shock to see a small horse with huge eyes and had a unusual shade of color for its coat. “This is bad, what should I do? Should I say hi? Welcome to Equestria? There’s a huge Manticore that’s right behind me that’s hungry!” She thought to herself. James was wide eyed as well. “Uh Dave…” Just when David was about to answer, the Manticore came running out of the woods. As soon as it did it spotted Twilight and with two Army Rangers. It roared and then came charging after them. “What the fuck is that thing?!” said James, “How the hell should I know! Open fire!” yelled out David. David and James drew their rifles and fired round after round at the charging creature. But their bullets couldn’t stop it. David and James both jumped in opposite directions. Twilight ran in the other direction and into a large bush and then peeked through. James quickly stood up turned around reloaded his AK and fired again at the beast. He walked backwards as he was firing and tripped over a rock, the beast started to slowly run in his direction. James started to panic and was about fire again but the beast swiped the rifle out of his hands with its large paw. James then pulled out his M9 sidearm and fired two shots before realizing it was right above him. The manticore raised it paw once again with its claws extended. James closed his eyes tightly and prepared to enter an entire new world of hurt. Suddenly the beast started to wine and stumble away from James. He opened his eyes and saw David on its back with one hand on the knife in the middle of its furry hide while his other hand had a fist full of fur. The beast swung him around but David held on tight. His rifle slipped from his back and landed on the ground a few feet away from James. James looked up at David and then back at the rifle and quickly got to his feet and picked it up just as its tail smacked him on his chest. James flew back a few feet and landed right in front of Twilight as she was watching the whole thing unfold in front of her. David saw what happened and then quickly pulled out his side arm, a M1911 .45. He pointed it at the base of creature’s skull and fired several rounds. The manticore stumbled for the very last time right before it fell to the ground. “…oh my goodness…h-he just killed a manticore…” Twilight thought to herself. Twilight walked out of the bush and stood a few feet away from James. David stood up and dusted himself off and looked back at the creature. “The hell is this thing?” he thought to himself He yanked out the knife out from the corpse and cleaned off the blood and slid it back in the holster and his gun as well. He walked over to James lying unconscious. As he walked closer he made eye contact with the purple horse. They stood there for several seconds before Twilight broke eye contact and looked over at James. “What a strange looking horse…” he thought to himself as he slowly walked past by it. The one thing he noticed was the horn on top of her head, “what the hell is that?” “James, wake up! Wake up man!” said David as he gently slapped him in the face. “Well Twilight, he seen you might as well talk to them” Thought Twilight Twilight carefully walked over to him and looked down at James and then looked at David “Is…is he going to be ok?” she said David looked up at her with confusion, and then looked around. “…D-did you just talk?” He said looking at her “Of course I did why wouldn’t I?” she said, “…shit is getting weird Cortez…” He thought to himself. “Uuggh what the fuck hit me?” said James as he came too “Oh good, you’re not dead.” said David with a small chuckle, “As long as I am with you who knows” he said sarcastically, “Oh thank Celestia, he’s not dead. I thought for sure that the Manticore would…what?” Twilight looked back at the two soldiers who started back at her. “…Ok I must have been hit in the head one too many times cause I swear that horse just said some-” “Ahem, I hate to sound rude but I am a pony not a horse. Ponies are a different breed from horses but we do come from the same-” James continued to look the purple horse with a surprised look on his face. David stood and started to walk away. “...S-so we’re going to ignore the talking horse now Dave? Dave!?” James said as he stood up and followed him “I’m a pony!” yelled out Twilight. Twilight was offended by his rudeness but she tried her best to not get upset. She trotted up to them from behind. “I must apologize, we got off on the wrong hoof. Allow be to introduce myself, my name is Twilight Sparkle, local librarian in Ponyville and apprentice to Princess Celestia. She is our kind ruler of our land called Equestria. She controls the sun while her sister Luna controls the moon. And as a representative of my species to make contact with yours, let me be the first to...hey, where you paying attention to anything I was saying?!” David and James looked down at the purple pony and then back at each other “So Dave, you are not as shocked as I am that there is a talking horse standing right behind us?” Said James, “And what the fuck was that thing that attacked us?” “It was a manticore” she said “Manti-what?” said Dave “A manticore, a head of a lion with wings and tail of a dragon” Twilight looked at the two of them waiting for them to talk again. “James, there has been a slight chance that we might have been transported to...another world.” James looked at him and blinked several times “...Another world? Seriously Dave?” “I am not entirely sure, but the fact that we are in another universe is just a theory” “A theory? A THEORY! You went to college for this shit, you should know everything about the whole damn universe!” “I dropped out of college after three years, I told you about this Stevens. Look, I can give the whole fucking explanation which will take hours, on end which we don’t have time for, or I can just half-ass it for you!” James rubbed the bridge of his nose from the frustration “J-just half-ass it for me, I got a headache...” he said. Twilight was standing right behind them the whole time, her ears really started to perk up as David tried to explain the best he can about parallel universes to James. David pulled out his knife and started to draw lines in the dirt. “This line on the left is our represents our universe and this on the right is the one we are currently in right now. I’m not too sure how it happened but the teleporter must have ripped the fabric of space and time and opened up to this world. I am guessing to whoever stole it tried to reverse engineer the technology and somehow found this world. This is earth but a different earth. We might be in the same universe or we might not, might being the key word. If it was night time and I could get a hold of some star charts maybe I can figure out where we are...” “So are you a scientist?” Twilight looked at him from top to bottom, “ You don’t look like the real scientific type.” The two Rangers looked back at the purple creature “And I usually don’t meet talking horses on a daily basis.” said David “You are being awfully rude! Do you normally treat everypony you meet like this?” “Everypony?” David said he looked over at James. He shrugged while looking back at him “So what do I call you?” asked Twilight “David…” “What is the name of your species?” He looked back down at her “Human...” Twilight’s horn started to glow, the scroll and quill levitated moved in front of her. “Hmm, ‘Heumin’…” David and James looked at her with a puzzled look. David knelt down and got eye level with Twilight, with the parchment and quill still floating in front of her. “How are you doing that?” asked David “Magic.” “Magic?” “Yes magic, don’t you use magic where you come from?” David looked at the pony with confusion. James knelt down next to him “Dave, we have to get going before they find out that their pals are dead.” said James “Alright get in the truck. You horse, pony, thing, you are coming with us.” Said David “Y-you’re not going to take me prisoner are you?” “We can’t let you go, you might get captured by the enemy and then THEY might kill you. They also might torture you to giving away our location. We just witnessed them killing some dogs, talking dogs I might add. So you are better off coming with us.” “I just saw you kill a manticore in front of me. I don’t feel safe right now but I have to cooperate with you. I don’t want to die.” said Twilight “Look I promise I won’t lay a single finger on you and you won’t die. Not on my watch.” said David. David was driving with James in the passenger seat. Twilight sitting in between looking around the truck she started to ask David and James more questions about them. James started to answer some of questions but David remained silent as he was still trying to figure it all out. They both wore the Russian uniforms with black balaclavas covering their faces with lightly tinted goggles covering their eyes. As soon as they reached the rest of the Rangers, David told her to get out and stay with the Sergeant. He stood at the top of the ridge as he watched the truck with the captain and the lieutenant driving down the hill. He then looked at the lavender pony that the captain told him to keep an eye on. “So…you really talk?” asked Abraham Twilight was nervous enough, but she still wanted to know more about the humans the just met “Yes I do. please allow me introduce myself, my name is Twilight Sparkle and…are you OK?” “Join the army they said, see the world they said, get the credits you need for college they said, oh yeah and you get to meet talking mutant horses…” She looked up at him and blinked several times before writing down more notes. “Remember James, we are going to be real subtle about this.” “Let’s just hope we don’t take out half of the forest.” David drove the truck down the hill to the entrance of the cave, two of the guards and their rifles drawn and the gunners in the nests had the heavy machine guns pointed at the truck. The guard came up to the driver’s side, “(Hey, what the fuck too you so long?)” He asked, David just stared at him. “(We heard gun fire and explosions, we were about to send a team to investigate. Did you run into those talking flying horses again?)” “flying horses?” David thought to himself The guard started to get suspicious as he continued to stare at him, “(The fuck is wrong with you, why aren’t you saying anything?)” David looked over at James and then pulled out his side arm and pointed it at the soldier and fired several shots. He stumbled back and fell to the ground. David fired at the other soldiers as he ducked for cover “Yeah, real fucking subtle Dave.” James pulled out the AK and fired at the other soldiers “What? Did you want me to ask them nicely to give up and surrender their guns?” From the tree line Twilight was watching with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth, “Dose he normally do these types of things?” Abraham looked down at the purple pony and was still in slight shock that there was a talking horse next to him. “The captain has outrageous ideas, mostly endangering his life. But somehow he comes out with little to no injuries, in other words he’s got a shit load of luck.” “…luck, huh?” she said as looked down. The machine gunners in the nest fired upon the truck David and James ducked behind the dash. He placed his finger on the ear piece that was attached to the helmet “We’re taking heavy fire, use the damn tanks to take out the MG nests!” he said as he was yelling his ear piece. “Sir we might hit you and-” said Abraham “I don’t fucking care! Danger close, danger close!” “Goddamn it…” The sergeant gave a heavy sigh and waved his hands signaling the tank gunners to fire. The tanks moved the turrets around and pointed it at the two machine gun nests. Since they had the higher ground they had the advantage. Twilight continued to take notes, “The one named ‘David’ would endanger his own life to ‘take out’ their enemy. Why would he do such a thing? But I would like to know more about him, he seems rather interesting.” Several enemy soldiers fired grenades and RPGs back at the ridge. The rest of the Rangers fired back. Twilight ducked down and covered her ears as the tanks fired and the explosions from the grenades and RPGs. *BOOM* *BOOM* The two tanks fired at the nests, hitting one of them on the steel girders and the other hitting the nest itself. The nest that got hit directly toppled over onto the truck while the other that got hit in the girder landed next to the truck. David was still inside the truck covering his head trying not to let debris land on him. James jumped out as the second tower came crashing down. As soon as it started it ended. All of the enemy soldiers have been killed by the Rangers. James came crawling out from under the wrecked truck coughing he yanked off the helmet and the black balaclava. “Dave! Dave where the hell are you?!” He came out of the truck coughing and leaned next to the destroyed truck. He took off the helmet and yanked off the balaclava. He had his hands on his knees and looked up at James with a smile, “Just like Karkand.” David chuckled and shook his head. His fellow Rangers came running down the hill to secure the entrance to the cave with Twilight not too far behind. From inside the cave the CIA agent peeked around the corner and witnessed the destruction. “Damn it! He’s alive? I thought the teleport killed him. I got to get out of here!” he thought to himself He pulled out his side arm and slowly sneaked his way towards a jeep that parked nearby. He started the engine and floored it almost running over several of the Rangers. David looked and seen that it was Alex. “It’s the agent, stop him!” said Abraham Dave pointed his M4 at Alex as drove off, but something in the corner of his eye caught his attention, “Private, hand me that RPG!” said David. The PFC tossed him the RPG, David pointed it up at the road leading the target. He fired the RPG and struck the road in front of the jeep causing it to flipped over. Alex was ejected from the seat and landed in some thick bushes. David tossed the launcher to the side. “Let’s go pick up the trash.” he said David picked Alex up and punched him as hard in the stomach as he could. Alex fell backwards and landed in the middle of the group. He was grabbed again by David and was about to punch him in the mouth. “Is that all you got?” said Alex. “You fucking bastard, why are you with them?” Said David. “You killed my brothers in Dubai, you left them for dead, and it’s your fault!” “Who were your brothers?” “You took off in that Osprey and watched them die!” Said Alex Something must have sparked in David’s mind, he flashed back and remembered seeing two Rangers running for him and then falling to the ground dead, “I told that pilot to stay put!” he said “You should of done a better job, you are a disgrace to the Army!” David pulled out his side arm and pointed at Alex’s head Give me one good reason why shouldn’t execute you right now for treason!” “Don’t kill him we have to bring him in to stand trial like you said.” said James with his hand on David’s arm. David continued to look at Alex angrily, “Sergeant Parks!” “Yes sir?” “Tie him up and make sure he doesn’t escape!” “Yes sir!” Twilight watched the whole thing unfold and continued to take more notes, “I need to take extra precautions towards these dangerous hostile creatures. I can’t make any drastic moves nor lead them to Ponyville. It’s been a long day and I am very tired, in the morning I will try to sneak out and hopefully that they won’t notice that I am gone. I am sorry princess, I have never came into the Everfree Forest.” Universal SoldierCanterlot It was just about time for Luna to set her moon and Celestia to raise her sun. She walked along the large white marble stoned hallway. A red carpet was placed in the middle and ran along a grand hallway several servants who also walked in the hallway stopped and bowed before their highness. She gave them a soft smile and continued towards a large balcony. She looked up at the sky and watched as Luna came flying in “Hello Luna” she said with a smile “…Tia” Luna had her wings spread wide with her nose up in the air “Luna, are you quite alright?” “I am doing fine my dear sister…” Celestia turned around to Luna “Luna I know there’s something wrong with you, please tell me” Luna stopped in her tracks and turned around and faced Celestia “…the griffons are getting on my nerves and every time we try to talk to them about a diplomatic solution to keep peace between our two nations they keep pushing the issue about moving the border past the mountains into Equestria!” “Luna, you have to keep your calm when talking to them. If you show any signs of anger they will use it to their advantage and-” A guard came galloping and stopped in front the two of them. He bowed before the two princesses while huffing for air. “Your highness, the patrol that went into the forest yesterday came back!” “What happened, did they find the creatures?” “Yes, they turn out to be hostile and they killed two of our best guards!” “Tia, didn’t you sent out three?” “Yes I did. Where is the third?” Celestia said as she looked at the guard “He’s in the infirmary” he said Celestia looked at Luna “Luna I need you the rise the sun for me. I must attend to this matter” “But Tia, I-” “Luna I showed you how to raise the sun, it’s not that hard to do. I trust you’ll get it done so please Luna can you do it?” “…yes…” she said with a groan Celestia gave her a smile and walked with the guard in lead as Luna flew off the balcony. When they reached the infirmary the staff and guards all bowed. The guard was on the bed with his body wrapped around in bandages with several blood stains. His wings where missing several feathers and was bruised and scared. He weakly raised his head as the princess came into the room. “You poor dear, does it hurt?” The injured pegasus rose his head at the princess and started to speak with a weak voice “They killed…they killed the others…I-I barely made it out. They walked on their hind legs and carried sticks that shot fire and lead…and they spoke a strange language… then one of them started to speak our language…” He slowly closed his eyes while Celestia looked down at him. His breath was short and getting shorter. He laid his head back down. He closed his eyes and suddenly stopped breathing. The pegasus was dead and Celestia closed her eyes and tried to fight back the tears. She watched one of her best guards die in front of her. “His wounds where too great, he had internal bleeding and couldn’t stop it. I-I’m sorry your highness” said a nurse “It’s, It’s alright you did what you can. Please inform his next of kin.” Said Celestia “Y-yes your highness” she said A larger pegasus was standing just outside the room, Celestia hung her head slightly as she walked out. The pegasus walked along side of her. His armor was golden, just like the other guards but had dents and small rips like he was just in a battle. His helmet was also golden with a full plume of blue on top and also had dents and a large rip on the left side. He was a few inches taller than the other royal guard pegasi. He was always taller ever since he was a foal. He was always made fun of cause of his size and the other colts wanted to see how tough he was, this got him into trouble often by getting into fights at school. Just because of his size he was labeled as the bully. “Captain Power Strike” said Celestia “Yes your highness?” he said as he stood to attention. “You and your best guards are to go into the Everfree Forest and find who their leader is and bring them here!” said Celestia as she spread her wings. “Yes your highness” he said as he bowed. He walked away with a look on his face, a look only a soldier had after seeing of his fellow troops dying right in front of him. He wanted to find who has done this and take care of it himself, but he as orders and he must follow them. Celestia walked out to balcony again and looked up at the sky as the run rose with a sad look on her face “My visions are becoming real. I fear that a great battle will happen” The Everfree Forest Twilight slowly crept her way out of the cave and tipped-hooved over the sleeping Rangers trying her best not to make any sudden movements to wake them. David was leaning against the wall of the cave entrance looking up at the dark, clear morning sky. In the corner of his eye he saw the small purple unicorn looking back into the cave and not noticing him standing there. She turned around and gave a light sigh of relief