Equestria was beautiful. The rays of the monarch’s sun cut across the early-morning landscape and settled over everything like a heavy blanket, burning away at the mist that still clung to the surface of the river. The night-birds had all returned to their roosts, and the day-birds had yet to emerge; the silence hung in the brush along river’s edge thicker than the mist and the sunlight both, and one had the uncanny feeling that one could reach out a hoof and gather the silence around it like a cobweb. Moments like these made expert gunner and former artillerypony Minty Twist wish she could live in the heartland forever.

Maybe when the war was over. If it was ever over. If she was still around to enjoy it when it did.

Minty, and by extension, the whole crew – the soon-to-be-lieutenant Summer Meadows, the expert driver-mechanic (and apparently bang-up welder) Supercharger, the soft-spoken radio operator Cashmere, and, of course, the incorrigible Thrash – were posted to an infantry unit in a “forward operating” capacity, so there was at least one tank on hoof the instant the enemy tried something at each river crossing. The other day, they had, and Minty couldn’t forget the subtle difference in the vibration of the machine as it ran ponies over and ground their broken bodies into the silt of the riverbed.

Minty’s frustrations had been many lately. Since everypony still had all those “K-type” rations that had been delivered in great truckloads when they’d got back, the ones that had a personal serving of four cigarettes in each, the quartermasters had seen fit to withhold the usual packs of cigarette rations. As a result, it had been harder for her to get enough of the stuff she needed; and now, on a frontline post and far from the hubs of supply distribution, it was even harder. Nopony wanted to part with their tobacco, and she was forced to ration what little she could get. It would be terrible to run out like she had towards the end of that whole Major Grapevine business – that day without a cigarette had nearly killed her from the stress.

And then there were these new arrivals, new blood, greenhooves, whatever other denigrating name she wanted to call them. It was evident that they’d had hardly any training before shipping out to the front to meet their machines, and Summer had ordered her to train their gunners as much as she could. At least ammunition for the guns wasn’t a problem anymore. Normally, she wouldn’t mind, since it was important to be able to rely on your comrades in a fight, but these ponies didn’t know anything about the front and didn’t respect her seniority and experience. They were young, Minty suspected too young, and swaggered around like they were already expert tankers just from attending a few of her lectures. The grey stripes in Minty’s mane were natural, and she’d had them since she had been born, but she could swear that they’d grown wider recently, threatening to drown out the thin red streaks that remained.

And there had been all the work of organizing and procuring supplies to get their unit, and especially their tank, combat-ready as fast as possible. Just because Minty knew a thing or two about getting things she wanted in the army didn’t mean she was good for doing it all the time, large-scale. It was a lot of responsibility, a lot of ponies to talk to, a lot of places to run around to, a lot of things to keep straight, and she didn’t even have a secretary or anything. Cashmere would have been a capable one, but Summer kept her close as some kind of personal servant, and had the mare helping Supercharger with repairs the rest of the time. In a way, the move out to this forward post had been a weight off Minty’s mind as much as it had added its own, more familiar weights.

Weights like waiting for something to happen, staying on high alert all hours of the day. It was impossible to relax when the enemy was an easy mortar-shot away, and the deadly 81-millimeter daisycutters could rain down on their heads at any moment, in prelude to an attack. Or just to keep them on the tips of their hooves, wasting their energy. And then, of course, there was Supercharger-

“Hey, are you alright? You’re getting really tense there,” a rich masculine voice said next to her ear, breaking through her thoughts. It all fell away and she returned fully to the beautiful morning, and to the warm body pressing against her side.

She took a long, deep breath, then let it out through her nostrils. “Yes, Thrash. I’m fine now. I was just thinking.”

“Mm.” Thrash nuzzled behind her ear. “Stop that. You know it’s not good for you.”

Minty sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“But since you’re in a thinking mood…”

“What?” she said, more snappish than she intended. She needed a smoke, but if she lit up here it would be visible across the river, through the thinning mist. Where the enemy sat in their own little holes, ever watchful.

Thrash ignored her tone of voice, like he always did. “It’s kind of been bugging me. Why did you agree to do this? I thought you hated me.”

