The Reality War

Missiles rained down from the sky and mortars created massive craters in the streets, obliterating carts abandoned by the fleeing populace as Charlie Division engaged the Combine army with little success. Like their allies in Canterlot they were handling things well enough until the main body of the Combine formed together and attacked en masse. The soldiers were finding themselves being quickly overwhelmed by the Striders and Hunters (they did not have nearly as many tanks or jets as Canterlot Garrison). The remaining troops were reduced to fighting in buildings. One particular team however was doing just fine, using their unique skills together to dispatch any enemies in their path.

“Ubercharge ready!” Medic shouted.

“Ready doctor,” Heavy responded. Jumping out of cover right in line of sight of three Striders and a handful of Hunters, the Heavy started firing rounds out of his minigun like they would explode if he didn’t. Before they could fire back a red energy consumed him, creating an impenetrable skin of which bullets and rockets alike bounced off of. His squad mates took this opportunity to take out a few targets of their own. Scout ran past a Combine elite, bashing its skull in with a baseball bat, whipping past a few Hunters and under an arch connecting two houses. The Hunters chasing after him exploded in a glorious fountain of blood and bits as they reached the other side and encountered Demo’s mines. Sniper shot the head clean off a soldier and whipped out his Huntsman and shot an arrow at another soldier. Right before it got skewered on the wall behind it, its last thoughts were not this archery shit again. What’s with soldiers and bows?

Engineer was busy setting up sentries in strategic locations overlooking the battlefield, giving the rest of his squad covering fire. Solder and Pyro were back to back in the middle of the fray, each covering each other as they carved a bloody path through their enemies unfortunate enough to be in their way. Spy however was nowhere to be seen.

Sniper turned around to see a Combine soldier standing there staring at him before it crumpled to the ground, a knife in its back. Dusting off his shoulders and standing behind the now dead soldier was Spy.

“Nice of you to join the fight, mate,” Sniper said.

“You’re welcome,” Spy said before snatching up his blade and cloaking away, leaving Sniper alone again to pick off any enemy he sees fit.

Within mere minutes the area they were fighting in was wiped clean of enemies (not actually clean-there was a LOT of blood).

“Well, that takes care of them,” Soldier commented.

“Next area?” Engineer asked.

“Mmh hmm,” Pyro said… sort of.

Moving on to the next block they encountered more resistance; this time they were engaging the other soldiers. Wasting no time they ran headfirst into the fray.

Roland didn’t know if he could take much more of this. He was a treasure hunter, not a soldier. Okay, well he was a soldier. But that was a long time ago. Still, the Crimson Legion had nothing on these Combine. They were like a machine. Red Team was busy engaging the enemy on the other side of town while Pandora Team had their hands full on this side. The soldier was busy running from enemy to enemy blasting their heads off with his Jakobs shotgun. These guys were nothing though compared to some of the enemies he’d faced on Pandora like -Roland shuddered- Crawmerax. That damned, whatever it was would kick their asses dozens of times before they were actually able to take it down. Roland just wished he had a car right about now. There was one thing giving him trouble however: the Combine seemed to have no end to their troops, and Roland was getting tired. A screech broke through the sound of gunfire as Mordecai’s falcon swooped down on unsuspecting soldiers with razor sharp talons. Those who were fortunate enough to miss it were taken by the sniper’s rifle. Brick was running around with both his fists out beating the crap out of Hunters before they could react with their explosive barbs. Lilith would occasionally phase in and out of view, cutting down Combine with her submachine gun. All in all, they weren’t doing pretty badly. The plan was to make it to make their way to the League of Nations tower. It’s supposedly where nations from all over the world would meet up and discuss their issues. It apparently worked too because Equestria hasn’t had a war in centuries. That’s where all forces would rendezvous and fight their way back out, essentially sweeping over the city twice.

That was the plan anyways; it didn’t seem like it was going to actually go through. The Combine were coming from everywhere and there didn’t seem to be an end of their reinforcements. Roland didn’t like this at all: they were fighting a war of attrition. And at this rate the Combine would win. The way he figured, the Allies were going to need a really big strike against this army if they wanted to win. This was no way to fight this war. The sky was getting darker, but not because of the passage of time; the Combine carriers were right over the city. Roland made a judgment call, signaling to his teammates they ran to one of the buildings near them and he dropped a sentry to cover their retreat into the door. Cutting down any resistance along the way, their only objective was to get the hell out of the city.

