Introspection, the act of looking into oneself to see the subconscious reasons behind why one does a certain thing. It's an interesting process, as with me there is more than enough to go through. I looked deep into my mind, there was a question bothering me. That question was only one word, but it spanned a universe of questions bouncing in and out of my mind. The question: Why? Why did I go along with this group? Why did I continue to fight? Why did I join Steel's militia? Most of all, however, why am I alive?

It was weird, how this kept me up. I was just looking at the dark fall sky, bleeding stars bore through the black silk that is our sky. In the West, however, there were no such stars. The lights that came from Blueblood's factories and cities were so bright that they blotched out the night, putting them in an everlasting day. We slept on the ridge of the mountain, just under a big oak tree, with carvings written in it from decades long gone. I faced that everlasting light as I rested my back against the tree, but Bellona was on the other side.

'Why am I alive?'

I've seen so much, through both peace and war I've seen the best and worst of ponies. I've seen good stallions die in ditches as if they were dogs, and I've seen the worst of all rise to the top of the world. At least the top of the world I fought for. I had felt many things, love, hate, fear, sorrow, and pain. Why was that? So many questions, so little time. None of it had answers, but when I looked around that oak tree at Bellona, I think I found my answer.

'The job isn't done. You still have work to do and ponies to save.'

The answer satisfied me, and I drifted off to sleep.

A rogue bullet broke the silence that was in the helicopter, an odd and awkward silence took it's place.

'From one world, into the next.'

We had gotten tipped off to a weapons cache in the widely torn streets of Ishmail, we weren't sent until we confirmed that the intelligence was good. To do this we had an agent head down to the area under the guise he was a transfer from a nearby village. The first place they took him was the cache, and it was exactly where we thought. Old warehouses in the fifth block towards the town square. We needed to do it by the book, a daytime helicopter drop raid to cut off all streets around the warehouse so that we can make sure nobody got in or out. From there (at the same time we were getting dropped) they would drop a small ranger detachment directly on top of the warehouse, who would then breach through side windows and the ceiling.

We called these types of things Cowboy Runs, mostly because of the fact that very few shots were fired and most of the time there would be a lot of captured Yakistani insurgents. I was dropped one and a half blocks away dead center in the street. The helicopter rocked to a stop before we dismounted, sliding down the metallic rope all the way to the bottom. The spot we dropped on was the real issue, the rope landed right on a car. This caused a weird bounce that put a shock right through your calves. It wasn't anything painful, but just a bad start.

Right when we all touched down, we ran to cover, we needed to stop anyone and everyone no matter how difficult. This should only take an hour so I knew that it would be easy to hold them off. At least it would've been, had insurgents not figured out what we were doing as soon as we pulled the helicopters out. The shots started coming in from directly behind us, the first of which breaking through the window of a car next to me. Our medic got cut with some glass from that, but he returned fire at no direction in particular as he made his way behind it's engine block.

I was looking down the road, nopony in the streets. That was when one Yak popped his head out of a corner and made a quick burst, which all flew wild and made it's way nowhere. I readied my M16 at the same corner waiting for him to pop his head out once more. Instead of his head, however, he showed his rifle and hooves to send out some blind fire. It was surprisingly accurate, hitting another window out of the car, just passing a radiopony by a couple of inches. Our SAW gunner had just set up and started opening up in automatic bursts at the young Yak, who got frightened and ran away.

We were pretty good so far, only that medic had gotten hurt and two windows had gone out. Still could've been worse. That was until the few bystanders peeking out of their windows and apartments became a mob, all approaching the same location. The crowd built up quickly, soon enough men women and children alike were yelling and screaming at us. I couldn't make out what they were saying even if I did speak the language.

A few shots rang out from within the crowd, they were small shots that sounded like a small pistol. Some of the crowd broke off, but most didn't even hear it. The ones that did fled into alleyways or into open doors. The doors would then, presumably, be shut and locked. We heard a car in the mix, I directed our SAW gunner into a nearby building, we were in a one way road and there were small two story buildings on each side. He made his way to the roof and set up his machine gun , staring down the sights. He looked up off the roof and shouted something at me.

"What?" I couldn't hear him. He shouted again but I just read his lips.

Truck... too many...

"Could you say that one more time?"

He scoffed and pulled out his map, which he wrote a note on the back of and tossed it down to me. I opened it and read it.

'There's a truck just down the road, it's carrying armed stallions. I can't take the shot there's way too many civilians in the way.'

"How many of them are there?"

When he shouted this time I could actually hear him, faintly but enough to know for sure what he was saying.

"We're looking at maybe twelve, but there's a lot of them piled on that thing, probably a machine gun too."