Minty scoffed. “I could get up and leave right now.”

“Ah, but you won’t.” He nipped the end of her ear, sending a thrill up her spine, and laid his warm, muscled neck over hers, pushing it down slightly.

“…I do hate you,” she answered eventually. “But a mare like me has needs too, you know.”

Thrash grinned and licked his lips; she only knew because she felt the subtle movement of muscles in his neck. “Care to expand on that?”

“I’m not talking about that.” Minty playfully pushed her head up, making to head-butt his chin, and he swiftly lifted his own to avoid the blow. He pulled his head back into his own space, and she looked up into his large hazel-colored eyes, the kind of eyes any mare would die for. Any mare but her. Only a bare hoofful of centimeters separated their muzzles, and she slowly leaned closer, closing the gap.

Then she dipped her head and butted lightly into the side of Thrash’s neck. He made a startled noise in his throat, clearly having been expecting another kiss. “I’m talking about this,” Minty finished, leaning into his body more and nuzzling under his chin.

“Well, if this is what you want…” he said, untucking his right foreleg so he could throw it over her withers and pull her closer. She snuggled gratefully into the warmth of his barrel and rested her chin on his other foreleg. She’d been wearing her uniform jacket for so long it had become like a second skin; being without it now made her feel strange, naked, vulnerable. “There’s something I've been thinking about.”

“Go ahead…” Minty prompted. She closed her eyes. Being close to another pony, sharing their warmth, feeling their breathing through her skin, was something she had not done for a very long time. It instilled in her a feeling of peace and rightness, like nothing could possibly be wrong in the world. The more cynical side of her mind told her it was simply a result of ponies’ natural herd instincts, but she ignored that side and let herself enjoy the moment.

“What if we got married?”

She was silent while she analyzed his tone for any sign that he was joking. Eventually, she decided he wasn’t, as silly as that sounded to her. She snorted in amusement. “Oh, please. As if that could ever end well.” She shifted slightly, rubbing her head against his body, and murmured, “You’re a snake, Thrash. A shameless serpent. You’re just lucky I prefer snakes I can see to snakes I can’t.”

“And what would get you to change that assessment?” Thrash asked. He sounded a little hurt.

“For starters, I’d have to be absolutely certain you wouldn’t leave me for a prettier or newer mare. Like you’ve done to your marefriend and I don’t know who else. For somepony you call your ‘main mare’, you’ve been neglecting her a lot lately.”

Thrash laughed weakly. “I guess I have.”

Minty wasn’t done. “She’s been very out of sorts about it. I can tell. Haven’t you noticed how fixated she’s become on making sure the tank is as battle-ready as possible? We just changed the filters three days ago, and she did it again yesterday. It’s like if she stops working, she’ll have to remember you’re here. And she thinks it’s all my fault! Won’t even say a word to me anymore. You really should talk this out with her.”

“Yeah…” was all Thrash would say.

A silence fell between them. Minty cracked open her eyes to observe the mist on the river. It was diminished somewhat, but the far bank was still not visible. They would have to move soon. She didn’t want it to end.

“So what else would it take to make me good husband material?” Thrash asked.

“You should drop it, Thrash. It’s never going to happen.”

“No, I get that. I mean, in general. For some other lucky mare.”

Minty scoffed noisily at that. “Besides remaining faithful? Well…” she raised her head until it brushed his jaw. “You could start by being reliable. Dependable. Keep your word. Understanding and kind. You could be more like…” she trailed off, realizing what she had been about to say.

“Like what?”

“Like who,” Minty corrected him. She didn’t know why.

And now his interest was piqued. “Who could I be like?”

Minty tried to swallow the sudden tightness in her throat. She hadn’t meant to think about him. He’d never even… they’d never… He wouldn’t have…

Thrash must have noticed something, because he asked, “Was it something I said? I’m sorry.”

That’d be a first, Minty thought to herself. She took a deep breath and let it out. The lump remained. “No, I’m sorry.” It came out huskier than she liked. “It was… it has nothing to do with you.”

“Hmm…” Thrash hummed tunelessly. “I’m going to guess this has to do with a stallion.” Minty stiffened under him. “Huh, I’m right. Well, I can’t say I’m not curious, but I won’t push if you just want to stay like you are.”

