Chapter 60

12-10-14, 12:10 A.M.

“Sky’s clear, prepare for landing,” Chrysalis called.

Jeremy finally sat back, breathing out a relieved sigh at the order. “Damn, that was intense,” he mumbled.

Chrysalis gave a shaky laugh as they touched down over Euclid. “Quite… Nice work, Myocia.”

There was a burst of static over the radio, which slowly settled to reveal Myocia’s laughter. “That wasn’t me – I didn’t even touch the controls that whole time,” she declared.

Chrysalis gave Jeremy a confused look. “Then who-“ she began, but was cut off by more laughter, this time recognizable by its mildly insane tinge as Ethan’s.

“T’was I who took the controls!” he dramatically declared.

Jeremy instantly cracked up, and Chrysalis shook her head exasperatedly. “As you humans say, whatever… Nice work, Ethan.”

Once Jeremy had calmed down, they got out of their jets and met on Euclid avenue. “Wow, this group got kind of big,” Jeremy commented as he looked around. Six changeling queens, eight soldiers, Celestia and Luna, Mary, Ethan, and various additional changeling pilots surrounded him – it was a far cry from all the lone fighting he used to do. Though, he reflected, by no means an unwelcome one. “Okay…” he began, and every face turned to look at him. “We’ve been through hell and back – but I still don’t feel like we’re done. So, I guess we should do a sweep through the rest of campus, see what we can find?” Various murmurs of agreement reached his ears, and he was about to continue when he noticed a lone runner approaching them, unarmed and carrying a white flag.

“The hell do you want?” Jeremy rudely asked as soon as the man was within earshot. Celestia shot him a glance, and Jeremy was reminded that he should probably treat the messengers at least with some form of respect. Seeing Chrysalis, the man took a nervous step backward, and Chrysalis smiled dementedly, her insane grin bringing the full length of her sharp fangs into view. The other queens stepped forward, each sporting only a slightly less creepy smile. All in all, it was a very effective intimidation tactic, and Jeremy could tell from the man’s body language that he wanted to run as far away as he could.

“We, ah, wish to send you this message,” the terrorist began nervously, his thick accent obscuring some of his speech.

“If you do not surrender within one hour, a nuclear device will be detonated on-site. All of you will die, as well as everyone within a two-mile radius. The remainder of our army is near the bomb as well – we care not if we die, so long as you die as well. We are located at the national park – you know where it is, yes?” he asked. Jeremy slowly nodded – they were just there an hour ago, after all. “If I am killed, my comrades will know and detonate the bomb instantly,” the man hastily added. With nothing more to add, he stared at them expectantly. Jeremy realized everyone else was looking at him, and cleared his throat.

“Sounds good, er, well, not good obviously but… we’ll get back to you guys within the hour.” With that, the messenger nodded and took off running, full-on sprinting away from their group.

“I bet he was lying about that last bit,” Queen Chroma uttered out of nowhere.

“Saving his own skin, hmm? You might be on to something there, but it’s a bit late to do anything about that,” Chrysalis replied.

“What’re we going to tell them?” A soldier wondered out loud.

An argument quickly broke out amongst the various factions, and Jeremy looked around with dismay. Completely ignoring all other conversations, Ethan walked up to Celestia and Luna.

“Hey, I’ve had a question for a while now,” he began, and they looked at him interestedly.

“Yes?” Luna prompted. “Why didn’t you just use magic to put these guys to sleep?” Ethan asked.

For a moment, all was silent – even the other arguments had died down to hear the answer. For their part, Celestia and Luna looked like deer caught in the headlights of an automobile.

“Out of the mouth of a child,” Celestia muttered, slapping a hand to her forehead.

“We could have done that so much earlier… nopony would’ve had to die!” Luna exclaimed angrily.

Jeremy frowned. “Well, that definitely sucks, but unless you want to throw time travel into the mix, I don’t think dwelling on it is going to do us much good. Can we still use that while we’ve got the chance, though?”

Celestia mulled over this, and from the way they were glancing at each other, Jeremy suspected she and Luna were having another mental conversation.

“Well, putting any more than a few to sleep at once would be beyond our capabilities at this point. So unless thou hast a very specific idea of who to target, such a spell would hardly be helpful,” Luna explained.

“What if… what if we targeted the people around the bomb itself? Or better yet, a spell that makes you get sleepier the closer you are to the bomb,” Jeremy thought aloud.

