Twilight trotted out of the mess hall beside Delco, they had just finished eating and as much as she hated to admit but over the last three days her stomach has been getting less and less angry with her about putting meat into it. “I’m still surprised you are going out Twi’” Delco was saying, this had been the first chance she had seen him for more than a few moments so she had been able to tell him of her decision. “Though thinking about it actually it makes sense.” He said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?” She asked looking up at him as they walked.

“Well, with what happened to you it makes sense you want some payback.” He said nodding. “I mean that lab was contracted to the government so what they did was with the government’s approval to an extent.”

Twilight was quiet for a moment as she looked ahead. “I know.” She said. Every day that had passed she became more sure that she wanted to go into the field and the more sure she was of what she could do when out there. She knew that should scare her but for some reason it didn’t in the slightest. “But the main reason I am going out is because my healing spells will be more useful out there than in the infirmary.”
“Yeah I get that. If they work half as well as you told me then they will be.” He said.

Twilight opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by a voice from behind her. “Hey there little pony, just the unicorn I was looking for.” Both Twilight and Delco jumped and spun around, Delco hand going for his pistol on his hip.

“Damnit Liston! You need to stop fucking sneaking up on people! You’re going to get yourself fucking shot one of these days!” Delco said angrily glaring at the smiling supply clerk.

Liston waved his hand as if shooing a thought away. “No, No if one of you were going to shoot me you would have done it by now I’m sure.” He chuckled. “Besides it keeps you soldiers’ wits about you so to speak.” He smiles wide. Yes he defiantly reminded Twilight of Pinkie Pie. “Anyways I need to measure your ears little pony.” He said pulling out his measuring tape from his jacket.

Twilight perked up. “What do you need to measure my ears for?” She asked.

“Well you see I need to modify the helmet so your ears aren’t crushed by it and to do that I need to know the exact measurements of your ears. Granted I could take a guess but I run the risk of the holes being too big and then the helmet won’t be as effective. Trust me you want the helmet to be as effective.”

Twilight looked up at Liston for minutes before she nodded. “Alright.” She said and made sure her ears were up fully as the Pinkie like human started measuring her ears from every angle. He also ended up measuring her horn as well before the tape measurer disappeared into his jacket and his notebook came out. “Thank you little unicorn, your armor should be done in the next couple of day, at least enough you can try it on.” He said as he wrote in his note book. “I’ll come find you when I need you.” And with that her turned on his heels and walked off back down the tunnel.

Delco leaned over and whispered to Twilight. “Not going to lie, that guy weirds me out.”

Twilight walked into the Armory and saw Dupo was already out of his cage and ready for her with a new gun for her to train with. “Hey Dupo, reporting for training.” She said happily. She had to admit the sight of a new gun to be trained on made her happy. The last two days he had been training her on the pistol.

She had been afraid of the gun for the first day but after Dupo had taken time to explain how the guns worked and how to properly handle them as well as the rules of gun safety she hadn’t been as scared of them the next day and had actually been looking forward to the training.
“Right on time kid.” Dupo said as he lifted the rifle he had sitting on the table and Twilight smiled. “Now then let’s get right to it. This. “He held out the rifle. “Is an MX3B assault rifle, it has a 32 round magazine of 5.73. It works with all types of ammo. It had two different rates of fire, semi-automatic to fully automatic. It is the standard issue assault rifle of the Federal Army do to the fact it is very durable and works with a wide range of attachments from scopes, grips, tactical lights, laser sights and 30mm grenade launcher to name a few.” Dupo said with a hint of pride in his voice, one thing she had noticed was that Dupo was very enthusiastic about firearms and seemed to know everything about any of them; she figured that was why he was in charge of the Armory.

The next few minutes was spent with Dupo showing her how to eject the mag and reload before having her do it several times. She found how these guns worked very fascinating. Once she had reloading down he showed her several different MX3Bs with various attachments and had her familiarize herself with how they worked, she found the different scopes to be really interesting as there were so many different types. She had been shocked when he showed her the Night Vision and Thermal scope do the fact she had never thought of making devices that would allow you to see in the dark without actual light or see a person based on their body heat.

“Ok I think that is enough familiarizing yourself with it. To the line.” He told her and she moved to the line. “Weapon ready.” She picked up the rifle without any attachments in her magic and rook aim down the sites. “Fire.” She pulled the trigger with it set to semi-auto. The rifle had less of a kick then the pistol had. After firing a few shots, all of which hit almost the exact center of the target. “Cease fire.”

