The war between Equestria and the Griffons was still on. Currently, we were in our 3rd official month at war. Nothing had really happened yet. It was as if both sides were still getting ready for the war. No matter the amount of preparation, no one would be ready. It was war. You can't prepare completely for something like that.

-X-X-X-

A team of eight ponies, all of them wearing body armor and wielding various firearms of the Equestrian military, stood outside of a door. One stallion trotted up to the door and bucked it open. He quickly moved out of the way as the other seven moved into the building, guns at the ready. A second later, the stallion that breached the door, entered the building. Gunshots sounded out from the building as the team cleared the building.

A few moments later and the eight stallions walked out of the building. "How did we do?" one of the stallions asked. All eight of them walked over to a small crowd of ponies that were watching. The crowd was entirely made up of the ponies that I was in charge of training. All of them were wearing body armor and were armed with the weapons that they were issued.

I checked my stopwatch. "Two minutes, seven seconds" I said. I walked into the building and looked at the various paper targets set up in the building. Each of them had been perforated with bullets and was a testament to the stallions' capabilities.

I walked out of the building. "You were quick, shots were placed in a perfect manner, and no mistakes were made. There's nothing more that I can say." I snapped my fingers. The holes in the targets were repaired and the doors to the building were reset.

I pointed at one stallion that was in the crowd. "Blueblood, you're up. Like the other guy did. Choose seven different stallions and go." Blueblood, ever since he was forced to join in my small platoon, had made a lot of improvement. He wasn't as pompous, was more humble about his prince title (especially after he was hospitalized for a week by Sweetie Belle), and no longer considered regular people/ponies as "peasants". Basically, not a douchebag like his previous self.  

Just as Blueblood bucked down the door, a pegasus wearing a set of saddlebags flew down in front of me. "Sir, I have a message for you" the pegasus said to me. He pulled out a scroll from his saddlebag and handed it to me.

I opened up the scroll. Once I read it through, I closed it and stuffed it into my pocket. I dug through my backpack and pulled out a flare gun. Pointing it at the air, I fired. I popped open the flare gun's cylinder and stuck another flare in it. I pointed it at the sky and fired again. Once again, I reloaded the flare gun and fired it into the air.

-X-X-X-

Thousands of ponies and six humans looked at me, waiting for me to say something.  

"You know, that was actually pretty fast" I said. Not two minutes ago, I had fired three flares into the air.

"Why did you call for a meeting?" Ike asked.

I looked at Andy and snapped my fingers. "Megaphone?" He handed me a megaphone, specifically the megaphone that he originally had with him when he first came to Equestria. "Attention! Griffon airships have been spotted coming towards the mainland." Numerous whispers sounded out through the crowd. "We don't have long before the griffons hit. The Navy's been holding them off but they've estimated that we only have forty-two hours. We have to pack up our gear and move as soon as possible. Manehattan and Fillydelphia are already taken care of by large contingents of Royal. Baltimare is also being prepped but only by a small guard force. We're being sent there to help reinforce the area."

-X-X-X-

Logan pulled out a crate, placing it on a table and opened it up, revealing the parts of his McMillan Tac50. As he began to assemble it, I walked in on him. I walked up to him and set a can of ammo on the table. "You might need this" I said.

Logan placed his partially assembled rifle on the table and grabbed the can. He opened it up and pulled out one of the can's contents, a .50 BMG round. "More explosive rounds?"

"Yah." I picked one of the rounds out. "Remember, they're unaffected by the rail gun barrel of your Tac 50."

At twenty-seven thousand feet per second, a regular round from a rail gun is superheated at temperatures that would make magma jealous. If explosive rounds were subjected to that temperature. Kaboom. The only reason why regular rounds survived was that they were made of tungsten and were heavily enchanted.

I took out my own empty magazines and laid them down on the table. Picking one up, I started loading it up.

Logan pointed one of the .50 cal rounds at me. "Hey, why is it that you don't use the A-10 for every battle?" Logan asked.

I paused. Then I held one of the .50 cal rounds up in front of me. "How long do you think it takes to make one of these?" I asked him.

"What?"

I repeated the question. "How long do you think it takes to make one of these?"

"I don't know, an hour for a batch?" Logan said.

"Five minutes per bullet so you're close" I said. I placed the round down on the table, pointed up. "Five minutes to make a single bullet. The question rises, why don't I get help? Only I know the recipe and design of the bullet and I'm the only one available that knows how to put the enchantments on the bullets. The only other people that can possibly cast the enchantments are too busy or cannot be trusted with them." I picked up the single round and started loading another magazine. "One full combat load takes about a month to manufacture."

All of my mags were loaded. "Looks like I'm done."

-X-X-X-

Nick was thoroughly examining his two hand cannons. He set down the S&W 500 on a table and opened the cylinder of the Blue Rose.

"Hello there" I said.

Nick jumped slightly in shock and nearly dropped his revolver in the process. "Don't do that!" Nick said at me.

I chuckled at Nick. "You know how you have to lug your minigun into battle?" I reached into my backpack and pulled out a large, grey trench coat.

Nick took accepted the trench coat and donned. "I've needed a new set of armored clothing" Nick said.

"I've been- Wait, what? What do you mean you needed a new set of armored clothing?" I asked.

"Well-"

-X-X-X-

Nick picked up a phial of an unknown liquid. "What's this supposed to do?"

Twilight took carefully set down the phials that she held in her magic down. "Careful with that!" Twilight said. Nick slowly set the phial down. "It's a potion that enhances a pony's natural talent."

Nick walked over to the table where Twilight was working on her experiment. "What do you mean, natural talent?"

Twilight picked up the same phials that she was holding up earlier in her magic. "Whatever that pony is good at, they'll be better at with ingestion with this potion." Twilight finished mixing her potion and a giant cloud came out of potion. The cloud slowly rose into the air before it formed itself into a giant troll face.

"Did that really happen?" Nick asked. Twilight slowly swirled the potion in the light. Then she took a small sip. "What could possibly go wrong?" That was when Twilight's eyes began to glow brightly. In the next second Nick was blasted in the chest with quite possibly one of the most powerful magical bolts to ever have been casted. Nick was sent flying out of the basement where he was sent off to Canterlot.

-X-X-X-

"I lost it" Nick said.

I facepalmed. "Okay I'm just going to have to charge you for replacements of any kind from now on." I picked up the Blue Rose. "As I was saying. I've been working on something to help you carry your minigun. Check the left pocket."

Nick raised an eyebrow at my statement. I just simply continued to look at him with the same expression. Seconds later, he reluctantly stuck his left hand into the coat's pocket. He adopted a look of surprise as he began to pull his hand out. Grasped in his hand was a massive handle like pole. It was mechanical in nature and only resembled one thing.

As Nick continued to pull out the object, more and more of the object was revealed. When the item was fully in view, Nick recognized it as his Gravity Hammer. "Explain?"

"Each of the trench coats four pockets houses a magical inventory system similar to how I carry a majority of my weapons" I said. To provide an example, I pulled my Barrett out of my inventory. "The only difference is that each pocket can only carry one object. Then again, it’s an object of any size."

"So could I carry my motorcycle in one of the pockets?" Nick asked.

You know, that is actually a pretty good idea. Why haven't I thought up of that? "I guess so."

"So four pockets, four slots?" Nick said.

"Basically."

"Hmm, one slot for my minigun, another for ammo for said minigun, another for my motorcycle, and the last slot for the hammer" Nick rattled off. "What do you think?"

"Good choice. Other than that, it's identical in concept, other than the inventory magic, to your hoodie. It's made of buckypaper and it will stop pretty much everything."

Nick donned the trench coat and buttoned it up. Then he took the Gravity Hammer in his hands in a manner that looked like he was brandishing it.

"Hey, careful with that. Remember what happened the first time you got it" I said to Nick, remembering when I was sent through several buildings. I looked at Nick's Blue Rose revolver in my hand. "Don't make me shoot you."

"It won't happen again" Nick said.

"Are you sure? You quite often make the same mistake multiple times" I said.

"Name one example" Nick said.

"Other than the many times when you've consumed whiskey, setting fire to your home, creating bullet holes in people's homes, hitting your head on door frames, destroying the door frames you run into, setting fire to-"

"Alright, I get it!" Nick said, interrupting me.

I felt somepony tap my shoulder. "The transport airships are here." I turned around to see another pegasus messenger.

I turned back around to look at Nick. "Let's go."

-X-X-X-

I carefully examined my M4a1. It was badly worn due to heavy use and would soon need another touch up after this.

"When are we going to get guns like yours?" Looking up, I saw myself face-to-face with Blueblood.

"Simple, it's too advanced for Equestria" I replied.

"You have said that before but what does that exactly mean? We have firearms just not of the same type as you and yours friend's" Blueblood said.

"If I were to supply every member of the military with a firearm similar to that of what I use and supply to my friends, I would be the only one available to maintaining the firearms and manufacturing ammunition. It can be argued that I could simply give out the information but it would affect everything that all ponies know about firearms. That and some of the technologies necessary to create the parts needed for the firearms are not available yet. There's also the possibility that giving Equestria the information to create such firearms might lead to other inventions" I explained.

Blueblood pulled out a pistol that was holstered on his right rear leg. "How about this? You basically gave this to Equestria" Blueblood said. The pistol held in his hoof was a 1911 with a hoof trigger, a standard in the Equestrian military.

"That is actually a pistol with a rather basic design compared to other pistols that my friends use." Well Blueblood does have a point. There are only two pistol designs in all of Equestria. Obviously, one was the 1911 which was copyrighted to my name and the other was a .22 pistol for marksmanship(marksponyship).

I slung my M4a1 over my shoulder and started walking. "Where are you going?" Blueblood asked.

-X-X-X-

I carefully browsed my personal armory. This was the first official battle of the Griffon-Equestrian War. "I'm going to need a lot." I had collected a lot of weapons in my time. Even better was that I could carry a lot of things. I had a magical system of carrying items from another universe that was called the inventory system. The inventory system was really useful considering I could carry thirty-six items as long as the items were portable. My favorite thing about it was how easily I could carry ammunition. When it came to objects of a numerical amount(such as magazines), it could carry 64 of it no matter the size. The inventory system could only be explained as magic and nothing else.

My M4a1 carbine was the first to be prepared. It was loaded with a 150 round magazine full of custom, hand tooled 5.56x45mm rounds. The carbine's underbarrel M203 was loaded with a high velocity 40x53mm grenade that was, in simple terms, very explosive..

My AA12 auto shotgun was loaded with a 32 round drum full of 3 inch magnum shotgun rounds of the bird shot variety. Of course I'd need bird shot, they're griffons in flight. It would make short work of anything in flight.

My 870 shotgun was loaded with 8 rounds of 3 1/2 inch magnum shotgun rounds of the buckshot variety. It would rip anything apart unless you were somehow a moving tank.

My M82 SASR was loaded with a 10 round magazine filled with .50 BMG explosive rounds that I had hand tooled to be able to take out medium tanks if used correctly.

Yin and Yang, my two pistols that I carried everywhere, were situated in their specialized dual holster seated on the small of my back and hidden by my coat. Both pistols were unique in many ways and they were originally built ground up from 1911s.

Yin was primarily a precision pistol and was built in every way to be as accurate as possible. For one thing, the trigger was lightened and set at a 2.5 pound pull. The sights were target grade and were fully adjustable. The barrel was 2 inches longer than a regular 1911 barrel and sported a compensator to reduce recoil. The barrel was also sported a medium set of firearm/railgun hybrid barrels unlike the short set on the pistols used by my friends. This longer hybrid barrel made the pistol considerably more powerful. What Yin actually fired were these custom made .460 Rowland armor piercing rounds. Each round was hand enchanted and loaded. The bullets themselves were made of a telfon coated tungsten projectile and in the setting they were in, were capable of punching through a few inches of armored steel. The magazines that held these morsels of death held 100 rounds each because of the powerful enchantments done on them.

Yang was primarily a combat pistol and was built in every way to be as practical and deadly as possible. The trigger was a pretty standard and was set at 4 pounds. The sights were combat sights and were fixed in place. Like Yin, the barrel was 2 inches longer than a regular 1911 barrel and also had a compensator. The barrel also sported the same medium set of firearm/railgun hybrid barrels. The slide was loosened so that it could fire much faster than Yin. The rounds it fired were actually custom made hollow points based on the Black Talon Round. Each of these rounds were made of a tungsten alloy and would rip apart whatever it hit. The magazines were identical to the magazines that fed Yin and held 100 rounds each.

Due to the level of enchantments done to the magazines, they could not be stored in my inventory so I had to carry them manually. On the same small-of-the-back holster that carried the two pistols were several magazine pouches that held the extra mags. A total of 26 extra magazines were carried, 13 for each pistol.

They were, without a doubt, my favorite firearms in current possession and were pretty useful. However, due to how I carried them in a concealed holster covered by two jackets, it took me considerably longer to draw them so I often used them last in certain situations. That or I was saving the ammo cause making and enchanting each round costs quite a bit, even more me.

Anyways. Yin and Yang were among the most powerful pistols/sidearms used by anyone in our group of seven. The .460 Rowland round that they usually fired, usually weighed 230 grains and flew at 1300 fps. This would normally generate around 900 foot pounds of energy. 900 foot pounds itself is rather powerful considering a normal .45 caliber round fired from a 1911 generates around 300 foot pounds of energy.

However, a normal bullet is made of lead with a copper coating and it weighs 230 grains. Both Yin and Yang fired specially made teflon coated tungsten rounds. Teflon is 75% lighter than copper and refined tungsten is 15% lighter than lead. Because the laws of physics says so, items of less density accelerate much slower. Also, lighter projectiles cause less damage than heavier projectiles. The total weight of these much lighter bullets are 180 grains and they only flew at 925 feet per second under normal conditions. Notice how the term "under normal conditions" is used. Yin and Yang were both firearm/railgun hybrids so their projectiles were 3 times faster than normal. In addition to the boost from the hybrid trait, I could run my devil powers through them, making the projectiles 2 times faster.

In the end, the bullets traveled at 11100 feet per second. 11100 feet per second. One hundred eleven thousand feet per second! If you were to calculate how much energy each round would generate, it would come to a little over 49000/forty-nine thousand foot pounds of energy. That is 3 times more powerful than a .50 BMG round. Wait... Why am I still using the .50 bmg round as a scale? Oh, I have a better scale! Each round would be 1.24 times more powerful than a 20mm cannon round. Yeah... Very powerful. That's why Yin and Yang are my favorite.

And moving on.

Carried on shoulder holsters were a Colt Python and a Webley revolver. As they were revolvers, they were only able to hold six rounds. The Python was loaded with six rounds of .357 Magnum, a very formidable round, while the Webley was loaded with six rounds of .455 Webley, a round known as a very good man stopper. Like my other weapons, I carried a lot of extra ammunition for them. Good stopping power and pretty good for any other general uses. The main benefit from them was that I could draw them really quickly with how they were placed and fired them very quickly because they were revolvers.

Carried on an ankle holster was a very compact pistol. It was a PPK pistol clone chambered in .22. It would be of no practical use in the battle but it was a good luck charm. As it was a good luck charm, I carried no ammo with it.

Every firearm in my arsenal was, of course, fitted with firearm/rail gun hybrid barrels. This made them several times more powerful than conventional firearms.

Now the rail gun barrel attachment has been mentioned several times already and it has been explained before. The concept behind it is pretty simple in the idea that it made the rounds fly a lot faster but complicated in how the physics behind it worked. The basics behind rail guns was that it fired projectiles using magnets. It's  very complicated and expensive to produce but it's definitely worth it considering projectiles fired from it flew at thousands of miles an hour.

Simple fact, rail guns require a lot of power to function properly. For the concept to actually work, I had to use a combination of very powerful magical enchantments and advanced technologies from different universes and timelines. The only place in a firearm where I could fit the power source was the grips and stock of the weapon.

Then there were the projectiles. The projectiles had to be highly magnetized for the rail gun to actually work. Commonly in fiction, ferromagnetic slugs(basically iron) are fired from rail guns. This presents a massive issue. For one thing, the air friction from moving at 4000 miles an hour would melt the slug in flight, even possibly upon firing it. Basically, you'd be firing a pool of melted iron at someone. This pool of iron would not fly in the air very well and would have the accuracy of a thrown potato.

So instead of using a ferromagnetic material to create the projectiles, I used Tungsten. Tungsten is a very hard element with the highest elemental melting point so it doesn't melt in the barrel or in flight. However, tungsten doesn't exactly display the desired magnetic qualities that we really need to make the rail gun really efficient. That's where magic comes in. I made the bullets out of tungsten and enchanted them to give them more magnetic qualities.

This actually has two benefits. One, they could be fired from a rail gun properly and efficiently. Two, any other regular bullet wouldn't turn into a projectile of death. This second benefit was really useful with my six human friends. If any of them accidentally fired a weapon supercharged with a hybrid barrel and correct ammunition, it would go through several houses and possibly kill multiple ponies/people. In any non-combat situation, they would never have access to any rail gun ammunition.

Then there were the rails. The rails of the rail gun itself were usually built into the barrel. This took me quite a while to perfect and many things happened while I was trying to perfect it. Long story short, a lot of things exploded a lot. Magic kept the rails from degrading quickly and it kept the barrels from rusting.

Now the length of the rails determined how powerful it would make the gun. If a gun had a short barrel, it wouldn't be nearly as powerful as the exact same gun with a longer barrel. This was because a longer rail would have more time to accelerate a bullet and would have more more series of magnets to do as so. I refined the firearm/railgun barrels to have 3 different types. Standard handguns or short barreled weapons would fire a projectile 2 times faster(or 4 times more powerful), rifle type weapons or handguns with a medium length set of firearm/railgun hybrid barrels would fire a projectile 3 times faster(or 9 times more powerful), and weapons with really long set would fire a projectile 4 times faster(or 16 times more powerful).

This made every single firearm much, much deadlier than they should be. My M4a1, AA12, Yin and Yang, and Remington 870 Super Mag were equipped with medium length hybrid barrel and were 9 times more powerful than they'd normally be. My Colt Python and Webley revolver was 4 times more powerful than they'd normally be because they had medium length barrels while my Barrett M82 was 16 times more powerful than it would normally be because of its considerably longer barrel.

Then, melee weapons.

Carried on my back was the Sparda, a devil forged blade of another universe capable of cutting through quite literally everything. Although the Sparda's normal form was that of a broad sword, it was currently in the form of a katana. The Katana was a blade that I was most familiar with. Although a katana is traditionally carried at the waist with a hand attending it, I carried it on my back for personal reasons. It was the perfect melee weapon for me.

Strapped to my forearms were wrist blades, or hidden blades as they are more commonly called. Basically, they were blades strapped to my forearms that shot out with the flick of a wrist, er hoof in this case. They were infused with the power of a devil that were actually meant to be used with a special pair of boots. I was wearing the special boots that went with them. The boots, when used with the blades, gave me the ability to move a lot faster than normal and were rather fun to use. The set were rather useful for when I needed a weapon very fast but other than that, I preferred other weapons.

On a cloth sheath strapped attached to the left of my belt was the Axe of Perun, a weapon of belonging to the Slavic god of thunder.

In a hard plastic holster that was integrated to the holster that carried Yin and Yang was a set of throwing knives. Three throwing knives, ready to be thrown with just a simple grab and throw.

