(Fallon)

"Amp, on your right!" I yell ejecting an empty mag and slapping another into the receiver. The green light blinks on to signify a round is in the chamber and the weapon is charged. Raising the weapon and flipping the selector to fully automatic I let loose a torrent of flechettes shredding the rocket team about to flank the other Atlas.

Amp sprints over to the building, using it as cover, sliding on his knees digging furrows in the ground as he does so. Behind me the shield generator continues to send energy pulses into the sky to power the planetary shield, so i know the ninth hasn't completed their mission yet. Since the ninth went in, UEC troops have been arriving in droves to try to pry us out and now the UEC cruisers have reached a distance that allows them to send down dropships full of troops and vehicles. The TAClink is lighting up with calls from units that have been cut off and are being over run. In the distance a massive mushroom cloud rises into the air, followed by an earsplitting explosion meaning an atlas has just activated its self destruct.

"Incoming, at mark two five!" Amp sends, a vector line slashes its way across my HUD and I turn SD to face the incoming Cocatrice attack helicopter. Two more of the UEC gunships come around the corners of a building following the first. The Atlas was never designed for this kind of combat, it was designed to deal with lankies who don't shoot at you, but despite its shortcomings, it has proved itself indispensable in this campaign and allowing us to use their versatility to our advantage.

"Shield wall!" I say earning a kind of nod from the green Atlas's sensor buble. As the Gunships begin their strafing runs, I lower SD to his knees and extend both arms in front of me, and activate the Icarus mounted autocannon. As the cannon swings into place, Amp steps behind me and extends his arms at a forty five above me. The rounds and missiles from the dropships impact on the magnetic shields of our Atlas' stopping them dead.

"Now!" Amp sends linking with SDs neural network and taking control of the auto cannon.

The low and slow pomp, pomp, pomp of the auto cannon firing signals the end of the lead gunship, then the next. The last does an about face and attempts to flee around the corner of a building known to hold enemy soldiers. We track the gunship and when it reemerges from the corner of the building, we return the rounds and missiles back to their sender. The Magnetic shield was never meant to stop rounds and rockets, it was meant to stop shrapnel. As the UEC helicopter was literally blown to bits, I have a feeling that someone in the R&D department must have been a groundpounder. There is a strange electrical sound in the sky catching our attention, the shield start ripping for some reason before steadying out after about a minute.

"What the hell was...!" Amp begins before a thunderous sound cuts him off drawing our attention.

"Holy hell."

A massive black dragon slams down in front of us. Unlike its brethren before it this one is covered in scars and is missing an eye. In its claws is the Atlas White Rose, her right arm has been severed and left leg looks like something heavy slammed into the metal and bent it good. It looks at us and smirks before rearing its head back and letting loose with a torrent of blue fire. The net comes alive with the screams of White Rose's operator as she is roasted alive, she tries to raise her Atlas's weapon only to have its gun arm pinned down. The metal starts to warp and turn orange as the lenses in the sensor bubble pop, before with a small pop the cockpit hatch begins billowing smoke. As Amp and I raise our weapons an entire company of UEC troops comes streaming around the corner.

"This is Iceman requesting back up at admin building entrance. Request strike package rolling, rolling north, point two six, three hundred meters Danger close." I say before taging my location with a waypoint and firing. If I can hold that fucker off a little bit longer my team and Miiora will...

===================================================

(Snow)

"Missile locked on, missile locked on, missile lock.." Snow jinks his fighter towards the deck stopping mere meters from the ground, prompting the missiles tracking him to slam into the deck. Pulling back on the stick he ascends and sees the two fighters on his tail through the canopy mirror. A line of tracers streak passed his canopy seeing his chance he takes a calming breath and snapped his fighter to starboard. The fighters follow him as he flies towards two buildings linked together by two bridges. He kicks the afterburner, folds his wings, and flattens his tail to present a smaller target. His vision starts to blur and darkness encroaches at the edges of his already strained body as he further accelerates.

"Mach 1, mach 2, mach 3, mach 4." The firing has gotten thicker as the other fighter has begun firing on him with its own cannon.

"Missile locked on, missile.. Vampire, vampire, vampire." At the last second he uses both hands to roll his fighter to the left, and only just makes it through the gap. Unfolding his wings, angeling his tails, and drawing back on the throttle he sees the two fighters slam into the buildings.