Stopping at the other end of the structure they looked out into an empty street. An explosion from one end of it rocked the ground and a helicopter streaked overhead, trailing smoke as several pods flew after it. There was no way they were going to get out of Manehattan this way. But Roland spotted a stairway descending into the ground from a sidewalk; they had found a subway entrance. Running down into the station they found a map. Figuring out the right way to go, they made their way down one end of the tunnel, determined to get out of the city before everything goes to hell.

The entire journey was uneventful; the Combine either had yet to get far enough to work their way into the underground subway system, or they hadn’t found it. Roland really hoped it was the latter. Before he could continue his thoughts Brick accidentally tripped into a door in the wall, breaking it open. The noise reverberated throughout the tunnel, making Roland cringe. Old stairs on the other side of the door gave him pause: where’d these stairs go? He just had to find out now. Ushering everyone inside, he closed the door behind him, hoping no one was following.

This was getting really tiring; Red Team had just cleared another block but there seemed to be no end to the Combine.

“I thought the whole point of closing the portal was so we didn’t have to deal with this,” Scout complained.

“’Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack,’” Soldier responded.

“What the hell does that even mean?” Medic asked.

“It means shut your mouth and push forward, or else we’ll be eating dirt for dinner,” Soldier chided.

“Whatever man,” Scout said.

Pushing through the legion of soldiers, the team found no end to their issues. However since they themselves were nigh unbeatable, the entire battle was at a sort of an impasse. There was one weakness to their fighting, and that was they were getting tired; and with exhaustion comes mistakes.

“Goddamn it. I should’ve blown his head clean off,” Sniper exclaimed with frustration.

Engineer was transporting a dispenser forward to where Heavy could use it, but he tripped and dropped the toolbox, constructing it right in the line of enemy fire where it was promptly destroyed. Spy de-cloaked right in front of a Hunter he neglected to notice and in was only a stray rocket from Soldier that hit the Hunter and saved his life. The problems were evident though, and apparently this was happening all over Manehattan.

Demo was listening to his comm (he programmed it to play music) whilst blowing a Strider to bits when a transmission from Field Command, the people in charge of Charlie Division, came over it.

“Attention, the city is lost, fall back. I say again: Manehattan is lost, fall back!”

“Oy, we need to get the fuck outta here NOW!” Demo shouted to his squadmates. They retreated into a nearby building and were about to go out the door on the other side when it burst open and Combine spilled from the newly created hole in the wall.

“Shit, this way,” Sniper redirected them upstairs to an office complex; after blockading the door they noticed large windows in the walls. Through one of the windows could be spotted the roof of another building. Shooting out the window with a shotgun blast Engineer jumped onto the roof. Following was the rest of the team, with Spy taking up the rear. Before he could get through the window the Combine forced their way into the room. Spy looked between his allies and his enemies and made his choice.

“Go, I’ll cover you,” he said to them, diving behind cover and pulling out his Ambassador.

“But Spy-“Sniper started.

“Go!” he shouted, and without another word he dove out of cover, putting six bullets into six different heads before jumping back into cover and reloading.

Red Team did what he told them to, and ran across the roof before jumping one and a half stories onto the ground below. It wasn’t long before they were being shot at again from the direction they came from. All of the mercenaries were hardened warriors, but they were a team, and teams stuck together. That team was just reduced to eight. Mourning would have to come later though because they, the living, were still in danger; so they ran, and didn’t stop. Ducking down into a nearby alley, the group pausing to catch their breaths, they noticed they weren’t being followed anymore. Only the sound of heavy panting and distant gunfire was heard; no one spoke a word.

“So… what do we do now?” Soldier asked.

“Ze only sing ve can do,” Medic said, “try to get out of ze city.”

“But there’s no way we’ll make it,” Engineer argued, “We’re too far into the center of the city, if we try and go all the way out, we’ll just get slaughtered by the hordes of Combine we’re bound to run into.”

Demo sighed, “Then I guess we try and make it to the original rendezvous point in hopes that there will be some way to leave that way.

