The spear had been carefully removed from Novo, her side bandaged with equal gentleness. They knew the barbed end could have caused untold internal injuries, but all they could really do was keep her inner water separate from her outer water.

She was wrapped in protective and warming blankets made of a sort of seaweed that could help hold in her heat. Skystar fretted nearby, keeping a watchful eye over her mother. "You'll be alright... right? Please tell me you'll be alright..." But Novo had no words to respond with, sleeping without sound and barely movement. "Stupid fish! She was trying to help!"

Skystar swam over to her mother's still form, laying two hooves gently on her chest. "You have to be alright... We have so many more things to do..." A drop of water even saltier than the ocean she swam in escaped her. "Just one... small thing..." The song brought her little comfort, but she sang it anyway, hoping feverishly for her mother to recover.

Bulls cowered in broken buildings. The bombs roared, a constant beating heartbeat, the sound of war. A war they had not asked for, but could not avoid. Huddled around a small fire, they tried to chase the cold away, about five of them, two larger than the other three. They were a family, but they hadn't always been. The two were not married, nor were the children belonging to either of them, but they found each other, and tried to stay alive and sane.

"Will it stop?" asked one of the calfs, a boy with such large desperate eyes. "Will we go to school again? I promise to never complain ever again."

"Me too!" called a female next to him. "I'll do extra homework forever if we can just... go back..."

The larger male, the adult, the father of their strange family, smiled faintly. "If that trade worked, I'd be with you, doing homework forever... Eat up... We have to live, to see when it does stop, alright?"

The female shook her head. "We'll make it through this..." "I hope," were words she didn't voice in front of the children. "But eat, he's right. You need the energy... and if it goes bad, there... aren't replacements." She swallowed heavily. "I'll go searching after you're done."

"No!" The third child clung to her. "Don't! It's dangerous out there!"

She set a large hand on his small head. "I must. One of us must, or we'll get hungry. It's my turn, so I'll go."

"Be careful," urged the young girl calf. The others voiced agreement with that idea, urging their foster mother to caution.

The war was for a good reason, they had been told over and over. At that moment, they would have been quite happy for it to just end.

With her legs crossed, Somnambula led her group in meditation. "With your mind cleared, envision the sun, warm, not too bright, softly bathing you in its gentle heat, dry, soothing..."

The crowd had their legs crossed too, mostly ponies, with a smattering of humans and other creatures. They were all doing their best to find inner-peace. "You are a plant, content in its place, the sun feeding you, caring for you. You are loved and nourished. Be at ease..."

A foreign soldier wheeled around the corner into the square. With a raised rifle, the rapid tempo of automated gunfire filled the air, bullets flying towards the knot of people, but it was not alone. Brothers in arms appeared from other angles. Ponies and humans began to fall, many before even realizing what was going on. Others screamed, some paralyzed in place, others fleeing in a panic.

Somnambula opened her eyes calmly. To navigate life in a peaceful state was literally her name, the sleepwalker. "What?" Even she could not fathom what she saw. Half her class was injured or worse, sprawled across the stones and cushions. "Stop! Stop!" She hopped to her hooves in time for her world to constrict to a point. Something had pinched her in the chest and she staggered back.

She raised a hoof to the spot and it came away with blood, far too much blood. "What?..." She took a shuddering breath, but it felt like something was wrong inside of her, as if she couldn't breathe right. "Stop... it... What did we ever do to you?" She slumped to the ground, never to move again. She survived countless moons, only to meet her end in such a way.

She would be far from alone. The yaks would not go down peacefully, charging at their attackers with rough cheers even as their young and infirm fled their city. Their attackers had sprung up from nowhere, heavily armed and armored. The firearms the yaks had were inefficient, but that armor did little when it came to their bulk.

One enemy combatant was lifted from the ground, skewered at the end of a defending yak's horn. "Smash!" he called out, echoed by others. Still, for every enemy trampled under angry hooves, three yaks were brought low by munitions and explosives.

Across an ocean, two gangs were posturing and ready for a fight, with each other. Neither expected a literal military action, and when one of their spokespeople crashed to the ground, caught in a wild spray from the side, both sides did what came naturally, panic. They fled and fired at once, putting at least as many shots into each other as towards the actual source of danger.

Neither side was prepared for what crashed against them, soldiers taking practiced bursts on them, gunning them down almost as easily as any other civilian. "This is fucked as hell," cursed one as he jumped out through a window frame and made good his escape.

With the sharp whistle of a rocket, the TSDI forces proved it had learned well the value of explosions. Police cars erupted into flames, often with the brave defenders still inside. Cities were being razed indiscriminately, as if each and every building were an enemy to be destroyed. They were small in number, relatively, but surprise made for a heady advantage in those precious first minutes.