In another inventory slot were 64 frag grenades. They were M67 fragmentation grenades. They would explode with a guaranteed lethality zone of 15 feet, and a possible injury zone of 50 feet from the fragments that result from the grenade exploding. Unlike the Pineapple grenades of the World Wars, the inside of the grenade's shell was perforated to maximize the amount of fragments produced from the grenade. One thing that I hate is how people believe that explosions are massive fireballs. No they're not. It's more like a sudden cloud of dust. Another thing is how they're thrown. No you do not simply chuck a grenade. You have to lob it like a shot put. It you try to throw it like a ball, you risk throwing out your shoulder or throwing the grenade backwards.

With the weapons, I wore body armor unique to me. It was a large set of white robes with a blue lapel that was based on Connor's robes from Assassin's Creed III. It was only the robes and included nothing else, like the belt, decorations, sash, or other items. The robe itself was made entirely of a light material called graphene. Graphene is quite possibly the most durable/strongest material that will ever exist today and in the future. If there is sheet of graphene that is only .5 mils thick or roughly 2540 sheets of graphene, it would take an item producing 40,000 PSI to punch through it. Now let's put it in normal people terms. If there was a sheet of graphene that was as thick as saran wrap, it would take the weight of a full grown elephant balancing on a pencil to punch through the sheet. With that in your mind, the robes was one eighth of an inch thick or 250 times thicker than saran wrap. The only things that could actually damage my robes would be nuclear explosions and direct contact with the sun.

Now the robes protected my back entirely but it left a good front portion of my chest exposed so I wore a black hoodless jacket that was also made of the same material, graphene, with the exact same thickness of my robes. My legs were also exposed to I wore black dress pants, also made of the same material.

Other than the massive number of weapons and nigh indestructible armor, I had special abilities. It was mostly because I was basically a devil. If you wanted to be technical, I was an elevated ethereal being whose powers stemmed from evil. The more evil in the universe that I was currently in, the more powerful I was. Equestria was relatively mellow compared to other universes(definitely when compared to Earth) so I was a bit underpowered here. However, I was still supercharged from the devil powers. With them, I could move fast enough to catch bullets with my toes if I wanted to. A healing factor was another benefit from my powers but enough injuries would overload them. They also made me stronger but not by much if compared to the other members in our group. If everyone was wearing their suits of armor, I'd be the weakest member of the group. However, it was a pretty good increase in strength. For one thing, I could carry all of my weapons without them affecting my speed and I could still rip people apart easily. Any of my abilities would slowly drain my very essence so I sometimes had to go easy on them. Nothing is infinite.

I was death incarnate.

-X-X-X-

The griffons would only be able to come to Equestria from the east via ship or airship. Going west would not be an option for them as they would have to traverse an extra three thousand plus miles as opposed to going east. Anyone that comes from the east would have to go through the mainland, which Baltimare, Fillydelphia, and Manehattan essentially guards. If the griffons decided to come in through Equestria south of Baltimare, they'd have to deal with a swamp which, fortunate for us but unfortunately for them, is inhabited by a number of dangerous species(such as chimeras, blemmyes, and many others). Any further south, they'd have to deal with dragons which everyone knows is dangerous. Coming in from the north is also not a possibility with the frozen tundra that comes with the climate. In addition to the frozen climate, you'd have to deal with wendigoes.

South of Baltimare was Horseshoe Bay which was, as the name implies, a giant bay shaped like a horseshoe. This presented a prime target for naval landings from the enemy so we decided to place naval mines every twenty-five square meters in the bay. Mind I mention that the mines were placed just barely out of each other's blast radiuses.

We would be dug in directly east and northeast of Baltimare to prevent the griffons from entering. Due to time constraints, we would be stuck with using trenches instead of fortified pillboxes and bunkers.

I walked inside one of the trenches that had been already created outside of Baltimare. Three systems of trenches would be built and they'd span all the way up to Fillydelphia's trench lines and defenses. They were six feet deep(barely enough for me to stand in), four feet wide, and was lined with wood planks and branches from the nearby woods. All of the trenches connected with each other and was separated in three sectors, the northern sector was directly south of Fillydelphia, the central sector which was directly between Fillydelphia and Baltimare and was in front of a forest, and the southern sector which was directly east of Baltimare.

I climbed out of the trench and started walking away from them, towards the direction of the city. Behind all of the trenches were several command posts, auxiliary posts, and temporary buildings that held spare munitions. After a short walk, I had found the main command post.

Inside the post were several ponies working at radios, a few guards at the entrance, and a table planted directly in the center of the post. The table was surrounded by several ponies, obviously officers as they only carried sidearms and wore no body armor, who were looking at a map spread out on the table and weighed down by various pistol paperweights.

One pony stood out especially(quite literally also as he was taller than everyone else). The stallion in question was a grey stallion with a brown mane that was cut short into a buzz cut. Instead of an officer's uniform, he adorned combat fatigues. Strapped to each of his rear legs were revolvers in closed holsters, one on each leg which was rather strange as the other officers were armed with the standard 1911 in holsters that completely enveloped the handgun. The holster that carried the two revolvers also carried spare rounds which I recognized as .45 Long Colt and .357 magnum. Another interesting trait that he displayed that seemed rather interesting was how old he was. His face displayed the signs of age, something that everyone else did not have. "-sets of heavy machine guns every five hundred meters and mortars behind the second line."

They all noticed me.

"We're in the middle of planning the defense of Equestria and you have decided to bother us!?" one of the officers exclaimed.

The officer who was armed with two revolvers glared at him. "Rip that stick out of your plot, Chess Pawn" he said. He looked to me. "To what honor do we owe one of the humans?"

I walked over to the table. "I was curious as to what you're planning" I answered. The map detailed everything about the trenches, troop positioning, the locations of all munitions stockpiles, and other key placements. "And I'd prefer if you were to call me by my name, Tran."

"Just refer to me as the Old Geezer or by my rank, colonel" he said.

I wonder what his real name is. Let's get it out of him. "Then call me the Cannibal" I said.

"I can see what you're doing, you're going to coerce me into giving up my name by asking me to call you by a unpleasant name. Since the process is going to be long and arduous, and if the papers are correct, I'm going to give up now" he said. "My name is Cowpony Iron."

I blinked. Now that was a bad name. If ponies had a cutiemark that was similar to their names, what would his be? "..."

"My parents were rather eccentric" he said.

"I can tell and I'll stick with Geezer" I said. I looked back at the map and noticed one very important detail. "Where's the artillery?"

"We have none" one officer said.

"Most of the howitzers and field guns were flown over to Manehattan to aid in their defense. The defense force placed in charge of protecting Manehattan needed it more as they have the difficulty of having to guard an island. Besides mortars and portable pieces, we are stuck with our wits" a different officer said.

"That puts a damper on things" I said. The griffons would come by sea and air. Cannons would be perfect in shooting down airships. Like tanks, airships were slow and bulky, making easy targets.

The Geezer looked back down on the maps. "I have an idea."

"What is it sir?" an officer asked.

"We don't have artillery" the Geezer said.

"Yes. That information is no secret here" a different officer said.

"Let me finish first" the Geezer said. "We do not have artillery but we do have tanks."

That's actually pretty smart. The main guns of a tank are of excessively large caliber, similar to that of howitzers and cannons. "Using the tanks as artillery. Genius" I said.

"We'd have to place the tanks towards the front, out in the open and directly in front of everyone" one officer said.

He looked down at the map. "It's a good idea, all in all but we won't know until it happens."

I looked down at the map. "Three lines of trenches. From my country's history, the defenders in terms of trench warfare usually reaped the most."

"How bad?" he asked.

"The land between trenches was called No Man's land. It was named as so because no man from either side, when trying to advance upon the defender, was not able to go forward. Everyone died trying to cross the land between trenches but the defenders would always mow them down." There was another reason why WWI was so devastating on both sides. Technologies such as machine guns, poison gas, tanks, and air support made it ungodly dangerous to leave your trench.

I looked at the Geezer's revolvers. "If I may ask, why revolvers? The standard sidearm is a pistol."

He pulled out one of his revolvers and held it up in the sunlight. I easily recognized it as a Colt Single Action in .45 Long Colt. The every visible inch of the gun, including the hoof trigger, was engraved with a beautiful vine pattern and the grips were made of ivory. The gun also sported a 4.75 inch barrel and a shortened hammer. In short, I wanted it but then again, it's his gun. "I used to carry a pistol but I traded it for this little gem."

"Ivory, not pearl, grips?" I asked.

"Only a pimp carries a pearl handled gun" he said. He holstered the Single Action and pulled out the other gun. This revolver, I was more familiar with. The Colt Single Action that he carried was a product of Colt Firearms, basically the Equestrian version of Colt's Manufacturing Company from the real world, and was obviously the Equestrian version of the Colt Single Action Army, the only visible difference being the trigger(real world, standard single action pivoting trigger: Equestria, standard hoof trigger). The Old Geezer's other revolver was very similar to what Rainbow Dash had. It was a double action .357 revolver based on the Smith and Wesson Model 27 which, in real life, was the original .357 revolver. Instead of designating it as the Model 27 like in real life, I named it the Dueling Magnum. The gun featured a 3.5 inch barrel, ivory grips like the Colt Single Action, and instead of a vine engraving this one had a scrollwork patterned engraving.

"Is that one of mine?" I asked.

"Yes, I made an order a few months back" he replied.

"A Dueling Magnum. Not a bad choice." I pulled out my Colt Python and held it up. "I have a few handy revolvers too."

"It's a beaut." I was going to make a comment when one of the ponies that were working the radios ran up to us. "What's the issue?"

The radiopony's face told me that it would be bad news. I was unfortunately correct. "The griffons have docked in the northern sector."

The tent was filled with dead silence for the next few seconds. Although the northern trench line was already finished and had thousands of ponies stationed inside of it, they had caught us by surprise. Another issue was why they had attack only one sector? Directing an attack to only one portion was not something that happened in war. "They're early" the Geezer said. "Start sending out warnings."

"Yes sir" the radiopony said before running off back to his radio.

"This isn't right" I said.

"The griffons attacking early isn't right? Where did you get this idea?" one of the officers asked.

I glared at him. "The griffons attacking early on only one sector? That doesn't seem suspicious to you in any way?"

The Old Geezer caught onto my idea. "You're right. Why would they only attack on one font? They're natural hunters and are working in a group so they'd be attacking in at least two directions. One to distract or guide the enemy and the other to attack. If they wanted to, they'd attack from two directions and they're fast enough to plan that between two forces. Why didn't they?"

The same radiopony as earlier loudly piped up. "The line is holding!"

I looked back down at the map. They were attacking towards the north. There was almost no strategy as to what they were doing. "What are you thinking?" the Geezer asked. "What do you-"

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

A shock wave swept through our position from the west, blowing dust everywhere. Most of us had headed towards the direction of where the shock wave originated from. Not that far away was the smoldering remains of one of our munitions depots.

"What the hell?!" the Geezer exclaimed.

That was when I realized what this was. It wasn't a direct offensive/attack. "It's distraction."

"What?!" the Geezer asked.

"They're distracting us to go after something important!" I said.

By now, he had drawn both of his revolvers. "What in the buck could be so important that they'd do this?!" Other officers that had accompanied us had also drawn their sidearms.

That was when multiple gunshots sounded out from the direction of the command post. The very post that held the map that detailed the key positions of everything. Accompanying that were two ponies flying away from the post and towards the city. Both were armed with some kind of a two handed(hooved) weapon but one was carrying a tube on his back.

I instantly drew Yin and took aim. A split second later, I fired and shot off the map courier's left wing leaving him to fall in a downward spiral. The courier tried to stabilize himself in the air but it was impossible with his remaining wing.

Before I could shoot the other one, a gunshot rang out signifying that somepony else had fired. The other pegasus had been hit and was also falling back down to the ground. Instead of losing a wing and trying to stabilize himself, he just started dropping, signifying that he was dead.

I turned to see the shooter who was, to my surprise, the Geezer. "Nice shot."

We walked over to where the courier had landed. When we found him, he was covered in cuts, blood, and anger. "You shot off my wing!" he screamed in pain.

"Oh just die already" I said. I shot him in the face with Yin, obliterating his skull. I reached down and took the tube off his back and removed the map from it.

"If this map were to happen upon enemy hands, we would be dealing with a much bigger problem" the Old Geezer said.

"There were gunshots. Why?" I said.

When we had returned to the command tent, we found the corpses of the radio ponies that were previously working at their radios along with the corpses of a few officers.

"Mother of Celestia" the Old Geezer said.

I holstered Yin and placed the map back on the table. "Get more ponies to guard this post and relocate their bodies. Don't forget to grab their tags."

-X-X-X-

The griffons would be here soon. Fortunately enough, we had everything already set up. Gun nests were built, trenches were completely finished/dug, soldiers/ponies were set in the proper locations, tanks were set in place to be used as artillery, and land mines were buried. Even better, the sky was clear so anything would be easily spotted.

I myself was sitting in the first trench line in the northern sector. I pulled out a radio from my pocket and clicked it on. The frequency it was on was currently on a channel where my friends and I could speak. "Radio check. Everyone connected?"

"Yes" Nick replied.

"Roger" Logan replied.

"Yeah" Alex replied.

"Yep" Andy replied.

"Yeah" Ike replied.

"Affirmative" Austin replied.

"Austin, don't ever say that again" Logan said.

Okay, that was strange. "Logan, where are the snipers set up and how far away are they?" I asked.

"Second and the third trenches, six hundred and a thousand yards out" Logan replied.

"Gunners?"

"First trenches" Nick replied.

"Tanks?"

"Just behind the first trenches" Ike replied.

I switched the channel on my radio. This channel was connected to the scouts in charge of spotting the griffons. "Current ETA on the griffons?" Instead of a reply, there was only static. I switched the channel to a different channel and back to the previous one. "Hello? Can someone give me the ETA of the griffons?" No reply again. I slapped the radio on the palm of my head and nothing happened.

Maybe the radio failed? These are pretty basic radios. Or maybe they're out of range. Maybe the-

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

The area directly in front of the trench had exploded, showering me and several other ponies in dirt. Everyone immediately brought up their weapons at the ready.

I personally took out my M4a1 and pointed it at the sky. Where had that come from? I scanned the sky for anything that could lead to the source.

In an instant, I found a smoke trail that led into... The clear sky? Wait a minute. I looked closer and barely noticed a camouflaged airship. It had been painted the same color as the sky. The same hue too! That's ingenious! No one would take a second glance at the sky! Even worse considering today is a clear sky.

By now, more explosions had blanketed the field. No one on our side had begun firing yet. They hadn't found the griffons.

I changed the channel on the radio to a universal one. "They're here! Their ships are camouflaged!"

"What in the hell are you talking about?!?" the Old Geezer demanded.

I checked the load in my M4a1's underbarrel grenade launcher. It was one of my custom high velocity, excessively high explosive 40x53mm grenade. I aimed into the air and fired. The grenade seemingly soared into the air as if it was fired by a mad man and kept on going until it's path had led to it being above the ocean. Then it exploded, a mile and a half out from the beaches midair.

Griffon airships were nothing like Equestrian ones. The body of the airship was shaped like the body of any seafaring ship and the sides of it were lined with pipes, which were the ship's primary means of propulsion. Now that one of the ships were exposed, everyone had the idea to shoot into the sky, which they obliged to happily.

Once again, I slicked on the radio. "Notify Fillydelphia and Manehattan that the griffon's airships are painted the same color as the sky!" I yelled over the gunfire in the background.

The sky over the ocean water in the distance was then flooded with thousands upon thousands of griffons, making seem like a swarm. Unlike their airships, they were easily distinguished from the sky since they wore dark colors that contrasted heavily with the sky.

Luckily, the griffons weren't able to get too close before they decided to launch their main attack. The airship that I had shot was possibly minutes away from hitting the beaches.

While I still had time, I jumped out of my trench and started running towards the second trench line. Blue Blood was the first to greet me. "What are you doing, retreating?!" he asked.

"It's quieter in this trench." I took out my radio. "I need pegasi and a lot of them." I waited for a reply.

"What use do you have for pegasi?" the Old Geezer returned.

"I fear that there may be airships that we have not seen. I need as many pegasi that we can spare to meet me at the third trench line. Tell them to be carrying light and ready for flight."

"Taking the battle to them?"

"Yah. I need this done five minutes ago."

-X-X-X-

I looked over the crowd of pegasi that had gathered to the third trench line. There were a lot of them but just under two hundred. "You're all here because we're going to be taking this battle for their airships. This may be a bit sudden but we have to stop some of their cannon fire."

"We're flying into that fracas?!" one of them yelled out.

"I didn't sign up for this!" somepony else yelled.

And so, that crowd descended into chaos. Everyone was either protesting or panicking. I drew Yin and fired thrice in the air. "Hey! If we don't stop them. They'll get into the mainland and we're all dead! Do you want that?!"

"No!" everyone yelled back.

Good. "Now I want three groups. Forty of you will go with follow me. The rest of you will divide into the other two teams."

-X-X-X-

I was once again in my smaller alicorn form. Across my back, over my backpack, was my M4a1 and in my hooves was my AA12 loaded with buckshot. "Everyone ready?!" Everypony roared back in response. I flared out my wings and took flight. Everypony else followed.

We were a good distance away from the ongoing battle but after a minute or so of flight, we had ready the main battle flight zone. Bullets whizzed through the air coming from both friendly and enemy sides, giving us a constant reminder that we had to be careful. Then, we were within a good shooting distance from the griffons and their ships.

Now we couldn't stay in the sky long. We had to try to take out those airships. I began to flap my wings faster and made my way closer to my target ship, a medium sized war ship that was essentially the air version of a destroyer.

I landed on the deck of the ship and was immediately swarmed by a group of griffon soldiers. Jumping back, I went over the edge of the ship and started hovering just right under the edge. I heard the griffons slowly scrambled towards the edge where I had my AA12 aimed, ready to ambush them. Before they actually could look over the edge and try to shoot me, they were peppered by the ponies that were following me in flight.

I flew back onto the airship as the rest of my team landed. "How did they not see us? There's like forty of us!" one of the pegasus commented.

"They're idiots, that's why" I commented. I looked at our numbers. "How many did we lose en route?"

"Fortunately, none" somepony told me.

I smiled. There's one very obvious, well known fact about attempting to shoot a small flying target why you yourself was in flight... ITS HARD!!!

I ejected the magazine in my AA12 and tossed it over the side of the ship before reloading it with a fresh magazine. I looked over the ponies that I had with me. Five of them had flamethrowers(which were definitely not light weapons), twenty-seven had submachine guns, and the last eight had carbines. All of them were wearing light armor.

Body armor was very basic in Equestria. They did not have advanced materials, such as kevlar, so all body armor was made up of the same thing, steel. No, they did not wear steel plate armor with exception to the helmet which was a steel pot styled helmet. instead, they wore steel weave which was basically steel woven into a cloth and then made into armor.

Light armor was, well, light and it would only stop pistol rounds. It covered only the body of a pony and left the neck and limbs vulnerable. The only reason anypony wore this was if they had to fly for more than a minute or couldn't wear regular armor. It was essentially useless for anypony that couldn't fly so only certain pegasi wore it. To further add to that statement, only pegasi that knew they were going to fly a long distance and or at fast speeds would wear it. This meant that only a small percentage of all pegasi in the Equestrian military would wear it.

Medium armor was heavier and almost 90% of all Equestrian soldiers(mostly infantryponies) wore it as it stop standard rifle rounds. Although it was three times heavier than light armor, it could stop a certain amount of small to medium caliber rifle rounds decently but it could be surpassed by small caliber ammunition if it was shot enough. It protected the body, the upper body, and a helmet protected portions of the head.