So they moved, quickly, quietly, just hoping that the League of Nations building was still intact and in allied hands. But as they reached their destination their hopes fell. The LN building was about fifty stories tall, and about two blocks wide. A wall wrapped around the perimeter and several trees dotted around that. The wall broke on one side, taken place instead by a round courtyard with a large fountain of a pony, a griffon, and a dragon all standing, seemingly welcoming in anyone who walked this way. At least, that what it was supposed to be; the fountain’s water was red with the blood of a dead alliance soldier lying face down in the shallow pool. Part of the dragon’s head was missing, most likely blown off by an explosion. Smoldering wreckage of several tanks sat in the courtyard, and bodies were scattered haphazardly about the area. The team ran forward into the building, not waiting to see if anyone was outside. Scout bolted ahead and quickly checked all the rooms. Bodies of each side lay everywhere, obvious signs that a bloody battle had taken place. They had yet to find out who the victor was though. Traveling upwards to the roof where there was supposed to be a helicopter, they paused when a wheezing sound could be heard on the other side of a large conference room they were crossing. A dying alliance soldier lay propped against the leg of the conference table with a smoking stump where his left arm used to be and large gas cutting across his torso.

“Help me,” he gasped.

“I’m afraid I can do nozing for you,” Medic grimly stated.

“Help me… please,” the soldier pleaded, “there were so many… we were overrun… HQ was lost… aerial bombardment on the city’s inbound… they’re going to destroy it… scorched Earth,” his breaths became more and more shallow. Engineer walked past the soldier before turning around to face the dying man. Pulling out his pistol he centered his sights on the soldier’s head.

“Sorry brother.” A gunshot sounded in the air.

Roland found out just where those stairs went. Following them for a good five minutes the squad came up to a balcony overlooking a large cavern. His thoughts were drowned out by the noise of thousands of ponies in this cavern milling amongst themselves; though there was no sounds of panic, the tension in the air was apparent.

“Halt!” A couple of royal guards were standing in front of Pandora team with a few more appearing on their flanks.

“Woah, wait, we’re Pandora team of Charlie Division. What is this place?” Mordecai asked with his hands up, staring down a long spear wielded by a unicorn guard.

The guards put their weapons down. While the general populace was in the dark about all the recent events in Equestria, Celestia and Luna’s guards were brought up to date on the situation. A dark maned, dark coated Pegasus stepped forward.

“I’m Commander Shield, I’m in charge here,” he said, “and you are in a shelter contained inside the Manehattan subterranean train system. Our orders are to remain here until these Combine have passed over the city.”

“Huh, I wondered why the city was so empty. But stay here? You can’t stay here! We found this place easy; it’s only a matter of time until the Combine find it too. You have no idea of the shitstorm that is going on above you!” Lilith exclaimed.

“I’ll ask you to please watch your language. And if need be we can escape through the tunnels where they meet with the old mine shafts. They’ll lead us straight to Canterlot.”

“Canterlot. You mean the same Canterlot where the other half of the Combine army went? That Canterlot? How is that a good plan?” Roland asked.

“Well… I…”

“It would be best if you just followed those mine shafts somewhere else,” Lilith suggested.

“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we sho- What was that?!”

Small rocks and dust rained down on the cavern and Brick ran back up the steps that Pandora team came down to see what was the matter. A minute later he came back down with a small look of dread on his face.

“They’ve made their way into the subway tunnels. It’ll only be a matter of time before they find us.”

“Celestia damn it! What are we supposed to do?!” Shield started panicking. Obviously he’d never been in this sort of situation before.

“You’re going to evacuate everyone further down the tunnels. We’re going to try and hold them off. Brick will seal the tunnel behind you,” Roland explained.

“Then how will you get out?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when it gets here.”

“If you’re sure. Luna-speed you four.” Then he turned around and started shouting to the guards to move the civilians out. The tunnel was fairly large so the few thousand ponies were funneling into it fairly easily.

“Okay, we have a couple of minutes,” Roland started, “I want to be ready when they get here. They’ll be coming down those stairs so they’ll be somewhat bottlenecked. Everyone dig in. Brick, when the last pony gets through, shoot rockets at the tunnel entrance until it collapses.”

Brick grunted it acknowledgement and the four scattered to take defensive positions. Ten minutes later the last pony got through the tunnel and a few seconds later Brick fired several rockets at various points on the rock tunnel’s entrance. Chunks of rock flew everywhere and soon enough the entire tunnel entrance started giving way.

“Now that that’s taken care of…” Roland aimed down the sights of his assault rifle and waited with for the Combine to appear on the stairs so he could teach them a new religion.

“Roland,” Mordecai broke the silence, “how are we going to get out of here?”

“How much money do you have in your wallet?”

