Fluttershy squeaked as the train rolled over a bump in the tracks.

Applejack raised a brow at that. "You gonna do that with every little bump? We've gone and rode tons ah trains before."

"Well, yes, but not to a war before..." Fluttershy shrank in place. "Not like this..."

Pinkie shrugged softly. "The mood is a little... off."

Spike hiked a brow at Pinkie. "Really, the mood is off. That's the way you'd describe being crammed into a car with countless other ponies to wage war?" He glanced towards the other rows, each filled to overflowing with as many ponies as could fit. There wasn't even room in the aisles, with ponies sitting or standing in just about every available space there was.

Applejack pulled down her hat lightly over her eyes. "Ain't nothin' for it but to wait."

With a soft grunt, she opened her eyes. "Where am I?" She sat up and looked around, seeing so many other ponies also sprawled out in various shades of injured. Some of them weren't even ponies. "What the..." There was no nurse attending her, or anyone really paying attention to her.

With so many hurt ponies, perhaps that made sense. "Hello?" Rainbow rose to her hooves, legs shaking a little. She remembered, it was coming back to her. That human had a gun... But it hadn't put her down, ha! She was still kicking! She took to the air lightly. "Where are the doctors?"

She flew away, not fast enough to produce her usual rainbow stream. She was fast enough to find a table with food on it. "I am starving!" She landed beside it and started filling her face eagerly. As she ate, she noticed another soldier standing next to her eating more sedately. "Hey, do you know where Rarity or Twilight is?"

He pointed out of the great tent they were in.

"Figures." No longer feeling quite so hungry, she took off with a slightly wobbly trot to go find her friends. As she went, a section partitioned off only with cloth dividers came into view, with one of its sides open towards her as she went past. Inside were some of the missing doctors, working on a pony that... "That... isn't right..." Her eyes kept darting from one limb to the next.

But no matter how many times she counted, there just weren't enough legs on that pony. She stared a moment before pushing onwards, shaking her head.

"Rainbow!" Rarity tackled her recovering friend the moment she emerged from the tent. "Rainbow Danger Dash, you had me worried half to death. Darling, please never do that again."

Rainbow gently hugged Rarity back with a little smile. "Hey, I'm alright... What's going on?" She pointed back where she had come from. "There are more ponies laid up then I even remember being ready to fight. What the actual hay?"

"Things have not improved while you were recovering, dear." Rarity turned in place and tossed her head. "They attacked."

"They did? Did we shoot them?" She grinned a cocky smile before looking towards where Rarity was pointing with her horn. "What? That's... a lot of holes."

"That was the training yard..."

"But... how?"

"I wasn't there personally, and, if we're being perfectly honest, I'm very glad I wasn't... They say there was the roar of one of their... things overhead, then whistles, then this." She waved a hoof at it. "Each hole is where it exploded, tearing... tearing ponies apart..." She shook her head quickly. "It was horrible!"

"Whistles?" Rainbow hiked a brow skeptically. "Why would someone whistle before they explode? What's the purpose of that?"

"Darling... really... that's the part that worries you?" Rarity let out a soft huff. "Sometimes I wonder about you."

Rainbow waved it away. "Anyway, sorry for being out. How long was I snoozing for?"

"Too long." Rarity stood tall. "I'm just glad you're better. Are you... recovered? You just woke up after such a terrible injury."

"I'm ready to go!" She threw out her wings, but her left wing sagged a bit. "Uh, alright, maybe only 80%. I'll work on that. So how are we doing? I mean, we're gonna take out their, whatever it was that did that, right?" She nodded towards the destroyed field. "We take that out, and no problems."

Rarity blinked softly. "That would be a lovely idea, but they haven't told me anything of the sort. I do hear there are reinforcements on the way." She turned to point at the train tracks that led to the city.

"Mr. President." A new folder was offered with the confidential information.

"Thank you." He flipped it open to reveal an update. Hostile motions had slowed to a crawl. Had their attack punched the fight right out of them? One could hope. He folded it shut and considered a moment. "Send word to the general to keep ears and eyes open for attempts to surrender. We don't want this dragging on any longer than it has to."

With dark implosions of magical force, six ponies appeared in the snowy wastes of the north. One of them, a larger female, pointed off into the distance. "That is the direction they saw the beast approach from."

"Then that is where we are needed." A smaller male nodded softly. "For Equestria."

"For Equestria," echoed the others, vanishing with a fresh series of dark sparkles.

The warlocks were required.

Finding the origin of the thing was a simple matter. It had flown straight and true, which left little to the imagination in tracing it back to its origin.

It lived in a complex full of humans and other things. "It is watched, with living eyes and others," spoke the eldest male. "If we approach any closer, we will be seen."

"They are well equipped for war," hissed another, a frown on her face. "If we approach directly, we ask to meet our end."

"Our mortal forms are weaknesses. We must shed them," spoke the large female. "As shadows we will ride."