"Requesting back up at admin building entrance. Request strike package, rolling north, point two six, three hundred meters, Danger close." Rolling to port he swings around and burns towards the admin building. He rolls to the side to get a look and sees two Atlas's one white and the other green firing wildly at an advancing crowd of UEC ground troops. There is also a dragon slowly advancing towards the two however upon seeing the Avenger the beast slams into a building seeking cover before disappearing inside. There is another crowd of about company strenght coming around from another street about to flank the two Atlas's.

"Solid copy, rolling north, point two six, three hundred meters Danger close." Swinging around he flashes banshee six-four and banshee nine-eight, the dragonfly dropships come around and form on his wing. After another six seconds, a Tarantula hawk wasp dropshop comes around.

=============================================================

(Fallon)

"Last mag!" I shout dodging to the right to avoid an incoming missile.

SD is firing the auto cannon over my shoulder and even from here I can see the heat billowing off of the barrel of the gun. He fires the weapon with the precision only a machine can achieve. Beside me, Amp has a heavy round ricocheted into his arm making him stagger back. There is a thunderous roar as a black Avenger fighter streaks overhead followed by the much slower dropships and the street Amp and I are useing turns into the seventh circle of hell. Autocannons grenades, missiles, and guided munitions slammed into the ground in front of us shredding anything in their way.

A Cazador Atlas dropship swings over and drops a canister in front of us before flying off. Using the lull in the fighting Amp uses his shoulder mounted grapple to pull the ATLAS supply crate over to us. Opening it we see a surplus of filled magazines for our rifles and a Lankie blade attachment for the Icarus. The Lankie blade is a piece of a lankie siege ship's hull sharpened and mounted. Lankie ship hulls are made of some material that make our own laminate armor look like partially frozen whipped cream. I assume the guys at R&D thought why not use a piece of their own ships to cut up Lankies, the irony does not escape Amp either. I pick it up and am about to hand it to him when he denies it gesturing to my back.

"You take it, your auto cannon barrel is about to melt." he says. I nod my sensor bubble and turn around handing him the weapon.

"You are aware that this is essentially a giant sword."

"Yes. it’s really stupid, and it's a stupid concept, i'll give you that. I mean if a lankie gets close enough to someone to warrant this being used you will probably die."

"Grand."

There is a jolt as the auto cannon is removed from its modular mount and the folding blade is placed in. The L-blade is essentially a fifteen foot long, double edged pocket knife that tapers from the forte to the tip. As the blade is mounted I see the icon appear on my HUD replacing the autocannon icon with a maximum swing arc for the blade. The entire blade folds up into its casing as it is attached to the Icaros arm. Standing back up I key the primer and the entire arm raises itself and angels the white casing away from SD's back and the black blade swings out with an audible clang. I fold it up and begin filling my mag pouches.

"Iceman, your man snafu says we have movement heading our way." Amp says.

"Let's get to work." I say slapping a fresh mag into the receiver as the first of the new wave of troops arrived.

========================================================

(Miiora)

"Were at the opps center." Gunnery sergeant Parkins reports.

"Two casualties so far."

"Breach it and use flash bangs. we’ll need the comms gear in there." Fick sends.

"Copy that. Going in soft."

Fallon says the NAC's flashbang grenades are by design much louder than their anti personnel grenades. When Parkins and first squad breach the opps center hatch and toss a pair of them into the room, the detonation is so loud that it feels like the walls of the hallway are bowing out from the sonic energy. None of the troops we've faced so far are in fully sealed armor and without the benefit of an automatic hearing filter anyone in that room still alive is going to have permanent hearing loss, once they regain consciousness.

"Ninth this is Razgriz." a voice says sends. The transmission is weak and full of static even though I know that he must be overhead and at most, a few thousand meters from us. The walls of the Admin Key are thick concrete which does not like to let radio waves through.

"Razgriz one, go ahead" Fick replys.

"We have an active radar signatures from something coming in from the east. I can't engage because two UEC cruisers have shown up. So we have to stay low, but i'd say you have ten minutes before they're on top of us."

"Copy that Razgriz one, stay low and good luck. Saber one-one did you copy that?" Fick responds.

"Loud and clear." Avery Fallon says from his position outside of the building.