I know what some of you(the readers) are thinking. The griffons will just shoot at the joints and every Equestrian soldier will be done for! No. Just no. Imagine trying to hit something as small as a joint from 20 yards while under fire from the enemy. You'll have adrenaline coursing through your veins, fear making your aim shake, and the pressure of trying to live! Making that shot would be highly unlikely. If it does happen, it was most likely luck.

The last set of armor in Equestria was heavy armor and it made anypony wearing it into a miniature tank. It was ungodly heavy(well no duh), weighed four times more than medium armor and was only worn by the most built stallions in Equestria. There was no helmet as the suit included a face mask that had eye ports made of armored glass and were enchanted to stay clean so dirt or blood couldn't obscure the wearer's view. It protected everything on a pony, including the tail! The only way to actually kill the pony inside was with a heavy caliber weapons, lots of armor piercing ammunition, enough explosives, anti-tank weapons, or hundreds and quite possibly thousands of rounds of ammunition. There's a reason why 'enough' is included in that description for explosives, a simple grenade wouldn't affect the wearer, much less scratch the armor. As if it wasn't armored enough, there were additional sets of steel plates that could be bolted over the sections of the armor that protected the body and limbs. Ironically enough, ponies that wore this were not slow lumbering soldiers. They were expected to be able to run for at least five minutes while wearing the armor and carrying a weapon and ammunition for said weapon.

Naturally, everyone in Nick's unit wore heavy sets of armor and were armed with Gatling guns and bazookas. Yeah... A bit much. The only other ponies in the Equestrian military that wore heavy armor were used to personally guard the princesses and important ponies, dispose of explosives, and defend key positions or resources. Good luck killing them!

"I want three flamethrowers in the back and two in the front, behind me. If you are being shot at, do not engage. Instead hide because I do not want a griffon shooting your fuel tank and covering all of us in fuel before being barbecued. Anyone else, watch for griffons and put as many bullets into them as possible! We will be finding the engine and turning it into a heap of scrap!" I turned around and began to walk.

Airships, Equestrian or Griffon, were a lot like battleships. They were heavily armored and armed with a lot of mechanical cannon turrets that fired shells taller than I was while wearing boots. Fortunately for us, we were obscured from being spotted by one of the airship's turret.

Well, we were hidden until three griffons walked in on us. Naturally we tried shooting them. We succeeded in peppering two but one got away.

"Buck!" somepony in our group yelled out.

"Move it!" I began running towards the ships superstructure(basically any structure built on the first deck or floor of a ship). Sirens began going off, signaling that every griffon on board would know of our presence.

Griffons began popping into view. They fired. We fired. Everyone fired. We managed to kill a couple of them, they managed to kill three of ours. Before we could lose anyone else, we ducked between two cannon turrets, leaving our dead comrades' bodies out in the open. None of the griffons were able to gain any ground as they were pinned down by us.

"Flamethrowers not lit yet" somepony told me.

One pegasus decided this was the best moment to say something. "Well, we're bucked right up in the-"

"Finish that sentence and I'll shoot you" I said. I thought about our situation. We still haven't lost anyone but we were pinned down from all directions. Let's have some fun. I held out my AA12 in front of the pony that I had reprimanded earlier. "Hold this for me." He held it for me as I pulled out the Sparda.

"What in the hell are you going to do?" he asked while eyeing my shotgun.

"Having some fun." I was still in my alicorn form, the smaller one that shared a similar size to Cadance. Similar but still very different. I was slimmer, completely white all over, and had bigger wings. Oh, did I forget to mention the fact that the feathers that made up my wings were made of a titanium, tungsten metal alloy that were magically enchanted to be sharper than razors?

I jumped out in the open where every griffon began to shoot at me. I used the Sparda block the fire that came at me from the front and my armored wings were protecting my back. I ran towards one half of the griffons that were pinning us. They tried to shoot at me but all they succeeded in doing was waste ammunition. The other half of the griffons that were pinning us earlier that I hadn't ran towards, were also shooting at me but were only able to shoot their allies.  

The first griffon to meet his end was vertically cut in half by the Sparda and another two dropped were dropped by quick flaps of my wings. Picking up half of a griffon, I threw it into a pair of griffons, knocking both of them over. I quickly stabbed another griffon in the face with the Sparda and let go of my precious sword as gravity pulled the corpse down to the griffon. With my free hand, I grabbed all of my throwing knives and threw all three simultaneously behind me, nailing three separate griffons.

One of the many benefits to being a devil was the fact that I could move really fast when I wanted. I had already killed six of them and it had only passed four tenths of a second. Smiling, I drew both my revolvers and fired all twelve shots at four different griffons. A good rule of thumb for shooting someone is to put two in the chest and one in the head just in case they survived the first two shots. Once both revolvers clicked empty, I dropped them.

One nearby griffon tried to shoot me in the back with his weapon but was stopped with a swift kick to the face. While dazed from the kick, I grabbed him and used him as a shield to protect me from the remaining three griffons that were still alive from this end. The griffon's body and the armor that he wore was enough to stop the bullets from the three until they ran out of ammo. When they began to reload, I extended both of my wrist blades and stabbed two of them in the neck, leaving only one left alive.

The last standing griffon was just standing there, staring at me. I smiled before side kicking him off of the ship. He would have been able to fly away to safety if I hadn't put enough force in the kick to kill a chimera(long story short, Applejack asked me to help find Apple Bloom after she had wondered off). At the least, he would have a caved in chest.

While I had been busy killing these griffons, the griffons from the other side had been trying to shoot me. Unfortunately for them, this left them open to be shot by my team mates. All of the griffons from that side had been mowed down by the time I had killed my twelfth griffon.

I picked up my Colt Python, reloaded it before holstering it. Then I grabbed my Webley, reloaded it, and then holstered it.

"You left two alive" one pony commented.

The two I knocked over with half of a griffon corpse? "There's a reason why I left two alive" I said while retrieving my three throwing knives. I looked down at the two of them. "The first one to tell me which floor and section of the ship the engine is located at and in, gets to live."

The two griffons shared a look before they blurted out the same answer. "Third deck! Towards the center!"

"Let's decide who gets to live" I said. I ripped the Sparda out of the griffon I had stuck it in and stuck it back into its scabbard. "Now who was holding my AA12?"

The pony I had handed my shotgun trotted up to me. "Here you go, sir."

I thankfully took it and shot one of the griffons in the face. I looked at the other griffon that had most lost all control of his bowels. "Looks like you get to live. Now go before I change my mind." He scrambled away and tripped resulting in him falling over the edge of the ship. "Okay?"

"Now we just have to find a stairwell" somepony else said.

"Not exactly" I said. I looked directly at the ground before making three quick slashes into it with the Sparda. A large triangle shaped section of the deck fell down, leaving a massive hole for us to enter. One pegasus with a sub gun was about to jump down until I grabbed his tail with my mouth, stopping him. "Ah ah ah. Watch."

I grabbed his helmet and held it right in the hole. It was immediately peppered by many, many shots. "Whoa" the same pegasus commented. I dropped his helmet down onto the ship deck.

I pointed at a nearby pony with a flamethrower. "Get over here."

"Gotcha." He trotted over to the hole and lit the pilot light on his flamethrower. A stream of fire flooded the hole that was situated in front of us. Screams of pain came from the hole only to be silenced mere seconds later.

Fun fact about flamethrowers. They're most effective when they're used for two things. One is to clear vegetation. Two is when they're used on small enclosed spaces. When a flamethrower is used in the latter example, the fire is in an enclosed space(no duh). This results in the fire sucking out all of the oxygen out of the small space as the fire burns. You'll quite literally have only seconds to scream before you start asphyxiating.

I tapped him on the shoulder and he stopped firing.

I grabbed another pony's helmet and held it in the hole. Nothing. I plopped the helmet back on the owner's head before sticking my head into the hole. Inside were several charred griffons. I jumped down into the hole and everyone followed.

I looked at one of the corpses. Using the Sparda, I cut off one of his, or her, wings and took a bite out of it. "Oh my god! They taste like chicken!" I said with a giddy smile. Albeit biting into charred flesh and burnt feathers, it wasn't that bad. Though it could use some seasoning.

"That's disgusting!" somepony commented.

"You're ARE a cannibal" somepony said.

"The one and only" I said while cutting another hole into the deck. The triangular section of the ground fell through like earlier and unlike last time, it fell right onto someone, crushing them.

The same pony who torched this hallway made his way towards the hole. Before he could actually torch our new makeshift entrance, a grenade popped out of it and landed in front of my feet. I blinked before I kicked the grenade back into the hole. It exploded a second later.

"I don't believe we have to torch this one." I jumped down into the hole and found the remains of six blown apart griffons. Everypony else soon followed. "Just another one down and we'll be on the correct level."

Right as I was about to cut another hole into the deck, gunfire began to come from one end of the corridor. This was quite possibly one of the worst case scenarios we could be caught in, being trapped in a narrow corridor while being shot at.

Our side, the ones closest to them traded fired but was not able to do much. I quickly made a hole into the deck and jumped down. This brash decision resulted in me jumping directly into a crowd of griffons. I immediately dropped the Sparda and drew my Colt Python and Webley and shot six nearby griffons. When they clicked empty, I dropped them once again. This time, I grabbed the closest griffon's weapon and began firing at the remaining survivors. Luckily I had grabbed a submachine and it fired with a very high RPM.

"Get down here already! It's clear!" I yelled up at the hole. Ponies began flooding in from the hole. Not nearly as many as we had started came through. I jumped up through the hole and tossed grenades at both ends of the hallway. The remaining few that survived, I finished off with the griffon submachine gun. I went back down the lower level. A size able chunk of our numbers were now gone. Now, there were only four with carbines, sixteen with submachine guns, and one with a flamethrower.

I looked down at the griffon submachine gun in my hands. It fit in my hands perfectly. While equine firearms were awkward for me to shoot, this submachine gun was like something from back home. The parts of the gun were placed in the exact same places that would work for human hands. It even had a trigger guard with a pivotal trigger!

An open bolt submachine gun that fired somewhere near 1000 RPM. Geez.

I dropped the magazine and looked at the round it was chambered in. It was an unfamiliar round to me, something that was difficult for me to say considering the number of firearms I had seen throughout my life. I pulled out one of the rounds and examined it. The headstamp on the round was labeled "8x21mm" and the round was a similar size to a 9x19mm round. I looked at the magazine itself. According to the last witness whole on the magazine, it held 72 rounds! 72 rounds! What?! Well, at least that explains why I didn't run out of ammunition while using it against their race.

I dropped the submachine gun and picked up my two dropped revolvers. I reloaded the Python, then the Webley. Dropping these two is really starting to show, the finish is getting really scratched on both guns.

"Which way was towards the center?" I asked. One pony pointed in the direction of the hallway that I was facing. I took my AA12 off of my back and exchanged it for my 870, the former going in my inventory. I checked to see if it was loaded(it was) before placing it on my back. "Let's go."

This airship's passageway was a lot like one you would find on the older naval battleships. We soon began to pass by doors, all of which were labeled with their purpose. At the moment we were in the barracks. That was actually a strange setup. What I mean is how they keep the barracks on the same deck as the engine.

"How far do you think the engine room is?" somepony asked.

"Well, we already walked a good distance that equals to a quarter of the ship so not very far" I said. "A better question to ask is how to tell when we're near the engine room."

"How about that big door that's labeled engine room?" somepony else said. He pointed at a door, four doors down, that was labeled as such.

I took my 870 off of my back and held it, at the ready. "Guns ready?" Everyone nodded in response, except for the pony with our last flamethrower who simply replied by lighting the pilot light on the torch. I kicked open the door, gun aimed at anything inside.

Inside was a lot more than what I expected. Three griffons were stationed inside as guards. They weren't regular griffon soldiers. Apparently, the griffons were thinking the same way we were with implementing heavy soldiers.

The three griffons were all massive and wearing armor similar to the heavy sets of Equestria. Unlike the Equestrian heavy armor that was made of steel weave, theirs was made up of segmented plates. What was rather strange was how their wings were also armed with the same degree of excessiveness as the rest of their body. Was it even possible for them to use their wings? Their feathers would have difficulty providing lift. Their heads were also completely protected in a massive full helmet with two protected eye holes for seeing.

I ducked back into the hallway. "Come on assholes! Scared?!" one of the griffons taunted.

I placed my 870 against the wall and drew the Sparda. I took a deep breath before I jumped into the engine room and closed the distance between them us. I slashed at the middle griffon with the Sparda. The blade merely bounced off of his armor. I just blinked at him, incredulous at the sight. The Sparda was supposed to be able to cut through anything!

To make it more embarrassing for me, the griffon I had just tried to kill laughed at me. "Do you think we can't have scientists too?" the griffon said.

"Steel can't do that."

"You talk too much about yourself! Time and time again, you have said that you are the devil. We've found priests that have blessed our armor to stop your weapon. This isn't steel either. It's orichalcum. One and a half times stronger than steel with half the weight" the griffon boasted.

"If you use explosives, you'll have to gather enough to make an explosion that would kill you too. Go ahead and ask what happens if you use a flamethrower on us. We have our own air source built into this suit and they're sealed and heat treated" the griffon continued on.

I walked out of the room, grabbed my 870, and then walked back into the engine room. I pulled back on the shotgun's pump enough to check that it was loaded and then look back at the griffon.

"Do you think you can kill me with that?" he asked while laughing at me.

I frowned before shooting him in the face with it. His helmet stopped the shot but there was one thing it didn't protect him from, the impact of the shot. You can protect yourself from behind stabbed, shot, or blown up. One thing that you can't protect yourself from is the force of an object. It is massively worse if you're shot with charged shot from a rail gun shotgun. The resulting shot caused the griffon's head to violently jerk back, breaking his neck in the process.

He slumped down and the other two griffons brought up their guns to fire at me. Before they could actually fire, I drew Yin. The first one to be shot was the one on the left. The charged armor piercing round that Yin fired punched straight through the griffon's helmet and obliterated his skull. The bullet stopped when it hit the backside of his helmet.

Then I shot the other one twice in the chest. The rounds punched right through the griffon's chest armor and ripped apart his body. After ripping through his body, the bullet stopped when it hit the back portion of his armor.

"Dear Celestia" the last flamethrower operator said.

"Give me your flamethrower" I said.

"What? Why?!" he exclaimed.

"Explosive charge" I replied. He grumbled before he took his flamethrower off of his back. I placed it on the ground and placed a dozen grenades on the ground beside it. "Everyone out!." Everyone ran out of the room as fast as their four legs could handle. Once everyone was cleared, I pulled the pin on one of the grenades and teleported out.

When it blew up, the entire airship began rocking. "We have maybe five minutes before the ship goes down!" I said.

Even more sirens began blaring around the airship. "Attention all personnel. The ship is going down. Find the nearest exit and fly off to the next airship."

"Nearest exit my flank!" somepony said.

"Screw it. We'll make our own exit!" I said. I stopped running and cut a large hole in the nearest wall. I jumped through the hole and cut another one into the next wall. When I jumped through the second whole, I found that I had cut my way into a massive armory.

I whistled at the sight of the griffon weapons. Before I could enjoy the sight any longer, the ship began to tilt, knocking everything down and creating a mess. "Well universe, you are a douche. You might be trying to keep me from staying on this ship any longer but you are a douche." I used the Sparda to cut a hole into the next wall, revealing the blue sky. "Come on, I made an exit!"

"Hold your horses, we're going!" one pony said.

I stood standing beside the hole in the wall, waiting for everypony. I had my 870 out, ready for anyone as they began jumping out of the ship. When the last one of them jumped out, I followed suit. My wings caught the air and I glided around. I looked back at the airship while in flight. It had begun to lose altitude and it was rather obvious too with how it was dipping.

That was when one of the other airships exploded. Apparently the other pegasi team had a much more radically different plan. Following the explosion, a flock of pegasi could be seen flying away from the fireball. While this happened, a third airship had begun flying towards the ground. Seconds later, pegasi could be seen flying away from that soon-to-be wreck. It seems like my plan was to destroy the ships engine, another team had the idea of blowing up the ship completely, and the last team thought of flying the ship into the ground.

In addition to friendly pegasi forces flying away from the doomed airships, thousands of griffons could be seen flying away from them. That might be both good and bad for everyone on both sides down there.

In the First Trench Line

Nick had been firing his minigun almost nonstop. If it hadn't been for the many, many enchantments done to the damn thing, the minigun would have melted. Although Nick was armed with an electrically driven minigun, the griffons were quickly gaining ground. They may have had the upper ground, literally and metaphorically, but the griffons had numbers.

One messenger had run up to Nick. "We need to retreat to the second trench line. They're beginning to overrun the first line!" he yelled at Nick.

"How many are left in the first?" Nick asked.

"Maybe fifty in this sector!?" the Messenger yelled back.

"Go warn them, I'll cover them!" Nick said. He stood back out of the trench and continued firing. Seconds later, his minigun stopped firing, signaling that it was empty. Ducking back down, he waited while the minigun initiated its automated, magical reloading sequence. That was a big downside to using the minigun that he was so gleefully happy about using. The entire reloading process would automatically teleport ammunition into the minigun's built-in ammunition drum, which was very convenient, but the whole process took twenty seconds to finish.

Twenty seconds is a long time to wait, especially in a battle. Because everypony was being evacuated from the first trench line, Nick had been only one who was shooting at the griffons which gave them enough reasoning to not try to gain ground. Because he had to reload, no one was shooting at the griffons. Because no one was shooting at the griffons, the griffons were given a massive opportunity to gain ground.

One griffon believe it was a good idea to jump into the trench and he landed mere feet away from Nick. Both Nick and the enemy griffon just stared at each other for the time being.

"Nope" the griffons said before climbing out of the trench and flying away. "Nope!" he yelled while still in Nick's hearing range.

Another griffon had jumped into the trench and unlike the previous one, tried to shoot Nick. Most of the bullets that griffon fired ended up hitting Nick's minigun...

Nick, while still getting shot at, punched the griffon in the face. Now getting punched in the face hurts but getting punched in the face by a massive brute of a person who was also been enhanced by nanobots is even worse. The best words to describe the griffon's pulverized head was raw hamburger meat put into a blender.

Once the griffon's body fell to the bottom of the trench, Nick looked at his minigun. Contrary to movies, tv shows, and video games, if a bullet(s) hits a gun it will not fly out of the person's hands. Instead, the bullet(s) will just horribly damage the gun to the point of being unusable. Nick knew this of course.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" Nick yelled into the sky. Unfortunately for him, nothing could be done about his unusable minigun. The only thing he could do was to store it for now and give it to Tran to repair it when the battle was over.

Luckily for Nick, he had other weapons. The arsenal that Nick had brought to the battle was not as extensive as Tran's but still pretty extensive. His trench coat, the new one that Tran gave him, utilized a similar magical inventory system that Tran used but it was only limited to four slots. For the time being, two slots was already taken by his unusable minigun and ammunition for said minigun. The other two slots, however, carried something much more useful in than the unusable minigun.

One slot held his Gravity Hammer, a very powerful war hammer from another universe that generated a gravity field in the hammer's head. Anything hit by the hammer would be turned into paste if they're not wearing armor. Otherwise, they'd be sent flying at hundreds of miles an hour in whatever direction they're sent flying in.

In the other slot was supposed to be a motorcycle but Nick had decided to put 10 gauge buckshot in it. The shotgun that it was for was a lever action Winchester Model 1887 fitted with a rail gun barrel that made it 9 times more powerful. At the moment, it was on Nick's back held by a simple sling.

