Usurped Dawn

by BaroqueNexus

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Princess Celestia, Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Luna, Queen Chrysalis
Length: 21363

A man is tasked with assassinating Princess Celestia.

My name is none of your concern. We are not alone. Humans are no longer the only creatures that walk, talk, write, and kill. In 2015, the Pentagon received direct contact from an extraterrestrial with an offer that we soon realized was too good to pass up. In exchange, we had to eliminate one of her kind. We were desperate, and this alien held in her hooves the key to humanity's prolonged survival. One man was assigned for the mission.

I was that man, and that mission was called Operation: Usurped Dawn.
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Published 2012-11-28 17:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-28 17:00:01 UTC

Usurped Dawn

Usurped Dawn

by BaroqueNexus

My name is none of your concern. I don’t mean to sound rude, but I doubt my name means anything to you. I suppose you can call me Colonel, but that is a rank, not a nickname. Had I been in a different line of work, my name would be plastered over every newspaper across the globe. I’d be world famous, rich beyond my wildest dreams.

But no, I’m a shadow, a ghost that does its job and doesn’t ask questions. A phantom has no name, not even when that phantom saved the goddamn world. Yeah, that’s right. I saved our world. Sort of.

You may think to yourself, our world?

If you take everything I say as bullshit, at least believe this: we are not alone. Humans are no longer the only creatures that walk, talk, write, and kill. In 2015, the Pentagon received direct contact from an extraterrestrial with an offer that we soon realized was too good to pass up. In exchange, we had to eliminate one of her kind. We were desperate, and this alien held in her hooves—yes, hooves—the key to humanity’s prolonged survival. So we agreed.

One man was assigned for the mission.

I was that man, and that mission was called Operation: Usurped Dawn.

In August of 2015 the government put me on a plane to Washington to meet with the President. I don’t usually get nervous, but it’s hard not to when you’ve been summoned by the most powerful man in the world. It was an honor that I couldn’t turn down.

When I sat down with him in a private room in the Pentagon, the first thing he said was:
“Colonel, have you ever seen a unicorn?”

I tried to keep my face straight and my voice flat. I said no. After a brief moment of silence he began to talk about unicorns and pegasuses (he called them pegasi) and things called alicorns. He talked about a land called Equestria that was apparently populated by talking horses. At first I thought one of my superiors was pulling a prank on me, but I came to realize that not even the President of the United States would waste his time to partake in a joke to mess with a single soldier. I had to accept what he was saying as truth, even though more than once I thought he should have been in the nuthouse rather than the Oval Office.

Midway through the conversation, he paused, probably waiting for a response. But I had none. I was fighting a losing battle to stay calm and not let my confusion get the better of me, and I knew that he could tell I was about to crack up. He stood, and I stood with him.

“Colonel, I’m not telling you all of this just to have a laugh. Sure, it sounds silly and infantile, but right now we are in a crisis.”

“We are, sir?” I said, my ears perking up.

“Yes,” he replied, pacing the room. “I called you today to give you a mission. I know it is not proper for the commander-in-chief to personally assign missions to lower personnel, but this comes at a very crucial time. You see, Colonel, we have been—well, invaded.”

Suddenly my nerves were taut. “Invaded, sir?”

He nodded. “Don’t worry, Colonel. There is no cause for alarm. However, a foreign individual made contact with military officials about three years ago, claiming to be from another world.”

Another world? I thought to myself. “Sounds to me like this individual has something wrong with him.”

“Oh, it’s not him, Colonel. It’s her. She does not have something wrong with her, but rather a solution for something wrong with us.”

My brain was in turmoil. “Sir?”

“You’re confused, Colonel?”

“Very, sir.”

“I understand. This is a lot to take in, and forgive me if I’m not putting it in the clearest of terms. I know how to make things much more understandable.”

Before I could reply, he went over to an intercom device on the table and pushed the button.

“Send her in.”

“Yes, sir,” came the response. The President sat down again, and I sat with him, trying to make sense of what the fuck he was talking about. Unicorns? Aliens from another world?

But when the far door opened, the President turned out to be right…sort of. Things did become a lot clearer, but at the same time they got even more confusing.

Flanked by two fully-outfitted soldiers was one of the strangest creatures I’d ever seen in my life. It looked a bit like a horse but had rotten flesh and a teal-green mane that looked putrefied. Its eyes were green and snakelike, and it had gossamer, insectlike wings and a horn. Fangs protruded from the folds of its long lips, and its tail hung lazily behind it. Its body was covered with weird holes. At first I thought I was looking at some kind of zombie horse, but then it did something that nearly knocked me off my chair.

It spoke.

“You called, Mr. President?”

Its voice was female and coy. Somewhere buried underneath my confusion and shock at seeing and hearing a winged zombie unicorn was an inkling of suspicion. I mean, if a human being looked the way she did, I doubt anyone would want to be near the poor fellow, let alone strike a deal with him.

“Your Majesty,” the President said, and more confusion sloughed into my mind. Majesty? This thing was a queen? A queen of what?

“Sir,” I began, careful in choosing my words. “Uhm…may I ask—?”

“There will be no need for that, Colonel. I shall explain. This is Queen Chrysalis, a Changeling from her homeland of Equestria. Your Majesty, this is Colonel—”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Colonel,” she said after the President had introduced me. “I have heard that you are a great warrior among your people.”

“Well,” I began, “I mean, maybe. Sure.”

“That’s wonderful,” she replied, batting her ugly eyes. “Now, Mr. President, have you summoned me with the final cog in our plan?”

“You could say that, Your Majesty,” he replied, turning to me. “Colonel, you know of the energy crisis currently gripping the world, correct?”

I nodded. Of course I knew. Everyone on the goddamn planet knew.

“Energy and resources number among the most taxing of issues for any leader, not just the President. When we used up our oil reserves, many thought the end was near. I admit that I was among them.”

“Sir, what does this have to do with the—with Queen Chrysalis?”

“I’m getting to that, Colonel. Chrysalis showed up carrying this.” He pulled out a tiny black rock from his pocket. “She calls it ponytanium. In her world, she told us, it is plentiful but not used for energy consumption. However she performed experiments and discovered that for humans, ponytanium can be a safe, reliable, and practical source of energy for everyone on the planet.”

“How did she know of Earth’s existence, sir?”

“My kind has always known,” Chrysalis answered. She probably felt like she was being left out of her own story. “We’ve studied human beings for centuries.”

“Who is we, if you don’t mind my asking?”

She shook her head, indicating that she didn’t mind. “We is my kind, the Changelings. Some may call us ponies, but we believe we are separate in more than just physical appearance from them.”

“Ponies? You’re saying you come from a land of talking ponies?”

“Correct. And that is where ponytanium comes from. My kind often overlooks it, thinking it a mere rock or stone. However, my experiments revealed great uses for ponytanium when applied to basic human energy consumption.”

“So, what? You’re offering us energy?”

“No, Colonel,” she said, smiling and batting her eyes. “I am offering unlimited energy. For millennia of human existence, in exchange for a single favor.”

The President nodded, and I suddenly felt like I had become the center piece of this meeting, not Chrysalis. I was still reeling from her appearance—no, from her existence—when the commander-in-chief spoke up again.

“This is where you come in, Colonel. I am offering you a position to head a one-man operation in order to complete the Queen’s request. In exchange, you and your family will enjoy special government benefits and you will be employed in my newly formed agency, OFEA.”

“OFEA?”

“Office of Facilitations of Extraterrestrial Affairs. Founded as soon as Chrysalis set foot—or hoof, rather—on our world.”

“Okay,” I said, still confused. “But what do I need to do?”

“That is quite simple,” the Queen piped up. “There is an alicorn, a winged unicorn, called Celestia. She resides in the capital of Equestria, Canterlot. She and her sister are princesses of the night and day. All I ask is that you eliminate Princess Celestia.”

As soon as she said eliminate I immediately knew why the President had called me in. “This is a mission briefing, sir?”

“Indeed it is, Colonel. Queen Chrysalis holds in her hooves a viable solution to the world’s energy crisis. If we were to harness the power of this ponytanium, we would have clean, renewable energy for millennia.”

“So in order to do that, I have to kill this Celestia person?”

“Celestia is not a person, Colonel,” Chrysalis replied. “She is an alicorn, and a very powerful one at that. Killing her will be no small task.”

“This man is no ordinary soldier, Your Majesty. He can get the job done.”

The President wasn’t lying. I could get the job done. But did I want to?

The briefing continued for three hours. By then I had heard everything I needed to know, but I was still confused. Why was I being sent to kill an alien? Why did Chrysalis want this Celestia dead? We couldn’t have known at the time the true relationship between the two alicorns. Hell, back then we were so desperate and so fucking naïve that we’d do anything to keep our power plants running and our people safe.

“Sir, why me?

“A recommendation from General Gordon, Colonel. I’m sure you’re familiar with him?”

I nodded. When I was still a Corporal, Gordon had organized my team for a major raid on Kantu, a resort island off the coast of Hawaii that had been attacked by terrorists.

“Excellent. Then the operation is a go, codename Usurped Dawn. Your name is irrelevant because you’ll be going in alone, and we will be unable to monitor your progress.”

“Then how am I getting back, sir?”

“That is up to Chrysalis, son,” he said nonchalantly. “You will be the first human to step foot in a brand new world, but do not let that hinder your objective. Chrysalis promised us free energy, but you must kill Princess Celestia.”

“Yes, sir. I accept the mission.”

I said that because I didn’t want to make it seem like I was wasting the commander-in-chief’s time. Little did I know that my decision would end up being the biggest mistake of my career—and my life.

I’ll spare you the long and agonizing details of the training and pre-mission briefings. By the end of January (I’d talked to the President in October) the mission details were ingrained into my mind. I had my equipment loadout. I had memorized the objectives. On February 3, I stepped aboard a C-147 and strapped myself to a chair, waiting.

The idea was that Chrysalis would come along on the flight so that she could teleport me in mid-jump to Equestria. The whole thing was ridiculous, like H.P. Lovecraft had met with Michael Crichton, or maybe Tolkien and Clancy. Once again, we were forced to take the word of a necrotic equine alien. I was putting my life into the hands—hooves, sorry, keep forgetting—of an alien. At times I thought I was dreaming, but whenever I tried to wake myself up I would open my eyes and see the cold walls of the plane, reddened by the harsh light of the interior.

Chrysalis sat across from me but never looked up, staring at the ground as if perplexed by it. I was still nursing suspicions about the alien, but I knew it was too late to turn back. I had no choice.

Fifteen thousand feet over the Atlantic Sea, the intercom turned on.

“Get yourself ready, sir. Green light in ten.”

So I had ten minutes before I had to jump. I unstrapped myself and checked my equipment. I was clad in black combat fatigues with a darkened tactical vest, gloves, and boots. My helmet was lightweight and equipped with a NOD, and I wore red-tinted goggles. I’d been issued a sidearm, the classic Beretta 9mm, and a brand new rifle courtesy of the Pentagon. It was a heavily modified M4-A26, a combination assault and sniper rifle. It had an upgraded ACOG scope with infrared filter, an elongated barrel, and a silencer that doubled as a lightweight mount. I had my field knife and a Powerbook in my backpack, along with rations and other supplies. My parachute was packed tightly and my face was covered with a balaclava. I was fully geared and ready to go.

I’d be lying if I said those ten minutes didn’t go by as quick as a flash. I was about to pull out my Powerbook and go over the mission details again when the intercom came on again.

“One minute!”

I jumped up and prepared myself, stepping onto the C-147’s ramp and triple-checking my equipment. Suddenly Chrysalis stood up.

“I wish you luck, Colonel. You are brave.”

“No, I’m stupid. But where I come from, there’s hardly a difference between the two.”

“Thirty seconds!”

The ramp began to open slowly, and the midnight wind nearly knocked me off my feet. I looked back one last time and saw that Chrysalis’s horn was glowing. She was preparing to send me to Equestria. I faced forward and bent my knees, ready to jump.

The ramp opened fully, and the light turned green. I took a deep breath and stepped off into the night.

The wind rushed by me and snatched my breath away. It pounded my chest and pressed my goggles into my face. I could see the moonlit ocean several thousand feet beneath me, and suddenly, inexplicably, there was a hole in the air. I didn’t have time to think before I was swallowed up by the hole.

