Pony Tankers

It was looking to be another fine day, not as hot as it had been recently; perhaps there was weather moving in. The sky through the canopy cover was blue with thin shreds of cloud rolling across it. Turnip hadn’t tracked anything for a long time, but ponies couldn’t be that much different from varmint, right? Looking closely at the ground as she trotted, what she picked up on seemed encouraging.

She was on the brink of deciding that the hoofprint impressions could be traveling a different direction, or from an older track, when she spotted a flash of a gentle pink coat through the trees ahead of her. Bingo!

“Hey! You up there! Wait up!” she called.

The group halted, and she caught up with them quickly.

The corporal looked slightly annoyed as she walked up. “Didn’t expect to see ya again, missy,” he said. “Did we forget somethin’ at camp, or what?”

“I came to join ya,” Turnip puffed, leaning forward slightly. “Aren’t ya missin’ a pony after yesterday?”

Then she noticed the unfamiliar dark-brown-coated pony standing near the front of the small group. “Oh.”

“’Oh’ is correct, Missy. Why’d ya want to come with us, anyhow? We’re going on recon, girl, into enemy territory. Thought you was a tanker. Why don’t ya hang ‘round the tanks ‘til it’s time to do yer part?”

Turnip stepped sideways awkwardly. Maybe she should have expected a less than enthusiastic reception. “Well,” she said uncertainly, “I figgered ya could use my help. I’m small, I know the area, and mebbe that counts fer something. And besides,” she continued, cutting off whatever the corporal was about to say, “I’m kinda in a grey area here. I ain’t part of your outfit, all them boys from headquarters are dead, and my old commander can’t decide if I’m part of the crew again or not. Please, sir, I won’t be no trouble.”

The corporal chewed on this. The greenish-tan coated stallion from yesterday, Strongheart, cut in, “You can’t be seriously considering this, sir! We shouldn’t be taking fillies into combat zones, no matter how useful they might be. Think of your sister, sir!”

Turnip only barely stopped herself from throwing herself at him in a fit of rage. She vibrated in place, teeth clenched and redness hovering at the edges of her vision. One hoof made it off the ground, and with an effort of will she forced it back down. Running after a patrol just to have something to do that got her away from whatever was going on with the crew was filly behavior, she knew, and she didn’t need to reinforce that image in the corporal’s mind.

“I say we let her stay, sir,” Shortcake vouched, although she cast a worried glance down at Turnip’s injured hoof and its blood-stained bandage. “I’m sure she’ll be helpful.” Turning to address Turnip directly, she asked, “You okay? Leg hurt any?”

Turnip passed a hoof over her face and forced herself to calm down, mostly by resolving to beat up that stallion later for that remark. She spit out a sigh. “Sure. Yep. Still a little tired, that’s all.” Actually, anger aside, her leg still hurt, but it wasn’t really noticeable unless she put too much weight on it. She’d be fine.

“Mm,” the corporal said finally, “I got one question fer ya.”

“Shoot,” Turnip said, meeting his eyes.

“Why our patrol and not somepony else’s?”

His tone suggested that he already knew what she was going to say. She said it anyway.

“Yer the ones I know.”

He laughed. “Sure, sure. Now come on,” and he made an up-and-over motion with a forehoof, “We’re burnin’ daylight.”

They all hitched up their gear and walked onward, and Turnip walked along beside them, as part of the group.

They didn’t talk much, but Turnip asked just enough to find out that the dark brown stallion she hadn’t seen before was named Jerky, though he insisted on being called by his first name, Beef. Turnip told him she would remember to; her beef was not with Beef, it was with Strongheart. Shortly afterwards, the corporal ordered the small squad to silence.

They spread out in loose order, the corporal communicating orders with hoof signals that Turnip did not know. Most were pretty self-explanatory; go this way, go that way, stop. She did her best to keep up with them, pony see, pony do. She still ended up shunted to the back of the formation anyway, left to follow the others. That was fine with her.