"Saber two-six and I are engaged with the locals. We have the ACM teams up on the north east and south west corners. Be advised our position is in danger of being over run." In the background of the transmission I hear the bases alert sirens wailing and the thundering horse reports of the giant flechette rifle his battle machine uses.

"Get out of there Fallon, we'll hold them at the entrance."

"Negative I'm not leaving you guys."

"Then keep our back clear for just a few minutes longer, we're taking control of the ops center." Fick says and he, Forbes, Trombley and I sprint down the corridor to our left to catch up with Gunny, Parkins, and first squad.

"Rudy, this is Fick hows it goin up there?"

"It's a big party, there's Humans with handguns, and PDW's up here. Must be the Local sympathisers."

"If you come across their leader try to get him alive."

"Be glad to if he doesn't shoot at us."

There are at least four or five bodies of fallen garrison troopers in the corridor, and none of them are even wearing the ballistic vests that wouldn't do anything to stop a human M-66. Our attack took them completely by surprise, which is almost unforgivable. They knew they had a hostile presence and the main protective platoon tasked with keeping their main command center safe wasn't fully battle ready when we showed up. Two of first squads troopers Giddings and Kenen are hunkered down covering both sides of the hallway just in front of the ops center hatch which is blown off of its hinges and lying on the floor just inside the room. I step ontop and over the hatch and into the OPS center.

"So far so good." Gunny Parkins says while unloading sidearms and PDWs and tossing them into a pile in the corner of the room. First squads troopers are busy tying up garrison personnel with "Flex cuffs". There are a half dozen people on the room, two civilian ponies in overalls, and four in fatigues. Two more uniformed troops, a Kleese and Human, are motionless on the floor. Sergeant Parkins checks them for weapons and then cuffs them anyway.

"Don't go anywhere." he says to the corpses. The opscenter people looks scared, one of them is bleeding from a gash in the forehead.

"They got at least one call out, we have UEC fighters coming in." Fick tells Parkins.

"They can't reach us in here, but they can fuck up things for Fallon outside."

"They have multi megawatt gear and at least a huge antenna array on the roof. Get someone up there and get Fallon some backup. Miiora, you can read their language and you know their computers, do you think you can lower the shield?"

"I have no idea how to do it, but I can try."

"Then try or your boy is gonna get shanked." I sit down and remove my helmet resting it on my lap before diving into the console

"I need some help up here. We've got a hole bunch of people who got smart and surrendered, I don’t have the manpower to keep a lid on them." Sergeant Rudy Reyes sends over the company channel.

"Send two troopers down with them to the center staircase, we’ll meet down there and take over the prisoners. Got just the space for'em."

"That's a solid copy."

"Humphrey, Rodgers, with me." Fick says on his way out and the two SI troopers follow him weapons at the ready. I find the Human armor so fascinating, the fact that we are able to talk, whisper, and even yell with our helmets on nopony outside can hear us talking. To someone on the outside we just seem to be gesturing randomly. Looking back to the screen I see a four big flashing red icons ming our way. I can't help but think about Fallon fighting for his life outside while I sit inside safe from any danger.

"If you are getting this message I am here to help." a voice said over the UEC channel.

======================================================================

(Fallon)

"That sure was a nice thing you did." Amp says firing his last thermobaric shell and destroying a building.

I kick the emergency exhaust and burst to the right to avoid two missiles coming at me before taking cover behind a building across the street from the Admin building. Pale blue icons appear two meters to my right and I see two mixed squads of ACM troops running up. Extending my arm, I stop their progress.

"Incoming!" Amp shouts taking cover behind another building across from me. My Taclink updates to show a Cocatrice has joined the UEC troops. Loading a canister shell into the chamber of my 120, I look to Amp, making a fist, a gun, and make a low sweeping motion with two fingers. He nods his bubble and sends his acknowledgement. I take a step out and level my rifle on the Cocatrice fireing flechetts into the cockpit while at the same time, Amp steps out firing a thermite grenade into the crowd of UEC troops. The Cocatrice exploades and crashes to the ground and I lean back taking my weapon into my left hand knife handling at the ACM troops.

"YOU GO GO GO!" I yell into the external. Knife handling at the direction they were heading before I stopped them.