The ocean disappeared, and now a sea of trees blew in the wind below me. I was falling faster, and then a signal came into my earpiece, prompting me to open my chute. I pulled the cord and gasped as I snapped back into the air, the parachute billowing behind me. I began to gently float down to the forest, and I lowered my NOD over my eyes. Red light flooded my vision, and suddenly I could see everything. The forest stretched for miles, and in the distance there were hills and mountains. The night was cloudless and the moon was huge, far larger than Earth’s. There were scattered lights in the distance that were parallel to the stars in the sky. I watched in silent awe as the trees grew larger and larger, then realized that I was about to hit.

WHAM!

The impact was hard, but I’d felt much worse. One time during a stint in Grenada a damn Mac truck hit the front of my Humvee, but that’s a tale for a different time. I had landed in a thicket grove in the middle of a forest. My chute snagged on branches and strange leaves, ripping and falling apart. Quickly I detached it and gathered my bearings.

Trees were everywhere, in every direction I looked. I was lucky that I hadn’t run into an oak or pine on my way down, but now my luck seemed to be waning. There were no footpaths, no way through the thick trees. Everything was red from my night-vision, from the grass to the trees to the moon in the sky. All this red made me a little queasy and anxious, but I quickly quashed those feelings and set about making camp for the night.

I tried to make my way through the forest, but it was difficult as hell. I’d been in plenty of forests before, but this one was different. This wasn’t an Earth forest. What if the trees were sentient? What if instead of squirrels and rabbits the forest contained lions or velociraptors? I don’t think I was adequately prepared to deal with being in a new world quite yet, so I sat down and lay my back against a trunk, opening my backpack and powering up my Powerbook. I quickly opened the mission file and took off my NOD, squinting to get used to the harsh light and lack thereof.

Don’t think I hadn’t read the file hundreds of times already. Of course I did, but being in a very foreign place and merely reading about it were two different things. I had to see if the tree I was lying against would gobble me up or not.

I spent the next two hours reviewing the file, until I could say with certainty that I wasn’t going to die via carnivorous tree. More than that, actually. I already knew about the ponies, how some of them flew and some of them did magic (which was definitely on my top ten list of things that could fuck this entire mission up.) I knew that Celestia and her sister Luna ruled over Equestria. I knew where Celestia was going to be and when she was going to be there. There was some kind of party planned for her in a town called Ponyville (original, huh?) At least, that’s what Chrysalis said. That’d be the ideal time to take her out.

That last part wasn’t in the dossier. I knew when and how I wanted to take targets out. My work is not just exclusive to assassinations, but they do comprise a large part of my assignments. I’d had my fair share of government contracts before Usurped Dawn, so I knew a thing or two about how to kill someone without leaving much of a trace, if any at all. Aim for the head unless otherwise instructed. Don’t kill anyone else but the target unless absolutely necessary. And, as so bluntly put by Allan Quartermain, if you can’t do it with one bullet, don’t do it at all—unless you’re an idiot.

But I found myself doubting such counsel now that I was in an alien world where the rules could be incomprehensibly different from those on good ol’ Earth. I also found myself doubting my own sanity. Why? Because I was in an alien world. I thought things were moving too fast. Now that both my feet were planted on alien grass, and my ass was up against an alien tree, I found myself wishing I was home.

You may think it was cowardice, what I felt, but I’d disagree. Anxiety, sure. Paranoia? Maybe. But cowardice, no fucking way. I’m no coward. Just ask General Amos Gordon of the U.S. Army. He’ll tell you about my exploits, and expect him to go into excruciating detail about my team’s hotel assault on Kantu.

I closed my Powerbook. Exhaustion was creeping up on me. I looked at my watch, but saw in the light of the moon that the digital numbers read 00:00. Strange. It should have been working, but it was just a watch. I put my rifle, my backpack, and my helmet in a small pile next to me, and tried to get comfortable. Thankfully I couldn’t feel the tree’s irritating grain on my back, due to my vest, but sleeping against an alien tree is no easy feat, I found out. Eventually I closed my eyes and they stayed close, and my dreams were weird and nonsensical, broken flashes of thought and memory that zipped by faster than the human mind could comprehend.

Morning came and the sun was a welcome sight to my weary eyes. I awoke covered in leaves, which I brushed off and scattered. The tree was shedding. It must have been sometime in autumn here in pony world. I gathered the rest of my equipment and, after downing an energy drink and taking a bite out of a horrible-tasting MRE, I checked my Digital Positioning Tracker, the basic equivalent of the GPS when there aren’t any satellites floating around in the air. The tech boys programmed it with great difficulty, because creating an entire region for a DPT and then tracing a viable route for a lone man on the instructions of an alien was no picnic, according to the programmers. Nevertheless, Chrysalis promised it would take me to the ideal lookout point for the Princess. As time went by, though, I wondered if Chrysalis’s word was really worth anything. She certainly didn’t look very trusting.

I cursed myself. Letting your mind wander is one of the big DON’Ts of being a soldier and government assassin, and for a guy who’s had ADD since childhood, it’s one of my biggest flaws. Medication treated it alright, but the last thing I wanted to do when putting a target’s head between my crosshairs was to become suddenly engrossed with the way his eyes gleamed, or the way his shirt matched his pants or stuff like that.

Shaking off the final dregs of sleep, I began to follow the route on the DPT, keeping my eyes open. I was not camouflaged very well in the forest. At night I could be like a shadow, moving at ease without worry of detection. In daylight, I was like a spot of blood on snow. I would have to rely on my stealth training in order to remain undetected by any enemies.

As I progressed, I began to wonder who my enemies really were. When I kill, usually the guy in my scope is a real scumbag, or maybe he’s a homicidal maniac. I know that doesn’t justify it in any way, but for that I usually rely on the Moker principle, which states that it is always wrong to directly take innocent life. The people I’ve killed were never innocent. I always made sure of that. The thought of killing an innocent human being always gives me chills.

But these things, who could tell? How did we know Chrysalis wasn’t a scumbag? I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I felt like even if she were human she wouldn’t come across as a trustworthy person. Every time I looked at her I saw something in her eyes, something I couldn’t fully make out. Was it treachery? Cruel satisfaction? Or perhaps her eyes were filled with amusement, watching us go about fulfilling her wishes, standing back as we fall to her whim…

I don’t consider myself a good judge of character, but there was something not right about that alien.

Nevertheless, I had a job to do. My personal opinions wouldn’t and couldn’t intervene with the mission. Eliminate the target. Simple as that.

Not so simple.

Walking through the forest gave me time to think, so I thought about that. I thought about how everyone thinks it’s so easy to kill someone. Just point the gun and bam! He’s dead. Kids and adults see it on TV and in video games all the time. They think that’s all we do in the army, is kill, kill, kill.

Sure, we kill. But it’s a mistake to assume that we enjoy killing. No one should enjoy killing. You can’t easily pull the trigger when the guy on the other side of the gun is terrified out of his mind. You can’t easily kill him when you look in his eyes and see that everything that led up to the moment you put a gun to his head, all of it is irrelevant. Judgments, opinions, and misgivings are pushed aside when you look into his eyes. You see not a rival, not a fiend, but a human being, and you realize that killing him would be like killing yourself.

That’s what killing is. When you kill, you never just kill the other guy. You kill your soul. You taint your soul with his blood. You go home and you think about what could have been.

They say it takes guts to pull the trigger. They’re wrong. You have to be insane to pull it. You have to be out of your mind to think for even a second that your god or whoever placed you on this planet gave you the right to destroy a human being, the most complex creature on Earth.

And yet I kill for a living. Why? Is it kill or be killed? The lesser of two evils?

Of two evils, there may be a lesser, but take three apples from four and you still have three apples. Take a little evil away from a lot, and you still have evil. The lesser of two evils is evil nonetheless.

I’ve spent countless nights pondering these thoughts, wondering why I kill. I’ve never been able to come up with a reason. Most people would think that I’m just trying to defend myself. Sure, but so is the other guy.

We kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong. We kill those who have killed in order to prevent more killing. We kill and kill and kill and when we stop and realize that we’ve killed, we end up killing ourselves physically, emotionally, or mentally.

Many men, even women, have ended up on the wrong side of my gun. They were all scum of the earth. But they were human.

I was now in a world without humans, only animals. But these animals could talk, think, and solve problems. They could even kill each other. Would I still kill one of them and feel the same regret, guilt, and horror that I felt every time I pulled the trigger, every time I watched through a scope as a human life ended before me?

I had no choice but to find out.

It’s not easy to keep going when you’ve had a complete mental unfurling like that, but I managed to. I would have made it to my objective sooner, had it not been for the living tree.

When I first saw it shivering, I immediately thought to myself, Living trees. Fuckin’ knew it. But then my soldier instinct kicked in, and I dropped to the ground onto my belly, slowly inching up to a bush to get a view of the clearing I had arrived in.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the moving tree, and there was no question that it was moving by itself. I slowly coaxed my rifle from my back and screwed the silencer onto the barrel. The tree shivered again, and in a few moments I had my gun lined up perfectly with its trunk.

From the other side of the clearing emerged a squirrel, not an alien, blue-skinned, fifteen-legged thing but an ordinary squirrel. It chattered and stood in the open, blinking quickly and looking around.

The tree began to move into the clearing with restraint, as if it didn’t want to disturb the squirrel or anything else that might have been lying in the bushes. Then slowly, the tree began to lift up, and yellow legs appeared from its bottom. Before I knew what was going on, the tree was on its side and a completely new creature stood in its place.

It had to have been a pegasus, because there was nothing else it could be. It was bright yellow and had pink hair and shining blue-green eyes. Its wings were tucked tightly into its sides, and there were three butterflies on its flank, like some kind of tattoo. I guessed that it was female, but I knew nothing about equine anatomy. I was at least relieved to find that not all creatures in this world were like Chrysalis. The pegasus seemed reluctant to go on, but slowly she made her way into the clearing. The squirrel noticed the winged horse, and rather than running off, it ran forward. Then the pegasus began to speak.

“Aw, hi there, mister squirrel!”

I was right. Female. Her voice was soft and soothing. I relaxed my finger but did not remove it from the trigger.

“Are you all alone out here? Me too!”

She knelt down, and the squirrel began to nuzzle her knees, chattering away. She giggled.

“Oh, that thing?” She pointed to the hollow tree she’d been wearing. “Well, this is the Everfree Forest, you know. There are all sorts of strange creatures in here. It’s not always safe, see? So I travel in disguise sometimes so that none of the big scary monsters will get me!”

She patted the squirrel on the head, and I swear the little rodent was smiling. A grin tugged at my mouth too, but I vanquished it and remained focused. Then I realized: this thing could talk to animals. She’d answered the squirrel as if it had asked her a question.

“Oh, you need to get going?” she said, and the squirrel answered, I think. “Alright, then! Bye, mister squirrel!”

The squirrel gave her one last nuzzle and ran off—in my direction.

I nearly cursed. If this squirrel could talk to this pony, then what could stop it from telling her I was here? I had no time to think about it, as the squirrel bounded through the bushes and ended up four inches away from my left knee.

It looked up and stared for a moment, a mere second, then screamed. I don’t think squirrels normally scream, but this little rodent was definitely howling in terror. It was loud and obnoxious—and audible to anything nearby.

I had no choice. I grabbed the poor squirrel and, in one quick motion, snapped its neck. The screaming stopped, and for a moment I thought I was in the clear.

“Mister squirrel? Are you alright?”

Shit.

I didn’t move. I hardly breathed. My left hand rested on the squirrel’s corpse while my right gripped the rifle’s handle. I couldn’t fire, and moving my hand would probably make more noise. I was stuck.

I turned my head just a fraction of an inch and saw the little winged pony through the leaves, coming toward me with a concerned look on her face. If she came through the bushes, I would have to kill her too. But I didn’t want to. There had been something in her voice, in the way she had treated the squirrel. She was innocent. She didn’t deserve to die.

Please, I prayed. Please don’t come any closer. Don’t go through the bush. Please.

“Mister squirrel?”

She was about two feet from the bush. If she had looked hard she would have seen the barrel sticking out of the plant.

One foot away. Any closer and she’d feel the cold silencer against her body.

My lungs were on fire. I needed to breathe. She wouldn’t go away. She was just concerned for her little furry friend, the little friend whose neck I had snapped.

Seconds passed. Then a full minute. She stood mere inches away from the tip of my rifle, listening. I dared not move. I did not want to kill her.