They followed more or less a reverse of the path they had gone back on yesterday, but upon reaching a meadow Turnip recognized, they struck off in a new, more southerly direction.

Turnip had said she’d known the area, but that was kind of a lie; she’d previously avoided leaving the headquarters, and she’d got there by the train. The loader’s position wasn’t the best way to examine the surroundings, either, on the few missions she’d left on. She had to face it, if it wasn’t for these ponies, she would already be lost.

Despite the different route, it was mostly the same as yesterday – forest, meadows, clearings, ponds and bogs, sometimes a field. It was the cultivated countryside of Equestria at its finest, bright green and shimmering in the late summer sunshine. Then they came to the edge of the stretch of forest immediately north of the headquarters, and the corporal held up a hoof for a halt.

He ordered Shortcake and Strongheart ahead to take a peek with two brisk signals. They stuck their helmeted heads, wrapped in twine and stuck through with twigs as seemed to be the fashion of their entire unit, out the screening brush at the edge of the trees and looked around. After a few minutes, they came back and reported to the corporal in whispers.

The corporal nodded. He swished his hoof in the air, then made a downwards motion, then a forward one. The squad moved closer to him, got down into a creep, and started moving forward.

“Stay close, not too close,” he said quietly, as they moved. “We’ll be headin’ through the grass. Stay low and head straight at that stand there ‘till we’re out of it.” He pointed to a treetop, barely visible over the next hill.

Turnip followed his hoof, then looked around, stopping to think before she plunged into a field of grass tall enough to swallow her up, even standing at her full height. They had to stay spread out, she supposed, so that any individual trails they made in the grass had less chance of being spotted, now or later.

They were a fair distance to the east of the commanding hills Turnip had just been defending yesterday morning. A few distant crystal ponies could be seen, distinguishable only by their bright, sparkling coats, moving over the old battlefield. To the other direction, the forest curved around slightly, then dropped off, and far beyond that were farm fields with an elevated road running through them. A lone staff car with an open top drove slowly along it. Turnip turned and pushed into the grass.

It didn’t take very long pushing through the tall, choking stalks, hearing the rustle of the others somewhere on her left, before the stagnant air and the seed-pods that fell all over her forehooves, chest, and head, started to get to her. It might not have been the hottest of days, but the direct sunlight on her back, together with the total lack of airflow among the stalks and all the dust and plant matter she was getting in her nose made things very hot, very stuffy, very quickly.

She tried forging ahead quicker. Her light mass was poorly suited to bulling over the stalks, and she didn’t make any more progress than before, only growing hotter and more out of breath. She stopped, her flanks heaving and covered in foam, and tried to catch her breath. Seeds stuck to her fur, prickling her sides.

She tried to think. That tree the corporal had pointed out! If only she could tell where it was, she could make right for it! Nightmare take this creeping business, she had to get out of here!

Once she had got her breath back somewhat, Turnip stood on her hind legs to try and see over the grass, risking being visible to a distant observer for a moment. No dice; she wasn’t tall enough. Frustrated, she tried jumping, gathering herself on her haunches and springing upwards. Her eyes just barely cleared the tops of the grass, and still she didn’t see any tree. In fact, she didn’t see anything, except pale green grass filling her field of vision. It was the same story when she tried all other directions.

As she sat down to contemplate this, it struck her that she couldn’t hear her comrades anymore, and actually hadn’t heard the noise of their rustling passage in some time. They had all moved on… without her. Well, that was fine. She would just strike out to the left of her path, and she’d break out on Jerky’s trail.

Except that was not happening. She pushed for about five meters, began to suspect something at ten, and knew something was wrong when she’d gone fifteen. She halted, surrounded on all sides. The grass behind her where she had come was already straightening back up. What now – admit defeat and backtrack along an uncertain trail? Go upslope in the hopes of seeing something there? Keep going straight ahead?

Shouting, of course, was out of the question. She took a drink from her canteen and pressed onwards, figuring that she had to come out of this cursed grass someday.

