The Nameless War (or, the Circum-Equestria Conflict)

Published against my better judgement

When Twilight came to, all she could see was a mass of light and a mass of darkness. As her eyes refocused and her other senses returned, she soon realized she was on a very pale, very dusty surface with a night sky. A familiar alicorn lay on her side just metres ahead.

"Luna!" Twilight cried.

"Twilight..." Luna breathed.

"What's going on? Where are..." Twilight's voice trailed off as she saw, amidst the giant starfield, the planet - her home - below.

"The first place I thought of that would be safe." Luna replied.

"So you sent us to the moon?" another voice asked.

Twilight turned and saw that, alongside herself and her five friends, there was also nearly everyone she knew, along with everyone on the beach.

"Yes," Luna replied. "it is my domain - and my former prison."

Scott sighed. "Well this is just brilliant," he said sarcastically.

"It's a fitting place for birds like you," Cadian replied sourly. "Aren't you all from Hell in the first place?"

"At least we brought you here with us." another bird retorted.

"If it sounds like I care, featherbrain, you're sorely mistaken!"

"It's no wonder our world has so many problems!"

The argument grew and grew, and Twilight simply looked on at amazement.

"I can't believe you two!" Twilight shouted, uncharacteristically angry. Surprised at her outburst, the argument quickly dissolved. "Even under the threat of annihilation, you both are acting like children!"

Scott buried his beak into his feathers in thought. "Well, it's true we're partially responsible for this."

Cadian said nothing, but agreed soberly with a nod.

"It's therefore only fitting we do our best to fix this," Scott continued. "But it's not going to be easy, especially now that your former ruler has access to the best of Equestrian magic, human technology, and our own aircraft. If we're going to fix this, we're going to need help." He looked to Luna, Twilight, and Cadian.

"Princess Luna?" Twilight asked. Luna looked beaten and disheveled, but her voice carried her resolve.

"I believe I can speak for everypony that we'll do everything we can to get our world back," Luna said. "I was also once corrupted by evil. You will require our experience to succeed, Scott."

"And we'll have it?" Scott asked, to which Luna nodded.

Both pairs of eyes then turned to Cadian, with the human's armed forces behind him, hanging on his command.

"Well, far be it from me to be the only one to not help clean up part of our mess," he mused. "I can't say I like cooperating with the birds, but seems we don't got a choice." There were murmurs of agreement on the humans' side.

"Well, let's get started," Scott said. "I gotta say, it's strange being here in space without a spacesuit or something."

===

Rainbow Dash landed on the lunar surface with a sigh. "Man, so much has happened..." she breathed. "It's all just sinking in now."

Pinkie Pie nodded in agreement. "Well, look on the bright side, Dashie! We're all still together, we have a ton of new friends, and they're here to help us take back Equestria!"

"Still, what about the rest of Equestria?" Rainbow Dash bolted upright. "What about the Cakes? Applebloom, Big Mac...they're all still down there!"

"They might not be for long," Pinkie Pie replied. "Twilight and Luna were working on some sort of complicated teleport spell."

"Leave it up to the bookish ones to work their way with magic," added a silver bird who landed next to them.

"Heya, Scott." Pinkie Pie greeted.

"I heard you're a good flyer," he said, addressing Rainbow Dash.

"Only the best," Rainbow replied confidently.

"That's a good attitude to have. But can you fight?" he continued.

"I can beat AJ in a hoof-wrestle..."

Scott shook his head. "This is different," he started, but Rainbow interrupted him.

"I can fly, I can fight. It's not too hard to do both at once."

"Alright," Scott said. "See if you can keep me in front of you."

"So you want me to get behind you?"

"If you can."

As Pinkie Pie watched below, Scott and Rainbow Dash took off, skirting the moon's surface. To both of their surprise, flying on the moon was, at least here, the same as flying normally. The bird quickly banked left, and Rainbow Dash kept pace with him easily. He then climbed upward, and again Rainbow followed him, but then he performed a roll that drained his momentum drastically, flaring his tail wide as an airbrake. He watched as Rainbow slid ahead of him; without real combat experience, Rainbow didn't recognize the standard "airbrake" manoeuvre that nearly every pilot on his world knew about.

Rainbow glared as the bird slipped past her. On the defensive but still determined to get Scott in front of her, Rainbow took off; to her surprise, the bird mostly kept pace with him. She banked left sharply, knowing that the bird would quickly overshoot her. However, instead the bird flew upward; he rolled onto his back and descended sharply. Scott was still behind her.

Next, she weaved sharply left and right; a move that she performed with some difficulty during the Cloudsdale Young Fliers' competition. However, this proved to be a mistake, as Scott easily followed her through the paces.