Finally after what seemed like an eternity, she shrugged and said, “I guess he went off to be with his little squirrel family! Oh well!”

She smiled and turned around, humming to herself. When she disappeared into the thicket I let out a breath, then held it again when she rose from the forest’s ceiling, flying through the air with graceful ease. I waited a full minute after she disappeared, then stood up.

I could not help but look at the little squirrel. I never though an animal could look and sound so scared. Now its eyes were wide and frozen, and his mouth was open in a dead scream.

Chills ran up and down my spine. I never liked killing animals. I never hunted and always felt a little guilty when eating burgers or chicken. But these ponies were animals, and I had to kill one of them.

I sat down and lay my rifle in the dust, then held my head in my hands. If I couldn’t cope with killing a little squirrel, how the fuck was I supposed to kill a full-grown, talking pony?

That was me, all through basic training and everything that followed. A top notch assassin who hated killing. Ironic, isn’t it?

I punched the ground and got up. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be going. I had a job to do. With great difficulty, I pushed aside my emotions and picked up my gear. Checking the DPT once more, I made my way back into the thick forest.

There finally came a time when no trees were in my path. I emerged from the forest into empty plains. The sky was azure-blue and there were no clouds. It reminded me of the time I went on vacation to Tel Aviv. Beautiful place, beautiful weather. It was perfect.

According to the DPT, there was a winding road about half a klick to the east on which the Princess would make her appearance tomorrow. Parallel to the road was a small cave that would serve as my perch.

My watch still wasn’t working, so I had to wait until the sun went down so I could make my move across the open plains. It was a long wait, so I passed the time by playing games on my Powerbook. When the sun finally disappeared, I had just completed level 45 of Pac-Man.

Putting my laptop away, I gathered the rest of my things and set out for the cave, using my night-vision to guide me. For anyone else, it would be arduous to run with so much gear on, but I’d grown used to it after countless training exercises and missions. I could run a mile in six minutes. This was nothing.

Finding the cave wasn’t difficult either, as it was one of the few real landmarks on the featureless plain. But I had to make sure it was empty, so I shortened the barrel of my M4-A26 and turned on the underbarrel laser sight. After clearing the cave, I found a strange wall that sloped upward, and upon climbing up said wall, I made another discovery. Cut into the stone was a room of sorts, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet. On the far wall, there was a window-like opening that offered a perfect view of the road.

It was too convenient. I was immediately suspicious. There was nothing around for miles, and yet there just happened to be a cave with a perfect view of the road? I suspected a trap, but had little choice than to accept this as my perch. Anywhere else and I’d be a sitting duck.

So I settled in and waited silently, forgoing sleep. There were times when I would look out the rocky window and stare at the stars. They twinkled like diamonds in the sky, and the moon was so beautiful. It’s funny how a giant heap of dead rock can be so beautiful when you’re looking at it from thousands of miles away. The night was completely silent, which I found odd. Normally this close to the forest you’d still be able to hear the crickets chirping and the owls hooting, but no, the night was quiet. Maybe a bit too quiet. I put on my NOD and did another sweep of the area, but found nothing. I was alone.

Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. I don’t normally get very paranoid, but as I settled back into the cave, the moonlight spilling across the barren rock, I felt like an animal in a zoo, like someone had his eye on me. But I’d already done two sweeps. Nothing was around.

I put the sniper scope away and lay down. From my backpack I rolled out a sleeping bag and climbed in, zipping myself up. It was nowhere near as comfortable as my paper-thin mattress back at base, but hey, I was in no position to complain.

I closed my eyes and let the night wash over me.

Morning arrived, and with it came the anticipation of the pre-kill hours. Usually I’d find something to occupy my time before the two hour mark, the time when I had to be on the rifle. But my watch didn’t work, so as soon as I woke up I was manning my gun, the barrel just barely poking out of the shadow of the cave window. I kept my finger behind the trigger and waited.

The nice thing about Equestria was the weather. In places like Iraq or Syria, the heat was always sweltering and one of the most distracting things for any rifleman. On the other hand, during the Presidential hostage crisis in Chicago two years ago, I’d been co-oping with the National Guard as a sharpshooter, and that day it must have been at least thirty degrees outside. But this weather was perfect. There was no ungodly heat to make me sweat, nor was there intense frost that could fog up the scope. It was a picture-perfect day. Perfect for an assassination.

I quashed the doubt and guilt in my gut. Like I said, I always used to justify my assassinations because I felt like killing scum like my targets would benefit the world as a whole. I continually played God and decided dozens of people’s fates without them ever knowing. But now things were different. I wasn’t assassinating a bloody terrorist or a drug kingpin. I was assassinating a princess of alien horses.

Two hours after waking, my doubts were beginning to creep up again. Did they have the same anatomy as Earth horses? Would shooting them in the head do nothing but give them a headache? The mission dossier hadn’t said anything about where to shoot this princess. I figured I might as well aim for the head, the universal insta-kill area.

But what about the other ponies? Despite its excellent coverage of the surrounding plains, the cave only had one exit, and the plains were so featureless that even if I ran out with nothing but my shorts on, I’d still stick out like a sore thumb. There were sure to be guards in this procession, or whatever it was that the Princess would be coming in. What kind of weapons did these ponies have? Guns? Laser beams? Magic disintegrator things? I was beginning to realize how ill-prepared I was for this mission, how focused I’d been on the how rather than the what or why.

I suppose I could kill every pony that showed up. Collateral damage, nothing more. Just a quick burst and all the aliens would be dead. That would be my backup plan.

My mind reeled and crashed like a roiling ocean, but my body was stiff and frozen, my gun pointed at the paved path where the princess was sure to arrive on. I waited and waited, watching the edge of the forest.

Four hours in. No sign of the princess. Fucking watch. Four hours felt like four days. I was patient, though. Unbelievably patient. In basic training they put you in a room alone and tell you to wait, then see how long you last. I went forty-six hours before they called it quits. That’s how patient I was.

Six hours in, and the sun was high in the sky. Must’ve been noon. That’s when I heard the wings.

I thought birds at first, but then realized that whatever was flapping was way too big to be a bird. So I looked up.

There was a chariot, a goddamn chariot, about two hundred meters above me. Four winged horses pulled the chariot, and I could just make out the chariot’s rider, a snow-white creature with a flowing mane of pink and teal, wearing a crown…

Fuck.

They were out of sight before I could swing the rifle around. The damn cave blocked my vision, and in a few seconds I no longer heard wings. So I gathered up my gun, wasting precious time in packing up the mount, and ran out the cave. The sunlight blinded me momentarily, but as I ran around the raised cavern I saw the chariot shrinking into the distance, getting closer to the jumble of buildings that must have been Ponyville.

Goddamn it. Nobody told me about a fucking flying chariot.

I raised my rifle, but it was useless. She’d already dropped into the town. My anger grew like a fire.

My one chance, gone.

What else could I do? I went back to the cave. To lament? Yeah. To brood? Maybe. To think of another plan? Oh yeah. When you’ve been assigned a mission by the commander-in-chief, failure is not an option.

But my other options weren’t exactly healthy alternatives. There was no way I could infiltrate the town undetected. I knew nothing about its layout, and it was probably filled with ponies now that their princess had arrived. The only option I could think of was to wait until the princess left, and then try to take a shot.

That meant more waiting, but I had a job to do for my country. So I waited.

Nothing really eventful happened during my wait except that the sun got lower and lower, and then finally I saw it: a small black speck on the fiery horizon. Celestia’s chariot.

Time to make the kill.

I’d taken a prone position at the foot of the cavern, out of sight of the chariot and with an unimpeded view. The chariot was the only thing in the sky. I just needed a clear view…

There.

She sat about a half mile away from me and five hundred meters above the ground, resting comfortably in her luxurious chariot. Even though there was no wind, her mane flowed like a flag in a gentle breeze. I’ll bet her subjects thought she was beautiful. Through the scope I could make out an odd sun-shaped mark on her flank. Did all these ponies have tattoos on their flanks? What a weird custom.

Her guards looked like old-fashioned Roman centurions. No guns, no Kevlar—hell, no weapons at all. But they did have horns, and I didn’t want to find what kind of magic they could do with those things. I would dispatch the princess and have enough time to get into the forest before the guards realized that their passenger was dead.

She drew closer, the gap between us diminishing by the second. My finger lay on the trigger. A single bead of sweat dripped down the side of my head and stuck to the smooth fabric of my balaclava.

Two thousand feet away. Now was the time. I lined my sights up with her head, tracing her path. Her face filled the scope. She was completely unaware, completely unprepared.

Three. Two. One.

Now.

I pulled the trigger.

There was a small spurt of red somewhere along her neck. I saw her face contort with pain and one of her hooves reach up to her throat.

Then I ran.

I’d been hoping for a head shot, but the bullet had hit her neck. Maybe I’d cut the jugular and she’d bleed out. I couldn’t confirm the kill, and probably wouldn’t be able to anytime in the near future.

I was about thirty feet from the forest when the ground exploded around me.

Fire shot up and billowed out of the grass, and the earth shook as if something had just smashed into the ground. The blast lifted me off my feet and sent me flying forward until my back made a painful introduction to a tree. Had the Kevlar not been there, I’d be dead.

But what the fuck was that?

Suddenly, another explosion, this one closer to the forest’s edge. The trees lit up, and black smoke filled the air. I saw a green ray of light zip past me, and then a fireball came rushing toward me. I ducked into a small rut in the ground as the fire roared over my body, searing my backpack.

It was magic. The unicorns were firing on me.

Wait a second. If they were taking the time to fire on me rather than evacuate their princess, then…

Mother of a…

She was still alive. She had to be. If she were bleeding out, the guards would have turned tail and fled. But no, they were bombing me, shooting up the forest like Harriers, hovering and dipping in the sky as they searched for the princess’s would-be assassin.

So I ran. Man, I fucking ran. I had to keep my rifle with me, because as much as my thoughts were focused on the explosions that crept dangerously closer to me with every interval, somewhere in the back of my mind a voice told me that I shouldn’t leave a high-tech piece of human weaponry lying around for the enemy to find. I did my best to strap it down to my back and run like hell, and all around me the forest burned.

Suddenly, it all stopped. The bombing, the fires, everything. It was as if it had never been there. I heard a low whoosh, and with a spurt of relief realized that the ponies were flying away. I stood still for about half an hour. Maybe she died and the guards were trying to whisk her away to the hospital. Maybe they’d lost sight of me.

Maybe. No certainties in my line of work.

After waiting an additional fifteen minutes, I went to investigate a patch of forest where I was sure that, just a quarter of an hour earlier, had been blackened and on fire. But there was no trace that such a thing had ever happened. The grass was pristine, the trees strong and healthy. Looking around, I saw that there was no smoke or fire, and that I no longer smelled burning wood.

The destruction had vanished like magic.

I had little time to dwell on this anomaly. I had to confirm the kill. But how the hell was I going to do that? Her escort was on the way back to the Equestrian capital—Camelot? Cannerlot? I couldn’t remember what it was called—and I had no way of knowing if the princess was dead or alive. The initial shot hadn’t killed her, but there was always the possibility of exsanguination.

I had little choice but to go after her again.

The map guided me through the forest, but couldn’t get rid of the cumbersome vines, bushes, and fallen logs that lay in my path. I’d had jungle and woodland training, but this was ridiculous. The forest was gnarled and knotted and seemed to clump up everywhere I went. Nevertheless, I followed the DPT. Canterlot—that was the name—was north, but far north, according to the map. Somehow I had to find a way to get there fast.

Had it not been for the talking zebra, I would have gotten out of that damned woodheap faster.

I stumbled upon her hut—literally stumbled. Damn branch was in the way, so down I went, flat on my face into the mud. I was spitting out some kind of weed when I heard a short exclamation.

“Who is that? Come out of there! Looter, gawker, foe beware!”

Muted fear gripped my body, but I quashed it and slowly brought up my rifle while scraping mud off my face. Shuffling forward, I came to an opening in the bushes.

A zebra, a fucking zebra was standing on the porch of her tribal-looking hut, the kind of hut I’d seen in the jungle of Kantu. It had rings around its neck and hooves, and it had a black-and-white mohawk. It must have been the one who had spoken.

“I heard you, now please come out! I mean no harm, stop messing about!”

In the back of my head I wondered why she lived all the way out here. I saw her face contort with anger.