"banshee two-eight going down, mayday may..." I hear over the radio and see a dragonfly dropship spiraling towards the ground its port engine spewing smoke as its starboard engine tries to keep the crippled engine in the air. The dropship clips a building and flipps over, crashing to the ground before exploding filling the street with dust and smoke. I switch to millimeter wave and see what looks like a carpet of insectoid creatures and a company of UEC troops heading our way. I look around and see they are coming at us from all sides complete with armor and dragons.

"There's people in the smoke. Contact all sides." I say, Amp nods and the two of us begin laying into them as we fire the sky turns dark.

============================================================================

(Snow)

"Target lock." the computer chimes. I depress the firing stud with my thumb and a missile leaps from the rotating rack and rockets forward. The UEC Pegasus fighter jinks right to avoid it, deploying flares, making the missile go dumb and explode. Flying around the explosion, Snow deploys his underslung laser cannon. He follows the fighter through some downright dangerous maneuvers as his computer and cannon track the UEC fighter. The red triangle jinks left and right, up and down forcing the blue circle to follow it around the HUD.

"Come on, come on, come on...." the computer makes a chime as the triangle and circle meet blink and turning green, he pulls the trigger and the entire hack half of the UEC pegasus is blasted to slag by fifty thousand gigawatts of laser.

Glancing to the mirror he rolls his fighter into a reverse S pulling his fighter up at the last second and unknowingly splattering a griffin's brains all over the next five hundred meters. Now in attempting to turn to meet him is another UEC fighter who was caught flat footed is promptly blown to slag. His computer chimes and he deploys the vertical racks as his eyes flicker over the twelve UEC fighters. The computer locks on before another flight of eight UEC fighter joins the first. Flicking the firing selector, he selects all remaining missiles before firing every remaining missile on the racks and destroying them all. Multiple warhead missiles, Tridents, and Air-ground variable missiles slam into the UEC fighters.

"Missile lock on, missile lock on, missile lock on..." he looks up to see two UEC fighters coming right at him. The sky turns black before a strange white fighter with no cockpit pulls up on his starboard wing. The sky turns violent again and he sees the ice blue fighter go inverted and flip over to his port wing, firing a pair of missiles destroying the two coming his way.

The Avenger and ice blue fighter both flip sideways and pass in between the two UEC fighters. He tracks the blue and gold UEC fighter with his laser cannon using his rotary grenade cannon to keep the fighter from turning away. His computer chimes and he lets loose turning the fighter to flaming wreckage. The ice blue fighter pulls alongside the fighter it went after and an arm unfolds from the fuselage. It tilts its fist down and unleashes a torrent of armor piercing grenades destroying the fighter.

"Thanks."

"You’re welcome. You’re out of sauce, go to this point and get more." A French woman's voice comes over the com before turning off.

As Snow turns his fighter he sees three African Commonwealth ships closing on the two UEC cruisers over the ocean unloading their cargo of brown fireant dropships as they go. The fourth with a red stripe streaks over the battlefield, dropping Zulu shock troops in sub orbital biopods and Siafu heavy infantry ground units.

=====================================================

(UEC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLtCgMN1Go

The new breed Changeling Praetorian stands over the body of a dead human soldier observing the humans falling back and using a fountain as cover for a firing line. The brood of Changelings that supreme commander Rarity has proved to be just the thing to finish off the humans. He sees movement on the ground to his left and turns to see a human struggling on the ground with two changelings. They appear to be trying to take the males armor off but can't seem to fathom it. Always up for a challenge, two more Changelings jump in to try to help and get their fun. And before long the Human is almost buried under a small mound of the Pratorians sisters.

"Fuck off!" the male yells once the females manage to pry the chest plate off. This apparently gave him enough leverage to get his arm free giving him time to pull a knife and began stabbing the multicolored changelings. However after about two or three deaths, he is quickly pinned and the remainder of his armor is either removed or broken off.

"Shut up, human." one of them says before a massive thump resonates throughout the courtyard.

Turning he sees what looks like one of the Human war machines kneeling down only this one is more spindly and sleek as well as having kind of flattened head with two red eyes on one side. The thing unfolds itself and a human can be seen inside of its chest directly under its head. The helmet the human wairs resembles a stylized human skull, the eyes of the helmet ignite a fiery orange and the things weapon snapps forward. With a sound that matches the Human autocannon fired from semi automatic droves of the Praetorians Changeling brood disappear in showers of gore. The thing stands to its full height showing it is indeed the same size as one of the Human war machines. On its shoulders are what appear to be magazines in slots built into the shoulders, and attached to the torso beside the head just before the right shoulder, a multi barreled gatling gun opens fire. Rockets fire from missile tubes on its left shoulder and a rocket pod on its left ankle.

