Chapter THREE

Lyra took a long drag from her cigarette and decided that only ponies who had never smoked thought of smoking as a filthy habit. In fact, Lyra had come to the conclusion that smoking was not only not a filthy habit – it was the cleanest, safest, most practical habit you could have – and that any number of years it supposedly subtracted from your life were well worth it because life was already too long and too miserable anyhow. Lyra took another slow satisfying drag form her little white stick of cancer, and tried to image what her life would be like without cigarettes. And just when she'd succeeding in dreaming up an alternate reality her that had, due to the absence of tobacco, turned to harder drugs, somepony nudged her from behind with a rifle butt.

"Celestia's sake," complained Bon-Bon, "the hell are you smoking? Smells like – like I don't even know."

"If it weren't for cigarettes I'd be a three legged, pan handling smack head," said Lyra to no pony in particular.

"What?"

"I'd be smack head. A miserably deformed drug attic. I'd sell my body for fixes on corners in Manehattan."

"What are you going on about?" said Bon-Bon with an easy smile, too easy for somepony who lived a life free of cancerous clouds. Lyra wondered how such a thing was possible. "I thought you were gonna try to quit soon. That's a filthy fucking habit you know." Lyra knew. She took another satisfying drag, and she smiled on the inside, and she knew what Bon-Bon would never know.

Lyra and Bon-Bon had been assigned to third platoon, Cheerilee's platoon, along with Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Colgate, and at least a two dozen other ponies Lyra didn't know by name. third platoon's mission was to cover first platoon's retreat. When the rebels came after first platoon it was second and third's job to surprise attack them from both flanks, and when Twilight radioed in, that would be the signal to prepare for the enemies charge. In the meantime (and there was plenty of it) they were to stay concealed and stay alert. The former posed no problem at all in the Everfree Forest. The woods were dense, claustrophobic, even a total armature could stay hidden provided they wore the proper camouflage and didn't make too much noise. The later however was no simple task. Boredom was one of those things they don't prepare you for in basic training. Between shoot outs, forest fires caused by showers of exploding mortars, and the occasional knife fight at close quarters; war could prove to be a real monotonous drag. A Long stretch of nothing occasionally interrupted by short spastic fits of everything at once.

Lieutenant Cheerilee was in charge of making sure third platoon operated like a stringent military machine. Not a social club. A stringent military machine. Lieutenant Cheerilee took her job seriously.

"Put that damn thing out private. This is supposed to be a surprise attack. You'll give away our position," she said. Lyra seriously doubted that. Not only did she seriously doubt that, she also seriously doubted that Cheerilee had it in her to do anything about it – or anything about anything for that matter. Lyra was not alone in this conviction.

"Y'all officer types are all the same." Applejack, whose reputation for challenging authority was on a steady incline, trotted up to the two of them and asked Lyra for a smoke.

"It's a cigarette not a smoke signal." A pale blue light enveloped both the lighter and the pack of smokes. Lyra wasn't much of a magician, but she could manage a simple manipulation spell. Most unicorns could do that much without practice, it came naturally. Lyra levitated the carton from her flak jacket pocket, removed a single slim white cigarette, and maneuvered it gingerly between Applejack's parted lips. She did all of this without moving an inch, and with less effort than it would've taken to actually move an inch. The lighter flipped open and sparked as if held by a spirit: a spirit who had perhaps once declared that before her time had passed she would kick the filthy habit, failed, perished form lung cancer, and had yet, even in death, found the will to kick the filthy habit. Then the lighter returned to her and the pale wisp of magic was gone.

AJ's first drag was defiant. She blew a lung full of smoke in Cheerilee's direction, prodding her for a reaction, daring her to retaliate. She didn't. Cheerilee took her job seriously but not so seriously as to immunize her from those spontaneous moments of oh-what-hell that tempted one away from the bore of occupational responsibility.

She took a smoke herself, showing the other two that she knew how to blow rings, as if trying to prove that she too could be one of the cool kids. Lyra and AJ were impressed, and, much to the dismay of Bon-Bon, the three of them smoked and talked like a couple of jaded office workers unwinding around the company water cooler.

"I heard from Pinks you got into it pretty deep with Sparkle," said Lyra, "heard you were about ready to buck her head off."

"You should have bucked her head off. You should've trampled her. That little shit could use an ass kicking," added Cheerilee helpfully, sounding like a new kid trying too hard to fit in. A few mummers went around the ranks, and Applejack realized that most of third platoon had something to say about Twilight Sparkle and that none of it was particularly nice. Applejack knew that Twilight wasn't well liked – hell, lately she hadn't been all that crazy about the unicorn herself – but she was genuinely surprised at the openness with witch so many expressed malice towards her. Well, openness when she wasn't around at least.

"Yeah, well Pinks should keep her durn mouth shut on a count a it weren't even like that," said Applejack. They had their differences sure, but at the end of the day there was a small list of ponies Applejack trusted to watch her back in a firefight. The name Twilight Sparkle was pretty close to the top of that list.

"Tweren't nothing. Just pre-battle jitters is all."

Lyra made that sound ponies make when they suddenly need to stifle a laugh. "Didn't know Sparkle jittered." She took a drag form her smoke, which was nearly a stub now, and thought of a joke about Sparkle being much too great and power to ever jitter, and she'd have told the joke too but just as the words began forming in her mouth she heard a bang and immediately dropped to her stomach, rifle at the ready.

"The hay was that?" said Bon-Bon, who was also on her stomach, crawling towards the three of them as awkwardly as one would expect a horse to crawl. She was going to say something else; something about how it was too soon, how first platoon had failed to radio in but Cheerilee shushed her. Together they listened for a moment. Then Cheerilee stood up and made a peculiar looking gesture – a sort of waving/pointing motion with one of her forelegs – that an impartial viewer may have mistaken for some kind of improvised sight gag, but third platoon understood and spread out immediately. If the enemy began their attack with a volley of mortars it made no sense to risk the whole platoon being obliterated in a single blast.

Cheerilee's first thought was that the rebels were on their way, just as planned, and that something had happened that prevented Sparkle form radioing in. It was a comforting thought because it meant nothing had changed. first platoon would come tear-assing through the woods with the rebels hot on their hind hooves, and when they came into firing range second and third platoon would split them in half with fire from both flanks.

Cheerilee kept focus on a clearing north east of her position; that's where they'd be coming from…

…Any minute now.

There was a second boom. This one sounded closer than the first, and it sounded less like the roar of a poorly placed mortar and more like the roar of something with a voice box the size of a horse drawn carriage. Cheerilee didn't recognize the roar, it was like nothing she'd ever heard before, but Bon-Bon did. She lay on her stomach clutching her riffle as it were a security blanket – shaking like a frightened child. Her eyes were shut in a way that suggested perhaps they'd never open again. Scared witless. Just the sight of her nearly scared Cheerilee as witless, but the officer was made of tougher stuff than that. At least that's what she thought as grabbed the immobilized pony by the mane and tried to shake her out of the fear induced trance. In truth she wasn't, nor was Bon-Bon a coward. The difference between them was not a matter of fortitude, rather it was simply a fundamental understanding of the situation. Bon-Bon knew something that Cheerilee didn't – and was afraid. Next Chapter: Chapter FOUR Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 45 Minutes