Twilight was pressed into the mud, razor wire and gunfire keeping her down. It had only been a few days since she had begun going through basic and already she was regretting the decision. The mud was cold and clinging to her coat; sapping her warmth in the early morning air. She wanted nothing more than to stop dragging herself through the sludge and stand up, but the drill instructor was watching and had told her she would be shot if her head came above a certain level. So she had no choice but to continue to pull herself forward and hope for the cold to go away soon.

The purple unicorn suddenly found herself in the mire up to her chin. She stood without thinking and felt a sharp, stinging pain attack her shoulder. The rubber bullet rolled down her foreleg into the mud where it quickly vanished beneath the surface. Twilight looked up to see a grinning soldier with a smoking assault rifle held in his hands lining up for another shot. She dropped back down just as the soldier fired again, narrowly avoiding another painful hit.

“I told you,” yelled the instructor, “to keep your candy rear on the ground! The enemy won’t be using rubber rounds and I ain’t gonna drag your sorry backside to the infirmary for a stupid mistake!”

“Do you really think that little pony is going to be able to do this?” one soldier questioned as he fired a burst above the trench’s occupant.

“I bet she could,” his partner replied as she took her turn to fire, “You heard that one pony killed one of the traitors by herself? Saved the Colonel’s life apparently.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, there is more to these ponies than we thought.”

“No kidding, they could be…”

“You two!” the instructor roared, “Can the chatter, this is not gab session!”

“Sir, yes sir!” the two soldiers cried back in unison as they returned to the onerous job of keeping the unicorn down.

For her part, Twilight was now able to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The mud was becoming more solid and no longer pulled her back a foot for every two she advanced. She saw the DI standing with his arms crossed and his feet spread apart, waiting on her. The unicorn hauled herself the last few feet out of the mud-drenched hell that she had inhabited for what felt like an eternity.

She wore a slightly proud smile as she stood before the human; a smile that was mirrored on the faces of a few soldiers that had been silently cheering the unicorn on. The drill instructor, however, merely looked down his nose in disdain at the small quadruped before him.

“That was terrible!” he hollered, “I’ve seen old folks do better dragging their walkers behind them!”

“But…” Twilight began.

“BUT?!” the instructor roared, “You were not about to back talk me, were you?”

“No.”

“‘No’ what?”

“No sir.”

“Dammit,” the human muttered darkly, just loud enough for everyone to hear, “I am supposed to turn this into a member of the deadliest fighting force in the galaxy?”

“What does that mean, sir?”

“It means that you’re worthless! Woefully outta shape, and can barely follow even the simplest protocols without being reminded half a dozen times.” He let loose a defeated sigh, “Just get outta here; you ain’t ready for this. And I don’t wanna be the one who has to scrape you offa the battlefield.”

“I can do this, sir!” Twilight remarked, confidence flowing through her voice.

“I doubt it.” the instructor replied as he turned away.

“Let me try again. Sir.” She ran back to the beginning of the mile long obstacle course and waited for the soldier acting as the time keeper to give her the go-ahead.

The drill instructor wore a self-satisfied smirk, “Works every time, we might make this one a soldier yet.”

Twilight took off as fast as she could at the soldiers signal; refusing to use her magic for anything that she could do another way, the DI had already yelled at her for that. The first obstacle looked simple enough, a ramp with some bumps and dips adorning its surface. It was easy to get your hoof caught and fall as Twilight learned to her chagrin her first time through. She made her way up the ramp quickly, but carefully.

Once she had conquered the ramp, the next challenge presented itself in the form of a large gap that needed to be jumped. She had used her magic to teleport across before, and this time she wanted to show the DI that she could complete this without cheating. She took a running leap and cleared the gap with room to spare, never slowing. She was determined to show them that she could handle anything.

She fixed an image of all her friends in her mind and used that to motivate herself. She would not let them down; they had all done their best and now it was her turn to step up to the plate. She could do this, for them and for herself.

The purple-coated unicorn pushed herself even harder. The next challenge was a wall with small ledges jutting out to use to climb the wall. She had fallen and bruised her side the last time and was determined to avoid the same mistake again. She took her time to ensure that she made it over the wall on her first try, letting out a small cry of triumph as she slid down the rope on the far side.

The next part she had breezed through before; it was a set of large, heavy bags filled with sand swinging from chains. Even though she had no trouble before, she wanted to run through the course flawlessly and so kept her eyes open. The unicorn dodged around the bags swinging every which way until she could finally dive past the last one.