Minty flopped her head down on his foreleg again. Thrash leaned down and planted a tender kiss on the top of her head. “I thought you were going to ask me about him,” she said dully.

To her surprise, Thrash laughed, a genuine one, this time, but still quiet, lest he give them away. “Oh, Minty, there’s still a lot you don’t know about me. I don’t care about a mare’s past, I only care about what I see right in front of me. And I like what I’m seeing in front of me.” He playfully nibbled on the base of her ear, and Minty giggled, shocking even herself, her melancholy temporarily forgotten.

“Stop!” she giggled, flicking the ear and turning her head away. She got serious again. “It’s fine. I might as well tell somepony. Why not you? It’s not like it matters who knows, anyway. He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

“And if I hear you’ve been spreading it around to the others,” she said, opening one eye to see him looking down at her and letting some steel creep into her voice, “I will personally ensure you end up one of Celestia’s faithful eunuchs. You understand?”

Thrash blinked down at her, but his curious expression didn’t change. “Got it.”

Minty huffed and closed her eyes. Being partially wedged under his body didn’t feel quite as good as… well, but it was ten times more relaxing. “…He was an officer,” she began. A lieutenant, naturally, in charge of their battery. “I was still an enlisted soldier. I was responsible for maintaining the gun. One of the guns. Care & feeding.” He’d noticed her; she’d noticed him. Every morning he would find her cleaning the breach of her gun to a shining polish with a rag, and he would tip his hat, and she would smile and wave. Her mane used to behave more than it did now, and she would sometimes plait a small braid in it. He would comment on it when she did, every time, and every time she would blush and look away.

Back then, she had looked her age, as much as a soldier who’d been fighting for months could. Maybe she was pretty; she didn’t know. All she knew was that every morning he would start his daily inspection at her gun, and every morning she was there, with her rag. “We had… an understanding.” He’d begun stopping by the gun to talk to her, about the weather, about how the battery had been doing, about anything at all. It had always been couched in a concern for the battery, how it was doing and how it could do better, but she had known he just wanted to talk to her. “He never stopped to talk to any of the other enlisted gun-loaders in the morning, only me.” Some other mares were jealous; they thought she was secretly shacking up with him. She wasn’t.

“We had to move the battery a few times as the Empire advanced. I began to pick up the trade from my fellow gun crew. I think I picked up smoking around then, too, but I don’t remember.

“The gun aimer transferred out to smaller, more mobile batteries. He said the flying machines were getting too frequent, and if we knew what was good for us, we’d also switch to guns that were smaller, more mobile, and easier to hide. But I just couldn’t go. I was promoted to corporal and took his place.” And every day, she and the lieutenant would play out their ritual. Their conversations grew beyond trivial matters. The war had begun to tell on his face. She imagined it must have told on hers. The lines of his handsome face deepened. His bright, intelligent eyes seemed to sink into his head. His grooming began to slip, and he didn’t seem to care. But as their youth faded, chipped and worn away by the things they saw and experienced, their admiration for each other deepened.

“I was the one mare he could depend upon more than anypony else. He offered to make me a gun-captain.” But she had liked how, as a junior NCO, the new blood trusted her, and she could help them learn the ropes, without any barriers that the greater rank and responsibility would have put in her way. “I turned him down. I don’t know why.” She knew why. “I think… somewhere in all that time, I fell in love with him. I think he loved me.”

She rubbed some unbidden tears off on Thrash’s warm chest. “But we never did anything. I never went to his tent, though Celestia knows I could have.” Should have. “He would have let me in, I’m sure. But he was a noblepony, I am… me, and his reputation among his fellow officers was important for his work.” She would never have dreamed of making his life harder. “I could never bring myself to take the last step and say something to him.” Because she felt that if she did, the lines she saw in his face would only get deeper.

She took a deep breath, preparing herself. “And he never said anything to me.” She could tell he had wanted to. There had been a painful, awkward, electric undertone to their last conversations. Both of them dancing around something, and only in retrospect did she think she knew what that thing was.

