I have to admit...I had my eyes closed against what I assumed to be my inevitable demise as a pile of splattered meat sauce in armor against the desert floor so I had to open them to see why I wasn’t nothing more than a pony pancake. The first thing I saw was an emerald green sparkling aura of magic wrapped around me, suspending me a foot or so off the red Badland clay. Honestly the first thing to come to mind upon seeing that redness was wondering if my splattered and mangled corpse would actually be noticeable. When that ridiculous thought left my brain I was free to try and wriggle my body around in an attempt to see what Unicorn had taken the time to save me (and judging by the lack of meaty slaps on the ground around me, everypony else) from certain death. The second thought to come to mind was that I hoped whoever it was, was hot.

“Major Crete…” Came a gruff, unpolished male voice that reminded me of somepony trying to talk through a mouth full of molasses. “Nice of ya and yer Nad Pads tah drop in finally.”

The levitation field holding me up was all at once terminated and I was unceremoniously dropped on my ass before a large group of Steel Rangers who all stood proud and self-centered in their Power Armor, their helmets giving them all the same menacing glare kind of look. Most of the group were obviously Unicorns from their steel covered horns protruding from their helmets and many different colored auras all sparkled as one as the rest of the Desert Rangers were caught and dropped to the ground all around me. Although I was happy to be alive (even in the middle of an active war zone) I was completely pissed off that our intended glorious entrance into the battle was completely sideswiped by the fucking Tin Heads having to rescue our asses right out of the gate. Any chance we had of making a stunning entrance to outshine them on the battlefield was now completely and utterly out of the question...which meant me and everypony else was gonna have to triple our output of ass kicking to make up for it.

“For your information Tin Head, we were not advised as to the fate of the D.U’s which should have been one of you fucker’s jobs before we dropped.” I retorted, getting to my hooves and slinging my reloaded AMR onto my back.

“And fer your information Nad Pad, we just saved yer skinny ass so why don’ we skip th’ foreplay and get right tah th’ down n’ dirty kinky shit ahlright?” He growled back as Rangers continued to rain from the sky behind and around me.

I glared at him through my mask and knew he was more than likely glaring right back before a massive explosion shook the ground nearby wrenching us from our playground taunting and back to hell where we found ourselves in. I spun around on my hooves, flicking my tail up at him as a sign to fuck off, and met up with the rest of my Squad who were all readjusting their armor and gear from the free fall, Buck Beak looking the least troubled out of all of us due to his wings.

“You all alright?” I asked, our radios still synced to just each other.

“Yes ma’am.” Pennies Worth replied, getting to her hooves after checking the load on her main combat shotgun and that of her backup sawed-off double barrel. “Though I find it extremely insulting to have my ass be saved by a bunch of Tin Heads. Fucking hell, this was supposed to be our day to shine, not theirs!”

Everyone nodded, Buck Beak commenting, “Fucking Tin Heads...what next? They gonna save us poor defenseless Rangers from a Megaspell attack using just their golden egos?”

The sarcasm and nigh-on hatred of the Steel Rangers was positively dripping like Huckleberry in heat as we finally got our shit together and took the time to try and scout out the area.

The Badlands, though still red and hazy and blasted as always, had changed almost drastically in the three weeks I had been away from it back at Camp Macintosh for some much needed R&R. The trenches and foxholes seemed to stretch on for miles to the south where I knew the Zebra’s camp lay, a place we all called Fort Fuck-Off for how much we wanted them to hop the ocean back to their country and leave us alone. The drop zone was relatively far into what was supposedly conquered ground but aside from the platoon of Tin Heads playing catch with my Corps' lives, the area around us was devoid of any signs of life or activity. Far off in the distance the true fighting was taking place as the Grande Meat Grinder sucked in every stray fuck in uniform and churned em up in the blender, the air punctuated with the echoing roar of the artillery set up on the Eastern Ridge and the crackling pops of enemy mechanized units. The fight took a lot out of a girl but damn if the sound of the heavy 300mm Solar Eclipse shells going off and echoing down the Badlands weren't enough to get the blood pumping and chanting for blood!

