“Okay, now one…two…three PUSH!” Parker and Shining strained to lift the cot into the back of the waiting truck, where a pair of medics waited to lift and drag it into place.

“That’s the last of ‘em!” The medic said, slamming the truck’s door shut as its engine revved up.

“Perfect!” Shining gasped, not noticing the way his skin stretched and strained with each motion he made.

“Fantastic work, people…er, ponies!” Parker said, turning to the crowd gathered in the town square as he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Now, get going! Things are about to get real tight around here!”

“Looks like I arrived just in time, then,” a familiar voice said.

“Cady!?” Shining said, peering around Parker to find his wife standing right next to the truck. “Honey, what’re you doing back here!?”

“Cadet Mi Amore Cadenza, reporting for duty, sir!” She replied, saluting as she smiled warmly. “Mission to secure elderly and infirm has been completed. Current status of ponies is safe and stable far out of range of enemy artillery, and has been judged to no longer require monitoring. Now awaiting further orders, sir!”

“Oh my God! That’s your wife, you lucky bastard!” Parker gasped, beaming at Shining.

“As unbelievably sexy as…ahem…as that was,” Shining said, coughing to the side as he walked up to his wife on shaking hooves. “I wanted you out of this village safe and sound, sweetheart! You were supposed to…to be safe!”

“Did you really think I was just going to stay back and wait on the sidelines like a damsel in distress?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow as she reached a hoof to his forehead. “Besides, you should speak for yourself! You’re burning up!”

“That’s just…just because…you’re here…baby…” Shining said, trying to flash a winning grin to disguise the fatigue and dull burning sensation spreading throughout his body.

“Cute,” she replied, kissing his forehead. “But seriously, you’re scorching!”

“I have to agree with your wife there, Mr. Armor,” Parker said, inserting himself into the conversation. “You’re not lookin’ so good.”

“You’re both being…ridiculous…I feel…” Shining was interrupted by a massive stabbing pain searing through his lungs, as if they’d been dowsed in gasoline and set on fire. Gasping for breath, he collapsed over the cobblestone, writhing in agony.

“SHINING!” Cadence screamed in terror.

The entire crowd gathered around, looking on in concern. Parker wasted little time in putting them to work. “Okay, you all know the drill! We need a cot, some restraints, and an IV pack, stat!”

A few ponies closest to him nodded and ran off to chase down one of the MASH trucks. Parker knelt and took Shining’s head in his hands, trying to keep his face pointed upwards and his windpipe cleared. The unicorn continued alternating between gasps and heavy panting, interrupted by the occasional convulsion. “Damn, is he epileptic or something!?”

“Epi-what!?” Cadence gasped, stroking Shining’s hoof as tears started to gather in her eyes.

“Never mind,” Parker sighed, his hands suddenly darting away from Shining’s skin. “What in the hell…”

“What’s wrong!?”

“It’s like…like his skin was convulsing!” Parker said, looking down at the unicorn in terror. “Like there were maggots or something running underneath it.”

Shining shouted in pain, his head bucking against the cobblestone. As his wife watched in terror, she realized she could see it: the skin on his back and neck rippling and wavering like water on a pond during a windy day.

“That’s…that’s right where he was hit,” she mumbled.

“Hit? What’re you talking about?” Parker asked.

“He was hit shuh-shielding me from an explosion. He was gonna die, but then somebody showed up and saved him. Just squirted some goo on him and saved him.” She said, her voice in a faraway tone as she gazed down at her husband, obviously entering the first stages of shock.

Parker knelt by her and looked her in the eye. “This man: did he have light skin? Like mine, but maybe a bit darker?”

She nodded slowly.

“And did he have on a brown leather jacket and blue jeans? With maybe some close-cropped, greased-up black hair?”

“Yes! How did you know!?”

Parker scratched at his chin. “‘In the event that the Major is severely compromised, physically or mentally, the objects under his power will begin a major breakdown, entering an automatic shutdown state to ensure a minimal loss of life should his current form be destroyed.’” He mumbled.

“Wha-what?”

“Nothing, just something from my briefing on the Major,” Parker replied as a group of ponies returned with a cot and IV bag, followed closely by a human medic. “Listen; stay with your husband. Get these ponies out of the city. In fact, you might wanna get them out of the country if you can.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it, I hafta go. If the Major’s in deep shit, we all are. Good luck, Princess.” Unsure of what else to do, the human took her hoof in his hand and kissed it gently before running off towards the front lines.

“Where are you going!?”

“Working off a hunch!” He screamed over his shoulder. Then he was gone, leaving Cadence alone to follow her husband as he was strapped to a cot and taken away, leading the ponies to the nearest MASH point.