“You have hidden long enough! Come out of there, you little scruff!”

Scruff? I’d been called many things, but never scruff. Jesus, she rhymed worse than Nicki Minaj. So much for meaning no harm. She certainly sounded hostile. I considered putting a bullet in her head.

“I know I heard something out here,” she said, and I could just barely hear her. “But what, I do not know, I fear.”

God damn it. She’d make a lousy poet. But you can’t just kill something because it rhymed badly, even if it was an alien zebra. Otherwise I would have iced Lil Wayne years ago. Chaucer would turn in his grave if he knew how badly people—and alien ponies—rhymed these days.

I took English at the University of Iowa before West Point. I take my poetry seriously.

Rather than continue with her god-awful rhymes, she pawed at the ground and went back inside her hut. The inside of her lodging glowed purple, and the faint smell of turnips and raspberries met my nostrils. I had to move to get around her hut, but all this creepy voodoo shit that was strung up on the trees was really freaking me out. Voodoo has scared and pissed the hell out of me since Kantu, and even though I’m thirty-four I can never quite shake the feeling that somewhere, somebody has a little doll of me and is about to drive a pin right through my—

“Maliki liki, se tiki le’uuk kaamran…”

Her voice drifted out of her hut, and a chill ran up my spine. That’s it, I told myself. I’m getting the fuck out of here.

It was a bitch to get around the hut, and it took me five hours. But I managed to sneak all the way around, and not once did the zebra come out to investigate. It took me another two hours to slowly back up to a safe distance where the zebra wouldn’t see me. When I finally stood up, I looked like a pig fresh out of a mud bath. I ignored the mud as I made sure one last time that the zebra hadn’t seen me, then ran deeper into the forest.

I stumbled upon a stream as dawn began to break and used it to clean off my non-electrical equipment. The forest smelled of wet cedar and I was beginning to lose my patience. I had yet to confirm Celestia’s death, and how I would end up doing so was a mystery to me. After cleaning my equipment I walked toward the edge of the forest, keeping my eyes open and my gun ready. It had grown dark out, so I put my NOD down and viewed the trees through the crimson filter. There were no more zebras or ponies or animals around, though I could hear them everywhere. I felt like they were watching me, mocking my failure.

The forest eventually ended and I stepped out onto another unbroken plain…except it wasn’t unbroken. Through the night-vision I saw a black line on the horizon, so I ran to investigate. The night was silent once more, and the stars glittered above me. Once again the full moon was out, and I thought it strange that there could be two consecutive full moons in as many days. I think that’s where the term ‘once in a blue moon’ came from, not because of the moon’s color but because sometimes two full moons occurred in one month.

Pins and needles suddenly crawled up my spine, and I once again had the feeling that something was watching me. I looked up at the moon, and the feeling grew. But this was no time for gut feelings. I had to check out the black line.

So I did, coming upon it gingerly with my gun at the ready. It was a snakelike iron path of sorts with two iron bars running parallel to each other, connected by wooden planks at specific intervals.

Or in simpler terms, a railroad track.

I knelt down and felt the track. These things had railroad? And this was no Amtrak line; this was the old-timey Wild West kind of track. I half-expected to hear the horn of a locomotive coming my—

WHOO-WHOO!

Speak of the fucking Devil.

I removed my NOD quickly as a beam of light hit my eyes. It was a circular beam that drew closer with every second, and I realized that it was indeed a locomotive, but there was something off about it. I looked through my scope and saw that the train was being pulled by a group of six strong-looking stallions, each wearing an old-fashioned conductor’s uniform.

Suddenly I had a crazy idea.

The train was close, only about a hundred yards from where I lay. I had to time it perfectly so I could mount the train and not be seen by the ponies pulling the engine. The locomotive would pass in ten seconds.

Five seconds.

Two…

With a great burst of wind, the locomotive blew past, and I realized that there were only a few cars behind it, maybe five or six. Abandoning caution, I stood up and tried to time my jump so I would land on the platform between the cars. Saying a quick prayer that I wouldn’t break my legs, I breathed and jumped.

My timing was just a microsecond off, and my knee slammed into the iron, cracking it for sure. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming, drawing blood. As I pulled myself up, I felt my rifle slip from my shoulder, hanging on by a hair’s breadth. I made the mistake of trying to adjust my position, and the rifle fell underneath the train’s wheels. I heard for the briefest moment the crunching of metal and glass, then nothing except the chugging of the train.

I pulled myself up onto the platform and, taking care not to alert any of the passengers, rolled up my pants and checked my knee. It was bleeding, but nothing appeared to be badly damaged. I still had my backpack, so I fished out an Ace bandage and wrapped it around my kneecap. For my mouth I kept spitting until I felt the bleeding stop.

Now I only had my fists, a single grenade, my knife, and my 9mm for armament. That rifle had been a favorite of mine, and to be honest I was sad to see it go. But better it than me, I reasoned.

I started wondering if I should have jumped onto the train in the first place. There weren’t many other options. Walking was out of the question. Cars seemed to be nonexistent, and I imagined the flying chariots like the Princess used were hard to come by. It was a risky move, hopping aboard, but at least I was getting somewhere—wherever there was.

It was cold, noisy, smelly, and uncomfortable on the train platform, and I had the haunting feeling that one of the passengers was going to try to change cars and would see me. So I ducked out of the way onto a side running board, my face only about five feet off the ground. Now no one would see me, but I had practically zero mobility. I tried to make myself more comfortable—hard to do, as there was a rut sticking into my belly, among other things.

When I accidentally kicked out my left knee, the one I nearly shattered, smashed into something. I howled in pain, which was thankfully lost in the chugging of the wheels and the locomotive itself, but then I realized that whatever I had smashed against was no longer there. A worn-down section of lower wall now lay in pieces, and I saw a way into the train. Desperate for warmth, I climbed through the tiny hole and fell into a small alcove just underneath the passenger car. There was mesh grating above me, and the burning lamps made the room extremely hot, especially with all my gear on. I dared not remove my balaclava in fear that someone would see my face through the mesh grating. I moved slowly as the sound of voices met my ears. I realized I was in some kind of air vent, and I stopped when I heard someone say ‘Celestia.’ Straining my ears, I tried to listen in on the conversation, unable to fully make out the speakers through the mesh.

“…exciting? She’s invited us back to the Royal Court!”

“Maybe we’ll get to see Luna! I love Luna!”

“Of course you love Luna, Fluttershy! Who doesn’t love Luna?”

“Ya mean besides half o’ Equestria, pardner?”

“I don’t think everypony really is used to Luna yet, Applejack. See, when—”

I listened for half an hour, and by that time I knew all their names. I knew the pony from the forest had been Fluttershy; she had the same smooth, soft voice that would make even the most battle-hardened brute smile. Then there was Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack. I saw some of their faces through the mesh, but never could really make out the details. I was certain, though, that Fluttershy had been the pegasus in the forest, the one whose squirrel friend I had killed. They talked about going to Canterlot to continue Princess Celestia’s birthday celebration. So this train was going to Canterlot. More luck for me.

There was someone else with them, but I don’t think it was a pony. After a period of brief silence, they picked up again, and that’s when I heard about the weird creature named Spike.

“Ow, Spike! Can’t you sit still?”

“Sorry, Twilight, but I’m as excited as you are!”

“I know, Spike, but this isn’t going to work if you keep moving around. You can’t be on me like that with your spikes! That hurts!”

“But I’ve poked you with them before and you didn’t say anything!”

“What? When did you do that?”

“Last night while you were asleep. It was part of an experiment.”

“An experiment?”

“Yeah. You know, for research!”

“Spike, please get off me. And clean yourself up, for goodness sake! We’re going to see the Princess at Canterlot! We can’t be looking like we just had lunch spilled on our legs!”

You can imagine my confusion and slight disgust, as I couldn’t see what was happening. None of the other ponies were reacting any differently, except for a few that were giggling. That meant that either I was misinterpreting the whole thing, or this Spike was the biggest poon hound I’ve ever heard of.

Eventually they all went to sleep, and the lights went out and I was in darkness. I decided to get some shut-eye as well, as difficult as it seemed given the conditions at the time. I was traveling with the enemy, not four feet from where they slept, on my way to assassinate their leader. I wonder if these ponies were as violent as humans. Humans were violent but they were also ugly. These things were cute-looking, how tiger or wolf cubs look. But like tigers and wolves, they could both be very deadly.

I would have to find out, because with just a pistol without a silencer and a knife, it was going to be very hard to kill this princess without attracting a lot of attention. But that was something I’d worry about in the morning.

When morning came, the train had stopped and I heard no voices. The only sounds were the sounds of metal on metal and distant shouts. Shaking off the last dregs of sleep, I squeezed my way out of the small alcove under the passenger car and looked out.

I was in some kind of giant warehouse full of trains and tracks. It looked like some kind of rail depot. The heat was stifling, and I removed my helmet and my balaclava, letting the fresh air caress my cheeks. Donning my helmet again, I cocked my pistol and, removing myself completely from the alcove, dropped onto the floor.

Immediately I checked to see if anyone had seen me, but there was no one in sight. There was a door at the far end of the depot, so I made my way over, staying low and ducking between trains to stay out of sight. Thankfully my way was undeterred, and I made it to the door, opening it and going outside.

The air was fresh and cool, and outside the depot were ragged bushes and weeds. A city stood about half a mile north, full of gleaming towers and stone castles. This must be Canterlot.

The city was white and bright; my dark camouflage would prove useless, if not detrimental. So I took off my helmet, detaching the NOD and hanging it around my neck. I then shoved my gloves into my pockets. My goggles went into my pocket as well. Then off came my vest and with it my black fatigue shirt, until all I had on was my white T. I put my vest back on and stuffed the fatigue shirt into the helmet, laying it in the bushes for later retrieval. I was now lighter and quicker, but less protected. I had little choice. It was going to be hard enough to get to the castle undetected; I didn’t need to look like an ink spot on paper while doing so.

I checked the DPT. Celestia’s castle sat on a cliff overlooking all of Equestria. Every conventional way in was either guarded or in a high-traffic area, making it impossible for me to go by. I tried for hours to come up with a viable plan, until once again I got a crazy, impossible idea.

The cliff.

Rock climbing without ropes, clamps, or real experience is both harrowing and stupid. Nevertheless, I reasoned it was the only way to get into the castle undetected, and that was how I find myself on the face of a five hundred foot cliff, hanging on for dear life. I had to put my gloves back on, or my skin would’ve been rubbed raw. I’d only climbed a few times in basic training, and this ridge differed greatly from the rock-climbing wall with the many colored footholds back at base.

I had climbed two hundred feet when I started to regret shedding much of my clothing. The wind made it extremely cold, and the rocks were even colder. I could feel the chill through my gloves.

One hour and three hundred and fifty feet later, I was almost there, in utter disbelief. The sun was high and the rocks were still cold, but only fifty feet remained between me and lip of the ridge.

I reached for the rock and it crumbled in my hand. One razor-sharp chunk gouged my left hand, cutting through the glove and my skin.

A single stone saved me from plunging to my death. I hung onto it as I tried to pull myself up, both of my arms burning with strain. A few more rocks tumbled, and I thought for a moment that I would join them. I swung my arm in an arc and tightened my grip around a jutting piece of granite, pulling myself up. My arms and lungs were on fire, but I couldn’t rest. I had to keep going.

And go I did, all the way to the top. Underneath my torn palm I felt wet grass, and as I pulled myself up, the castle loomed over me. I got the rest of my body over the lip of the cliff and lay back on the wet grass, gasping. But I could only spare a few seconds for recuperation, as my objective wasn’t getting any closer.

I had more climbing to do.

Anybody else would think me nuts, but I knew what I was doing, even as my bloody palm left red spots on the white marble. In basic they actually trained us in the art of fluid body motion, known to most people as parkour. Except I always thought that anyone who did parkour and wasn’t a pro was just a show-off douchebag. As I went through basic training I realized that I was going to be, among other things, a professional free runner.

With free running they taught us free climbing. The idea was that every nook and cranny, even the smallest niche, could be a foothold. You had to ‘let go’ of your body, relax your muscles. That way not only would it be far easier to scale a building, but you’d be less likely to die from a fall. Same thing applies to a car accident. If you’re rigid, you’re more likely to get seriously hurt.