but suddenly froze in her tracks to seeing the tall human looking down at her. The two of them stared at each other for a few moments. He then looked back up at the night sky “I haven’t seen the sky like this since, well, forever” She looked up at him with a worried look on her face “I-I thought you would be asleep” she said “It’s funny before I joined the army I only needed eight hours of sleep and I’ll be recharged and ready for the day, but now I only need a few hours. Or sometime no sleep at all” “But won’t it affect your physical and mental health?” “Well it’s kind of hard to get some shut eye when you have bullets buzzing over your head and explosions going off a few feet away from you” He looked down at Twilight as she sat down on her haunches and nervously tried not to make anymore eye contact with him. “Where you off to this early” he asked “Oh I was, uh…uh, going to-” “If you were going to tell your ‘princess’ or whoever is in charge then go ahead, I’m not going to stop you. She is not our enemy but if she sends her armies to attack us then we have no choice but to fight back. But that’s the last thing I want to do right now. All I want to do is get the rest of my men back to base safely. We killed all of the bad guys so you have nothing to worry about, except if there are more of those manticore things or whatever then you should have us escort you to your home, what was it called again?” “Ponyville” “Ponyville, hmmm strange name but since I seen a ‘manticore’, talking dogs, and a pony with HUGE eyes that can use ‘magic’, at this point I am not going to be surprised what will I run into next.” He sat down on a large near-by rock and took off his helmet and let the cool air flow on his head. After a while she started to relax and used her magic to pull out a parchment and a quill from her saddlebag. David looked at her as she did this with an interesting look on his face “So how exactly does this ‘magic’ work?” he asked “Well first off only unicorns can use magic and the really gifted ones, such as myself, can do anything from levitating objects, to creating spells, and even teleporting. My friend Rarity uses magic too, but she is not as powerful as I am. She is more into fashion and not into spells. Celestia is the most powerful one in all of Equestria. She has the power to move the sun. She can move to moon too but that job is left to her sister, Princess Luna.” She went on and on about the magic in her world and how it can solve and create problems. Like one time she cast a spell on a plow to bring it to life during winter wrap up. She thought using magic would help but only made it worse. She also told him about the song they sung for to get them motivated. “What the hell is ‘winter wrap up’?” “It’s where we get the town cleaned up for spring. It was first founded by earth ponies who didn’t use magic they did it all by hoof for hundreds of years. There are three teams; each has their own job to do. The earth team takes care of the crops, the animal team wakes up the animals from hibernation, and the weather team takes care clearing the skies. Canterlot is the only place where they use magic to clean up winter. If we don’t complete it in time it throws all of the other seasons off. It’s kind of a headache. We where almost late one season but with my organizing skills, we got it done just in time.” “So let me get this straight, you all sing a song about wrapping up winter and if you don’t complete is in time it throws all of the other seasons off?”He said as he ran his fingers though his hair, “This is a strange world” “Don’t you have the same in your world?” she asked “Well one thing for sure is that we don’t sing songs, we just go about our business like nothing happened. The only thing that we do is change our clothes to whatever the weather is like” “How does the seasons change in your world, I am pretty sure that they don’t change on their own” “Actually they do. One pole and hemisphere of the Earth will be directed away from the sun at one side of the orbit. And half an orbit later, about half a year later, this pole will be directed towards the Sun. This is the cause of the Earth's seasons.” She blinked at him several times “Then who raises the sun and moon?” she asked “The earth orbits around the sun giving us day and night, and the moon also orbits around the earth from its gravitational orbit” “Do you have magic in your world?” she asked “Not really. Magic in my world is nothing like yours it only exists on stage shows and is more of a skill if you know how to make the audience think its magic.” Said David “Then what do you use to create spells and solve problems?” “We don’t use magic for anything. We use equations, mathematics, chemistry, and a whole lot of other shit that I was into when I was younger. Science is our magic.” A light purple aura surrounded the quill and parchment as she wrote down everything they been talking about “…so, I know I asked you this before but are you really a scientist?” “No, not really.” “…oh” she said in disappointment “But, I was on my was to be one” Silence fell upon them again bit only for a short while. David started to chuckle “I can’t believe that I am another universe, oh man if my college professor could see this now. I wrote an essay about universes and how I said that alternate universes can exist, but not just on TV shows and movies. He thought I was wrong and he gave me a ‘C’ and went on this whole spiel about how I was wrong and my theories where nonsense. That jackass made a fool of me saying that’s impossible alternate universes exists even though I have valid argument points. You see space is massive and my species only explored a small portion of it. When I mean small I mean a VERY small portion. Billions and billions of galaxies are out there with the possibility of life. We sent out probes to explore our planets in the solar system and a sent an exploration vehicle to another planet. The furthest mankind has been into space was the moon. Come to think about why the hell we haven’t gone back, it’s fucking 2015 and we are fighting each other over the dumbest shit and…” David looked down at Twilight. She looked at him with a worried look and gave a sigh, “...sorry, didn’t mean to off on a rant” Twilight continued to write “One thing that I did noticed was the stars, Orion’s Belt, Ursa Major and Minor, all of the other consolations are there in the correct locations in the sky but the fact that we are in alternate universe does not make much sense to me. Makes me think that this might be Earth, well another Earth…what?” Twilight looked up at him with amazement. “What did you study when you where in college?” “Quantum Physics, I was on my way to get my-” Her eye grew wide and had a huge smile on her face, then she jump up to him and placed her fore-hoofs on his leg. He jumped a little to have two lavender eyes staring back at him. “Whoa!” he said. He leaned back with a surprised look on his face “This is so wonderful, the fact that I met another sentient being that knows about the universe as much as I do make me so thrilled!” “…uh, yeah, glad I could help?” David gently pushed her hoofs off but still sitting really close to him “Ooh, I have to take you to the Canterlot library in the Starswirl the Bearded wing. It’s full of books and scrolls about spells and magic! Everything you need to know about Equestria and the universe is there! I am getting so excited!” soon the excitement left her face, “Oh-no I completely forgot!” “What?” “The princess told me to stay out of the forest. If she found out that I disobeyed her she will be very mad at me. This is bad, really bad! She’ll send me to the moon for one thousand years!” She paused for a moment and took in a deep breath, “Well you can’t really blame me, I mean I wanted to see what the creatures looked like, guess I found out first-hoof” She said with a sad look on her face “Well if it’s any consolation, my superiors are not very happy with me either. Whenever they give me an order to follow, I follow that order in my own way…and the fact that I do pretty stupid, wreck-less shit…” “Well yeah I think wreck-less is putting it nicely” she said as she rolled her eyes They both shared a small laugh. Twilight cleared her throat and straightened up “So, I heard that you didn’t finish college. I don’t mean to be rude, but do you mind telling what happened?” she casually asked David un-slung his M4 and placed it off to the side. He crossed his arms and legs and gave a light sigh as he leaned back “I just started my fourth semester. I had almost straight A’s in all of my classes. I was on the dean’s list, just met the girl of my dreams, and I was promised a position at NASA when I graduated. My life was set, I felt like I was on top of the world and it couldn’t of gotten any better. But, I made a horrible decision.” “What happened?” David looked up at the sky and sighed, he didn’t want to go too much into detail. He didn’t want the little unicorn to know how horrible his world is like. But since she has seen firsthand…firsthoof of what humans are capable of, she wanted to know more “I dropped out of college and joined the army…” “…dropped out of college and joined…wait, why would you do something like that? Graduating from college is more important than joining an army.” said Twilight. She stopped and gave him an upset look, “What was going through your mind at the time?” “I don’t know, spur of the moment I guess…” She had a look of disapproval “*pfft* whatever…” he said as he rolled his eyes. He continued on, “My mother didn’t take the news as well as my then girlfriend, lucky for me they both supported my decision even though she wasn’t happy that I dropped out. But my old man was a different story, he told me straight to my face the day I told him what I did, ‘quit the army and get your ass back in to college or I’m kicking you out of the house’. I was at the age where I was man enough to take responsibility for my own decisions but I was still living with my parents at the time and I had to follow his rules. Care to guess what happened next?” Twilight looked at him as the morning sun slowly started to creep over the tree line. “Don’t you miss them, your parents I mean?” “My mom sometimes, my dad, eh, sort of. With all of the stupid shit I been doing in the army they think I’m dead.” “I think that’s a horrible way to think about it, don’t you write letters to them? Why don’t you go see them when you get back to your world?” “Maybe I should…maybe not, let’s just say I am still not on that good enough terms with my father…” “You should always have a healthy relationship with both of your parents. I have a great relationship with my parents.” “Now that I am thinking about it, maybe I should have stayed in college. I was going to be set for life and I lost it all. I was going to help out humanity search the universe for other worlds with life, but now I am killing other human beings that threatened the world’s safety, my world’s safety. I threw it all away because my fucking patriotism got in the way. The choice that I made ruined my life” She continued to write down the notes on the parchment. She looked up at the sky along with him. “Have you ever thought about quitting the army and going back to college?” David looked at her and laughed. She tilted her head and had a confused look on her face “Are you kidding me? I have the greatest job in the world. I would never trade it for anything.” “But you said joining the army ruined your life” “True I did say that. I’ve been in the army just over 12 years and all of my promotions and medals that I have earned in those years would have been a waste. Besides it’s all I got left…” “Didn’t you mention you had a mate?” she asked “Mate?” “Your mare friend” David took off his helmet and showed Twilight the picture that he kept there. Twilight looked down at the picture, he was in his formal military attire and she was wearing a black dress with thin black shoulder straps. He had her left hand is his right and has his other hand around her waist. They both had smiles on their faces. Her eyes grew a little wide, the first thing she notice was the way her hair was cut, almost the same style as hers. The only difference, she had dark brown hair with two-toned purple highlights. “She, she looks almost like me, if I was one of his kind…” She thought to herself “Something wrong?” he asked “Oh, um nothing…” “I-it can’t be, alternate universes may have other versions of us. So that means that this female human is…me” “…she called off the engagement after I…was…um, incarcerated…” he said “Incarcerated?” "More like court-marshaled" “You two were about to get married?” “Yep, it was going to be perfect but then I had to go and fuck things up” “Why did she called it off?” He put his helmet back on and stood up and walked a few feet away. He places his hand so his hips and turned his torso to the side stretching out his muscles. Then he dropped his arms to the side turned around and gave her a slight smile. “That, my little pony friend, will have to wait for another time, for now I have to find some food for my men and I” “Food? What kind of food does your species eat?” “Meat, fruits, vegetables…mostly meat” “M-m-m-meat?” said Twilight as she dropped her ears and scooted away several yards Hearing that his species eats meat made her extremely worried that he is going to kill her for food. “But we don’t eat horses…err, ponies. My world uses them as helpers and sometimes pets. So don’t worry.” he said She gave a sigh of relief. She perked up again and trotted back up to him with a smile “I have a friend who owns an apple orchard and she has plenty of apples I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving away. I have another who is a pastry chef who makes delicious cupcakes.” She said “That sounds wonderful, fresh apples are definitely better then the crap they serve us at the mess hall. As for cupcakes I guess I can go for one, you have no idea how much I want a cupcake.” he said with a smile Twilight smiled back. The morning sun was shining down at the entrance of the cave. David closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun shine down on his face. He inhaled and exhaled like he was taking a breath of fresh air for the first time. “You know I never really had talked about this before. And to be honest I feel a bit more relieved talking about what happened about quitting college, joining the army and my ex and I breaking up. So uh, thank you for listening and…yeah” he looked at her and then the other way like he was almost afraid to admit sharing his feelings. “You know, he’s not that bad looking for a creature of a different species. No, I can’t think about him like that, we just met. Besides, I don’t think he is thinking about the same about me!” She thought to herself. The silence was broken when a PFC came running up to him “Captain, the…” The PFC looked down at the pony with a blank look on his face still surprised to see a strange talking purple horse. But he wasn’t the only one surprised, the other soldiers started to question each other about their leader and his sanity. Most of all they wanted to know where they are and how are they going to get back home. Some even started to question his leadership. David cleared his throat and stood up in front of Twilight like he was hiding her from view. “Is there something you wanted to tell me, private?” “Oh, um, th-the agent wants to speak with you, sir” David and Twilight reached to the cell, the agent was locked up in he was lying down on his back with his hands behind his head and his legs propped against the wall. Once he seen David and the pony he sat up right with a smile on his face. David stood in front of the cell looking down at him with an upset look on his face. He was quite surprised to see him smiling after he put a gun to his face and threatened to kill him. “You look cheery for someone whose about to get their ass thrown in federal prison” he said “Well I was thinking I can barter for, oh let’s say, immunity” He looked at him “Fucking seriously?” “I can help you turn in Baryshnikov” “This is wasting my time” David said as he started to walk away “I can tell you what the NPR has in store for the world, why they are here, and why you’re involved” David ears started to perk up. Twilight was about to follow him but then he stopped walking and turned around looked back at Alex in the cell. He then started to walk back. “Why the hell do you want to tell me what they have planned? For all I know you could give me false information!” “Well the NPR does not like let anyone live once they are captured by the enemy, when they found out that I didn’t kill myself when I got caught by you they will kill me. They don’t want to let anyone know about their plans.” “Why the sudden change of heart? You do realize that you will be executed for killing my soldiers, so you’re fucked either way.” “Look Dave, do you want to me to tell you everything or what?” David got very suspicious as to why he wanted to talk to him suddenly. He slung his M4 around his shoulder and crossed his arms. Twilight pulled out a blank parchment and her quill. “…talk…” Alex sat up Indian style with his hands on his knees “The NPR wants to take over the world and get rid of the corruption that plagues the governments. Especially Baryshnikov, he wants to reshape the world and tired to seeing his soldiers dying for a worthless cause. But he can’t just waltz right into the Kremlin and ask to take over; he wants each nation to go to war with each other. Remember I told you he caught that terrorist trying to blow up the Kremlin? When he was interrogating him he told him about the NPR and what they want to do. Somehow he was convinced to join them. The NPR needed a power source to power the teleporter; he told them about the convoy carrying the nuclear materials that they needed. But they needed a scapegoat, and that’s why Iran took the fall. The NPR stole the teleporter and they are going to send a bomb to a major city around the world and tell each government that the other sent the bomb to them. So in turn each nation will go to war. And when the dust settles the NPR will seize control over the major countries.” “So why am I involved?” “You’ve foiled several of their plans in the past. They were all perfectly orchestrated, each plan brilliantly thought out but then you had to go and fuck things up. The surprise attack you pulled in Karkand, the raid on that hotel in the gulf of Oman, and most recently the infamous battle in Dubai. But those are just only a few. The leader had enough and wanted you dead so you won’t fuck up any more of his plans so that’s where I came in. I pretty much gave your general false intel so he’ll put you on a mission to where I kill you. But Baryshnikov wanted to see how tough you where since he had heard so many stories about you. You see Davy, the leader of the NPR is pretty much fed up on how the world is and the only way to fix it is by war. War brings peace” David blinked at him several times “With peace achieved no more men and women will go fight a pointless war, they won’t have to die for a pointless cause.” Alex continued “That, has to be the most stupid thing I have ever heard. We can’t have peace just by starting a war; we need to achieve peace without firing a single bullet! But world leaders need to get their heads out of their asses first then they will realize they need to focus on things that matter!” Twilight had her quill and scroll and took down notes “This ‘NPR’ wants to take control of their governments. Ending all wars by starting major one? That doesn’t make any sense. What a dangerous world they live in. Whoever this leader is, wants to make their world a safer place. Couldn’t they sit down and talk instead of fight?” “Cortez, don’t you want your soldiers to go back to their families alive, unharmed, instead in a wheel chair or worse a coffin?” “They all signed up knowing what they were going to get into. They all knew the risks, if it was up to me I wouldn’t let all of those young men and women join the army and die in that fucking pla-” He paused and had an almost sad look on his face. Visions of soldiers that where under his command flashed before his eyes. He took his hands and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at him with an angry stare. Twilight could sense that David was going to do something dangerous to Alex, before that could happen she stepped forward and sat down a few