"Hell, I forget what I had for breakfast these days - but I never, never forgot the war."
- unidentified veteran of the War of the Two Superpowers

As the convoy unknowingly drove ever closer to a rather whimsical town, Krieg Feldwebel Arnulf Jauer slid back in his seat, the adrenalin high from taking down the "Manticore" having worn off, replaced by exhaustion. Luckily, he, like many veterans of urban warfare on Kulmar, was highly adept at sleeping in uncomfortable, dangerous, and downright miserable conditions.

The erratically-bouncing Dingo barely qualified as the first, seeing as it was dry and there weren't artillery shells slamming into the ground around him. A definite improvement over his previous posting.

He slid into unconsciousness . . .

~

The air stank. That fact was lost in the revelation that there was a distinct smell at all here.

The Princess of the Night, co-ruler of Equestria, fittingly referred to as Luna, took in the surroundings of the dream she had entered. It was odd that a pony be sleeping at around mid-day, and odder still that they be dreaming - and that the dream contained so much pain.

Pain. Her subjects suffered from anxiety, doubting, fear, rejection - not readily apparent from the surface of Equestrian society that most visitors saw on their official tours through Canterlot, but present nonetheless. This dream, however . . . pain really didn't begin to describe it.

Sorrow, loss, fear, uncertainty, rage, Luna shook her head violently at the wave of emotions cascading around her. If one of her little ponies was in this much trouble, it was her solemn responsibility to do everything she could to help.

She paused as another emotion clawed its way through the filth. Duty. How could she not have noticed it? In every layer of this dream, there was an impressively strong undercurrent of duty to some unseen cause in this pony's mind. Not quite youthful enthusiasm, much like the type she saw in the dreams of new Royal Guard - no, it was everywhere yet somewhat faint. Something more immediate was on . . . his, yes, his mind. She feared it had something to do with the incessant rumbling in the background.

Yes, and the only way to find out more was to descend into the dream itself, and see what's what, as they said nowadays.

~

As she spiraled downward, the heavy clouds parted to reveal a truly massive city below her. She paused at the sight, then continued, uncertainty gnawing at the back of mind. No city in all of Equestria, and all its surrounding lands for that matter, even resembled this. The buildings themselves were not much larger than, say, Ponyville's houses, but there were so many of them!

And then she took it in fully. Great clouds of pitch-black smoke hurled themselves into the sky from massive fires, bright flashes dotted below, and most disturbingly of all - the city itself was destroyed. Never had she seen such destruction. Half the buildings were complete wrecks, mere piles of rubble, and the other half were hardly better. They stood, but it was obvious they had gone through extreme forces to get to their current sorry states.

It was becoming evident this was not Equestria as she knew it. Even as she continued towards the ground, and hopefully the poor creature, knowledge flooded her head as she began to take in the situation fully from the memories of the person.

Person? This was not a pony.

Bipeds. She neared the ground, strange crackling and popping sounding from all over. There she saw them, scurrying forward, unaware of her presence. The level of detail in this dream was incredible, she noted, and there was no doubt that this was in fact a memory in itself.

She put two and two together in an instant. This was the dream of one of the alien creatures that her sister had left to meet in Ponyville! The ones she had felt approach Equestria! With mounting resolve, she dove into the thick of whatever was happening down there, to the source of the dream himself.

Or, rather, many nearly-identical looking bipeds, dressed in some sort of ugly camouflage and identity-concealing helmets, and carrying a baffling assortment of black objects, brandishing them like weapons.

A nearby explosion made her flinch, but also knocked the helmet off one of the creatures. There. The dreamer.

Her elation was interrupted by a wet distinct wet thud, and she turned to the source of the noise only to see one of the bipeds slump back. To her horror, a bright red puddle began spreading from the chest of the unmoving creature.

Blood.

Luna backpedaled, physically and mentally. Were these the creatures that were almost upon her sister and the Elements?

The dreamer screamed something, and another biped scrambled over, carrying a case and hurriedly pulling out what she could only assume to be medical supplies. It dawned on her that the dreamer's apparently intense concentration at the event was muffling the noise, as the constant flinching and tensing of the bipeds evidenced more than she was getting led onto.

Another, more massive explosion, this time practically on top of the group of huddling bipeds, sending the dreamer hurtling into a wall. Concentration shattered by the concussion, the full roar of the surrounding world smashed into Luna's hearing like a solid wall, sending her reeling at the sudden onslaught of noise. Explosions near and far, incessant popping and rippling the dream told her was gunfire, the growl of great machines - now she saw in the dreamer's concentration, the memory had barely shown anything of what had really been happening.

Metal beasts roared overhead, their blades slicing through the air at blurring speeds, hurling burning lances at a point beyond her distance, and on a road nearby she saw massive, grey boxes speeding down the cracked surface, belching smoke and fire from a tube affixed to it.

Around her, the screams and cries of the bipeds flowed and ebbed. Many fell, torn apart before her eyes by unseen forces, while others went down in pools of their own blood, keeping their dignity in their silence as the apparent doctors worked frantically to keep them alive.

The ones still on their feet pointed their metal tubes in front of them, as the tips flashed and roared. Guns, the memories told her, and similarly armed bipeds were the source of all the death and horror around her. They were killing each other, this species.

Yet none faltered, encouraged by the presence of their comrades. It would have been impressive, but the presumed end result of all this was too horrible to contemplate.

Lost in the panorama of killing before her, she stepped directly into the dreamer's view, who was currently kneeling over the bloody figure of a fellow biped, evidently the source of anguish and reason why this particular dream was so vivid. Then again, it was hard to fathom any creature letting the details of an experience like this blurring out and becoming abstract, like many of her subject's dreams.

The biped chose that moment to look up, tears staining his face. His eyes narrowed in confusion at the sight of the majestic blue pony standing casually in the crossfire between the two forces, then widened in recognition-

-and at that moment, Luna returned to her chambers in the Canterlot Palace.

There, the images of the dream fresh in her mind and readily processed in full, she walked numbly to her bed, and collapsed into sleep of her own.

~

Jauer sat up with a start, his hand instinctively brushing the rifle at his side before he relaxed, remembering the comparatively peaceful, yet alien, land they were in. Nothing like a horrible nightmare to put things into perspective, he thought.

DeWitz twisted around in the forward passenger's seat, handing the now fully-alert Marine a moist toilette. "Clean yourself up, we're almost at the town." the Oberst said, before turning back to his partially-disassembled G-63.

"Right." Jauer acknowledged, before jumping up and smacking his head on the ceiling, eyes wide.

"What?" DeWitz asked, speaking for the rest of the lead Dingo's passengers.

"My dream!" the soldier almost yelled.

"What about it? We all get those." his commander responded, eyebrow raised.

"There was an equine in it, Sir."

"What?"

"And when I saw it, it disappeared."

Any other place, and DeWitz would have dismissed the report. This was no ordinary place.

Author's Notes:

Welcome to war, Luna.