My Little Pony: Slaves to Celestia

A story of NIGHTS and SOLDIERS

Chapter 4 - Night Terrors

Checkpoint

The air was heavy, and the atmosphere was gloom and dark.

Shortly after we had left Helsinghoof we had been forced into an absolute downpour, it was an odd transition from dry and sunny to cold and wet.

In a way it was like going into a shower, except that the shower was everywhere.

The dark rain clouds above gave the landscape around us a depressing gray shade, a heavy dark gray fog made it difficult to see beyond a hundred meters, but that wasn't a problem as there was only one road to follow and only one way to go, and that was forward and towards the border.

"Ah still dun get it." Brook said.

We had explained in brief what had happened in Helsinghoof, Manie was now explaining the events leading up to her crime, including the long and boring part about her ambitious project, the SOFLAM+.

But Brook hadn't understood any of it, he didn't even understand the concept of laser designation (even though truth be told I didn't really either), so Manie had been forced to rephrase everything she said over and over to no success.

She was starting to become rather annoyed.

"Brook, I can't make it any simpler than that. It doesn't get any easier to understand than 'aim binoculars at target, missiles fly to target, target goes boom'."

"Ah get that part! But how does it work?"

"I told you how! Look, all you really need to know is that the system was better than the SOFLAM and it's predecessors."

"Now can we move on please? I am not telling you all this to brag about my system, there is an actual point behind all of this that I'd like to get to"

"Okay okay, jeez."

"So like I said, my rivals got pissed, they began to demand that I share the reward with them and credit them for my work, something that I obviously refused to do."

"As time passed my rivals began to harass me more and more about it, they limited themselves to petty threats at first, but then it gradually became more serious, they would go as far as sabotaging my work in the lab, assaulting me and threatening to kill me if I didn't give them what was 'rightfully theirs'..."

"Didn't anyone notice? Why didn't you ask for help?" Swirly asked.

"She did." it had been our newest addition to the group, the pegasus Cloud Tumble, to speak.

"She went with it to command, but they refused to help her, claiming that it was just petty bullying and that she could handle it well on her own. Then she went to Civil Protection, but they just told her that they wouldn't meddle in army affairs."

"One night I brought her out for drinks-" he went on, apparently intending to continue the story for her.

"Out for drinks? As in going out?" Blizzard wondered.

"That's none of your business."

"No. We were not going out." Manie clarified.

Cloud Tumble looked back at the wagon, looking hurt or at least somewhat bothered by her response.

He paused for a few moments before going on.

"I brought her out for drinks at a bar we used to frequent with a few other coworkers, she was visibly upset by what was happening to her and throughout the night as she drank more and more she would talk about how she wanted to quit her job and how much she wanted to make them pay, I figured that it was just angry drunk talk so I didn't pay much mind to what she said."

"Eventually she reached her drinking limit, and since it was dangerous to let her to go home alone, even when sober, I decided to help her get back home. After a few wobbly blocks and a few drunken rants later I finally brought her up to her apartment and laid her down on her couch, and th-"

"If you tell them anything about what really happened I'll kill you!" Manie interrupted him.

Cloud Tumble grinned at the wagon.

"You are certainly welcome to try. I was fighting all this when you were just a kid, I think I can handle you."

"Cloud. Don't do it." she warned.

"So I laid her down on the couch and-"

"I am warning you! Don't fucking tell them!"

"And she grabs hold of me and kisses me, just like that. She tells me all these things about how she loves me and how I am the only one there for her and how she views me like the brother she never had (which made the kiss all the more awkward and weird) and how I am the only true family she has."

Candy and Brook snickered.

The rest of us didn't really know what to think about it or how to react to it.

"Fuck you Cloud!" Manie snapped at him.

"Well it... uh... there is nothing wrong with that is there?" Nurse Swirly said.

"She just felt momentarily close to you after drinking too much, it happens..."

"She kissed me and then immediately told me that I was like a brother to her."

"Damnit! Stop it! Just move on!"

"Yeah, uh... I think we are getting a bit off track here." I said.

"Not at all."

"Not at all? You didn't have to tell them that, they didn't have to know that." Manie muttered.

"Nah. I just thought it was a funny thing to mention. Especially since the next part is painfully serious."

"So I sit down beside her and she rests her head on a pillow on my lap and talks for hours about all sorts of things, she tells me about completely mundane and uninteresting days, she tells unfunny jokes that only she laughed at, at some point she stopped having a coherent train of thought and began to talk about frogs and birds being turned into oranges or some other random nonsense..."

"MOVE ON."

"I just sit there nodding and acknowledging everything she says waiting for her to fall asleep, then as the sun began to rise she became strangely silent for a long long while. I thought she had finally given in so I gently try to move the pillow so I can get up and go home, but then she just tells me not to go, not to leave her alone, so I stay for another while, waiting quietly."

"Then after awhile, she tiredly asks me in the most serious and sober tone of speech that she could muster, to help her deal with her rivals at work, that she can't take it anymore and that she doesn't know who else to turn to before passing out."

"And you leave..."

The two were awkwardly quiet for a while.

This was new to me, she hadn't mentioned Cloud Tumble in the version she told me.

"So... what happened next? Did you help her?" I asked.

"I did. Even though she had been completely wasted when she asked for my help."

"I gathered some of my closest friends and plotted against their ringleader, an unicorn stallion named Talon Embrace."

"We found out everything there was to know about him, his routines, his interests, his family and closest, everything, and one night while he was on his way home, we approached him, disguised as common street thugs."

"We beat him up, robbed him and extorted most of his savings, which forced him to live poorly and to move to a cheaper more affordable home with his wife and daughter."

"But we didn't stop there, we continued to harass him almost daily, we rendered his life miserable, and after some time his wife left him after we had anonymously tipped her off with proof of him being involved with another mare..."

"He was cheating on his wife?"

"No, he was loyal and faithful to her, his wife and daughter were central to his life, to him, everything else came second."

"What we gave her were manipulated images and fake letters, fabricated false proof to turn his own wife against him."

"That's horrible!" Swirly burst out in horror.

"Why? The guy was an asshole, he was the one behind everything Manie's coworkers did to her."

"You ruined his life! You took away everything he had and held dear!"

"Yeah, that does seem pretty excessive, maybe ya shouldn't have gone that far." Brook said.

"I can't believe you had him do that to him!" Swirly said turning herself towards the moving wagon, addressing Manie directly,

Manie didn't respond.

"You... you monster!"

"She has nothing to do with it. She wasn't involved."

"I didn't approve of what he did." Manie said, "I told Cloud Tumble off for doing what he did, I was afraid that Talon Embrace would catch on, that Cloud's harassment would only worsen things."

"And it did."

"Talon Embrace became miserable and incredibly cruel, Cloud had rendered him poor, he had taken away everything he had, including his family. Talon Embrace began to push harder and harder to get at me in the hopes of getting at my fortune."

"This time Cloud Tumble wasn't around to 'help' me, not after the way I had told him off."

"You acted like an ungrateful cunt, you called me a monster and said that you didn't want to have anything to do with me anymore."

"And what was I supposed to tell you? 'Thank you for ruining somepony's life?'"

"A fucking 'thank you' would have been enough."

"You made things worse, that's why I am fucking here, that's why you are here!"

"This is your fucking fault!"

"Oh wow, that is how you thank me for all my efforts? I spent weeks getting at him, I took massive risks to help YOU."

"You could have fucking told me that you were going to ruin him! You went behind my back!"

"I couldn't risk you telling them!"

"And that's why we are fucking here in this SHITHOLE."

"Fuck you!"

"What exactly is it you want to hear anyway? 'Thank you Cloud Tumble for worsening things and making us end up in this mess'?"

"If that's it then thank you Cloud! Fucking thank you."

"Break it up you two!" I said, "We are all in the same boat here, what's done is done."

"Now continue, get to the point, Swirly Star deserves to know what happened."

Manie sighed deeply.

"Yeah well thanks to corporal thug here Talon Embrace pushed me harder and harder, the assaults and sabotage got worse and worse to the point where command had to give me my own private lab for me to work on the newest project, a modified version of the SOFLAM+ for main battle tanks."

"When the project was in prototype stages we began making field tests, the results were promising, and it didn't take long before Air Force and Infantry began to make use of the system as well, more weapons were retrofitted to be usable with my system, including most of Air Force's guided missile arsenal."

"A big field test came up, it was to be a joint training exercise and test of the SOFLAM+ with a platoon of MBT's fitted with the new system and an Air Force helicopter platoon using some of the new missiles, we were told that there would be surprise targets at random, both air and ground. So most of the lower ranked men didn't know what to expect."

"I had participated in and supervised these tests a hundred times before so I knew that it was just dumb unarmed drones."

"The day before the test five pilots from the Air Force helicopter platoon that was going to participate came and beat me up, nearly killing me. Before leaving me broken in an alley they gave me an USB containing a virus and demanded that I handed Talon Embrace my reward and that I sabotaged the SOFLAM+ network, they threatened to kill me in a friendly fire 'accident' during the field test if I didn't comply..."

"You didn't tell me this yesterday."

"Yes I did."

"You didn't tell me about Cloud Tumble, what he did or the virus..."

"Cloud Tumble was a personal matter, it wasn't something you really needed to know and I wouldn't have told you if he didn't so conveniently show up like this."

"The virus, well, that's the 'sabotage' part I told you about, same thing, different wording."

"We didn't have to bring him with us you know, you seemed pretty eager to take him with us, so I did."

Manie chuckled.

"Would you have left him behind? To be executed by Overwatch?"

She had a point, I probably wouldn't have just left him to die like that.

I'd be the first to admit that I am not the most benevolent of ponies, I'd like to think that I'd make hard decisions when necessary, but still, that just takes it a bit too far, it wouldn't have been right.

"No... I guess not..."

"Then there you go."

"Okay fine. So what did you do?"

"I threw it away obviously, like hell that I was going to sabotage what I had worked so hard on, the laser guidance system, the SOFLAM+, was my project, my baby."

"My goddamned cutiemark is the icon my system uses to target things, I valued my project higher than anything else at the time,"

"Higher than your life?"

"Pride can do funny things to you."

"I wasn't just going to give in and met their demands anyway, sabotage the project of my life and give away my fortune? Yeah, not a chance."

"So I refused and instead planned on how to deal with the mess I was in, I sat up all night going through a million possible scenarios, but in the end there was no easy way out, it would either come down to dying or fighting back, that is shooting down their helicopters before they shot me."

"But I couldn't possibly know which choppers were which, I didn't know the names of the pilots who threatened me, fuck, I didn't even know what they looked like, the bastards had came wearing their flight helmets."

"You could have gone after the color of their manes and tails, couldn't you? I don't know how Air Force pilots are outfitted, but I hardly think they would have to stick their manes and tails in their outfits like we do in Civil Protection, it seems more likely that they would be fitted more for comfort and mobility than protection and secrecy."

"The colors of their manes and tails? Really?"

"Well yeah? Why not?"

"Damn Air Force pegasi that's why!"

"Out of 60 pilots and gunners, how many of those do you think had rainbow tails?"

"Huh?"

"I know what she means." Strawberry Feather inserted.

"You do?"

"Yeah."

"It makes sense that at least some of the pegasi working with the Air Force would have rainbow manes and tails."

"Why?" I asked, I wasn't sure of what he was getting at, why would that make sense?

"Do you know of Rainbow Dash?" he asked me.

Rainbow Dash was, if I recalled correctly, one of the last six wielders of the elements of harmony, but that was pretty much all I knew about her.

"I know of her. Why?"

"Rainbow Dash was a pegasus mare, the wielder of the Element of Loyalty, one of the six Elements of Harmony which were used to defeat evil and protect Equestria half a century ago."

"Rainbow Dash was known for her speed and ability to do Sonic Rainbooms at will-"

"What's a Sanic Rainboom?" Brook asked.

"Sonic." Strawberry Feather corrected.

"That's what ah said, sanic."

"It's-"

"Just forget about it, he just can't pronounce it right." I said.

"Right."

"A Sonic Rainboom is a type of magical explosion that occurs when a pegasus breaks the sound barrier in speed, it unleashes a rainbow colored blast that can be seen from all over Equestria."

"Don't sound like anything ah've ever seen."

"Of course not. No one has done a Sonic Rainboom in over fifty years."

"She was the last one capable of doing them at will. No has been able to pull one off since after she died."

"Not even the Wonderbolts?"

"Not even the Wonderbolts."

"Speaking of Wonderbolts, did you know that Rainbow Dash used to be their captain?"

"Wha- really?"

"Yeah. They were one of the first real fighting forces of Equestria."

"Of course, they didn't really have weapons back then, at least not firearms. She used the Wonderbolts to fight off creatures from the Everfree during the expansion of Ponyville among many things. It is said that they would swoop down with swords and lances..."

"It all worked out well, until one particular attack where more than half of them were wiped out by an Ursa Major rampaging through Ponyville ways back."

I know this.

"I know of the attack." I said.

"That's when they reinstated the Equestrian army and began to form military industries. My grandpa was in it."

It was pretty interesting that this six year old colt knew more of Equestria's history than any of the rest of us, he really was smarter than he looked.

"How do you know all this stuff kid?"

"I read books."

He gave me a look that for some reason made me expect him to add 'Do you read books, you illiterate fuck?', but he never did, he just gave me the same passive indifferent glare that he always had.

"Fair enough."

"Now what's so special about rainbow manes and tails?"

"Isn't it obvious?" he said.

"Rainbow Dash had a rainbow tail and mane. So like I said, it makes sense that Air Force, a branch of the army whose name implies that they like flying and aerial combat, would adore her and use her as a role model."

"If you are done yapping about Rainbow Dash I'd like to finish my explanation." Manie interrupted.

"We've been sidetracked enough."

"Sometimes it's good to sidetrack, you learn more that way." Strawberry Feather said wisely.

"Sweet Heavens, how long til we get to wherever we are going?"

I had no idea, but we had been walking for a couple of hours at least, and it was about 30 kilometers between Helsinghoof and Checkpoint Berry 2, so there was plenty of road to cover.

"Eh, we are still a ways from Checkpoint Berry 2."

"Go on Manie."

"Since Cloud Tumble was still assigned to my crew and since he was... a former friend, I told him in the morning about what happened and what I planned to do and gave him the option to either go with me or find a way out. Shortly thereafter the pilots came by and asked for my decision, I firmly said that I refused to meet their demands, and they stormed off."

