Celestia led the others out into the streets of Canterlot. “We still have much to do to prepare for the battle. Our four mages here must teach the spell to all the others. We should gather food and drink and make sure that everyone gathers their strength and focus for the charge.”

“I’ll get the food,” said Fluttershy.

“I’ll help with that,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Somepony’s got to make sure the dungeons that we’ll be using are secure,” said Applejack.

Rainbow Dash jumped in front of her. “And we’ve got to have maps for anyone not familiar with the town, and who can’t see it from the air. Luke, can you help me with that?”

“No problem.”

Twilight Sparkle flashed a grin. “You’re all going to make my organizational skills obsolete. I’m glad to see that you’ve all learned how to take a role and accept it.”

The ponies and humans all went their separate ways, and Alex was left alone without an assignment.

“I should probably go with Fluttershy and Pinkie,” he said to himself. “Or I could round up everyone and start escorting to the camp site.”

His feet were already carrying him after Twilight and Lisa and Olivia. And Rarity.

They were all gathered in an outdoor café on one of the boulevards. Lisa was giving instructions. “This seems like simple enough teleportation spell, but it’s not. In the first place, you’ve got to be sure of your destination without being able to focus, so you’ve all got to be familiar with the dungeon in the castle. Second, you’ve got to learn the part that will let you pierce the anti-magic shield.”

Unicorns and magical bronies craned their necks to hear what was being said, and Alex got out of the way of as many as he could. Even though so much of the technical details went over his head, he still loved being around magic. He considered that it might be his last day in Equestria, or his last day alive. He wanted to go out being true to himself.

The mages moved from listening to practicing on whatever was available, and word soon came from the castle that they were being overwhelmed with objects used for the tests.

“Now, remember,” Twilight said to everyone, “when we get back to Ponyville it’s going to be intense. Everything depends on your knowing this spell and not having it fail. You should practice as much as you can between now and the battle. But for right now, we should be heading to the camp where Princess Luna is supposed to meet us.”

Alex found himself folded into the crowd as they marched in step. As the Brownian motion moved him from pony to human to pony, he found himself next to Rarity.

“Already you’re here as my protector?” she said. “You don’t have to do that until the battle begins.”

“I was just tagging along. I had nowhere else to be.”

“Well, I do need to stop to pick up something important. You could help me with that if you like.”

They broke off from the troop a few blocks down, and Rarity pointed out a fabric store that Alex probably wouldn’t have noticed had she not. She ducked in, and emerged a moment later with three boxes. He took two in his arms and left her to float the third.

“Goodness knows when I’ll find time to prepare them,” she said, “but they’re very important.”

He peeked into the box. “Fabric?”

“Yes, of course. We can’t be a proper army without uniforms.”

Alex burst out laughing, the first relief of tension he had had in a while. “Uniforms?”

“Well, not proper dress uniforms. I don’t have time for that. Just a blue and white sash. I thought the colors appropriate, to represent the princesses.”

“But, I mean, do we really need them? We’re all going to know which side we’re on.”

She stopped walking and stared at him. “Rationally, yes. But if we were rational, we would have surrendered already. When we all see each other with our sashes arranged in order, we’ll know it in our hearts.

“Military uniforms go back hundreds of years, to when Commander Hurricane of the warlike pegasi had her squadrons wear the same helmets to enforce discipline. I know that Earth has many warriors as well. If we must import the ills of your world, like war, I’m going to make sure that we import the beautiful things as well.”

Alex had a lot to think about as they continued to the camp. From where they stood, Ponyville was just on the western horizon, backlit by the setting sun.

Rainbow Dash had already led the flying contingent to the camp and had set up. From the opposite direction, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were coming with a cart of food in tow.

“Hey, everypony! Pinkie’s here for her first ever pre-battle party! I got whole piles of sugary food to get your energy up, and inspirational music that my human friends recommended. Though I still don’t see how taking some poor tiger’s eye is going to help.”

A few of the humans got the joke, but despite Pinkie’s efforts, no one would get into the party spirit. A few low tables were set up, since it was easier for the humans to sit on the ground at the level of the ponies than it was for them to eat standing up. All the places alternated the species, each pair being one that would ride into battle together.

Any semblance of fun they were having was lessened when Princess Luna returned from having sent Julie on her mission.

She surveyed the camp and nodded approvingly. She sat at the head of the table next to Olivia and tucked into the food herself. When everyone was finished, she stood up.

“Everyone should get some sleep now. I will watch over you in the night and wake you when it is time.”