Nearby lay the crater that marked the graves of the Drop-Uni team put in place for our arrival. Whole bodies were hard to come by as the blast had either vaporized their remains or simply blew them apart limb from limb scattered across an area the size of a hoofball stadium. At the craters edge, a small reading popped up in the upper right corner of my HUD as the feared clicking noise of the Silent Killer sounded in my ear which led to only one conclusion: the Zebras had used some of their really fucked up shit to take out our landing party. Well, either that or a Steel Ranger’s Crystal Fusion Core had exploded somehow, a very unlikely possibility given how immensely protected they were within the T-45 body. Putting aside my competitive spirit for a moment, I approached the Tin Head who had spoken to me earlier and asked for his take on the magical radiation emanating from the crater. There would always be another chance to play a game of verbal slander with them but only if we could come together long enough to do our jobs.

“We don’ know either.” He responded in the same gruff, southern tone. “None of mah boys were anywhere near here tha’ Ah am aware of so this here must be th’ work of them fuckin’ Imperials.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I exclaimed as I looked beyond the ever thickening group of Rangers surrounding the crater and the area beyond. “What kind of weapon could pull off something like that? Have you seen anything like this before?”

He nodded and pointed a thickly armored hoof in towards the south as he said, “Aye, this is th’ fourth crater we’ve seen just like this but ain’t nopony been around tah see whateva th’ hell it was tha’ fired whatever th’ hell it was tha’ did this.”

Well, I certainly had wished the intel I had gotten back at Macintosh had mentioned that little fact since now it meant there was more than Zebras, death robots, assorted Zebraland freak unit and the occasional NecroGas attack in play in this War. I racked my brain trying to come up with a potential explanation and stumbled across my barebones knowledge of their Balefire ‘technology’. Whereas Equestria relied on incredibly complex and insanely powerful magical spells (aptly called Megaspells) as the ultimate ace up our sleeves, the Zebras (who lacked magic similar to our Unicorns of their own) relied upon their use of archaic and often downright evil magics such as Necromancy and Voodoo to do the same. Their potions and talismans could achieve almost all the same effects as our spells could but their answer to the Megaspell was Balefire, the almost indescribably horrifying bastard child of science and Necromantic Voodoo having crazy monkey sex in the deepest pits of hell. Instead of more refined methods of ultimate destruction like the Megaspell Celestia One (which fired beams of pure sunlight at shit), Balefire Bombs engulfed everything in horrific, twisted, evil fire that melted ponies into the ground and snatched their Souls from their bodies leaving them desecrated and horrible to look at. Horror has a face...and it’s the face of a pony whose last moments were having their Soul ripped out of their bodies as they instantly flash-fused with their immediate surroundings.

“What if...what if they made mini Balefire Bombs?” I suggested in a hushed tone directly into the microphone built into his armored ear. “Ain't that always how these tech things go? I mean we all remember the first gen weapons they handed out during the first years...those big ass clunky things were fuckin' fat compared to the shit we got nowadays.”

The jet black lenses of his angry looking helmet stared at me for several moments before he said, “I fuckin’ hope tah hell, heaven n’ back tha’ tha’s just speculation...if they have tha’ kind of technology on their side, we’re fucked. These here trenches be ahll sorts ah cramped n' fucked without no goddamned Balefire shit goin' off in there too.”

I nodded fearfully in agreement. Bullets, shrapnel, magic and explosions can be protected against (though survivability may be a wildly varied scale) but there was nothing that could save you from a direct hit from Balefire anything. I actually wanted to piss my pants in terror at just thinking about what a Legion of Zebras armed with such a horrifying creation could do. Every Equestrian life here in the Badlands or on the Eastern Front or even in the Empire would be fucking useless against that kind of power. The more I thought about it...the more and more I began to realize that the use of Megaspells was becoming inevitable. The Zebras wouldn’t stop until Equestria was dead, that much could be seen by the increasing brutality of the War as the years passed. It was no longer about coal and gems in a ‘simple’ Resource War...this was a War of Annihilation. Equestria could live without the Zebras and their damned coal now that we had Spark and Crystal Fusion technology to power our energy needs but the Zebras wouldn’t stop until we were all dead and they had our gems and our bones for Necromantic fodder. This had become a two-way genocide by means of excruciating attrition of mind, body and spirit.