"Later, when I got to my tank with my crew, I was surprised to find Cloud Tumble already waiting there for us."

"When we rolled out with the platoon I was scared, shaking even, I didn't know when the helicopters would show up, but I knew for a fact that the pilots wouldn't be too happy."

"That was it, there was no going back from it, no way to change my mind, and no way to hide. I was ahead of the column, leading the 'attack' on the dummy drones and then they showed up."

"The Air Force chopper platoon came flying over the horizon."

"I doubted at first and thought about just letting it come for me, that perhaps the cost of defending myself would have been too great, but my fear got the better of me and I marked the helicopters one by one and called them out over the channel as hostile targets. It didn't take long before the entire platoon of helicopters was set ablaze, destroying all but one chopper before the others caught on to what happened after the last pilot had panicked over the radio..."

Swirly Star had a tear in her eye, she looked as if she was about to break any second now.

"Something doesn't add up though." I said.

"In the version I heard from Bob back in the mainland your crew was found unconscious."

"They... what?"

"She said that they zapped your tank with an EMP and that they charged your tank on foot, finding you upset and the crew unconscious."

"What? We weren't unconscious, I was in on it all along and our driver and MG gunner didn't know." Cloud Tumble said.

"Yeah I don't know where 'Bob' got that from, that's not what happened at all." Manie said.

"When everyone found out about the targets being friendly all operations stopped and the crews disembarked from their tanks to search the wrecks for survivors, including ours."

"I was too shaken up to explain coherently what had happened or why I had targeted the choppers, I remember that the only thing I managed to say was 'I had to do it, I had to, it was them or me', I never participated in the search for survivors, I was just brought back to base."

"Why would CP lie about that to me?" I asked.

"I don't know. Your organization have been nothing but a bag of dicks so far."

A bag of dicks?

I was wondering if it was a type of paper bags where the dicks stuck out like baguettes or if they were all mushed together like sausages.

Wait, what the actual fuck am even I thinking?!

This isn't the time to dic- to mess around! This is serious!

"My... my housband..." Swirly broke out in tears, "You killed him!"

"Brook, please stop the wagon." Manie instructed.

The wagon stopped and Manie carefully climbed out, moaning quietly in pain as she did.

She slowly went up to Swirly who was being consoled by the little colt.

"Swirly..." she began, trying to place a hoof on her shoulder, only to have it violently shrugged off.

"You killed him! You killed him!" she cried out.

"I'm sorry Swirly, I had to do it..."

"No you didn't! You didn't have to do it!"

"I had to defend myself."

"You could have given them what they wanted! You could have avoided all of it!"

"I know... I thought about it, I did, I really did."

"I've thought over it a million times, I should have given them what they wanted, my money wasn't worth all those lives..."

"MY life wasn't worth all of this..."

"Rainbow Sea was right..."

"Don't say that Manie." I said.

"Why not?" Manie smiled weakly at me, "You know it's true."

"I am just one pony, my life isn't worth more than yours, or Swirly's husband, or anypony."

"I valued my money and stupid weapon more than the lives of 58 ponies."

"That's... that's fucked up. That's just not right."

Manie bowed her head in shame.

"I... I wish I could have gone back and done things differently... But I can't... I'm... sorry..."

No one said or did anything for a long while, we just stood there on the road in the middle of the downpour waiting for someone to say something, anything.

To our surprise Swirly Star was the first one to speak, she turned to Manie and gave her a long pained look mixed with feelings of anger and compassion.

"Are... are you really sorry for what you did?" she asked, sadness clear and evident in her voice.

"Y-yes..."

"And do you really regret doing what you did?"

"Yes..."

Swirly was going through another change of temper, she rose her hoof over Manie's head and she instinctively bent in submission, I readied myself to go break the two up, but then all of a sudden Swirly leaned forward and gave Manie a hug, leaving her completely puzzled and surprised.

"S-swirly?!"

"I... forgive you Manie..." Swirly said, still hugging the confused mare.

"You... you were in a threatening situation and you did what you thought was the best at the time..."

"Sometimes we all make bad decisions which we come to regret... you have done yours... and now you will live with that shame for the rest of your life... and that, is punishment enough. I can't be angry with you. I... can't blame you..."

Manie was blank and silent for a moment before loosening up and returning Swirly the hug.

After a while Swirly let go of her and the two drifted apart, Swirly began to slowly walk down the road on her own, shortly followed by Strawberry Feather.

Manie quietly got back into the wagon and our little convoy began moving again, and as we did I barely managed to notice the small group of ponies that were stalking us, keeping just out of sight shrouded by the fog, Cloud Tumble noticed this too.

"Do you see them?" he asked me in a low voice, not wanting to alert the others.

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"Bandits."

"Bandits?"

Why would there be bandits in the area if the frontier was secured?

"I thought the frontier was secured?"

"Secured from wildlings, yes."

"There are still escaped workers who have taken to banditry to worry about, they are a huge problem out here."

"We better be careful and keep an eye out."

"Should pick up the pace?"

"No, they will know that we saw them and get alerted."

"Just stay calm and be ready for anything..."

I thought about it for the next kilometer or so.

"About the bandits..." I whispered to Cloud Tumble.

"I am not forcing you to stay with us if you don't want to go to past the border, and CP doesn't know that you are part of our group, yet, so you could very well leave and join up with the local bandits if you'd like."

"Join the bandits? I'd never sink that low."

"Still, you could leave the group, go free."

"Do... you want me to leave the group?"

"It's not really a matter of what I want, staying with the group is your decision, bringing you with us was more of a formality to save you from Overwatch than anything, I'd understand if you don't want to go with us."

"What are you getting at?"

"I am giving you the choice to leave, that's all. No hidden intentions."

"Why?"

"I need everyone to trust me and stay on their own accord. We are going to a very bad place, and I'd need everyone to stay focused on helping each other than attempting to escape. I don't want anypony to do anything against their own will here."

"And with the way things are between Manie and you I wouldn't want the two of you to form any new grudges like Rainbow Sea had, we all need to set out hostilities aside and stick together."

"I don't have anything against Manie..."

"You don't?"

"No..." he lowered his voice even further.

"I... I love her."

"You..." Uh...

"...what?"

"She doesn't share the same feeling towards me... but I love her, and I always have. I have helped her no matter what to the best of my ability, even though it hasn't always worked out..."

Had he helped her more than once?

"I have done everything she has ever asked of me... for her."

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say to that, I felt a nauseating feeling of deep jealousy begin to nag at me, preventing me from saying anything in his favor.

The worst part was that I didn't even know why I felt that way, I liked Manie, but not like that, I didn't love her.

Cloud Tumble was the one that wanted her, not me.

So why would I be jealous of him?

"I'm sorry to hear...?" I said hesitantly, I couldn't figure out of a more graceful thing to say in response.

Cloud Tumble gave me a confused look, as if he had expected me to say something else, something encouraging.

"Whatever it is you decide on in the future, I mean regarding the group," I said, changing the subject, "at least let us know about it beforehand. Please don't pull the same crap Rainbow Sea did."

He looked away, almost as if he was disappointed.

"I wont... I promise."

We walked for another while in silence.

It was an awkward silence, occasionally Cloud Tumble would give me saddened looks, as if he had caught onto my feelings towards Manie, feelings that I didn't really have.

I was hoping that he wouldn't view me as some sort of rival or competitor, this wasn't a conquest of love we were on, this was an incredibly dangerous and serious mission and there would be no room for open hostility between us.

Maybe I should have encouraged him after all, it couldn't have hurt, if Manie didn't share the same sentiment towards him then it wasn't very likely that he'd have a chance anyway, I probably only ended up pushing him away from me.

Or maybe it was just the silence playing paranoid mind tricks on me.

I did have the stupid tendency to overthink certain situations more than I should, maybe this was one of those situations?

"So Cloud Tumble." Blizzard Candy prompted.

"Are you going to stay with us or are we dropping you off somewhere?"

Cloud gave him a tired look.

"I'll stay... for now, young one."

Blizzard Candy looked bewildered, a completely unexpected reaction on his part.

"Young one! Who are you calling young one!"

Cloud Tumble sighed.

"How old are you son?"

"I am 18 years old!"

"I am just over twice your age. 37."

Blizzard looked amazed.

"Whoa there grandpa, don't go breaking your hips now!" he joked.

"Hey there, let's not exaggerate now," I said, "I am 32 and I can buck ponies and take hits just fine."

"t' way you take damage you'd think that you were 22." Brook chuckled.

Was that a compliment? Or a jab?

"Thank... you? I think?"

"I don't think that was a compliment..." Cloud Tumble said.

"You know Blizzard, back when I was your age turning 14 made me eligible to own property, get a job and vote on political decisions."

"And fuck." Brook added.

"Eh, yeah, that too."

"But I wasn't legally allowed to drink alcohol, not until the age of 21."

"Really?" he said.

"Now it's the complete opposite."

"You are not allowed to fuck until the age of 21?" Brook snickered.

"No! That's not what I meant!"

"I meant that we are allowed to drink, but that many of our freedoms are restricted in one way or another."

"Like, we can't move to another city unless we ask for authorization, we can't get certain jobs without certain clearance and there are no political decisions to vote on at all. We don't even get to vote on anything occurring locally in our own city, there isn't even a city council or anything."

"Yeah... we know..." Brook said, gloomily.

Strawberry Feather joined me and Cloud Tumble, Swirly had probably asked to be alone for a moment.

“Hey Manie,” I called.

She waited a bit before answering, she didn't really seem in the mood to talk right now.

“What...”

“How old are you exactly?”

“Ya ain’t supposed to ask about a mares age.” Brook Cotton said to me.

“Why not?” Strawberry Feather asked.

“It is not polite.”

“But its okay for mares to ask about our age?”

“It’s aaeeeh... you want to answer this one Heavens?” Brook tried to weasel out.

"You are the one who brought it up. Why don't you explain your strange reasoning to him?"

Brook gave me a friendly but mean glare.

“Well, Strawberry, it’s complicated. You’ll learn as you grow older and meet a nice mare one day.”

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Brook has got it all confused." I said.

"What he really means is that it's not polite to ask about a mare's age if you are going out with her, like Blizzard did yesterday."

"Screw you!"

"That's what he meant by 'when you meet a nice mare one day'."

"Oh, okay."

The two seemed satisfied with the answer.

I turned to the wagon.

"Well Manie, how old are you?" I asked again.

"Why is it of such interest to you?"

"You were a Major in the army and you left, what, 2-3 years ago?"

"Yes. And?"

"You don't look much older than Swirly Star here. Aren't you a little young to be a Major?"

"DO keep in mind that it was I who invented an advanced military targeting system that was and is still used in all branches of the army today, I explained it to you, it has no known countermeasure, I believe that it is one of the greatest military advances of our age."

"I get that. But what I am asking for here is, were you underage when still in the employ of the army or not?"

There was a long pause.

"Yes." Manie answered softly. "Yes I was."

“So you invented that system when you were 17.." I assumed, "Pretty impressive.”

“16 actually.” she corrected me, “I am 19. I didn’t... didn't do what I did until I was 17...”

“How old were ya when ya joined the army?” Brook Cotton wondered.

“I was signed up when I was 14. But have unofficially been working in the army since I was 9.”

“What? Since you were 9 years old?” I was surprised.

These were ages that gave even more sense to her story, it seemed likely that her coworkers had targeted her out of jealousy for her talent, but it also made it seem all the more wrong of them to have assaulted her and threatened to kill her.

“That’s impossible.” Brook Cotton said in amazement.

“Not when your father is a high ranking pegasus officer it’s not.” she said.

“He is a Colonel General within the army. Pretty much all of Equestrias ground armor is under his command.”

HER FATHER was the commander of Equestria's ground armor!?

"I didn't know that." Cloud Tumble said.

"You wouldn't, I never told you."

"Tell us about him."

“Colonel General Light Vale, he was one of the first pegasi who signed up when the 'new' Equestrian Armed Forces were first founded, the old military before Air Force, Armor and Infantry."

"He quickly rose up the ranks due to his exceptional mind for strategy and planning."

"But it wouldn't matter as they seldom listened to what he said, especially during the 5 year preparations for the 1st Recon Battalion expedition.”

"And well... look where that went..."

“You weren’t here.” Cloud Tumble said coldly, “You don’t know anything.”

“No. Neither was my father. But I do know that you’d have a damn better chance if you brought napalm grenades instead of frags and that more of you would have survived if you had actual combat training instead of running on those damn treadmills and wind tunnels all the time.” Manie retorted.

"I am not saying that the massacre could have been avoided if they had listened to him, but with relative safety say that you could have been better prepared and avoided unnecessary deaths if they had just listened to some of the things my father suggested."

"You talk as if Cloud was here when it happened."

"He was, as far as I know."

"But that is entirely his own business, you'll have to ask him to fill you in about it."

I turned to Cloud.

He gave me a hard icy stare.

"I am not telling you a fucking thing."

"The 1st Recon Battalion is my past, my... nightmare. I am not going to talk about it, not with you, not with anyone."

"As you wish... Your choice."

I turned back to Manie.

“So what kind of involvement did you have with your father?"

"I mean, you said you had been with the army since the age of 9. What did you do there?”

She paused.

"I don't know Heavens..."

"Don't want to talk about it?"

"Yeah, I... hmm..."

"I understand if you don't want to talk about it, I am not forcing you or anything."

"I'm sorry if I am being a bit to personal, I just want to get to know you guys a bit better."

"While I do prefer and appreciate open discussion and sharing you don't have to tell me anything as long as it isn't critical to the mission."

"The reasoning behind your crime however was something I had to know, because of the conflict going on between you and Rainbow Sea. Even though in the end, it didn't really work out all that well..."

"I get that, it's just that I don't talk about him very often..."

"But I guess I can tell you about him, I owe you and Cloud Tumble, so it's the least I can do..."

"You don't owe us anything." I assured her.

"But I do. The two of you saved my life, and in your case that's twice in a row now."

"I was just doing my job."

"And you did a good one at that, you found me and you rescued me from that... that creep."

"So my father... hmm..."

"I was mostly his apprentice early on, he wanted to get me involved with the military when I was young in the hopes that I could make connections and become an officer or something, the other generals allowed him to bring me with him on his meetings and briefings so I could learn, I was sort 'their' little girl, everyone were really nice."