feet from the cell and placed herself right in front of David to make sure that he doesn’t do anything. She turned her head around and looked at him. “If you don’t mind David if I asked him a few questions” He threw his hands up in the air her and walked away and leaned against the wall on the other side. Twilight’s horn glowed and quill and scroll came from her saddle bag “First of all I would like to know is why you are here in Equestria. Are you here to take over our world? We are peaceful equines that wish no harm to either of our races.” She asked “Well sweetie the only thing we want from this world is the rich natural rescores that is in these mountains. Once we are done harvesting with what we need, we’ll leave like we were never here. Our original plan was to take over this world.” “I am surprised that you are not as shocked as I was to find out that she can talk” said David “Surprise Cortez, I have been here several times before. I was apart a scout team to search this world we discovered. It was not too long we found the rich natural resources in these mountains to build the bombs without rising suspicion. We stumbled upon these caves along with those mutts and the diamonds” “Why did you kill the diamond dogs?” asked Twilight “They attacked us once we stepped onto their land” said Alex “But you trespassed” she continued “We defended ourselves” “I know they are bad, but there was no reason for you to kill them. You invaded their home! Why do does your species need to kill? It doesn’t make any sense. It frustrates me to no end!” David placed his hand on her shoulder in order to relax her. “Relax Twilight. Go over there and do, some magic…stuff” he said She groaned and took in a deep breath and walked off to the side and sat down on her haunches. She used her magic and pulled out a parchment and quill. “The creatures would kill everything that gets in their way even if it means killing their own kind. I wonder what David goes through every day.” Alex raised an eyebrow from what David was doing. David watched her has she walked away with a clam relaxing look on his face. After a few moments of silence Alex suddenly started to laugh “What so funny” asked David “Can you believe how dumb the terrorists are? Really, fucking, stupid!” “What did happen to Al-Qaida and the Taliban? I know for a fact that they didn’t decide to disband or turned themselves in. They can’t be that dumb” asked David “We’ve been using them as test subjects for the teleporter. We strapped fake bombs to them and told them that they will be sent to key locations in Washington DC and around the world to blow up several federal buildings. Somehow they believed us. When we sent them through the teleporter and when they came out the other side, there was nothing but a pile of dust.” “Haven’t they caught on to what you’ve been doing?” “Well they did catch on, once they found out what’s been happen their buddies they tried to retaliate and even some had the balls to send a message to the CIA, unfortunately that message never got out.” “So why I am not a pile of dust?” “I thought so too after seeing you disappear but I guess we perfected it. We thought we had to wear some kind special hazmat suits in order to pass though the portal without harm, I guess not anymore.” “Is there a way we can get back to our world?” “There is, but there will be several NPR soldiers” “What about that remote?” A PFC came in with the wrist remote and handed it to David. He examined it and looked like it was homemade. Wires sticking out the side, a few buttons looked like they were off a mobile phone. It was pretty much a large wrist band with a small LCD screen attached with Velcro. Two D sized batteries attached to each side powering it. “I didn’t know that the NPR had a shop class, this looks like something a kid made” David said as he examined it “It’s the prototype; Baryshnikov has the much better model. He can be anywhere in the world to activate it, but this one you have to be in a pacific spot. It’s a pain in the ass to get it working right but it works” “Is that the magic you where referring to?” asked Twilight “Yeah, the teleporter can fold time and space on each other to make long distance travel shorter. It’s extremely complicated than it already is. I can go more into detail if we had spare time” “Well I would love for you to explain it to me, if we have time maybe we can-” Said Twilight “Do you two want some time alone?” Alex interrupted “Um, what do you mean?” ask Twilight “I seen the way he looks at you, little pony. But don’t get me wrong Cortez, if you like animals that way then I am not the one to judge.” Twilight blushed slightly as she rubbed the back of her head and looked up at David. He ignored his statement. Silence fell upon the room, with the exception of crackling sound of the flames from the torches that hung along the walls. Alex stood up and leaned against the wall as Twilight and David examined the device. “Alright so all we have to do is go back to the field and the portal will open?” asked David “That’s right, but you need the code which I have.” Said Alex “Give it to me” “No” “And why the fuck not” “Because I told you I want to barter, a full pardon” “Like hell that’s going to happen, I saw you kill my soldiers’ right in front of me! For all I know you could have told them secrets about the CIA!” “My brothers you tried to save where killed only a few feet away from that Osprey. They died in vein, all they really did was say that they gave to her was their condolences. My mother wept for days on end and I felt helpless. Once I found out that they were under your command I wanted to get back for what you did. But I am over that, for now. I am pretty sure that you are pissed too, I mean they didn’t even give you a fair trial; they just threw you in jail and forgot about you for six months. Six whole months! And then you got out you lost all of the respect from your superiors that you worked so hard to earn. You where kicked back own to captain where you remained for the past three months.” Alex “First off I told that pilot to keep that bird on the ground because he knew that we had men on the ground. But we were under heavy fire, I understand that. But they where only a few feet away, I could of ran out there and carried them back but I couldn’t. I am sorry for you and your mother’s loss, but I can’t speak for the whole damn army. I can’t turn back the hands of time and go back and help them.” Said David “Before your incarceration, your leadership was brought up several times in the debriefing report. And I must say a lot of it was negative more then you think. Some it even said your abuse of power, lack of communication to the generals, and property damage just to name a few. At one point there was talk about a dishonorable discharge.” Alex continued David had a look of shame; he sat down and leaded against the wall and hung his head slightly. Twilight came up to him and placed her hoof on his shoulder. “Are you alright David?” “I…I’m fine…” “Do you want to talk about this?” “I think now is not a good time to share my feelings.” “That didn’t stop you before” He lifted his head and looked at her. She looked back at him and gave a warm smile. He smiled back and patted her on the head and scratched her ear with his right hand. She tilted her head and closed her eyes and enjoyed her ear being scratched. Suddenly she quietly moaned and David realized what he was doing and quickly pulled his hand back. Twilight opened her eyes and seen a surprised look on his face. She blushed and walked away and sat down with her back towards him. She rubbed the back of her head with her hoof pretending that didn’t happen. David then stood up and scratched the side of his face slightly embarrassed. Alex lay on the ground and crossed his arms and chuckled to what he witnessed. One again scilence fell upon them. “You know Cortez, the NPR could use a leader like you. But your patriotism will get in the way. I can’t really blame you. But if you still think about it, I can help you. I can help you turn in Baryshnikov, you’ll get the respect back from the generals. Respect that you so deserve. You’ll get your title back as Lieutenant Colonel or even better, General. I think General Cortez has a nice ring to it, don’t you? That whole mess in Dubai will be gone from your record permanently, plus all of the other mishaps. All that I am asking you is to help me.” David looked at him for a while. Took off his helmet and looked a while at the picture inside. He stared at it for a long time looking to into the eyes of his former love. He sighed and shook his head; he placed his helmet back on his head and snapped the chin strap together. He stood up and walked towards the cell “Can’t believe I am about to do this” he thought to himself “Private!” “Yes sir?” “Wake up the others, where Oscar-Mike!” “Yes sir!” Twilight looked up at David with a concerned look “You’re not actually going to help him go are you? From what I can tell he sounds very dangerous and conceiving. On top of that didn’t he killed your fellow soldiers and betray your country? He’s a part of that NPR group, doesn’t that concern you?” David looked down at Twilight and he continued to walk. Twilight stood as she watched him walk away. “…and I thought he was the good guy” she thought to herself David opened the gate to the cell and Alex stepped out, David came up to him and gripped is right arm tightly “I am going to keep my eye on you. The second you fuck up, a bullet will be put in your head. You understand?” “Sir Yes sir” Alex said as he mockingly saluted David with his free arm Fort Sitting Bull “Well Albert what do you have to say about yourself and your ‘prodigy’, eh?” said a man who was sitting in a chair that was in front of the general’s desk. His hands was behind his head with a slight smirk on his face “Can it John, you and I both know he’s the one that could of get this done.” He was just less than 6 feet tall and had brown hair with a crew cut. He wore an army combat uniform with the ranking of colonel in his sleeve. His sleeve where rolled up past his biceps and on the left side of his chest has his last name that said ‘Stanton’ stitched on a patch on the front. “All I am saying that it was a mistake to send him in. He’s wreck-less, he’s hard headed, and he’s stubborn-” “He sounds just like you John. Remember how you where” “I don’t know to be flattered or insulted” The colonel sat up and walked over to the general who was looking out towards the mountain range that David was heading towards with the small convoy just a few hours ago. The general looked down at his gold pocket watch that was slightly worn. He popped open the cover and looked at the face with the cracked glass. Behind the cover said, ‘This we’ll defend’ etched in silver. “I think it was a mistake to send him into something he couldn’t handle, I thought this would be a simple smash and grab mission. Not only we lost several brave soldiers, but we lost a couple of brave men in that AC-130.” Said Albert “You should have gave Cortez a choice to not to take the mission” said John “I did, but I somehow convinced him that this mission would make him earn the respect that he deserves” “The boy needs to realize that risking his own life to save his fellow soldiers isn’t always the best thing to do. If he dies, we lose the best damn soldier we ever had.” “You and I both know that he can’t die. I can’t explain it to why but it seems like something about him just wants him to keep going…hell for all I know he might be immortal” said Albert “…seriously?” said John with a cock-eyed look on his face “He’s a strong leader despite his ‘ideas’” said Albert The two of them looked out at the same mountain range “What’s our next move, sit down with our thumbs up our asses and wait for the NPR to come to us?” asked John “Send in a MAF to recon before we send in any more troops. If we don’t hear anything from him within the next hour, we send in reinforcements” said the general as he looked at his pocket watch again A/N: I am sorry that it took SO long for this chapter to come out. I was busy with work, lost interest, just being lazy, etc. But the import thing is that I got around to it and it's finished. This chapter might be a little bit boring to some but it helps me move the story along. And as always thanks for reading! :)
Leading the WayAuthor's Note: I wrote this story way back in September 2011 and way before I knew about the US soldiers pulling out of Iraq. I also did not have anytime to work on this and I had to go back a re-edit a a lot of parts. I hope you enjoy and any criticism is helpful so I can improve :) BATTLEFIELD: EQUESTRIA Once upon a time, the world was at peace. There were civil disputes between several countries in the European Union, the Russian Federation was having a crisis of their own, the so-called ‘war’ in Iraq and Afghanistan still remained, and America's economy was still declining with no hope of ever recovering anytime soon. Reports of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and ultra-nationalists from several countries in Europe and in Russia vanished without a trace. But countries around the world still remained on high alert. On top of that a teleporter that was being developed in Japan, with a joint effort with the American, European, and Russian governments, was stolen buy a group called “The New People’s Republic”. It was so-posed to be a cost effective and safer way to teleport supplies and parts to the International Space Station. But it was still in its testing stage As for Captain David Cortez of the US Army Rangers, it was just another day on planet Earth. Fort Sitting Bull Eastern Georgia September 17, 2015 10:23am local time Capt. David Cortez U.S. Army Rangers A large group of soldiers sat in a dimly lit room talking amongst themselves. They shared stories about missions they went on and others shared about their families. One soldier remained quiet as he sat in the front row of desks. He was about 6’ 2 and had short, but not buzzed, black semi-curly hair. He had his helmet off as was staring at a picture with his light brown eyes. He just stared at it not paying any attention to a soldier that sat down next to him looking at the same picture. “You know Dave if it’s any conciliation it wouldn’t work out since, you know, you being in the Army and all and that little mishap in Du-” “I know James, I know.” he said as he cut him off, “I just wish that the way she called it off was under better circumstances” Several months ago David was engaged to get married to his long time fiancee but due to his tours of duty she called off the wedding because she was afraid that he was going to get killed or never come back to the States. But it was mostly due to his court-marshal. He was now battle hardened to the point where he didn’t need to be in a relationship anymore, but for some odd reason he decided to keep that picture, he says it brings him ‘luck’. “Why do you even keep it, the picture? I mean doesn’t it bring you painful memories?” He flipped his helmet over and placed it on the desktop and looked over at the lieutenant “Let’s just say it brings me luck.” He said with a smile “With all of the luck you have I’m wondering if you’re even human.” Said James Suddenly two men came in and walked towards the front of the room. One was older with brown hair with grey streaks on the side. On the side of his Army combat uniform had the ranking of general. The soldiers stood up, including David and James, saluted. Next to him was a younger man, he had black hair and light brown eyes and wore an Army combat uniform. In his right hand he held a steel briefcase. He placed it on a table in front of the room and opened and pulled out a large file. “Good morning gentlemen, I’ll make this quick. At 0440 yesterday morning, a Russian military convoy was ambushed here.” The room was lit up from a early green light of a hologram map. The general pointed to a spot on the map, “We believe they were carrying radioactive materials that was on its way to a nuclear power plant that is under construction near a small town next to the Caspian Sea.” David rose his hand, “Does this have any connection to the disappearance of the teleporter that went missing from Japan a few months ago?” “Captain, we are not sure at this point. The Russian Federation government is also questioning the Japanese government to the disappearance. Our government is investigating as well” “Can it be used to teleport bombs?” asked James “We are not sure” said the other man He stood up and pointed at a picture that was on the screen “Gentlemen this is Agent Santiago from the CIA, he’ll be attached to your company” said the general. He then sat down next to David and let the agent have the floor. “This man, General Baryshnikov, was last seen with the convoy before it was ambushed.” He said as he pointed at a picture that was on the screen, “After they were ambushed the Russian soldiers followed their attackers all the way down south towards the Azerbaijan/ Iranian border where they were shortly stopped by Iranian soldiers. The Russian government is demanding to be let in to Iran to retrieve the stolen items but the Iranian government is denying the attack. We have reason to believe that was a decoy that fled to Iran. From what little Intel that I could collect that the real attackers fled into this mountain range here in Georgia. I believe that the NPR was behind this and may use the nuclear materials to build weapons of mass destruction. Right now we want to prevent conflict between the two nations.” The general sat back up and stood in front of the room “Gentlemen, I want this done quick and clean. You are all dismissed. Hooah” “Hooah!” said the soldiers The soldiers stood up as long with David. James stood up right behind him. Just when they where about to walk out the door the general placed his hand on David’s shoulder “Cortez, I want to have a word with you.” Said the general “Yes sir.” said David David looked over at James “Stevens make sure that the men are fully supplied” “You got it sir” David followed the general into his office. The general sat down behind his desk with an ‘old man’ grunt. David sat down in one of the chairs that were in front of the desk. The general then reached behind his desk, slid open the bottem drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. He popped open the bottle and poured the alcohol into the glasses. “Cortez, you’re probably wondering why I asked you to about this mission?” he said “Well I thought the original plan was for me train the recruits and- ” “Captain, that little fuck up you pulled in Dubai didn’t set well with the other generals. They wanted to extend your court-martial, throw you in the brig for more then 6 months for disobeying a direct order, and pointing a loaded gun at a pilot.” “I understand sir, but I told you in my report-” “I had to pull a lot of strings to get this mission for you. Don’t fuck this this up captain…I have faith you will get this done. You’re the best I have seen in all of my years of serving in the Army.” He held up his shot glass and David picked up his and held it in the air. “Hooah…” said David David walked out the office and out the main building that had the briefing room. James was standing in front of the group of soldiers awaiting for orders form their superior officers. They stood up straight as soon as David came into view. “We are all ready to roll out sir” said James “Everyone fully supplied and armed?” “Yes sir.” James looked at the group again and then at David “If you don’t mind me asking, what did the general say to you?” “Words of wisdom, ‘you’re the best I’ve seen’ and all of that bullshit.” he said “What would happen if you complete this mission? Will they let you go back to lieutenant colonel? Are we going to be lead by a BIGGER asshole of a captain?” “It’s not ‘if’, we ALL are going to complete this mission. We all fight as one, remember what I said to you when you where just a recruit, ‘no lone wolf shit!’ But at this point so far I am not sure if I even want to go back to lieutenant colonel, besides no one in the Army is a bigger asshole then me.” He said with a chuckle. James smiled and stood in front of the group “Alright, lets move out!” David and James walked along side of the group towards a convoy. Canterlot A white creature with wings and a horn was on top of its head. There was mark on its flank in the shape of the sun. It was lying down on soft red pillows in a room that was lit by dozens of candles. Its hair was multi-colored and was flowing in a non-existent wind. Her horn glowed slightly. There was a knock at the door and its horn stopped glowing. “You may enter.” it said, “Tia, there you are I’ve been looking all over for you!” Another creature came in that was just like the white one. She was smaller and was a dark blue color. It also had a mark on its flank but it was the shape of a crescent-moon with black background. Her hair was also a dark blue and had stars in it. She wore a tiara with a crescent-moon on the front and a necklace with the same mark. It also was wearing steel slippers in its hoofs. “What is it my dear Luna?” said the white one, “I need your help with the royal duties, I can’t take care of them all when you are not around!” she said “They are not that hard my dear sister.” said Tia “What was it about?” asked Luna “Mysterious creatures from another world will come to ours…and they will bring war with them…” “What did they look like?” asked Luna “It is hard to explain them but they walked on their hind legs and carry long metal-like sticks that shoot fire. They have large metal beasts that have a long nose that also shoots fire and destroy any thing that gets in its way. I have seen flying steel birds that destroy the sky.” “That sounds scary Tia.” “It’s nothing to worry about Luna. It was just a vision. Now what is it that you need help with?” As the two princesses talked, a green smoke came into the room and puffed into a scroll in front of Celestia. Luna looked up at the scroll. “What is it?” “It’s a letter from Twilight, lets she what she has to say.” Celestia read the letter out loud to Luna, “Dear Princess Celestia, I keep hearing strange rumors about some strange looking creatures running about in the Everfree Forest. All of the ponies in Ponyville keep hearing explosions off in the distance. The mayor is suggesting that you send some guards to investigate. I am half-tempted myself to take a look myself. Another thing that Fluttershy is finding several wounded animals near her cottage, lucky for them she is nursing them back to full health. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle” Celestia gazed at the letter, Luna looked at her with concern “Sister, whats wrong?” “I hope all of those dreams I’ve been having are not coming true.” “Should we increase security in the mean time?” “Yes and have your night guards keep an eye of the forest during the night” “I will. The night is almost over, Tia. You need to be rising your sun soon. Please get some rest” “Goodnight sister” “Goodnight” Luna stood up and walked out of the door. Celestia looked out at the night sky, she shook her head and smiled a little. Her horn glowed and extinguished the flames on the candles and laid her head down, closed her eyes and fell fast asleep. ****** A/N: I am sorry that I made this chapter so short but I promise that the next chapter will be longer. I also want to say that I have some military knowledge even though I never served I got references from books, the web and a few TV shows. I just want to say in advance sorry that I might get some references wrong. Can't blame a guy for trying :)
Over the Hills and Far AwayA/N: Wow people are actually reading this? I am very happy that they are and tracking it on this site and its giving me a boost of confidence to continue to work on this. On to the story and now with 20% more awful grammar and half-ass punctuation errors! :) Ponyville Spike had a pile of books in one hand and the other he was using to climb up the wooden ladder. When he had one stack done he climbed back down and started another stack. As he did he looked over at Twilight sitting at her desk reading a book about alternate universes. “Twi, have you ever tried to read one book then put it back before you get the next one?” “Well I am sorry Spike, the princess wanted me to look up on alternate universes. I think this might have something to do with the creatures in the forest.” Spike looked at her with wide eyes “Strange creatures? Do you think they are aliens!?” “Spike don’t be silly, aliens don’t exist. Even if they do exist I doubt that they want to start any trouble” “Yeah but-” “Spike, relax” she said with a smile, “Everything will be alright, don’t you worry” He started to relax a little and walked over to her with a pile of books. He placed them down on the ground and sat down next to her “So what have you found out?” “Listen to this,” Her horn glowed and the pages turned and then stopped on a page she bookmarked, “The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain why our universe seems to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it. If there were a large number, possibly infinite, of different physical law, or fundamental constant, in as many universes, some of these would have laws that were suitable for stars, planets and life to exist. The weak anthropic principle could then be applied to conclude that we would only consciously exist in those universes which were finely tuned for our conscious existence. Thus, while the probability might be extremely small that there is life in most of the universes, this scarcity of life-supporting universes does not imply intelligent design as the only explanation of our existence.” “Wow…I didn’t understand any of that.” said Spike “There could be other worlds with life in them, other worlds with all kinds of intelligent life and useful knowledge we could learn from them!” The more she thought about it the more excited she got and grew a big smile on her face. Spike rolled his eyes and continued to get back to putting books away. “That silly filly, she really needs to get out more.” Spike suddenly stopped and belched out a flame and a scroll appeared. “Twilight, another note from the princess.” “Oh good, let’s see what she has to say.” “Dear Twilight Sparkle, How are you coming along with the research, I hope the books I sent you are more then enough. As for the creatures that have been appearing in the forest, they are nothing more then just rumors. I have dispatched my best guards to look in the forest to make sure nothing is off. I am sorry to hear about the injured animals, Fluttershy is the best and she will heal them back to full health. I also to ask you if you stay out of the Everfree Forest until the guards come back with their report Sincerely Princess Celestia.” The Everfree Forest The Everfree Forest, where the weather changes on its own, the animals fend for themselves, all kinds of strange creatures roam the forest. Every pony knows it’s a dangerous place for any pony but yet very few venture into it. But three brave Royal Canterlot Guards had nerves of steel, laughed at danger, faced danger head on. “Why are we doing here?” “We’re here to find the pony eating monsters!” “Pony eating monsters…really?” “Will you two pipe down, were on a mission. The princess wants us to find out about the creatures that been appearing in this forest!” “Is it true that these creatures walk on their hind legs?” “We are here to confirm if the reports are true." The three pegasi walked down the dirt road and heard a strange sound coming from down the road. It sounded like metal slashing against itself, the sound made the two guards cringe with every slash but the lead pegasus stood his ground. Suddenly the source if the sound came into view. To them it looked like some kind of monster with a long nose with a head that looked like it was swollen. The color if it’s skin was a mixture of green, brown, and black. The tank stopped in front of the three pegasi, their wings spread wide trying to intimidate the large metal beast. The leader stepped forward. The other two guards looked at each other and stepped forward next to him. The three of them huddled with their wings covering each other’s backs. “Is that the pony eating monster?” “Of course it’s not, it doesn’t even have a mouth…does it?” “Look how long it’s nose is.” “Seriously, will you two dumb-asses shut up!” “What now, sir?” “We have to establish communication with them in order to confirm if it’s are hostile or not!” Suddenly the hatch of the metal monster popped open. “(Whoa, horses with wings cool! Hey check this out they are wearing some kind of gold like armor!)” Their language they spoke was strange to the pegasi. “(Horses wearing gold armor?)” “(They are horses with wings!)” “(The correct word is pegasus, didn’t mother read you any fairy tale stories with pegasus?)” “(No, but your mom did!)” “(Oooo, so original…asshole…)” The three guards looked at each other and shrugged and then focused their attention back at the creatures. The soldier hopped down from the turret and started walked over to the lead guard. “(What the hell are you doing, we have to meet up with the others at the cave!)” “(Animals like me…I want to pet it.)” “(Stop fucking around and get your ass back here!)” “(Come here horsey...)” the soldier slowly walked up to the lead guard. The guard had a confused look on his face as he got closer. When the soldier had his hand right to his face the guard bit it. “(Ow, the little fucker bit my hand!)” “(Aw, it likes you. I’ll get some rope and then you can take it for walks and feed it hay and comb its hair and name it Sprinkles.)” he said as he started to laugh. “(Fuck you, it probably has rabies!)” As the two argued, one of the guards leaned into the other, “What a strange language they speak.” The two soldiers looked at him then back at each other. “(What the fuck? Did it just talk? It talked!) The other soldier jumped down from the tank and walked over to his comrade with rifle in hand. The soldier walked past him, knelt down, and took off this helmet. “You, horse creature, say something else” the soldier said The three looked at him. After what seemed like forever the lead guard spoke up, “You two are to come with us by order of the princess. If you do not come with us peacefully we will do it by force!” said the leader The two Russians looked at each other then back at the Pegasus and pointed their rifles at their leader. The three pegasi took this as a threat. Two of the guards flapped their wings and charged at them. The second soldier was knocked down to the ground the lead soldier grabbed the pegasus by the wings and threw him to the ground hard. He then pulled out his side arm pointed and fired at the pegasus he took down. The lead guard watched in horror as his fellow guard was executed in front of him, he charged at the soldier who killed him with full force but he was too slow. The soldier slammed the butt of his rifle on the back guards head. The lead guard tumbled across the ground. The Russian walked over to the injured pegasus, his helmet was off and was bleeding from his head. “Get back...to the princess...tell her we need back up!” he said The guard flapped his wings and flew into the air as fast as he can and didn’t look back. The two humans looked up as the guard flew away. “(It’s getting away.)” “(Not for long.)” The lead soldier pointed his AK and fired several rounds. The royal guard felt the bullets shred his body and wings and came crashing down in the trees. “(Lets go make sure its dead)” “(No time, we are already late as it is)” The lead soldier walked back to the tank and climb up onto the turret “(What should I do about this one?)” His comrade looked over at the pegasus and then back at him and climbed back into the tank. “(Kill it, we can’t let anything know we are here.)” The soldier pulled out his side arm and pulled back on the slider and pointed it at the guards head. The pegasus knew he was going to die, with his last ounce of strength he flung his left wing at the Russian and cutting him on the arm. “(Ow! You little piece of shit!)” The soldier pointed his sidearm again at the pegasus and fired several shots *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* Eastern Georgia David looked out the window of the Humvee. Watching as the scenery passed by. At first David was happy to be on his first mission since his ‘little mishap’ in Dubai that left him on probation, but then he started to realize that the CIA agent was probably there to keep an eye on him. To make sure that he doesn’t disobey any more orders. “Hey Dave, is there something wrong?” David continued to stare off into the distance. “Something about this mission just doesn’t sit right with me. I mean why would Iran steal nuclear materials when they already have a shit-ton of their own and why does Russia have nuclear shit of their own in the first place? I am pretty sure that Russia is planning something!” “Come on Dave, don’t think too much into it. This is guy we’re getting is probably some NPR nut-job who thinks he can ‘take over the world’, gave some bullshit speech to a few ultra-nationalists that are willing to give their lives to a false cause, and promise them money and power. But in the end, we’ll come in and kick their asses” David looked at him with a cocked look “Now who's thinking too much into it” he said with a chuckle James chuckled with him and smiled “Well at least you are off base on a mission and finally away from the general. I mean I’d be happy to be doing something else besides the same old boring shit day in and day out.” he said The agent leaned forward and tapped David on his shoulder. “The Dubai mission was the only negative point against you. I’ll do whatever I can to make you look good again in front to the other generals and even the president.” “…Yeah, thanks” David rolled his eyes and reached for a small AM/FM radio that was sitting on the dash. He pulled out the antenna and started to fiddle around with the dials and held it close to his ear. “Hey Santiago, I was just curious do you know anything about that teleporter that the Japanese had?” asked James “All that the Pentagon knows that it was stolen by the NPR but there are conflicting reports saying that some another group stole it. All we know that it has to be found before it can be used as a weapon.” “A weapon? How?” asked James “It can be modified to teleport a bomb, or bombs, all over the world. But we haven’t heard any reports of attacks yet. Either they are testing it or can’t figure out shit how it works. Once it’s located it has to be destroyed properly.” “But how are they going to transport supplies to the ISS since it been stolen. I doubt the government wants to spend more tax payer money to re-build another one.” “Well for now they have to do it the old fashion way, with rockets.” David turned around with the radio still close to his ear. “Tell me more about this General Baryshnikov.” said David “Baryshnikov is a former KGB and was appointed by the Russian president to train men to become soldiers. He also captured a very important Al-Qaida leader that tried to blow up the Kremlin in Moscow a few years ago.” “Why is Russia rebuilding their armies again?” “They want to take on all terrorist that threatened their country, but as of right now Iran is on the top of their list” “I’m assuming that the Iranian government to stepping up their game, huh?” asked James “The Iranian government is not too happy with the Russians blaming them and they will attack first without hesitation if Russia does not back off” “Goddamn, finally…” David said as he finally found a signal. He put the radio back on the dash and turned up the volume. The song on the radio was playing ‘When the Levee Breaks’ by Led Zeppelin. The convoy consisted of a small company of Rangers, two tanks, one APC, and three Humvees. The general gave David the extra fire power since he knew he needed it to fight off any heavy resistance but the one thing he was wondering why he need it all. A gun and a few brave men is all he needed. It was only a few minutes when they reached the foothills. David held his finger to his ear and pushed the button the comm. “General, this is Cortez we have reached the foothills we are now preceding into the canyon.” “Cortez your call sign will be ‘Echo 1-0’, you and the rest of your soldiers are ordered to find General Baryshnikov alive.” “...roger that.” “Oh and one more thing Cortez, you are clear to neutralize any enemy forces that you encounter. Grimm Reaper will cover you from the air if you encounter heavy resistance.” “10-4 Echo-Actual, moving in.” “Why the hell do we need so much damn fire power?” he thought to himself The foothills were a dense forest of evergreen trees. There were also some narrow canyons that the road they were on ran through but David gets a little paranoid when he goes through a canyon or even narrow city streets he is always looking up to see any suspicious activity. Not too long ago he ordered several soldiers out of the APCs and walk along side of the convoy. The area that they were in hand them venerable to attacks from the cliffs to their right and a sudden drop to their left. “Hey Santiago, you know how to use a gun don’t you?” David said as he rolled down the window and had his M4A1 rifle pointed out. Alex cocked his M16 and pointed it out the window. “I took three and a half years of gun combat training; I can shoot a bug from a mile away.” In the distance, a soldier wearing a green digital camouflage looked through binoculars and watched and the convoy drive through the road. “(They are getting closer, everyone get into position.)” He ran past a tall man with a shaved head standing at six feet with his arms crossed looking down at the same convoy. “(Sir, the Americans are getting closer. Are you sure that he will direct them to the right spot?)” Said a lieutenant that was next to him. He uncrossed him arms and walked back down the hill. “(Make sure our spy doesn’t get injured.)” As James carefully navigated the Humvee down the dirt road, small rocks fell and landed on the hood of the Humvee. All of the soldiers pointed up towards the source of the movement. David looked up, “I want eyes looking up at all times, the rest of you watch their backs.” A man peered over the edge of a nearby cliff. He waved his hands signaling others that where the other side. The man pointed down at the convoy and then pulled out an RPG launcher. “RPG, RPG!!” Said James The RPG struck the rear Humvee and exploded killing the soldiers that were inside. Several soldiers ducked behind the tank and the machine gunner opened fire. The man ducked back behind cover as another one popped out from cover and pointed another RPG at the gunner. “Incoming!!” The gunner quickly took cover in the tank just as it struck. David aimed his rifle at the man while he was reloading another rocket. He pulled the trigger firing three shots into his chest and head. David, the two PFC, James, and Alex jumped out the lead Humvee and ducked behind it. “Tango down!” Suddenly, two Russian APCs came from around the corner and enemy soldiers came running out weapons drawn. “Grimm Reaper this is Echo 1-0, are you in the air?” “Echo 1-0 this is Grimm Reaper, we’re right above you. You’ve got 2 enemy tanks closing in on your position.” “Roger that, bring the rain.” he said The AC-130 quickly banked and fired its heavy machine gun and a 120 mm shell on the opposing forces. From the ground David continued to fire back and heard the large shell hit their targets. Dust kicked up on the battlefield, he couldn’t see anything but heard gunfire. He thought about the fallen soldiers in the Humvee that exploded, he couldn’t do anything to help them. His guilt was shadowed by eliminating the enemy. In the AC-130 a bright flash consumed the cabin. “The fuck was that?” said the gunner The other gunner looked at him and shrugged. He picked up another shell and was about to reload and noticed a large metal tube with a timer on it sitting amongst the ammo. His eyes grew wide, the timer reached zero and then exploded. The explosion caught David’s attention he looked up at the falling debris that was Grimm Reaper “Echo-Actual this is Echo-1-0, Grimm Reaper has been shot down I repeat Grimm Reaper has been shot down!” “Copy that echo, general is giving orders to fall back.” “…Shit, Roger that” David came from behind cover and fired back then another bright flash came from underneath the Humvee. Alex fired several shots at the enemy that was trying to flank them. “The hell was that?” James looked underneath and saw metal tube with a timer. “Fucking run!” David said as he pulled Alex to run. He turned to the soldier that was still manning the 50 cal. On the Humvee. “Get the fuck out of there soldier!” David was about to pull him out but he wasn’t fast enough. The