Twilight looked with dread to her least favorite part of the course, the muddy trench. Once she stepped beyond the line in the dirt, she was fair game to the soldiers whose job was to shoot over the top of the trench, and shoot its occupants if they came off the ground too high. Her shoulder was still sore from the rubber bullet; which gave her even more reason to pause before diving back into the morass in the trench. She stayed as low as she could while keeping her mouth out of the black mud and crawled like her life depended on it.

She reached the end in record time and without once getting hit. The unicorn fixed the DI with a glare of grim determination as she pulled herself from the mire once more, sweat pouring from her body. The instructor’s face broke into a slow smile.

“Much better, you might be worth it all in the end.” he said, causing Twilight to grin, “But you disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer.” Her face fell as she was ordered to do fifty push-ups as punishment. She was panting; her chest and forearms burning from the sudden increase in physical activity. She was, as Rainbow Dash says, an egghead; she was not used to working her body so hard for so long. But she gritted her teeth and pushed herself as hard as she could, keeping thoughts of her friends in her mind.

When Twilight had finally finished with her pushups, the DIs had her run laps with the few soldiers that had volunteered to accompany her. One female DI tossed a large bag at her feet and told her to put it on. She lifted it with magic and got the bag situated across her back in a somewhat comfortable manner. When the magical lift was removed from the bag and its full weight hit her, she was nearly driven to her knees; it weighed nearly about eighty pounds.

The DI grinned as she watched the unicorn struggled to keep on her feet, “You’ll be jogging with that on your back for now.”

“Why? This is a lot to carry!” Twilight grunted.

“Because that is about the weight of standard combat gear before a rifle. Later you will be training with something that is a hundred and sixty pounds.” The DI laughed at the look of shock on Twilight’s face, “Get you used to that much, and this will be utter bliss. Now get running, Recruit!”

Twilight’s entire body was throbbing from the day’s hard work. She had spent the morning in all kinds of physical training, followed by hours of learning how to the instructors wanted her to walk, talk, and even think. Now she was dead tired and wanted nothing more than to return to her library and curl up with a good book. But the drill instructors had ordered her to get in touch with a local tailor who had been modifying a standard uniform to fit her. She could only think of one pony in the clothing business and so set off to Carousel Boutique.

As she made her way through the human camp, she began to notice that several ponies from Ponyville had made their way over and were mingling with the Marines that had been stationed here. The ponies were helping the soldiers to make their fortifications, and some had even begun to frequent the bar to laugh and drink with the aliens. Many of the Marines had taken to going to some of their pony friends’ houses for meals, getting a good home-cooked meal in exchange for helping out with the basic chores. Friendships had fast been formed between the two races despite the true reason for the humans’ presence. The purple unicorn’s face split in a tired smile as she saw a group mixed humans and ponies playing a human game called “football”, or “soccer”, in one of the open recreation areas the humans had set up.

She stopped and sat down to watch the game unfold. Twilight’s eyes followed the black and white ball back and forth until it was sent flying towards one of the sets of posts designated as goals. She finally noticed who was defending the goal; it was Sergeant Sands. He reached out and caught the speeding ball with ease, tossing it to a cyan blur that sped by. Rainbow Dash took the ball up the field and managed to get it past the pony defender, proving once more that she was one of Ponyville’s star athletes. She took a brief victory flight around the field before dropping back down to the field to continue the game.

Twilight decided that it was time for her to go home and stood back on her tired hooves and started making her way away from the camp, taking her time. She plodded along, trying to avoid making her legs any sorer than they already were, but she found the simple act of walking nearly unbearable. Still, she managed to make it to the Boutique without falling over. She could her angry voices coming from within the dress shop.

“But they’re ECC! Everyone takes ECC!” A man called out.

“Well, not this pony! It’s bits or nothing!” Rarity said in a politely angry voice, “Now if you would let me jazz it up a little…”

“And have the DIs take a bite out of me? Oh no, no way in sin am I going to let that happen.” Twilight nosed open the door, causing the bell to ring and the occupants of the store to round on her.

“Twilight, darling.” Rarity breathed in relief at the sight of her friend, “Help me convince this… man, that you need something fabulous to show who you are.” Between them floated a pony-shaped, olive drab StarSide Marine uniform; devoid of the various adornments to signify rank and specialties. Several more of the uniforms were folded neatly on a table near the arguing pair.

“Ma’am,” the exasperated soldier finally snapped, “she’s going to rolling in the mud and worse with these on. I see your work, are you sure you want that to be what people think of your clothes? At least this way they won’t recognize it as yours.”

“Mud?” Sheer horror played across the white unicorn as she looked to Twilight with wide eyes, “You’re going to be in the mud? Whatever for?”