"He taught me all he knew about leading soldiers and strategizing, and when he began working on conjunction with the defense contractor, Warhorse Military Industries in the design of the first serious main battle tanks he taught me about that too."

"I was... competent... in leading soldiers, but I wasn't special, in both the sims and the few training sessions that I was allowed to try the responsibility of command in I performed generally average, and in the army 'average' doesn't cut it."

"My true calling was with the new main battle tanks and their systems. I was really interested in their inner workings, so I learned everything I could about them during the five year training period that my father was busy helping in the planning of the 1st Recon Battalion's expedition."

"But then, disaster struck and the 1st Recon Battalion was slaughtered by the natives here. My father became grim and incredibly serious. He stopped taking me with him, he didn’t learn me anything, he isolated me completely from his work, he rarely talked to me."

"Since I wasn't officially in the army I wasn't allowed in unless my father brought him with me, so I decided to simply apply for the army conventionally, I was too young for basic training but was allowed to work in R&D due to my experience with main battle tanks, they had to do me a childishly simple test which I aced right away.”

"In the following years a lot happened, my expertise when it came to main battle tanks netted me a position as an officer, a tank commander, in Armor, despite me not being an unicorn as was asked by the prerequisites of that type of position. I met Cloud Tumble and my crew, I worked on a variety of upgrades and minor projects in between training exercises, I often got to test the very same things I worked on in the R&D department. You wont meet many engineers who get to say that."

"I... I loved my job... It was... great."

"But there was something missing, two very important things."

"A stable relation with my father, and a cutiemark."

"You... you didn't have a cutiemark?" Strawberry Feather asked hesitantly.

"After all that?"

"I sure didn't."

"Can you believe it? 15 years old and still no cutiemark?"

"And here I thought being the second to last to get mine in my class was bad..."

"But how is that possible? You got into the army and worked on advanced tech as a teenager, isn't that a special talent?"

"Apparently not, for all my worth as a tank commander and engineer that still wasn't it."

"So when did you get yours?"

"When I completed my work with the laser designation system of course, I did mention that my cutiemark is the interface icon used by my system to highlight a target, didn't I?"'

"You mentioned it before, but you never said anything about how you got it..."

"Well that was it, my special talent, laser designation, apparently."

"But that didn't work out, not with my rivals as you know, and not my my father..."

"I was proud of my accomplishment, I showed it to my father, but he ignored me, he had changed."

"He even ignored me when I asked him for help in dealing with the others, it's like he didn't even acknowledge me anymore and he never even told me why..."

"So the two of us have drifted apart... I haven't spoken to him since before it all happened..."

"For many, the day of their cutiemarks appearance is often a happy and cherished memory, for me, it is a sad reminder of how my father stopped loving me and of all the struggles and problems my 'talent' brought with it."

We remained silent.

"And now you know that about me, a bit corny, perhaps, b-"

"It's not corny, it's sad." I said.

"Now we know that what you did was more of a matter of circumstance than anything, you had your reasons to act the way you did, valid reasons, that any of us would be just as likely to have if we ever got into the same kind of situation."

"I can't justify killing 58 ponies with a bad relation to my father, that's not a 'valid reason'."

"But you can, you asked him and others for help and you got nothing. It is their fault for not helping you out in that messy situation, you had to do something to defend yourself, even if it ended up being a bit extreme."

"I guess..."

"I know that it might not mean much, but just know that if there is anything you need, I am here for you."

"And so am I." Cloud Tumble inserted.

"I don't know what you think about me anymore, but I am still here for you as well, I'd do anything for you."

"I..."

"..."

"Thank you. Both of you."

We left it at that.

It didn't seem to be all that appropriate to start anything else after that, I figured that we might as well go the last few kilometers in silence, to let everyone reflect on things.

After another hour of walking I checked behind us for our pursuers, they were still following us, still keeping just barely out of sight.

They hadn't made a move yet, but it was clear that they had bad intentions.

I checked the map to try and make out the distance to the military outpost we were heading to, it shouldn't be far now, I estimated that we had barely two-three kilometers left to go.

"Sweet Heavens!" Nurse Swirly called for me.

I looked up from the map and noticed the dark shape of a pile of debris further up the road.

Shit.

They had been herding us into an ambush.

“I should have guessed.” I said bitterly. “Everypony grab a pistol. Manie and Cloud, you grab rifles.”

I glanced at our wagon, the back of the interior was shrouded and dark, whoever would be looking towards there from a distance would never notice Manie Manie in the shadows.

“Manie, I hope you can use a rifle because you will be our marksman, stay in the back of the wagon and prime your sights on whoever happens to introduce himself as the leader."

"IF they talk to us before they shoot.”

“How about negotiating for safe passage?” Nurse Swirly suggested.

“If there is the remote possibility of getting away without bloodshed and significant loss of supplies then yes. If not, let’s assume the worst. I know that it may not be in your nature as a nurse, but please, grab a pistol and be prepared.”

Everyone grabbed a weapon and two mags each.

We were slowly approaching the road blockade.

My heart was racing, I felt a rush of adrenaline build up in my system.

I had been in fights before, riots, raids, assaults... I had taken hits, I had killed armed suspects before, combat was not new to me.

But this was different.

This time I had no armor to protect me, no trained squad of armored and well equipped officers to rely on, and worst of all, I was at the head of the group, I was the leader.

I would be the first to be shot if things didn’t turn out well.

I stood right next to the pile of debris that blocked the road. Brook Cotton stopped the wagon.

There was a very long moment of silence where nopony made a move, the only sound to be heard was the sound of swaying trees in the wind and the rain clattering on the road.

I gathered courage and called out loudly.

“OKAY, SO YOU HAVE BLOCKED US ON THE ROAD. WHAT HAPPENS NOW?”

“Now” a dark and burly voice could be heard saying from the nearby bushes.

“Now you lay down your weapons and hand us the wagon and all your gear, supplies and items of value.”

An earth pony with an impressive bulk emerged from the bushes, he was completely unarmed and unarmored.

Everypony primed his sights on him.

His coat and mane were painted in an elaborate camouflage pattern, his blood red eyes were slowly looking over the group, briefly stopping at Nurse Swirly but soon shifting to me.

“You are a curious one.” he said. “What exactly are you?”

I said nothing.

Mentioning the scramble suit would only end up with the stallion trying to get it off me, which I knew was impossible.

“The quiet type I see.” he looked towards the group. “I repeat. Lay down your weapons.”

Strawberry Feather and Nurse Swirly were about to drop their weapons.

“No.” I instructed. “Don’t listen to him. Keep your sights aimed on him.”

“You better do as I ask.” the bandit demanded nonchalantly.

“And if we don’t?” I challenged.

The bandit slowly looked in both directions of the road.

Several more bandits geared in various bits of stolen gear and makeshift armor armed with rifles, pistols and melee weapons emerged from the foliage. Surrounding us completely.

Everypony diverged their attention from the unarmed bandit leader to other bandits.

They were easily more than 20.

We didn’t stand a chance.

Nurse Swirly, Strawberry Feather and Blizzard Candy seemed nervous and shaky, the others looked fierce and determined.

They had courage, they would go down fighting if they had to.

I let out a deep tired sigh.

“Fine. You can have the wagon and our gear.” I submitted.

"It's not even ours, this isn't worth dying over."

"Smart guy."

“Hand over all your gear and the mare and we'll let you move on unharmed.” the bandit said.

The mare?

They wanted Nurse Swirly.

We are not giving them Nurse Swirly.

Once Manie Manie would have to step out of the wagon they would likely demand her too.

“No.” I said firmly. “You can’t have her, or anypony from our group. They are not trade goods.”

“You don’t have a choice.” the bandit leader said. “Either you hand over everything and the mare or you die. Here and now.”

I remained quiet, moments passed.

I looked back at the group and the wagon, I could see the faint gleam of Manie Manie’s deep red-purple eyes faintly gleam in the shadows, she looked pissed.

The bandit leader hadn't noticed her yet, she had the perfect shot.

"I am not resisting, I am making you a generous offer of all our goods without the need for bloodshed, but we are not giving you her."

"Offer?"

"This isn't negotiable, it's everything or death. Your choice."

I nodded looking down at the ground.

“Hmm.”

I was in deep thought, thinking over the many scenarios that could play out.

Biding my time.

The bandit leader was growing impatient.

“Well?” he said irritated.

Well what you stupid dickhead. You are bandits, you have weapons.

Do you need my permission to loot our goods and steal our mares?

“You are the leader of this group, right?” I asked him.

He seemed taken aback by this obvious question but regained his intimidating composure quickly.

“Why, yes! Yes I am.” he said proudly.

“Good good...” I said quietly, nodding for myself. “And what exactly makes you their leader?”

I knew this was a lost cause, I was merely trying to try to fuck with them before going down.

The bandit leader looked unamused, he didn’t say anything.

“He is the strongest!” a bandit said from behind the wagon.

“He is the biggest!” another bandit said.

“He is da smartest!” a dumb sounding third said.

The bandit leader smirked, he seemed proud and confident in the support he had.

“I see.” I said. “Well you see. While we have been talking one of my own guys have been aiming his sights at you.” the bandit leader’s eyes dilated, “The moment shit flies lose out here you will die along with us."

"You see, if I am going down to hell, I am sure as fuck going to drag you down with me.”

“You bluff!” the bandit leader exclaimed, rapidly scanning our group again, “None of your group are even aiming at me and-”

The bandit leader’s eyes widened as he noticed Manie Manie’s gleaming red-purple eyes in the back of the wagon. “.......damnit!”

I mimicked for him not to make a sound about her.

“I am not going to give you her." my confidence swelled, I had this secured in my hoof.

"Quite frankly, now that I think about it, I am not going to give you a damn thing. If you want our supplies and the mare you will have to take it from us forcibly, which shouldn’t be such a problem for your companions here..."

"Yeah!!" one of the bandits called out.

"But for you, your career of banditry ends here, today.”

“And honestly, judging from you and your group I don’t think they will last long without you.”

“BOSS!?” one of the bandits exclaimed angrily. “YOU GONNA LET THIS SHITHEAD TALK TO YOU LIKE THAT!?”

Murmurs of dissent could be heard among the bandit ranks.

The bandit leader looked paralyzed in fear, staring deep into Manie Manie’s eyes.

She was like death herself for him.

“C-clear t-the barricade!” he ordered.

“Boss!?”

“W-we are letting them pass!”

“Boss! He is just fucking with you! We can take them!” one of the bandits called at him.

“Stand down!” the bandit leader ordered.

Nopony made a move.

The bandits refused to listen to him. They felt betrayed.

“No.” a bandit said, stepping up to the bandit leader. “We are not going to stand for this shit, if you are letting this fucking bloke screw with you then perhaps you shouldn't be the one leading us.”

“Shut the fuck up Ripper.” another bandit said, stepping out of the lines. “Nopony talks to the boss like that.”

“Let him talk!” a bandit was heard saying.

“Fall back in line!” another said.

Soon arguments began to break out and the bandits became busy arguing with each other, completely forgetting about us.

The bandit leader was still frozen in fear as he were.

In the chaos I noticed two yellow grenades land by either side of the bandit leader, a split second after seeing them a bright flash and a loud bang blinded and deafened me, I backed up and rubbed my eyes trying to recover but to no avail.

I could hear the faint sounds of screams and gunshots that ceased as I began to recover.

When I could clearly see again I saw the bandits lie dead by our hooves, killed where they stood, bits of skull, dismembered legs, torn open torsos, the bandits were all laying in growing pools of blood that mixed with the rain and flowed off the edges of the road.

None of us had any idea what the hell was going on, we had all dropped out weapons in the confusion and were completely disarmed and unprepared for whatever had killed the bandits.

“*Hello*” the familiar sound of a helmet vocoder greeted me. “*You must be Captain Tombs.*”

An Overwatch army sergeant emerged from the bushes where the bandits had previously laid in wait.

As far as I could tell by the shape of the dark red armor, it was a mare.

The other Overwatch soldiers clad in dark blue armor soon followed and began checking for survivors, some began to clear the road blockade and bodies off the road.

“How do you know who I am?” I asked.

"Who are you?"

"*Overwatch, patrol from Berry 2.*"

“*CP Command informed us that you would be coming this way. We expected you sooner.*”

“We had some... setbacks at Helsinghoof.”

“*I see.*” she glanced over at the group who was still mildly shocked and recovering.

“*These must be the ponies assigned to you...*”

"*Hang on...*"

"*Somepony is missing. The green one.*"

“Rainbow Sea turned on me and kidnapped one of the others.”

“He had to be dealt with forcibly...”

“*And this new stallion...?*”

“That would be Cloud Tumbler, he was a worker at Helsinghoof. He stole a firearm with the intention of escaping Helsinghoof but ended up using it to rescue us instead.”

“*’Us’?*”

“It’s... uh, probably best if I tell you on the way.”

“*Yes yes, of course.*"

"*Personally, I don’t think your CP command will be especially happy with the developments, but from how you describe it you did what had to be done.*”

“*Sun Valley Hills lies 70 kilometers further inlands, you’ll never make it there by nightfall, and you DON’T want to be out traveling on the frontier at night. At least not without an APC.*”

“Why is that?”

“*That*” she said, “*is something I will tell once we get back to the outpost.*”

“*Some things are better shown than told...*” she added.

The roadblock had been cleared, the wagon was free to carry on.

The soldiers began to make their way down the road with the loot taken from the bandits, they ignored the bodies and left them by the sides of the road.

“You are just going to leave them there like that?” Nurse Swirly asked the sergeant.

The sergeant stopped and shivered briefly.

“*The... night creatures... and rain will take care of those.*” she said, I thought I detected a hint of fear through the static of her radio but could not tell for sure.

We began walking the last few kilometers towards the outpost and I told her of what had happened in Helsinghoof on the way.

The walls included only a short segment of the road blocked off by two large gates and enough barely for 2 two story cement buildings to be built on either side of the road.

The walls, I noticed, were almost twice as high as the walls surrounding New Prospect and Helsinghoof.

They were made of a black metal of some sort, steel I figured, painted black to lessen the silhouette of the outpost from a distance.

What was strange about these walls was that the foundations were adorned with long sharp spikes, many of whom seemed red with dried blood and bits of dark fur and cloth, the dirt in which the spikes were planted were sullied with charred looking black mud.

When the guards sighted us the gate opened and we were all let in, we parked the wagon under the protection of a rain cover.