“Until one day.” One morning. It was still cold out. She was at her gun. The rag wasn’t wet, she remembered, because it would have frozen to the metal if it had been. But in the warmer months she usually wetted it. “I was polishing the breech like always, waiting for him.” She didn’t have to. There was somepony who was supposed to do it for her. The poor mare hardly had anything to do, except when they fired the gun, and then there was a lot of carbon to get out of the old grooves. Minty hated doing that, so her underling got to work then.

“It’d felt like a special day when I’d woke up. You see my mane now, but I’d managed to fight it into submission long enough to put a little braid in it. I think I wanted him to ask me the question. I would have said yes. I remember there were some flying machines buzzing around, and I was keeping half an eye on them while I waited for him to come around to my gun. They didn’t used to bomb you, back then. Back then, they just skirmished with our Weather Corps. fliers and observed us, then flew away. They were pretty high up, like always. I didn’t mind them. They were basically like big flies buzzing around up there, or circling buzzards, and we never cared, since the location of the big guns was not exactly a secret.

“Well, flies that shot our brave pegasus fliers dead. We’d find their broken bodies nearby the gun nests regularly. There’s not much left after…” Minty stopped and took a shuddering breath, trying to dispel the memory. “But I knew by then there was no use agonizing over ponies dying you could have done nothing for. You know.”

“I know,” Thrash said, surprising Minty. He’d been silent for so long.

“Well, um,” Minty continued, put off on her narrative somewhat, “He came to my gun nest as always.” She had smiled and waved, like always, but he hadn’t even looked her way. He walked into the sunken area ringed with high earthen berms with his head craned skywards, squinting. She had followed his gaze and seen the black speck of one of the flying machines getting bigger. A smaller speck had detached from the machine and it peeled off, pursued by several hopelessly slow smaller specks. Friendly pegasus fliers.

“And one of those flying machines dropped a bomb. There were more that came after, but no others hit my gun nest. He saw it falling and he must have guessed where it would hit because he ran at me and jumped over the gun and tackled me to the ground.” At the time, she didn’t know what was happening. She had flushed and started stammering something, some nonsense she couldn’t remember. All of it had left her head a second later.

“The bomb hit the gun. A very lucky direct hit. Lucky for the rockhead flying that thing, not for me. It wasn’t a very big bomb, or I would be dead. As it was, it blew the gun apart.” And several large chunks of that gun had found their way inside his body. Bomb splinters, too, probably. She never knew for sure. He’d made a horrible choking, gurgling noise. Blood had dripped from his slack lips and onto her head. His mouth had moved like he was trying to say something, but his lungs were full of blood.

“And that’s when he died?” Thrash asked.

“…Not quite.” Minty used Thrash’s body as a convenient kerchief to dry her eyes again. Her voice remained level, a fact that surprised her. “He was still alive. I thought he might still be able to live, but I didn’t know what to do. So I did the only thing I knew how to do, and I held him in my arms and I screamed for help.” It was the first time she’d ever held him close, like she’d longed to do. It was also the last time.

“And I’ll guess you didn’t get any,” Thrash hazarded, becoming more confident with interjecting himself.

“I said there were other bombs, didn’t I? The only reason we were alone in there to begin with was because everypony knew about our morning conversations and steered clear of the place at that time of day. If there was anypony outside the gun nest they either didn’t hear me or had problems of their own.”

The medics had found her when the air raid was over, after his body had begun to grow cold. His blood had seeped out his chest and through his uniform and stained her forest-green coat red. Blood had dried in a rivulet going down her face, and none of it was hers.

“Huh,” Thrash said. Minty barely heard him.

It had taken two ponies to pry the corpse away from her. She wouldn’t stand up to go with the medics or react when they grabbed her. Though she didn’t respond, she was aware of everything. And she remembered everything. When they tried to wash the blood off she came out of her trance to try and fight them. They had held her down with four strong ponies and washed it off anyway. It was the last thing of his that she had, and she wept after they had finished, determined that she was otherwise healthy, and sent her to a hospital ward as a shell-shock case.

“Sooo…” Thrash began, “What. Are you saying I should be more like some stallion that never made love to you until it was too late because of his reputation?”