explosion threw him several feet and into the APC injuring him and the wind was knocked out from his lungs. For several minutes and there was ringing in his ears drowning out the gunfire and explosions. He started to fade in and out of conscious as James was running towards him. “…Dave…” James was above him, “…we have to…” He started to blackout, “…fall back, get up…” James slapped him awake. “Get your ass up!” David quickly sat up and looked around. “We’re out numbered, out gunned, and more and more enemy forces are coming out from every damn hole in this canyon.” David looked around as he tried to figure out a way out. He looked at a large cave across from them. “Everyone move into the cave now, move, move, move!” The few remaining soldiers ran into the cave as the fire fight continued. David quickly ran with James and Alex right behind him. As they ran in the cave the entrance collapsed almost burying the three of them alive. The soldiers quickly helped to their feet. “Are you alright sir?” asked a soldier. David looked around the cave and turned on his light on his rifle. The narrow passage had very little lighting and dust was kicked up from the collapse; There was a humming coming from the end of the passage and David aimed his rifle forward. “…Move up…” When the group reached the source of the humming, they couldn’t believe their eyes. A set of three large metal rings where carved into the wall with a medium sized pad in front of it, a large wire leading from the outer ring lead to control center that was on a elevated platform that was off to the right. To the left racks full of bombs where in the corner, two tanks, and an old Soviet APC. “Is that the teleporter?” asked James, “Sure looks like it, get command on the horn. Let them know we were ambushed and send reinforcements.” Said David as he walked up the device. James placed his finger on his comm mic “Echo-Actual this is Echo-1-0, come in!” James heard nothing but static. “Echo-Actual, do you copy!?” More static. “Fucking hell, the military spends billions of tax payer dollars on satellites and advance weapons and where stuck using this antiqued shit!” He threw his hands up in the air in disgust David looked around the cave and the racks of bombs as Alex went on the platform and inspected the control panel. He plugged in a flash drive and typed on the keyboard. “I got to shut this thing off, give me a second.” said Alex “Can’t we just plant C4 on this thing and blow it up?” “If you do that it will be like a nuke going off…except worse.” “How can anything else be worse than a warhead?” “Well you know a black-hole works? Time and space will collapse on each other and we’ll be sucked in and then the whole world will be fucked.” “I doubt it really works like that...” David thought to himself, “I should of fucking stayed in college..." David started to get concern on how the agent knew so much about this teleporter, how he obtained so much information about the Russian general, and where exactly he would be. His ‘sixth sense’ was telling him that was bad ever since he left base. “Sergeant Parks, I want you to see if you can get radio HQ from the APC!” “Yes sir!” “The rest of you try to find a way out of this hole!” “Sir, yes sir!” David saw something sitting in the back of the cave was a large truck that had a tarp covering the bed. He then walked over to the truck and pulled back the cover. “Mining equipment? What the fuck are they trying to mine in these mountains, gold?” At first he thought it was used to carve out the caves in the mountain but then let the thought leave is mind. “Alright, upload is done…” Alex said as he walked down from the platform. “Upload? I thought we…” With David and James had their backs at the agent, they heard a clicking sound. They both turned around and saw that the agent had his gun pointed at them. David looked over at James that was standing next to him and closed his eyes “…Goddamn it…see James this is exactly why I don’t trust the government. They send assholes like this fucker too keep an eye on us soldiers.” said David with his back still turned at the agent Alex smiled an evil grin and fired several rounds from his rifle at the soldiers that were at the APC, killing the one that was standing in front of it. The others ducked behind cover. David’s eyes grew wide and felt hatred started to flow through his veins. He came towards Alex and was about to swing at him with a right-cross when suddenly a large Russian blocked his arm and punched David in the ribs. David recognized him from the picture. David staggered a few feet back dropping his rifle kicking it into the pad. He quickly tried to throw another punch at him but blocked it again. When he tried to punch David again, he tried grabbed his arm. But he threw David to the ground hard. He was still in a lot of pain from the hit to the ribs. The general grabbed David by the collar of his Kevlar vest and dragged him to the teleporter. “Dasvidaniya...” He threw David onto the pad. Looking down at him James came up from behind and tried to hit him in the back of the head with his rifle, but he punched him in the face. He grabbed him by his arm and threw him into the pad. In the corner of his eye he saw Alex at the control panel again. He waved goodbye at the captain, with a flick of a switch the pad fired up and huge ball of energy consumed both David and James. David felt electrical surges flow through is body. He looked at his hands and they started to disintegrate, his whole body started to the same. Tears started to flow from his eyes as he fought back the excruciating pain and then suddenly vanished. David suddenly woke up gasping for air as he rolled onto his side coughing and wheezing. After he caught up breath looked up at a bright blue sky. He had a sudden bad feeling that it wasn’t the same blue sky that he always seen before. It was different somehow. He stood up and dusted himself off and looked over to his right as saw his rifle. He picked it up and inspected to make sure it wasn’t damaged. He surveyed the landscape and noticed that he was in a lush, dense green forest. “Wait, wasn’t I in a cave…?” A/N: I know this will never EVER make it to Equestria Daily but I can say I enjoy doing this for fun. Thank you all for reading!
SSDW (Same Sh*t, Diffrent World)SSDW (Same Sh*t, Diffrent World) Ponyville Twilight quickly rose from her bed and galloped out the door of her bedroom. She ran downstairs and got her saddlebag and placed books, paper, quills and her binoculars in it. Spike came downstairs rubbing his eyes. “Morning Twilight…” Twilight continued to pack. As she ignored him Spike continued sarcastically, “Good morning Spike did you sleep well? I did Twilight thanks for asking! Oh it’s no problem Spike, Rarity thinks you’re very handsome I think you’ll…” Twilight looked at him with a funny look then he blushed from embarrassment. “I’m going into the Everfree forest and observe those creatures.” she said as she put on her saddle on her back. “I should go with you, it's too dangerous to go alone. What if they are aliens and came here to destroy Ponyville…? *gasp* What if they eat ponies!?” he said as he covered his head with his blanket. “Don’t worry Spike, it will be OK. I’m pretty sure they don’t eat ponies. Besides I’m sure it’s all just a rumor, if they wanted to destroy this land they would have done it a long time ago.” Twilight gave him a smile and patted him on the head with her hoof. “But didn’t the princess say that you should stay out of the Everfree Forest?” “She did, but she won’t know that I will observe them from afar. Besides the only way to get blah blah blah is to see it first hoof.” Twilight picked up her saddlebag with her magic and placed it on her back. She opened the door and walked out towards the forest. Spike stood at the door watching walk away “Please be careful, Twilight” The Everfree Forest David sat down on a nearby tree stump, he took off his helmet and started to drink from his canteen. Unfortunately it was empty and this made him a little upset. “…super...” He looked around and noticed a large tall grassy field in front of him surrounded by tall green trees. A dirt road separated the grassy field with the rest of the forest. David suddenly noticed the sound of running water. He sat up and followed the source of the sound. After walking through the trees for a short distance he found a fresh water river and he walked over to it, rolled up sleeves on his uniform, got on his knees and put his hands in the water and splashed water onto his face and washed off the grime and dirt. He put his canteen in the river and took a big chug. After he took his well deserved drink, he looked at his reflection. “They gave me a second chance and I fucked up big time. I should of never have accepted this mission.” Suddenly he heard a faint voice, he quickly ran through the trees and back to the area where he first woke up. There he found the lieutenant laying on his back moaning. “James, are you hurt?” David said as he knelt next to him. “I feel like someone punched me in the face and then tossed me into a microwave…” James said as he rubbed his eyes. “So pretty much the same after you take one too many shots of Jack.” he said with chuckle, “Yeah, except usually I’m not in this much pain.” “Walk it off soldier, give me a sit rep.” David helped him to his feet. James took off his helmet and ran his fingers through his dark blond hair and then put his helmet back on and looked around. “Permission to speak freely sir...?” “Permission granted.” “I have no clue where the fuck we are, we lost our unit, that bastard CIA agent betrayed us and I forgot to call my girlfriend before we left base…she’s going to be so pissed.” “You still got your sidearm?” “Yeah, but I only got about two clips left and…” A bright flash appeared from the dirt road. A vortex opened and out came some soldiers wearing hazmat suits with rifles drawn. “Quick into the trees!” David and James ran to the tree line and hid in some thick bushes. Two soviet jeeps came out and stopped right in front of them. James had his sidearm drawn. The jeeps where followed by two US Army tanks, the APC, and a large truck carrying mining equipment. The back of the APC opened up and several Army Rangers piled out, stripped of their Kevlar vests and guns. The soldiers lined up the Rangers side by side and told them to get down on their knees with their hands behind their head. Sergeant Abraham Parks was struggling with one of the enemy soldiers. He broke free from his grip but another one came up and hit him in the back of the head with this rifle. He stumbled a few feet and fell onto his side. The soldier pulled him up to his knees by the collier of his uniform. The lead jeep had four soldiers wearing hazmat suits. The two in the back seat stepped off the jeep and looked around. One of them looked down at its wrist and pushed several buttons and then the vortex closed. The two took off their helmets, one was the CIA agent and the other was the Russian general. “You had the chance to kill him, why didn’t you put a bullet in his head instead of throwing him onto the teleporter?” The general took in a deep breath and with a medium Russian accent he spoke, “I heard so much about this Captain Cortez, I wanted to see if the stories about him where true. But I guess he wasn’t as tough as I thought he would be, too bad. My question is why do you have so much hatred to Captain Cortez?” “I hate him because he left my two younger brothers for dead in a war in Dubai. A war, which I might add, you started!” “Brothers?” David thought to himself as he continued to peek through the bushes “I didn’t start it; I merely helped out a certain group. Besides one shouldn’t have so much hate for one person in turn you’ll end up destroying yourself.” “As long as he’s dead and I get my money.” “Comrade Alex, you’ll get your money soon enough. But you realize that you can never go back to your home country and you’ll be labeled as a ‘turncoat’ or what’s the word I am looking for, oh yes, treason.” “Fuck America, they screwed me over for the last time! It’s time for a change and the American people need to wake up! They need to realize the corruption that surrounds the government. My brothers died for nothing and Cortez failed as a leader!” Alex handed him a small USB drive. “All of the targets are in there, and make sure you get his hometown first. I want to make his family suffer the same way he made mine suffer.” The general put his helmet on and climbed back into the jeep. He held up his wrist and pushed several buttons and the vortex opened up again. The captured Rangers looked away from the bright flash. “I am leaving you in charge of the mining operation. Kill the rest of the inhabitants in the caves. We may have alerted the locals and we need to wrap this up soon before they send more of their guards.” He whistled, the soldier in the driver’s seat started the engine and drove back into the vortex and then vanished. One of the soldiers walked over to Alex. “What should we do with the captured Americans?” asked a soldier who was standing next to him Alex looked at them and then back at the soldier. “Kill them and dump their bodies…” Alex climbed back into the jeep. “Take me to the cave.” the driver started the jeep and drove off down the dirt road. David and James looked at each other. “They are going to execute Abraham and the others, we have to hurry and think of how we are going to free them!” said James “I got an idea, I’m going to run across to the other side and flank them. When I give the signal I want you to throw a flash bang. You know what to do from there on out.” David said as he cocked his rifle. “Roger that…” James said as he cocked his M9. David looked around and grabbed a big rock. He slowly crept along the tree line. He held back his arm and threw the rock as hard as he can into the big grassy field. The sound of the rock landing in the grass was enough of a distraction for him to run across the road and to the other side. A few soldiers looked out in the field and pointed out the location. “(Go see what that was!)” Said one of them. A few started to walk out to the field to locate the source of the sound. Twilight was always nervous whenever she went to the Everfree Forest alone and she was half tempted to walk back and forget about the ‘mysterious creatures’ but her obsessive sense of knowing everything that the universe had to offer stopped her from turning back. After walking for several miles she noticed a bright white flash appear from down the road. “What was that?” she said to herself. She trotted down the road to the source. As soon as she came around the bend she suddenly stopped in her tracks as if she seen a ghost. Her mouth was open and eyes wide. She wanted to run but she couldn’t move her body. There they were...the creatures. It was nothing like she would of imagined. Suddenly she spotted another creature running across the dirt road. As she watched it run by everything seemed like it was in slow motion. The way it moved it’s hind legs, the look on it’s face, she was mesmerized to see the strange creature run upright. She quickly jumped into some nearby bushes. She peeked out with her horn glowing, a scroll and a quill came out from her saddle bag. “I’ve spotted the creatures. They seem to travel in large packs and they have some type of strange looking metal wagons. Two of them has swollen heads with long snouts, and another looks box shaped. Some of the creatures look like to be wearing some kind of strange looking yellow armor. One of them just ran in front of me, it was wearing a different type of armor then from the others. From the looks if it, it seems to be sneaking around them. But why? I will continue to observe.” As the enemy soldiers stood out in the field they couldn’t find what they been looking for. “(Did you find anything?)” “(All we found was a fuckin’ rock)” “(Get back here we are going to need some help dragging their dead asses)” The enemy soldiers started to laugh as they started to walk back David crouched along the tree line and then found a good enough spot. Then he pointed his M4 at the lead soldier that had his sidearm pointed at the Sergeant’s head. He held up his hand and waved at James, he waved back. David had his five fingers extended… Then four… Then three… Two… One… David closed his hand and pumped his fist once in the air. James nodded his head and grabbed a flash bang from his vest, pulled the pin and tossed it. One of them looked down as it landed in front of them and took a second to realize what it was. “(What the fu-)” *BANG* James came out firing at the enemy soldiers as the captured Rangers broke free and fought the other spetsnaz. James picked up an AK and fired at the enemy soldiers. David came out from behind the tree and fired at soldiers that were in the field. The turret on one of the tanks turned and had it's howitzer pointed right at him. “Aw fuck!” David said as he dove into the grassy field. *BOOM* The tank fired leaving a big smoking crater where the trees once stood and rain down debri on David. He shrugged it off and continued to fire Twilight was in shock as to what she was witnessing. The other Rangers freed themselves from their captives. The sergeant quickly tackled him and grabbed his rifle and fired at the enemy soldiers. Another Ranger quickly got on top of the other tank and shot the enemy that was inside. “These creatures are completely hostile to each other, are they at war? Why are they here? Do they plan on taking over Equestria? I know I should not make any contact but if I can just talk to one of them maybe I could-” Before she could finish writing, a bullet broke through her scroll and causing her to jump out of the bush leaving her exposed. She just stood there watching as the firefight unfolded before her. She looked out into the field and David popped out and fired a few rounds. “Secure those tanks!” he yelled out. James quickly climbed up top on the tank and forced open the hatch. And threw another flash bang and closed the hatch. *BANG* The hatch opened and two of the enemy soldiers came out, James pulled out his side arm and pointed at them. He pulled one out and then the other. The other Rangers came running up to them and made them get on their knees with their hands behind their heads. David came running up and slung his rifle around his back. He looked at the both of them with an upset look on his face “English?” They remained silent “Why are you here?” “We’re not talking, you American pig!” said one of them “Are you with the NPR?” David yanked off their helmets and balaclava. The two Russians gave David and the other Rangers a scowl look. “I’d say we put a bullet in their heads to save us some time, they aren’t going to say shit!” “Relax Parks” said James “Tell me what are you planning? Give me a fucking answer!” David’s voice started to get louder. He grabbed one of them by the collar of his vest and really got into his face. “Don’t fuck with me! Tell me everything or you are going to end up like your comrades!” With a straight face he stared back into his eyes trying to intimidate him “We will burn down your cities, destroy your homes, nothing will stop us!” the other soldier grabbed a two grenades from his vest and pulled the pins out. “Grenade!” The Rangers quickly ran in all directions and ducking down behind the tanks as the grenades exploded killing both of them. David ran back out into the field and turned his head around after the explosion “…goddamn it…” David said Abraham came up to him “What do we do now sir?” “Hide the bodies in the field and take their guns and ammo.” he said “What’s our next move Dave?” asked James “First off, we need to secure Santiago. Once we secure him we can head back to base and tell them what just happened. As much as I want to put a bullet in his head we have to bring back alive to he can stand trial.” The Rangers dragged the corpses into the grassy field and lined them up side by side. Then they took their ammo, guns, grenades and anything they could use. Twilight quietly peeked through the bushes and slowly made her way to the grassy field without being noticed by the hostile creatures. She found one the dead bodies and poked at its cheek with her hoof. Her horn glowed and she used her magic to pull out the quill and scroll. She then continued to take more notes, “Why would these creatures kill each other? Let alone kill themselves…” She looked down at the body. “This is sad