Another Overwatch sergeant came out to greet us, a stallion, he was not wearing his helmet but instead wore red night vision goggles over a woodland camouflaged boonie hat.

He seemed to have a crimson coat, his head was clean shaven under the hat from the looks of it, and so was his tail.

He wore black sunglasses.

“Welcome to checkpoint Berry 2!” he greeted us. “Hope you don’t mind the small size of the outpost. It wasn’t really designed to host guests and passerby.”

“*This here is Bonnie. He is in charge of the defenses around here while I am in charge of patrols.*” the sergeant mare introduced him.

“Ain’t Bonnie a feminine name?” Brook Cotton wondered.

“Yes it is.” Bonnie replied.

“Are you...” Brook Cotton didn’t finish his question.

“Am I what?” Bonnie wondered, then he realized. “Oh, you mean gay? No goodness no, how could I be that with all these wonderful mares around?” he gave us a nasty smile “Got my name because of the boonie hat I wear all the time. I keep insisting that it is called a bush hat but they wouldn’t have any of it.”

"Why would you assume that he was gay?" I asked Brook.

He became a bit embarrassed by the question.

"Uh, ah... ah don't really know why ah'd assume that..."

Bonnie looked at the wagon, noticing Manie Manie’s eyes looking at him.

He pulled down his night vision goggles, over his sunglasses.

“Well well, speakin’ o pretty mares...” he muttered, smiling.

“Hiya there!” he called for Manie, “Why don’t you come on out here with the rest of us and have a chat? We don’t bite, well at least not in Overwatch! Can’t speak for Infantry or anything.”

No response.

I leaned in closer towards the sergeant mare.

“What has CP command told you guys about the ponies assigned to me?” I asked in a low voice.

“*Ah, you must be concerned about Manie Manie.*” she said indifferently.

“Well... yeah.”

“*Relax, she is safe here, we aren’t too fond of Air Force out here, you’ll find that none of our twenty men wont lay as much as a hoof on her.*”

I was somewhat relieved hearing this, hopefully what she said was true and we could have a moment of respite before someone else tried to kill or rape us.

Manie Manie jumped out of the wagon and stretched her legs before trotting up to us.

“Why aren’t you fond of Air Force?” she asked.

“*To be honest, they are kind of a bunch of dicks.*” the sergant admitted. “*With pegasi being the only ponies allowed in they consider themselves to be the superior branch of the army and that we all 'depend on them'.*”

“That is all a bunch of bullshit obviously,” Bonnie interjected, “Overwatch has its own division of helicopters that are piloted by some of the finest earth ponies and unicorns that you can find in Equestria. Air Force is mighty scared of the new continent, so they refuse to send more than a few representatives and weather clearing ponies that all reside in the safety of the frontier towns.”

"Fucking cowards."

“That's Air Force for you.” Manie Manie said.

“Pretty much all the helicopters you see on the frontier belong to Overwatch.” Bonnie continued proudly, “We gots all kinds of choppers, from smaller open scout helicopters with miniguns to huge transport gunships that can carry up to 20 soldiers and still deal a shitton of damage. But our main variety is the V972 Hunter-Chopper, or just gunship if you will. Those babies are clad completely in armored steel plates, feature rocket pods, mine disp-”

“I don’t like helicopters.” Manie Manie interrupted.

Bonnie seemed a bit hurt hearing this.

“*You’ll have to excuse Bonnie here, he gets carried away sometimes.*” the mare said.

"*He really likes gunship support you see.*"

“Oh I understand, if I was stationed out here I would probably consider helicopter air support to be a blessing too. I don’t mean nothing bad about it, it is just that I’ve had a... bit of a bad experience with helicopters...” Manie Manie explained.

Bonnie’s eyes widened.

“OH! You must be Manie Manie! The bane of Air Force! Amazing job you did back there in the mainland!” Bonnie let out an awkward laugh to show his approval.

He meant well, but she didn’t really take it like he had expected.

“Too soon.” I said to Bonnie, giving him an understanding look.

“Oh... uh sorry... I’ll just... shut up now.” he said, slightly ashamed, “Sunny Sunshine, you mind showing these ponies where they can sleep for the night? I need to... um... make sure that the perimeter is nicely secured. Yeah...” he then walked off looking slightly downbeat.

Everypony looked at the sergeant mare, Sunny Sunshine.

Sunny Sunshine.

Ocean Ruby.

Rita Gumdrops.

Cake Frosting.

It hadn't been longer than a week and I had already met mares with some of the most ridiculous names I had ever heard in my entire life, it was as if there was some sort of malevolent third god up there that was toying with chance and making the mares I met have laughable names.

I honestly didn't know who I should feel sorry for, the mares who had been forced (or at least lived) with their assigned names or the malevolent god who couldn't come up with good names for the ponies of Equestria.

“*...yeah, I know I know. Laugh it up.*” she said.

“What’s with the names here?” Blizzard Candy wondered.

“*Oh you know, it helps lift the mood.*"

"*Most of us have silly nicknames for laughs to ease things up a little. We are all very close to each other around here.*” she chucked nervously.

We weren’t convinced and silently stared her down.

Eventually she gave in.

“*Aw fuck. You win. Sunny Sunshine is my real name and some of the men began giving each other silly nicknames just to mock me when I showed up.*”

Still no response.

“*That's it. Seriously.*”

We all gave her a mean smile.

“*...*”

“Don’t mind them,” I said, as if I hadn’t partaken in whatever it was we were doing, “They are just like that.”

“*Yeah. Real funny. You’ll fit right in here.*” Sunny Sunshine muttered.

“*Common then, I’ll show you the ‘guest’ room.*”

Sunny Sunshine led us to a small room in the bottom floor of the cement building on the left side of the road.

It was a very small room that had some wooden crates with the Overwatch logo on them stacked in a corner.

The room had three beds, two of whom were queen sized.

The sheets seemed stained and almost yellow, and the room had a familiar smell that I couldn’t really put my hoof on...

Even the cement floor had strange dried stains here and there.

Blizzard Candy’s eyes went wide for some reason unbeknownst to me

“*This is where you will be sleeping for the night.*” Sunny Sunshine said.

She took off her helmet, revealing her yellow coat, orange mane and orange eyes.

She seemed to be about my age I thought based on the weary look in her eyes. Hard to tell with ponies though.

"Sorry about the lack of space, you'll simply have to share beds for the night, not much we can do about that."

“I know that smell. Have you guys been-” Blizzard Candy tried to ask.

Sunny blushed furiously.

“NO. NO WE HAVEN’T."

"You have!"

"You could have at least changed the sheets or something, this is just unsanitary."

What did he mean?

What was h- semen.

That was the familiar smell I couldn't pinpoint.

Semen.

The stains were dried semen.

“Oooooooh...” Brook Cotton came up to speed.

“Now we know what she meant by ‘we are all real close’...” Manie commented quietly.

“Uhm... can... I... sleep on the floor?” Strawberry Feather asked Nurse Swirly.

"It's... probably best if you don't." Swirly replied, looking in disgust at the stains on the floor around her.

“You... can't be serious.” I said.

Sunny Sunshine gritted her teeth.

“We are far from home and have been left to guard absolutely nothing in the middle of nowhere.”

“We are all deathly afraid of the night creatures that circle our walls like goddamned tigers every damned night... we could die any day, is it really wrong for me and my men to...”

A stallion in blue armor came in.

“*Heey Sunny~*” then he noticed us, “*Oh, shit! Uh. Hey sarge. I see that. Um, we got guests."*

"Indeed we do."

"*Are you... are you having them stay in here tonight?*” he sounded disappointed. We could all guess why.

“Yes. Private Snowball.” she said with authority in her voice.

I struggled to contain a chuckle.

And that makes six unfortunate ponies touched by the imaginary evil third god.

“How about you entertain our ‘guests’ while I go debrief this CP Captain.” she ordered.

“*Uh. Yes. Of course ma’am.*”

“Ask him any questions you may have.” she said to the group, smirking as the two of us left the room.

When we left she seemed to be rushing off in an awful hurry.

“Hey! Wait!” I called after her.

She stopped but didn’t turn to look at me.

“We are all afraid of death, but are you seriously running your unit like this? What would command say about it?”

“I think you should mind your own fucking business, officer!” she growled at me.

Huh!?

“Either you behave and shut your fucking mouth about how I run my unit or you will know why you should fear the night, LIVE AND UP CLOSE.” She looked at me with an expression mixed with anger, devastation and fear.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I questioned, that reaction seems completely uncalled for.

All of a sudden she crouched down and whimpered, holding her head with her forehooves, muttering a bunch of unintelligible nonsense.

What the hell was she doing?

What was going on?

“Are you okay Sergeant?” I put a hoof on her shoulder to try and comfort her, but she violently shrugged it away.

“DON’T TOUCH ME YOU MONSTER!” she screamed at me with tearful bloodshot eyes.

!?!?!?

….

I understand.

She was suffering from post traumatic stress.

That explains her inclination to keep the mood lighthearted, the names, the lack of protocol, and why she allowed her unit to... 'have their fun' in that storage room.

She is far gone.

There is nothing I can do for her.

She calmed down and stood back up, wiping her tears off and sniffing lightly.

“I... I’m sorry about that... Just... come with me.”

She lead me to the upper floor of the right building, the two large rooms here were filled with monitors and computers of various kinds and functions.

The center of the main room was occupied by a large table with a map that was illuminated by a large headlight, it was a map of the area around Checkpoint Berry 2 in a radius of ca 20 kilometers.

The map was cluttered with various marks and symbols, what caught my attention were the multiple skull and crossed bones markings in red on what appeared to be caves and... ruins?

Scattered throughout the continent and the secured frontier we have found a number of ancient looking ruins partly overgrown by the fauna.

What kind of ruins are we talking about? Temples? Primitive remains?

Oh no, these aren't the kind of cozy little temple ruins you read about in the Daring Do books, these are ruins of actual cities and installations, remains of an ancient civilization who judging by the architecture was well technologically developed.

Sunny Sunshine looked at me wearily.

“This is our briefing and tactical room, this is where we organize ourselves and register recon data about the area for Overwatch and Air Force. They like to keep an eye on things in the frontier...”

The monitors displayed the view from various cameras set up in the surrounding areas, one monitor had the view of 10 different cameras, set up to cover all angles of the perimeter wall. Others were set up looking towards cave entrances and woodland clearings.

I noticed one particular screen, it displayed ruins in the distance, urban ruins.

Looks like we really weren't the first civilized beings on this continent, that was a bombed out city.

“We have cameras set up all around the area, to monitor activity and keep an eye our surroundings. We put them up originally to alert us of bandits in the area but our cameras ended up catching sight of... other things.” she looked at me gloomily and misty eyed.

“Before you say anything, keep in mind that some ponies DIED setting up some of these cameras. So don’t... just show them respect.”

I said nothing.

She walked up to a monitor and pressed a few keys. A recording began to play.

The screen flashed with gray static, an acid green text read “REC 034 - OCT 15 - 03:23” in the center of screen.

It was from a camera set up high overlooking a woodland clearance that I recognized from one of the screens.

It was clearly nighttime and a group of 10 bandits had lit a campfire in the middle of the clearing.

We couldn’t hear what the bandits were saying, only the occasional raised voice was heard sometime when one of the bandits tried to sing something, laughed at a joke or became angered.

Several minutes passed like this, nothing was out of the ordinary.

Then Sunny Sunshine whimpered and looked away, I didn’t understand why until I saw it.

The treeline lit up with glowing red dots that reassembled eyes... wh- holy SHIT they WERE eyes!

The bandits were surrounded by something!

One of the bandits stood up screaming and pointing towards the treeline, he screamed in horror as his companions stood up bearing weapons, soon a deep chilling roar was heard and the twisted nightmarish versions of giant creatures and insects came running from all directions completely massacrating the bandits.

I saw the bandits get torn limb from limb, ripped to ribbons and eaten alive as they screamed in terror and pain, there was blood everywhere.

The recording soon ended after that.

I could feel myself shivering, this was... wait, there was more.

Another recording began to play, this one saying “REC 049 - NOV 2 - 02:49”.

It showed the entrance of a cave, two bandits, or possibly even just escaped workers, were talking about looking for shelter for the night, they were acquainted with each other, possibly good friends.

One of the ponies instructed for the other to wait outside while he went inside to have a look at the cave.

Shortly after he went inside a deathly scream of pain was heard echoing from the cave and the clattering of tiny feet was heard coming from the cave.

OH SWEET MER- WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT THING!?

It looked like a giant centipede with massive razors for mandibles!

A fucking centipede!

The other pony didn’t stand a chance!

The giant centipede swung its mandibles, chopping its head and a large chunk of his upper body off with a single swing, blood sprayed out covering the camera completely with a sickening red.

The recording ended after that.

I began to feel violently sick, this was horrible!

There was another recording!

This was a recording of a group of ponies running away from the urban ruins I had seen on one of the screens, again, at night.

They were being chased by... Oh god... they were being chased by a massive deformed blob of flesh that had a chaotic mess of tentacles, tails, talons, blade like appendages and limbs twitching and swinging wildly in all directions.

It had multiple crazed red glowing red eyes all over its body that blinked and twitched and had multiple mouths gaping and closing, revealing whole rows of razor sharp teeth with bits of pony flesh stuck to some of them.

It caught some of the running ponies with remarkable and unnatural speed, decimating them quickly, ripping off several limbs and chunks of pony with its limbs and appendages and devouring them in the most gruesome and utterly sickening way imaginable.

I retched and felt bile pour out of my gaping mouth, as I looked away in violent disgust I mashed at the keyboard trying to find the ESC key.

The recording shut down.

I felt Sunny Sunshine put a hoof on me in a reassuring manner.

I retched, again and again, it just wouldn’t stop! Oh god! Why wouldn’t it stop!!

I became weak and dehydrated from the shock and vomiting and fell unconscious, in my own pool of bile.

Smell.

I had fallen unconscious in my own vomit, but... I couldn’t smell it.

Had they washed me off?

“He is waking up” I heard a distant voice say.

“Sweet Heavens. Are you alright?” a voice asked me.

“Sweets.”

“Unghh...” I tried to talk.

“What did you do to him?” a voice demanded.

There was no response.

With great effort I opened my eyes and tried to make out the shapes of the figures standing around me.

They were ponies. The ponies of my group.

The two closest ponies I could make out were Sunny Sunshine and Manie Manie who stood on either side of the bed.