Silently, they broke up and bedded down, each human with a pony, each pony with a human.

They were roused and set to charge so quickly that Alex didn’t have the time to appreciate that he was actually mounted on Rarity’s back before he was directing her to targets. The fury and competence that she had shown with the diamond dogs was on display again. They moved through the streets of Ponyville with blinding speed, running down each soldier and moving on to the next one. A single touch of Rarity’s horn was enough to make one vanish, and she wasted no time on reveling in each victory.

Alex had only a dim perception of the other part of the battle. Out of his peripheral view he saw other spells flashing on and off, and the sound of gunfire was everywhere. His stronger perception was of the enemy. Whether it was part of his innate Earth human abilities or simply being in flow state, he was able to sense which soldiers were tracking him and Rarity, where they were aiming, and the angle and timing of each round they fired.

More importantly, he found that he could communicate to Rarity when to bank, duck, speed up, or slow down with only his hands and his knees. Now he understood why Celestia and Luna had employed the strategy of pairing humans with ponies. There was too much going on for one mind to take in, but so long as he directed her, all Rarity had to do was concentrate on casting her spell.

They were advancing and converging on the center of town. While he could advise her on tactical maneuvers, the objective direction was under Rarity’s purview. She galloped to the square in tandem with many others, but the largest nest of enemy soldiers was camped around the tall building.

Alex focused as strongly as he could. More rifles were being aimed in their direction, and it seemed to him that they were ahead of the pack. His rear was a confused mass of light and sound. A sniper on the roof took aim, and he directed Rarity to veer left, but then saw the infantryman already aiming where they would be. Quickly changing, he yanked Rarity’s mane down and to the right, only to realize that this would take him into the path of the pony next to them, who was also being targeted. With panic taking over, he pulled his entire body backwards, trying desperately to get Rarity to stop without the intervening deceleration.

It was no use. Alex’s perception and distorted sense of time forced him to watch the bullet as it entered just below Rarity’s horn. He felt it travel through her head and heard it come out the back side.

It was almost a relief when he saw the next shot headed for his heart. He didn’t even try to move. And it was almost anticlimactic when he woke up. The battle was still several hours away.

Alex sat up and looked around him. Everyone else was still sleeping, and he was relieved that he had not cried out and woken anyone. At his side was Rarity, wearing her sleep mask and surrounded by piles of fabric that had been sewn into the sashes. She had found the time.

Night had fallen, and it was pitch black. The only light he could see came from two light blue circles set against the sky. He realized in a moment that they were Princess Luna’s eyes.

He got up. Treading carefully, he took a seat next to the princess and talked in hushed tones.

“Did you send me that dream?” he asked.

“Dream?”

“Come off it. We all know that you guide and watch over us as we dream.”

Princess Luna bristled. “There are perhaps a thousand souls sleeping before us. Am I to be expected to know every detail of their minds?”

Alex shrugged. In the cool of the night he overlooked his companions. He kept telling himself not to say it. He said it.

“You’ve got to keep her out of the battle.”

Princess Luna turned to look at him.

“Rarity,” he said. “You can do it, just don’t let her come with us. She’s already been wounded once. That should excuse her, right?”

“Young man, if you wish me to entertain a request, you should speak plain.”

Alex wondered what she meant, but saw that she was perceiving his thoughts. “She was wounded for me. And now she’s going to get killed for me. I don’t want that. I should be the one to die for her, not the other way around.”

Luna sat still for a long time. Alex was afraid that he had said something horrible, and that Luna was somehow going to punish him.

“In the charge we are to make, everyone we can have on our side counts. Would you take her out of the battle if it meant the difference between victory and losing Equestria?”

He knew that the right answer was no. But it was not the honest answer. “I would.”

“Would you do it if it meant somepony else would die in her place?”

“I would.”

Luna turned away again and looked into the distance. It seemed to Alex as if she was not even looking at Ponyville, but at something beyond his perception, as though she was seeing the future.

“Think carefully before you answer this one. If it meant that the two of you would have your destinies sundered from one another, that a bond formed in battle would instead be broken, that you would lose her forever, would you still ask me to remove her from combat?”

Alex closed his eyes and went over her words. He understood. If their destinies were to be sundered, that meant they had to be together first. They could be victorious together. Or he could protect her.