Attached to its left wrist is what looks like a vicious set of black jaws, the usefulness of which is instantly demonstrated as an LAV tries to close on the vehicle. There is a sound like tires whiring in its feet and it reverses firing at the LAV, the rounds destroy the turret and front set of tires causing the vehicle to stop. It then rolls forward and uses its jaws to pry open the armored vehicle like wet tissue paper, the screams of terror from the occupants of the vehicle are cut short as the thing angles its torso and lets loose with its shoulder gatling. The pilot looks up and raises the weapon and begins picking sisters off of the pinned NAC soldier showering him in blood, before turning his attention to the Praetorian.

"What in the queens is that?" he asks taking a step back aghast before a series of impacts draws his attention from the death machine.

Now impacting in front of the NAC position and among his troops are what appear to be resized stone cigar shapes. With a bang, sections of the stone are blown off and sleeveless dark skinned humans jump out and engage the brood. Unlike the NAC however these new humans are not afraid to get up close and use their large angled knives to slice and hack into their victims. The Humans wore helmets like the pilot of the death machine being that of stylized skulls with tubes linked to their armor. They raise their weapons and let loose with rounds that are obviously meant for something that isn't as small as a pony or changeling, because the rounds cause their targets to literally explode. The Praetorian turns to join his retreating brood and runs into a massive six foot five human who grabs him by the throat with one hand and lifts him up, strangling him, before unsheathing his Kukri and disemboweling the changeling, the last thing the Praetorian sees is the oval shaped shield and crossed spears over the burning red eyes that seem to bore into his soul.

================================================================

(Charlotte)

I transform my fighter into its mid Atl transformation and fly backwards, firing the wrist gatlings at the advancing dragon. The relatively small rounds seemingly bounce off of the hide of the large reptile forcing me to use the "nose" gun. As soon as the Dragon rears back to breath fire like it had done before, I let loose with a burst from the anti-Lankie autocannon blowing the things head from its shoulders. I transform my Gungnir back into fighter mode and rocket back into the sky administering another G stimulant. I feel bad for the NAC fighter pilots who don't have access to G stimulants, they really save...

"Attention this is Hitman-Liaison requesting support for Atlas team outside of Adminkey, Saber one-one and Saber two-six are about to be over run." A female yet strang voice comes over the net.

Looking around I see a massive pillar of flame around the center building in the compound. I flick the afterburner and go at full burn towards the center and see a massive firefight on the ground. Flicking through infrared, millimeter wave, and ultrasound I can see there are literally mounds of dead UEC troops on the ground and at the center of the three way intersection are a pair of those Anti-Lankie units. There are a few of the ATLASs, I think they are called, lying on the ground in pieces and the two of them are back to back firing into an advancing crowd of UEC ground units. At their feet are what appear to be UEC personnel firing on their own units. No, because when I zoom in I see that there are kleese, humans, and i think they are called changelings in the group aiding the two Atlas. The smoke clears partly to reveal the two Atlas in greater detail. One is green, firing one handed, while an Atlas rifle magazine engulfed in a green glow and lifted into its hand. The other Atlas is like its partner covered in pockmarks and scratches, however the damage is accentuated by the white armor.

"This is Saber one-one to any remaining Atlas units requesting immediate backup. We are activating self... Come on you scaly fuck!" A familiar voice begins before an orange dragon slams through a building at them and the white mech sidesteps the massive reptile. Grabbing and twisting its arm and guiding it to the ground before lifting and bringing its clawed foot down on its head pulverizing it in a shower of gore. As the Atlas turned around, I see what looks like a frozen skull is painted crudely on the cockpit hatch that can mean only one thing.

==========================================================================

(Fallon)

A rare shrieks overhead and looking up I see the smoke has been cleared. Followed by a series of autocannons shots zipping a line down the apocalyptic setting before me, scores of bodies explode before a series of cluster missiles rack the street to my left. Then, there is sound of electronics deactivating followed by a violent and definitive boom behind me, the battle stops however briefly as we watch the shadowed from of the shield generator explode. A sudden gust of hurricane-like wind clears the smoke and in the sky we can see one of the UEC cruisers burning and making a Beeline for space. The other is sticking halfway out of the ocean on fire and its entire rear half where the engines would be were gone.