Sunny Sunshine was staring at Manie Manie bitterly, Manie Manie looked furious.

“Wha- what is going on here.” I struggled to say.

“Sweet Heavens!” Manie called for me in relief.

“H-how long have I been out...?” I asked, a deep feeling of fear and panic beginning to rise in me.

“About five hours... the sun is setting, it is almost time for supper.” she said.

“What did they do to you? What happened?”

“N-no.” I tilted my head towards Sunny Sunshine, shaking my head slowly and giving her a fearful look that she returned with a nod.

“No what?” Manie wondered, she looked at Sunny Sunshine suspiciously.

“L-leave me with Sunny.” I said, nopony budged, “Please.”

A brief moment passed and everypony left the room, leaving me alone with Sunny Sunshine.

We spent a few moments looking in panic at each other.

“They. Must. Not. Know.” I said decisively.

She didn’t say anything, she just stared at me for a few minutes before leaving the room.

I was alone.

I was alone.

I don't want to be alone, not now!

Unreasonable thoughts of panic crossed my mind and a multitude of nightmarish scenarios began playing in my head.

I began imagining that the outpost had been overrun and that the night creatures were just outside, laying in wait for me.

I imagined that they would begin pounding on the door any second now they-

The door handle turned.

Cold sweat ran down my forehead.

I began breathing deeply and quickly.

! ! ! ! !

Nurse Swirly, Brook Cotton, Manie Manie, Cloud Tumble and the two bucks stepped inside the room.

...

I felt stupid and ashamed.

I wasn't sure what I had been expecting to come through that door, of course it would have been them.

I hadn't been so afraid of anything in all my life, and in the end it was only my drained and tired mind playing a nightmarish trick on me.

Nurse Swirly was quick to notice my condition.

“Sweet Heavens! Are you okay!?” she asked me, running up to me trying to determine what was happening to me.

"What's going on?" Manie wondered.

“He... he is physically fine.” Swirly deduced.

“It’s paralyzing fear.” Cloud Tumble said from the doorway.

Everypony looked at him.

“I have seen that look before... In the lost expressions of my former companions... He is deathly afraid of something.”

“Afraid? Afraid of what?” Manie Manie asked.

"Maybe he's afraid of what's beyond t' frontier?" Brook suggested.

They all looked at me silently, trying to make out details and piece things together from my terrified expression.

"I don't think that's it."

"He talks about the frontier all the time, I think he accepts it."

"No one accepts the frontier." Cloud said.

"Okay."

"But he accepts his mission to go past the border."

"So what is really scaring him then?"

The door opened and a pony leaned in, it was Bonnie, he seemed slightly intoxicated.

“Grub’s almost ready. Will you guys be joining us?” he asked.

“Uh...” Brook Cotton was unsure.

I struggled to gather courage and focus again.

“...yes.” I said in a low voice. “Help me up.”

"You should rest." Swirly advised.

"I should eat."

"I can rest later..."

Nurse Swirly helped me get out of the ill smelling bed, I got up on shaky legs but was otherwise in decent condition.

We followed Bonnie to the outpost’s mess hall, it was in the bottom floor of the right building.

The room wasn’t especially big, but was big enough for a long table for ca 15 ponies and had a kitchen in one end, 7 others were sitting by the table chatting cheerfully and drinking some sort of gin, Bonnie seated himself next to Sunny Sunshine who was leaned in towards another group listening to a joke which we didn’t quite get.

Everyone wore their armor but had taken off their helmets, either setting them on the floor next to their chairs or placing the helms on the table, the soldiers were a good mix of mares and stallions of varying ages and colors.

A few minutes after we had all taken our seats we were given our own gin.

“This is strong stuff” one of the soldiers warned “Guaranteed to knock ya off yer hooves after five, max six glasses. ‘record’s at twenty four.”

"What is it?" I asked, looking at the oily transparent liquid in my glass.

"Queen Celestia's Victory Gin!"

"Victory Gin, huh?" Blizzard said, picking up his glass.

"It can't be that strong." he gulped the full contents in one go.

"Whoah! Easy there kid! One sip at a time!" the soldier warned, but it was wasted on him, Blizzard had already emptied the glass, he set it down on the table with a satisfied grin on his face.

"See?"

"It's noth-" Blizzard Candy blacked out and fell backwards, landing with a thud on the cement floor.

Brook and Swirly got up to help him back up, his lights were completely out.

"What do we do?" Swirly asked me.

"Do we take him back to the room or...?"

Before I could respond the soldier who had warned Blizzard answered for me.

"Nah, nah, he'll quicken up soon enough. Just rest the fellers head on the table."

"Chef's gumbo's almost done, he shouldn't miss that."

They did as he instructed and returned to their seats.

Strawberry Feather was eyeing his glass of Victory Gin, it didn't look like he was intent on drinking it the way he stared at it.

"Is there something else Strawberry Feather could drink?" Swirly asked.

"He's a bit young for this 'Victory Gin' of yours."

"Well, there's Victory Gin." the soldier suggested.

"Eh, yeah? I was asking if there was something else?"

"We have Victory Gin." he suggested again.

"Something else, something that isn't Victory Gin."

The soldier gave her a long blank glare.

"Did I suggest Victory Gin?"

"Yes, you did. Do you have any water?"

"I am really sorry about that, I forget myself sometimes." the soldier excused himself.

"Iee, uh..." he looked around and towards the kitchen, "I'll get the colt some water alright."

He got up and went over to our end, taking Strawberry Feather's glass of gin and heading off towards the cook.

In a moment he returned with the glass and set it down before Strawberry Feather.

"Thank you." he said.

The soldier gave him a quick nod before returning to his own seat.

Strawberry Feather carefully sniffed the contents of the glass, to make sure that the soldier hadn't refilled it with more gin and it seemed like he hadn't.

He took a short gulp of water and set the glass down.

It barely took five seconds before Strawberry Feather looked dizzy, the glass hadn't been washed beforehand and some of the gin must have mixed in with the water, he leaned onto Swirly Star.

"Um, sorry." he said to her.

"Did you give the boy gin?" Swirly chided the soldier angrily.

"I gave 'im water. That's what he wanted right?"

"Look at him!"

"Bah, this ain't no luxury restaurant sweetheart, so there was a little gin left in the glass, big whoop."

"The gin will be good for him, just give it a rest."

"Grub's ready!" the cook announced.

The soldiers cheered and applauded.

We were all given a portion of some sort of funky looking soup with bits of vegetables and dices of meat in, from the smell of it it had been spiced heavily.

A drunk soldier stood up, grasping and holding a mug of gin up high, he coughed and everypony gave him their attention.

“Here is to living another day to taste ‘Chefs’ delicious gumbo!”

Everypony cheered and agreed.

Blizzard Candy woke up in the midst of it.

“Bon apetit!” the pony that had served us the soup said.

"Ooooh," Blizzard remarked, "soup!"

"Hey chef, what's in it?"

The cook gave him a fiendish smile.

"Mystery meat!"

The cook waited for Blizzard's suspect reaction, but it never came, Blizzard was completely blank.

"Neh, it's potatoes, carrots, celery, parsnip and spices. There is also some chicken and pork in it."

"Well, it's mostly chicken."

[size=9]"Okay, there is not really any pork, it's all chicken and vegetables." [/size]the cook trailed off.

Everypony began digging in, the more squeamish of our group first looked at the soup reluctantly but eventually began chomping in as well, except for Swirly who was carefully sorting out the bits of meat from her soup.

From their expressions the soup wasn’t the... best they had had, but it was food.

My stomach grumbled and I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday evening, without second thoughts I began to eat.

It was... pretty disgusting, it tasted rancid, 'delicious' was hardly the right description.

But the retching had left me empty stomached and dehydrated, I’d drink and eat anything.

Between bites the soldiers could be heard talking about this and that.

“So where are you guys heading?” a soldier sitting across the table from me asked.

“Beyond the frontier...” I said.

“Oh... sorry to hear.” the soldier muttered.

But then he looked thoughtful for a second, adding, “But well, it’s mostly wildlings there anyway, so maybe it’s not so bad..."

"Wanna switch assignments?” the soldier grinned.

“Don’t even try there Cakes, you belong here with us.” Sunny Sunshine scolded.

“Aw, I know sarge, I was just kidding.”

“Frontier duty sure sounds better than this shit...” I heard a soldier mutter loudly down the table, a couple of other soldiers agreed but I couldn’t hear what they were saying very well over the ruckus and table conversations going on.

The ponies of my group didn’t seem to understand and were giving the soldiers puzzling expressions.

“Don’t mind them.” Sunny Sunshine said to them, “They are just joking.”

“Tombs, you should come with me to the command center after eating, I still haven’t given you the message from CP command.”

“Uh... sure.”

“Sweet Heavens, what is going on here?” Manie Manie whispered to me, she was sitting next to me.

“Why are they all acting to strange?”

“It’s nothing Manie. They are just tired of guard duty that's all.”

She seemed to accept that as an answer and continued eating.

“Eat up now little ponies!” Chef announced, “There’s another portion of my special gumbo coming right up for those who are still hungry!”

The soldiers cheered on yet again.

Sunny and I finished our meals and decided to leave early.

I turned to talk to my group.

“You better go get some sleep, we got a long march ahead tomorrow and I need you guys rested and alert in case we encounter more bandits on the way.” I said.

“Uh... yeah, yeah you are right. We’ll... figure out how to set up with the beds and such...” Manie Manie said.

“You coming now or...?”

“I got to talk to Sunny Sunshine about mission directions from CP first. I’ll be down in a few.”

“Oh okay. We’ll just stay here for a while then, I am in no rush to go back to the room.”

She paused briefly, “H-hey, would uh... would you like to share a bed with me?” she asked me.

I gave her a questioning glare.

“Don’t get any funny ideas. It is just for the night and there are only 3 beds, so we'll have to share it with a third.”

Makes sense.

“Eh, sure, alright..”

"Great."

“See you later then.”

I followed Sunny Sunshine back up to the command centre.

The monitors showed no monster activity of any kind.

But there were also absolutely no animals, critters or sounds at all, the forests around us seemed devoid of life.

“Don’t bother with that.” Sunny Sunshine called from a corner of the room, she was sitting by a computer checking through messages on a screen. “They seem to know of the cameras and tend to stay clear of them unless some prey is camping out there.”

“Over here.” she called.

I went up to her, she got up from her chair and signaled me to have a seat.

With the press of a button a recorded message from CP command played.

“This is CP command,” a male voice said, “This message is intended for our operative, Captain Tombs. Tombs, if you hear this then you have made it to Checkpoint Berry 2. It is time to give you some more info about your mission.”

Yeah it is.

“Whatever you have heard about your destination from the ponies on the frontier, and whatever assumptions you yourself have made regarding the mission, rest assured of one thing. You are not being sent on a suicide mission. We know of your abuse of the Psycho chem, but that isn’t why you have been sent away, you have always been a stellar officer, an example we believe other officers should strive for.”

"You were simply chosen your experience in leadership, the officers who have served under you have vouched for you rather favorably, so we trust that you'll do a good job in leading your assigned group.

…

“You are being sent to found a military outpost beyond the frontier border, for the purposes of establishing a small hidden resupply, recon and laser guidance base for future operations in the area."

"Yes, you heard that last bit right, laser guidance, we will be installing a SOFLAM PLUS tower in your outpost once things are settled and sorted out, this is expensive and valuable tech, so it is important that you protect it."

"This is also what we wanted to contact you about as well, the ponies we have sent on with you haven’t been randomly picked from the usual pool of suspects like you'd think. These have been hoof-picked to help you on your task, in some cases unfairly, in others completely justified. But rest assured that they all have their specific use and role.”

I don’t even...

“Brook Cotton and Strawberry Feather are both great farmers, you will find that both Brook and Strawberry know more than just cotton and strawberry growing, Brook Cotton has had a history with apple bucking and comes from a long line of apple farmers, you wouldn’t believe it from his age but Strawberry Feather is proficient in the growth of sweet fruits of all kinds. I am not sure if you have cared to check through your gear (we did send you with a considerable lot) but there should be a sack filled with bags of seeds, you’ll know what to do with those...”

I knew about the seeds, but how long were they expecting me to be there?

Where on earth would I find the time to grow an orchard? They take years to fully grow.

"...you might be wondering where you'll find the time to grow crops and where to plant them."

"There are two things you should know then, one is that the seeds are genetically manipulated to grow ten times faster than conventional crops, another thing to note is that the manipulated crops don't need sunshine to grow properly. The area marked out for you is cavernous and has plenty of room for you to grow food in."

What the fuck!

There are monsters living in the caverns!

Why the fuck would I settle there!?

Didn't mission command do their research before sending me off like this?!

“Nurse Swirly was obviously sent due to her medical background, she hasn’t finished her training yet but she is a proficient nurse and good at what she does. She is going to be a valuable asset to your outpost, keep her safe.”

“Blizzard Candy is an excellent cook, but you may know that already depending on how acquainted you have become with them. If not, you should know that he worked at several restaurants before getting into the ice cream business. He got his mark at the age of 16, so don’t let the ice cream cone fool you.”

“The most important pony we have decided to send with you is Rainbow Sea, he is actually one of the head engineers and master builders who helped design the many oil rigs that dot the coasts around Equestria. He is a fantastic builder and engineer, he knows a bit or two about building fortified constructions and emplacements. You will need him to establish a safe perimeter at your destination, so it is VITAL that he is kept alive.”

I facehoofed.

Yeah, that worked out well.

“The last pony is a last minute addition. You helped in her capture two days prior to being sent on your mission. That is the former Major Manie Manie, the mare that brought down an entire helicopter platoon of Air Force with a weapon she designed herself. She is too valuable of an asset to hand directly to Air Force so whatever you hear about any reward they are handing out for her, ignore it, should she be captured and sent to them we will try to intercept her and send her back, so try not to lose her, Air Force has their greasy hooves everywhere, just like we do, and we can’t guarantee the success of interception of she is captured.”

“She is being sent with you simply due to her expertise with military tech and hardware, she built the damn system we intend to install in your outpost so she knows how it works better than anypony in Equestria.”

The bastards didn’t know about her relation to the relatives and friends of the victims of that event.

“In case you were wondering about the scramble suit, we have gave you the suit so that you wouldn’t get personally involved with any of the ponies we send with you. I don’t know how they run things in other branches of the army but in CP we keep our personal feelings separated from our work at all times, perhaps one day you will be forced to make difficult decisions regarding the lives of the ponies assigned to you and we can’t have one of our own compromise the mission in case of say, romantic involvement.”