“I’m an earth human,” he said. “Whether or not that means that we can tarry with unicorns is something that I’ve learned not to care about. But I still know one thing: that we don’t let the ones we care about the most get hurt, not when we can save them. I wish that none of us had to fight. But I know that I do. If I’m going to fight, I’ve got to know why. I’ve got to know that Rarity is safe.”

“So be it,” said Luna. “When she wakes, I will tell Rarity that she will serve us in another capacity. You will ride Applejack instead.”

Applejack wasn’t a unicorn. He had no magic of his own. Their purpose in battle would be to protect the ones who mattered more. If he had had a formal rank, he would just have been busted. “I understand, Princess. I accept.”

“Then you should return to sleep. You will still need to be at your sharpest.”

Fitfully, he bedded down between Rarity and Applejack.

Julie was kept in a holding cell in one of the houses of Ponyville. The soldiers had found some tacky paper and blocked all the windows, then posted spotlights to illuminate the room. Even with the harsh lighting, the cell still looked homey. She had alternately been questioned and left alone, but she still assumed that they were following set procedures for interrogation and did not consider herself in any danger. Much of that was also Luna’s assurances, and the fact that she had completed the first part of her mission.

Luna had indeed assured Luke that she was sending Julie away to save her from danger, but she had not said anything about saving her from all harm. The interrogation techniques the Americans used were not the physically debilitating tactics once in force, but they hoodwinked her to keep her in darkness, then shined bright light in her face. They brought in speakers and played loud music during questioning, then berated her for not speaking loud enough.

Her interrogators changed frequently, sometimes working in teams and sometimes alone, but the sessions with Colonel Stone were the worst. He seemed to take a personal interest in breaking her resistance, or considered her as having personally insulted him by her existence.

“Stop bullshitting me!” he said, putting his hand on Julie’s hair but not quite pulling. “We know there’s a reason you were sent down, and we’re going to know what it is. It’ll make it easier on you if you just tell us. We’ll feed you and take you back to Earth, and I won’t have to look at those freak feathers on your back.”

Just to antagonize him, Julie spread her wings. It had its intended effect, as he picked up a canteen and threw it across the room, storming out. But he was back a moment later.

“We’ve just started our advance to the capital,” he said. “Whatever you’re going to do won’t be in time.”

“You can get all your men mustered and moving this fast? Don’t you have to even put gas in your tanks?”

“What are your plans?”

She was silent.

General Wallace come in and shut off the music and lights, telling her that she could be released if she told him all about the Equestrians’ plans. Still she held back. Wallace left and two burly sergeants took over, returning to the visual and auditory distraction.

It was the loneliness that was her eventual downfall. She knew from the moment she had been captured that she would probably break eventually, but was determined to hold out as long as she could and make the Americans waste time and effort that would otherwise go toward preparing to hurt her friends. But just being alone, surrounded by people who saw her as someone severed from their species, was trying on her soul.

Colonel Stone was in her face again. “Just give it up. We know you know something. There’s going to be another fight. You know it, and we know it. But if you hold back, I’m going to tell them to specifically go after that friend of yours. The yellow one with the wings.”

A part of her knew that this was only a tactic. That he had every intention of attacking everyone she loved, and that anything she said would have no effect on who would survive. But too much of her just saw the image of Fluttershy surrounded by soldiers training guns on her. She broke.

“All right. We have a way to beat your shield.”

“Bull!”

“Fine, don’t believe me, we’ll win easier if you don’t,” she said.

“If you have that, you’d already have attacked us. It’s a bluff.”

“No, it only works at close range.”

Stone started writing down notes. “How close?”

“Direct contact.”

He kept the questions coming rapid-fire. “How many troops do you have?”

“We didn’t count exactly. Maybe two thousand.”

“How are you planning to get to us?”

“All-out attack. Just run in and get as many as we can before you organize.”

Even through Stone’s tough exterior, the idea of such bravery touched a nerve. He shook it off. “When were you planning to make this attack?”

“At dawn tomorrow. I think the plan was to come in from the East so the sun would be in your eyes.”

“Do you really expect to get us all before we wipe you out?”

“The goal was to capture General Wallace and force him to negotiate.”

Stone stopped his questioning. He was about to leave when Julie thought of one other thing.

“Wait!” she said. “You have to understand that we’re still not going to kill or injure anyone. We’ll be using magic, and it’ll look like people are disappearing, but they’re not. We’re just teleporting them to a safe place where they can’t hurt us.”

“Hm. That’s interesting.”

“So there’s no reason to use deadly force against us. We won’t be endangering your lives.”

He put down his pen. “Well, perhaps I’ll leave that out of my report.”