"Keep an eye on it will you?"

"Wilco."

I looked forwards, I could see what he was talking about. The crowd was dying down with that truck pretty much plowing through it. I could see one of the Yak's heads, poking just above the rest. He was small, skinny, and bloodshot. He looked tired as he approached, not quite physically tired but emotionally. He was sick of fighting, and I could see it. Moreso I could see it through the ACOG I used on my rifle. I had it centered right in his center mass, I didn't know if he was a threat or not, but more heads slowly came into view above the rest. Another pistol shot rang out way too close to us, it wasn't fired at us but it was still close. The crowd parted, except for a few, the yaks got off of the truck and opened fire. It was a plain white truck, I don't know why that was what I remember the most clearly but it is, that oddly clean color that truck had in such a poor country. I never understood it.

They were using whatever they could find, some even throwing rocks. I looked over to the radiopony, I didn't need to say it.

"Light 'em up!" He screamed into his radio.

The SAW gunner let loose hellfire into the trucks windshield, blood splattered all over it and the glass pane fell into the chassis of the truck, he rerouted his attention to the sidewalk. Someone else took the shot before him but there was a Yak firing his pistol from the sidewalk, he lay dead leaning his body off of the road. That was three down, one wounded. The wounded rolled his way out of the passenger seat of the truck, leaving a smear over the dash and the side door.

We kept our rifle steady, there was a few still lingering about. Going by our initial estimate that there was twelve overall, that made probably seven left. I moved my headset off of my ears and looked towards our medic. He was horrified. Our medic was a corpspony named 'Aishika'. He was a small set zebra that had just gotten out of high school. He joined to be a doctor, but never wanted to have to pull a trigger. When he first told his family he was joining the Navy (As he had learned the Marines did not have any medical positions, and instead relied on the Navy for such services), their initial reaction was shock.

He didn't have a normal upbringing for a soldier, but to be fair there really isn't a 'normal' for these types of ponies. His parents were adamantly against all Equestrian wars, since they were survivors from the Equestrian occupation of Morocco. They almost disowned him had he not said he was to be a doctor. The issue was sometimes you aren't at leisure to decide what you will be doing when you join the military. Although he was a corpspony and technically not supposed to even hold a rifle, due to lack of medical experience among soldiers led to a serious gap in ponies that knew how to use a pair of scissors. They threw all the corpsponies into the fray.

He was young and terrified. Most of all, however, he was never going to be the same.

The simplicity of life was a bit astounding actually. I woke up just before dawn, and as always Bellona was still asleep. I got up to gather firewood, it was getting cold and we needed to have heat. The cedar wood rolled off of it's branches the way you would peel a fruit, it took a gentle pull to get the tinder separate from the dead tree. Once I had a nice pile I went back towards where I rested and laid rocks around where my fire was to be.

It wouldn't be a large fire, and thus the circle wasn't going to be large either. I put some of the dry cedar in the center and lit it on fire with my knife and a flint. It kindled after about twelve minutes of trying. When it did burst into flames I just looked down into the fire, staring blankly as I waited for it to grow. Once it went from a tiny candle to a small and respectable flame I used twigs to keep it going and bade the fire to gain size. Bellona was now awake and looking at the fire over my shoulder. I never understood what was so intriguing about fire, but I suppose it's a universal fascination. I threw the rest of the sticks in until I could get at a higher body temperature, Bellona was fine already so she stayed back, we didn't speak but just looked into that burning pit.

The fire danced in the morning light, and as soon as it rose above the rocks I put more rocks in on top of the fire to smother it. It died quietly, and it was time to move again. Our path that lay ahead was steep uphill with roots jutting out from the hillside. It went like this for a solid 100 feet or so. I was up first, so I put my hoofs against the wall (it wasn't entirely vertical, it was roughly a 80 degree angle so there was space to move) and grabbed the first strong root.

It was a tree root from long ago, but it was pinched into the ground and secure to be pulled on. I used it to help me gain some altitude, Bellona followed my every step. She even mimicked the way I stepped on the spaces, gently prodding the ground to get rid of any doubt that I had tried to clear for her. I grabbed at everything I could, and eventually made it to the top. As soon as I climbed up I turned around and reached for Bellona's hoof. Then a booming crack came from the mountain. The root under her hoofs had given in, causing a dirtslide on the small cliff. I swung towards her and caught her by the forehoof and threw her up onto the top of the mountain. I was still holding onto her, and when I felt the land under me start to slide I didn't hesitate to drag her up the hill. We made it to the top of the mountain, which made me somewhat glad we didn't try to go around. The other half of the mountain was a death range with steep drops every few yards. The way down the mountain would be much easier, as it was all clear land and prairies.