To me, climbing buildings was a piece of cake. The cliff had been difficult because it had been craggy, pockmarked, and random. Here the castle was made up of white marble bricks punctuated by windows, turrets, and balconies. I’d already traced a way up to the highest point of the castle, where I would work my way down. Going down is always easier than going up. Many people take this for granted, but I wasn’t about to.

A half hour passed, and around that time I saw something dark and winged zoom into one of the turrets at an incredible speed. It was too fast for me to make out fully, but it was gone so I didn’t let it impede me.

I was sure my arm muscles were about to rip off by the time I reached approximately the six-hundred-foot mark. Thankfully there was a balcony, and I thought this would be a good place to dismount. Breathing a sigh of relief, I began to shimmy over.

“Hey!”

At first I thought I had imagined the voice, but when I looked back I saw that I was not imagining anything. A cyan pegasus with rainbow hair, the one from the train named Rainbow Dash, was hovering at the same level I was, her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed.

“What the heck are you doing up here?! And what the heck are you, anyway? Answer me, you—”

Before she could speak anymore, I pulled my pistol out of my holster, aimed at her wing, and fired.

The shot echoed and bounced against the many turrets and facets of the castle, and the pegasus screamed as she plunged toward certain death. My heart grew sick and my stomach contracted.

Collateral damage.

I didn’t have a choice. She would have blown my cover, and I was too close and had worked too hard to fail now. I put my gun away and quickly dismounted the wall, spilling onto the balcony. My palm had stopped bleeding.

I shouldn’t have shot her. She didn’t even have a chance. What would her friends think? Would they find her body? Maybe she could still use the other wing to fly. Maybe…

Just collateral damage.

I had a job to do, an objective to complete. Once I killed Celestia I would be rid of this nightmare.

Or would I? Nobody could have answered at that time.

The interior of the castle was lavish. It reminded me of the Palace of Versailles, where I had vacationed with my late wife several years before. We’d had a blast there, laughing among the mirrors and the diamond chandeliers, enjoying ourselves as we went back to Paris, the most romantic city in the world…

She died three years ago. Cancer.

I’d rather not talk about her.

I moved through the many halls and corridors of the castle, avoiding passersby and ducking between rooms in order to find the princess. At one point I actually considered asking one of the guard ponies for directions. Maybe I should add that I just shot a pegasus. No, no, that was the ADD talking. I had an objective to complete and wouldn’t let any goddamn chemical disorder get in my way.

The DPT didn’t have schematics of the castle, which I though was a pretty big flaw in the overall plan. Something nudged at the back of my head, and I began to feel like there had been too many flaws in the mission so far. The only intel we had came from Chrysalis, so we were utterly reliant on her. But I didn’t trust her, so why was I following her information?

The answer never came to me, because at that moment I passed by an open door, and there she was.

This must have been the royal bedroom, as the furnishings were lavish and the bed was fit for a queen. And there was Celestia herself, her mane flowing though there was no wind, her back turned to me. She hadn’t yet noticed me.

I forced myself to ignore the fancy furniture and sundries that lay around the bedroom, and I slowly drew my pistol.

This was it. This was the moment. I would kill Celestia now, and my mission would be complete. I would escape the castle and head for the pre-designated spot for extraction. There was nothing between me and her except air. I had the perfect shot, lining up my pistol’s iron sights with the back of Celestia’s head as she arranged miniature statues on her dresser. I noticed she had a scar on her neck where I had shot her before. I would not miss now.

She would hear the sound of the gun being cocked, but I was not about to give up such an opportunity.

I cocked the gun. She stopped arranging the statues.

Something slammed into my back—and burst out of my chest.

Suddenly there was blood everywhere: on my hands, on the floor, on my vest, everywhere. It was my blood. I was bleeding from—from what?

I looked down and saw, with utter disbelief, a dark, bloody horn sticking out of my chest. The horn slid back, and I saw Celestia turn around, her face contorted by shock.

I don’t remember if I screamed, but I don’t think I did because I was sure my lungs had been punctured. The horn had gone right through my chest, and now my blood seeped down my front, collecting in little pools on the immaculate floor.

I fell to my knees. I could no longer feel anything, except maybe the blood coming up my throat. I felt it run off the edges of my mouth. I tried to speak, to say anything, but nothing came. Celestia did not move, nor did her expression change.

And the pain. Oh God, the pain. No words. No—

Darkness, brief and sudden.

I should have died. But I woke up and realized I wasn’t dead, and then I looked up. You wouldn’t believe who was standing over me, smiling.

“Ease yourself, human,” Princess Celestia said, laying a hoof on my chest. “My sister’s horn did you great damage. It will be some time before your wounds fully mend.”

“Wh—What?”

“Shhh.” She put a hoof to her mouth, and I noticed that her hoof was covered with my blood. “Don’t speak. You have questions, as do I. I will try my best to answer.”

She cleared her throat. Her horn shone briefly, and the blood on her hooves disappeared. “You are not dead, human, and that is by my doing. My sister tells me that she saw the young pegasus Rainbow Dash outside the castle, bleeding from her wing and going on about a strange creature with a device that spat fire. She came up here to warn me, but instead found you. Out of concern for my safety, she ran you through with her horn.”

The edges of my vision were black. I tried to listen, but her words were fuzzy.

“She only did it because she thought you were going to kill me, which, by all accounts, you were. But I am not angry with you, human. In fact, I—human? What is—”

When I awoke again I saw another alicorn above me, this one dark blue all over. I recognized her from my data files as Princess Luna, keeper of the night. She was arguing with her sister.

“He tried to murder you, sister! How could you tend to his wounds?”

“He was not acting of his own accord, Luna! Someone obviously sent him here to do that creature’s bidding! He is not our enemy!”

“Not our enemy?!”

“Incredulous as it may seem, sister, this poor man is not our foe. Had he been, he would have not hesitated to kill me.”

“How can you be so certain? He is an alien creature! A violent one, at that! He wounded poor Rainbow Dash!”

“I did not say he was without fault. We shall interrogate him further when he wakes up—oh, speaking of which.”

She and Luna scrambled over to my bedside. I touched my chest gingerly. My wound seemed to have healed. I coughed, and no blood came out.

“You have healed well, human. Perhaps now you may answer our questions.”

I was a prisoner of these two pony princesses, so I had no choice but to comply. I noticed they had taken my gun and knife, but had left my grenade, probably oblivious to its purpose. Celestia spoke again.

“What is your name, human?”

I coughed. “You can call me Colonel.”

“She asked for a name, not a rank,” Luna snapped.

“Well a rank is all you’re getting, bitch.”

I knew it wasn’t smart to mouth off to my captors, but my anger over my failure was close to boiling over. Celestia seemed unperturbed, however.

“You came here from Earth to kill me, yes?”

“You know about humans? About Earth?”

She sighed. “We have known of mankind for centuries. We know you are a cruel, violent species. In my early years I considered contact between our worlds, so that the magic of friendship and love could spread to your people. I was not successful, and you remained a bloodthirsty species.”

“Not every human is like that, Miss,” I said, sitting up.

“Of course not,” Celestia replied. “Nor is every pony in Equestria the embodiment of friendship. But as a whole, your kind was and still is the antithesis to mine. That is why we have remained separate. But that leads me to my next question: who sent you to kill me? It was a pony, it had to be. No human ever knew of our existence. Speak!”

“I ain’t telling you shit.”

Her eyes narrowed, and there was no kindness left in her pupils. “You will tell us, or I will let my sister work her magic of the moon upon you.”

I almost laughed. “Magic of the moon? What a bunch of fucking—”

Suddenly unimaginable pain ripped through my body, and I screamed until there was no more air in my lungs to vent. I don’t remember blacking out, but when I came to I was on the floor, bathed in sweat and shivering. The pain had subsided, but the feeling itself probably would not leave my body for a long time. I’d undergone training for things like this, but the pain—my God, it was unbearable.

My breath was shallow and there was an ache in my stomach. I slowly got up, realizing that the two sisters had not moved.

“I did not enjoy that any more than you did, human,” Luna said, “but if necessary I will do it again. Lunar spells come from the darkest depths of magical study, and my—experiences—have granted me this great ability to do ravaging harm. I would compel you to not be so belligerent again.”

Celestia frowned. “What she means is she’ll zap you if you don’t comply with us.”

“What,” I gasped, getting back onto the table. “What—the fuck was that?”

“Answer our questions and we shall answer yours. Who was it that told you of our existence?”

I’d like to say that I didn’t give in because of the pain, but for some other reason, like maybe I gave up because I—

See? I can’t even come up with an excuse. It was the pain and the fear of more pain that forced me to spill.

“Queen Chrysalis,” I gasped, lying on my side as my breathing returned to normal. Celestia’s face darkened and Luna’s mane stood on end.

“No,” the sun queen said. “No, it can’t be. Her power should have been forfeit. What did she do?”

Reluctantly I told them everything, about how Chrysalis came to us with promises of free energy, and my adventures since then. They both winced when I brought up the squirrel, and Celestia’s face darkened further when I got to the point about me shooting her.

“A poor shot, then,” she said when I’d finished. Immediately I felt anger in my heart.

“I didn’t account for a fucking flying chariot.”

Luna gave me the evil eye, but Celestia hung her head. “So Chrysalis has manipulated mankind in order to orchestrate my downfall. How could I not have seen this coming?”

“Wait—you knew about us before all this? I thought only she knew!”

“Ponies have known about humans for millennia, Colonel. There are those on the Council of Pony Elders, along with the general population, who do not see human-pony contact as anything but a detriment to our society. For the longest while, I agreed with them. But the ponytanium—that was Luna’s idea from long ago.”

I looked at her oddly, and she shrugged. “I don’t hate all humans. I just hate any being that would try to harm my sister.”

Celestia gave her sister a light nuzzle. “Thank you, Luna. But yes, the ponytanium! Chrysalis is as much a liar as she is a manipulator. Ponytanium is a common and unused metal in these parts, but she did not discover it. An unimportant detail, I know. What is not unimportant is that she would get your government to send you, a lone assassin, to murder me. I would have expected this from a beast such as Chrysalis. She is a vile, cruel Changeling from an even crueler land. I am assuming your leader willingly complied with her?”

I thought back to that moment in the Pentagon when the President had first introduced the Changeling queen. “We’re in an energy crisis. All of Earth is. He cut a deal so that we could harness the power of ponytanium.”

“Ah, yes. The perfect bribe. And your people sent you to do her work.”

I nodded. There was no point in lying to them anymore. She was about to speak again when a white unicorn burst through the doors. He wore Roman-style armor like the rest of the guards, but his mane was cobalt-blue and his armor purple. He looked at me briefly as if I were some weird creature he’d never seen before, then turned to the princesses.

“Your Highnesses, my stallions have recovered Rainbow Dash from underneath the cliff.”

Their faces lit up. “Is she—?”

“Alive, Princess Celestia,” the pony said. “Her wound has bled badly and she has a broken leg, but she is alive.”

“Oh, thank heavens!” Luna said. “And thank you, Shining Armor. You are dismissed.”

“Are you sure, Your Majesty?” the pony said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Are you certain that you don’t need—”

“We are fine, Shining Armor. Please return to your duties, and see to it that Miss Rainbow Dash makes it to our infirmary.”

The pony saluted and then bowed. “Yes, ma’am!”

He turned on his hooves and walked off, and Princess Celestia turned to me.

“It looks as though you are still unable to kill a pony.”

“I didn’t mean to—she was—”

“I understand, be it as it may,” she responded. “A surprised predator always lashes out. I take back what I said. You seem to be a very proficient hunter, but I would only know little of that, as violence is abhorred in my land.”

“Yeah, well, where we come from it’s anything but.”

She nodded. “I know. But this is a grim event nonetheless. Did you mention the Pentagon?”

I scratched my chin. “I think so, yeah. But before you do that, are you going to kill me?”

She smiled warmly, and I felt content just by looking at her. Even Luna was relaxed.

“I am not going to punish you, Colonel. Your bullet did very little to injure me, and while I’m sure Miss Rainbow Dash is very angry about what you did, I’m also sure that our medics will heal her. I have something different in mind for you.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “You see, we have kept watch on humans throughout history. It is merely a precaution; we watch other worlds as well, such as Bleakmire and Draconia.”

I didn’t know either place, but I let her go on.

“Our chief officer of otherworldly affairs is a unicorn named Cyclops. I will introduce you to him and see what Chrysalis is up to.”