Rapidly assembling an impressive-looking device and pointing it at a bridge they did not want humans to have access to any longer, they plugged it directly into the very power grid of their enemy, stealing America's might for its own. With a bright flare, magic bolstered with electricity crashed into the bridge in a beam of purple-yellows. The explosion could be heard for miles around as it began to come down, cars and trucks with it. The people's screams would be unheard under the din of destruction.

Tourists gaped with awe as the landmark they had come to see crumbled before their eyes. Mount Rushmore collapsed with a roaring wave of tumbling rocks, no enemies even in sight, all done from beneath the ground in an act of petty terrorism, done entirely as a symbolic gesture.

It was as if the world had unraveled all at once.

In the Lutrai lands, they had precious few significant buildings to attack, so they came for the people. Many fled, but others charged forward. They did not have police, for they never needed any. Most able-bodied lutrai of fighting-age knew how to do so. Unfortunately for them, many of their warriors had been lent to America for the war effort, but they had more behind them.

It was a pity they did not have much in the way of firearms. Trained with spears and with little industrial base to speak of, the only guns they had much access to were the ones lent to the warriors fighting alongside the Americans.

This did little to deter the Lutrai warriors that threw themselves at their far-better-armed foes. Spear and naked fur was not a fair trade for advanced armor and automated rifles, but they charged towards their enemies, ready to do battle as best they could.

Ruddertail cursed them, shaking a fist in their direction. "There are less of them than us, show them their mistake!" she howled, but even she saw the benefit of discretion, vanishing beneath the water of her lake.

A single infantryman could take down six to ten charging lutrai in a spray of bullets, but they kept coming, some of them even after being shot. With blood oozing down their front and froth in their mouth, they closed distance with the bulls and revenge began. Stout spears were not what the armor they wore was meant to deflect. They impaled the attacking TSDI forces, often with each enemy soldier left gurgling on the end of several spears holding them up even as the warriors rushed towards the next one.

The Wonderbolts had been enlisted. Not that it was much of a choice. They were a military force to begin with, even if that military had little immediate need for them most of the time. Soaring in a circle around Canterlot, looking for trouble, most days passed boringly, for little seemed to be happening so far into Equestria proper.

Rainbow cocked a brow. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Soarin looked where she was pointing. "What the?"

They banked sharply as Rainbow pulled her gun up into place.

"Hey woah, where were you hiding that?"

"A mare has her secrets." Rainbow rolled her eyes before focusing on what they were dropping towards. There were several diamond dogs working at one of the supports of Canterlot, clearly intending to bring down the entire city. "Not on my watch!"

She bit down on the trigger and began spraying the dogs without mercy. One crumpled before they even knew what was happening. The others pointed at her and scattered.

One popped out of a hole with a gun of his own. She and Soarin spread sharply, leaving the incoming bullets to impact the air where they had been a moment before.

Soarin came in at a screaming descent, crashing into the dog with his forehooves, driving him to the ground with a shout.

Rainbow took potshots at any dog she could see. "Get away from there!" she called through the trigger. Whether or not she would have normally defaulted to such lethal deterrence, even she knew that if the dogs took down the city, countless ponies would die, possibly including their princesses. It could not be allowed to happen.

The dog he had pinned a moment slammed his face with the butt of his gun, forcing him back enough for the dog to dive into the ground, burrowing away rapidly. "Son of a..." A wild beam of power surged, catching him across one leg that suddenly ceased to exist. He began to fall forward, but his wings pumped wildly, carrying him up and away, eyes wild with panic.

"Soarin!" Rainbow veered sharply to bring her gun to bear at where the fox that had fired was stationed. Her shots were wild, perhaps distracted at the thought of her suddenly maimed team-mate.

Sudden shapes zoomed past her. The other Wonderbolts had arrived. Canterlot would not fall that day.

The response from America was at first confused and local. Police forces moved to fight what, at that split second, seemed to be isolated crimes, but as their reactions were violently rebutted, calls began to go out for larger forces with larger guns. Never had this happened before.

Terrorists, even at their most bold, did not operate this way. They did not come in even small forces and try to 'conquer' America, even if it was clear that they weren't actually doing that.

Soldiers began to filter onto the battlefield as helicopters flew overhead, searching for the insurgents and trying to coordinate the efforts.

Bright bolts and screaming missiles made helicopters regret being such large targets without cover to speak of. Bombing their own cities was not an idea that was entertained for long, and the infantry was sent in. America would not be so easily defeated, they felt certain, being driven as close as possible before disgorging from their APCs across the country.

It was time to fight.

Author's Notes:

Things suddenly get... real in an unpleasant sense, and the fatality rate climbs. Silly random question but now that you made it this far, are the tags on this story right?

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