“Initially, we were going to give you the option to take the suit off at leisure, but we heard that you had a bit of a falling out with your briefing officer and that she had you sealed inside the suit. Very unfortunate for you, still, we have decided that it may be for the best and you will thus wear the suit at all times until we deem it necessary.”

“That is all. Another message will be waiting for you at the frontier border at Checkpoint Whiskey.”

“May Celestia watch over you. Command out.”

May Celestia watch over her CUNT!

Why couldn’t they just tell me all this shit back on the mainland?

Was it REALLY necessary to put me through all this unnecessary crap?

Mission command didn't have the sightliest clue what was what, all they had done to me so far shove crap in my life, everything they did had came back to bite me in the ass, and now they wanted me to play settlers over a cave full of monsters in the middle of nowhere all while being surrounded by savages.

This was my fucking mission.

The mission which required hoofpicking me and six civilians for our 'skills' and 'experience'.

Build an outpost, for the army.

Lay down and die.

For fucking sake, why couldn't just the army deal with this shit?

It was their outpost!

What the hell made command come up with something as outrageously stupid as this?

I slammed my hooves on the desk.

That's it, that's the last straw.

I need to talk to command and get this sorted out.

I am sick of being jerked around like this.

Fucking sick of it.

“Bad news?” Sunny Sunshine asked.

“CP is leading me in the dark.”

“Is there any way to contact CP command from here?” I asked.

“No. We lack the coms tech needed for overseas communication, that message was relayed from Sun Valley Hills.”

“Sun Valley Hills?”

“The next town from here. 17 miles down the road.” Sunny explained.

Sirens began wailing outside.

A radio crackled to life in the room.

“*THE OUTPOST IS UNDER ATTACK! MAN THE DEFENSES!*”

“Goddess...” Sunny Sunshine said slowly, staring at the monitors who were going crazy with activity.

Hordes of monsters were running through the woods, their red eyes looking like tracers in the dark.

The cameras around the walls displayed multiple short and frail looking bipedal creatures with long fangs and small arms who clumsily tried to climb the walls, only to end up impaled on the spikes surrounding it.

The soldiers above fired down below, picking off the creatures one by one.

“Bogeymen!” she exclaimed.

Fast dark shapes sprinted across the screens, jumping up on the walls.

“BALVERINES!! OH GOD NO!! PLEASE NO! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!”

She ran to a weapon rack in the room and grabbed a loaded automatic rifle, I did the same and we ran outside.

It was a horrifying scene.

Huge nightmarish twisted forms of what appeared to be bipedal wolves were jumping over the walls wreaking havoc inside the camp, all around, soldiers were firing off their automatic rifles against the twisted creatures on the walls, just seconds after we came outside four soldiers were slain and the others ended up surrounded in the 'courtyard', shooting wildly in all directions as the balverine monsters threw themselves at them.

“*RETREAAAAT!! RETREEEEEAT!!*” a soldier called from the door to the mess hall.

The remaining soldiers outside, including me and Sunny Sunshine made a run for the mess hall, it was a mad dash of death, the soldiers couldn't sprint and fight back at the same time, so the cease of fire gave the balverines a target opportunity to charge us all at once while we made for the door.

All around me soldiers were shredded to pieces by the charging balverines, I was fortunate enough to make it all the way to the door, being the 3rd one to make it through, Sunny Sunshine was right behind me.

As I came inside I immediately turned towards the door, I saw Sunny Sunshine being right about to make it inside when a balverine jumped out of nowhere slicing her neck diagonally, severing her head and part of her torso in just one swipe.

Her head sailed off in a bloody arc and slid into the mess hall.

“*CLOSE THE DOOR!!!*” a soldier who had made it inside screamed.

“*WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS!?”*”

“*THERE ARE NO FUCKING OTHERS, SHUT THE DOOR!!*”

A soldier ran up to the door and tried shutting it, Sunny Sunshine’s decapitated corpse was blocking the door, as he realized this a long furry balverine arm reached in and severed his right foreleg in a single swing, the soldier gasped in shock as the leg was clutched by the balverine and pulled out of the room making the balverines outside go crazy, blood sprayed all over the door as the soldier screamed in agonizing pain, Nurse Swirly and another soldier instinctively rushed up to recover him.

“NOW IS OUR CHANCE! WHILE THEY ARE DISTRACTED!” Bonnie shouted, sprinting towards the door, tears pouring ceaselessly down his cheeks.

I followed and together we managed to unjam Sunny Sunshine’s corpse, kicking it back outside.

The door slammed shut and the balverines went absolutely insane outside as they competed over Sunny Sunshine's carcass.

We had a moment of respite, it had only been a short few meters from the command centre to the mess hall but it felt like I had just ran the running of the leaves in full speed.

I looked over the survivors, there were only five soldiers in here, among those we had Chef and Bonnie.

All of my group was here, thank Luna!

“SUNNY!! UHUUHH NOOOO!!” Bonnie screamed in grief as he knelt down beside Sunny Sunshine’s severed head, which was locked in a deep expression of shock and intense pain.

“WHYYYY SUNNY!! WHYYYHHHYYYHYY!!” he cried out, clutching her head to his chest.

Cloud Tumble, Brook Cotton and Blizzard Candy had begun barricading the door to the courtyard, it was the only exit in the room, the room featured no windows or openings of any kind, aside from an air vent.

The wounded soldier wheezed in pain, he was laughing and mumbling incoherently, Nurse Swirly had bandaged his stump with what she had at hand, but it was bad.

He was bleeding profusely and the makeshift bandage was already soaked in blood, it was a miracle if he made it past the hour, he would never survive, not without morphine or something to dull the pain.

Wait... that's right! I had the Psycho chems!

I went up to the wounded soldier and took out a Psycho chem from my satchel, I only had 4 left but this was much more important than what I had intended to use them for.

“This is going to sting, but it should help against the pain.” I warned.

“What is that?” Nurse Swirly asked suspiciously, holding me off.

“Psycho Stimulant. Combat drug designed for the army.” I explained.

“Psycho!? That's dangerous! You can't give him that!”

I gave her a stern look.

“Look. He will pass out in pain if he keeps bleeding like this, if he falls unconscious he's dead, and you know that.”

"This could save his life, he just needs to hang in there and stay awake."

“...”

“You are right. Do it.” she said in a low voice.

I injected the psycho chem into the soldier, he began breathing deeply and quickly, his eyes dilated, I felt his heart beat faster and faster when I put my hoof on his chest.

The drug had its effect, he calmed down and stopped mumbling incoherently.

“T-thanks.” the soldier stuttered, the shock from a lost limb and blood loss didn’t pass for him, but at least the drug numbed his senses for a while.

If it didn’t help him live then at least it made his death feel a little less painful.

“You can thank me back in Sun Valley Hills. Hang in there soldier.” I encouraged.

I looked around, aside from the soldier we had no other wounded, so that was taken care of at least, now all we had to worry about was holding them off, they had to go away sooner or later and we had food to last for a few days.

Problem was all we had in terms of weapons to defend ourselves with were chairs, cutlery and three auto rifles, and of those we only had one spare mag in addition to the half empty mags already loaded.

Fortunately, it didn't seem like the balverines were making a serious attempt at breaking in and the barricades seemed pretty solid.

We were safe and secure, for now.

Bonnie was still hunched over, clutching to Sunny Sunshine’s head and slowly rocking back and forth, he was devastated over her death.

They must have been close.

Manie Manie, Brook Cotton and I gathered around him.

“Bonnie...”

He didn’t respond.

All he did was sob and whimper.

“There is nothing you can do. You need to let her go.”

Still no response.

Manie Manie slowly reached forward and gently grabbed the head, Bonnie didn’t resist and gently let it go.

Brook Cotton then helped Bonnie up and the two went up to the others who were huddled over at the other end of the room.

I found a ripped tablecloth which we wrapped Sunny Sunshine’s head in and hid in the corner left of the door behind a box.

We would likely be here all night, we shouldn’t have to see that.

Manie Manie and I sat down with the group, the 12 of us had formed a sort of circle before the kitchen compartment, the soldiers had all taken off their helmets revealing their sad and grief stricken faces.

The atmosphere was, needless to say, pretty heavy in here.

We didn’t say much in the hours that passed, none of us dared to sleep, we didn’t touch our food, we didn’t drink.

We just sat there, in deep thought. For 6 long hours.

Sometime in the morning the whimpering of dogs and snarling of wild animals were heard just outside.

As I got closer to our barricade I could make out the sound of something being burnt into a crisp.

"Something is burning." I informed the others."

"It's over." Bonnie said.

He got up and the others followed.

We began dismantling the barricade and prepared our three rifles, aiming them at the door.

Bonnie gently pulled the door open, letting wonderful orange sunlight into the room.

It had stopped raining.

Just outside, right next to what remained of Sunny Sunshine’s half eaten corpse, was a pile of black ash that was slowly dissolving in the sun.

“Don’t step in the ash.” Bonnie warned us, “It will rot your soul.”

We did as he said and carefully stepped over the pile of ash and into the courtyard.

It was... an absolute mess.

There were piles of black ash all over, marking where the balverines had fallen, but that wasn't what disturbed us.

It was the bodies of fallen soldiers that were spread throughout the outpost.

Most of the bodies were half eaten, some had their limbs, heads or chunks of torso ripped off and thrown off elsewhere.

Everything was completely drenched in blood, giving the outpost a bizarre crimson orange color in the sunlight.

The more squeamish of our group threw up, the rest of us simply observed the scene in disgust.

“We... should bury them.” I said.

“Sunny Sunshine. Her head. What did you do with her head?” Bonnie asked me.

“Wrapped in a tablecloth and hidden in the corner to the right of the door.”

Bonnie returned inside to retrieve her head.

We dragged Sunny Sunshine’s body away from the pile of ash and onto the road.

Soon Bonnie came out, tearful, holding her head still wrapped in cloth.

He knelt down beside her corpse and unwrapped her head, he gave her face a long silent look before loosely putting it back on her, then he covered her completely with the bloodied tablecloth and went up to the command center.

I followed him up.

“We- … I, can’t man this outpost with 4 men. I need to contact Overwatch Dispatch and inform them of what happened here, then we are coming with you to Sun Valley Hills.”

He walked up to a radio and pressed a few buttons.

“Dispatch, this is Sergeant Crunch Opal of Checkpoint Berry 2. Come in.” he broadcasted.

“*Hello. Unit.*” The electronic monotone voice of a mare greeted him.

“Sergeant Sunny Sunshine is dead. Checkpoint Berry 2 has been nearly wiped out, only I and 4 of our men remain. One has been critically injured and is in urgent need of medical attention.”

“*Report.*”

“Night creatures attacked the outpost, a whole pack of balverines jumped over the walls. We never stood a chance. Most of our men fell in the initial attack and the rest tried to fall back to the mess hall, only I and Private Shoeshine made it in, along with the CP officer Captain Tombs.”

“I am just calling to inform you that we are abandoning Checkpoint Berry 2 and are going to go with the captain to Sun Valley Hills. And frankly, with all due respect, I am going to ignore any orders you give until I return to the safety of the Sun Valley compound. You are free to do what you will with me there, but I am not staying here another night.”

There was a moment of silence.

“*Remaining Berry 2 units. Report to Sun Valley compound. Code: debriefing, evaluation, reassignment.*”

“That is all then. We are going to bury our dead, gather up some of the more valuable gear and prepare for the journey before heading out, we will be there by dusk.”

Dusk seemed about right.

We had to bury the dead, stock the wagon with all the gear and then pull it for 70 kilometers.

The weight of the wagon would slow us down to a minimum of an hour of travel per 10 or so kilometers I estimated.

“*Dispatch out.*”

Bonnie let out a deep sigh and leaned back in a chair.

Then without provocation he let out a scream of rage and smashed the radio with his hooves, it sparked and fizzled, and slowly began to smoke.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Go gather up the gear with the others, grab as many weapons, munitions and suits of armor as you can, I’d rather not leave our most valuable gear behind for the bandits to march in and take. I’ll be down in a few, I am just going to make backups of our collected data here. Overwatch will want to see this...”

I left the room.

Outside the others had already gathered the bodies and identifiable bits and limbs and lined them up on the road.

Chef and one of the soldiers were mourning over the mangled corpses of a mare and stallion.

“Listen up folks,” I gathered attention, “We are all leaving the outpost, Bonnie contacted Dispatch and your new orders are to return to the Sun Valley compound for debriefing and evaluation."

"Right now we need to gather up all the important gear in the outpost, lets try not to leave anything behind for the bandits to be used against others passing by the area.”

Without protest the soldiers and part of my group headed for the armory to begin loading weapons and supplies onto the wagon.

I went down to the bodies, they had been respectfully lined up beside Sunny Sunshine, Manie Manie and Nurse Swirly stood over her bowing their heads.

It was hard to tell if these were all the soldiers who had been stationed here or if some had been devoured or taken elsewhere, before us lay the pale and mangled bodies of 15 ponies, some missing large chunks, others missing limbs and bits of skin.

Their faces were frozen in the expressions they had just as they had been killed, fear, terror, anger, intense pain... it was all there.

“Sweet Heavens...” Manie called to me in her usual gentle tone. Here come the questions I thought.

“What were those things? What could possibly do this a pony?”

I waited a bit before giving my response, looking over the bodies once more.

I sighed, this feels tiresome, I had been up ever since 8:50 yesterday morning and aside from the four hours of unconsciousness after draining my stomach completely on the clean floor of the command centre I hadn’t had a moment of rest or respite.

We had been through quite a bit in these, what, 20’ish or so hours that passed, too much.

It felt like the last days of my life were playing out before me in ultrarapid.

This frontier shit is too harsh for me.

“Night creatures did this, Manie.” I said plainly.

She seemed a dumbstruck by the rather obvious statement.

“Yeah I... I figured. But what the hell IS a night creature?”

“You want to know what a night creature is?” Bonnie said walking up to us from behind and startling Manie, he was carrying a pistol with one hoof, “Come with me.”

“Don’t do it Bonnie.” I said, following closely behind.

“Don’t do what? The monitors all lay smashed and broken upstairs." he assured me, understanding my intent.

"‘not gonna let the bandits steal those too...”

“Where are we going then?”