"Fallon this is Hitman actual the shield is down, mission accomplished." Ficks voice comes over the Taclink. Then the entire net begins lighting up with incoming radio chatter everything from NAC to SRA comms flood the net.

"What the hell?"

"Need some help? Longtime no see fallon." a french accented voice says as a NE Gungnir lands beside me in its infantry form, making it resemble an Atlas with jets for feet and plane part. Charlotte a girl I met in the Pittsburgh metroplex, I remember she was some unlucky berber who got off at the wrong train stop. The entire street on Amp's turns to a bloodbath as three red African Siafu units, two of which have massive napalm spewing incinerator units, roll their way down the road and joins our little group.

"Holy shit." I say before a thunderous roar draws our attention.

The massive black dragon appears again only this time we are ready for it as one Amp, Charlotte and I level our weapons followed by the three Siafu. But in its hands is the cockpit module for Orca’s Atlas.The fucker crushes it in his hands and as one we let loose as the dragon pulls its knife and charges our position. The scaly bastard’s hide is tough and even after Charlotte goes to that weird fighter/atlas mode to use her autocannon the autocannon rounds simply bounce off or are stopped by the hide. Seeing the threat posed by Charlotte's autocannon, the Dragon goes for her first and slams her hard into the side of a building. Amp steps up and fires the grappler at the things neck. The dragon then snaps its wing out catching the line and ripping it from Amps shoulder. Then a torrent of rounds slam into its side ricocheting off but gaining his attention. I look to my right and see the three siafu slide forward with a tirescreach, it's weird watching them move because their legs don't move when they roll forward.

“Come on!” one of the siafu pilots shouts reversing from its advance firing its autocannon. Amp flashes me on the net and I raise my weapon only to hear a click from an empty magazine I check my ammo supply, empty. I turn around to get more ammo from the supply crate only to find that empty as well.

“Fallon, we need help over here!” Amp says over taclink. I look to the downed Gungnir and see one of the arms is broken, This think killed most of the remaining Atlas’s and who knows how many of my friends in other units. The UEC has killed my friends they killed garza they could be killing Fick too, what about Trombley, or Forbes. What can I do, I don't have a weapon? Then a thought crosses my mind, god what would they do to Miiora if this thing kills us and the UEC troops get inside. In the best case scenario she would be executed, when she was assigned to my kare i had to take an oath to keep her and the other liberated slaves safe. Scanning my HUD for anything to help kill this dragon I see it,

“I wont let this fucker take me down.” i say to myself thumbing the release for the L-blade before taking a deep breath.

=================================

(Amp)

Fuck my guns dry and the damage to my Atlas is to bad for me to engage this thing at close range. The Africans surround the black dragon as I scan the battlefield and see a downed atlas. I sprint over to it and retrieve its ammo. There is the sound of tearing metal and I see the Dragon is standing over one of the siafu with its arm in its hand. It is about to stomp on the open cockpit when an audible metallic clang can be heard as the dragon is truck with what looks like a rifle. I look over and see Iceman stepping over a dead dragon towards us, the L-blade’s glossy black blade glistening in eerie glow of the fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIF7fLh0VH8

“Get to the entrance. Ill handle this.” Fallon says and from the tone of his voice low and calm I can tell that he is in full “iceman mode” as the people in his platoon like to call it.

The dragon roars dropping the Siafu arm and charging the Iceman. The beast goes high and Iceman goes low attempting to slice its legs off with the L-blade. The dragon beats its wings at the last second and avoids the blade getting only a small cut in its scales. I sprint over to the downed Siafu who is now in the process of picking itself back up before we go back to the entrance of the Admin building. From our position we can see the fight has gotten downright savage. The dragon makes continues attempts to rip the Icarus mount holding the L-blade from Iceman's Atlas’s frame. But every time he takes a step back making a swipe at the Dragon's hand or face with the blade. The dragon roars picking up a UEC humvee or jeep as they call it and hurls it at Iceman who slices the vehicle in two, before diving out of the way of an oncoming torrent of flame.