that these creatures would just leave these bodies in the open instead of burying them. This…this is disrespectful…” “Saddle up, we’re Oscar-Mike!” yelled out Abraham The engines on the tanks fired up causing a sudden shock to go through Twilight’s spine. “The steel beasts have awoken. Not too long ago one of them breathed out fire with a loud bang and destroyed a tree. I am starting to guess that maybe I shouldn’t find out who or what these creatures are.” Twilight shook her head and held her head up, “No, I have to find out. I am not going to let the Princess down!” she said to herself. As David was about to walk away, his so-called ‘sixth sense’ kicked in. He turned around and walked to the dead bodies were. Twilight quickly crouched down into the tall grass in hopes he won’t see her as he came closer. He was only a few feet away, she wanted to use her teleport spell but she was too scared and couldn’t concentrate. “Dave where are you going?” said James “Thought I seen something moving in the field…something purple…” David said as he looked around the field James gave him a confused look and blinked several times “…something purple…right.” he said “I think we are not alone, someone or something maybe watching us.” Said David as he continued to scan the field. James rolled his eyes and put his hand on his shoulder “Come on Dave, I think the teleporter must have fried your brain.” David looked at him and then back out at the field, “I want eyes watching our six, whatever I just seen I want to make sure it’s not hostile!” “You got it. Hey the Captain wants eyes watching our asses! You two watch our six!” James said. David and James walked away and jogged up as the tanks started to roll away. Twilight peeked up and started to write down on her parchment, “I’ve just now noticed something they speak the same language as we do. From what I heard the alpha asked the other creatures if they speak ‘eingelash’. What a strange name for a language. I will continue on.” The captain was in front of the small convoy. He looked around the forest and noticed the wild animals peering around from behind the trees. Another thing he noticed that the air was much cleaner and fresher then is was out in Georgian mountains. “Hey Dave, I just noticed something.” “What?” “You’ve noticed the trees, the ground, and the sky right? Well they look completely different than usual…like they are out of a fucking cartoon or something…” David gave him a cocked eyed look. “…Just saying.” James said “That untested teleporter is now fully operational. It must have sent us random location some place god knows where. Right now we need to locate Santiago and get the hell out of here fast before they send reinforcements.” “Yeah but I’m just saying that…” “Zip it Lieutenant!” As they continued down the road, David suddenly he noticed black smoke billowing up from behind the ridge not to far away. He held up his hand and knelt to one knee. “Stevens, Parks, up front!” The three of them crouched down until they got closer to the edge. Abraham pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked down. It was a mouth of a large cave at the base of a large mountain range. In front was a large dirt field with small patches of grass all over the place. The one thing he did noticed was large mounds of dirt also scattered around. A large fire was off to the side with bodies burning in it “What do you see?” asked David “Let’s see…bad guy, bad guy, bad guy, machine gun nests, bad guy, bad guy, bad guy, guns, guns, and more guns.” David looked down at the small camp as Abraham handed him the binoculars. He looked through them and spotted a pile of dead bodies in front of the fire. “James down there.” David said as he pointed down the hill. “Holy shit, they killed civilians!” said James, “They don’t look human, they look more like…dogs?” Said the sergeant, “Is that one is wearing red vest?” Said James. Two soldiers dragged a large grey dog out into the open. It had a black collier around it neck, its fur was unkempt, and its upper fore legs where skinny and got bigger towards it fore paw. But looked like a hand then a paw. A man walked up to him and pulled out gun and tapped its forehead. immediately David knew who that man was, it was Alex. “Just so you know, the more you keep sending your troops, the more of them are going to die. Now tell me once more where are you keeping those diamonds I keep hearing so much about?” “You ugly creatures will never get our diamonds!” As it spoke it was like a medium pitched scratchy voice The three Rangers on the ridge looked at each other “…did that thing just fucking talk?” said James. “...this, just got weird...” said Abraham “Give us those diamonds or you will end up like your buddies over there.” “NEVER! You come into our den and kill everyone! You too will know what death will be!” Alex chucked a bit “You see this is what happens when lower sentient beings do not cooperate with higher beings with a weapon! Once again, where the fuck are they?” It stared at him with a scowl look “…Wrong answer.” He held his gun to its forehead and pulled the trigger. *BANG * Its lifeless body slumped over and fell to the ground. The two soldiers dragged the lifeless body over to the fire where the rest of them where being burned. James had a puzzled look on his face, “...so let me get this straight, that thing he just killed was a dog, a talking dog mind you. Russia has some wired animals...” said James, “What do we do now, sir?” Asked Abraham “No body here just seen that talking dog?!” “Calm the fuck down lieutenant...sir” said Abraham David looked at James and Abraham and stood up “James, do you remember that thing we did in Karkand A few years ago?” “Yeah how could I not remember, we nearly look out half the damn city” said James. David looked at him with a slight smile and nodded slightly “Sir you are not going to do what I think you are not going to do, are you?” said Abraham David got up and started to walk back down the road, “Oh god Dave, please tell me you’re not…” said James “He is…he is.” “…fuck, I just hope I don’t get a small helmet again.” “Parks, you stay here and keep an eye on them. Stevens and I are going to get that truck with the mining equipment down there and take them by surprise. One we neutralize and eliminate all enemy forces, we secure Santiago and radio base for an ex-tract. Hooah?” “Hooah…” Said Abraham David and James ran back to where the truck was. They took the uniforms off the dead bodies and changed into the ones that were not covered in blood. Hiding not too far away was Twilight with parchment and quill ready. She continued to take notes, “The two creatures are taking off their clothes and redressing themselves as the other creatures. I overheard the one they call ‘Dave’ talking about ‘neutralizing’ and finding ‘Santiaigho’. Also from what I can tell, they almost have the same body structure as primates at Fluttershy’s cottage. The only difference is that they speak the same language as we do, have very little hair, they are taller, and they can walk on their hind legs with no problems.” Twilight finished up and placed her parchment and quill back in her saddle. She brought up her binoculars with her magic and continued to observe them. A few minutes passed by and both James and David were fully changed. “Oh great, now I got helmet that's too fucking big” “As long as its on your head it fine, and besides you are not going to be wearing for long anyway” As she continued observe them, she suddenly heard some heavy breathing from behind her. “What is thaaaaaHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” she looked behind her and there stood at Manticore staring down at her. She came out from the bushes screaming. She wasn’t paying any attention to where she was running, all she knew is that she had to get away from the Manticore fast. She looked back to see if it was still following her, suddenly *THUD* She ran into the back of David’s legs. He turned and looked down at the purple pony. She stood there looking back up at David wide eyed. She didn’t realized how tall he was up close. As for David he was also in slight shock to see a small horse with huge eyes and had a unusual shade of color for its coat. “This is bad, what should I do? Should I say hi? Welcome to Equestria? There’s a huge Manticore that’s right behind me that’s hungry!” She thought to herself. James was wide eyed as well. “Uh Dave…” Just when David was about to answer, the Manticore came running out of the woods. As soon as it did it spotted Twilight and with two Army Rangers. It roared and then came charging after them. “What the fuck is that thing?!” said James, “How the hell should I know! Open fire!” yelled out David. David and James drew their rifles and fired round after round at the charging creature. But their bullets couldn’t stop it. David and James both jumped in opposite directions. Twilight ran in the other direction and into a large bush and then peeked through. James quickly stood up turned around reloaded his AK and fired again at the beast. He walked backwards as he was firing and tripped over a rock, the beast started to slowly run in his direction. James started to panic and was about fire again but the beast swiped the rifle out of his hands with its large paw. James then pulled out his M9 sidearm and fired two shots before realizing it was right above him. The manticore raised it paw once again with its claws extended. James closed his eyes tightly and prepared to enter an entire new world of hurt. Suddenly the beast started to wine and stumble away from James. He opened his eyes and saw David on its back with one hand on the knife in the middle of its furry hide while his other hand had a fist full of fur. The beast swung him around but David held on tight. His rifle slipped from his back and landed on the ground a few feet away from James. James looked up at David and then back at the rifle and quickly got to his feet and picked it up just as its tail smacked him on his chest. James flew back a few feet and landed right in front of Twilight as she was watching the whole thing unfold in front of her. David saw what happened and then quickly pulled out his side arm, a M1911 .45. He pointed it at the base of creature’s skull and fired several rounds. The manticore stumbled for the very last time right before it fell to the ground. “…oh my goodness…h-he just killed a manticore…” Twilight thought to herself. Twilight walked out of the bush and stood a few feet away from James. David stood up and dusted himself off and looked back at the creature. “The hell is this thing?” he thought to himself He yanked out the knife out from the corpse and cleaned off the blood and slid it back in the holster and his gun as well. He walked over to James lying unconscious. As he walked closer he made eye contact with the purple horse. They stood there for several seconds before Twilight broke eye contact and looked over at James. “What a strange looking horse…” he thought to himself as he slowly walked past by it. The one thing he noticed was the horn on top of her head, “what the hell is that?” “James, wake up! Wake up man!” said David as he gently slapped him in the face. “Well Twilight, he seen you might as well talk to them” Thought Twilight Twilight carefully walked over to him and looked down at James and then looked at David “Is…is he going to be ok?” she said David looked up at her with confusion, and then looked around. “…D-did you just talk?” He said looking at her “Of course I did why wouldn’t I?” she said, “…shit is getting weird Cortez…” He thought to himself. “Uuggh what the fuck hit me?” said James as he came too “Oh good, you’re not dead.” said David with a small chuckle, “As long as I am with you who knows” he said sarcastically, “Oh thank Celestia, he’s not dead. I thought for sure that the Manticore would…what?” Twilight looked back at the two soldiers who started back at her. “…Ok I must have been hit in the head one too many times cause I swear that horse just said some-” “Ahem, I hate to sound rude but I am a pony not a horse. Ponies are a different breed from horses but we do come from the same-” James continued to look the purple horse with a surprised look on his face. David stood and started to walk away. “...S-so we’re going to ignore the talking horse now Dave? Dave!?” James said as he stood up and followed him “I’m a pony!” yelled out Twilight. Twilight was offended by his rudeness but she tried her best to not get upset. She trotted up to them from behind. “I must apologize, we got off on the wrong hoof. Allow be to introduce myself, my name is Twilight Sparkle, local librarian in Ponyville and apprentice to Princess Celestia. She is our kind ruler of our land called Equestria. She controls the sun while her sister Luna controls the moon. And as a representative of my species to make contact with yours, let me be the first to...hey, where you paying attention to anything I was saying?!” David and James looked down at the purple pony and then back at each other “So Dave, you are not as shocked as I am that there is a talking horse standing right behind us?” Said James, “And what the fuck was that thing that attacked us?” “It was a manticore” she said “Manti-what?” said Dave “A manticore, a head of a lion with wings and tail of a dragon” Twilight looked at the two of them waiting for them to talk again. “James, there has been a slight chance that we might have been transported to...another world.” James looked at him and blinked several times “...Another world? Seriously Dave?” “I am not entirely sure, but the fact that we are in another universe is just a theory” “A theory? A THEORY! You went to college for this shit, you should know everything about the whole damn universe!” “I dropped out of college after three years, I told you about this Stevens. Look, I can give the whole fucking explanation which will take hours, on end which we don’t have time for, or I can just half-ass it for you!” James rubbed the bridge of his nose from the frustration “J-just half-ass it for me, I got a headache...” he said. Twilight was standing right behind them the whole time, her ears really started to perk up as David tried to explain the best he can about parallel universes to James. David pulled out his knife and started to draw lines in the dirt. “This line on the left is our represents our universe and this on the right is the one we are currently in right now. I’m not too sure how it happened but the teleporter must have ripped the fabric of space and time and opened up to this world. I am guessing to whoever stole it tried to reverse engineer the technology and somehow found this world. This is earth but a different earth. We might be in the same universe or we might not, might being the key word. If it was night time and I could get a hold of some star charts maybe I can figure out where we are...” “So are you a scientist?” Twilight looked at him from top to bottom, “ You don’t look like the real scientific type.” The two Rangers looked back at the purple creature “And I usually don’t meet talking horses on a daily basis.” said David “You are being awfully rude! Do you normally treat everypony you meet like this?” “Everypony?” David said he looked over at James. He shrugged while looking back at him “So what do I call you?” asked Twilight “David…” “What is the name of your species?” He looked back down at her “Human...” Twilight’s horn started to glow, the scroll and quill levitated moved in front of her. “Hmm, ‘Heumin’…” David and James looked at her with a puzzled look. David knelt down and got eye level with Twilight, with the parchment and quill still floating in front of her. “How are you doing that?” asked David “Magic.” “Magic?” “Yes magic, don’t you use magic where you come from?” David looked at the pony with confusion. James knelt down next to him “Dave, we have to get going before they find out that their pals are dead.” said James “Alright get in the truck. You horse, pony, thing, you are coming with us.” Said David “Y-you’re not going to take me prisoner are you?” “We can’t let you go, you might get captured by the enemy and then THEY might kill you. They also might torture you to giving away our location. We just witnessed them killing some dogs, talking dogs I might add. So you are better off coming with us.” “I just saw you kill a manticore in front of me. I don’t feel safe right now but I have to cooperate with you. I don’t want to die.” said Twilight “Look I promise I won’t lay a single finger on you and you won’t die. Not on my watch.” said David. David was driving with James in the passenger seat. Twilight sitting in between looking around the truck she started to ask David and James more questions about them. James started to answer some of questions but David remained silent as he was still trying to figure it all out. They both wore the Russian uniforms with black balaclavas covering their faces with lightly tinted goggles covering their eyes. As soon as they reached the rest of the Rangers, David told her to get out and stay with the Sergeant. He stood at the top of the ridge as he watched the truck with the captain and the lieutenant driving down the hill. He then looked at the lavender pony that the captain told him to keep an eye on. “So…you really talk?” asked Abraham Twilight was nervous enough, but she still wanted to know more about the humans the just met “Yes I do. please allow me introduce myself, my name is Twilight Sparkle and…are you OK?” “Join the army they said, see the world they said, get the credits you need for college they said, oh yeah and you get to meet talking mutant horses…” She looked up at him and blinked several times before writing down more notes. “Remember James, we are going to be real subtle about this.” “Let’s just hope we don’t take out half of the forest.” David drove the truck down the hill to the entrance of the cave, two of the guards and their rifles drawn and the gunners in the nests had the heavy machine guns pointed at the truck. The guard came up to the driver’s side, “(Hey, what the fuck too you so long?)” He asked, David just stared at him. “(We heard gun fire and explosions, we were about to send a team to investigate. Did you run into those talking flying horses again?)” “flying horses?” David thought to himself The guard started to get suspicious as he continued to stare at him, “(The fuck is wrong with you, why aren’t you saying anything?)” David looked over at James and then pulled out his side arm and pointed it at the soldier and fired several shots. He stumbled back and fell to the ground. David fired at the other soldiers as he ducked for cover “Yeah, real fucking subtle Dave.” James pulled out the AK and fired at the other soldiers “What? Did you want me to ask them nicely to give up and surrender their guns?” From the tree line Twilight was watching with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth, “Dose he normally do these types of things?” Abraham looked down at the purple pony and was still in slight shock that there was a talking horse next to him. “The captain has outrageous ideas, mostly endangering his life. But somehow he comes out with little to no injuries, in other words he’s got a shit load of luck.” “…luck, huh?” she said as looked down. The machine gunners in the nest fired upon the truck David and James ducked behind the dash. He placed his finger on the ear piece that was attached to the helmet “We’re taking heavy fire, use the damn tanks to take out the MG nests!” he said as he was yelling his ear piece. “Sir we might hit you and-” said Abraham “I don’t fucking care! Danger close, danger close!” “Goddamn it…” The sergeant gave a heavy sigh and waved his hands signaling the tank gunners to fire. The tanks moved the turrets around and pointed it at the two machine gun nests. Since they had the higher ground they had the advantage. Twilight continued to take notes, “The one named ‘David’ would endanger his own life to ‘take out’ their enemy. Why would he do such a thing? But I would like to know more about him, he seems rather interesting.” Several enemy soldiers fired grenades and RPGs back at the ridge. The rest of the Rangers fired back. Twilight ducked down and covered her ears as the tanks fired and the explosions from the grenades and RPGs. *BOOM* *BOOM* The two tanks fired at the nests, hitting one of them on the steel girders and the other hitting the nest itself. The nest that got hit directly toppled