“To the west gate. The sun doesn’t shine there in the morning...”

We opened the gates.

The wall cast an absurdly long shadow towards the west.

The spikes planted at the foundation of the wall had the charred remains of wicked creatures, bogeymen, they were slowly turning into crisp.

One of the creatures was still alive, impaled through its stomach, it was wheezing and cackling weakly.

It seemed to be bipedal in nature but all its features seemed to have burned off it’s charred flesh, it’s eyes had exploded from the heat and most of it’s face had melted away, it’s short arms were weakly trying to grasp the pike to absolutely no avail.

“Manie, meet the bogeymen. Bogeyman, meet Manie the pony."

"...and my hollow point bullets.” Bonnie said walking up to the impaled bogeyman and pressing his pistol against it’s head.

With a loud bang he ripped a hole through the creatures soft head, making part of its skull cave in.

The creature let out a short screech and twitched momentarily before fading away.

Manie observed this with wide eyes.

“The night creatures that attacked us were bigger.” I said to her, “Large hairy wolf like things with unnatural agility and speed.”

“The bogeymen, are the nightmarish forms of wildlings and other bipedal animals, mostly apes and such but also tall slender insects who have mutated in size.” Bonnie explained.

Manie didn’t say anything about this.

“*Bonnie. The wagon is all loaded up and ready to go.*” a soldier called from the gate.

“Good good... only one thing remains to do before we leave this place.” Bonnie said quietly, then went back inside the perimeter.

We had all gathered around the bodies of the fallen, all neatly wrapped in sheets and tablecloths in order to safely lower them, and all their detached limbs, down to their graves.

Bonnie was kneeling beside Sunny Sunshine again, uncovering her down to her neck.

Heavy tears slowly fell from his cheeks onto her, as he slowly caressed her mane.

“Sunny... my love...” he sobbed quietly, “You didn’t deserve this. None of you did...”

“I promise to be back one day, to recover you and bring you back home to Equestria...”

“You belong in Ponyville, not this... cursed hell.”

He stood up, wiping his tears off his face.

“Goodbye my love. For now.”

Two soldiers lowered her body gently into her grave after which she was buried.

The same process followed with the other 14 fallen.

By the time we were done it was nearing early lunchtime, but nopony felt especially hungry, we all just wanted to get to Sun Valley Hills.

We loaded the wounded soldier who had been given further care by Nurse Swirly with the medical supplies found in the base and in our wagon, his condition was stabilized and it seems like he was going to make it after all despite the considerable blood loss he had suffered throughout the night.

The wagon was becoming fairly heavy, so we added an extra harness to the wagon to allow two ponies to pull the wagon, a job which Chef had volunteered to do along with Brook Cotton.

We left the outpost behind us with the gates wide open to allow passage for other travelers, which unfortunately would also allow bandits to come and loot the outpost, still, we had stocked the wagon with as much military hardware and supplies as possible, the only things of value left were the computers, some food and the personal belongings of the fallen who hadn’t (or couldn’t) be buried with them.

We were tired, worn out, bitter and gloom and had a good 70 kilometers to cover before reaching the safety of Sun Valley Hills.

A long walk awaits us and we are bound to meet bandits on the way...

Our little convoy still had a long way to go and our moods didn’t improve along the way.

We had crossed a good 50 kilometers now in total silence, everypony minded their own business and scanned the surrounding area carefully for bandits.

With the rain gone visibility had vastly improved, on longer straight stretches of road we could see all the way to the next curve or hill.

We hadn’t encountered anything yet.

The Overwatch soldiers had all put on their full armor, with helmets and all, even Bonnie who had apparently been notable for not wearing his helmet while on duty was wearing the distinct dark red sergeants helmet with blood red lenses.

Walking closest to him up front I could hear the faint sound of his rebreather slowly inhaling and exhaling.

I imagined based on my own experience with the CP uniform that it wasn’t a very comfortable and pleasant thing to wear, I remembered how back in the slums of Manehatten the armor the heat from the industries and sun above made the armor unbearably hot to wear and how the rebreather only made breathing difficult and suffocating.

It wasn’t an easy thing to breathe through but it kept us safe from gas attacks, smog and other nastiness that often found it’s way into the lower reaches of the cities, the Equestrian army likely geared their own troops the same way for the same reasons.

Our own metallic helmets also protected us from blunt and cutting damage, which was a blessing in more hairy scenarios where rioting ponies threw rocks and other debris at us.

Our helmets however were not designed to be bullet proof, the Overwatch helmets were, to some degree, and this sacrificed even more comfort for more weight and protection.

Bonnie wasn’t in a very talkative mood, he and the other soldiers had done something with their helmets that blocked or at least limited communication to the rest of us, on the way I could occasionally heard their helmets give off a distorted sound followed by unintelligible robotic murmuring and static, I knew they were talking to each other on private channels even though the messages weren’t especially long.

We reaching the end of the current stretch of road and were approaching a sharp curve, that’s when we all saw it.

A turned over wooden wagon.

Yep. This was another bandit ambush alright.

Bonnie switched back to the normal channels and stopped the convoy a decent distance away from the pile.

“What’s happening? Why are we stopping?” Nurse Swirly, who hadn’t spotted the roadblock wondered.

“There is a roadblock ahead.” Brook Cotton told her.

“*Could be bandits waiting for us.*” Bonnie said. “*Stay put and don’t do anything stupid.*”

Bonnie switched back to the private channels and relayed something to the soldiers.

The two nameless soldiers slowly walked forward up to the turned over wagon, rifles ready.

Nothing happened, they walked around the wagon, stopped and then walked back after a few minutes.

“*Supply wagon. 3 civilian KIA. No sight of their escorts.*” one of the soldiers reported.

“Maybe they didn’t have any?” Nurse Swirly commented.

“*All civilian travelers have military escort.*” Bonnie said.

“We don’t.”

“*You have Captain Tombs.*” he dismissed her. “*Clearly their gear has been looted and their bodies disposed off. How long ago were they killed?*”

“*Hard to say. Their bodies are whole, save for the bullet wounds. But there is nothing to indicate recent fighting. There is no blood or casings. It is as if somepony intentionally placed their bodies there.*”

“Maybe the rain washed the blood away?” Nurse Swirly spoke yet again.

“*Miss Swirly. Please keep your nose out of this. I am not going to ask you again.*” Bonnie warned her. She kept quiet.

“*And you saw no sight of bandits hiding?*”

“*No sir.*”

“I don’t like this” I said, “They may be intentionally holding their fire to lure is in.”

“*True.*”

“In fact, they could be attempting to flank us right now as we speak.”

Everypony looked into the surrounding woodland on either side of the road.

There was no sign of movement.

“What if there are traps?” Blizzard Candy suggested.

We gave him a look.

“Look, I am just saying, what if the wagon is booby trapped and they are waiting for us to move it before triggering it? They may have gotten hold of explosive ordinance from you guys.”

“*The boy makes a good point.*” Chef said.

“I’m scared Swirly...” I heard Strawberry Feather whisper.

“We don’t have time for this, they wont wait forever and we will need to deal with the bandits laying in wait before attempting to move the wag-” I was interrupted by the metallic clinking sound of a blinking red object bouncing and landing several meters short in front of us.

“*BOUNCER!!*” one of the soldiers screamed, instinctively I threw myself on the ground, as did the rest of the soldiers, Cloud Tumble and Manie, but before anypony else in our group realized what a ‘bouncer’ was the grenade went off, knocking Swirly Star and Blizzard Candy who had stood the closest to us off their hooves.

As the ringing sound passed I heard Chef yelling AMBUSH as all hell broke loose.

Bullets flew everywhere from the sides of the road near the wagon ahead, we all returned fire, blindly firing salves of bullets wildly into the bushwork.

The bandits thankfully appeared to be armed with mere pistols and semi automatic rifles, or we’d all been dead already the way we were all spread out in the open.

As Brook Cotton and Chef struggled to unhinge themselves from the wagon harnesses, Brook, exposed as he were, was hit twice and fell unconscious. Chef dragged him back behind the wagon, a bullet pinging right off his helmet on the way, Nurse Swirly immediately began tending to Brook's wounds.

There wasn’t much cover for us to use, aside from the wagon and the two closest trees our group was largely exposed to enemy fire, Bonnie barked at us unarmored ponies to take cover behind the wagon.

In the heat of it all he calmly announced to our group that he was throwing an ‘extractor’ and he lobbed a grenade right at the wagon down the road.

The grenade triggered a fiery explosion, which knocked down several trees and bandits on either side of the road and sent debris and bits of pony flying in all directions.

The bandits stopped firing at us, disgruntled screams of pain and panic were heard from their group.

Bonnie said something on the private com and the two nameless soldiers went off into the bushwork on the right side of the road.

“*Tombs, keep them suppressed. Chef, with me.*” Bonnie said disappearing into the bushes on the left side.

Cloud Tumble, Manie Manie and I peeked around the sides of the wagon and fired off single shots down the road towards the mayhem ahead.

A bandit that didn’t sound much older than Strawberry Feather cracked under the pressure and began crying after his mother.

Soon the sounds of our shots were conjoined with the rapid salvos of the Overwatch soldiers assault rifles who had flanked the confused bandits on either side of the road, their pained screams died out in mere seconds.

The battle was over.

”*Clear!*” Bonnie called from down the road.

The soldiers were mopping up, executing stragglers and wounded bandits.

They weren’t taking prisoners.

Manie Manie and I walked down the road to witness the scene, and it wasn’t pretty.

In total there were maybe 20, perhaps even 25 dead or dying bandits laid out around us.

The explosion had left a gaping crater where the wagon had once been, the dead ponies that had been used as bait were now but red smears by the edge of the crater.

A sizable clearing had formed around the crater, the trees having been blasted away by the force, two of the trees had crushed two unfortunate bandits.

The bandits that had been closest to the wagon had had a limb or two ripped off by the shockwave, a young baby blue mare who had taken cover just by the side of the road had her head torn off, I spotted her head ten or so meters away from the road, away from the rest of the carnage.

"Fuck."

The ground was simply soaked in blood, the Overwatch soldiers who were tramping around the scene of battle were up to their knees in blood soaked mud.

Bonnie stood in the midst of it, over a filly covered in blood splattering, she was shaking and sobbing incessantly.

She said nothing as Bonnie pointed his pistol at her forehead and executed her.

Just like that, in cold blood.

He holstered his pistol and lifted his right hoof to his helmet to change the frequency on his helmet com.

“*Come in Dispatch.*” he hailed calmly as he stepped over the carnage and up to the road where we stood, next to the smoldering crater.

“*Hello. Unit. Berry. 2. How can I assist?*” his helmet radio echoed with the same dull robotic voice of the mare I had heard back at the outpost.

Bonnie quickly turned towards the crater.

“*Our squad was just ambushed by bandits on the road between Sun Valley Hills and Checkpoint Berry 2 about... halfway between Sun Valley and Berry 2, possibly more.*"

"*There were no causalities, but one civilian was wounded.*"

"*Copy. Unit. What is your need?*"

"*Yeah, eh, I am calling to inform that part of the road was destroyed by a booby trap set up by the bandit ambushers, we will be making a quick field repair in order to pass by with our wagon but it will not be good for heavy traffic. Send engineers to fix the road when possible.*”

“*Status on the surrounding area?*”

“*The area is not secure.*”

“*Affirmative. Berry 2.*”

“*Another thing Dispatch. The bandits used a supply wagon and three dead civilians as bait. No sign of their escort, presumed KIA.*”

“*Unit. Mango 6. 5 delegates. 8 civilians. Mission: Supply wagon escort duty. Route: Sun Valley Hills - Helsinghoof. Off schedule by 1 day. 5 hours. 32 minutes. 16 seconds.*”

“*Match?*”

“*I don’t know Dispatch. The wagon, and the remains, were destroyed during the battle, there is no way to confirm ID.*”

“*Understood.*”

“*We are resuming travel within an hour. Any report on bandit activity ahead?*”

“*Movement last seen 4. And. 7. Kilometers down Sun Valley Hills - Helsinhoof route.*”

“*Dispatching discouraging gunship wing.*”

“*Thank you Dispatch. Berry 2 out.*” he switched the radio off.

He caught us staring at him with wide eyes.

“*What?*” he wondered.

“DISCOURAGING GUNSHIP WING?” I wondered.

"*Yeah I know, she uses some strange unfitting terms at times, but anyway, that means that gunships will be patrolling ahead of us to force the bandits into hiding.*"

“Dispatch sounds very... cold and robotic.” Manie Manie said.

“*Well, yeah. That's what she is. She’s an AI.*”

“She is a what?” I wasn’t familiar with the abbreviation.

“*Artificial Intelligence. A program with the intelligence to act and make decisions on it’s own.*”

We stared at him silently.

“*I take it you haven’t heard of Overwatch Dispatch before?*”

“No.”

“*Manie?*”

She just shook her head.

“*Really? With all your experience with military hardware and systems you have never heard of Dispatch?*” Bonnie seemed genuinely surprised.

“We didn’t use AI in the Armored Forces.” she replied.

“*Armored Forces? You worked in R&D! Surely you must have heard.*”

“Nope.”

“*Wow. Well, maybe it isn’t all that surprising. Makes sense that they would keep something like her secret. Not a lot of trust between the army branches.*”

“Shouldn’t it be ‘it’?”

“*Pardon?*”

“If it is a program. Shouldn’t you be referring to Dispatch as ‘it’?”

“*No. I do believe ‘her’ is the correct term.*”

“No it’s not.”

“*Hey I am not arguing about how to properly refer to an AI construct in a databank. I agree that programs in databanks should be referred to as ‘it’ regardless of how it identifies itself as. And normally that would be the case. The thing is, Dispatch exists in the form of a robot in the shape of a mare. She speaks with a robotic voice mimicking that of a mare. She even acts and talks like a mare when in person.*"

"*Well, sort of. She is still a machine, but she is still a lot less medical and robotic in person. *”

“So it’s a robot. That still makes Dispatch an ‘it’.”

“*She is not ‘just a robot’. 'fucking sake Manie. You worked at R&D, surely you can’t be this slow to grasp it?”*

She gave him an evil eye.

I got it, he was being really subtle about it, but I got what he implied here.

“I am not sure you followed what he said there Manie...” I said slowly.

Now she gave ME an evil eye.

“He said that an AI in a databank is always identified as ‘it’, but that Dispatch, in her form, is referred and identified to as ‘her’.”