“Now hold on a second,” I said, standing up. “Why are you telling me all this? How do you know that I still won’t kill you?”

I had meant it as a rhetorical question. I didn’t mean to upset Luna, but her eyes flared and she lowered her horn anyway. Celestia stared her down, and she backed off. Then she turned to me.

“Do you still wish to kill me, Colonel?”

I thought for several minutes, going over my options. I had a duty to my country to carry out the President’s orders. But then…

How could I kill her? She’d nursed me back to health. She wasn’t going to punish me. And something about her made me want to hug her. Her voice was soothing like Fluttershy’s, and her mane that flowed without wind was so entrancing. I didn’t…I didn’t…

“No.”

She smiled and walked up to me, giving me a slight bow. “Then I formally welcome you as the first human ambassador to Equestria.”

I guess I should have felt honored, so I did a little bow back. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

Her ever-present smile shone like diamonds. “I shall take you to Cyclops, and we shall see what Chrysalis’s intentions truly are. Come with me.”

Our journey through the castle was a rather uninteresting one. I wasn’t a big architecture buff, so the inside of the castle didn’t really impress me. Sure, it had all the typical trappings of a fancy castle like chandeliers, mosaic windows, and marble floors. I didn’t see any other ponies besides armored guards in this part of the castle. Was the whole place off-limits to civilians, or was this some kind of private floor?

I didn’t get a chance to find out as we hurried along, walking briskly through corridors and arches until finally we came to an iron door. Celestia stepped forward with a slight air of bravado, then opened the door.

I entered a room that had walls made up of dozens of TV screens, a high ceiling, and dozens of computers arranged in a circle in the center of the room. Sitting smack-dab in the middle was a blood-red unicorn with a black-and-white mane, as if he had an Oreo for a mane. He turned around to look at us, and I saw that his eyes—no, his eye—was a much brighter and bloodier shade of red, almost like a ruby. The other eye was covered with a silver eyepatch. His uncovered eye was wide and quite piercing, and there were lines and bags beneath it. He looked like something that had not slept in days and then decided to down an entire espresso.

“Princess Celestia! Princess Luna! Human whose name I don’t know! Greetings! Welcome, as always, to my humble abode! Have you noticed the changes I made? There’s a new monitor in station five and I got the motherboard issue fixed and we have satellites inbound for the Crystal Empire and—”

“Cyclops!”

The unicorn cringed at Princess Celestia’s voice. “I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’ve been awake for two days now and I’ve been drinking coffee to keep my energy up! It makes me a little hyperactive, but—”

“Cyclops, you are always hyperactive,” Luna interrupted, but she was smiling. “That is why my sister appointed you this job.”

I looked at her quizzically, and she giggled. “Cyclops has always been a crazy pony, but any other pony who tries to do his job eventually nears madness. It’s a tiring job.”

“What does he do, exactly?”

At this, Cyclops straightened up, his single eye growing impossibly wider. “That’s an excellent question, mister! By the way, I’m so glad that a human has finally come to our land, even if you did try to kill the Princess and shot down the fastest pegasus in Equestria and—”

“Cyclops!”

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” he said meekly. He then cleared his throat and continued. “I am the overseer of foreign and alien activity as it pertains to Equestria. A veritable eye in the sky, if you will. My job is to observe foreign and otherworldly doings.”

“Huh?” I said, not quite understanding. “Why?”

“Ever since we discovered humans, we knew there would be a day when they would step hoof—er, foot, excuse me—in our world. We had planned to introduce ourselves in a more civilized way, but, well—”

“You didn’t know about Chrysalis? That she came to Earth?”

“Our last officer was a bit—how should one say it? Awful at his job,” Celestia said, eyeing a TV screen that showed a lavish wedding scene. “Chrysalis attacked my niece’s wedding, posing as her to invade Canterlot. Thankfully the invasion was thwarted by a group of heroes, one of whom you shot.”

I put my hands behind my back guiltily, but she went on.

“The officer was relieved of his duty and through Shining Armor, there came Cyclops. He was in the PMC before being wounded in battle and retiring from the field.”

“PMC?”

“Pony Marine Corps,” the one-eyed unicorn said. “My injury landed me here, but don’t think I’m complaining. I love this job. The things you humans do! They’re hilarious!”

“I don’t normally think of the human race as funny,” I growled.

He giggled. This guy seemed really lax and undisciplined for a former Marine, but then again I didn’t know anything about what pony military was like. Celestia stepped forward.

“This is irrelevant. Cyclops, we must find Chrysalis!”

“On it, Your Highness!”

So Cyclops jumped into a swivel chair and started pounding away at a keyboard, taking intermittent sips from a large cup of coffee. The TV screens on the wall flickered.

“Hang on,” Cyclops said, his face dangerously close to the computer. “Compensating for otherworld interference, and…I got her! Live feed!”

“Pull it up!” Celestia cried. Cyclops hit a button, and I saw something that made my blood run cold.

The Pentagon. It was on fire.

At first I thought I was watching a repeat of a 9/11 broadcast, until I saw the date in the lower-left corner. It was current. According to the figures on the computer, whatever happened was still happening right then and there.

“Jesus,” I said. “That’s—that’s—”

“The Pentagram,” Cyclops said. “Er, Pentagon, sorry. Center of military operations for—um, let’s see, how do you pronounce it? Aw-mear-ee-ca.”

“America,” I corrected. “This is happening right now. But what in the world—?”

Suddenly onscreen an explosion ripped through part of the building, sending a black-and-orange fireball into the air. I stepped back.

“Son of a bitch. That fucking son of a bitch! That’s her, isn’t it?! She’s creating those explosions!”

Cyclops looked over at his computer screen. “Well, I mean it’s possible that—oh no. Wait, yeah, it’s her.”

I wanted to break something, but I figured I’d only get in more trouble. I turned to the princesses.

“Well? What are we gonna do?! I have friends in there, and I’m not gonna let them die from a zombie unicorn bitch!”

“Alicorn,” Luna corrected, but Celestia shushed her.

“We understand the gravity of the situation, Colonel, but—”

“But what? You can watch this but you’re not gonna let me do a damn thing about it?!”

“On the contrary, Colonel. We are going to help you.”

My mind went blank and my eyes went wide. “Huh?”

“Chrysalis is a war criminal,” Luna explained, stepping forward. “She deserves a Canterlot trial and judgment. She has no business in the human world. We can still offer you ponytanium, but—”

“Forget the ponytanium!” I cried, and both the sisters looked tense. “I have men in there who are at the mercy of that fucking bitch, and I am not just going to sit here and let her do this!”

“I agree,” Celestia nodded. “A massacre of any sorts is in highest violation of our ancient laws. Chrysalis has gone too far. She has declared war on Equestria and on Earth.”

“So then what are we gonna do about it?”

Luna cleared her throat. “We will go with you to Earth and see to it that Chrysalis is brought to justice.”

Amid my anger came confusion. “Are—are you sure? I mean, they might take shots at you, they won’t—”

“We have ways of disguising ourselves in other worlds. Worry not about us, dear human. We will be fine.”

“Okay,” I said, breathing slowly. “But how are we going to get there?”

Luna smiled. “That’s easy. I can have a teleportation spell ready in minutes.”

“Yes, do that, sister!” Celestia smiled, nuzzling the other princess. Then her face hardened again. “You still have a weapon, human?”

I nodded.

“Good. There is something else you should have.” She picked up what looked like a Bluetooth from a desk and dropped it in my palm. “This is a headset, Colonel. You can use it to keep in touch with Cyclops and track Chrysalis.”

I smiled and did a low bow, my anger and frustration gone, replaced by determination. “Thank you, Princess. And allow me to formally apologize for shooting you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You are a lucky human. I will not be so cordial should you betray us again.”

“I have no intention of betraying you, Your Majesty,” I replied, and it was the truth.

She smiled. “Very well then. Luna’s spell will be ready momentarily. Prepare yourself. We are about to go to Earth.”

I looked at the blue alicorn and saw that her eyes were shut tightly and her horn was glowing. The ground began to shake, and it seemed that the air itself was about to catch fire. Celestia extended a hoof, and I grabbed it, feeling her soft hide and her hardened hoof. Cyclops waved goodbye, but he was smiling and tapping his ear at the same time, and I figured it was just the coffee.

Unfortunately, that was my last thought before a blinding light usurped my body and sent me plummeting into oblivion.

At first I thought the sisters had betrayed and killed me, but then I heard faint sirens, both police and emergency vehicles. The whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades came from overhead, and there was a persistent ringing in my ears. Everything was blurry, but I could make out a large gray thing with an even larger black thing coming out of it. People were running, shouting, panicking. It was chaos…

Then my vision cleared. The helicopter was so low that it almost made my ears bleed. An orchestra of police, fire, and medical sirens broke through the air, and I could see fire and smoke and a nightmarish scene that was unfolding in front of me.

The Pentagon was ablaze, and for a moment horrible memories of that Tuesday in September clouded my mind. I was a private then, just starting to flex my wings as a military man. Fourteen years passed and I’ve still never been as terrified as I was on 9/11. Emergency and military personnel, along with civilians, were running in all directions. Firefighters were working tirelessly to combat the blaze as police and military tried to keep the crowd of awestruck civilians away from the carnage.

I couldn’t believe it. What had happened to set Chrysalis off? I’d always suspected she would end up betraying us, but this was unprecedented. What had happened to trigger this?

I had little time to worry about it, as another fireball spewed from the heart of the complex.

“She is trapped in there,” said a voice to my right. I looked and saw two incredibly beautiful women, both with flawless skin and hair that flowed in the windless air. One wore a white tank top and jeans, the other a dark blue muscle shirt and cargo pants. They both had glittering eyes and oddly-colored hair. Then I realized I was gazing upon the humanized princesses of Equestria.

“Princess Celestia? Princess Luna?”

Celestia nodded. “Indeed, Colonel. Our human forms differ only slightly from our pony forms.”

“You say she’s trapped in there?”

Luna stepped forward, nodding her head. “If Cyclops is correct, your human forces have already surrounded the building. Is that correct, Cyclops?”

At first I looked at her oddly, but then a ringing noise filled my ears, like someone trying to adjust a microphone, then a familiar voice came through my headset.

“Correct, Your Highness. Oh, and howdy, Colonel.”

“Hello, Cyclops. So, what do we do?”

“Our presence, even in human form, is likely to evoke questions from your human security,” Celestia explained. “You, however, can most likely enter the building with little resistance. We will guard the perimeter and use our magic to try and form a barrier around the building so that Chrysalis cannot escape. You must go in and eliminate her.”

So I still had to assassinate an alicorn. At least I would be partially fulfilling my mission. “Just a straight shot to the head?”

“She may be able to reflect your bullets with your magic,” Luna answered. “And do not forget that she is a Changeling. She can assume the form of any being. Do not trust anyone in there. If you have suspicions, invoke a memory involving the person in question. Chrysalis can copy features but not entire memories. That is your best bet against her.”

“So more than just a straight shot to the head.”

They nodded in tandem. I looked at the Pentagon, which was burning even more ferociously now. That bitch was somewhere in there, killing my men and my friends. Putting a bullet between her eyes would be so pleasurable.

“Alright,” I said, drawing my pistol. “I’m going in.”

“Hey, I’ll be sure to help you along the way,” Cyclops said in my ear. “I can hack into the camera feeds from the Pentagon in order to guide you.”

“Thanks, Cyclops.”

“Colonel,” Princess Celestia said, touching my arm. “I wish you luck. But can I at least know the name of the hero that saved both our worlds?”

“I don’t think I saved your world, Princess,” I said respectfully, itching to go into the burning fortress. She let go of my arm.

“Please. Killing Chrysalis will make you a hero in the eyes of everypony in Equestria.”

I thought for a minute, which seemed like an hour. My cover had been blown for a long time. I was no longer a secret agent. So what harm was there in telling them?

I told them. Celestia stepped back.

“Such an interesting name. I shall forge it into the Hall of Heroes in my castle. Your name will be known for generations to come!”

I smiled and hugged her. Luna looked ready to protest, but she let it go. When I let go I ran toward the Pentagon, eager to put a bullet in the Changeling Queen’s head.

The smoke made the halls of the Pentagon hazy and choking, but I managed to get through, as I still had my NOD. I drew my Beretta and hurried past evacuees and emergency personnel, all of whom were rather surprised to see a man with a scope on his face carrying a gun. I paid them little mind, but realized that any one of them could be Chrysalis. But I couldn’t just go and frisk every evacuee. Some were in no state to walk, much less talk. So I continued into the depths of the building, growing weary of the alarms and the smoke.