She stopped firing. “Next target, use full auto.” Dupo told her and she clicked it over as she moved to the next target and she pulled the trigger, caught a bit off guard as the rifle climbed up but it didn’t take her long to adjust for it and fire in small bursts only holding the trigger when Dupo told her to so she could learn to fully compensate for the climb. The only time she didn’t have a close grouping was when she had to compensate for the climb but the cluster was only a bit larger than the rest of the shots.

After empting another mag and ejecting it she heard someone clapping slowly from the doorway and when she looked she saw another camo wearing human who was older than most of the soldiers but looked younger than Dupo. Dupo’s reaction was almost instant as he stood straight and his right hand snapped to the edge of his cap. “Sir, I was not expecting you in the armory sir.” He said crisply.

“At ease sergeant.” The man said as he stepped into the armory and Dupos hands went behind his back as he stood legs shoulder width apart. “I was just coming by to see how our newest recruit is doing in her weapons training and I must say I am impressed.” He stopped in front of Twilight. “Hello private, I am Major Briggs.”

Twilight smiled up at him. “Hello Major Briggs, I’m Twilight.” She said in the friendlies way she could then blinked in confusion when Major Briggs frowned down at her.

“I see no one has taught you how to react to a superior officer.” He said down at her and Twilight’s smile fell.
“Um….sorry?” She said uncertainly.

“Don’t worry; we have a very experienced Chief Petty Officer in charge of basic training. I think I’ll be introducing you to him later today. “Major Briggs said as he looked back at Dupo. “Carry on sergeant.” And with that Major Briggs left.

Twilight stood there staring at the door. She had done something wrong and she felt like she had failed her mentor. She didn’t know what the training entailed but if it would teach her what she was supposed to do so she didn’t fail again she’d do her best to complete it.
“Well, the Major is in a bad mood.” Dupo said as he relaxed before turning back to Twilight. “Let’s get back to your training.”

Twilight walked down another tunnel of the base in a section she hadn’t been to yet. While she spent time exploring the base there were still entire sections she hadn’t seen do to the base being spread out so much throughout the sewer. She was being led by a soldier who apparently had been sent to find her.

The soldier had found Twilight in the mess hall seeing how chicken compared to ham in taste. A fact she was not proud of admitting that for one, meat wasn’t bothering her as much and two she actually wanted to compare tastes of meats. When the soldier had found her she had quickly finished her meal and now she found herself here.

They soon reached a door that unlike any of the other doors of the base this one had nothing spray painted on it to indicate what it was. “Well we are here, good luck.” With that the soldier headed back down the hall as rabidly as he could without actually running. Seeing that did not fill Twilight with confidence of what she would find on the other side of the door.

Slowly she pushed the door open and found a large empty room with just a single middle aged human standing in the middle of it. “Um….hello?” She said stepping into the room.

The human looked at her with a blank face. “You’re late.” He said with little emotion.

“I’m sorry I was busy ea—“

“I don’t want your excuses I want you front and center!” The human barked at her and Twilight galloped and stood in front of the human. The human glared down at her. “Why aren’t you saluting?”

“I don’t know how.” She said and the human rolled his eyes in annoyance then looked down at her with disgust.

“Take your right hoof and bring it up beside your freakishly large eyes with the top edge is level with your eyebrow.” He told her and she did as instructed. “Wrong.” He said with more annoyance. All and all it took four wrongs before she got it right. “Now then, I am Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez, and I am going on record in saying you are truly the worst things I’ve ever had the displeasure of having to train and personally I wouldn’t be doing this for some purple horse if not for the fact the General told me I had to.”

Twilight swallowed hard. “So to start this off, I want you to run 50 laps around this room.” Twilight stared at him. “MOVE!” Mendez yelled and with a yelp Twilight started galloping around the edge of the room. About the time she reached lap 20 she was breathing heavy and was slowing.

She yelped when she felt a sting in her flank that made her jump and when she looked she saw a blue something on her flank as she ran and when she looked at Mendez she saw he had some type of strange looking gun she had never seen before. It was silver and thin with a strange bubble on top of it. As she ran anytime she started to slow Mendez would shoot her flank with the weird gun that seemed to shoot balls of paint at stung when they hit and it made her run faster.