over onto the truck while the other that got hit in the girder landed next to the truck. David was still inside the truck covering his head trying not to let debris land on him. James jumped out as the second tower came crashing down. As soon as it started it ended. All of the enemy soldiers have been killed by the Rangers. James came crawling out from under the wrecked truck coughing he yanked off the helmet and the black balaclava. “Dave! Dave where the hell are you?!” He came out of the truck coughing and leaned next to the destroyed truck. He took off the helmet and yanked off the balaclava. He had his hands on his knees and looked up at James with a smile, “Just like Karkand.” David chuckled and shook his head. His fellow Rangers came running down the hill to secure the entrance to the cave with Twilight not too far behind. From inside the cave the CIA agent peeked around the corner and witnessed the destruction. “Damn it! He’s alive? I thought the teleport killed him. I got to get out of here!” he thought to himself He pulled out his side arm and slowly sneaked his way towards a jeep that parked nearby. He started the engine and floored it almost running over several of the Rangers. David looked and seen that it was Alex. “It’s the agent, stop him!” said Abraham Dave pointed his M4 at Alex as drove off, but something in the corner of his eye caught his attention, “Private, hand me that RPG!” said David. The PFC tossed him the RPG, David pointed it up at the road leading the target. He fired the RPG and struck the road in front of the jeep causing it to flipped over. Alex was ejected from the seat and landed in some thick bushes. David tossed the launcher to the side. “Let’s go pick up the trash.” he said David picked Alex up and punched him as hard in the stomach as he could. Alex fell backwards and landed in the middle of the group. He was grabbed again by David and was about to punch him in the mouth. “Is that all you got?” said Alex. “You fucking bastard, why are you with them?” Said David. “You killed my brothers in Dubai, you left them for dead, and it’s your fault!” “Who were your brothers?” “You took off in that Osprey and watched them die!” Said Alex Something must have sparked in David’s mind, he flashed back and remembered seeing two Rangers running for him and then falling to the ground dead, “I told that pilot to stay put!” he said “You should of done a better job, you are a disgrace to the Army!” David pulled out his side arm and pointed at Alex’s head Give me one good reason why shouldn’t execute you right now for treason!” “Don’t kill him we have to bring him in to stand trial like you said.” said James with his hand on David’s arm. David continued to look at Alex angrily, “Sergeant Parks!” “Yes sir?” “Tie him up and make sure he doesn’t escape!” “Yes sir!” Twilight watched the whole thing unfold and continued to take more notes, “I need to take extra precautions towards these dangerous hostile creatures. I can’t make any drastic moves nor lead them to Ponyville. It’s been a long day and I am very tired, in the morning I will try to sneak out and hopefully that they won’t notice that I am gone. I am sorry princess, I have never came into the Everfree Forest.”
Universal SoldierCanterlot It was just about time for Luna to set her moon and Celestia to raise her sun. She walked along the large white marble stoned hallway. A red carpet was placed in the middle and ran along a grand hallway several servants who also walked in the hallway stopped and bowed before their highness. She gave them a soft smile and continued towards a large balcony. She looked up at the sky and watched as Luna came flying in “Hello Luna” she said with a smile “…Tia” Luna had her wings spread wide with her nose up in the air “Luna, are you quite alright?” “I am doing fine my dear sister…” Celestia turned around to Luna “Luna I know there’s something wrong with you, please tell me” Luna stopped in her tracks and turned around and faced Celestia “…the griffons are getting on my nerves and every time we try to talk to them about a diplomatic solution to keep peace between our two nations they keep pushing the issue about moving the border past the mountains into Equestria!” “Luna, you have to keep your calm when talking to them. If you show any signs of anger they will use it to their advantage and-” A guard came galloping and stopped in front the two of them. He bowed before the two princesses while huffing for air. “Your highness, the patrol that went into the forest yesterday came back!” “What happened, did they find the creatures?” “Yes, they turn out to be hostile and they killed two of our best guards!” “Tia, didn’t you sent out three?” “Yes I did. Where is the third?” Celestia said as she looked at the guard “He’s in the infirmary” he said Celestia looked at Luna “Luna I need you the rise the sun for me. I must attend to this matter” “But Tia, I-” “Luna I showed you how to raise the sun, it’s not that hard to do. I trust you’ll get it done so please Luna can you do it?” “…yes…” she said with a groan Celestia gave her a smile and walked with the guard in lead as Luna flew off the balcony. When they reached the infirmary the staff and guards all bowed. The guard was on the bed with his body wrapped around in bandages with several blood stains. His wings where missing several feathers and was bruised and scared. He weakly raised his head as the princess came into the room. “You poor dear, does it hurt?” The injured pegasus rose his head at the princess and started to speak with a weak voice “They killed…they killed the others…I-I barely made it out. They walked on their hind legs and carried sticks that shot fire and lead…and they spoke a strange language… then one of them started to speak our language…” He slowly closed his eyes while Celestia looked down at him. His breath was short and getting shorter. He laid his head back down. He closed his eyes and suddenly stopped breathing. The pegasus was dead and Celestia closed her eyes and tried to fight back the tears. She watched one of her best guards die in front of her. “His wounds where too great, he had internal bleeding and couldn’t stop it. I-I’m sorry your highness” said a nurse “It’s, It’s alright you did what you can. Please inform his next of kin.” Said Celestia “Y-yes your highness” she said A larger pegasus was standing just outside the room, Celestia hung her head slightly as she walked out. The pegasus walked along side of her. His armor was golden, just like the other guards but had dents and small rips like he was just in a battle. His helmet was also golden with a full plume of blue on top and also had dents and a large rip on the left side. He was a few inches taller than the other royal guard pegasi. He was always taller ever since he was a foal. He was always made fun of cause of his size and the other colts wanted to see how tough he was, this got him into trouble often by getting into fights at school. Just because of his size he was labeled as the bully. “Captain Power Strike” said Celestia “Yes your highness?” he said as he stood to attention. “You and your best guards are to go into the Everfree Forest and find who their leader is and bring them here!” said Celestia as she spread her wings. “Yes your highness” he said as he bowed. He walked away with a look on his face, a look only a soldier had after seeing of his fellow troops dying right in front of him. He wanted to find who has done this and take care of it himself, but he as orders and he must follow them. Celestia walked out to balcony again and looked up at the sky as the run rose with a sad look on her face “My visions are becoming real. I fear that a great battle will happen” The Everfree Forest Twilight slowly crept her way out of the cave and tipped-hooved over the sleeping Rangers trying her best not to make any sudden movements to wake them. David was leaning against the wall of the cave entrance looking up at the dark, clear morning sky. In the corner of his eye he saw the small purple unicorn looking back into the cave and not noticing him standing there. She turned around and gave a light sigh of relief but suddenly froze in her tracks to seeing the tall human looking down at her. The two of them stared at each other for a few moments. He then looked back up at the night sky “I haven’t seen the sky like this since, well, forever” She looked up at him with a worried look on her face “I-I thought you would be asleep” she said “It’s funny before I joined the army I only needed eight hours of sleep and I’ll be recharged and ready for the day, but now I only need a few hours. Or sometime no sleep at all” “But won’t it affect your physical and mental health?” “Well it’s kind of hard to get some shut eye when you have bullets buzzing over your head and explosions going off a few feet away from you” He looked down at Twilight as she sat down on her haunches and nervously tried not to make anymore eye contact with him. “Where you off to this early” he asked “Oh I was, uh…uh, going to-” “If you were going to tell your ‘princess’ or whoever is in charge then go ahead, I’m not going to stop you. She is not our enemy but if she sends her armies to attack us then we have no choice but to fight back. But that’s the last thing I want to do right now. All I want to do is get the rest of my men back to base safely. We killed all of the bad guys so you have nothing to worry about, except if there are more of those manticore things or whatever then you should have us escort you to your home, what was it called again?” “Ponyville” “Ponyville, hmmm strange name but since I seen a ‘manticore’, talking dogs, and a pony with HUGE eyes that can use ‘magic’, at this point I am not going to be surprised what will I run into next.” He sat down on a large near-by rock and took off his helmet and let the cool air flow on his head. After a while she started to relax and used her magic to pull out a parchment and a quill from her saddlebag. David looked at her as she did this with an interesting look on his face “So how exactly does this ‘magic’ work?” he asked “Well first off only unicorns can use magic and the really gifted ones, such as myself, can do anything from levitating objects, to creating spells, and even teleporting. My friend Rarity uses magic too, but she is not as powerful as I am. She is more into fashion and not into spells. Celestia is the most powerful one in all of Equestria. She has the power to move the sun. She can move to moon too but that job is left to her sister, Princess Luna.” She went on and on about the magic in her world and how it can solve and create problems. Like one time she cast a spell on a plow to bring it to life during winter wrap up. She thought using magic would help but only made it worse. She also told him about the song they sung for to get them motivated. “What the hell is ‘winter wrap up’?” “It’s where we get the town cleaned up for spring. It was first founded by earth ponies who didn’t use magic they did it all by hoof for hundreds of years. There are three teams; each has their own job to do. The earth team takes care of the crops, the animal team wakes up the animals from hibernation, and the weather team takes care clearing the skies. Canterlot is the only place where they use magic to clean up winter. If we don’t complete it in time it throws all of the other seasons off. It’s kind of a headache. We where almost late one season but with my organizing skills, we got it done just in time.” “So let me get this straight, you all sing a song about wrapping up winter and if you don’t complete is in time it throws all of the other seasons off?”He said as he ran his fingers though his hair, “This is a strange world” “Don’t you have the same in your world?” she asked “Well one thing for sure is that we don’t sing songs, we just go about our business like nothing happened. The only thing that we do is change our clothes to whatever the weather is like” “How does the seasons change in your world, I am pretty sure that they don’t change on their own” “Actually they do. One pole and hemisphere of the Earth will be directed away from the sun at one side of the orbit. And half an orbit later, about half a year later, this pole will be directed towards the Sun. This is the cause of the Earth's seasons.” She blinked at him several times “Then who raises the sun and moon?” she asked “The earth orbits around the sun giving us day and night, and the moon also orbits around the earth from its gravitational orbit” “Do you have magic in your world?” she asked “Not really. Magic in my world is nothing like yours it only exists on stage shows and is more of a skill if you know how to make the audience think its magic.” Said David “Then what do you use to create spells and solve problems?” “We don’t use magic for anything. We use equations, mathematics, chemistry, and a whole lot of other shit that I was into when I was younger. Science is our magic.” A light purple aura surrounded the quill and parchment as she wrote down everything they been talking about “…so, I know I asked you this before but are you really a scientist?” “No, not really.” “…oh” she said in disappointment “But, I was on my was to be one” Silence fell upon them again bit only for a short while. David started to chuckle “I can’t believe that I am another universe, oh man if my college professor could see this now. I wrote an essay about universes and how I said that alternate universes can exist, but not just on TV shows and movies. He thought I was wrong and he gave me a ‘C’ and went on this whole spiel about how I was wrong and my theories where nonsense. That jackass made a fool of me saying that’s impossible alternate universes exists even though I have valid argument points. You see space is massive and my species only explored a small portion of it. When I mean small I mean a VERY small portion. Billions and billions of galaxies are out there with the possibility of life. We sent out probes to explore our planets in the solar system and a sent an exploration vehicle to another planet. The furthest mankind has been into space was the moon. Come to think about why the hell we haven’t gone back, it’s fucking 2015 and we are fighting each other over the dumbest shit and…” David looked down at Twilight. She looked at him with a worried look and gave a sigh, “...sorry, didn’t mean to off on a rant” Twilight continued to write “One thing that I did noticed was the stars, Orion’s Belt, Ursa Major and Minor, all of the other consolations are there in the correct locations in the sky but the fact that we are in alternate universe does not make much sense to me. Makes me think that this might be Earth, well another Earth…what?” Twilight looked up at him with amazement. “What did you study when you where in college?” “Quantum Physics, I was on my way to get my-” Her eye grew wide and had a huge smile on her face, then she jump up to him and placed her fore-hoofs on his leg. He jumped a little to have two lavender eyes staring back at him. “Whoa!” he said. He leaned back with a surprised look on his face “This is so wonderful, the fact that I met another sentient being that knows about the universe as much as I do make me so thrilled!” “…uh, yeah, glad I could help?” David gently pushed her hoofs off but still sitting really close to him “Ooh, I have to take you to the Canterlot library in the Starswirl the Bearded wing. It’s full of books and scrolls about spells and magic! Everything you need to know about Equestria and the universe is there! I am getting so excited!” soon the excitement left her face, “Oh-no I completely forgot!” “What?” “The princess told me to stay out of the forest. If she found out that I disobeyed her she will be very mad at me. This is bad, really bad! She’ll send me to the moon for one thousand years!” She paused for a moment and took in a deep breath, “Well you can’t really blame me, I mean I wanted to see what the creatures looked like, guess I found out first-hoof” She said with a sad look on her face “Well if it’s any consolation, my superiors are not very happy with me either. Whenever they give me an order to follow, I follow that order in my own way…and the fact that I do pretty stupid, wreck-less shit…” “Well yeah I think wreck-less is putting it nicely” she said as she rolled her eyes They both shared a small laugh. Twilight cleared her throat and straightened up “So, I heard that you didn’t finish college. I don’t mean to be rude, but do you mind telling what happened?” she casually asked David un-slung his M4 and placed it off to the side. He crossed his arms and legs and gave a light sigh as he leaned back “I just started my fourth semester. I had almost straight A’s in all of my classes. I was on the dean’s list, just met the girl of my dreams, and I was promised a position at NASA when I graduated. My life was set, I felt like I was on top of the world and it couldn’t of gotten any better. But, I made a horrible decision.” “What happened?” David looked up at the sky and sighed, he didn’t want to go too much into detail. He didn’t want the little unicorn to know how horrible his world is like. But since she has seen firsthand…firsthoof of what humans are capable of, she wanted to know more “I dropped out of college and joined the army…” “…dropped out of college and joined…wait, why would you do something like that? Graduating from college is more important than joining an army.” said Twilight. She stopped and gave him an upset look, “What was going through your mind at the time?” “I don’t know, spur of the moment I guess…” She had a look of disapproval “*pfft* whatever…” he said as he rolled his eyes. He continued on, “My mother didn’t take the news as well as my then girlfriend, lucky for me they both supported my decision even though she wasn’t happy that I dropped out. But my old man was a different story, he told me straight to my face the day I told him what I did, ‘quit the army and get your ass back in to college or I’m kicking you out of the house’. I was at the age where I was man enough to take responsibility for my own decisions but I was still living with my parents at the time and I had to follow his rules. Care to guess what happened next?” Twilight looked at him as the morning sun slowly started to creep over the tree line. “Don’t you miss them, your parents I mean?” “My mom sometimes, my dad, eh, sort of. With all of the stupid shit I been doing in the army they think I’m dead.” “I think that’s a horrible way to think about it, don’t you write letters to them? Why don’t you go see them when you get back to your world?” “Maybe I should…maybe not, let’s just say I am still not on that good enough terms with my father…” “You should always have a healthy relationship with both of your parents. I have a great relationship with my parents.” “Now that I am thinking about it, maybe I should have stayed in college. I was going to be set for life and I lost it all. I was going to help out humanity search the universe for other worlds with life, but now I am killing other human beings that threatened the world’s safety, my world’s safety. I threw it all away because my fucking patriotism got in the way. The choice that I made ruined my life” She continued to write down the notes on the parchment. She looked up at the sky along with him. “Have you ever thought about quitting the army and going back to college?” David looked at her and laughed. She tilted her head and had a confused look on her face “Are you kidding me? I have the greatest job in the world. I would never trade it for anything.” “But you said joining the army ruined your life” “True I did say that. I’ve been in the army just over 12 years and all of my promotions and medals that I have earned in those years would have been a waste. Besides it’s all I got left…” “Didn’t you mention you had a mate?” she asked “Mate?” “Your mare friend” David took off his helmet and showed Twilight the picture that he kept there. Twilight looked down at the picture, he was in his formal military attire and she was wearing a black dress with thin black shoulder straps. He had her left hand is his right and has his other hand around her waist. They both had smiles on their faces. Her eyes grew a little wide, the first thing she notice was the way her hair was cut, almost the same style as hers. The only difference, she had dark brown hair with two-toned purple highlights. “She, she looks almost like me, if I was one of his kind…” She thought