Seven Meetings and a War

Bursts of tracers stream across the night sky. They meld with the fiery red of distant gunfire and explosions, illuminating the treeline with a ghastly red glow. The faint screaming of bullets and shells is drowned out by the planes roaring overhead as they chase each other through the sky in a backdrop of flak and smoke. An occasional burst of gunfire rattles from the fighters above, blending in with the chaotic orchestra of war.

In the distance, pitch black clouds steadily encroach closer, flashes of lightning and booms of thunder indiscernible from the artificial show of light and sound.

There will be no night sky tonight.

Away from it all, in an occupied tavern on the edge of a normally quiet town, there is pure chaos as ponies try to prepare for the terror that has already consumed them.

"The radio repeater is overloaded, sir!" Frequent Waves calls from behind the bar counter over the ruckus of the busy room.

"I want a gun at every window! What the fuck are you doing on the radio?" barks their commander from a table in the center of the large room. By some unholy coincidence, the regular Captain of the small garrison is visiting the town, leaving Sergeant Fast Luck in his place to lead in his absence.

"What do we do if we're attacked, sir? Are we allowed to fire back, sir? Without orders we can't-"

"Shut the fuck up for two minutes! I don't see you at a window! And- Corporal, what are you doing with that table? You gonna fucking bludgeon the changelings to death?"

Most of the soldiers present have been stationed here for months. Merely as a precaution against the minute possibility of a changeling invasion, they were assured. The town was just evacuated for 'safety reasons', they were assured. There would be no war, not in Equestria, they were assured.

And now, on what should have been another silent night, their worst fears have come true. When artillery began firing and the planes buzzed overhead, the slow realization set into every pony; nothing would be the same again.

Just a few measly trenches and a fence stand between them and the border to the Changeling Lands. Between these two dozen-or-so ponies and hell.

"In case we need to block the door from the inside, Sergeant!" replies the Corporal in question.

"Who's attacking us from the inside!?" Fast Luck screams with the incredulity of a drill instructor. "Our own damn stallions are up the stairs behind that, not 'lings. Window, window, find a window! And- hey, you, this isn't the time for a fucking drink!"

The Pony calmly stacks bullets into magazines from his cover underneath a window, ignoring the chaos around him.

Gone are his fancy coat, fashionable shirt, and lavish shoes. Here he wears the dull tan uniform of the Equestrian military, a simple steel helmet, and worn-out but clean boots. A single arrow adorns each of his shoulders.

He enlisted to get away from it all, to go someplace even his overbearing family couldn't find him. He's spent the past couple of years just... whiling away the time. Doing menial tasks, chatting, sleeping, enjoying rare treats on his military pay. Living.

The Pony isn't too concerned about the possible invasion. It's what he's been waiting for, after all. He's growing increasingly annoyed with the incessant mutterings and ramblings from the nearby ponies, though.

Click. He slides another bullet into the clip.

"Holy shit... holy shit... oh, god, no..." sobs the pony at the next window over, rifle abandoned at his side as he huddles in a ball. Private First Class Fragrant Flower. He used to grow plants behind the tavern. The flowers made for good tea.

Click.

"Our planes...? No, no, if those two are... those are enemy reinforcements... did something just move out there...?" A much younger pony incoherently mutters about the aerial battle to nopony in particular. Private Lengthy Tangent. His family thought military service would do him good, and packed him off to boot camp.

Click.

"Celestia give me strength and show me the way... may the Sun rise over this land and every other land and dispel the nightmares... Celestia give me strength and show me the way..." prays another under her breath. Like the Pony, she loads her ammunition with the practiced calm of a pony who has spent long nights mindlessly repeating the action.

Private Divine Sight. She spent the free time between menial tasks meditating and preparing for war. The Pony engaged with her the most in the garrison, appreciating the quiet, calm atmosphere she exuded.

Click.

"Listen... if they come in here, you watch my back, yeah? You gonna watch my back?" Private Elegant Prose to Specialist Poetic Prose. The two brothers are separable only by their age and rank.

Chick!

The Pony sets aside the loaded magazine and picks up another empty one.

He flinches as a nearby explosion sends rumbles through the building, throwing the magazine out of his hooves. The electrical lights flicker for a moment before returning to normal.

The room falls silent as everypony waits for another explosion. It doesn't arrive. The only sound is that of the distant hum of gunfire and blasts, and planes buzzing past.

"By Celestia, where was that?" shouts a soldier from across the room after a moment.

Sergeant Fast Luck replies with a dark chuckle, "In the woods, I'd reckon. Must be our own artillery. Trust them to hit fuck all..."