“That could work, yes!” Celestia enthusiastically replied.

“It’d have to not affect us, though,” Mary pointed out.

Luna nodded. “An easy addition,” she declared.

“Okay, so here’s the new plan, then: Celestia and Luna sneak up invisibly, and wait on the sidelines. As soon as we try to charge in there, they’ll try to detonate the bomb – that’s when the alicorns activate the spell. Meanwhile, we’ll be cleaning house, and one of us will have to defuse the nuke. Anyone know how to do that?” Jeremy asked, looking at the soldiers.

One cleared his throat. “I covered anti-I.E.D. measures in my training, and part of that was nuclear devices. If you can get me close to the bomb, I can probably take it apart.”

Jeremy nodded, flashing a smile. “Nice. Anything else to add?” he concluded, looking around at the motley group.

“Why are the last of them all gathered around the bomb? That’s so dumb,” Ethan commented to general laughter. Jeremy gave an amused shrug.

“Actually, I think they might be using an improvised nuke – they might not have rigged it up to a remote detonator, or something,” a soldier commented. Ethan shrugged, seemingly accepting this line of reasoning.

“Go team,” Jeremy finished with a smirk, and they set off.

Celestia and Luna had vanished into the shadows some time ago, and Jeremy was leading the soldiers and Mary forward. Ethan and the changelings had stayed behind with the jets, ready to go at a moment’s notice. All that was left was to make things official.

“Thank God this is the last fight, I don’t know how much more not knowing I could’ve taken,” Jeremy muttered to Mary.

She looked very different than she had to begin with – her face was ashen and nervous, and her eyes kept rigidly darting side to side as though expecting an ambush. “Yeah… Remind me to retire soon, kid,” she answered distractedly.

Jeremy chuckled, and let her be. The bomb expert, who Jeremy had learned was named Bruce, was to his right, Mary to his left, and everyone else behind him. His armor shone in the moonlight, heavily dented and pockmarked with bullet holes but still unpenetrated, and once again Jeremy was glad his suit was bright white in color – he assumed the terrorists would all go for him first, and the bright colors against the dark night would make it very easy for them, thus drawing fire away from the other, less protected soldiers.

They came upon the entrance to the national park, and Jeremy noticed the damage from the previous session of bombing: Decorative shrubs had been reduced to nothing, parts of the sidewalk were cracked or destroyed entirely, and the area overall looked as heavily hit as any picture of a warzone he’d ever seen.

“Everyone ready?”

Jeremy asked. There were various responses in the affirmative, and swallowing only once, Jeremy stepped into the quiet darkness of the abandoned park.

Waiting there, in an eerie column, were the remainder of the once-large enemy army. They looked gaunt and haggard – evidently the night had been as hard on them as it had been for Jeremy’s group. Jeremy led his procession down the makeshift aisle, feeling surrounded and apprehensive. Making sure his microphone was switched off, he contacted Celestia and Luna over the radio.

“Ready?” he asked.

“On your signal,” Celestia responded, sounding tense.

Jeremy switched his microphone back on, and walked forward. The same messenger from earlier was waiting at the end of the line, hand resting on a metallic cylinder that was only vaguely reminiscent of the bombs Jeremy had seen in historical texts and museums. An oddly disconnected part of him mused that it probably wasn’t cone-shaped due to the lack of necessity for aerodynamicity – it wasn’t being dropped, after all. It had a small red button with a few LEDs on the front, as well as a currently unlit screen that Jeremy assumed was a timer or some such.

“You have your answer?” The messenger asked, sounding equal parts smug and tense.

“Yeah, we do,” Jeremy grumbled, trying to sound as though he were about to accept in an attempt to keep the enemy from acting rashly. “We choose…”

Now, he thought, and Luna sent a terse mental confirmation his way.

Just as the messenger slumped to the floor, asleep, Jeremy shouted “NO!” defiantly, and prepared to fight.

To Jeremy's shock, as the messenger collapsed, his hand found a small red button on the side of the casing, and the man successfully pressed it. A green light blinked on, and the panel on the front lit up to read 05:00 – a countdown clock, Jeremy realized in horror. They had five minutes to disable the bomb.

05:00

Taken by surprise, the terrorists rallied remarkably quickly. One pulled out a radio and yelled something unintelligible into it, and the others quickly shouldered their arms and began firing. Bruce had sprinted over to Jeremy the moment the fight started, and was protected by a shimmering magical shield – Jeremy suspected Celestia and Luna were staying out of the fight in order to provide this protection. He focused on protecting Bruce as well, taking out anyone who was getting too close while Bruce feverishly worked to disable the nuke.