Other than an object that made carrying objects easier, the trench coat worked as armor. It was made of buckypaper. Basically, buckypaper is a cloth made of carbon nanotubes instead of a polymer or raw fiber like wool or polyester. This material, pound for pound, is 500 times stronger than steel yet it is more than 10 times lighter. If something was able to destroy it, you do not want to be within a hundred miles of the trench coat when it is destroyed.

Strapped to each of Nick's thighs via thigh holsters were two massive hand cannons. One was a stock Smith and Wesson Model 500. It could fire 5 powerful .500 S&W rounds before it had to be reloaded. The other was the Blue Rose revolver, a double barrel revolver that 2 .500 S&W rounds at a time. The 6 round cylinder of the Blue Rose meant that it could only be fired thrice before it had to be reloaded. The .500 S&W revolver was on Nick's left thigh while the Blue Rose was on his Right. Both had been outfitted with rail gun barrels and since they were massive with long barrels, the rails were regular sized models that made them 9 times more powerful.

Every single one of Nick's weapons, sidearms included, were almost impossible to be properly fired by normal human beings without injury due to the excessively powerful nature of every single one of them. The only reason as to why he was able to fire them was that his body was heavily augmented by nanobots. The nanobots were planted in Nick from an advanced alien species from an alternate universe who thought he was a god because he had the ability to use magic.

Yes... The weirdest things happen to the seven humans.

Anyways, the nanobots gave Nick an incredible advantage. The most useful thing it did was that it made him a great deal stronger. It made him strong enough to toss cars like footballs or destroy boulders. The nanobots also gave Nick a regenerative ability that could heal a good deal of injuries in a short amount of time. However, the regenerative abilities were heavily flawed. If there was a broken bone, it wouldn't set the bone when healing so it would later have to be purposely broken, then set and extreme injuries took a lot longer to heal. Then again, any healing ability was insane! Coupled with the ability to rip apart cars, Nick was a very dangerous person.

Nick grabbed the 1887 slung on his back and fired it at one griffon that thought jumping into the trench was a good idea. The buckshot that came out tore straight through the griffon's body armor and ripped him to shreds.

"Holy shit!" Nick exclaimed while working the lever on his shotgun. Nick popped his head out of the trench and looked at what he was to face. Hordes of griffons had begun flooding towards the trench. While most carried standard small arms, some carried Nick's most feared weakness, bazookas. One griffon that Nick had spotted, aimed his bazooka at Nick. "Well, fuck!"

Nick jumped out the trench just as the bazooka sent a rocket towards him. The rocket hit the back wall of the trench, sending dirt flying everywhere. Nick turned around in a flash and fired the shotgun at the griffon that tried to kill him. The shotgun had the same effect on the griffon as the earlier one that he had shot, it blew him into pieces.

Nick quickly worked the lever on the shotgun while running to the nearest cover, the destroyed remains of a Griffon medium tank that had its side facing the battle. While he ran, Nick felt bullets hitting him in the back. The bullets weren't able to get through the trench coat that he wore as armor.

Nick ran behind the tank and caught his breathe. While doing this, he noticed that twelve ponies were also hiding behind the tank. "What the hell are you all doing here?!"

"We thought it was a good idea to have picnic here until the griffons decided to drop in!" one obviously unsarcastic pony replied. He ejected the magazine in his submachine gun and looked at it. "And we forgot to bring our ammunition!"

"What's your name?" Nick asked him.

"Sarcy" he replied.

"Of course it is" Nick said with a bored expression. "Now somepony else tell me what happened."

"We were retreating to the second trench line when the griffons began shooting at us. We're pinned here" a different pony replied.

Nick peeked out of the cover and saw waves of incoming griffons. Even he had to be wary of being killed. They had bazookas! Making a mad dash to the second trench line would just be just plain stupid but they couldn't stay hiding behind the destroyed tank forever, they'd be swarmed in minutes.

"If only we could take this damn tank with us, we'd be fine" somepony else said.

"Oh! Why don't just carry the bucking thing with us!" Sarcy said.

Nick froze. "That might be a good idea."

"I was being sarcastic!" Sarcy stated.

Nick laughed while slinging his shotgun on his back. "I wasn't." Nick grabbed a portion of the tank and ripped off a large section of the tank's back armor. The steel that Nick had ripped off was big enough to shield all of them and was thick enough to stop any incoming fire.

"You know, this might actually work!" Sarcy said.

"No! Tank armor can only stop rocks. We're doomed!" Nick said. Sarcy glared at him.

Everypony gathered behind the massive makeshift shield and Nick behind to walk backwards. Bullets pinged off of the shield, telling them that the griffons were shooting at the group but they were still safe considering their shield was previously part of a medium tank's armor.

Well, they were safe until the shield was hit by a rocket. A decent sized chunk of the left side of the shield was ripped off. "Run!" Nick yelled.

And that was what they did, sort of. Nick had tried to run backwards, barely managing to increase their speed. Luckily for them, they were near the second line of trenches. This was also when a second rocket hit the shield.

The shield promptly snapped in half with one side falling to the ground and the other half still in Nick's hands but by now, everyone except for Nick had jumped into the second trench line.

"Jump down here already, you idiot!" Sarcy yelled at Nick. Nick dropped the shield and fell backwards into the trench, landing on his back. "Well that's one way to do it."

Nick reached behind him and fished his 1887 out from under him. "You could say that."

Everypony that was with Nick when he was retreating began to restock on ammunition inside the trench. That was when a massive shock wave and dust cloud washed over the battlefield. Following that was the sound wave from what caused the shock wave, a deafening explosion.

"Bloody hell!" Sarcy exclaimed.

"What the hell was that?!" Nick said.

"How the hell should I know?!" Sarcy replied.

"One of the airships blew up!" someone that was actually helpful replied.

Nick got to see but everything had been obstructed by a dust cloud. "Oh shit" Nick said.

"What now?" Sarcy asked.

"Dust cloud, can't see anything" Nick said.

"Well no shit, Sherclop" Sarcy said.

"We can't see them. They can't see us. Now they can get closer to us without getting shot now" Nick said.

"Oh." Just to compliment how bad the situation was, a squad of griffons had jumped into the trench firing their weapons. Nick shot one in the face before crushing another's face with the buck of his shotgun. The other griffons were mowed down by fellow ponies but in the process of doing so, two ponies had been killed.

"God damn it" Nick muttered while working the lever on his shotgun. Luckily for them, the dust cloud had resettled back on the ground. Looking out of the trench, Nick caught sight of the incoming griffons. They had advanced a few hundred yards and were dangerously close to the second line of trenches.

Nick then looked up and caught sight of the other two airships just as they hit the beaches. Unlike the first airship that exploded midair, these two just simply hit the water and started sinking.

And then "something" landed inside the trench with them. The "thing" that had landed in the trench and crushed a pony was a massively armored griffon. Everyone, Nick included, fired at the griffon but the shots were useless.

The griffon laughed at them. "Do you think that will kill me?!" he taunted. With that, he began raising the gun he was armed with.

"Well screw you!" Nick yelled before grabbing the griffon's helmeted head. With a good tug, he ripped off the helmet exposing the griffon inside. Before the griffon could say or do anything, Nick slammed the helmet back on the griffon's head. The helmet had forced the griffon's head to be shoved in halfway into the griffon's chest. It stood there for a second before falling to the bottom of the trench. "Cocky little asshole."

Nick looked back out of the trench just in time to spot three griffons that had rushed towards the trench. Nick shot one while the other two were mowed down by other ponies. Nick once again, worked the lever on his shotgun.

"Fliers incoming!" somepony yelled out.

Most of the ponies, and Nick, looked up into the sky to see a group of thirty or so griffons dive bombing towards them. Nick, along with many other ponies, raised his gun and fired. Instead of the deafening boom of a 10 gauge, all he got was a click. Nick held the 1887 shotgun in his left hand as he used the now free right hand to draw the Blue Rose from his side. Nick aimed up and fired three times, sending six rounds up into the air and taking out two griffons.

Most of the fliers had been decimated but eleven had managed to get into the trench. All eight were light units of the griffon military. Since they were supposed to rush the battlefield they were equipped with light armor and submachine guns, the very same model that Tran had looked at earlier.

The fliers' purpose was to rush the battlefield so they were equipped with submachine guns(the same that Tran examined earlier) and very little body armor. Fliers made up a massive portion of the Griffon military as flying was something that every griffon was born with. In short, they were very devastating up close to large groups sacrificing their ability to provide support.

The eight immediately fired at both ends of the trench. Several ponies were mowed down, more so than what their group of fliers had lost.

Nick had also been caught in the griffon's sights. However, most of the bullets that went towards the brute were stopped by Nick's trench coat. Only one bullet had managed to actually hurt him and it was one bullet that had hit him in the left foot. Nick holstered the Blue Rose and slung his 1887 on his back as the griffons reloaded. By the time the griffons had finished reloading, Nick had already drawn his .500 S&W. He smiled before firing all five shots in the hand cannon.

The bullets that were loaded in the hand held cannon were custom 700 grain bullets which were 3 times heavier than a standard .45 caliber bullet. Not only that but they were supercharged from the rail gun barrel. The five shots effortlessly tore through six of the standing griffons, turning them into giblets.

The two that were still alive had started shooting at Nick but were helpless as he advanced towards them. Reaching into his trench coat, he pulled out a Gravity Hammer and swung it at the closest griffon. That unfortunate griffon was sent into the back trench wall and subsequently turned into a smashed corpse. The last griffon tried to fly away but as he did, Nick had grabbed the remains of the griffon that he had smashed again the wall and threw it at the coward. The corpse knocked the griffon out of the sky and into the sight of gun nest.

Nick set his Gravity Hammer against the wall of the trench and carefully reloaded his hand cannon and shotgun while he checked the survivors in this portion of the trench. Half of the ponies inside were wounded or killed while the other half were shielded by Nick.

"We need to get the wounded to the medics!" Sarcy yelled from behind him.

Nick turned around to see the annoying bastard. "You're still alive?!" Nick said, amazed by the discovery.

"I was behind your fat ass!" Sarcy said. "We need to evacuate the wounded!"

-X-X-X-

Austin fired off a few bursts from his MP5 submachine gun and downed a flying griffons. Austin was in charge of the field medical division of the Equestrian military. In accordance to war laws that was preset, medics were immune to the fighting. However, Austin was a special case. He was technically a medic in the idea that he would help the wounded but he would still fight in the war when the need arose. In addition to that, the griffons had a shoot-on-sight policy for all humans.

The fact that he was in charge of the field medical division meant that he was armed nowhere near as much as his six friends.

His primary weapon was an MP5, a 9mm submachine. Like every firearm possessed by the seven of them, it was fitted with a rail gun barrel but a short one that made it 4 times more powerful. The 9mm submachine gun was fed from beta magazines that held 100 rounds of the little cartridges. Instead of carrying a bajillion magazines like everyone else, he only carried three extra considering the bulk of said magazines.

Slung across his back was an Ithaca Model 37 shotgun. It fired twelve gauge shotgun shells and held six shells. It was your basic pump action shotgun other than the regular sized hybrid barrel on it. 50 spare shells were held via a chest bandolier worn on his chest.

Strapped to his thigh was a USP pistol. It was a basic .45 combat pistol. The 12 round magazine made the pistol a good sidearm and Austin carried 5 extra magazines.

Instead of wearing clothing that also worked as armor, Austin used a basic armor system derived from another universe. Also unlike the clothing that Nick and Tran wore was that Austin's armor encompassed his entire body, leaving nothing exposed. Main portions of the body were protected by heavily reinforced armored plates while the joints were protected by a reinforced kevlar derivative. The head was also protected by a massive helmet that protected the entire head with a reinforced metallic glass face plate. The only thing that would threaten the armor's integrity were explosives and cannon fire. The armor was also given enchantments by Tran to increase strength at the sacrifice of some of the user's mobility. The same enchantments would also absorb shock to further protect the wearer. With it on, Austin was quite a bit weaker than Logan with his armor but stronger than Tran with his devil powers.

The suit had been heavily modified and had a few nonstandard features. For one thing, it had an artificial skeletal system that gave Austin a slight strength boost and minimized body overheating.

At the moment, most of the medical units were behind the second trench line. They had to be close to the fighting so that wounded could be rushed to them but far away enough to avoid being attacked directly.

As more wounded was rushed behind the lines, Austin pulled out a radio from an ammo pouch. "Where are the god damn bandages that I was told about?!" Austin yelled into the radio. Before anyone could answer back, a bullet hit the radio. "God damn it." He threw the remains of the radio away and brought his MP5 back up at incoming shapes.

"Whoa, easy there!" The shapes had turned out to be ponies carrying wounded back behind lines. The group was made of seventeen ponies. Nine were still untouched by bullets while the remaining were bleeding with varying intensity. Some of the wounded had helped walking with the unharmed ones while a few were entirely carried by a teammate.

"What the hell happened?!" Austin asked.

"Bunch of fliers ambushed us" the pony replied.

"How many wounded?"

"Eight with us."

Austin pulled out a spare radio. "We have eight more!" he yelled into it. He looked back at the pony. "Find somepony that's free and if there aren't any, find a group working on the same pony."

Just as they started moving the wounded, the ground in front of Austin exploded. A small amount of shrapnel had hit Austin but his armor stopped it entirely. Everypony in that group had started rushing away but one remained. "What the hell was that?!" Austin yelled out.

"A nice flowery surprise" he replied. Austin glared at him who was just giving Austin a dead panned expression. "What in the hell is this supposed to be?! A sandwich?! I thought you humans were supposed to be smart! It was a Celestia damned explosion from a grenade. How do I know that it's a grenade?! Airship grade artillery would have blown us to pieces."

"Why didn't you say so?!" Austin yelled at him.

"Because you're an idiot!" he said in reply. "What you should have asked was where the hell it came from!?" As if life was trying to continue mocking Austin, he was tackled down by a griffon. As a result, he and his primary weapon was knocked down. Austin tried to knock the griffon off of him but was successful in absolutely nothing.

The pony who had been mocking Austin simply walked over to where the struggled was and just looked at them. A second later, he pulled out a combat knife and stabbed the griffon in the neck. The griffon gurgled out at Austin before he was stabbed with another knife, this one being a large bowie knife. Now dead, the griffon slumped over Austin's body.

"Thanks" Austin said to the pony.

"You know, I thought you humans were supposed to be undefeatable in hand to hand" he said back to Austin.

"That is only one of us and he's off destroying airships" Austin said. Austin pushed the body off of him and picked up his MP5. "And stop referring to me as a human. My name is Austin, damn it."

"Sarcy." He let his submachine gun fall to his side as he began to search the griffon's body.

"Of course it is" Austin muttered under his breathe. He watched as Sarcy removed the two knives from the corpse. "Why two knives?"

"Why not?" Sarcy replied. He began frisking the griffon. A few seconds later, he came up with a long sheathed dagger which he stuck in his armor. "Now it's three."

"And then you're going to tell me that you carry two sidearms" Austin said. There was a silence(not really with a battle going on) between the two of them. "You do, don't you?"

"One 1911, standard as per the regulations of the Equestrian military, and one revolver, not standard to the Equestrian military, that was personally bought from a famed gun store in Ponyville" Sarcy said. An explosion was heard, this one being A LOT louder than the grenade, towards the second trench line. "That one was definitely from an airship cannon!"

Both of them ran towards the source of the explosion and found a massive crater. "Well fuck" Austin said.

The crater had taken up a huge portion of the mid trench line. The crater itself had spanned 80 feet in diameter and was 9 feet deep. Some ponies had decided to use the crater as a makeshift trench and were hiding inside of it to be safe from incoming fire. Inside the outer portion of the crater were the remains of ponies that had the misfortune to be near the blast. In the portions of the trench that was connected to the crater, ponies were continuing the battle.

"I thought the airships were too high to fire!?" Austin said. Life had decided to continue mocking him as he gained sight of one of the griffon airship that had been crashing to the ground. He turned to look at Sarcy. "Don't say it."

Both Austin and Sarcy had been standing out in the open too long and griffons had now noticed them. Bullets whizzed by the two of them, showing how smart their decision to just stand there. When they realized their mistake, they jumped into the trench. Ponies inside the trench noticed their arrival.

"Two ponies?! Is this a joke?!" a random soldier said.

"We were just investigating the explosion" Sarcy said.

Somepony who had been shooting out of the trench paused to look at them. "An airship fired off a salvo while crashing" the pony said. That was when a bullet hit his helmet. The resulting action surprised him and he fell to the bottom of the trench. When he realized that he had been shot, he took off his helmet and looked at the dent in it. "Well that was lucky." He stuck the helmet back on his head and buckled it back in. "Clover's the name."

"We need to bring the wounded to the medics" Austin said.

"I thought it was good idea to let them die" Sarcy said.

"Would you shut the fuck up already?!" Austin yelled at him.

"We're kinda tied up here" Clover said. A grenade landed in the trench but right in front of Clover. He scrambled for a second but he picked it up and threw it out of the trench. Seconds later, there was still no explosion. "Was that a dud?"

"No. The explosion was obviously silent" Sarcy said.

Clover glared at him. "As I was saying, if we step out of the trench carrying a wounded person, we'll be prime targets for the griffons."

That was when Austin's radio started spewing out chatter. He pulled it up and held it up to his ear. Tran's voice came from the radio. "Did those airship cannons hit anything?"

"Yes, one landed directly on a crater!" Austin yelled into the radio.

"Well damn. Can you evacuate the survivors?" Tran asked back.

"No, we'd be sitting ducks!" Austin replied.

"I have an idea. Look up into the sky."

Austin looked up into the airspace directly above the first trench line. "What am I supposed to be seeing?!"

"Wait for it" Tran answered. A red flare flew into the sky followed by a white flare followed by a blue flare.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" Austin yelled into the radio.

All of a sudden gunfire stopped entirely from second trench line. Austin was about to question this until everypony, Sarcy included, pulled out grenades and threw them. All of the grenades exploded in one giant deafening explosion. Then, everypony popped out of the trenches and began firing their weapons. Every gunshot melded into each other and turned into one loud buzz. Every able bodied pony on the trench were trying to get rid of as much ammunition as possible.

Austin, amazed by the spectacle, stood there in awe. Seconds later, he snapped out of his stupor and pulled up his radio. He switched the channel on it before speaking into it. "We're evacuating the blast victims from the second trench line, mid-section. An airship cannon shot it. Prepare for a lot of injured."

Austin tapped Sarcy and Clover on the back. He jumped down into the trench with Austin. "What?!" Sarcy yelled at him. He ejected the magazine in his submachine and replaced it with a fresh one.

"We need to move the wounded!" Austin yelled over the gunfire. He motioned at the ponies lying in the trenches to his left and right with his hands.

"Fine, though we're going to need more ponies to carry them all" Clover replied. He scanned the number of injured. "At least twenty-two more."

"How are we going to get twenty-two ponies fast enough to evacuate all of them?!" Austin asked.

Sarcy stood there for a second before he removed a grenade from his combat rig. He pulled the pin and toss the grenade backwards outside of the trench. When it exploded, several ponies turned around, guns ready. "You were asking?"

"We need to move the wounded back to the third trench line. Grab someone and let's go!" Austin said.

All of the injured/wounded were grabbed and hoisted out of the trench before behind moved backwards towards the previous trench line. Meanwhile, everypony was still madly firing their weapons at the griffons.