“I have to do this if I want to be able to learn to use a gun.” the studious unicorn explained, “Besides, it is not that bad.”

The soldier looked Twilight up and down, “Huh, you must be superhuman… er, super-pony. Or whatever.” He turned back to Rarity, “Look, if you have a problem; take it up with the Colonel. He would know more than I do.”

“The Colonel..? Oh, you mean Jaze.” Rarity let loose a sigh, “I guess I can just stick to these… blagh, plain designs. Since you are supplying all the fabric, but I’ll only do it this once.”

Relief danced on the soldier’s features, “Thank you kindly ma’am.” He turned and left the store, shaking his head all the way.

Rarity turned to Twilight with a pout, “They really should let me design their outfits. They may be soldiers, but that is no reason to let themselves be un-fabulous.”

The look on the white unicorn’s face caused the bookworm to laugh, “Thank you Rarity. I needed that.”

“Needed what?” she asked in confusion, “Was it something I said?’

“Forget it.” the purple unicorn said as she scooped up the uniforms with magic and turned to leave.

“Twilight,” Rarity called out worriedly, “are you okay?”

“Yeah, what do you mean? Of course I’m fine.”

“I mean about Rainbow Dash. She is one of your best friends and she was hurt very badly. I know that you worry for her.”

Twilight’s eyes fell to the floor, “I was so worried, what if she… No, I’m not going to think of that. We’ve been friends for years now and I couldn’t bear to lose any of you. Especially like that.”

“We’ll all be fine.” Rarity gave a reassuring smile, “You can count on it.”

“But I want to make sure we’re fine. I guess I understand Dash and Applejack’s decision to learn to fight. They didn’t need somepony to get hurt to make this real to them.”

“Be careful, dear.” Rarity’s eyes were full of anxious thoughts as her studious friend left to go home. She passed a few humans heading the other direction, and among them was Jaze. He saw Twilight and took on a knowing grin. He waved the rest of the soldiers on and stayed behind to speak with the exhausted unicorn.

“So, how is it going?” He asked, the grin turning into an almost mocking one.

“It is tough,” Twilight replied tiredly, “I had to do fifty pushups on top of everything else as punishment.”

“What did you do?”

“I disobeyed an order.”

“And you got fifty pushups?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes… why?”

A dark look took over the assassin’s features, “Could you follow me, please.” He set off at a brisk pace with the fatigued unicorn trailing behind. She found it difficult to keep pace with the human’s stride and groaned as aching legs worked hard again.

Jaze passed through the camp as quickly as he could, skirting the field where the soccer game was still in progress. His pace had been increasing as he went, and Twilight guessed he was upset about something, but she could not put her hoof on what the cause may have been.

The assassin burst into the command building and ordered the drill instructors to be brought in. He waited in his office for the men and women to assemble, pacing like an annoyed predator. Twilight was sitting next to his desk, watching and wondering where the problem lay. She found the silence nearly unbearable, the only sound the steady thump of the Colonel’s feet on the floor. Luckily she did not have to wait long; the DIs did not want to keep their CO waiting. Several looked in states of varying dishevel.

Jaze fixed the assembled soldiers with a death glare, “This recruit informed me that you are taking it easy on her.”

“Easy?” Twilight asked

“We believed that…” an instructor explained at the same time.

“Don’t start. I told you to put her through basic. She wants to join the StarSide Marine Corps and that means she needs to be combat trained. Do you want an under trained recruit at your side in battle?”

“Sir, no sir!” the DIs called in unison.

“Good, then starting tomorrow I want to see her pushed as hard as any human recruit. Maybe even harder, we don’t have much time.”

One of the DIs nodded and looked to Twilight with a wicked grin, “Hear that, Buttercup? No more easy days.”

“What do you mean ‘easy’?” Twilight asked in a near panic.

“You’ll see tomorrow.” Jaze laughed, “And remember, you can back out at any time. That is a courtesy not given to most recruits.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once someone volunteers for the StarSide Marines, we own them until they complete their service term, are too injured for active duty, or die. You don’t have to die to opt out. This is just for you to get ready to face actual war, but you will be treated like any raw recruit. No special favors for you because you happen to know the CO; that might actually make it worse for you.”

“Right,” she replied shakily, “then I am going to head home and get some sleep.”

“About that,” Jaze’s stare rooted the purple unicorn in place, “from now on, you will be living at the camp. Go home, pack whatever you may think you need, and then report to the barracks.”

“O-okay.”

“And Twilight?”

“What is it?”

“Remember that you brought this on yourself.”