“Well…” Minty said uncertainly. It did sound a little absurd to her now, when put in those terms. But it sounded very disrespectful to the dead, too.

Thrash rolled on his side and drew her tightly to his chest with his forelegs. “Minty, my dear,” he whispered, from close behind her ear, “I will never let a little thing like reputation keep me from a mare like you. When you see something you want, you’ve got to take it in both hooves.” He pulled her a little tighter against him and twined his neck around hers. “…If you know what I mean.”

Minty flushed deeply and tried to duck her head away. “We can’t… we’ve got to get up before the sergeant decides it’s time to get going. And anyway, I prefer cuddling.”

“If you like it, I like it,” he murmured.

“Sure,” Minty said. It felt liberating, somehow, to have told somepony something she’d been carrying around with her for nearly a year and a half. Maybe she should have expected it to feel this way. Hadn’t she been witness to countless other battlefield confessions? Some ponies just wanted to talk about these things. Minty had proudly considered herself tougher, more stoic than they were. She could take it, she told herself. Maybe she was wrong.

She allowed the moment to stretch as she gathered her thoughts and returned to the present. “We shouldn’t have done anything. This was a mistake.”

“Aw, but you liked it.”

“I did,” Minty acknowledged. “And I do. But you should really pay more attention to your marefriend, not me. This is just asking for trouble.”

“Didn’t we already talk about this?”

“I’m serious.”

“Fine, fine,” Thrash conceded. “It’s not a problem right now, though. You know she’s dead to the world in the mornings.”

“We’re pushing it as it is.”

“I’ll talk to her, if that’s what you want.”

“I know that tone of voice,” Minty said sharply. “You’re not getting out of this by telling her about us. What you’re going to tell her is that you’re going to stop fooling around with other mares, and that’s final.”

“Aww…” Thrash pretended to pout. “…Including you?”

“Including-” Minty blushed. Give this up? But it had been so… “W-well, I might still want this from time to time.”

“I thought you might say that.” She could feel him smirking behind her.

“Anyway,” Minty said, tearing herself free of his warm embrace with some effort of will and getting her hooves under her, “If I find out you said anything about… this, to anypony, just remember that infantryponies turned tank crew are replaceable.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Thrash said, rolling his eyes as he got to his hooves. He picked up his uniform jacket from where he had been lying and shrugged it on.

“Anytime,” Minty teased, poking his nose with a hoof. She squirmed into her own jacket. It felt strange to put the oddly oily yet supple garment on after not wearing it for several hours. Maybe she should wash it. In the river? Too much of a risk. “So,” she said, doing up her belt, “You’re going to go back right away. Both of us being absent looks suspicious, so hopefully you’ll get there before Supercharger wakes up.”

“What about the commander and Cashmere?”

“They’re probably awake, but you disappear and return at seemingly random times all hours of the day, so that shouldn’t be unusual. I’ll go try and get some cigarettes from the ponies in the trenches. I doubt I’ll get any, but you’ll know where I am in case the commander wants to go right away and sends someone to fetch me.”

Thrash nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Minty made sure she wasn’t leaving anything, and didn’t bother trying to straighten anything about herself. She always looked like she’d just slept in her dirty uniform, and it would be odd if she made an effort to look decent.

“This mist is almost gone. Let’s go.”

Author's Note

Hi again! Though this is the second intermission chapter I'm posting, it's actually the third one I wrote. It's also going to necessitate some tag changes for the story at large.

Next up, I think will be the fourth arc. I've been working on that and also a lot of other projects off and on, but life has a way of getting in the way, so I can't tell you when that will be ready, but I'm tentatively shooting for the 14th next month, just to keep this number sequence theme with the upload dates going.
edit: gahhh I posted it too late in the day... curse timezones. Well, make that the 15th of september, then.

I tried something new this chapter. I saw in a book I was reading the interesting trick of having a disconnect between what the character thinks during a recollection of past events, and what they tell others of that event, and I wanted to try that. Also, upping the ante for arc 4 could not possibly bite me in the striped hindquarters, no sir.

As usual, the old chestnut about the food pellets, thank you all for still being here for my silly little tank story, and have a great day.