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The Humvee rumbled along in complete silence. No one talked. No one laughed. No one made random observations illustrating a deeper knowledge of human pop culture than they could possibly possess. The Elements of Harmony and their human friends stared straight ahead, only moving when the vehicle rumbled over a bump in the road, rocking as its suspension creaked. Some had their hooves wrapped around one another: Rarity with Twilight, Applejack with Fluttershy. Pinkie had taken to holding her hoof in Ramirez’s hand, his arm reaching behind his seat to meet her. Rainbow Dash, stubborn as ever, just kept glaring out the window, her Element glistening around her neck while the Humvee’s engine roared in front of her. Ramirez kept both his hands for driving, trying to keep his focus on the road, though it did have a tendency to drift.

Damn, the tension’s so thick in here you could cut it with a knife! The coming battle was weighing on everyone’s minds. Soon, it wouldn’t just be something playing in the background like elevator muzak: it’d be their lives. It would be flooding their senses, assaulting their sight, their hearing, their very minds…

His eye drifted to the rearview mirror, where it saw the hooves all clenched together, holding on with a passion he’d only seen once or twice in real life, and only in a triage center. His mind began to drift back to those ugly days, somebody he knew clenching his hand, screaming as their helicopter evac took off with his leg hanging on by a tenuous sinew of muscle…

He blinked hard to keep himself focused, and a thought drifted into his mind. Grinning at it, one gloved hand left the steering wheel and wrapped itself around Uris’s free hand, the pilot still adrift in thought. It took the pilot nearly a full minute to realize what was going on, and another twenty seconds to follow the hand clenching his up to Ramirez’s smiling face.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he yelled, breaking both the melancholy that had fallen over the vehicle and his grip with the SEAL (but not with Pinkie, Ramirez noticed).

“Took ya long enough,” Ramirez laughed, the ponies joining in slowly.

“What, that near-kiss earlier wasn’t enough homoerotic adventure for you?” Uris said, barely able to keep the smile off his face. “The way you’re acting, it’s like you only want me for my body!”

“Please, whitey. You’re not my type.”

“Hey,” Rainbow said, breaking in between the two. “You might wanna be careful here. He could be spoken for already.” Ramirez and Rainbow promptly fist-hoofed as the giggling turned into full-on laughter.

“And I find that whitey remark offensive, dahlings!” Rarity snickered.

Uris couldn’t keep the smile from turning into a full-on grin. It was good to hear the girls laughing again, even if it was just for a little bit, and only for a few minutes. It was one last way they could ease into what was about to happen. Although he could think of another…

“Slow up, roll down the windows.” He said, his grin fading.

“Why…oh,” Ramirez caught on almost immediately, and obeyed.

“Why are we slowing down? Shouldn’t we get up there as soon as we possibly can?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, but right now you all need to hear this,” Ramirez replied.

“Hear what?” She asked, although in a few moments she had her answer. The air was filled with the echoes from the battlefield up ahead: a near-constant barrage of automatic rifle and machine gun fire, punctuated by the occasional explosion from a hand grenade or mortar round, the flashes from which accented very sound, like a punctuation mark to a loud, rumbling sentence.

“It’s…louder, than I thought it’d be,” Twilight remarked, trying to keep a calm face. “I thought since humans didn’t have magic, your wars might be quieter than unicorn wars. But that…that’s just a different type of magic, really.”

“Magic,” Ramirez mumbled. “Yeah, you could call it that. I call it hell.”

Uris watched, the explosions reflecting in his eyes. For the first time that night, it dawned on him: someone he loved was up there, in the middle of all that. Someone he cared about might die tonight. “Dad,” he mumbled, clenching the hoof in his hand tightly. Pinkie’s other hoof soon joined it, squeezing in concern. The Humvee fell silent again; hooves sliding back together for comfort, only this time, another hoof joined a hand. Ramirez peeked in the rearview mirror to find Rainbow’s hoof slowly sliding towards him. A hand drifted off the wheel to join it, accepting her gladly. She showed him the tiniest smile.

“Uh…you look scared, Mr. Ramirez,” she said quickly, red entering her cyan cheeks. “You…uh…you okay up there?”

“Never better, Dash,” he replied smiling knowingly. “Never…” he gasped, slamming on the brakes as a man nearly stumbled right under their tires.

“Oh, thank God!” The man gasped, dashing to the side of the vehicle. “I thought I’d hafta walk all the way up there!”

“Lieutenant Parker!?” Ramirez and Uris instantly saluted, sitting as straight as they could.

“At ease!” Parker screamed, nearly tearing the door off its hinges as he dove into the back. “I need to get to the frontlines, and pronto!”

“So much for easing ‘em into the shit,” Ramirez grumbled, flooring the accelerator and sending the Humvee careening towards the flashes and explosions just outside Coltton.