A faint shout erupts from upstairs. Everypony freezes in place as the distinct and clear sound of gunfire fills the building.

"The windows! Look out the fucking windows, idiots!" Sergeant Fast Luck barks from his vantage point on the central table.

The Pony, along with most of the soldiers, hesitantly complies and peers out into the dark. He rests his rifle on the window sill, head poking out above the frame only enough to see outside.

It's empty field all the way to the thick forest nearby. A lonely grey road snakes past the tavern into the woods, and ahead, to the border. It seems like a natural place to defend, but the Pony has run the route back to the town enough times to know that it is a death trap should the enemy gain the advantage. Besides the tavern building itself, there's only a small shed they use to store the jeep and extra supplies. There's no cover all the way back to the town.

He keeps his eyes on the treeline, ignoring the show of fire and flight in the sky. The storm has crept closer, much closer. The fire and brimstone below shades the clouds an eerie red.

It only takes him a few moments to realize what's wrong. There is nothing to shoot at. There are no muzzle flashes and no dirt being thrown up by gunfire. There are no changeling soldiers or tanks approaching. What, then, are the ponies upstairs doing?

For the first time tonight, a deep uneasiness settles on the Pony.

It seems the rest of the soldiers have made the same conclusion.

"Sir... they're not... they're not shooting outside...?" Poetic Prose announces uncertainly, just as the sound of gunfire ceases.

The Pony looks to the Sergeant, leaving his gun at the window. Fast Luck's gung-ho, dismissive attitude seems to have finally worn off, and there is nothing but dead seriousness in his voice as he orders, "Frequent Waves, go upstairs. Yelp for help if you need it."

Frequent Waves clambers over the bar counter to the door, rifle tucked under a wing. He pulls open the door.

A bloodied earthpony in tattered uniform stumbles out. He desperately clutches a red cloth to his neck. His helmet is missing, his shirt is barely a rag, and his agonized eyes betray his pain. Deep scratches run down his chest, fur turned sticky with blood.

"Help..." he gurgles weakly, reaching out to Frequent Waves for balance.

Frequent Waves holds out a hoof.

"Changeling!" barks Fast Luck.

Frequent Waves understands. This could be a changeling, wearing the face and clothes of one of their comrades to get them to lower their guard.

The hoof withdraws.

Nopony dares to move, morbidly fascinated by the scene playing out in front of them. The earthpony stumbles forward and falls to the floor, wheezing in pain. A pool of blood coalesces on the floor, staining the dirty wooden planks. The Pony finally recognizes him. Corporal Deep Bass. He sang in the Equestrian National Choir, and still brought out his rusty voice to entertain the soldiers when they felt bored.

As he lays bleeding on the floor, it occurs to the Pony that he will never sing again. He will never joke with them again. He will never talk about his late wife again, and his eyes will never shine with pride at pictures of his adult children again.

A wave of terror rolls over the Pony. This is real. This is too real. He cannot process the bigger picture, the years of suffering and war to come, not now. It is out of his grasp. The bloodied pony on the floor, though?

"Help me..." Deep Bass wheezes. With a tremble, his hoof reaches out to Frequent Waves, who simply stands there in shock. "By Celestia, help..."

The terror curls up his chest and seizes his heart.

"Help him!" shouts Divine Sight, rushing forward to assist. Changeling or not, the name of Celestia has been invoked, which the Pony knows is dear to Sight.

Out of the corner of his eye, the Pony sees something shift in the shadows from the door Deep Bass came through. He and Fast Luck shout at the same time.

"Stop!"

"Sight!"

Frequent Waves raises his rifle.

"Grün!"

"Feuern!"

The Pony throws himself to the floor as a volley of bullets tears out from the shadows. Frequent Waves is ripped apart instantly, his body flung across the room into the wall. Divine Sight ducks for cover in front of the bar counter.

Sergeant Fast Luck raises his rifle and fires twice through the doorway. He is forced to dive to the ground too, though, as bullets cut through the windows from outside and hit anypony unlucky enough to still be standing.

The Pony lifts himself off the floor and tries to grab his rifle from the window, only to find himself staring directly at a black-uniformed changeling attempting to climb through, his own gun slung at his side. How is there a changeling here?

They share a glance before simultaneously grappling for the rifle, desperately tugging on to it for dear life. The changeling hisses at the Pony, pure fury in his glowing green eyes.

The Pony focuses his telekinesis and throws a nearby chair at the changeling. It crashes hard and pushes him out the window, onto the ground.