When she finally reached 50 she collapsed on the floor panting. She heard Mendez walk over and she slowly looked up at him as he looked down at her in annoyance that seemed to be his normal expression. “Did I say you could rest?” He demanded.

“N-no…”Twilight said trying to catch her breath.

“Then get up and follow me, we are just getting started.” Mendez said and shot her in the flank again with the strange gun causing Twilight t jump to her hooves with a yelp as Mendez turned and headed for the door. With a groan Twilight followed, her legs shaking in protest.

With a groan of pain Twilight collapsed into her bed. She had just returned from training with Mendez and her entire body was crying out in pain. “Six….fucking….hours….”She mumbled. After her ‘warm-up run’ Mendez had taken her to an obstacle course and made her run the entire things, a lot of running, climbing and crawling, all with him shooting her randomly with that stupid gun of his! Her flank was completely numb from being hit so many times. After the course he had her do all manner of exercises. Then after that came probably the worst part, hand to hand combat training, she didn’t know how many bruises she had as after Mendez had shown her the basic moves she had to fight him. It did not go well with 10 win from him and 0 losses.

No matter what she did during the fights she couldn’t lay a hoof on the man as he easily dodged her attack and seemed board, telling her after the 10th win that if he had been a Fed she’d have been dead a hundred times over by then.

There was a knock at her door and she groaned as she rolled onto her side and sat up, wincing at her bodies protest. “Come in. “She said slowly sliding out of bed.

The door opened to admit Delco. “Well you look like shit Twilight. “He chucked as he closed the door. “Take it first day with our Chief Petty Officer?” Twilight nodded slowly. “Thought so, the guy’s a real son of a bitch.”

“You are telling me.” She said having to agree with that assessment, curse word and all.

“Yeah lot of us were surprised when he left Camp Graceland to join us. He was one of the instructors there and he was a military man through and through. But when the general made his coup attempt and was beaten back Mendez left and joined us, said something about how ‘if you really wanted to pull it off you’re going to need me’ or something to that extent. He’s been with us ever since.”
“So…he just randomly joined up?” Twilight asked as she sat on her haunches and Delco sat on the edge of the bed.

“Pretty much, it’s helped out a lot with the people that join up who aren’t military.”

“Wait, you mean some of you are Federal Army?” Twilight asked in surprise.

“Former, about a fourth of us here used to serve but we were loyal to the General and believed in what he was doing so followed him. The General was a one star general in the Federal Army and learned how things were actually run and it disgusted him and most of her as well as we were protecting an extremely corrupt government. This all happened about…oh…5 years ago I’d say. Since then civilians have joined up and that’s the bulk of our forces so without Mendez most of our guys would be dead trying to take on actual trained soldiers”

Twilight nodded, it made sense. “But…why is he…such a bastard?” Twilight said, she had tried to think of another more polite word but couldn’t.

“So you don’t die.” Delco said simply and Twilight stared at him. “Look, he might be hard on you but that’s because he wants to make sure you have the best chance of survival, if you can’t handle him what chance will you have against someone actually trying to kill you?”

Twilight sighed, that did make sense she reluctantly admitted to herself. “Anyways I was just dropping by to see how your first day went and to warn you it’s going to get far worse.” Delco said with a chuckle as he stood. “Best get some sleep Twilight; you’re going to need all the sleep you can get to survive Mendez.” And with that Delco left her room.

Twilight climbed back into her bed, her mind racing with what Delco had told her both about the rebels and Chief Petty Officer Mendez. She guessed if he was like that because he cared she could put up with it. She closed her eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep.

A few hours later she was awoke by a bucket of ice cold water being dumped on her and she shot up sputtering to find Mendez standing over her bed holding the bucket. “You’re late for training and when I come looking for you I find you sleeping on the damn job. “Mendez said with annoyed as Twilight stared at him. “Well…what are you waiting for? Move it!” HE yelled and Twilight jumped out of bed and headed for the door, before she reached it she felt the familiar sting of Mendez paint gun thing on her flank. “Double time it.” She started to gallop for the training wing with Mendez right behind her shooting her flank every now and then. Forget what she thought last night, the man was a bastard.

Author's Notes:

I know it's a very short chapter but couldn't really think of much more to write for this chapter without it getting bogged down with repeating the same things over and over but I wanted to show a bit of the start of Twilights training.

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