After a few more meters distance, she became aware of the rustling sound of someone pushing through the grass again. Had she kept up after all, or had one of them come back for her? Shortcake, perhaps? She excitedly pushed towards the noise, and was glad when she heard the other pony coming her direction.

The two questing ponies were very close now. Turnip pushed down one last curtain of grass with her forehooves and stopped dead in her tracks. Her veins ran with ice.

It wasn’t Shortcake. In fact, it wasn’t rightly a pony at all. Turnip stood face-to-face with an enemy soldier who looked equally as shocked as she was. The soldier’s burgundy coat sparkled dimly under its own layer of dust and seeds, the light glinting on the tiny facets crystal pony coats were said to have. This was the first crystal pony Turnip had ever seen up-close, and if she was asked later, she would have to admit that they were very beautiful, but right then, it was the last thing she wanted to see.

After a long second of mutual stunned silence, the soldier jerked a hoof up for her rifle, slung high on her back where it wouldn’t snag. Turnip couldn’t allow that.

She planted her forehooves and swung her body around in a classic forwards apple-buck. She had to draw her hind legs in much further than usual, or they would get tangled in the grass that surrounded them both so closely, and lashed out with both hooves put together. The enemy soldier dodged down, and Turnip’s hooves caught her a glancing clip on the temple.

The soldier cried out in pain and sprang forward, tackling Turnip while she recovered. Turnip rolled sharply to throw her off, and she halfway managed it, but the enemy mare caught Turnip’s rifle by the sling in her teeth and pulled Turnip down with her, crushing over a short swathe of grass.

Turnip twisted round and lashed out with her forehooves. The soldier grunted at the hits and kicked out with hind legs, and Turnip felt the impact drive into her lower intestines. A squelching jolt of queasiness ran up her body.

She had to ditch the rifle. With a duck and a twist, she got free of the rifle strap, but before she could do anything else, the hindhooves slammed into her chest and sent her flying back. The grass caught her, and now there was a meter, give or take, of distance between them. So short, but so far in this tight and airless place.

They glared at each other for a few seconds. The soldier had a split lip. Turnip wanted to double over at the pain in her abdomen. She took a deep breath, and the soldier started to get to her hooves and grab at her rifle again.

Turnip drew her captured bayonet with the hoof strap and threw herself at the enemy. The soldier, surprised, barely managed to block the deadly blade with the stock of her rifle.

Turnip didn’t let her get a chance to bring the gun up. She let go of the knife and stood on her hind legs and jabbed with both forehooves, trying to hit the cannon of the mare’s right foreleg. There was a solid, satisfying impact of hoof on bone, and with a cry, the gun was dropped to swing free in front of the soldier’s neck.

The soldier didn’t allow her to enjoy the small victory, however; rather than try and pick the gun up again, she shrugged out of the sling and spun into her own apple-buck which caught Turnip square in the chest. Apple-bucks had enough power behind them to shake a sturdy tree – Celestia alone knew what it could do to a much softer target, like a pony. Now, Turnip also knew.

She felt something snap in her chest with a sharp twinge of agony she had no time to even realize she had before she was flung back into the grass, flattening a wide channel this time with her passage and landing a few meters away on her side, legs splayed out.

She had just enough time to raise her head dazedly when the soldier barreled on top of her and began hitting her ferociously, stomping her barrel and then kicking her in the head. She felt numb and confused as blow after blow hit her chest and head without mercy. One foreleg kick hit the massive bruise the helmet had given her, and Turnip nearly blacked out.

However, the numb confusion quickly suffused into rage as she recovered from the stunning hit and took a few more. Turnip was used to losing herself when she got too angry. She was used to having a “short fuse”. She wasn’t used to this kind of white-hot, unthinking, electrifying feeling that consumed absolutely everything around her except the target, the pony she hated more than anything in that moment.