“I think I can do this!” Bruce yelled over the sound of gunfire, but Jeremy was too busy shooting to respond.

“Chrysalis, go!” he yelled into his mic.

He thought Chrysalis gave some snarky reply about how loud he was being, but he had stopped paying attention – as long as she got the message.

04:00

Why was the Final Countdown playing in his head? It wasn’t the suit’s strange music feature, Jeremy was sure of that. It was just his own thoughts. Still, it was oddly fitting. Some bullets ricocheted off his front armor, and he took a moment to send a few of his own back to the assailant, who quickly dropped as he clutched what remained of his heart. Unfortunately, these ones hadn’t forgotten their own armor, which appeared to be made of Kevlar and extremely thick ceramic on both the front and back. Fortunately, Jeremy came prepared. He pulled out his SPAS-12, and tried a few rounds of that – to his satisfaction, they went down much quicker. The rest of the soldiers were on the outskirts, having fled to the edge due to lack of sufficient armor and to provide better suppressive fire. All in all, Jeremy thought the plan was going rather well.

02:48

This thought was quickly stomped to pieces as the all-too familiar drone of a plane engine made itself heard over the noises of battle.

“Shit,” Jeremy swore loudly. “Bruce, how we doing?” he frantically asked.

Bruce had heard the incoming plane as well, and mumbled a string of expletives before turning to him, fingers still rapidly tapping and searching through the innards of the nuke – Jeremy had to admire that kind of hand-eye coordination.

“Just a few more seconds!” he shouted.

Jeremy nodded grimly, and went back to shooting as many terrorists as he could see – it was all he could do. One of the changeling planes appeared far above their heads, and Chrysalis said something into the radio – Jeremy was far too busy watching the other side of the sky to determine what it had been.

The plane finally appeared, a dark blot over the starlit sky. It released its cargo, which screamed down through the atmosphere – too fast, Jeremy thought with increasing panic. Chrysalis had already seen, and shot the plane down – but it was too late. Celestia and Luna couldn’t shield the both of them, let alone everyone else in the area – shielding Bruce was already taking its toll, as evidenced by his magical protection flickering every so often. He needed to do something right now if he wanted to live. Jeremy took out his rocket launcher, praying for a miracle.

“Jeremy, what are you doing?” Bruce screamed, having completely turned away from the nuke.

“Saving our asses,” Jeremy grumbled as he fired off the rocket.

Would this even work? He had no clue, but had to try. Using the laser, he guided the rocket straight towards the bomb, which was still a few hundred feet up, just a tiny dot against the black backdrop of the night sky. Come on, come on, work, dammit! He internally screamed, trying to get the rocket to connect. Finally, just as the bomb became visible above the treetops, the rocket swooped around, caught up with it, and hit the side of the casing, causing both the rocket-propelled grenade and the bomb to explode. Jeremy was blasted to the ground by the shockwave, and so was Bruce – but, wondrously, they were alive.

“Holy shit,” Bruce commented, slowly picking himself up off the ground.

“Lucky save of a fucking lifetime,” Jeremy murmured in response. He looked over at the nuclear bomb, the panel dark and the LED a bright red. “You got it?” he asked, and Bruce shakily nodded. “Good. Let’s finish this!” Jeremy cheered, and Bruce gave him a smile before grabbing his AK-47.

“Celestia, do you or Luna have the energy to teleport the deactivated nuke somewhere else?” Jeremy asked over the radio.

“Just… just barely,” Celestia answered, sounding as though she were about to drop. Jeremy’s HUD suddenly reappeared, and Celestia and Luna were visible as a blue and yellow dot respectively off in the distance.

“Come find us,” Luna begged, sounding desperate – Jeremy assumed this was because they would be completely unprotected once they carried out this final act. The nuke disappeared in a flash of white light, and Jeremy took off sprinting towards his wives.

“New plan! Everyone on the ground, follow me!” he shouted into the radio.

“Follow Freeman!” a soldier half-jokingly responded, and Jeremy allowed himself a brief smile before continuing to run and gun to the alicorns’ location.