“What?!”

“You see, General Wallace might believe you, and that makes my job a lot harder.”

Fear crept into Julie’s voice. She hadn’t expected this. “I’m telling the truth, I swear!”

“Oh, I believe you, don’t worry. But fear will be a good motivator for my men to shoot straight. If they think that allowing one of you to touch them means being erased from existence without even a body to send home to their family, their killer instinct will be at its sharpest.”

“But why?! Why do you want to kill us?”

Stone marched up and put his face an inch from hers. “There are always going to be freaks of nature. I can’t stop that. And if the good people of the world want to pander to the freaks and let them parade around and pretend they’re normal, that’s their lookout. But I’ll be damned if I let the freaks start taking over and kicking me out of my place.”

She backed away, and Stone, bolstered by the fear and pain he had seen in her eyes, left the room.

In the dead of the night Luna walked through the camp. In front of each sleeping pair she cast a spell that would wake them gently and without alerting anyone else. As humans and ponies came to, they gathered themselves together and got ready.

Each mage went over the spell one more time. Everyone who had wings took practice flights and tested the weight of their companion. Earth humans and ponies stretched their muscles and checked their gear.

It was Luna who suggested that no one put on their own sash, but rather each human would put it on the pony they would ride, and each pony on the human who would ride them. There was a great deal of ceremony and pomp attached, but everyone was serious and dour. When the last of the preparations had been made, they stood in a line, ponies and humans.

Princess Luna trotted from one end to the other, then back to the center of the line. She knelt before the assembled troops and bade them do the same. Adopting the projecting tone she had, Luna spoke.

“My friends. I see you all here and I call you my friends. Each of you sees the one next to you and calls them a friend. And so each of you can look to anyone gathered here and call them a friend. Together, as friends, we are about to do what would be called a foolish thing, if we were not friends.

“Together we shall make our charge, not for victory, but merely for the chance of victory. If fate smiles upon us and we are able to stand and write a history of this night, that history will call none the hero. No one of us, nor two, nor team of twenty shall be able to claim the glory without passing the cup to another. This would be folly, if we were not friends.

“Together we shall risk our lives, not in a clean contest of skill and honor, but in a chaotic cauldron where chance will have as much sway in determining the outcome as right and logic. The fastest among you will be the first to put themselves in harm’s way. The most effective will be the most attractive targets. The largest of you will be the easiest to hit. This would be folly, if we were not friends.

“Together with you I will fight, not from the rear with the intention of using the proper strategy, but in the line with the hope that I may strike at the right moment to save a life or to sacrifice myself to save the cause. Such a position runs counter to every history, idea, and instinct of how to fight to win. It would be folly, if we were not friends.

“Together, my humans, the ponies you ride will be there, not next to you, but below you. They will abase themselves by bearing you as burden. Look at them. If not laden, they could run faster and fly higher, and they might have more chance to survive. But they would not do better for the cause. Such a choice would be folly, if we were not friends.

“Together, my ponies, the humans will be with you, not as interlopers or guests in our land, but as fellow citizens. Do not discount the weight they carry, simply because they are the ones on top. It is oft as difficult to accept power or reward as it is to give such gifts. From the beginning we have granted them abilities far beyond what they had known, and they have not used them selfishly. This unselfishness would be folly, if we were not friends.

“Together, all of you, we shall ride, not for a gleaming kingdom of jewels and riches, but for a plot of land and the right to breathe free. We have magic! We have wings! We have strength and the earth as our domain! And yet we still must toil under the sun to give our lives meaning. This is the best we could hope for from tonight’s endeavor. The simplest among you would know this to be folly. If we were not friends.

“But we are.”

Luna bent her back, and Olivia climbed on. Rising to her full height and spreading her wings, Luna trotted to one side of the line. Luke mounted Twilight, and the entire flank mounted in time.

“We are friends who have sacrificed our wealth and status to a greater cause,” said Luna. She galloped to the opposite end, where Lisa climbed onto Rainbow Dash, signaling the other wing to mount up.

“We are friends who, even if we stumble, always have someone there to pick us up,” said Luna, returning to the middle. She looked at Alex. As the wave of mountings from each side collapsed to the center, he got onto Applejack’s back as the last one.

“We are friends, because true friendship means giving everything you have, even if you don’t get anything in return. Because, in the end, it always works out. Still, this is not the end. It is the beginning. And so, my friends. . . “

She turned her back to the army and started to pick up speed.

”Ride.”