Bonnie sighed.

“*Tombs has the right idea.*”

"By definition, that makes Dispatch 'her' and not 'it'."

We let it sink in.

She began to blush, her eyes dilated and her expression turned into that of disgust.

“Noooo...” she slowly said, coming up to speed.

“*Yes.*”

“Nooohooohooo...”

“*Yes.*”

“REALLY? Are you SERIOUS?”

“*Yes, really. She has all the important bits and everything.*"

"*But honestly, it’s not like any of us grunts have walked up to her and checked for ourselves. From what they have told me, they she is supposed to be pretty 'real' for a robot.*”

“OH GROSS, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN SAY THAT?”

“Why are you being so upset over it? Weren’t you just referring to Dispatch as ‘it’ just now?”

“WHAT THE HELL GUYS, THIS IS DISGUSTING, WHY WOULD OVERWATCH EVEN BUILD SOMETHING LIKE THAT? SHE IS BUILT TO COMMAND AND OVERVIEW MILITARY UNITS WHY WOULD SHE EVEN HAVE THAT!?”

Bonnie shrugged.

“*Dunno. Morale?*”

Manie turned even redder.

I found myself picturing magazines and photographs of awry pictures of their radio dispatcher being distributed to Overwatch troops.

It wouldn’t have been all that weird considering what had been going on at Checkpoint Berry 2.

“*What? You too?*”

Me what?

Oh... yeah...

Had it really been that obvious?

“*What is wrong with you guys? That is not what I meant!*” Bonnie sneered at us.

“*And you called me sick... We are standing by a smoldering crater surrounded by carnage and you- just how do you guys live with yourselves?*”

“So you mean that they don’t...” Manie began slowly.

“*Oh Luna no! What I meant by ‘morale’ is that Dispatch is built the way she is so she can be identified and related to as ‘one of us’, that is a pony. She isn’t a fucking sex toy guys, just because she has the bits doesn’t mean she has to-*”

“Please don’t go there.”

“*Look. Many of us are scared or feel threatened by technology. Some feel sick just looking at all this tech.*” Bonnie tapped his helmet with his right hoof.

“*Since it is impossible to effectively keep track of all the activity going on simultaneously on the Overwatch battlenet manually, the introduction of an AI as a central control unit, or unit Dispatch, that receives direct reports and responds accordingly instantaneously became absolutely necessary.*"

"But why... why the body?"

"*Because soldiers began to ignore Dispatch on the account of her not being 'real'. They didn't trust a self conscious program.*"

"And what? Now they trust her, just like that?"

"*She is still an AI and we know that she is an AI, but we trust her more now that she can be identified as a real person, because in a sense she is just as real of a pony as we are.*"

“So in reality, she really is just a machine built to look and act like a mare?”

“*No! Weren’t you listening!”*

“Honestly Bonnie, you are kinda contradicting yourself a bit." I said, "You claim that troops didn't trust Dispatch on account of her being an AI, and then you say that in response to this, Overwatch programmed her t-”

“*No! They didn't program her! They TAUGHT the AI to become and act more like a pony. What she knows and is like is based on what she has learned and taken in on her own accord!*”

"Teach? A program?"

"*Well duh! Artificial INTELLIGENCE, she is a self conscious intelligent program that learns things on her own.*"

“That still doesn't make her a 'real' pony, she is just a slightly smarter machine that looks like a pony."

“*This is getting tiresome, if I can't explain it to you then I'll just have to show you.*”

"*I'll take you to meet her in person once we get to Sun Valley Hills.*"

“...what?”

“*Meet Dispatch. She is held in the Overwatch HQ at Sun Valley Hills.*”

She looked at him in disbelief.

“You must be joking. Do you really expect me to believe that the AI responsible for the overseeing of virtually all our forces in the frontier is kept IN the frontier and that anypony is allowed to just waltz in there and talk to her?”

“*Yes.*”

“WHAT?!"

“So what exactly stops somepony from just walking in there and teaching her a bunch of bullshit that could potentially jeopardize the safety of the entire frontier? Or kill her?” I asked.

“*You mean aside from a shotgun blast to the face?*”

“*For starters, not anypony is allowed in. Officially only members of Overwatch are allowed to see her in person, but exceptions are made relatively frequently. There is no minimum rank requirement or anything either, a grunt has just as much of a right to see Dispatch as the Colonel General of Overwatch has. Dispatch is also, like I said, a robot.*"

"*Sure, she looks and feels real, but her interior is made out of an incredibly resistant alloy and she has no vital internal organs save for a heart.*”

“We are talking about a mechanical heart right?”

“*No, she has the fleshy, red, pulsating, bloody heart.*”

Manie Manie looked pale.

“Why does she have a real heart?” I wondered.

“*Take one real good look at me. What do you see?*”

It was a rhetorical question.

“A smug Overwatch Sergeant?”

“*A smug Over-*” Bonnie pointed a hoof at me, “*Fuck you.*”

“*I don’t know why she has a real heart. Just, what you need to know is that weapons are not allowed near her and she can't be dented by hoof, so she is pretty much unkillable in the conventional sense.*”

"Let's pretend then, what happens if she is killed somehow?"

“*In the unfortunate event that she is killed, her construct is a still technically speaking, a program.*"

"*While she HAS a body she doesn’t exist solely within that body, the only thing you’d accomplish by destroying her body is hurt her feelings.*”

"Hurt... her feelings?"

"*Hey I'd be pretty upset too if someone killed me.*"

"Right..."

"And if someone teaches her something that she shouldn't know about?" Manie asked.

“*If she is ever corrupted, taught wrong or goes rogue there are failsafes that allow Overwatch to reset her to a previous state.*”

“Kinda like a backup.”

“*In a way.*”

“Does that mean that there are multiple copies of Dispatch?”

“*No. She is one program that uses all the memory and space in her databanks as ‘her brain’. It’s impossible to copy the entire program known as Dispatch and make another identical copy of her.*"

"*Only her memories can be temporarily copied and wiped.*"

"Wiped?"

"*When Dispatch is restored to a previous state everything she has learned, experienced and felt during one period is wiped and reset, anything bad she has learned is simply deleted.*”

Dispatch would have been perfect for frontier duty...

“That sounds drastic.” I said.

“...but necessary.” Manie chimed in.

“How many times have you had to reset her?”

“*I don't know, dozen times? Maybe?*"

"*Overwatch has only had to restore her memory when she learns something conflicting or potentially dangerous. Before she learned about Queen Celestia she was utterly convinced that Celestia was the leader of a distant enemy nation.*”

“*Generally it’s never anything particularly dangerous, it's mostly misunderstandings on her part, but there was this one time she perceived the mistrust between army branches as an act of hostility and declared ‘war’ on Air Force for about five minutes before they reset her memory.*”

Manie snickered.

“*It’s not funny, she shot down a jet which crashed into one of our helicopters.*”

Manie broke out into uncontrolled laughter.

I leaned in towards Bonnie.

“I don’t think that does anything for her.”

“*And she said Dispatch was cold.*”

Manie stopped laughing.

“Well, I am looking forward to meeting Dispatch then. I just HAVE to see her now after that last bit.”

“Yeah it looks like you got something in common.” I joked.

“*I think we have talked enough. We still have a long way to go, and it is really important that we get out of the woods before nightfall.*”

We headed off towards the group who was now just about ready and was patiently waiting for us.

To our surprise two logs were laid out before us, cleanly cut and ready to be used.

“*As you seemed busy talking to the sergeant, we took the liberty of cutting down two logs.*” one of the soldiers informed.

Bonnie looked around.

Everypony was here, just waiting around.

“*That’s... it? Two logs? How were you intending to pull the wagon over a bridge made of two logs?*” Bonnie wondered.

“*I... uh...*”

“*Planks wont sustain the weight of the fully loaded wagon and we don’t have time to build anything decent right now.*”

“*Y-you’re right sir.*”

“*We need at least 8 logs and two lengths of rope to hold them together. When the log bridge is built, make two dirt ramps on either side so we can get the wagon over the edge.*”

“*Of course sir...*”

“We have a motor axe, would that help?” Blizzard Candy said.

“*A what axe?*”

I took Bonnie and Chef to see the chainaxe we had stored away.

It had some dried blood splatters on it from it’s previous user, Rainbow Sea, but was otherwise in pristine condition.

“*Ah. I’ve seen a weapon like this before. Except it was a sword, not an axe.*”

Bonnie picked it up and looked at it curiously for a while before putting it back in it’s place.

“*We can’t use that.*” Bonnie said.

“Why not?”

“*That’s a combat weapon. It is built to cut through flesh and bone, not trees and armor. It will jam if wood splinters get into the machinery.*”

“Oh, okay. Guess we’ll have to do this the traditional way.”

Blizzard Candy, Cloud Tumble, Manie Manie and the soldiers all went to cut down trees with the axes and machetes we had, seven ponies would be more than enough for the job.

I walked around to the front of the wagon where the wounded were loaded, Nurse Swirly was in the wagon kneeling beside the unconscious Brook Cotton.

The wounded soldier was looking at the two with a pained expression as she concentrated on telekinetically extracting a bullet with a pair of medical pincers, she was very precise in her work.

When she had extracted the bullet she simply discarded without looking by throwing it out of the wagon and hitting me where I stood.

“Oh my goodness! I am so sorry, I didn’t see you there!”

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!” Swirly said waving the pincers at me.

“It’s all good Swirly Star. I didn’t know you were a surgeon.”

“I’m not.”

“But you just extracted that bullet from Brook?”

“It doesn’t take a trained surgeon to pull a bullet out of somepony, silly. Unless the bullet is lodged in good, or is near a vital organ anyone with a pair of pincers should be able to pull it out.” she cleaned the pincers as best she could and put them away.

“Besides, I had this book to help me.”

She floated up the medical book they had sent with us.

The cover said 'EAF - INFANTRY: MEDICAL FIELD GUIDE FOR COMBAT MEDICS'

“*That is an Infantry manual.*” Bonnie said from behind me, startling both of us.

“*Where did you get that?*”

"It came with the medical supplies.”

“*That’s a damned good book you got there. You shouldn’t let the troops out here see you with it.*"

"Why not?"

"*We’ve been wanting to get ahold of Infantry manuals for ages, but they wont requisition them. Strictly for Infantry only they say.*”

"*If they see the book they might try to buy or steal it from you.*"

“Why is that? This is just a medical manual, surely it would be better for all if they shared medical handbooks?”

“*I don’t know. Just generals and officers being generals and officers I guess. Whole bunch of hostilities going on between the army branches, so everyone mostly do their own thing when it comes to tech and gear.*”

"I thought Infantry and Overwatch kept good relations?" I said.

"*Well, we don't exactly hate Infantry, and they don't hate us, but we still don't really trust each other that much.*" Bonnie walked up to the edge of the wagon and looked inside.

“*How are you holding up private Snowball?*”

The soldier gave Bonnie a pained smile.

“Private Snowball? You are the soldier that answered our questions about the outpost!” Nurse Swirly exclaimed.

“Y-yeah, t-thats me...” Snowball muttered.

“I’m... f-fine sarge... But my l-leg feels so itchy...! Please make it stop!”

Bonnie leaned in and reached for Snowballs good front leg.

“N-no! My other leg!”

Bonnie sighed deeply and leaned out of the wagon.

“*Snowball, we’ve been over this. You don’t have a front left leg anymore.*”

“Then why does it itch so much!!”

Nurse Swirly looked at Snowball and reached out her hooves to where his leg was supposed to be, she moved her hooves slowly back and forth over the empty space.

“There! W-wait go back!” Snowball said.

Swirly moved a hoof back to just below where his knee had been.

“Right there! Ah by the goddess that feels good!” Snowball seemed very relieved.

“Thank you thank you thank you miss!”

“No... problem?”

“*Thats... what did you do to him?*”

“I scratched his... leg? The book said that it sometimes helps against itching in severed limbs...”

“*But how is that possible? How could he feel that?*”

“I don’t know... honestly.”

"*You used magic didn't you?*"

"*There is no way he could have felt that without nerves, you can't feel thin air.*"

"No I didn't use magic. I don't know what I did, Bonnie, it just worked alright?"

Bonnie shook his head at her.

“*Whatever. Bunch of unicorn witch nonsense...*” he muttered as he walked away.

Nurse Swirly gave me a hurt and hopeless look.

"What does he even have against me? Is it something I did?"

“Don’t mind him Swirly. He has his own problems to worry about.”

“If you say so..."

Nurse Swirly began applying some sort of transparent goo to the wound she had just worked on.

“How is Brook doing? Is he going to recover?”

“I think so.”

“You... ‘think so’?”

“It’s hard to tell, he was hit twice by rifle sized bullets.” she pointed to the bandages on his leg and the wound on his right shoulder. “His right foreleg is broken, a bullet has lodged in his bone, it is beyond my ability to extract out here. And another bullet, the one you just saw me extract, hit him in his right shoulder.”

“That’s bad...”

“Pony metabolism is wonky at times, sometimes it may take mere days for a broken bone to heal yet at the same time it may take several months or even years to heal certain wounds, it seems to be random and poorly understood despite all the advancements in medicine we have had in the past half century."

"Random?"

"Yeah. Everypony heals at a different rate."

"There is a medical report dating more than a century back describing a pegasus mare with a broken right wing fully healing in just one day. A more recent report describes how the rib of a healthy unicorn stallion took a full seven months to heal.”

“It’s hard to tell if Brook will recover in a few days or if he will never walk on his right foreleg again. Best thing I can do is patch him up, keep reading this medical handbook and ask around the clinics and Overwatch medics at Sun Valley Hills.”

She gave me a caring warm smile.

“But don’t worry Sweetie, I’ll get him up and going soon.”

I returned the smile.

“Thank you Swirly.”

I left her to her work and joined up to help the others with the bridge construction.

In half an hour of work we cut down another four trees, cleared the logs of branches, laid them out over the crater and tied them up with some rope.

Then we covered either end with dirt, packed it solidly into a ramp and it was ready for use.

It wasn’t the prettiest bridge built by pony hooves, but it was stable and strong.

Chef and one of the soldiers pulled the wagon over the bridge with ease and we resumed traveling.

We had stopped for just under an hour and expected the sun to begin setting in another two-three hours or so, we had to hurry out of the woodlands and into the grassy plains surrounding Sun Valley Hills before night or are likely to meet the same gruesome end as the rest of Berry 2 did...