He found them both passed out behind a tree, just as a terrorist whipped out a shotgun and pointed it at Celestia’s head. Despite his feelings that Celestia could probably survive such injury, Jeremy shakily lowered his gun. Grinning in triumph, the man stepped forward, still pointing the gun at Celestia, only to have his head explode into a red mist. Mary stepped out from behind the tree, shotgun held firmly in hand – she promptly dropped this and stole the gun off the man she’d just killed.

"Defend these two?” she asked, holding down the button on her radio.

“Yes, please,” Jeremy responded, pressing the button for his own.

Now that everyone knew what to do, no terrorist could even get close to Celestia and Luna’s prone forms – every time they tried, they were mercilessly gunned down by a soldier hidden in the trees or some other available cover. Meanwhile, Chrysalis was carrying on her fight up above, plane parts raining down onto campus as bomber after bomber was shot down. Ethan could occasionally be heard laughing maniacally as he piloted his own ship, easily proving himself to be a one-man force of nature when it came to ruling the sky.

12-10-14, 3:42 A.M.

There was only one red dot left on Jeremy’s HUD, a single man who was clearly running out of bullets. His frantic wails in his native language only grew louder as Jeremy’s group cornered and surrounded him.

“Should we kill him?” a soldier asked calmly, wiping the sweat off his brow.

“I don’t see why not,” another muttered.

“What about pressing him for information? You know, give him over to the CIA, let them work their magic,” a third commented tensely.

Jeremy grimaced. “Haven’t you heard the recent news? Death would be preferable,” he replied.

But before they could do anything, it seemed the man had made his own choice. In the space of just a second, he pointed the barrel of his rifle to his temple, and pressed the trigger. There was a small but loud bang, and the other side of his head burst outward as he slumped to the floor.

“…Or that could happen,” Jeremy muttered.

He surveyed the sky – it was still dark, but he could see Chrysalis’ planes landing, the pilots getting out and congratulating each other. Myocia had pulled Ethan into another kiss, and this time Ethan passionately responded. As Jeremy fondly regarded the scene, he removed his helmet, feeling as though he were forgetting something. Then it hit him.

“Oh, shit, I need to study for my chemistry final,” he exclaimed suddenly.

Chrysalis burst into laughter, and held out a hoof. “Come on, husband,” she said, sounding exhausted, relieved, and a few other emotions Jeremy couldn’t quite place.

“Let’s get you home.”

12-25-14, 4:27 P.M.

“Hey, you guys made it!” Jeremy cheerfully greeted as he opened the door to his house. They were back home in Washington for the holidays, and he had decided to throw a Christmas party for everyone who had been through what had eventually became known as “The Night”. The media attention was still a problem – even now, he could see a reporter who was steadfastly arguing with local police trying to get him off the property – but he didn’t mind. The delicious smell of cookies wafted through the air, and Luna walked over, her hooves gently clopping against the wooden floor as she levitated a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies to the waiting soldiers. John and Bruce stepped in, each gratefully accepting a cookie and greeting Luna before turning left to enter the living room, where Ethan and Myocia were discussing their recent wedding. Jeremy smiled at the memory – Ethan had asked him to be best man, and he wouldn’t have dared say no with the look Myocia had been giving him. But some memories were not so pleasant.

The Case Western community had returned to find their campus mysteriously fixed the next morning, with not a hint of carnage or debris everywhere. Even the blood that had spattered Euclid Avenue, among other places, had vanished without a trace, though the twin smells of gunpowder and uncooked meat were much more reluctant to disappear. Jeremy, as true to form as he had ever been, had slept until noon before getting up and hurriedly studying for his last final of the semester. Once he had taken said final, he traipsed his way back to his dorm, greeting each curious passersby with a tired smile and a wave before returning to sleep. The next afternoon, he had awoken and packed for home, but not before having a quick conversation with his roommate, who agreed to keep the portal hidden while he was traveling, as well as keep the general secret of Equestria’s existence. Upon arriving at the airport, he had been surprised to find Mary waiting for him, though he had suspected she’d appear again eventually – her explanation of having to follow him everywhere claimed as much. Most of the soldiers had been given various medals of honor by the President, who knew nothing more than what everyone was saying – that a massive army of terrorists had attacked Case Western, and been driven off by the combined efforts of Jeremy and the soldiers, among others.

“Hey, Jeremy, come tell them about our first meeting,” Luna called over, snapping him out of his reverie. Jeremy grinned, and sauntered over, taking a seat on the only remaining couch space.

“Well, sure, why not. It all started when I was driving home from school…”

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