Austin shifted with the weight of the pony he was carrying. "What the hell is that with the flares and gunfire?"

"It's called a mad minute" Clover replied. He was one of the many ponies that had been carrying somepony injured.

"Mad minute?" Austin said.

"Your buddy Tran instituted it three months ago. When those three flares have been sent, everypony is to fire madly at the griffons" Clover explained.

"So it lasts one minute?" Austin asked.

"No, it's called the mad minute because it lasts ninety years" Sarcy said. He wasn't carrying anyone and was one of the many ponies that were escorting the injured.

"If it lasts only a minute, then we only have ten seconds left" Austin said. Everypony realized what he has said and began sprinting. Soon enough, the mad minute ended and their distraction was gone. Of course, the griffons would not come immediately as it takes a decent amount of time, even for the fliers, to close a distance but this also applies for Austin, Sarcy, the injured ponies, and the ones carrying them. It would take roughly two minutes to reach their intended location if they had been running and two minutes can seem like hours if you are being shot at as they were now.

Clover, which had been on Austin's left, was hit with a bullet. However, he didn't fall down and continued running. "Body armor" he exclaimed.

"Fliers!" somepony shouted out.

Four griffons landed directly in front of their group. Before they raised their weapons, they mysteriously dropped to the ground except for one of them. The one that didn't fall to the ground had simply exploded from the inside out. "Snipers, watchful little bastards, aren't they?" Sarcy said.

"What about the one that exploded?!" Austin said.

"It's your buddy with that artillery piece of a rifle" Sarcy replied.

Austin immediately knew who it was. "Logan" he said. By now, they were close enough to be protected by the third trench line and were now safe. They moved all of the injured past the third trench line and into medical tents.

-X-X-X-

Logan pulled back on the bolt to his Tac-50 and ejected a spent casing. Logan's Tac-50 was definitely a special rifle. It fired a .50 caliber round with a .52 Sub MOA accuracy. The barrel on it was a long railed barrel meaning that almost nothing would stand up to it, including certain tanks. What was really special about the gun was the action on the gun. It was a straight pull, something that Tran had added in for him. This let Logan fire shots more rapidly and it was considerably difficult to add since there were only a handful of decent designs of straight pull bolt action rifles.

There was a downside to the straight pull. It made Logan use up his ammo a lot faster than what was considered normal. When Logan reached for another magazine for his rifle, he found that every single magazine that he had loaded earlier in the day was now empty. "Well shite" Logan said.

He stood up and picked up his rifle before walking down the trench. After traversing half the trench, Logan came up to a large munitions pocket.

Other than standard Equestrian munitions, the pocket also held a very special and very massive chest. Logan opened the chest and started placing the disassembled pieces of his Tac-50 into the bag. After doing so, he began pulled out other weapons from it.

The first firearm that came out of it was an AR10. The AR10 was a gift from Tran when they had visited the humanized pony pocket universe and was heavily customized by the Asian. Aside from the regular length hybrid barrel, it had a foregrip and a red dot sight on it. The AR10 itself was basically an M16 chambered in 7.62 NATO. Logan's particular AR10 was fed from a 35 round casket magazine.

On a side note, Logan previously owned an M14 DMR that was fully automatic but it was destroyed in a freak accident. The only details that were disclosed was that it involved Tran and 14 pounds of chocolate. How did he do this? The world may never know.

The next firearm to come out of the box was a UMP45. It was a submachine gun that fired a .45 caliber round with a short hybrid barrels. It was almost a bare version of the gun aside from the foregrip. The weapon itself was fed from 45 round stick magazines.

The next weapons were two tomahawks which were settled on each hip. One was a tactical SOG tomahawk while the other was a Native American style peace pipe tomahawk. Both were razor sharp and had a knack for cutting through flesh and bone.

Already strapped to Logan's thighs were two Glock 18s. They were fully automatic 9mm pistols with the usual short rail barrels and were currently fed from 100 round drum magazines. Logan referred to his Glock 18s as 'Wall of Lead' guns. At cyclic rate of 1200 rounds a minute each, they would indeed send out a wall of lead.

Logan also carried a messenger bag. The messenger bag functioned a lot like Tran's backpack, it had a functional pocket universe inside of it. However, instead of having enough storage space to rival small countries, Logan's messenger bag carried a pocket universe that was more like a massive storage room. The room itself was 20 ft long, 15 ft wide, and was 7 ft tall. Inside the room was things that Logan deemed necessary such as extra ammo, gear, explosives, or food. To make grabbing these items easier, one would simply reached into the messenger bag and the bag would give them the item they desire. This only continues to function as so as long as the bag contains the item that the user desires.

Unlike everyone else in their group, Logan did not wear armor. Instead, Logan's body was infused with a Nanosuit, a very advanced piece of hardware that was essentially a mechanized body suit. Now if anyone were to look at Logan, they would not notice any difference between his Nanosuit form and his original form as the suit was made to look exactly like him. However, it was still functioning as it would normally function.

The main feature of the suit was the fact that it was body armor. The main building block of the suit was an alloy of Titanium, a very light yet strong and durable metal, and Coltan, a very heat resistant metal ore. The suit had artificial muscles that could harden to be additional armor as long as it had energy.

The more obvious function of the suit was that it would make him a lot stronger. The level of strength was pretty good and it allowed Logan to carry many weapons as he usually did. The number of weapons that Logan could actually carry was limited to where he could place the weapons on him. If he wanted to, he could cover his body entirely with firearms.

Another function of the infused Nanosuit was it made him faster. The suit were composed of artificial muscles and gave Logan the capability of running up to fifty-five miles an hour. Getting tired was also not a thing as infinite endurance was another benefit.

The last feature that Logan absolutely loved was how he could turn invisible. This feature would last only a minute or two as the feature drained the suit's power quickly as Logan wore things like clothing and carried weapons that the suit had trouble cloaking. Movement would also make the power drain faster so it would last mere seconds if he decided to run. How the body armor worked was that as long as Logan had energy left in the suit, he was invulnerable. Damage of any form would, however, lower the energy levels on the suit. Fortunately, the energy would replenish itself slowly over time.

Then, a group of eight griffon fliers landed in front of Logan. Unfortunately for Logan, he had none of his weapons ready to fire. "Well shite." All eight raised their submachine guns.

Instead of hundreds of gunshots sounding out, only a single one did. All eight griffons fell over dead with holes protruding from their heads.

Logan gaped like a fish, eyes wide from the event.

One pony walked out from behind Logan and looked at the eight bodies. "Sorry that I didn't shoot them before they raised their weapons" the pony said. He was a small white earth pony with a tan mane and tail and he was strangely enough, wearing light body armor. He was armed with an SRT8 or the standard issued rifle of Equestria. Now the SRT8 was commonly issued to marksponies or snipers in the Equestrian military as when it was fitted with a scope, it was deadly accurate. The rifle that he was armed with was just a bare model, iron sights instead of a scope.

"Did you just kill eight griffons with one bullet?!" Logan exclaimed.

The lone pony looked at the eight griffons. "I would say yes" he replied.

"I'm not even sure if that should be possible!"

"I believe it is now possible" he said.

"What is your name and why are you here?" Logan asked.

"Sugar Plum" he answered.

"..." Logan stared at him.

"I'm sorry but may I leave now?" Sugar asked.

"..."

"I'll take that as a yes." And so, he began walking away.

"..."

Sugar walked in the direction that Logan was staring at. When he had to go over the griffon corpses, he stumbled a bit considering his small stature, despite being an earth pony, but was able to make his way through. That was when he stopped, mere feet away from the corpses. One of his ears twitched. Then, in the blink of an eye, he brought his rifle up and fired into the air. He then worked the bolt on his rifle.

Sugar looked up into the sky. Logan followed Sugar's action and also looked up. Falling to the ground was one griffon. Sugar then took one step to the left and watched as the griffon landed right beside him. Present in the victim's neck was a bullet hole.

"Are you one of my snipers?" Logan asked.

"No. I was a Reserve Guard" Sugar replied. Reserve Guards were Equestrian Citizens that went through a small amount of military training and were put aside for if they were needed. They were the Equestrian version of the National Guard.

"Then what were you before the war?" Logan asked.

"A potato farmer" he replied.

Logan took the time to face palm. "Of course you are."

"I really have to take my leave now." And so, he walked away.

Logan just stood there for a second before he snapped out of his stupor. He reached for his AR10 and loaded it with a casket magazine from the chest. He loaded the other firearms he possessed before he locked the chest and started walking away.

-X-X-X-

Logan jumped down into the second mid trench line, between two ponies. One was one of Nick's heavy units. He was armed with a standard Gatling gun and wore a couple pouches were strapped to his sides that contained extra drum magazines for the gun. On his back was a simple bazooka and he carried no extra rockets. The armor that he wore was standard heavy armor of the Equestrian military, no extra plates. The other was a Royal Guard of all ponies and he was armed with a carbine with several extra magazines and grenades. He wore standard armor, medium level. Both of them carried the standard sidearms of the military.

"I thought you were a sniper" the Royal Guard soldier inquired.

"Well not right now!" Logan said. One griffon landed down in the trench and noticed Logan. He immediately jumped out of the trench in terror and began flying away. "Oh no you don't!" Logan fired at the griffon with his AR10 and succeeded in shooting him down.

"Give me the sit rep" Logan said.

"Well, we're getting shot at and the griffons seem to have finally landed their tanks" the Royal Guard said.

Thanks to spies, we knew a lot about the Griffon Empire's military. Tanks were not their forte. The most common tank of the Griffon military was a medium tank that weighed 32 tons and was armed with a 76MM gun. Comparing it to the Manticore Mark I of Equestria was like comparing a shirt to a suit of knight's plate armor. However, they mass produced this tank so they had thousands upon thousands of them compared to the dozens that Equestria possessed. Name? The Talon III.

"Oh, now they bring in tanks" Logan said. "Tell me that one of you have explosives." The heavy unit removed a bazooka from his back and held it out for Logan. "Well that might work, sort of."

He frowned back at Logan. "How about the bottom of the tank? Armor on the bottom is always the thinnest and therefore the weakest."

"But there is still not enough explosive to actually destroy the tank, just barely enough to damage it. At the most, we'd-" Logan paused and then started digging through his messenger bag pocket universe.

"What are you looking for?"

Logan didn't answer. Instead, he pulled out a glass mason jar. Inside of it was a foggy yellow liquid. "We may just need to damage each tank slightly."

-X-X-X-

The Royal Guard from earlier stood out in the open, obviously in the view of an advancing tank column made up of twelve tanks. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" No one answered him. The lead tank in the column stopped in front of him only thirty feet away. The turret on the tank slowly moved until it was aimed at the Royal Guard. He jumped out of the way and started running, just as the turret fired. He had barely succeeded in not getting blown into oblivion.

The tank crew inside began to aim the turret again until a small explosion originated from under the tank. "What was that?" a tank crewman asked.

"Just some idiot taunting us" the tank crew's captain said. Then every member of the tank crew noticed that a yellow cloud was slowly seeping into the tank.

"What is that?" the griffon driver asked.

"Is it magic?" the loader to the gun asked.

"Maybe the explosion damaged the exhaust" the tank technician commented.

The cloud continued to expand until it reached the driver, who was closed to the bottom of the tank. He immediately began to choke and his eyes started burning.

"It's poison!" the captain yelled out. The gas continued to expand until it filled most of the tank cabin. Half of the crew had already succumbed to the gas and were dead while the other half scrambled to get out of the tank. The captain was the first to get out as he was the one to open the hatch on the tank. The second he was out of the tank, he was gunned down by a patiently waiting heavy unit of the Equestrian military and Logan. Two more of the crew scrambled out of the tank and were shot like the captain while the rest of the crew stayed inside to avoid being shot, only to be killed by the gas.

The other tanks in the column noticed the death of their fellow tank crew and aimed their cannons at the two. Before any of them fired, the ground underneath their tanks exploded. The same yellow gas cloud seeped out and into their tanks like the first one.

Unfortunately, three tanks were not damaged enough for the gas cloud to kill the crew and still had functional crews. One tank fired at Logan and the heavy unit with the shell landing a few feet away from them. They would only have a few seconds before another tank fired so the two of them immediately ran behind a nearby disabled tank. "Well that was close" Logan said.

The heavy unit just stared at him. "..."

"Okay, three tanks left. Any ideas?" Logan asked.

"..." The heavy unit looked at the tank they were hiding behind.

"What about it?" Logan asked.

"..."

"You're about as useful as Andy with explosives" Logan said. The heavy unit continued to look at the griffon tank. "Oh! We can use the cannon to destroy the others. You're useful after all." Logan climbed up onto the tank and into it via the still open hatch. The inside of the tank was still filled with the poison gas but Logan's suit filtered the air for him. Inside the tank, Logan climbed into the gunner's seat and began to aim the turret.

One of the remaining tanks noticed what Logan was doing and sent a shell at the tank that Logan was inside of. The shell made a massive hole in the front of the tank but overall, it still had a functioning turret. Logan fired a second later, sending a shell at the tank that had shot him. The shell made a massive hole in the enemy tank, letting in the gas seep in. With that tank dealt with, Logan climbed out of the tank knowing that the remaining two would be trying everything to kill him. When he was out of the tank, he scrambled to hide behind it to avoid being vaporized by a giant shell. One thing he noticed was that the heavy unit was gone. Then he heard gunfire coming from the direction of the other two tanks. Logan peaked from over the tank and saw the heavy unit atop one of the griffon tanks.

The tank that he was standing on had the entry hatch open. From the open hatch, the heavy unit was shooting into it with his Gatling gun. Then, he stopped shooting and placed his Gatling gun on the turret. With a free hoof, he tossed a frag grenade into the cabin of the tank and killed off the remaining crew in the tank.

The last tank with a living crew immediately aimed their turret at the heavy. He noticed this and simply jumped down, putting the non-functioning vehicle between him and the last tank. Even with the obstacle, the griffons fired anyways, blowing up the back portion of the vehicle.

"Well damn" Logan said. The enemy tank fired another shell at the heavy's cover, destroying the tank even further. Logan looked down at his AR10 before running out from cover and towards the last tank. The turret on it swung its turret until it was aimed at Logan and fired. The shell that came out of it landed mere feet away from Logan, spraying him with shrapnel. Luckily, his Nanosuit was enough to protect him.

It didn't faze him and Logan closed the rest of the distance between him and the tank. The entry hatch popped open with a griffon armed with a submachine gun. Logan brought up his AR10 and pulled the trigger, only to get a click. He dropped the rifle and pulled out his UMP, peppering the griffon with supercharged .45 caliber rounds.

Logan quickly scaled up the side of the tank and stopped right in front of the entry hatch. "Weapons ready!" the tank captain inside yelled. Logan laughed at the crew inside and reached into his messenger bag. He came up with another glass mason jar full of the same yellow liquid as the other jars. Logan held the jar above the hatch and casually dropped it in.

Then he casually jumped down from the tank and walked over to the heavy unit. "What is that stuff?" the heavy unit asked in a deep voice.

"Chlorine gas" Logan replied. Then he realized that he had spoken. "Holy crap, you can speak."

Logan picked up his AR10 where he dropped it and inspected it. Earlier, Logan was sprayed with shrapnel. He himself was protected by the Nanosuit infused to him but the AR10 in his hands wasn't. It therefore rendered the assault rifle damaged beyond use. Clearing the weapon, Logan stuffed the rifle into his messenger bag universe and took up his UMP.

Another tank pulled up. This one was being escorted by a squad of griffons, one of which was a heavy soldier of the Griffon Empire. The griffons and the tank hadn't spotted the two of them. Before they could be spotted, Logan and the Equestrian heavy hid behind one of the disabled tanks.

"What the hell? Was that a griffon version of you?" Logan asked.

"Not steel weave" the heavy said.

"What?" Logan asked.

"Not steel. Not weave armor."

"If it’s not made of steel, then what is it made of?" Logan asked.

"..." The smirk on him could be seen under the helmet.

Logan facepalmed. "Okay, lets deal with them." He took the heavy unit's bazooka and started running towards the griffons.

"Idiot" the heavy soldier said. He jumped out of hiding and fired his Gatling Gun at the griffons.

Logan ran at them guns blazing. Quite literally in this case. His UMP spat out .45 caliber rounds supercharged by an insane advance in weapon technology, being able to punch through any standard set of armor, griffon or Equestria. By the time the UMP clicked empty, he had succeeded in mowing down four of the griffons.

Now empty, he let the UMP hang on his shoulder as he pulled out his two tomahawks. One griffon was instantly killed when he took a tomahawk to the face while another took one to the neck. Logan let go of both tomahawks and the corpses dropped with them attached.

With his hands free, he pulled out both Glock 18s and fired at the remaining griffons. The remaining griffons, save for the heavy griffon, were killed. When the two Glock 18s clicked empty, the heavy griffon smiled at him. "Your sidearms are useless!" he yelled at Logan.

The heavy griffon raised his weapon and pulled the trigger. It clicked empty. When he looked down he discovered that several 9MM rounds had punched right through the gun and rendered it useless. "Looks like your gun is useless" Logan taunted him.

A griffon popped out of the tank. "Just kill him already" the griffon said.

The griffon heavy moved closer to Logan and Logan pulled the bazooka off of his back. Unfortunately for Logan, the griffon threw a punch. Logan instinctively blocked himself with what he had in his hands, the bazooka. The entire thing snapped in half with the rocket inside of it falling to the ground. "Well, fuck you, you piece of shit. You are going to die."

Logan punched him in the face/helmet only to reel his hand back and shake. "Fuck. Shit. Piss. That fucking hurt!" The heavy griffon laughed at him before tackling Logan. Both of them went tumbling to the ground. Because the two of them were too armored, neither one was able to get in a good hit. Punches were thrown but all of it was for naught.

"This has stalemated" the griffon said. Then his head exploded. He fell over onto Logan, revealing the Equestrian heavy. He was holding the remains of a rocket in his left hoof. The head on it was obliterated from the explosion.

Logan pushed the corpse off of himself. "Uh, That's one way to do it" Logan said.

Both of them looked at the griffon that was standing in the entry hatch of the tank. He ducked back in. Shouts were heard and three griffons popped out of the tank. Logan pulled out a jar of chlorine and slammed it in the face of one of the griffons. The jar shattered and coated the griffon's face in glass and chlorine, mocking his existence.

"Oh look, the chlorine is making his eyes bleed. Welp. No wait, that's just the glass. Oh wait, never mind. There it goes." Logan said, commenting on the use of his homemade poison gas.

Logan's partner, the heavy brought up his Gatling gun and peppered the last two with a wall of .45-70 rounds. Logan turned to look at the heavy. In a fake mocking tone, he spoke. "Come on man, there's no honor in that. You got to have honor and elegance instead of mowing 'em down."

"You're using poison gas" he rebutted.

"I said you, not me" Logan replied back.

One last griffon popped out of the tank and started flying away. Logan removed one of his tomahawks from the griffon corpse where it was and threw it at him. The coward was hit in the back of the head and was killed instantly. The griffon, now dead, fell to the ground only to land on an incoming tank.

"Well fuck" Logan said. Surprisingly, the enemy tank blew up in a massive fireball. "My tomahawk!"

An Equestrian Manticore Mark I super heavy tank pulled up. Unlike Griffon tanks, Equestrian tanks had heavy machine guns mounted on the top of the tank's main gun. The gun on the tank was manned by Ike who was standing in the open entry latch. "Looks like you needed help" he said.

"Nah, we're good. If I needed help, I would have axed. Oh wait, you destroyed my tomahawk!" Logan yelled at him.