He snatches back the rifle. Points it down, out the window. Pulls the trigger.

With a sickening bang, the changeling's body jolts and he falls limp. The only thing on his face is surprise. There is no more fury.

The Pony falls backwards and scoots back on his hind legs, gasping for air. He clutches the gun tightly to himself, looking around wildly.

The room has descended into a chaotic melee. More black-suited changelings pour in through the windows, fighting tooth and nail with the desperate ponies still left standing. They bludgeon each other with whatever they can find; sharp or blunt. The heavy, unwieldly rifles are impossible to use here, and any sense of order or thought of strategy has been abandoned, every second spent trying to survive to the next.

A small semi-circle of more level-headed soldiers has gathered around the door, rifles ready, but they don't dare to fire into the fray for fear of hitting any ponies.

There's no other way out of the overrun tavern.

The Pony takes a deep breath, straps the rifle to his barrel, and leaps to his hooves.

He barrels as fast as he can around the edge of the room, stopping by Deep Bass to check on him. He lies still in a pool of blood, no longer breathing, eyes closed.

A snarl erupts from the Pony's right. A sudden blow drives the air out of his lungs and flings him at a table. He lays crumpled against the table, stunned, as a sneering changeling stalks towards him.

A green flash of fire, and a polar bear looms over the Pony. It stomps forwards, sending shockwaves through the floor with every step.

The Pony tries to levitate his rifle. A weak purple glow surrounds it, and it shakily rises into the air.

He can't focus. His head is pounding. He can't breathe.

The bear raises a clawed paw, ready to strike.

This is it. He can taste death.

Bang!

The Pony blinks out the flash of light from his eyes. Divine Sight stands above the crumpled corpse of a changeling, levitating a rifle with her telekinesis. Her eyes flash dangerously, without a hint of remorse or pity.

"Get up. We're going to go for the door," she orders.

The Pony stumbles to his hooves, swaying unsteadily, and reslings his gun. He spares the two corpses on the ground one last glance. It feels wrong to leave Deep Bass to lay here, so undignified.

Nothing can be done now, though. They have to fight off the attackers first. With a shared nod, they both canter across the room, weaving between overturned tables and debris strewn on the ground. Clothing, parcels, papers, everything the soldiers stationed here used on a daily basis, strewn on the ground and trampled underhoof without care.

They're pulled through a tight semi-circle of ponies and out the door, into the porch. Sergeant Fast Luck and another pony- Poetic Prose- stand there, talking grimly. Elegant Prose is nowhere to be seen.

The Pony shields his face with a hoof against the howling wind. Without electric lights, and with the moon covered up by the smoke and clouds, it is almost pitch black here.

Fast Luck nods at Sight and the Pony. "Ofcourse these fucking two survived. Take them with you, Specialist. Keys should be in the ignition."

"What's- what's happening, sir? Why aren't we going in there and fighting?" the Pony asks in confusion. He readjusts his helmet. "We can beat them."

Fast Luck grunts. "No, we can't. The ponies upstairs? They got wiped. We're only alive because we forced the 'lings into a crossfire, and they had to use their fucking hooves for once. The moment they wizen up and start shooting, we're done."

The Pony gapes in horror as he realizes what Fast Luck is implying. "We're running away?"

"No!" cries Divine Sight.

"We're not. You're going with Prose to alert the town while we hold-"

There's a loud series of bangs from inside, and the ponies duck as the glass in a window shatters. The rest of the soldiers rush out, coated in ash and soot, and slam the door behind them, huddling against the wall.

There's only three of them. That means a vast majority of the ponies stationed here are either dead or still fighting for their lives inside.

"They're overwhelming us, sir! There's too many of them," reports one of the ponies breathlessly. "We lost Teal and Lamp."

Fast Luck draws his rifle, wings flared menacingly. "Do you need clearer fucking orders? Go, dammit! Tell them we're dead, and if you see any of us again, it's a changeling wearing our face."

Lightning flashes across the sky above. For a brief second, the fear- and determination- on Fast Luck's face is sharply visible.

"We can't leave our ponies to die in there!" Divine Sight protests loudly.

"Let's go, Sight," the Pony mutters, putting a hoof on her shoulder.

She flinches and backs away, towards the door. Fast Lucks blocks her path with a shake of his head.

"Poetic! Your- your brother is still in there. I saw him, he's alive. You're not going to leave him, are you?" she pleads.

Poetic Prose looks away, hanging his head. "He's dead."

Another bang sends the ponies diving to the ground. Thunder rumbles alongside it.