Cyclops kept feeding me information about where I was going, which was good because the NOD wasn’t helping much with the smoke. I took it off and put on my goggles, which had been hanging around my neck since I woke up in Celestia’s bedchamber. The smoke no longer stung my eyes, but visibility was still zero.

“North hallway coming up, about thirty feet,” said the voice in my ear.

“Any sign of her?”

There was a sound of computer keys being tapped. “Nope. She’s probably in disguise, anyway. Do you have an IR filter?”

I thought back to the rifle I had lost under the wheels of a train. “Not anymore.”

“Son of a parasprite. Well, then you’ll have to rely on me. Chrysalis doesn’t give off body heat, so if I see a cold form moving around, you’ll know it’s her.”

“But won’t she give off body heat if she’s disguised as a human?” I asked.

“No, actually. It’s a Changeling flaw, and one that I would have seen had I been chief officer during the royal wedding incident.”

“That ain’t important now, Cy. Keep watching the feeds and tell me when you got something.”

“Will do.” And with that Cyclops signed off, and I was alone again.

I’ve walked the halls of the Pentagon many times, but the smoke and fire and bodies strewn in the rubble threw me off. It was bad enough that my ADD kept me from memorizing every nook and cranny of the massive building, but now I had to deal with outside elements. Half of the building was on fire, and military records and transcripts were probably burning up right then and there. Even if we captured Chrysalis and quenched the fires, this would still be a military disaster.

I was so deep in thought that at first I failed to realize that someone was speaking through my earpiece, and it wasn’t Cyclops.

“Units One and Four, line up at the south entrance.”

“All personnel, we have fire on the west and southwest sides. Repeat, fire on the west and southwest sides.”

“Are all VIPs evacuated?”

“Negative, recon shows many civilians and personnel trapped in the wreckage.”

What the hell? It was cross-chatter of D.C. police and military radio. Through it I could just barely hear Cy.

“—Colonel—there—close—”

“Repeat, Cyclops! Damn it, repeat!”

Silence. Something had clouded the connection. All I could hear was the crackling of fire and the now-muted alarm. I raised my Beretta. Now I was truly alone.

I should have known something was up when I ran into Amos Gordon.

The general, a fifty-something man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a thick mustache, and saggy jowls nearly ran into the barrel of my Beretta. When I saw who it was, I was so relieved to see a familiar face that I nearly hugged him.

“General Gordon!” I called. “It’s me!”

“Colonel!” His voice was gruff as ever. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for Chr—for the thing responsible for this attack.”

“Is that so? Well, you won’t find it here! Last I heard over the radio we got bombs all over the damn Pentagon!”

“I don’t think it’s a bomb attack, sir,” I said, trying to remain calm. I realized Gordon was in full military dress, which should have been stifling with the heat of the fires. I also noticed he wasn’t wearing his glasses, and he was blind as a bat without him. Yet he seemed to be doing fine.

“What’re you thinking, Colonel? Revenge attack by those goddamn mutant horses? You’re back so I’m assuming the mission was a success.”

“That’s not important now, sir. We have to evacuate the rest of the building and find her!”

“Her? You mean—”

“Yes,” I said, exasperated. “We have to find Chrysalis.”

The general straightened up. “Alright, then. I’ll handle the evacuation, soldier! You handle the hunt! We’ll meet up outside, ya’hear!”

I gave a quick salute. “Yes, sir!”

He nodded and dashed by me. I looked forward and thought I saw something lying in a heap on the wall, something large and dark. But I had no time to think before I heard a groaning noise and felt something slam into the back of my head. Everything went back, and I was falling through nothing as the flames and smoke and halls disappeared from around me.

I awoke sprawled on the floor, and the first thing I realized was that there was no wreckage around me. The ceiling wasn’t even on fire. Whatever had hit me, it hadn’t been a piece of rubble.

Then I realized that the smoke had cleared, for the most part. I could see clearly the debris-strewn hallway, and the huddled mass that lay at the end of it.

It was a person that was sprawled in a puddle of his own blood, with a large bloody hole poking out of his pudgy chest. I stood up, dazed but wary, and approached the person.

He groaned, and a gun fell out of his hands, a shining black Mossberg 500 shotgun, covered in his blood. Then he lifted his head.

It was General Amos Gordon.

“General?!”

My mind was racing. What the hell? I had just seen the general, and now—

“Colonel,” he moaned, clutching his ripped chest. He wore only a bloodsoaked T-shirt and camouflage pants. “I—I failed.”

“What? General, what is going on? I just saw you!” I knelt by his side, trying to see if I could find a way to fix him, but the wound was deep and jagged—like something had gutted him with a serrated knife. Or horn.

“General, was it—was it her?”

He nodded slowly, coughing up blood. “Too slow—too old—she got me.”

“But you were just—oh, no.”

“Took my form—changed—dying—”

“No, no don’t say that, General. You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be—”

But his hand had gone limp and his eyes were dim. General Amos Gordon, father of three, was dead.

Gordon had always been there for me. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Kantu, Chicago, Peshawar…

He’d always supported me, taking it upon himself to see me through my anguish after I lost my wife, after I lost Jessica. She had always liked him. He had a quirky sense of humor, a warm smile, and a definite way with words. He was a brilliant tactician and strategist, having reached the position of general in just ten years.

And now he was dead because of a winged, horned, alien cunt.

And I was gonna fucking kill her.

Cyclops came back on a few minutes later, babbling about cold forms and loss of feed, but I had already picked up the Mossberg and was marching down the burning hallways, my heart filled with rage.

“Colonel! Colonel, listen to me! You have to get out of there! I think she’s dead!”

“She’s not dead, Cy. Not yet.”

“But I saw her cold form go through a room that’s on fire now! She must have burnt up!”

“She wouldn’t be that stupid. I’m gonna kill her. You tell me where she is.”

“Colonel—I don’t know.”

“I saw her as an old man with grayish-black hair in full military uniform! Does that help?”

“What does human military uniform look like? ’Cause in Equestria it’s a—”

“Shut up! Or I’ll find her myself.”

And for a while, I thought I could. My rage pushed me on, fueled me. I thought I could just find her and blow her fucking head off with the Mossberg, but it wasn’t that simple. The Pentagon was huge, not to mention on fire. Finding her would be like finding a needle in a haystack, except that someone had tossed kerosene and a lit match onto the haystack.

I slammed through a door, and suddenly I was in a room that I never thought I would see in my life.

The War Room, the pentagon-shaped, balconied room filled with computers, computer screens, and holograms of war maps, layouts, and equipment. It had been untouched by the fire, although a few screens looked to be short-circuited and there was debris scattered across the floor.

And there she was.

I guess she had given up her General disguise, as the military uniform she’d been wearing lay in tatters at her hooves. She saw me and grinned, showing horrible pointed teeth.

“Colonel! How pleasant of you to join me!”

“Shut the fuck up, you bitch!” I yelled. “I know what you are, and I know what you did!”

“And I know what you did, dear man. I saw everything. You failed to keep your end of the bargain.”

“There was never any bargain,” I growled, spewing forth my hatred. “You would have betrayed us anyway. Celestia told me all about you.”

“Oh did she?” She raised her head and laughed a horrible laugh. “And did she tell you about herself, boy? Did she tell you she banished her own sister to the moon? Or perhaps the tale of what she did to my subjects before our invasion of Canterlot?”

“Shut up!” I yelled, pushing rage into every word. “You killed my men, and now I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

She smiled, and that further enraged me. “Such arrogance, such ignorance. Your world is a dead one, Colonel, and you shall die with it!”

Her horn glowed, and I just barely managed to duck behind a huge computer monitor before an orb of black-and-green energy slammed into the far wall, disintegrating it and throwing flames across the War Room. Sparks seared my face, but I yelled and stood, firing the shotgun twice and hitting nothing but more electronic equipment. She was surprisingly agile for a horse, and when she started to fly I thought I was done for.

Another orb sailed past my ear, but this one had so much energy it sent me flying across the room. I slammed into the wall, but I didn’t feel the pain. I only felt the heat of the flames that had sprung up from the fried computer monitors of the warm room.

Suddenly Chrysalis looked at me, her eyes filled with absolute hatred, and contracted. The air seemed to pull away from me, and I felt my breath get sucked right out of my lungs. My ears began to pop, and I realized that she was sucking up the air from the room to do—to do what? I would soon find out, but my lungs were already burning from lack of oxygen. The pressure was killing my ears, and some of the metal in the walls and monitors began to buckle. A midnight-black orb formed from her hooves, and I raised the shotgun, too weak to move.

At the same moment she released the orb, I fired.

The resulting explosion decimated the War Room. Fire spewed everywhere, spilling into the surrounding offices and hallways. The sound of the blast nearly burst my eardrums. It was louder and stronger than any IED I’d ever rolled over in my Humvee. As I struggled to get up, I realized that most of my shirt was seared off, exposing my sweaty, ash-covered chest. Blood seeped from the million tiny wounds where glass and splinters had punctured my skin, but I thought nothing of it. For a moment I yearned for the punctured Kevlar vest that I had left back in Equestria, but at the same moment I realized I had no more ammo for the Mossberg, she appeared. Her horn was glowing.

They say in times of imminent danger people are faster, stronger, and more aware of what’s going on. Take it from me, whoever said that was right. Chrysalis fired her horn three times, and I dodged each time. I even got a lucky hit when I threw the Mossberg at her, smacking her in the face and, from the sound of it, breaking her nose.

I still had my pistol, so I rolled and tumbled across the wreckage-strewn hallways with my eyes open and my head on a swivel. I stayed low to avoid the smoke, but doing so cut down on my speed and agility.

A beam of green energy zoomed down the hallway perpendicular to the one I was in. It must have hit something big, because I heard a big BANG and saw tongues of fire leap into the corridor from what must have been a huge fireball.

The door to the conference room next to me was blocked by debris. There were no other doors in the hallway, and Chrysalis was approaching my corridor from the left. The right had succumbed to fire, and the wall perpendicular to me was bare. I was trapped.

Somehow over the crackling of the flames and the whining of the emergency alarm, I could hear the drip-drip-drip of blood coming from her nose. And that’s what spurred me on to do it: to surprise her.

I crawled along the left wall, thankful that I had retrieved my pistol before heading out from Equestria to Earth. The dripping was closer. She was nearer.

Taking a deep breath, I turned around the corner and emptied my clip into Changeling flesh.

I must have not hit anything vital, because the moment my last shell discharged, she slammed me with an energy bolt. I went flying backward through the flame and through a Sheetrock wall, the impact of which must have broken my ribs.

I slid across the floor into the maw of a rubble pile. I felt my legs shatter but had no time to lick my wounds before Chrysalis was on me again, blasting the ground apart with her horn. Flecks of plastic and stone gouged my face, and I tasted blood in my mouth. She was smiling like a hunter that was about to bag a prize buck, but I wasn’t about to be her buck.

“You are beaten,” she crooned, stepping over the wreckage as I tried to crawl away. “You are wounded. Your great fortress burns. Yet still you fight.”

“Humans don’t get fazed by a lot,” I spat, ignoring the pain in my legs. “We don’t take shit from aliens.”

“Is that so? Well, when I have your little species wiped out, we shall see who is taking fecal matter from whom.”

She smiled evilly, and her horn glowed black. I noticed the headset had fallen out of my ear, and taking notice, she crushed it under her hoof. Suddenly I remembered something.

My gun was gone. My knife was useless. But I remembered the one thing that Celestia and Luna hadn’t initially taken away from me, the one thing that was still in reach.

Struggling, I pulled a small pear-shaped object from my belt.

My grenade. Chrysalis’s eyes widened.

“What is that? A metal fruit? You expect to defeat me with a metal frui—”

She shut up when she saw me pull the pin. I summoned all my strength to my arms, chucked the grenade at her, and turned onto my belly.

She was too close. I knew the explosion would kill me. But better to die a heroic death, taking your enemies with you, then to perish alone and afraid at the mercy of a ruthless killer.

I had mere seconds. I prayed. I thought I was going to see Jessica and General Gordon and all my buddies that I had lost over the years, all the men and women who had laid down their lives for their country. And I was about to join them.

Boom.