"That was a bad pun and you have a spare" Ike said. He pounded on the side of the tank turret with his fist and they started driving away.

"But I need two of them!" Logan yelled at the disembarking tank.

-X-X-X-

Ike pulled off the ammo can that was previously feeding ammunition into the heavy machine gun mounted on the Manticore Class I he was riding and tossed it away. "Do we have any more HMG ammo?" Ike yelled down while looking into the cabin of the tank.

A heavily build earth pony stallion appeared in Ike's view. Despite his muscular build, he did not wear a standard set of Equestrian medium armor. Surprisingly, he wore a light set of armor. "We're out!"

Because Equestria was a relatively small nation with a small-ish military, Equestria only owned a few hundred tanks. Most of these tanks were Manticore Mark I, the tank that Ike was currently captaining. It was a 105 ton, super heavy class tank that was covered in a reinforced steel hull. The Manticore's main gun fired a 155MM round and could decimate just about anything. In addition to the main gun, there were four Gatling guns inside the tank that were there for anti-personnel reasons. On the outside of the tank were two more guns, one was another Gatling gun while the other was a heavy machine gun that fired a .505 caliber round. The engine that powered the tank put out 900 horsepower and was enchanted to run more efficiently and fail less. The only downside to the tank was that it could only move 12 miles an hour in the field.

One advantage that Equestria had over the griffons was magic. It was very useful. The griffons, without a doubt, had better technology because they were born with hands instead of magic so it was the age old question of magic vs technology. Of course the Equestrians had technology too but it was at a slightly more primitive level, hence the magic. In terms of war supplies/weapons/munitions, magic was typically used in the form of enchantments. Unfortunately, due to heavy costs and how long it takes to make a single enchantment, it was reserved for only the most important of objects like the heavy suits of the Equestrian military or tanks in this case.

Enchantments were one of the reasons why the Manticore Mark I super heavy tank is functional. Normal heavy class tanks and super heavy tanks were plagued with hundreds of problems. Here are some of the problems that plagued heavy and super heavy tanks.

The engine often broke down.

They would get stuck in the mud.

The cannon was too powerful.

It was very slow.

The engine problem was solved by having nearly every part that made up the engine was enchanted. This went from the fuel lines and filters being enchanted to stay clean and not clog to the pistons and spark plugs being enchanted to resistant to wearing down.

Getting stuck in the mud was solved with enchanted tracks. It was simply enchanted to suck out all water in the ground that it rolled over and store it in a water tank that would be later dumped.

The cannon being too powerful was only partially solved. The barrel was enchanted so the muzzle flare wasn't a giant signal flare but it was still pretty bad. The gun's recoil mechanism was also enchanted to handle the shock of being fired better so the entire cabin wouldn't be shaken too badly(or badly enough to rip itself apart).

Being slow? That couldn't be solved. The damn thing weighed 105 tons. How in the world would we solve this? The Manticore Mark I, at best, had a top speed of 20 miles an hour on a flat road/downhill. When going through rough terrain, it would reach maybe 12 miles an hour. Good luck outrunning someone.

The other disadvantage to super heavy tanks was the cost. It cost 925,000 bits to manufacture a single Manticore Mark I. That's right. Nine hundred twenty-five thousand bits to make a single unit. In American dollars, that's nearly thirteen million!

To further put in your mind how expensive that is, here's a list of what you could manufacture with the cost of a single Manticore Mark I super heavy tank.

-29 Griffon Empire Talon III medium tanks

-42,045 1911 pistols with grips for Equines or 50,000,000 rounds of ammunition for said pistols

-29,830 SRT8 sniper rifles with scopes or 45,000,000 rounds of ammunition for said rifles

-14,230 SMGCP38 submachine guns or 46,250,000 rounds of ammunition for said submachine guns

-9,735 CT460 carbines or 48,000,000 rounds of ammunition for said carbines

-1,550 MGG45 Gatling guns 15,235,000 rounds of ammunition for said Gatling gun

-64 G505 heavy machine guns or 8,633,300 rounds of ammunition for said heavy machine gun

Or you could also buy this

-53,000,000 cupcakes or 360,000 cakes from Sugarcube Corner

-40,000,000 apples from Sweet Apple Acres or 3600 barns

-32,000,000 comic books or 518,000 pounds of assorted low grade jewels

-13,000,000 books from the average bookstore or 2,964,200 quills

-2,325,275 pounds of rabbit/bunny food or 4,315,000 overpriced cherries

-21,580 signed 1st edition Daring Do books or 62,500 front row tickets to the Wonderbolts

-1,200 dresses from Carousel Boutique or 135,210 trips to the spa

Or this

-18,500,000 packs of sugarless chewing gum or 333,000,000 sticks of gum.

-9,250,000 clay flower pots or 3,006,250,000 shards of clay

-4,625,365 gallons of gasoline or enough ingredients to make 1,825,000 pounds of thermite

-540,000 bottles of whiskey or 13,000 barrels of whiskey

-462,500 pounds of ingredients for makeshift explosives or 3,237,000 rounds of .50 BMG ammo

-172,000 guitars or 1,523,000 high end cigars

-132,280 pounds of tea or enough for 26,000,000 cups of tea

Also this

-40,468,000 sodium iodide pills or 162,000 wrist mounted PDAs

-4,300,000 burgers or 805,000 waterlogged pineapples

-681,000 shrubberies or 3045 hospital visits to treat minor flesh wounds

-360,000 whips or 290,000 fedoras

-20,720 scuba tanks or 470 much need larger boats

-860,000 pies and 3,237,500 pounds of salt

-215,833 preorders of Fallout 4 or 13,000,000 caps

Yeah, it was very expensive.

On average, 7 ponies crewed the tank. Commonly, the seven members of the crew wore light armor because all other available armor types were too bulky to wear inside of a tank. Everyone carried a sidearm and emergency submachine guns and carbines were stored inside the tank along with extra small arms ammunition. There wasn't much room in a Manticore tank but it was a good amount of room to at least move around in and store extra materials.

The most important of the 7 being the leader/commander of the tank. He/She decided when the tank fired and made important decisions. Typically, the commander was an officer of the Equestrian military.

The next position was the gunner. This position had to be filled by someone who was good with math as ballistics is a science itself. A gunner sending a 55 pound shell from a cannon was similar to a sniper sending a 180 grain bullet from a sniper rifle. Since whoever took this position was in charge of the gun, it was a very important position. Most gunners had degrees in a math field and were commonly lower ranked officers. In the tank, they sat behind the driver.

Complementing the gunner was the loader. Their job was to handle ammunition in the tank. The loader's most important role was, as the name implies, to load the main gun of the tank. This role could have been taken by anyone, whether they were an enlisted or an officer. The only requirement was that they were able to lift the 155MM shells that the cannon fired. There was an assistant loader to accompany the loader to make sure the cannon could be fired at a decent rate. Both loaders would sit in the back of the tank where the ammo was stored.

The next position in the tank was the driver. He drove the tank. What else would he do? Everyone else in the tank was trained to be able to take up the position if the original driver died. He sat in the front of the tank where the controls were.

A position just as important as the gunner was the engineer/electrician. He/She was the pony that made sure the engine was in top condition. The engine to the Manticore was complicated, massive, and heavily enchanted so the engineer really had to know what he/she was doing. He or she was generally in the back of the tank where the exhaust and engine system was, which were for some reason designed to be right next to the ammunition.

The last position was the radio operator. He/She monitored the radio frequencies for anything important. It was a simple job and the only requirement was that he/she was trained in the use of a radio. He or she sat in the middle of the tank.

A unicorn mare moved into Ike's view. She didn't wear armor and had a pistol strapped to her left rear leg. She was dressed in a military uniform, no armor, and had tools strapped to her in various pouches. To compliment her look, her fur and uniform was stained with oil and grease. "Why don't you use the Gatling?" asked the engineer.

"It’s out unless you have ammo for it inside" Ike replied.

"Nah, even the turrets down here are out" replied the same engineer.

"Fuck. Well, hand me my Tommy. It’s by the driver" Ike said.

"Your what?"

"Tommy Gun. Wood grip and foregrip. Drum magazine" Ike replied.

"Can't find it!" came the engineer.

"Oh for the love of god!" Ike ducked down into the tank and moved towards the driver seat. Although the tank was designed for ponies to move around inside of it, Ike could easily move inside of it despite being a couple feet taller than everypony because of the vehicle's massive size. The Tommy Gun that Ike referenced had indeed been by the driver and was exactly as Ike described it. He grabbed the submachine gun and extra drum magazines for it. "Fucking dumbass."

"Buck you too!" replied the engineer.

Ike pulled out a drum magazine and started to reload the Tommy Gun. Anyone that has ever fired a Tommy Gun with a drum magazine knows that reloading it is a bit tricky. As Ike reloaded the old yet incredibly deadly antiquated firearm, a griffon infantry soldier climbed into the tank.

Griffon infantry soldiers were a lot like Equestrian infantry. They wore a decent amount of armor and they carried a weapon for short to mid ranged combat.

Here's how the Griffon Empire and the Equestrian military worked. Each side had light, medium, and heavy soldiers. In Equestria, the light soldiers were scouts that scoped out areas early on while the griffons had fliers who rushed into battle. In terms of medium level soldiers, both Equestria and the Griffon Empire had infantry. Almost every civilization that has ever existed had standard level infantry for war from the modern day United States Army to the Ancient Greek Hoplites.

Ike spotted the griffon soldier and watched as he raised his rifle. The rifle got caught on an ammo rack and stopped him from actually aiming the weapon at anyone. Ike laughed at him before shooting in him the face with his sidearm. a .44 magnum revolver with a rail gun barrel. The bullet obliterated the griffon's skull and stopped when it hit the inside wall of the tank.

Everyone in the tank had heard the deafening boom of the supercharged .44 magnum revolver and turned their heads.

"Dear Luna, what are you firing?!" the driver exclaimed from his seat.

"Friendship" Ike deadpanned.

Just like most of the others in the little band of humans, Ike was armed to the teeth.

Ike's primary weapon was a caliber M1928 Thompson submachine or as everyone else knows, the Tommy Gun. Other nicknames for it was the Chicago Organ Grinder or the Trench Sweeper. This antiquated but insanely effective firearm fired a .45 caliber rounds fed from 100 round drum magazines at a 1000 rounds a minute. Even better? The Thompson had a long barrel so it was fitted with a regular length hybrid barrel that made it 9 times more powerful. With it, body armor was as useful as butter.

Ike's backup weapon was a M1014 combat shotgun. It was a semiautomatic shotgun that held seven 12 gauge shells. The barrel was decently long so a regular length hybrid barrel were fitted to it. It was simple but it would rip you to shreds with tungsten buckshot.

Then there were his sidearms. Ike carried six .44 magnum revolvers, all of which were equipped with regular length sets of rails so they were nine times more powerful than usual. With the correct type of ammunition and the rail gun attachment, it would be as powerful as a .50 BMG round. Every single revolver was identical in function, only differing in their manufacturer and looks.

Coincidentally, all six revolvers were six round models. Six revolvers with six rounds each and six inch barrel rail guns. Six six-shooters. Ike carried them was in twos. Two were carried on shoulder holsters and these two were what Ike usually went for first. The right hand one was a S&W Model 29 and the other was a Taurus Raging Bull.

The next two were placed on his waist holsters in a cross draw position. The one on the right was a Ruger Redhawk and the one on the left was a S&W Model 629. They were placed in a special way so that if Ike holstered his first two revolvers, he could quickly grab the next two.

The last two revolvers were strapped to his legs on drop holsters and were in a regular ready-to-grab-and-fire position. The one on the left was a Colt Anaconda and the one on the right was a Taurus Model 44.

It was a bit excessive but then again, Nick wields a minigun and can rip apart heavy armored troops like paper, Tran wields a pair of enchanted and devil powered pistols that fire rounds with more power than a 20mm, Logan fires a fifty cal with a rather long hybrid barrel and enjoys using poison gas, Breaker wields a 6 gauge shotgun with a rail gun barrel, Equestria has super heavy tanks, and many, many more examples.

In terms of armor, Ike wore a suit of armor but just not from another universe. Originally, Ike wore a heavily repurposed and armored environmental suit for hazardous environments but Tran decided to make a new suit from the ground up. Ike's current suit was armor was a mechanical suit of armor similar to the iron man suit except doesn't fly, isn't digital, and uses technology that seems possible with realistic capabilities.  

The main armor portion of the suit were the titanium tungsten alloy plates that made up most of it. These plates made up most of the armor and protected the main portions of the body. The plates itself were padded with nanokevlar, a material that is 50 times stronger than regular old kevlar(which is 12 times stronger than steel) and as an added benefit, it didn't degrade like kevlar. The only portions that weren't protected by the plates were the joints and neck. However, the joints and neck were protected by a good layer of the same nanokevlar so he was still unexposed. The helmet covered the entire head. It was also made of a titanium tungsten alloy with the entire front half of it was made of clear metallic glass, a reinforced microalloy glass that will stop most forms of everything. Hydraulics were built into the suit to reduce bullet impacts and increase the overall stamina and strength of the user several times over. In addition to that, there were five built-in syringes filled with a magically enhanced healing gel that activates one by one depending on the victim's heartbeat, blood pressure, and breathing pattern. Each filled syringe was capable of healing severe injuries up to partially severed limbs and large gaping holes in the body.

Ike's body was also enhanced like everyone else. Some time ago, he had consumed several enhancements in drink form that made his body several times more resilient to damage, more responsive to actions, and stronger. With the armor on, Ike's enhanced abilities would make Logan's abilities feel incontinent. Then again, Ike didn't wear his armor 24/7, there was a 36 hour battery life to the armor's hydraulics, and it restricted some of Ike's mobility.

Ike popped out the cylinder of the .44 magnum currently in his hands and replaced the cartridge he fired with a fresh one. He holstered the revolver and brought his Tommy Gun back up in both hands. Once Ike popped back out of the entry hatch, he was hit in the face by a rocket and fell back down into the tank.

"Got him!" a griffon outside of the tank yelled. He high-fived a nearby griffon while handing the spent bazooka to him. Much to the griffons' shock, Ike popped back out of the tank and shot both griffons with one of his .44 magnum revolvers.

The entire front half of Ike's full face helmet was broken open and the rest of the helmet was covered in a small layer of blast residue. His head wasn't harmed, the helmet had taken almost all of the damage from the blast. "Fucking assholes."

A rocket came from the opposite direction and directly hit the tank's side armor. Ike turned around while simultaneously bringing up his Tommy Gun. A quick burst from it ended the short lives of the bazooka wielding griffon. "We're still good down there?!" Ike asked.

"Yeah but we don't want too many of that!" the engineer said.

"Let's get going! We're sitting ducks here!" Ike said back.

"Where to?" the driver yelled out from his seat.

"Let's move along the second. We saw the tanks they brought in" Ike said. The tank's engine roared and the Manticore lurched forward.

-X-X-X-

The simple sight of a Manticore was enough to scare any enemy tank crew. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case when Ike's Manticore happened upon three columns of Talon III mediums.

"Let's get the hell out of here!" Ike yelled down into the tank cabin. The Manticore was immediately shot at by the tanks. Round after round pounded against the Manticore but the front armor was too thick. To avoid being horribly killed, Ike dropped down into the cabin and closed the entry hatch.

Inside, the sound of the enemy's rounds hitting their tank was muffled to a good level. Everyone inside was no doubt safe but they were still too close to the enemy. "The front armor is too thick for their cannons" the engineer said.

"Yes but you're a dumb ass if you think being shot at is good for you" Ike said.

The engineer tapped his hoof against the side of the tank's inside wall. "275 millimeters of armored and enchanted Equestrian steel. That's equal to like 350 mills of armor. The fires of Tartarus would burn out before they get through our armor."

"What happens if they get behind us?" Ike asked.

"Then just kill the bastards" the engineer said.

"How many rounds do we have?" the gunner asked.

"Not much left. Only nine" one of the loaders said.

"The gun is loaded with a armor piercing round" the assistant loader said.

"Firing!" the gunner said. Everyone(except for the driver and gunner, both had ear muffs) inside the tank covered their ears and he hit the firing mechanism of the gun. The 155mm gun roared and shook the entire cabin shaking with its recoil.

"Hit?" Ike asked.

"It went right through the one I was aiming for and took out the one behind it!" the gunner said.

"You killed two with one shot?!" the loader exclaimed. He opened up a view hole and looked out. "Dear Celestia. I didn't think that was possible!" He closed the view hole and moved to get grab another shell.

"Load up a HEAT" Ike said.

"We only have three of those left" the assistant gunner said.

"Well, time to use one up" Ike said.

The main loader shrugged before loading a HEAT shell into the gun. HEAT stood for High Explosive, Anti-Tank. In simple terms, a giant shell filled with explosives. "Firing!" the gunner announced. Once again, everyone but the driver and gunner covered their ears.

Gun fired and the tank shook from the recoil. "Another one down for the count" the gunner said. "Quick, load up another one!"

The assistant loader went to work. He grabbed a fresh shell and reloaded the main gun. After the gun fired its load, the spent shell would immediately be ejected from the gun so reloading the gun was relatively fast for a gun of its size.

Then, the sound of shells bouncing off of the hull stopped and the gunner started laughing. "Why did they stop?" Ike asked.

"They're driving away!" the gunner replied.

"That isn't good" Ike said.

"Now how is that not a good thing?" the engineer asked.

"No one just leaves their enemy alone for no apparent reason. They're planning something" Ike explained. There were many things that the griffons could be doing. They could have been doing something similar as to what Logan did, gathering up a large amount of explosives. The only real difference is that they would have to gather a much larger amount.

That isn't what they did. Another round hit the Manticore they rode in. Unlike the earlier shots that had been fired at them, this one hit higher. "Was that supposed to do something?" the loader asked.

"That one hit high on the turret" the gunner said. "I think they were trying to disable our gun. Hit too high." Something big landed on top of the tank, resonating a loud clang throughout the tank. "What the hell?"

The entry hatch to the tank was pulled open from the outside. In came a large griffon, covered in a full set of heavy armor. The griffon was armed with a submachine gun and jumped right into the middle of the tank.

The radiopony, who was the closest, immediately drew his 1911 sidearm and fired at the enemy. Each round was useless in piercing the griffon's armor and only caused potentially dangerous ricochets. Ike was the next one to fire. He had drawn one of his .44 magnums and fired. The .44 hit dead on the griffon's full face helmet but bounced off anyways. Even supercharged with a hybrid barrel, it wasn't powerful enough to puncture the entire helmet.

"Is that all you got?" the griffon taunted him. Ike kept his neutral expression before firing again. This time, the gun wasn't aimed at the griffon. Instead it was aimed at his weapon. The .44 magnum punched right through his gun's action, rendering it useless. "Oh, you son of a bitch."

Ike ran up to the griffon and punched him in the face. Ike reeled his fist back and shook it. Even from his armor protecting his hand, it still hurt like hell. "Aw! Son of a bitch!" The griffon himself threw a punch at Ike's vulnerable face. Ike used his arm to block the punch before kneeing him in the underbelly.

The griffon got winded from the attack and took a few steps back clutching his chest with one of his talons/hands. "Aw. Damn that hurt."