“Our intel is next to useless back at Camp so give me a sitrep.” I half asked, half commanded.

“Imperial Legionaries are swarmin’ everywhere yew can see.” He responded with a grunt. “Stripped ass is comin’ outa our ears to th’ south and they’ve been pushin’ us back up th’ valley. Their combat robots are too heavily armored fer anything less than an AP round ‘er somethin’ bigger than a 40mm grenade. Our supply of AP rounds is nil and ah fair portion of th’ snipers on site are K/MIA so Ah hope tah hell ya brought th’ heat.”

I rolled my shoulders to draw attention to the veritable cannon strapped to my back and said, “That we did. Most of us are trained exclusively as snipers and we all have experience with Anti-Machine Rifles. What, didn’t you do your homework?”

He rolled his steel covered head in lieu of rolling his eyes and sighed, “Let’s just cut th’ chatter and go do wha’ we signed up for.”

“Well, let’s go sniff these fuckers out shall we?” I said, smirking at him through my mask to which he nodded and said, “Aye, let’s go wreck some shit!”

From there we split ways, he to his group and myself to mine as we began taking stock of everything we would need for the upcoming mission. Throughout our entire conversation, the sound of gunfire, screams and explosions rang out across the Badlands, a constant reminder that we had only a few precious seconds left to us before we were shoved into the deep end. Buck Beak, loaded down with his multi-barreled rocket launcher, pump action grenade launcher and several hundred grenades and rockets, took to the skies to give us a better view of the current situation, the feed from his helmet cam being displayed on our visors. The situation seemed to be even more dire than what the Tin Head had told me as not even three hundred yards from us, the trenches were almost writhing with Zebra Legionnaires armed to the teeth with rifles, rockets and accompanied by their multi-limbed combat robots.

“Ma’am, I don’t like the look of this at all…” Buck Beak groaned just before his camera view flipped around in the air at an incoming missile.

“Buck! Cut the feed before I puke!” Rain Dancer cried out, his voice sounding dangerously close to throwing up inside his helmet which I could say from personal experience was a worse experience than getting shot in the ass.

The feed from Buck’s camera thankfully cut out leaving us staring at each other, the sun glinting off the red lenses of Rain and Pennies’ visors like a glowing orb of red gold. The other groups of Rangers, Veterans and Recruits alike, were all on the move towards the battle raging in the south. Snipers either flew into the air or went for any place with a vantage point while those less fortunate to be found carrying a shotgun or an assault rifle were directed into the trenches to inevitably fight the Zebras in brutal hoof-to-hoof combat.

Rangers (especially Veterans) were all trained extensively for CQC action but all Legionaries from the Initiates all the way up to their Legates were trained in it as well. The Equestrian style relied heavily on calculated blows and a quick offensive tactic while the Falling Kaizar style of the Zebras was very flamboyant, relying on complicated flips, jabs and kicks to keep an opponent at bay and dazzled by movement until the perfect moment came to strike. Anypony you saw dead in the trenches not riddled with bullets or shrapnel was almost certainly the victim of a broken neck, the signature killing blow of the Kaizar style.

My blood boiled within me seeing pile after pile of dead Equestrians; troopers, Tin Heads and Rangers alike all mutilated or mangled messes of skin, bone, armor and blood leaking into the red clay. What only added to my fury was there was not a single stripped bastard to be seen in any of the piles of the dead. They all seemed to have been shot from behind...the fucking cowards shot my brothers and sisters in the fucking back as they tried to flee for cover! I was convinced there was at least a shred of honor left in the Zebra’s fighting style but seeing how they mercilessly shot my people in the back convinced me more than ever before: the only good Zebra is a dead Zebra.

“LET’S FUCKING TEAR THOSE STRIPED BASTARDS A NEW ASSHOLE!” I bellowed through my mike for all to hear, my hooves carrying me forward into the trenches followed closely by the rest of my team who all shared in my less than child-friendly war cry.

Next Chapter: Chapter Seven: A Melody of Suffering Estimated time remaining: 29 Hours, 39 Minutes