This game continued for almost thirty minutes before Rainbow Dash simply gave up. "Alright, alright! I can't get behind you! What's the point in being behind anyway?"

"Fighting isn't a race, Rainbow." Scott said. "Celestia is using human planes. They have all their guns in the front. You need to get behind them if you want to have the advantage."

"For starters," Scott explained. "You should know about the airbrake manoeuvre. It's a classic move that no one from my world falls for. Secondly, I know how to execute a High Yoyo to keep myself behind you at all times. Thirdly, unlike other peregrine falcons like myself, I practice turning a lot. Trying to out-turn me is a very bad idea. I could go on, but I think you get the idea."

Rainbow considered her position. On one hoof, Rainbow Dash didn't take orders from anyone. On the other, she knew from experience to have some humility. Besides, Scott had a point: she would be fighting against the best they had to offer.

"Alright, alright." she acquisenced. "I'm willing to listen." Her ear twitched irritably.

"Hey, I'm not here to teach you level flight, how to bank, or the Split-S. You know this stuff already. What you need is knowledge, experience...and a plane." Scott smiled. "I think you'll like the last one, though I think we'll have to ask the humans to modify it..."

"A plane?" Rainbow asked curiously.

===

"Just like we said," Luna said. "Focus on your friends. Let their faces fill your mind. Everyone you know." Twilight closed her eyes and focused intensely. Everyone in Ponyville...her friends in Canterlot...

Luna did her best to hide the urgency of this spell. She knew that she would only have one shot at it; not just because it was a draining spell, but also because Celestia would know how to counter it once it was deployed. But focus was highly important for this spell, and lives were at stake.

"Can you imagine everypony you remember? All together?" Luna asked.

"Yes," Twilight breathed.

"I'm casting the spell now. Don't let them drift away. Keep that focus."

Luna and Twilight closed their eyes as the entire area around them glowed a bright light. Humans, birds, and ponies alike watched with both curiosity and awe as the two unicorns cast their spell.

===

Rainbow Dash didn't know where the hours went. First she was performing basic manoeuvres with Scott. Then he introduced her to some of the younger birds on his ship, the SFWS Radiance. Unlike Scott, their feathers were still brown, but their silver feathers glistened proudly under their wings.

"Today, you five will be training against me," Scott explained. "You all know the route to the simulator. Meet me there in ten minutes."

The four birds looked at each other nervously. "Man, I knew that the situation was bad, but for Scott to accelerate our training like this..."

"What're you talking about?" Rainbow replied confidently as she cantered down the Skywind's metallic hallways. Her companions flew alongside her. "So he's a good flyer. So I lost to him a while ago. But I learned a lot, and I'm pretty sure I can give him a run for his bits."

"You haven't really flown against a real silver going all out, though," a red tailed hawk replied. "Birds of the Windwhistler family are...what's so funny?"

Rainbow Dash was guffawing next to him. "No, no, it's just...there's a pegasus I know named Wind Whistler. It's just hard imagining her as a fighter pilot."

The birds reached the simulator room, an unlabelled pair of double doors. "Well, this is it." one of them breathed.

Despite her knowing what exactly a warplane was, she could never really get over how awesome they looked. Silver falcon planes had sharp, angular wings. The nose of the plane bent down, giving it a beaklike appearance. Four wingtip mounted laser cannons provided the planes' main armament.

Inside the simulator, there was a tiny platform floating in midair that Dash stepped on; the others simply took off into the simulator. Appearing as a gridline at first, their planes materialized around them.

"Just remember what you've learned," one of the birds said.

"Right." Rainbow Dash replied. "Focus. Control. Conviction. Resolve. A true ace lacks none of these attributes." she recited. By far her favourite part of the creed was next: "Nothing can deter you from the task at hand except my own fears. This is my sky."

Appearing as a gridline at first, Rainbow Dash's plane materialized around her as well. She found that the standard human controls were more intuitive than the birds' controls. She paused for a moment, listening to the hum of her aircraft's engines.

"I love that noise," she said. "Sounds strong. Powerful."

"They say it's the sound of freedom," another bird said.

"Hey, heads up. Scott's at our twelve. We make our identification pass, then fight's on."

The flight of five passed a similar looking aircraft. Rainbow checked her speed and could easily tell she could fly faster than this plane. On the other hand, as Scott pointed out, she couldn't carry any weapons, and could not use the birds' special one-way teleport system to bail out of her plane quickly. The main reason the birds have survived this long, Scott explained, was due to this one way teleport. Its functionality was never explained to her, nor did she really care - after all, Twilight was their resident expert in magic.

What was important was how Scott was already on the offensive, on the tail of one of her friends. She rolled inverted, the temporary sensation of feeling weightless feeling familiar, before the plunged in from above to make her attack.