Ike stepped forward and kicked the griffon's other arm at where the elbow would be. The arm bent back and the griffon fell down to the ground. Moving towards the back of the tank, Ike picked up a spare 155mm shell and smashed it down onto the griffon. "Aargh!" the griffon screamed. Ike picked up another 155mm shell and slammed it down on the griffon's arms, turning them into useless flesh sticks. He flipped the griffon over and started fiddling with the front of the griffon's chest plate. "What are you doing?!" he said between his pained screams. To silence him, Ike stomped on his face. The griffon's helmet blocked a good amount of the kick but it didn't stop his beak from being broken.

After a few seconds, he had managed to open the front of the griffon's armor. He pulled out a grenade and stuffed it into the griffon's armor after pulling the pin. Then he closed up the suit of armor before knocking him back to the ground. The griffon tried to pry the grenade out but both his arms were broken.

The blast was entirely contained inside of the griffon's armor. From the outside, it looked like nothing happened. Inside, the griffon's chest had turned into porridge.

"Well the hatch is now gone" Ike said while looking up at the missing entry hatch. "Let's get out of here."

"Aye sir" the driver said.

Ike climbed out of the cabin of the tank to the entry hatch while the tank lurched forward. He brought up his Tommy Gun and pulled back on the charging handle.

As they neared a munitions pocket a rocket pinged off the left side of the tank. Whoever was the source of the rocket, Ike had no idea. All he knew was that it came from the right side of the tank. Immediately, Ike heard the annoyed screams of their engineer. "What the hell?! That took out one of the road cogs!" she said.

"Can we still move!?" Ike yelled down into the tank.

"Aye! This is a Manticore! We can lose four before we're stuck!" the engineer said.

"Well tell the driver to gun it!" Ike yelled down.

"I heard yah!" the driver yelled from inside the tank.

"Then move! I'll try to get rid of them!" Ike jumped out of the tank and quickly moved into a massive blast crater. He set his Tommy Gun down before grabbing a nearby griffon corpse and placed it on top of himself. Then he closed his eyes and smeared blood(from the griffon corpse) on his armor. While Ike lay there, the Manticore he commanded slowly drove away. With his eyes closed, all he could do was wait and listen.

Ike heard the Manticore's cannon go off.

*BOOM*

"Aaaargh!"

"They still have ammo for that cannon!"

"Take cover before they fire again!"

"Where?! Nothing will survive being shot by that artillery."

"Anywhere!"

"There! That crater!"

"Haul those tail feathers!"

A team of griffons piled into the same crater was. The Manticore's cannon fired again and more griffons piled into the crater.

"How many of us are left?"

"Hey! Count off!"

"One!"

"Two!"

"Three!"

"Four!"

"Five!"

"Six!"

"Seven!"

"Eight!"

"Nine!"

"Ten!"

"Eleven!"

"Twelve!"

"Thirteen!"

"Fourteen!"

"Fifteen!"

"Sixteen!"

"Seventeen!"

"Seventeen!? There was thirty-two of us!"

"We need to get rid of that Manticore or we'll be minced meat!"

"Well no shit!"

"How many of us have bazookas?"

"Half of us."

"See if we can take out those treads."

Ike moved his hands down to the .44 magnums on his shoulder holsters.

"Is that one of those humans?"

Ike opened both eyes and drew both revolvers. At one end of the crater stood Ike with two .44 magnum revolvers at the ready. At the other end of the crater were seventeen griffons.

Both of Ike's revolvers went off at the same time. Ike didn't share the same ambidextrous capabilities as Tran. He favored his right hand like nine out of ten humans in the general human population.

The shot fired from the right revolver hit a griffon in the neck while the shot from the left missed and hit the wall of the crater. The next two shots fired went hit a different griffon in the chest. It went right through his armor and through him before taking out another different griffon entirely!

Ike fired off the remaining eight shots in the two revolvers and downed the three griffons closest to him. When Ike holstered his first set of two .44 magnums, he drew his next two set of revolvers. By the time Ike had his next two revolvers up, the remaining griffons had fired upon him.

Because griffons were a hunter gatherer species born with wings that loved using those wings, they favored very rapid firing weapons. The purpose of this was so they could shoot at someone while they were flying. While this was very inaccurate on the ground, this would give them a higher chance of hitting something while in flight.

And so, many bullets were fired at a rate that made a sound akin to buzzing. The griffon firing squad would not stop in their act. Even when someone had to reload, someone else was still firing. When everyone ran out of ammunition, Ike was still standing. One of the downsides to having rapid fire weapons was that they commonly had to be in a smaller caliber to minimize recoil. It would also help if the target was not a heavily armored individual.

"Well fuck" some griffon said.

"I'm out" a different griffon said before jumping out of the crater and flying away.

Ike stopped shielding his face and took one look at the two .44 magnum revolvers still in his hands. They had been riddled when he was being hopelessly shot at, rendering them unusable. "Fucking assholes." He holstered them and drew the last two revolvers that he still possessed. This time, Ike just fired both revolvers as fast as possible. This time, he only managed in downing four more of the griffons.

Ike holstered both revolvers and went for his shotgun. The M1014 was up before any of them could run. The first griffon that Ike shot had his lower body turned into paste. The next shot connected with a griffon's midsection, separating the lowed half of his body with the upper portion of his body.

One griffon drew a bayonet and stabbed Ike in the chest. The blade simply snapped upon hitting Ike's chest. "Did you really expect anything else?" Ike asked. He raised the M1014 at the griffon's face and fired. The griffon's head, previously a complex biological structure in charge of the body's key functions, was now a pile of fleshy mush.

Ike took a look at the remaining half of the griffons. He grinned. Every griffon left in the crater noticed it and tried to run away. Two tried flying away but were quickly hit by anti-air fire from the Equestrian front.

The three remaining griffons looked at each other. "Well shit" one of them said. The same griffon picked up a bazooka from one of his fallen squad mates.

"You're just going to kill yourself at this range" Ike said.

"Better to kill you with us than for you to kill us." He fired. The last three griffons were killed immediately from the explosion.

Ike, who had taken the brunt of the blast, was sent to the other end of the crater. "Good shit that hurt!" Ike looked down at his chest where the rocket hit. The chest portion of the chest's metal armor was shredded, revealing the padding. It wouldn't provide nearly as much protection as the reinforced tungsten-titanium armor plates and it was soft body armor so bullets would still injure with their impact alone.

A team of eight fliers landed in the crater. "Well fuck!" Ike raised his M1014 and pulled the trigger.

*Click*

The safety was on.

He dropped the shotgun and went for his Tommy Gun. When he felt nothing but air, Ike realized that he left it on the ground where he was previously hiding. "Well fuck you!" He ran forward to punch them in the face, only to be stopped by a jet of fire.

"Need some help there?"

Ike knew that voice and he didn't like who possessed it. "Alex. Of course I had to be saved by your ass."

"Well you sure as hell needed it!" Alex said.

Ike started reloading his empty revolvers, er ones still functioning. "I had it handled."

Alex scoffed at him. "They're advancing the upper second. Help em out." Alex started to walk away but stopped when he was still in speaking range of Ike. "And don't get in any tough situations." Ike flipped him off as he started walking away once again.

-X-X-X-

It was basic knowledge that Alex was the crazy pyromaniac of the group. Even before Equestria and before the zombie apocalypse in his home universe, Alex was a fan of fire so he would naturally wield a flamethrower. Most video game enthusiasts, fictional writers, historians, military experts, and the gun nuts know about flamethrowers. However, they are completely misunderstood.

For one thing, flamethrowers do not throw flames like their names states. Rather, they fire a very flammable propellant that carries the fire to the target. This propellant is usually lit by a built in pilot light. This is also the counter argument to the next myth.

Flamethrowers also have incredible ranges. Instead of being effective within speaking distance like every video game in existence, flamethrowers that use a liquid base fuel generally have ranges between 20-95 meters. At the low end of the spectrum, that's the length of 1.5 school buses. On the high end of the spectrum, that's the length of 3 blue whales, the largest living creatures on planet Earth.

The other most believed flamethrower myth is that they will explode upon being shot. That's not how it works. If any of the tanks are hit by a bullet, what will actually happen is that all of the fuel will be sprayed out of the tank. Of course, this is very flammable so there is a very big chance that it will catch fire and kill the operator and everyone around him/her.

Then there's whoever has to carry and operate the flamethrower. It would generally suck to carry a flamethrower. Flamethrowers are heavy. Like 40-90 pounds heavy. Even worse was that all of the weight was on the user's back in a strange fashion so it really affected the user's mobility. Even worse was that flamethrower wielders were look down upon due to their use of such a weapon so they were a prime target for snipers.

Then there's the purpose of flamethrowers. Flamethrowers are generally not good weapons to have. Why? Other than being massively heavy and bulky, they don't last very long. Most WWII flamethrowers, if you were lucky and were wielding a good model, had enough fuel to last about 10 seconds. Ten seconds. Then there's games like Call of Duty World At War or the Fallout games where you can get a flamethrower that can basically last forever.

However, when they were used, they were effective. A massive stream of flame is not something that you can simply recover from. It's not the heat of the flame that kills you, its asphyxiation because the fire sucks all of the oxygen out of the air so it can burn. Once you are covered in burning fuel, you will die. You cannot simply put the fire out. Even if you jump into a body of water you will die.

Actually, if you jump into a body of water, you will suffer an ever worse death. When any biological creature is exposed to extreme heat, for instance the burning hot flames of a flamethrower's stream of death, the cartilage and other parts of the body tends to melt. So basically the joints are doomed. If that creature decides to jump into a large enough body of water, the melted cartilage that has melted will immediately solidify and fuse whatever it is in contact with. Basically, the joints fuse together what it bends. Ironically, instead of dying via flames, you drown from not being able to swim with your fused joints.

And the purpose of flamethrowers is usually mistaken in fiction. The true purpose of flamethrowers is to get rid of any obstructions and obstacles like vegetation. They were also really effective against trenches and pill boxes.

Flamethrowers had another purpose. Scaring the crap out of the enemy. That's right. Psychological warfare. Of course, it was insanely effective at this particular objective considering a person shooting fire at you is not something that is very desired.

However, this was Earth. Not Equestria.

For one thing, they didn't last only 10 second. With a full tank, they'd last 30 seconds. The fuel tanks are enchanted to slowly regenerate. The enchantment didn't work very fast and only gave 1 extra second of burn time every half hour with a limit of 15 extra seconds before the enchantment wore out. Because Equestrians were naturally quadruped, it was much easier to carry them. In every other way, they were the same.

Alex's flamethrower was a custom piece created by Tran and was the only one of its kind, sort of. Sort of, in the sense that this was the third one. Alex destroyed the first two through misuse.

Other than that, it was the only one of its kind. Like almost every known model of flamethrower that ever existed on planet earth, it was made of three main parts. These parts were the fuel tank(s), the pressure tank(s), and the nozzle.

Because it was created by Tran, it was made with the most durable materials in possession. All of the lines were made of buckypaper and had titanium tungsten fittings. This particular flamethrower was composed of two fuel tanks and pressure tanks that were made of the same titanium tungsten alloy. Each of the four tanks were lined with a thin layer of graphene, making them puncture proof.

Tran had enchanted the fuel tanks himself by hand so it had nearly three minutes of burn time and it could regenerate the entire fuel supply within half an hour. Because of the materials that were used to make it were nigh indestructible, a higher psi level was achieved in the pressure tank. This higher pressure level gave the flamethrower a range of 100 meters!

The only thing wrong with the flamethrower was that it weighed 205 pounds. Fortunately for Alex, he didn't have to worry about this problem. The frame of the weapon was enchanted to make the weight seemed like nothing.

The main fuel type that it fired was a simple napalm made of gasoline and a slightly toxic foaming agent. The tanks could easily be switched out for something else but Alex wasn't carrying any extra.

Aside from the flamethrower, Alex carried a number of other weapons but not much due to how massive the flamethrower was.

Alex's backup weapon was a Saiga 12k. It was a shorter and smaller version of the Saiga 12, a semiautomatic 12 gauge shotgun. Alex's was fed from 20 round drum magazines. The stock was removed and replaced with a folding stock so it was easier to carry and the barrel was integrated with a short hybrid barrel. For its size, it had a lot of firepower. With every pull of the trigger a round would go off so the faster you pulled the trigger, the faster you shot.

For a sidearm, Alex carried a Walther P88. It was a 9mm pistol fed from a 15 magazine and had a short hybrid barrel. There was nothing special about it that really made it as dangerous as everyone else's sidearms but Alex had been carrying it with him since the zombie apocalypse in his home world. He quite literally carried it through the end of the world.

In case he ran out of bullets and fuel, Alex carried a hatchet. It was a hatchet. That's it. If explanation is needed, please see a neurologist to have your brain checked for any signs of chronic stupidity.

Alex also carried a sword attached to his left hip. It was a basic broadsword that had been enchanted to set on fire when drawn from its sheathe. Alex was no expert swordsman but he could swing it with great strength.

For armor, Alex wore a fully sealed and mechanized set of armor from an alternate universe that took place several hundred years in the future. Alex's armor was made entirely of armored plates and encompassed every single portion of the body. This included the head and joints. It was a lot like a knight's suit of armor except it was mechanized and was a lot more protective. The plates on the armor were the same titanium tungsten alloy plates that Ike and Austin had on their armor. Because Alex's main weapon spewed out fire, the armor had to be insulated. Beneath the plates were eight alternating layers of foam and heat treated buckypaper and nanokevlar.

Now other than protecting the wearer, it had a lot of other features. For one thing, it was sealed so poison gas, water, or fire would not be able to affect the wearer. Between the foam and plates were hydraulics. Alex wasn't augmented like everyone else so his armor was made to compensate. With the armor on, Alex was twenty times stronger and would require less energy to move around.

The armor also had a built in force field system that was used by no one else in their group of seven. A small battery built into the back powered the entire system. The suit also had a built-in generator. It wasn't just any regular generator, it was a nuclear fusion generator. This generator ran off on hydrogen-2 and helium-3 fuel cells. The hydrogen/helium fuel cells that powered the suit would last roughly 4 months before needing a replacement. Yes, 4 months. It's not a typo.

Tihs, howevre, si a tpyo.

The helmet itself was another entirely different ordeal. Like the rest of the armor, it was entirely sealed. It covered the head in a nice thick layer of the tungsten-titanium. There were no eyeholes. Instead, the helmet would project the everything on the outside of the helmet, inside the helmet. It would theoretically be impossible to obscure the user's view unless the entire head was covered with a bag or something. The helmet would also display information regarding the user's weapons. This includes what type of round the weapon fired, the number of rounds currently inside the weapon, and how much ammo was left inside of the weapon.

In other words, Alex had the same protection as a tank with the ability to lift at least a few tons. Of the seven, Alex was the most armored and was the second strongest in terms of raw power but only with his armor on.

-X-X-X-

Currently, Alex was sitting in the bottom of the second trench line in the middle section. In the background, the battle was now in its later life cycle and had started to slow down a little bit. Opening up the helmet, Alex stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

A nearby pony saw the unlit cigarette and pulled out a lighter, offering it to him. He simply pushed the lighter away and lit the cigarette with the pilot light on his flamethrower. When Alex finished the cigarette, he spat out the butt and closed the helmet.

Alex climbed out of the trench and sprayed napalm all over the field. The extreme range of Alex's flamethrower made it that everything half way to the third trench line was burnt to a crisp. The napalm stayed where it burned on the field, making the griffons unable to gain any ground. The act of the napalm burning also left a giant cloud of black smoke everywhere, obscuring their view.

With them unable to be seen, Alex ran towards them. When Alex was near the smoke producing flames, Alex fired another burst of fire at the griffons, creating more cover and roasting more of them.

The resulting black cloud that came from the stream of fire also provided Alex sufficient cover to reach the trench line that the griffons were dug in. Once dropped down, Alex fired his P88 at one end of the trench while spraying the other end of the trench with buckshot from his Saiga 12k.

Both sides of the trench were quickly cleared whether it was by charged 9mm or charged buckshot. With the danger temporarily gone, Alex took the time to reload both guns. Alex hung the flamethrower's nozzle onto the flamethrower's frame while taking up his Saiga. Shotgun in hand, he walked towards one end of the trench.

Now trenches are much more complicated than they seem. They have to be deep enough for a pony/man to stand in and not be exposed. It also has to be wide enough for a pony/man to walk inside of it. Each of the walls of the trench had to be reinforced(generally with sticks) so that the walls wouldn't collapse down and the ground had to be patted down so hooves/feet wouldn't sink into the ground. Also, trenches were not built in straight lines. There had to be an interruption in the the trench every dozen or so meters with either a zig-zag or a bend. This was done because it would make it impossible for a single person with a machine gun to mow everyone in a single line of trenches. A munitions pocket had to be built into the trench every few hundred yards to keep troops supplied and ready. Other than munitions, these pockets also had radio posts and officers stationed at them. The way trenches were designed also made it impossible for anyone to know what was within fifteen or twenty yards of them.

So there was a high chance that a griffon could have been in the next portion of the trench, hidden away by the walls that resulted from the zig-zag pattern of the trench. This wasn't the case. There was twenty of them...

When the group of griffons happened upon Alex, they immediately ran back where they were hidden by the wall of the trench. Alex laughed at the spectacle. "Do you think that's going to help?!" Alex taunted the griffons.

One grenade bounced out of where the griffons hid and rolled right to Alex's feet. The grenade exploded, throwing dust everywhere and sending shrapnel in all directions. It was useless, considering the level of armor that Alex was wearing. "Did you really think that was going to work?!"

Oh how Alex was going to be sorry. Seconds later, another grenade was thrown into the portion of the trench that Alex was standing in. This grenade was followed by another grenade... And another... And another... And twenty more... With a few rockets.

"Fuck!" The resulting blast sent Alex flying out of the trench. What he hadn't seen was the shock wave that resulted from it had traveled through the trench and killed half of the griffons that tried to kill him. Ironic, right?

When Alex finally landed, he landed on his back, sending a wave of pain through his back. "God fucking damn it!" he yelled. He stood back up and looked at the Saiga in his hands. The stock had been ripped off from the blast and the magazine was ejected.

Alex pulled the trigger and it went off. "Holy shit, it's like an AK47!" Oh, if only he knew that the Saiga 12 was basically a 12 gauge AK47. He pulled out another drum magazine and reloaded the Saiga 12k.

Alex looked at where he had landed. What he found out was that he was standing beyond the first trench line, meaning he was actually behind enemy lines. "Well shit." Alex started to turn around, only to be ran over by a tank.

When the tank finally cleared Alex, he stood up from his Alex-sized crater. It was a good thing the ground was made of dirt otherwise the armor would have been damaged.

Now another benefit of the armor was that it let Alex run at a much faster speed. It was nowhere near the speed of what Tran could reach but being able to run as fast as the average cruise speed of a car on a city road is still pretty good.

Alex caught up to the tank that had ran him over and climbed up onto it. The hatch to the tank was closed and quite possibly locked. "Let's see how good Tran is at making powered armor." Alex gripped the handles to the entry hatch and pulled. The metal creaked under the strain and seconds later, half the hatch was ripped off.

Alex tossed the hatch away and pulled out his flamethrower. Alex lit the pilot light and filled the inside of the tank with fire. Nogriffon was spared from the death and the air was soon filled with the smell of charred flesh.

Just as Alex stowed the flamethrower nozzle back on his back, another tank had stopped him and open fired. The round missed Alex by mere inches and flew right by his left. Alex jumped down from the tank and took cover behind it.

"Shit." He looked at the tank that he was behind. Alex assumed that tanks were immune to fire considering they were immune to decent cannon fire.

The insides of a tank was an entirely different question. For one thing, there was fuel inside of the tank and the engine itself. Another thing was the ammo that was stored in the tank. So let's say that all of this was set on fire. Would it explode?