The grenade went off, and an earsplitting explosion ripped through the hallway. A fireball blossomed from where Chrysalis had stood, and I knew immediately there was no way she could have survived. I barely did. The fire rolled over me like a red-hot steamroller, scorching my back and the ends of my hair. It was over in a few moments, but the experience was not one that I would soon forget. At least I was alive.

When I turned around, she was gone. There was no evidence that an alien zombie alicorn had ever been in the battle-scarred hallway. Pain flared in my legs as I tried to stand up, and I fell onto my face. It was no use. I’d have to crawl out.

Only when I had dragged myself a few feet did I realize that I was bleeding heavily. The edges of my vision were beginning to blacken, and the sounds of fire and destruction were growing muffled. I reached out to nothing with my scarred hand, then fainted, half-conscious with pain.

My vision came back a few times, and once I saw two familiar faces, both looking at me concernedly, doing something to my legs. I blacked out for good that time, and I had nightmares about zombie ponies eating my heart.

I awoke on the pavement outside, and there was a lot of shouting going on, so much that it hurt my ears. Heavily armored men with guns were pointing at something and screaming, but when one of them noticed my eyes open, he came over to me and thrust his gun in my face.

“You! Identify yourself!”

I had no idea what was going on, but I told them my name and rank. When the soldier found out I was a colonel, he put the gun away.

“Jesus, my apologies, sir. It’s just that—these alien things—”

I realized I was tied down to a stretcher and that my legs were secured, but still in pain. I craned my neck to see what the soldier was talking about.

Sure enough, Celestia and Luna had shed their human forms, and both were on their hind hooves with their arms in the air, looking both annoyed and frightened. About a dozen soldiers trained their weapons on the princesses, and a sergeant held her arm in the air, ready to give the signal to fire.

“Stand down!” I cried at the sergeant. She turned around.

“Sir?”

“Stand down! These beings are not hostile! They are friendly! Friendly!”

“He’s just delirious,” another soldier said, beginning to lift the stretcher. “Sir, I think you should—”

“Put me the fuck down! That’s an order!”

They did so, and it hurt my legs, but I ignored the pain and turned my head to look at the sergeant.

“Sergeant, you will tell your men to stand down. That is an order. Enough have died today.”

The sergeant’s eyes were filled with confusion and irritation. Celestia and Luna still had their hooves in the air, and Luna was looking at me pleadingly. Finally, the sergeant gave the order, and the soldiers backed down.

“Good. Now get me off this goddamn stretcher.”

“Sir, you need to—”

“Don’t tell me what I need to do! I know what I need to do! Get me some crutches and untie me, goddamn it!”

After much reluctance, somebody finally untied me and fetched me some crutches. The medics had managed to clean me up and set my legs, but it still hurt like hell. They were looking at me like I was crazy, and I ignored their stares. Shifting uncomfortably on the crutches, I approached the sergeant.

“Where is Goalkeeper?”

The sergeant understood the codename. “At the Foxhole.” The White House. “Why—?”

“I need to get to him. The crisis is over.”

“Over? Colonel, I have men trapped in—”

“That is an order, soldier! You get me a chopper to the Foxhole or you will lose your job along with your men!”

I hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but I was angry and the woman sergeant was pissing me off. She unfroze after several seconds.

“Everyone lower your weapons! What are your orders, Colonel?”

“These…aliens…go with me to the Foxhole. Get in there and search for survivors!”

She hesitated for a moment, then began barking more orders. Soldiers went into the burning Pentagon as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot beckoned me and the princesses toward his craft, having just been informed of our intentions via the sergeant. We got on, and the princesses stared all around the helicopter, fascinated by the flying metal beast.

“Your technology—it is so different…”

“Nah. It’s the same. It just keeps getting’ better.”

I closed my eyes for just a second as we flew over the Potomac, and for just a second, the pain faded away.

Before I knew what was happening, I was face-to-face with the President in the Situation Room. Celestia and Luna sat in chairs on either side of me, under careful guard by a half-dozen Secret Service agents. I was still dirty and bloody, but nobody seemed to care that I was messing up the carpet. I had just finished telling my tale, everything from the HALO jump to the grenade that had killed Chrysalis.

The President’s face was grave. His eyes were glued to a TV that was blasting news about the Pentagon, and from what I could pick up the media was already blaming terrorists.

“We’re going along with that,” the President said, as if he had read my mind.

“Sir?”

“Terrorists. It’s not untrue, and it’s a far better excuse than what some of my aides have come up with. I have to make a speech in a half-hour, so I’ll make this quick, Colonel.”

He turned to me in his swivel chair. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable.

“Sir, about my mission—”

“We’ll get to that, Colonel. I have to debrief you.”

“You, sir? Why not a general or maybe the DOD or—”

He put his hand up, and I went quiet. Then he spoke.

“Colonel, your mission was a failure. You failed to neutralize the appointed target, and for that, I’m sure you saved all of America.”

Okay. Now I was really confused. “S-sir?”

He went on. “I was a fool, Colonel. I was a fool, a fucking idiot for letting Chrysalis in so easy.”

I caught myself. I’d never heard the President swear before.

“It’s this damn energy crisis, it got the better of me. It clouded my judgment, and because of that, dozens, maybe hundreds have died.”

“No, sir,” I said reassuringly. “I didn’t see hundreds of bodies in the Pentagon…”

“It doesn’t matter, Colonel. It’s 9/11 all over again, except now I’m in the hot seat. The Pentagon’s on fire and I have politicians all over the country tearing their hair out as Americans watch from their homes.”

“Sir…”

“I was a GODDAMN FOOL!” he yelled, slamming his fist on the table. Celestia and Luna flinched. “I let that fucker into our midst! I did! Not you! Not anyone else! I did! And now we’re all paying the damn price for it.”

“Sir, if I may—”

But then I got the first hint that something wasn’t right. The President had been through some major crises during his term in office, some of which I had been present for behind closed doors. But he had never lost his cool like this, not even after terrorists had blown up the Williamsburg Bridge back in June. Something else was wrong. There was something he wasn’t telling me.

“Sir,” Celestia spoke up. “Mister—er, President? I speak on behalf of my people that you have our support in this energy crisis of yours. Chrysalis was not lying about the ponytanium, and I can gladly offer you a supply for the world over.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Your Majesty, but that is not the most important issue now. What am I about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.”

He looked at me with fierce eyes as he said this, and tiny alarms started to go off in my head. Nothing ever left the Situation Room, nothing like this, anyway, so why was he telling me this? The way he had said it…it was almost as if he was trying to tell me something else.

Doesn’t leave this room…

Then Luna spoke.

“Sir President, we must continue the hunt for Chrysalis!”

“What?” I said, growing uneasy. “But Chrysalis is dead! I watched her die!”

“I’m afraid you’re incorrect,” the President said, almost apologetically. Then I detected it. Fear. His voice was trembling with fear. Something in this room was making him shiver, and whatever could do that must have been pretty fucking scary.

“Sir? What do you mean?”

He cleared his throat and looked at the spot on the wall just above my left shoulder. I heard the faintest sound of something being removed from a pouch.

“She’s not dead. She’s in this room. She’s—she’s right behind you.”

I slowly turned around and came face-to-face with a gun barrel, the cold black hole lined up perfect with my forehead. The Secret Service agent that was holding the gun was no longer a Secret Service agent but rather—

Son of a bitch.

Chrysalis smiled cruelly as the other agent froze. She cocked the gun with her human, gloved hands. When she spoke, her voice was quivering with glee.

“Hello, Colonel.”

Then she fired.

…

I don’t remember anything.

There was no bright light, no darkness, no gates of heaven or pit of hell or omnipotent courtroom or anything. There was just…nothing.

Through it I couldn’t think. At least, I thought that I couldn’t think. It was really weird, like trying to remember a dream after you’ve woken up. It lingers for a little bit, then disappears, leaving behind only a shell of residual feeling.

So that’s what being dead felt like.

But I guess someone, some fucking moron, decided that it wasn’t my time to die yet.

Turns out that fucking moron was Princess Luna.

The first thing I remember seeing was the bullet that had been lodged in my skull, crumpled and bloody, lying on the Situation Room floor. Then I saw more blood, which I was certain was not mine. There was a spray pattern across the wall, and where it ended there lay a Secret Serviceman on the floor in a huge pool of blood. I didn’t need to turn him over to figure out what had happened. That spray pattern was an arterial spray. His throat had been slashed.

There were bullet holes in the walls as well, and the scent of gunpowder hung in the air. As I got up I noticed Princess Luna lying next to me, spread out on the floor, with part of her body lying in the Serviceman’s blood puddle. She probably looked worse than I did. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about how I just survived a point-blank bullet wound to the forehead. I remember thinking about Gabby Giffords, but that was it. I stumbled over to Princess Luna and felt her chest. She was breathing, but it was shallow. Her eyes were closed and her skin was drenched with sweat. It was as if she had galloped a thousand miles without rest. I didn’t know what to do, so I wrapped my arms around her and tried to comfort her. For a moment she stopped breathing and I feared the worst, but then she opened an eye.

“C-Colonel?”

I smiled. “Let me guess. You just saved my life.”

She cracked a grin too, and I noticed her horn fizzling with magic. “That’s…two you owe us…Colonel…”

“Tell me about it.”

Now I knew that Luna had saved me with her magic. I was being humorous with the princess to lift her spirits, but in my heart I knew that I owed these ponies a great debt.

Suddenly the President and Princess Celestia rushed in. “Colonel, are you—”

Then they saw me hugging Luna, and suddenly I was crying. I don’t know whether it was out of joy or fear or pain or what, but I was crying. Bawling. I lay my head on Luna’s warm flank and cried my eyes out. I did not stop crying fully until the next hour.

By then I had learned everything.

The grenade blast had wounded Chrysalis, but not killed her. She’d held the President hostage in the situation room and threatened to harm his family if he didn’t comply. She had been wounded again in her flight from the White House, but again, she had escaped.

It was three days later. The Princesses were back in Equestria, but not after having awarded me a beautiful medal with a stallion imprinted on the front. It was their Medal of Utmost Valor, and as Luna redundantly told me, I was the first non-pony to have ever received it.

The Pentagon had stopped burning, but we still had not found an enemy to retaliate against. We didn’t want to just go around blaming other nations for a terrorist attack.

So the commander-in-chief told the truth, but he told it slant.

Dickinson. Again, poetry at the University of Iowa.

He said that the Pentagon bombing had been the work of a single terrorist who had since fled the country. The story still had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese, but the President thought it was a much better alternative to nuking a random country.

Now I sat with him in the same room where I had first met Chrysalis. He hadn’t been sleeping well and he looked disheveled, but he was smiling.

“Hello, Colonel.”

“Is this my official debriefing, sir?” I was tired, and as much as I didn’t want to disrespect the President, I wanted to get back to my D.C. apartment and sleep. He kept smiling, though.

“You could call it that. I just came to say that your mission isn’t over.”

That one hit me like a sledgehammer. “Sir?”

He nodded. “Hate to have to tell you this, but your mission is far from over. You still have a target to eliminate.”

“Chrysalis. Do you have a bead on her location?”

He shook his head. “No, but we’re working on it. In the meantime, I was wondering if you’d be interested in a little—promotion.”

My ears perked up. “A promotion?”

“Yes, son,” he said, even though I was only about ten years younger than he was. “You remember OFEA? The organization I made to help with this blasted operation?”

“I assumed it was going to go down the drain now that Usurped Dawn is a bust.”

“But it’s not a bust, Colonel. And OFEA is far from going down the drain. We merely have a new objective: hunt Chrysalis.”

“I see…”

I looked around the room, suddenly distracted by nothing. “So what now?”

“Now you go home, Colonel. If anyone has earned a rest, it’s you.”

“Are you certain, sir? What about Chr—”

I stopped when he put his hand on my shoulder. “Go home, soldier. Get some sleep. I’ll have my man at OFEA call you when we’re ready to proceed.”

“Proceed with what?”

At this, the President grinned. “For the hunt, of course.”

I smiled half-heartedly, so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. He laughed.

“Very well. I think this is adjourned. Until next time, Colonel.”

I think at that point he was as tired of the meeting as I was, so decided to go with it. All I wanted was a good night’s sleep. I shook hands with the President and he saluted me, to which I saluted back. Then I walked out of the room, feeling a little bit more confident than when I had walked in, a lifetime ago.