She flipped onto her back. The soldier stomped down on her face directly, and the vision in her left eye went red. She didn’t notice; it had already been red, as far as she cared. She kicked up with hindhooves and jabbed out with forehooves at the soldier’s body, ignoring the hits that soldier was still dishing out on her head and chest.

The soldier abruptly dropped out of view. Turnip rolled to her hooves and kicked out and found flesh, and pursued it with more. Hitting something was not gratifying anymore; it was just something that happened. Useful information, to help her hit some more.

She kicked, jabbed, swiped, bit, headbutted, clobbered, and anything else she could possibly do to hurt. Nothing mattered but the enemy. Everything was on the table and there was no time to think. She couldn’t hear anything but the roaring of blood in her ears.

The enemy was on the ground now, their positions reversed. Turnip kicked, and kicked, and kicked.

/ - / - / = \ - \ - \

Some time later, how long she could not say, Turnip abruptly realized she was standing, motionless, over an equally motionless body. Her coat felt sticky, and her throat was dry, and there was something in her mouth, and her teeth hurt. Actually, everything hurt. Absolutely everything.

She groaned and let her tense jaw go slack. Something heavy fell from it to plonk onto the crushed grass. Once started, the slackening of tension would not stop; the next thing she knew, she was on her side on the ground, staring at the dented Equestrian entrenching spade a hoofful of centimeters in front of her eyes. The edge had a fresh crust of blood.

Lying on her side hurt more than standing up. Stalks of grass prickled her body uncomfortably. Everything felt leaden, and aching, and hot. She didn’t think she could stand up again even if she wanted.

And so she lay there for a while, baking in the morning sun with her eyes closed. Eventually, she thought she would give it another try, and to her surprise she found enough strength to roll over on her belly and tuck her hooves underneath her body. Rising further felt beyond her at the moment.

She tried to open her eyes and found only one worked; the other felt puffy and hot and refused to open. She sniffed and wiped at her muzzle and found dried blood. One of her teeth was loose. It hurt to draw each breath.

She pushed herself painfully to her hooves. Well, she thought, looking around at the walls of grass on all sides and wetting her tongue with a small sip from her canteen, time to get out of here.

Trying not to look too closely at the crystal pony’s body, she limped over to her dropped carbine, pulled her knife out of the other rifle, and replaced the bloodied spade in her belt. She took another sip and started forging ahead again due south, more or less.

It was even slower going than before, but an interminable eternity later, she broke through the other side onto the relatively clear ground before a line of old trees. Turnip could have cried if she had the tears.

But she couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t rest. If she did, she might not get up again for a long time, and she was burning daylight; she had to find the others.

Turnip started heading along the line of trees, which served to divide two fields from each other, in the general direction of the midmorning sun. Sometime in the trek through the grass, her foreleg had begun to hurt noticeably with every step again. She should never have left camp on some silly whim, she thought bitterly.

Then, as she neared the end of the line of trees, she spied a gentle pink up ahead with her one good eye – and now it really was her one good eye. Shortcake? Hope rising in her chest, she hurried forward, then slowed down again as her leg almost buckled under her.

It was, indeed, Shortcake. The mudslogger-turned-nurse was crouched by the last tree in the line, watching the tall grass before her worriedly. Occasionally she would paw the ground anxiously.

Turnip didn’t call out a hail, instead opting to just keep walking. When she had gotten quite near, Shortcake’s ear pricked at some small noise and she turned her head.

The mare’s face lit up in an expression of infectious relief. Turnip couldn’t help it; a lopsided grin started spreading over her own face. Then Shortcake blinked and looked at her again, and the mare’s expression changed to one of deep concern.

Shortcake got to her hooves and hurried over. “What happened to you? Did you get lost?” she whispered loudly.

Turnip stopped in front of the mare, swayed in place a moment, then collapsed on a ridgeboard of tree roots, hooves sprawled out in every direction. “Whadya think?” she answered wearily, not caring to keep her voice down.