“You really think that will work? Even across universes? Even if it does we’ll never be able to come back. And I kind of like it here.”

“The prices we pay and the risks we take, my friend. Get ready, here they come!”

“So what do we do now? Obviously there’s no one here and there’s no way we’ll be able to make it back out of the city.”

“That’s fine, we’ll figure something out. What I’m more worried about is what that soldier said. ‘Scorched Earth’? Is that what I think it means Soldier?”

“I’m afraid so. I never thought I’d live to see the day where that happened. And I never thought the Americans of all people would be the ones to do it,” Soldier said solemnly.

“Perhaps zers a vay ve can kommunikate vith zem. You know, tell zem ve’re still alive,” Medic suggested.

“No, even if there was, they’re already committed. Ain’t nothing stopping them now.”

“Well then,” Demo said, “we should at least try to make for Canterlot.”

“No! Aren’t you listening?! Lemme spell it out for you. They. Are. Going. To. Nuke. Manehattan! Unless you have a helicopter hidden in your pants, because I know you don’t have a dick to take up space, we’re not getting out of here alive!”

“Why you numpty nyaff! Your wheel’s turnin’ but it looks like the hamster’s died!”

“Only you know what that means! You scum sucking, ass licking, fuc-“

“HEY!”

Everyone turned to Heavy who was currently staring out the window- or hole in the wall where the window should’ve been. They walked up to see what he was looking at and were astonished to see a gunship hovering outside the wall formerly known as window. Out of it climbed a heavily armor clad soldier in yellow-red armor with massive shoulder plates and a green visor. Jumping the gap between the ship and building they landed with grace right in front of the group. As they reached up to grab their helmet off their head Sniper spoke up.

“Thank God you’re here sir. You think we could hitch a ride on your ship? It’s sort of urgent. Although, come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing you on the Normandy…” he trailed off when the soldier took off their helmet to reveal long flowing blond hair.

She smiled. “That’s because I wasn’t on the Normandy. The Doctor picked me up just now. So sorry I’m late. Name’s Samus. Samus Aran. What’s this about needing a ride?”

“Well you see Miss Aran,” Engineer spoke up. This city here is about ta be nuked and we’d much appreciate a ride.”

“Seriously? Nuked? Alright, I can just fit you all in so we can make our way back to Canterlot.”

“Zat’s good because I need a drin-“ Medic was cut short by a blast to his chest by an unseen assailant. He collapsed to the ground with a hole where his heart once was.

“Doctor!” Heavy cried before his head was blown off by another shot.

“Sniper! Everybody get the fuck do-“Sniper too dropped as his arm fell beside him, unattached to the rest of his body.

“Quick, on my ship.” They all clambered into the gunship as it flew away from its unseen murderer.

On the way back to Canterlot Soldier started making notches in his shovel.

“What are those for?” Engineer asked quietly.

“Notches, one for each of our fallen comrades.”

The rest of the ride back was quiet, the sound of the engine being the only noise.

“I guess they’ve let us hung out to dry huh?” Lilith asked, slipping out of her phase walk for the umpteenth time, stabbing a Combine soldier in the back.

“I guess so,” Roland shouted over the sound of Brick bashing in the head of another hunter.

“Guys, we’ve been at this for hours, I don’t know how much longer I can do this- ahh!” Mordecai took one too many bullets and hit the ground, furiously firing his revolver trying to get a second wind.

“Hold on I’m coming!” Lilith shouted before taking several barbs to the back. All she could do was watch Mordecai’s lights fade as hers too did.

“I’ll see you two on the other side,” Roland said before taking an energy ball to the chest, disintegrating on the spot.

Suddenly Brick found himself surrounded; he wanted to take out as many of these bastards as he could, but he had no idea how to… rocks. Rocks. He smiled and with a final roar he fired all his rockets into the cavern ceiling. His last image was that of a group of hunters being crushed by a massive boulder before one too crushed him.

Roland took a massive gasp of air. He really hated these respawn thingies. Especially since his wallet felt significantly lighter every time he used one. But it was better than the alternative.

“Well, Roland,” Lilith said, groaning as she got off the ground, “I guess that answers that question. I worry though, will the Combine find those poor ponies?”

“Don’t worry, Brick buried them.”

They stared at him for a while before the got it and then shared a laugh.

“C’mon, let’s go get a drink guys. I kind of missed Pandora.”

“Really?” Mordecai asked incredulously.

“No.”

They shared another laugh.