to herself “Something wrong?” he asked “Oh, um nothing…” “I-it can’t be, alternate universes may have other versions of us. So that means that this female human is…me” “…she called off the engagement after I…was…um, incarcerated…” he said “Incarcerated?” "More like court-marshaled" “You two were about to get married?” “Yep, it was going to be perfect but then I had to go and fuck things up” “Why did she called it off?” He put his helmet back on and stood up and walked a few feet away. He places his hand so his hips and turned his torso to the side stretching out his muscles. Then he dropped his arms to the side turned around and gave her a slight smile. “That, my little pony friend, will have to wait for another time, for now I have to find some food for my men and I” “Food? What kind of food does your species eat?” “Meat, fruits, vegetables…mostly meat” “M-m-m-meat?” said Twilight as she dropped her ears and scooted away several yards Hearing that his species eats meat made her extremely worried that he is going to kill her for food. “But we don’t eat horses…err, ponies. My world uses them as helpers and sometimes pets. So don’t worry.” he said She gave a sigh of relief. She perked up again and trotted back up to him with a smile “I have a friend who owns an apple orchard and she has plenty of apples I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving away. I have another who is a pastry chef who makes delicious cupcakes.” She said “That sounds wonderful, fresh apples are definitely better then the crap they serve us at the mess hall. As for cupcakes I guess I can go for one, you have no idea how much I want a cupcake.” he said with a smile Twilight smiled back. The morning sun was shining down at the entrance of the cave. David closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun shine down on his face. He inhaled and exhaled like he was taking a breath of fresh air for the first time. “You know I never really had talked about this before. And to be honest I feel a bit more relieved talking about what happened about quitting college, joining the army and my ex and I breaking up. So uh, thank you for listening and…yeah” he looked at her and then the other way like he was almost afraid to admit sharing his feelings. “You know, he’s not that bad looking for a creature of a different species. No, I can’t think about him like that, we just met. Besides, I don’t think he is thinking about the same about me!” She thought to herself. The silence was broken when a PFC came running up to him “Captain, the…” The PFC looked down at the pony with a blank look on his face still surprised to see a strange talking purple horse. But he wasn’t the only one surprised, the other soldiers started to question each other about their leader and his sanity. Most of all they wanted to know where they are and how are they going to get back home. Some even started to question his leadership. David cleared his throat and stood up in front of Twilight like he was hiding her from view. “Is there something you wanted to tell me, private?” “Oh, um, th-the agent wants to speak with you, sir” David and Twilight reached to the cell, the agent was locked up in he was lying down on his back with his hands behind his head and his legs propped against the wall. Once he seen David and the pony he sat up right with a smile on his face. David stood in front of the cell looking down at him with an upset look on his face. He was quite surprised to see him smiling after he put a gun to his face and threatened to kill him. “You look cheery for someone whose about to get their ass thrown in federal prison” he said “Well I was thinking I can barter for, oh let’s say, immunity” He looked at him “Fucking seriously?” “I can help you turn in Baryshnikov” “This is wasting my time” David said as he started to walk away “I can tell you what the NPR has in store for the world, why they are here, and why you’re involved” David ears started to perk up. Twilight was about to follow him but then he stopped walking and turned around looked back at Alex in the cell. He then started to walk back. “Why the hell do you want to tell me what they have planned? For all I know you could give me false information!” “Well the NPR does not like let anyone live once they are captured by the enemy, when they found out that I didn’t kill myself when I got caught by you they will kill me. They don’t want to let anyone know about their plans.” “Why the sudden change of heart? You do realize that you will be executed for killing my soldiers, so you’re fucked either way.” “Look Dave, do you want to me to tell you everything or what?” David got very suspicious as to why he wanted to talk to him suddenly. He slung his M4 around his shoulder and crossed his arms. Twilight pulled out a blank parchment and her quill. “…talk…” Alex sat up Indian style with his hands on his knees “The NPR wants to take over the world and get rid of the corruption that plagues the governments. Especially Baryshnikov, he wants to reshape the world and tired to seeing his soldiers dying for a worthless cause. But he can’t just waltz right into the Kremlin and ask to take over; he wants each nation to go to war with each other. Remember I told you he caught that terrorist trying to blow up the Kremlin? When he was interrogating him he told him about the NPR and what they want to do. Somehow he was convinced to join them. The NPR needed a power source to power the teleporter; he told them about the convoy carrying the nuclear materials that they needed. But they needed a scapegoat, and that’s why Iran took the fall. The NPR stole the teleporter and they are going to send a bomb to a major city around the world and tell each government that the other sent the bomb to them. So in turn each nation will go to war. And when the dust settles the NPR will seize control over the major countries.” “So why am I involved?” “You’ve foiled several of their plans in the past. They were all perfectly orchestrated, each plan brilliantly thought out but then you had to go and fuck things up. The surprise attack you pulled in Karkand, the raid on that hotel in the gulf of Oman, and most recently the infamous battle in Dubai. But those are just only a few. The leader had enough and wanted you dead so you won’t fuck up any more of his plans so that’s where I came in. I pretty much gave your general false intel so he’ll put you on a mission to where I kill you. But Baryshnikov wanted to see how tough you where since he had heard so many stories about you. You see Davy, the leader of the NPR is pretty much fed up on how the world is and the only way to fix it is by war. War brings peace” David blinked at him several times “With peace achieved no more men and women will go fight a pointless war, they won’t have to die for a pointless cause.” Alex continued “That, has to be the most stupid thing I have ever heard. We can’t have peace just by starting a war; we need to achieve peace without firing a single bullet! But world leaders need to get their heads out of their asses first then they will realize they need to focus on things that matter!” Twilight had her quill and scroll and took down notes “This ‘NPR’ wants to take control of their governments. Ending all wars by starting major one? That doesn’t make any sense. What a dangerous world they live in. Whoever this leader is, wants to make their world a safer place. Couldn’t they sit down and talk instead of fight?” “Cortez, don’t you want your soldiers to go back to their families alive, unharmed, instead in a wheel chair or worse a coffin?” “They all signed up knowing what they were going to get into. They all knew the risks, if it was up to me I wouldn’t let all of those young men and women join the army and die in that fucking pla-” He paused and had an almost sad look on his face. Visions of soldiers that where under his command flashed before his eyes. He took his hands and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at him with an angry stare. Twilight could sense that David was going to do something dangerous to Alex, before that could happen she stepped forward and sat down a few feet from the cell and placed herself right in front of David to make sure that he doesn’t do anything. She turned her head around and looked at him. “If you don’t mind David if I asked him a few questions” He threw his hands up in the air her and walked away and leaned against the wall on the other side. Twilight’s horn glowed and quill and scroll came from her saddle bag “First of all I would like to know is why you are here in Equestria. Are you here to take over our world? We are peaceful equines that wish no harm to either of our races.” She asked “Well sweetie the only thing we want from this world is the rich natural rescores that is in these mountains. Once we are done harvesting with what we need, we’ll leave like we were never here. Our original plan was to take over this world.” “I am surprised that you are not as shocked as I was to find out that she can talk” said David “Surprise Cortez, I have been here several times before. I was apart a scout team to search this world we discovered. It was not too long we found the rich natural resources in these mountains to build the bombs without rising suspicion. We stumbled upon these caves along with those mutts and the diamonds” “Why did you kill the diamond dogs?” asked Twilight “They attacked us once we stepped onto their land” said Alex “But you trespassed” she continued “We defended ourselves” “I know they are bad, but there was no reason for you to kill them. You invaded their home! Why do does your species need to kill? It doesn’t make any sense. It frustrates me to no end!” David placed his hand on her shoulder in order to relax her. “Relax Twilight. Go over there and do, some magic…stuff” he said She groaned and took in a deep breath and walked off to the side and sat down on her haunches. She used her magic and pulled out a parchment and quill. “The creatures would kill everything that gets in their way even if it means killing their own kind. I wonder what David goes through every day.” Alex raised an eyebrow from what David was doing. David watched her has she walked away with a clam relaxing look on his face. After a few moments of silence Alex suddenly started to laugh “What so funny” asked David “Can you believe how dumb the terrorists are? Really, fucking, stupid!” “What did happen to Al-Qaida and the Taliban? I know for a fact that they didn’t decide to disband or turned themselves in. They can’t be that dumb” asked David “We’ve been using them as test subjects for the teleporter. We strapped fake bombs to them and told them that they will be sent to key locations in Washington DC and around the world to blow up several federal buildings. Somehow they believed us. When we sent them through the teleporter and when they came out the other side, there was nothing but a pile of dust.” “Haven’t they caught on to what you’ve been doing?” “Well they did catch on, once they found out what’s been happen their buddies they tried to retaliate and even some had the balls to send a message to the CIA, unfortunately that message never got out.” “So why I am not a pile of dust?” “I thought so too after seeing you disappear but I guess we perfected it. We thought we had to wear some kind special hazmat suits in order to pass though the portal without harm, I guess not anymore.” “Is there a way we can get back to our world?” “There is, but there will be several NPR soldiers” “What about that remote?” A PFC came in with the wrist remote and handed it to David. He examined it and looked like it was homemade. Wires sticking out the side, a few buttons looked like they were off a mobile phone. It was pretty much a large wrist band with a small LCD screen attached with Velcro. Two D sized batteries attached to each side powering it. “I didn’t know that the NPR had a shop class, this looks like something a kid made” David said as he examined it “It’s the prototype; Baryshnikov has the much better model. He can be anywhere in the world to activate it, but this one you have to be in a pacific spot. It’s a pain in the ass to get it working right but it works” “Is that the magic you where referring to?” asked Twilight “Yeah, the teleporter can fold time and space on each other to make long distance travel shorter. It’s extremely complicated than it already is. I can go more into detail if we had spare time” “Well I would love for you to explain it to me, if we have time maybe we can-” Said Twilight “Do you two want some time alone?” Alex interrupted “Um, what do you mean?” ask Twilight “I seen the way he looks at you, little pony. But don’t get me wrong Cortez, if you like animals that way then I am not the one to judge.” Twilight blushed slightly as she rubbed the back of her head and looked up at David. He ignored his statement. Silence fell upon the room, with the exception of crackling sound of the flames from the torches that hung along the walls. Alex stood up and leaned against the wall as Twilight and David examined the device. “Alright so all we have to do is go back to the field and the portal will open?” asked David “That’s right, but you need the code which I have.” Said Alex “Give it to me” “No” “And why the fuck not” “Because I told you I want to barter, a full pardon” “Like hell that’s going to happen, I saw you kill my soldiers’ right in front of me! For all I know you could have told them secrets about the CIA!” “My brothers you tried to save where killed only a few feet away from that Osprey. They died in vein, all they really did was say that they gave to her was their condolences. My mother wept for days on end and I felt helpless. Once I found out that they were under your command I wanted to get back for what you did. But I am over that, for now. I am pretty sure that you are pissed too, I mean they didn’t even give you a fair trial; they just threw you in jail and forgot about you for six months. Six whole months! And then you got out you lost all of the respect from your superiors that you worked so hard to earn. You where kicked back own to captain where you remained for the past three months.” Alex “First off I told that pilot to keep that bird on the ground because he knew that we had men on the ground. But we were under heavy fire, I understand that. But they where only a few feet away, I could of ran out there and carried them back but I couldn’t. I am sorry for you and your mother’s loss, but I can’t speak for the whole damn army. I can’t turn back the hands of time and go back and help them.” Said David “Before your incarceration, your leadership was brought up several times in the debriefing report. And I must say a lot of it was negative more then you think. Some it even said your abuse of power, lack of communication to the generals, and property damage just to name a few. At one point there was talk about a dishonorable discharge.” Alex continued David had a look of shame; he sat down and leaded against the wall and hung his head slightly. Twilight came up to him and placed her hoof on his shoulder. “Are you alright David?” “I…I’m fine…” “Do you want to talk about this?” “I think now is not a good time to share my feelings.” “That didn’t stop you before” He lifted his head and looked at her. She looked back at him and gave a warm smile. He smiled back and patted her on the head and scratched her ear with his right hand. She tilted her head and closed her eyes and enjoyed her ear being scratched. Suddenly she quietly moaned and David realized what he was doing and quickly pulled his hand back. Twilight opened her eyes and seen a surprised look on his face. She blushed and walked away and sat down with her back towards him. She rubbed the back of her head with her hoof pretending that didn’t happen. David then stood up and scratched the side of his face slightly embarrassed. Alex lay on the ground and crossed his arms and chuckled to what he witnessed. One again scilence fell upon them. “You know Cortez, the NPR could use a leader like you. But your patriotism will get in the way. I can’t really blame you. But if you still think about it, I can help you. I can help you turn in Baryshnikov, you’ll get the respect back from the generals. Respect that you so deserve. You’ll get your title back as Lieutenant Colonel or even better, General. I think General Cortez has a nice ring to it, don’t you? That whole mess in Dubai will be gone from your record permanently, plus all of the other mishaps. All that I am asking you is to help me.” David looked at him for a while. Took off his helmet and looked a while at the picture inside. He stared at it for a long time looking to into the eyes of his former love. He sighed and shook his head; he placed his helmet back on his head and snapped the chin strap together. He stood up and walked towards the cell “Can’t believe I am about to do this” he thought to himself “Private!” “Yes sir?” “Wake up the others, where Oscar-Mike!” “Yes sir!” Twilight looked up at David with a concerned look “You’re not actually going to help him go are you? From what I can tell he sounds very dangerous and conceiving. On top of that didn’t he killed your fellow soldiers and betray your country? He’s a part of that NPR group, doesn’t that concern you?” David looked down at Twilight and he continued to walk. Twilight stood as she watched him walk away. “…and I thought he was the good guy” she thought to herself David opened the gate to the cell and Alex stepped out, David came up to him and gripped is right arm tightly “I am going to keep my eye on you. The second you fuck up, a bullet will be put in your head. You understand?” “Sir Yes sir” Alex said as he mockingly saluted David with his free arm Fort Sitting Bull “Well Albert what do you have to say about yourself and your ‘prodigy’, eh?” said a man who was sitting in a chair that was in front of the general’s desk. His hands was behind his head with a slight smirk on his face “Can it John, you and I both know he’s the one that could of get this done.” He was just less than 6 feet tall and had brown hair with a crew cut. He wore an army combat uniform with the ranking of colonel in his sleeve. His sleeve where rolled up past his biceps and on the left side of his chest has his last name that said ‘Stanton’ stitched on a patch on the front. “All I am saying that it was a mistake to send him in. He’s wreck-less, he’s hard headed, and he’s stubborn-” “He sounds just like you John. Remember how you where” “I don’t know to be flattered or insulted” The colonel sat up and walked over to the general who was looking out towards the mountain range that David was heading towards with the small convoy just a few hours ago. The general looked down at his gold pocket watch that was slightly worn. He popped open the cover and looked at the face with the cracked glass. Behind the cover said, ‘This we’ll defend’ etched in silver. “I think it was a mistake to send him into something he couldn’t handle, I thought this would be a simple smash and grab mission. Not only we lost several brave soldiers, but we lost a couple of brave men in that AC-130.” Said Albert “You should have gave Cortez a choice to not to take the mission” said John “I did, but I somehow convinced him that this mission would make him earn the respect that he deserves” “The boy needs to realize that risking his own life to save his fellow soldiers isn’t always the best thing to do. If he dies, we lose the best damn soldier we ever had.” “You and I both know that he can’t die. I can’t explain it to why but it seems like something about him just wants him to keep going…hell for all I know he might be immortal” said Albert “…seriously?” said John with a cock-eyed look on his face “He’s a strong leader despite his ‘ideas’” said Albert The two of them looked out at the same mountain range “What’s our next move, sit down with our thumbs up our asses and wait for the NPR to come to us?” asked John “Send in a MAF to recon before we send in any more troops. If we don’t hear anything from him within the next hour, we send in reinforcements” said the general as he looked at his pocket watch again A/N: I am sorry that it took SO long for this chapter to come out. I was busy with work, lost interest, just being lazy, etc. But the import thing is that I got around to it and it's finished. This chapter might be a little bit boring to some but it helps me move the story along. And as always thanks for reading! :)
