The ground shook.

It had been days since supplies and sustenance had last  reached Stalliongrad. The bustling, massive city once beautiful and joyous was beginning to starve, and the constant pounding from the Aether Mk II Magic Missiles shook the snow off the roofs and the various inhabitants off their hooves. The city sizzled, a silvery, wispy hell from the stifling side effects of the bolts that struck the ground - a phosphorescent burning that crippled and deformed. Civilians were being led out of the city, of course - but for the remaining defenders, every pony smelled the stench of magic flame and burning blood.

Last night, Storm Hammer struck the last nearby wing of the liberation force, gutting their air power. This morning, early, the bombing began.

Her upper right haunch was bleeding heavily. A portion of the blue balloon tattooed onto her flank was singed - below the blood oozed steadily, the wound only half-cauterized by the burn, leaving a dip where the bolt’s energy apex made impact. The crimson trail down her leg caked over and stopped at a tightly wound bandage just above her knee, soaked red with absorbed blood leakage as she limped, shivering, through the snow.

Pinkie’s face was garnished with her winter-print scarf and frozen tears. The warmth that so brilliantly radiated from her eyes only a year before had all but disappeared. A cold, steely blue iris remained. The once bright pink coat had turned stale and bleak. She sniffed softly and continued on, her hot pink rifle slung across her back, and her miserable canter was framed with her straightened dark magenta mane, dusted lightly with snow.

Before her the treeline emerged. The treeline was carpeted with snow and the scent of strong wintermint wafted with the soft breeze, almost comforting. Her right flank continued to burn as she trotted into the treeline. It was refuge for some ponies, the forest. For her, for Pinkie, it was a matter of retribution. Two klicks northeast was the F.O.B. and the artillery position of the Imperial Military Sixth Battalion. Her mission was simple. Disable the Aether casters.

And then came the twitch.

It was slight, in her left eyelid. A little jerk. But all at once, her brain snapped into focus and her lithe body dove sideways behind a tree as the magus bullets bit into the trees where she had just been trotting, the wood crackling and snapping and sizzling with the impacts.

Her breath quickened, but quickly her eyes achieved a fluid clarity in their shine, her breath slowed, and her rifle was safe at home in her hooves. On her hindlegs, she leaned back against the tree for support as she craned her neck to locate her aggressor. One o’ clock from the side impact from tree - noise and slight movement in shadow of canopy. She could hear very softly the breath of the hidden pony, and grimaced.

Standing on her hindlegs caused more blood to spurt softly out of her wound. She quickly covered her mouth with her hoof to prevent her yelp from escaping as the pain worsened. In a quick flash her rifle roared out two rounds in the general direction of the previous shots, and she ripped a painkilling hypo from her belt and roughly rammed it into her flank. The pain, at least, was gone when she leaped to the next tree forward. She could more easily hear the adrenaline-driven panting of the unicorn hunter - huntress, by the tone of the breaths.

But her seeking eyes found no target. Perfect.

She fired another two round burst in the general direction of the shooter, her left eyelid twitched, the return was surprisingly almost on target. The bullets whizzed by each other, nearly touching. The searing heat of the magi bolts punched into the previous tree, and Pinkie dove quickly to a tree at her two, and dropped and listened carefully.

The huntress’s eyes flitted about carefully. One earth pony wasn’t too much of a challenge. What’s more, she seemed to be wounded, judging by the way she had walked into the forest.

There was a reason the Imperial Military did not give special operations training to the lower breeds. The cloaking magic was simple and illusory - more than enough to fool even the perceptive eyes. Although the shots came close to her, they were not at all threatening. The earthbreed wouldn’t get a shot on her. But the pressure needed to be continually applied. She stalked forward and trained her M-4 Magus on the previous tree, quietly, slowly.

The hoof-shaped depression in the snow fell two feet from Pinkie’s tree. She could feel the odd spacial distortion in her wiggling rear right hoof. Her hooves held the rifle by the barrel shroud, raised quietly as if a club.

The stock met the rear of the unicorn’s head, hard, blanking her vision for a moment as the cloak disabled. Dazed, she grunted and stumbled and swung her own rifle muzzle-first around to meet the side of the pink pony’s face, the iron sights cutting into her cheek, but the muzzle stuck where a shot fired would be a shot wasted.

The blood ran quickly down Pinkie’s face as she struck the weapon out of her face, warming her frozen cheek as she quickly slung her rifle over her back and struck down with her free hoof at the huntress’s face, which connected with a crack and knocked out a molar.

The unicorn spat her silvery blood and bucked upward at the pink pony’s chest to send her back. Her vision still blurred from the strike from the stock of the earth pony’s rifle and still grounded, she struggled to train her own weapon on the pony before her.

Pinkie gasped as the impact of the huntress’s hindlegs knocked the air out of her, disorienting her for half a second, perhaps even breaking a rib. Eyelid twitch.

The bolts barely missed the top of Pinkie’s head as she ducked and dove down upon the unicorn again, her one forehoof shooting to her belt to find the ursa sedatives, the other connecting cleanly with the unicorn’s bloody face again, spattering more silver fluid onto the snow and her own hoof.

A shot was heard as the huntress slammed her rifle sideways into Pinkie’s right flank, jostling out the firing pin from the mechanism as the shot fired in panic lost the bullet from the muzzle into nothingness.

Pinkie yelped loudly and a hoof shot to her right flank as the other found purchase in the sedatives on the left side of her utility belt. But the pain from the added injury to her flank caused her to topple over from her mount rightways, leaving her prone.

The huntress struggled to lift herself up as her beaten and bloody face dripped silver. She struggled to train her rifle correctly, but the blood loss in her head caused her horn’s magic to falter and sputter, and the rifle dropped to the snow. Shaking her head, she bared her horn down at the pink earth pony and she leaped head first at the prone Pinkie.

The sedative needle, was, luckily for Pinkie, longer than the horn. The unicorn threw herself onto the needle heedlessly, and the full ursine dosage drained into her bloodstream through her neck. Pinkie’s outstretched hoof trembled as the unicorn’s movement slowed, and eventually ceased, save for only the light, deep breathing of drugged sleep.

But Pinkie could barely move. Her right flank bled profusely, the wound slightly opened by the impact from the rifle, a pain that even her painkillers could not kill. She breathed heavily and looked at the comatose unicorn, sniffing through her now bloodied white scarf.

Her eyes teared up.

The added weight on her back made it unbearably painful to stand. The double dose of painkillers would not do her well in the long run. But, still.

She blinked, heavily. The snow crunched softly beneath her faltering hooves.

There was a clearing. She placed the unicorn down onto the snow and reached into her satchel. No one deserved this.

====

The huntress awoke alone. Her face felt as if an imperial guardpony had stomped upon it with full force, and it felt heavy, as if swollen to hundreds of times its size. The back of her head stung like a wasp.

But she was warm. And she felt something - gauze cloth was wrapped tightly around her head, and a pink woolen blanket was wrapped tightly around her body.

She blinked and stared up at the treeline.

And she sobbed, softly.