"Pull the trigger when your target is squarely in your sights," she murmured to herself. She used her rudder controls to yaw and fine tune her aim before she began firing. As she passed, however, Scott saw her coming; he set his rudder hard right, returning fire as she passed him. There was a loud, terrible, sparking sound as the magic shields that protected her aircraft were struck.

A display on her aircraft read [REED: HIT], indicating that she had, in fact, hit Scott's plane.

A few blue laser shots whizzed past her, surprising her out of confidence. Rainbow checked behind her and saw five planes behind her. The group included Scott's plane, and the rest of her team.

"Rainbow Dash, bank hard right. I can't get a clean shot without hitting you!"

Rainbow quickly began a hard left bank before realizing that she had, in fact, banked the wrong way. Laser fire whizzed past her, with one or two hits to her from behind. She inverted again, beginning her hard right bank to shake him off. To her surprise, she seemed to have shaken Scott off.

The rest of her flight flew in after him, sixteen wingtip mounted cannons firing at him. She banked hard, gained altitude, and watched as Scott's plane took several more hits. That was when Scott's plane performed one of the sharpest turns she'd seen anypony - let alone a plane - perform. Scott performed a 360 degree horizontal flip. In that single manoeuvre, he was right behind the rest of Rainbow's entire flight.

"Bank left! Bank left!" cried one of the birds.

Rainbow made a sharp turn into the fight to help, but could only watch as Scott's cannons made short work of two planes at once. They exploded in a giant sea of digital squares; Rainbow briefly wondered what happened to the pilots, but figured that she didn't want to find out - even if it was just a simulation.

The fight was now three on one, and Scott still had the advantage.

The rest of her flight was still engaged with Scott; Scott was trailing one of them while the other positioned from behind, trying to get a clean shot. Rainbow positioned herself beside the fight. She yawed left, adjusting her aim in front of Scott's aircraft hoping to get a clean shot from the side.

"Guys, I'm coming in from the side, gonna try to cut him off." Rainbow announced.

"Alright, I'm gonna turn into you so you don't hit me,"

At the same moment Rainbow began firing, the tailing wingmate banked hard left, into Rainbow's laser fire. It initially sounded counter-intuitive to Rainbow herself, but in a situation like this she could see why somepony would bank INTO gunfire - it would minimize the amount of time spent in the enemy's firing range.

As soon as the first few shots missed, Scott also yawed hard left, snapping his plane and returning fire on Rainbow Dash. "Geez! How hard can he turn?!" Rainbow Dash exclaimed as she pulled up, Scott's fire narrowly missing her.

"Uh, guys? He's on me now! Get over here!"

Rainbow turned hard again, looping back the way she came, along with her wingmate.

"Come on, hit him now!" Rainbow rolled out of the line of fire as her wingmate bore down on Scott, weapons blazing. He made a hard bank left to avoid a plane presenting its top to him, realizing all too late it was Scott's, performing yet another tight diametered turn. Scott's lasers tore through Rainbow's wingmate as well as his original target.

"Oh come on!" Rainbow's wingmate cried as he was knocked out of the fight.

"Guess it's just you and me," Rainbow quipped. As she climbed, Scott followed her. She positioned herself in between Scott and the sun, having learned that the sun was one of the few places to hide in the sky. This gave her a momentary reprieve, but Scott then began firing blindly. Most of his shots missed her, but a quick glance told Rainbow that she wouldn't last long. She banked hard right, hoping to find a cloud to hide in, when a new voice appeared over the radio.

"You're not picking on our equine allies, are you, Scott?"

"Wha...no! I'm training the Element of Loyalty, here!" Scott replied, caught off guard.

"I thought you were above all that bragging, love."

"I am, Ariel. Besides, Rainbow Dash is a pegasus. She already knows the basics of -"

Scott's voice was roughly caught off by a loud sound.

"Oh, so that's how you want to play?" he asked.

As Rainbow Dash banked, she saw two virtually identical planes matching each other turn for turn. For a brief moment, she thought she saw two birds, rather than two planes, each trying to get the other in front. It was almost like watching the Wonderbolts, but even they didn't fly in the same style as this.

Ariel's plane seemed to hang in the air for a moment before twisting around and returning fire on Scott as he climbed past her. Scott looped around to try and get sights on the newcomer, but he seemed to have met his match; Ariel was behind him again, manoeuvring for yet another attack.

Her nature for competition kicking in, Rainbow Dash mischievously climbed high, rolling on her side so she could see both the sun and the two birds, locked in battle below. Rainbow reduced her throttle as much as she could without stalling, waiting for the perfect moment.

"Ariel, what are you doing here, anyway?" Scott asked. "Who'd you leave in charge of the bridge?"