When the dragon ceases its torent to breath we see that fallon is kneeling beside the fallen form of stompers atlas. Stomper unlike the rest of us chose to come equipped with the anti lankie eighty milometer autocannon for his atlas. And now the weapon is being held in IceMan's hands before the cannon opens up with a three round burst. The rounds impact the thick hide of the black Dragon and exploded tearing holes into its hide. The Dragon screeches and dives around the nearest building for cover giving Iceman the time he needs to scavenge more ammo. Iceman's sensor bulb snapps to the right as a nearby friendly unit spots the dragon. He levels the weapon taking a step back before firing full auto into the side of the building.

He reloads and continues to fire as he tracks the computers presumed movement of the monster tearing massive holes into the buildings side. A portion of the buildings face collapses as the dragon emerges from a corner firing what looks like an assault rifle. Iceman doesn't skip a beat after the first few rounds strike his armor. Raising his left hand he deploys the Magnetic shield and continues firing on the dragon as he walks forward closing the distance. When the dragon is within range Fallon deactivates the shield blasting the beast with its own rounds before grabbing the barrel of the assault rifle and jerking it up. Startled by his change in approach the dragon attempts to swipe at him with its free hand only for the Icaros to jerk the L-blade up and around fallon's right shoulder and slice the offending arm off. The dragon lets out a raur of pain so loud my Atlas and helmet have to cut all external sound to protect my hearing. Iceman then brings his autocannon around and begins firing point blank into the dragon's body, firing a line from its stomach to its neck each shot showering his atlas’s white armor with blood before the weapon ejects its empty magazine.

The thing still refuses to die letting go of the rifle in its hand the dragon makes a grab for the Knife Iceman has strapped to the shoulder of his machine. Iceman grabs the arm before wrenching it back forcing it to its knees, and kneeling the dragon in the back with an audible pop and groan of metal as one of the wing bones are broken. Iceman brings the blood covered L-blade around slicing the dragon's stomach open. Before raising a clawed ped up to the dragons shoulder and pushing it to the ground where it tries to weakly grasp at him. Iceman then reloads the autocannon before jamming it into the beast's open stomach and firing. The shots cover the Atlas with blood as he brings the blade around and slices the dragon's head off, before firing another three rounds into the now gaping chest cavity.

“And stay down. Huh, so that's what the L-blade is made for.” Fallons voice comes over the radio before he reloads his weapon and rejoins us and the stunned ACM troops by the Admin building.

“...Damn.” one of the Siafu pilots says, my thoughts exactly.

====================================================

(UEC Element of Magic)

The battle has reached a stalemate, the Humans did not retreat like Rarity had thought they would when they used the Elements of Harmony to destroy the massive human ship. Instead the two smaller one thousand meter Manitoba and the other like her, however the Elements of Harmony were lethal to the human ship and soon would be the end of the Human fleet once the firing lenses were reset. The bridge to the ship opens up to reveal Spike walking in.

“Ah spiky wiky come to see the end of the Human fleet.”

“Ya.” he responds.

“Are the final preparations complete?”

“Yes ma’am” a human sensor operator says.

“Fire.” the entire ship begins to shake from the build up magical energy but then as the ship is about to fire the lenses on either side of the ship explode.

“Status Report!” polar demands,

“Sir the Main magical emitters are offline and the lenses have been split.”

“How?” Twilight asks

“Sabotage.” Luna answers

“Imposable.” Rarity interjects

“Actually not.” All eyes turn to spike.

“I'm sick of being your slave Twilight, being forced to do your work, being fed only just enough to be kept alive, sleeping in a bucking basket, and being forced to do the same to other slaves. What we are doing is wrong…”

“What are you saying Spike?” Twilight asks the entire bridge is quiet with the exception for the officers at their stations.

“What i'm saying is this. Fuck off, i'm out” he yells and the hatch to the bridge opens and two cylinders roll into the room.

“Grenade!” Polar yells raising a shield around himself, the Royals, and the Elements, and act quickly followed by all three alicorns. However instead of exploding smoke fills the room and two Humans in black bug like armor emerge from the smoke one carries a long black weapon attached to an arm at his hip and the two snatch spike.

“Death to the UEC!” he shouts as two more actual grenades roll into the room after he has exited, the entire command center explodes with a shower of sparks and dust. Polar pushes a body off of the helm and takes control.

“Secondary bridge crew to command center, prep for Warp the Element of Magic is leaving.”

Author's Notes:

What did you think of the longest chapter yet?