"We're running out of time, Sight! Let's go, let's go, please," the Pony begs from the wooden floor of the porch. "What are you trying to prove?"

One of the soldiers pushes a rifle through a window, firing loudly at some unseen target within.

"Fuck this," mutters Poetic. He takes off at a canter towards the shed.

Divine Sight takes a step towards the Pony. "I'm going in, and if you don't come with me you're a coward and a disgrace to-"

A small, round object tumbles through the window. It bounces off the fence of the porch and settles near the door.

"Grenade!" shouts Fast Luck, diving at the object.

Reacting on instinct, the Pony pulls Divine Sight towards himself and falls backwards, off the porch. He throws up a small magical shield in front of them just as the tiny, innocent grenade detonates.

Shrapnel and wooden splinters are thrown in every direction. Fast Luck is torn apart instantly, and the roof collapses onto the two other ponies. The soldier by the window managed to get a shield up in time too, and is only knocked to the ground.

The Pony drags Divine Sight up. "Let's go, let's go, let's go!" he screams into her ears, filled with sudden adrenaline and panic. She nods in a daze and doesn't resist as the Pony helps her towards the shed, eventually stumbling forward on her own.

They race down the small dirt path from the porch to the shed, between rows of flowers that would be full of colour in the daytime. Now, they are simply vague black patches on the ground.

They're about halfway to the shed when a shout rings out above the ever present, distant sounds of battle. The Pony stops and turns back to see a changeling driving a bayonet into the soldier they left behind, among the wreckage of the porch.

Another changeling stands on his hind legs, pale purple eyes staring down the sights of a rifle.

The Pony freezes in place. The still-functioning part of his brain screams that he should be dead, that he is dead, but the changeling simply stands there. The rifle gently sways with the breathing of the changeling, and his eyes seem to glow in the dark.

"Hey!" Divine Sight suddenly appears, throwing up a giant blue shield. Almost immediately, a bullet slams into it. Sight grimaces, her horn flashing a bright blue.

The Pony stares at the spot where the shield fizzles and cracks, right in front of his muzzle. "Holy..."

He's shaken into action as another shot pummels the shield. Still, it expands, forming a curved wall on the path.

Moving with a shield is impossible. "Ok, Sight, you drop the shield on my-"

"If I drop the shield, we die," Sight gasps through her teeth. As if to prove her point, more shots ring out, peppering the shield with cracks. The Pony squints through the shield at a growing swarm of changelings with guns lining up outside the tavern.

"We can make it to the shed. Fast Luck had a plan."

Divine Sight's muzzle twitches in the ghost of a smile. "That plan involved somepony staying behind to hold them off."

With a rumble of thunder, fat raindrops begin drizzling from the sky. The storm of bullets against the shield only intesifies.

"What? No, no, we can make it, we can go," the Pony pleads, shouting above the storm. Why is she so insistent on throwing herself into danger? He can't understand.

"Listen to me. Promise me you'll stop running away." Divine Sight tears her gaze away from the shield, locking eyes with the Pony. Her eyes glow softly as she speaks. "What you were doing before, throwing away everything for your responsibilities and family expectations? You're right, that wasn't living. But running away and trying to avoid doing anything isn't living either."

"Sight..." The Pony isn't sure what he wants to say. There's a finality to her words that draws tears into his eyes and chokes up his throat.

"It's dead people that don't do anything. We're dead. You can still live." She smiles at him, tears dripping from her own eyes. They drop to the ground like rain. "Don't waste it."

The Pony takes one last look at the scene. Divine Sight, holding the shield up with sheer will of mind, the unending hail of bullets and incessant bangs, and the ruined tavern behind. It's where he lived, and he won't forget it.

He tears his gaze away and gallops towards the shed. It's just a wooden frame holding up a roof to keep the contents dry. Poetic Prose taps anxiously at the wheel of a rumbling military jeep. The Pony silently climbs into the front seat.

Poetic doesn't question where Divine Sight is. The rapidly shrinking shield and lonely silhouette is hard to miss. He smoothly drives the jeep out of the shed, down the road towards the town.

"...holy shit. They really did it.," brings up Poetic after a few moments.

The storm finally breaks through, heavy rain pouring from above onto the ponies in the roofless jeep. Cold water pours down their fur and seeps into their clothing.

The Pony stares back at the tavern as it steadily shrinks from view. The blue light blinks, and disappears.

"Yeah, they did," he finally responds, turning around to face forward.

The sound of gunfire has stopped. In the distance, though, the orchestra of war carries on.