"Arrow's on the bridge."

"You're sure that he's not firing on our newfound allies yet?"

"Oh come on, he's always gonna listen to his older brother."

Rainbow Dash couldn't help but notice how both birds were able to keep up casual conversation while manoeuvring with the speed and agility of...well, falcons. But at long last, Rainbow Dash tipped her wings, banked, and plummeted right through the fight - guns blazing.

Temporarily distracted by his mate, Scott accidentally positioned himself right in front of Rainbow's guns.

"Wha - hey! That's not fair!" he cried as Rainbow's aircraft read [REED: DESTROYED] on her, indicating she had gotten a kill.

"I got him? I GOT HIM!" Rainbow Dash cried, surprising both herself and Ariel. "I can't believe I got him!"

A few seconds later, Rainbow's aircraft started blaring alarms as Ariel fired on Rainbow. Rainbow saw a single laser bolt streak right in front of her before her vision exploded in a sea of digital squares. A flash of light later, and they were standing in the simulation room again. Her wingmates stared at her.

"Wha - hey! You got me?" Rainbow looked at the largest bird of the group, who nodded with a gentle smirk.

"You should always keep full awareness on you at all times, Rainbow Dash. Don't be too proud of yourself." she said.

"I still can't believe you got Scott!" her wingmate cried triumphantly. "You're in a very special club now!"

As the others retorted with their own explanations, such as "I could have shot him down if you didn't get in my way", Rainbow Dash was watching Scott himself.

"And who's showing off to the newcomers now?" he asked.

Ariel paced around him. "Can't let you have all the fun," she replied, preening his left wing.

"Hey Rainbow! We're heading to the Forward now. Come on with us!" one of her wingmates said. "We need to celebrate the fact you shot down a Windwhistler!"

"Thanks, guys, but I really -"

"No buts!" came the response, as Rainbow Dash was pushed out of the room by three pairs of wings.

===

Before Rainbow Dash could even ask what Forward was, they were already there. Consisting of several multilayered perches, birds of all kinds mingled together, drinking from various glasses. It seemed difficult to do, since they would have to nip at their drink and then let it run down their throat, none of the birds seemed uncomfortable.

"...no, wait, it gets better." A brown feathered Harris Hawk said, regaling his table with a story. "So when she came taxiing on the runway, she asked what Pinnacle was doing, with his giant transport plane. So you know what he did? He opened the doors on the nose of his plane and said, 'I'm going to eat you.'" The story was met with laughter all around, and a single peregrine falcon with juvenile brown feathers buried his beak into his feathers, embarassed.

Rainbow's wingmate climbed on top of a perch before screeching loudly.

"Heyhey!" she cried.

"What is it now, Ruby?"

"This here's my wingmate, Rainbow Dash! Guess what? She shot down Scott in the simulator today!"

There were surprised cries of "Really?" and others.

"Well, in all fairness, I did get killed by Ariel seconds later..."

There were cheers regardless. "Rainbow, getting a kill on Scott in the first place is an achievement in of itself. I mean, look at the boards." She said, gesturing over to a large screen with names and numbers. A few taps of her talons later, a highlight appeared over Scott's name.

"72?" Rainbow asked.

"72 aerial victories," Ruby explained. "The highest of the entire air force."

"So he's killed 72 humans?" Rainbow asked quietly.

"Yeah," Ruby confirmed, nodding vigorously. "He's good, isn't he?"

"What about them, though?" Rainbow asked. "What about those he's shot down?"

Seeming to remember that she was from a different world, Ruby lowered her voice slightly and sighed. "Rainbow, we know you equines don't like conflict. For us, though, it's a fact of life. I mean, even if we weren't at war, what are we going to eat?"

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to reply, but closed it before she said anything.

"We're all animals," Ruby continued. "And we need to eat by killing other things that fly. Is that not the same as us killing the humans who want us killed? Our natural behaviour is the same as tactical air warfare. It's not wrong...it's natural."

"I can't help but feel sorry for them." Rainbow stared at the ground, contempolative. "You guys are all really good flyers," Rainbow said, trying to change the topic.

"We practice a lot. My father was born in the sky, lived in the sky, and was killed there. Again, it's only natural." the peregrine sighed. "I'm just glad I have my friends with me."

"I'm surprised that you guys are so...friendly." Rainbow said. "I always figured soldiers and fighter pilots were...you know. Ultra-violent, ready to kill anything that moved."

"Nah, that's way, way far from the truth." Rainbow's wingmate replied. "You know, I think it's friendships born in conflict that last lifetimes."

"What, you mean like Scott and his mate's?"

"No," Ruby closed her eyes, smiling. "Like ours."