They all nodded in agreement as they began to fade away, until they were little more than patches of darkness with eyes. "For the night."

"For Equestria."

The humans did spot them coming. The military base was bristling with surveillance. They were seen, but what was being detected was confusing at best. They only appeared on the night-vision camera, but it was during the day. The alarms sounded and the entire base began to move.

"(Freeze!)" ordered a soldier, gun already in the ready position with others at his side in either direction. "(Any movement will be considered a hostile action.)"

The shadowy warlock took a step forward, but covered the distance in the one simple stride. Suddenly he was standing just in front of the soldier. "Sleep." The soldier sagged and crumpled before the being, and the gunfire began. Bullets penetrated the incorporeal form of the infiltrator, without any visible effect. "We have come for the death dragon." He took another step and was far past them.

A female danced with the soldiers, laughing wildly as they tried to fill her shadowy form with bullets. "Come, come, try your best," she taunted despite their strange language. "Face me!" She lashed out a hoof into the face of a soldier. Despite being made of shadow, her hoof solidified the instant before impact, sending the soldier sprawling backwards with a broken nose. "Next."

She had been rigorously trained in hoof to hoof combat, and she waded into the enemies with wild laughter, only solid for as long as it took to deliver bone-shattering strikes with her steel-hard hooves. She was making little progress towards the death dragons, but that wasn't her job.

"(Grenade out!)"

She looked up towards the shout just in time for something to land next to her. What was-- Her thoughts were interrupted by an explosion. She hissed in fury, her vision obscured by dust, but her immaterial form unharmed by the detonation. "Rude, rude little soldiers. I'll teach you a lesson in manners."

It was her job to keep their eyes on her, and she was doing a good job, if she had to review herself.

Elsewhere, the eldest took a soft ethereal breath. There was not just one death dragon... There was an entire field of them. There were... and they had sent just... one? The magnitude of it was staggering.

"Why are you not moving?" Another warlock had joined him. "She is buying us time, but she cannot remain wraithly for long while fighting that vigorously, you know that. We must move."

"You are correct. We will have to work together to wipe them all clear." He waved a shadowy hoof at the collection of bombers that could strike again.

"Together." A third pony had joined them, then a fourth.

Without prompting, their heads lowered, horns touching as power gathered between them, weaving a great and terrible spell.

It would fall on the base commander to explain how millions on millions of dollars of bombers were lost that day, falling into the ground suddenly where they had bent, crumpled, and snapped in half.

The distraction backed up a few steps, ears twitching at the sound of bending metal and crashing airplanes. "Sounds like they did what must be done. Time to go." A bullet ripped through her shoulder. She was not as wraithly as she should have been. "Too long... goodbye." She willed herself away, vanishing in a dark burst of magic, leaving only what blood had spilled behind.

The base was left with far fewer planes, sudden new injuries, and not a single enemy combatant to show for it.

George stuffed his phone away to see his ranching friends were staring at Twilight, who seemed to be posing... "(Are you captivated by a horse that's only missing a pole?)"

That shook their leader free with a laugh. "(Hey, we don't swing that way. The missus would skin me alive. Still, come on, horses don't do that.)" He shook his head with a smile. "(Crazy... so... what was the call about, you looked put out.)"

"(Work...) Twilight, we need to talk."

"Of course." She fell back to all fours and followed him back towards his car. "What's wrong?"

"People came to the town hall." Flip flip flip. "Guards."

"Oh." Her ears perked. "The ones that... put the bad medicine in me?"

"Not the same ones," he quickly assured. "But they want to see you, and me."

"Well... we should do that? I need to talk to your leader. Can they take me to her?"

Her? "Our leader is male, and they could, in theory. Not sure that's what they plan to do... probably not."

"Then we'll have to convince them." She smiled brightly at him. "Onwards."

"You are very..." He had to flip through his directionary again. "Trusting."

"Friendship starts with trust." She willed the door open and climbed into her seat, ready to be taken back to where she had started the day. "Thank you, for taking me here. I learned a lot."

"You did?" He sat down on the driver's side, making sure both of them were buckled in before he started off, leaving his ranching friends with something to talk about. "What did you learn?"

Twilight frowned. "I need bigger words." And she was sure he didn't have them, so expressing the thought would be difficult at best. Still... He had shown her something vital. Those horses were what humans first associated with ponies, and how could they not, having the horses first.

The horses were clearly pets, perhaps servants. Like a dog or a cat, really...

Then came the ponies, wearing the general appearance of such a tamed creature, but ready to fight. It must have been horrifying on some levels. No wonder they were behaving so irrationally... What would ponies do if wild cats suddenly lunged at them with swords and magic, shouting strange warcries in languages ponies did not understand.

How sympathetic would ponies be, or would they just run or fight?

Twilight had to fix it.

Author's Notes:

The warlocks have arrived.

Twilight does not give up easily!

Rainbow's awake, yay!