“You’re bleeding,” Shortcake fussed, tugging apart the knot in Turnip’s foreleg bandage. “Oh, this is all my fault…”

“Heh. Don’t go beatin’ yerself up on my account,” Turnip said, laying her head on its side. “This’s all just my bad luck.” The shady earth under the trees was cool to the touch and soothed her swollen eye a little.

“No, I’m sorry.” Shortcake pulled away the bandage, which came away sticky and stiff. At some point, the wound had begun to bleed slowly again, and Turnip hadn’t noticed. “Somepony should have told you we were going single file after a few dozen meters.” She pulled a roll of bandages from a saddlepack and began rebinding the wound.

“What.”

Turnip said it flatly, without feeling. ‘Too tired and beat-up to care’ was quickly becoming her default state of being, she reflected. Ordinarily, she knew she would be very angry at this revelation, violently so, even. But for now, she felt like all her anger for the day had been left behind in a hell of tall, choking grass.

Shortcake tied off the new bandage and started checking the rest of Turnip over for injuries. “Yeah…” she said apologetically. “Roll on your right side for me.”

Turnip obliged, shutting her good eye. Shortcake ran the frog of her hoof gently over the side of Turnip’s face, then around the puffy, swollen eye. She pressed down in a few places, and Turnip winced.

“Looks like your orbit’s fractured” she reported. She pushed up Turnip’s lip momentarily. “And it looks like you need a few teeth pulled. Want me to do that now?”

“No,” Turnip said emphatically, pulling her muzzle away slightly. “Since when’d ya get good at diagnosin’ ponies’ ailments, anyhow?”

“And you’ve got a broken muzzle,” Shortcake breezed over her. Turnip tried wrinkling her snout and found it was true. The mare began prodding her barrel. “How did this happen, anyway?”

“Met somepony in the grass,” Turnip grunted. She hissed as Shortcake poked a painful rib. “Not much to tell. Got in a fight. Couldn’t let ‘er shoot.” Shortcake began rolling fresh bandages around her head. “Why’re you here, anyways? I thought everypony’d go on with the mission.”

“Oh, we waited for a while, but when you never came out, Dusty left me here to wait for you.”

“Mighty kind of him,” Turnip sighed. Her head was almost completely encased in white linen bandages now. Her head throbbed, and underneath the bandages her skin itched. “I guess I wasn’t useful after all. Splint my muzzle, will ya?”

“If you say so…” Shortcake said dubiously. She took hold of Turnip’s head with both forehooves, and Turnip closed her eyes and waited for it to be over. The questing hooves felt around her muzzle, then, with a sharp, painful grinding sensation, pressed down on both sides. Three parallel somethings were placed on top of her muzzle and taped down with something adhesive that stuck to the short fur. Blood started dripping out of her nose and onto the ground again.

“Ow…” Turnip groaned, opening her eye and picking herself up. She focused on her muzzle. “…Are those popsicle sticks?”

“Yep,” Shortcake said, packing her saddlebag. “They come in useful. Do you think you’re ready to go after the others? They’ve got about an hour head start, but we might be able to catch them up.”

Turnip was standing, but she wanted to lay down. She could still walk, but she probably shouldn’t. She’d decided to bring herself on this mission, and her pride wanted to see her finish it.

She shook her head. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere like I am.” Her voice had taken on a nasal quality, with the nosebleed.

“Alright, then we wait,” Shortcake said, sounding like this was the answer she was waiting to hear.

“I’m real sorry ‘bout this…” Turnip said morosely. “This is all my fault. If I’d just set tight like I was s’posed to…”

Shortcake lay down under a bush and indicated the spot next to her. Turnip crawled under the bush with her. Somehow, the greatest tragedy of the day was that she could not feel the other pony’s warm coat through the bandages around her barrel.

“Looks like we’re in for a wait,” Shortcake observed. “About that… Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not r-” Turnip began, then stopped herself. She drew in a deep breath, wincing at the pain in her chest, and sighed explosively. “Fine. Let’s talk.”