The answer is yes. Definitely a yes.

The tank blew up and sent shrapnel in all directions. Of course, Alex's armor easily protected him from the blast and shrapnel. The only thing that the blast actually did was that it knocked Alex onto his face.

Alex got back up, he brought his flamethrower up again. He quickly peeked out of hiding and covered the tank in a cloak of fire. The fire itself did nothing to the tank but the black smoke that came from it obscured the view of the crew inside.

Jumping out of cover, Alex ran towards the armored vehicle. Like what he did to the previous tank, he climbed up onto it and ripped off the entry hatch. When he was about to spray the inside with fire, the crew shot back with their weapons.

The gunfire had absolutely no effect other than scratching Alex's armor. Alex laughed while he filled the cabin with fire. When Alex jumped down from the burning wreck, he started to walk away. A repeat of having a tank exploding a few inches from you is not something that you want.

As he was walking away bullets started to rain down from the sky, hitting Alex in the back and the dirt surrounding him. Alex turned around to see teams of griffons in the air shooting at him. Unfortunately, they were out of Alex's flamethrower range. If Alex had to fire his flamethrower across a flat surface, it could hit anything within a hundred meters or so. However, if he had to fire up the range would be dramatically reduced because the stream of burning fuel would work against gravity while traveling upwards. They were well within lethal range of Alex's other weapons but it didn't matter if he wasn't to hit them from this range.

Alex was by far, the worst shot in the group. He usually didn't have to worry about it because he was either using his flamethrower or close enough to not worry about it.

To make matters worse, a third of the airborne griffons pulled out bazookas and two more tanks pulled up. "Fuck!" Alex turned around and started to run away.

This was essentially a shooting gallery for the griffons. What little rounds that actually manage to strike Alex did next to nothing. Bullets were easy to land on Alex but to actually hit him with a low velocity rocket from a single shot bazooka or a shell from the cannon of a tank that had to be carefully reloaded is an entirely different different matter.

Then, one tank managed to hit Alex square in the back with a HEAT round. Of course, Alex's back was where he carried his flamethrower. The flamethrower was very well made with the strongest available materials but its a 76mm HEAT round. The impact of the round succeeded in rupturing the flamethrower's fuel tanks and the act of the round exploding sent Alex flying into the trench. The fuel inside of the flamethrower's ruptured fuel tank sprayed in all directions covering everygriffon inside of the trench and Alex with the deadly napalm.

When Alex finally stood up, he noticed that he was surrounded by griffons rubbing at their eyes from the napalm. Some of them paused in their act and raised their weapons.

Alex quickly pulled out a zippo lighter and lit it. All of the napalm in the surrounding area was set ablaze, creating a bonfire the size of two football fields. Every griffon inside of the field of fire was killed within a short amount of time while Alex waited. Minutes later, the napalm burned out leaving Alex still standing with his now-scorched armor.

Alex looked at his Saiga. Portions of the drum magazine had melted away and the ammunition inside had cooked off. He checked the rest of the shotgun ammunition that he had and found the same thing, melted away drum magazines and cooked off ammunition. When Alex checked his Walther P88, he found that the 9mm rounds had also cooked off like his shotgun.

The only weapons that was still usable was the sword and hatchet that he carried. Alex climbed out of the trench and drew both. Almost immediately, a griffon heavy soldier landed in front of him.

Alex wasted no time and thrusted his sword at the griffon's neck. The blade sunk in a few inches before it snapped in half. Despite breaking, the blade had gone in deep enough to cut into the griffon's neck. In response, the griffon dropped his weapon and clawed at his neck. There was nothing that he could do, his windpipe was sliced open and the excessiveness of his armor allowed him to do nothing.

Alex looked at his broken sword. "Fuck! I actually liked this." He tossed the sword to the ground and picked up the griffon's weapon. "Well this can work." Alex did not know much about guns. Out of the seven, he knew the least about firearms. The weapon that he held looked a lot like an assault rifle. It had sights, a trigger, a grip, and a buttstock. However, the size and weight of it gave out the feel of a machine gun. The magazine was also confusing. The magazine was curved and it fed ammunition to the gun in from the top rather than the bottom.

Whatever it fired and how many rounds it had was a complete mystery and Alex did not know how to check for such things.

Life had been helping Alex out too much by now so it decided to get even. Life did this when it decided that one of the tanks from earlier had driven up and noticed Alex. "Uh. Son of a bitch."

Before the tank could fire, it exploded. From the flaming wreckage of what used to be a combat vehicle, Andy walked out. He was holding a smoking bazooka and despite being Andy, he actually seemed badass...

And then he dropped the bazooka and sprinted out of the flames that came from the tank's wreckage. "Ow! Ah! Oh my god, that's hot!" When he finally got away from the flames, he stopped right in front of Alex. "Are you just going to stand there and do nothing?!"

"Why in the hell would you do that?" Alex asked.

"I thought my armor was fireproof!" Andy said. "Why did no one tell me that my armor wasn't?!" Andy reached behind himself and took up his primary weapon in hand.

"Tell me you have some guns that I can borrow" Alex said, eyeing the various firearms that Andy had strapped to his body.

"Nope." With that, Andy started to walk away. Alex was still technically behind enemy territories so Andy was too. The direction that Andy was going meant that he was walking towards more griffons. Whether that was a good idea or a bad one is debatable.

-X-X-X-

Andy was a scout.

Scouts had to perform reconnaissance on the enemy. They did this to gather information about the enemy.

Before Equestria, Andy resided in a universe with the others that was plagued with the zombie plague. In that universe, Andy was given a lot of practice doing what he did now. While the zombies in that universe were shambling dead bodies as opposed to the griffons that were sapient, it was the same concept.

On Earth, he watched for zombie hordes and noted how big they were, what direction they were headed, and if the zombies were carrying anything useful like weapons or a full backpack. Now, he watched for griffon troop movements and reported how many griffons made up the movement, where they were headed, what type of troops they were, and what weapons they were armed with.

On Earth, he would look for buildings that contained resources and would write down what the buildings contained, where they were, and how dangerous it was. Now, he calls in attacks on enemy munition points and gives information on how well they're guarded.

It was a very important job and despite Andy being who he was, he was very good at it.

Because of what the job entitled, scouts were usually lightly armored and or lightly armed. However, Andy was a member of the seven humans of Equestria and was given custom weaponry and gear like everyone else.

Andy's main weapon was a KRISS Vector submachine in .45 ACP. The KRISS Vector was a submachine gun that was easily the most modern human firearm that anyone was armed with in the group. It was designed with a special delayed blowback system that took away a lot of the gun's recoil. This made it easy to control when it fired at its extremely high rate of fire of 1200 rounds a minute. For a single barreled weapon, that is a lot. Speaking of the barrel, it was equipped with a short hybrid barrel because the barrel was the same size and length as a pistol's barrel. However, this was still enough to make each .45 round more powerful than a decent intermediate rifle round. It was basically an assault rifle in a small, light package.

Andy's backup weapon was a generation 2 SRM M1216 shotgun. Similar to the KRISS Vector, it was the most modern human shotgun that anyone was armed with in the group. It had used special revolving tube magazine that was made of 4 tube magazines. Each tube would normally hold 4 rounds but the size of the magazine had given a lot of opportunities for enchantments. His brother, Tran, hand enchanted each magazine to hold more ammunition. Now, each tube held twelve rounds for a total of 48 rounds. Andy preferred to load each tube with different ammunition types. At the moment, one tube was loaded with buckshot, another tube was loaded with slugs, the next tube was loaded with bird shot, and the last tube was loaded with incendiary rounds that were essentially dragon's breath on steroids. The only reason why he had these was that his brother owed him a favor. The barrel was long enough to have a medium hybrid barrel that would work with all of the different types of ammunition that Andy used, save for the incendiary rounds.

As for a sidearm, Andy carried seven Beretta M9 pistols. The M9 was just a simple 9mm pistol that used a 15 round magazine. Each pistol was equipped with a short hybrid barrel that gave them quite a bit of power behind each trigger pull. Andy carried his pistols almost identically to how Ike carried his .44 magnums. Two were on shoulder holsters in a cross draw position, another two were carried on a cross draw position on his hip, and the last pair were carried on thigh holsters. The seventh pistol was carried on a holstered strapped to the small of his back. Despite having 7 pistols, Andy decided to carry a few extra magazines for them.

Why did Andy carry seven pistols? Well, if you were to ask him that he will reply with "because reloading happens at the worst times" in a heartbeat. Between the seven pistols, Andy had 105 shots available compared to the 36 shots that Ike had with his 6 revolvers.

Other than firearms, Andy carried a dagger. It wasn't just any ordinary dagger, it was an EK Commando dagger. If you were to buy a new one before the company was bought out by Kabar, it would set you back $300. It was expensive but it was definitely worth it. They were made with this quality that was unrivaled by any other company. Since the blade was now in Equestria, it had now been given enchantments. The blade was now nigh unbreakable and the edge was sharper than a straight razor with almost no chance of losing that edge.

Other than weapons, Andy also carried a number of other items that were useful on a belt and a tactical vest. Among these items were maps, a radio, a spare radio, batteries, smoke grenades, extra ammo, signaling gear, duct tape, and many other items.

Following the same pattern as Andy's weapons, he wore a rather light set of armor. It was a skintight suit of armor that was made entirely of nanokevlar. The entire suit was sealed and stored its own air source. It could withstand the cold environment that was the vacuum of space or an underwater environment though it didn't like fire. To make the suit stronger, several ribs were attached to the suit's upper and lower arms, upper and lower legs, torso, and helmet. The helmet and neck was also reinforced with the same reinforcement ribs. The entire suit was perfectly articulated and would not restrict the user's movements in any form. The suit was also enchanted and attached with special magical charms that would increase the user's strength and would further increase the user's ability to take damage. With the suit on, Andy was the fourth strongest person, just ahead of Logan.

Andy jumped down into the burnt out section of the trench that Alex created. "Idiot" Andy said, commenting on Alex's actions.

Andy pulled out one of his radios and brought it up to his mouth. "Alex managed to clear up the entire middle section of the trench line that the griffons are occupying."

Seconds later, Logan replied. "Wait, how in the hell did that idiot do that?"

"He set fire to the entire section simultaneously" Andy replied.

Instead of Logan replying to the response, Nick did. "How in the hell did he do that?"

Andy laughed at the question. "He got his flamethrower destroyed. Andy placed the radio back onto his belt before taking out a different radio. "Anyone on the other side of the radio?"

"SPC Starchy receiving. Who is sending?" the radiopony from the other end said.

"Andy. Identity number four" Andy replied.

"Acknowledged" the radiopony said.

"The middle sector of the trench line the griffons took over is currently unoccupied. A certain member of our group managed to torch the entire section" Andy said.

"What is the order?" the radiopony said.

"Send four squads to take over the trench. This needs to happen before they retake the burnt out area" Andy said.

"The order will be put out" the radiopony said.

"Make it fast" Andy said before putting away the radio. He continued making his way through the trench, KRISS Vector at the ready. The area that Alex burned out was big but it wouldn't be long before Andy would see griffons. The bad thing was that if he did see griffons, it would be at a surprise considering the zig-zag pattern of the trenches.

Right before he could move into the next section, gunfire erupted from the outside of the trench. When Andy came to attention, he found two griffons firing at him. What happened next was both simple yet impressive. He shot them both. It was simple in the aspect that this was the obvious answer. However, it was impressive when the speed of the action is taken into consideration. It had taken Andy half of a second to turn around and shoot both griffons in lethal areas.

Both griffons, now dead, tumbled down into the trench and stopped at Andy's feet. Smiling, Andy turned back to what he was doing earlier, moving into the next section of the trench. Before he could clear it, a griffon walked out of that section and right into Andy.

Both of them fell down from the surprise with the griffon on top of Andy. Andy immediately kicked the griffon off of him and drew one of his M9s. The pistol barked out twice and the griffon was no longer able.

Andy grabbed his KRISS where he dropped it and brought it up for the inevitable. Three griffons ran out from the corner, weapons ready. They weren't expecting him to be lying on the ground and a few bursts ended their lives. "Well that was a smart of them to just run in like that" Andy commented. Reaching down, a grenade was plucked from one of the bodies. The pin was pulled a second later before it was thrown into the next section of the trench.

Unsurprisingly, two griffons ran into the same section of the trench that he was in. It took him a second but Andy brought up his KRISS and shot both. Once the grenade finally exploded, Andy moved into the next section of the trench. A few bodies were strewn on the ground and there was no doubt that a few ran into the next section of the trench.

"Damn it" Andy silently cursed. He climbed out of the wall of the trench, only to find himself face-to-face with a Talon III Griffon tank. "Son of a bitch." Without a second thought, Andy fell back down into the trench that he just climbed out of.

Instead of having a break, he found himself in the company of more griffons. "Ah! Son of a bitch!" Andy brought up his KRISS and held down the trigger. Unfortunately for him, the gun clicked empty after a couple shots as he had not reloaded for a while. Andy dropped the weapon and immediately drew one of his M9s. The remaining griffons were quickly finished off before they could fire off shots of their own.

Holstering the M9, he picked up his KRISS and casually reloaded. "I wonder if that tank spotted me" Andy said.

"He's killing our brethren!"

"I guess that's a yes" Andy said.

"Get backup! We're going to need more to deal with one of those human!"

"Of course" Andy said sarcastically. Andy ran into the previous section of trench and pulled out two smoke grenades. He popped one smoke grenade outside of the trench where he thought the tank was and the other smoke grenade into the section of the trench he was in. The red smoke quickly filled the entire trench, leaving nothing visible.

The smoke continued to expand until it spread into the neighboring sections. "Shit! Weapons ready!" one griffon said.

"How hard could it be to shoot one person?" Andy said to himself. While hidden from the smoke, he climbed out of the trench and moved closer to the tank.

The griffon captain of the tank opened the entry hatch of his tank to survey the field. "Find him! Don't let him get away!" Two bullets ended the captain's life and he fell down into the tank.

"Close the hatch before he gets in!" came one of the crew members of the griffon tank. It was too late, Andy had already climbed up onto the tank and grabbed the entry hatch, preventing them from closing it. The griffons inside tried all they could to shut the hatch but their combined might was no match for the strength of Andy's armor. One hand went towards keeping the hatch open while the other hand reached for the KRISS that was hanging on his torso via a sling.

Most of the time, Andy would take careful shots to conserve ammo. It was a trait that he had gained from living in a world with zombies because ammo could not be wasted. However, this was Equestria and he had access to a near infinite supply. The next thing that he did was known as the infamous 'mag dump' and he did it with extreme fervor. By the time the Vector's mag ran out, the griffon's inside had either died from direct hits or deadly ricochets.

As Andy tried to reload his KRISS, a rocket narrowly went by Andy's head, missing it by mere millimeters. This spooked him and he fell down from the tank. He had somehow been fortunate enough to actually fall down behind the tank, safe from whoever who had fired the rocket at him. Instead of reloading his Vector, Andy brought up his 1216. With a simple action, he switched the shotgun to buckshot.

Two griffons appeared from the top of the tank and were quickly shot with two blasts from the M1216. The tungsten shot that came out of the shotgun affected the griffons in a fashion similar to the tungsten shot that came from Nick's shotgun, it rendered their torsos into hamburger meat. "Jesus Christ" Andy said.

That was officially the first time that Andy had fired his shotgun with the appropriate, enchanted tungsten ammunition that let the shotgun function properly with its rail gun barrel. Anything supercharged from a rail gun would decimate anything, even if it was a tiny projectile.

A grenade flew over the tank and right in front of Andy. Andy looked at the grenade and blinked once before he simply kicked the thing away where it exploded safely. Cause who in the world needs flare when you have practicality?

Andy peeked his head out form cover to look at his situation. Almost immediately, a bullet pinged off of the tank's gull, inches away from his face. "Well that's kinda cliched."

Andy pulled out another pair of smoke grenades and threw both out over the tank. While he waited, Andy took the time to reload his KRISS with a fresh mag. When the smoke cloud had spread out far enough to reach his cover, he decided to move.

Inside the cloud, he slowly walk towards the direction where the rocket had originated from. If he moved too quickly, that might make enough noise for him to be heard and it could also lead to missing important details like three griffons appearing on his right.

It was a good thing three griffons hadn't appeared on his right. Instead, they appeared on his left. Andy immediately raised his Vector and open fired. Like earlier, he successfully eliminated all three with the expense of dumping the entire magazine. Thirty rounds were fired but only eight were hits though those eight hits were more than enough.

Gunfire erupted from behind him so he did the first thing that came to his mind, run. It was a good decision because after four strides, Andy had fallen into an empty section of the first trench. After getting back up, he brought up his KRISS.

Then, Andy realized something. "Did we just switch positions?!" Andy yelled out.

"Yes!" one griffon answered.

"Why in the hell did you answer him?!?" a different griffon screamed.

"But captain, there's no harm in answering that question" the griffon said back.

"No harm?! No harm?!?! NO HARM?!?! He knows where we are now!" the captain yelled at the griffon soldier.

Andy laughed. "I could have figured that out on my own" Andy said. "You're not just going to stand out in the open and that tank is the only thing that you could be hiding behind."

"Wait, why don't we crew this tank and use it against him?" the griffon soldier asked.

"That's cheating!" Andy yelled out. "Though I do like how you think."

"I want four griffons on that tank!" the griffon yelled out. "And where are our reinforcements?!"

Andy checked his KRISS. It was still good. "Screw it, I have armor!" Andy yelled out. He climbed out of the trench and went into a prone position. If you are ever out of or do not have access to cover/concealment, the best replacement is to minimize yourself as a target. To put it simply, go into prone or go into a kneeling position.

Because of the order, a small number of griffons had climbed up onto the tank and were in the process of getting into the tank. This left them out in the open and made them easy targets but at this distance, they would be quite a challenge. By the time Andy's KRISS clicked empty, the griffons on the tank were down.

"He's empty. Use the rockets!" the griffon captain ordered.

Andy dropped the KRISS but because of the sling on it, it just hung on his shoulder. Hands free, he brought up his M1216. Three griffons popped out from the left and right sides of the tank. Two were armed with bazookas and had peaked out from the left side of the tank. The third was armed with what looked like one of their submachine guns and was peaking out from the right side of the tank. The biggest problem that plagued rocket launchers and bazookas was that they took time to aim and were generally single shot weapons so missing is discouraged.

Andy smiled and shot the two griffons armed with bazookas. Then, he turned slightly to fire a shot at the last griffon. However, the transition from target to target gave him enough time to dive back behind cover.

As it turned out, the griffon that had successfully dive behind cover was the same griffon that had answered Andy's questions from earlier. "Not empty. Not empty!" the griffon said.

"Fliers incoming!" the captain yelled out.

Bullets hit the ground around Andy, originating from the sky. Andy looked up to the sky and saw a group of fliers coming down towards him. Andy got into a kneeling position and with a quick movement of the wrist, Andy turned the magazine cylinder on his shotgun to the tube loaded with birdshot. Aiming up into the sky, Andy fired like a wild madman. Because it was a semiautomatic shotgun with a delayed blowback system, the rate of fire was completely dependent on the shooter's finger.

All twelve rounds in the shotgun's tube were expended in three seconds. Twelve rounds of birdshot. Good God that's going to be painful. For those with strong stomachs, look up "birdshot wounds" on Google Images. Now the griffons were wearing light body armor but the birdshot that came out of Andy's shotgun was supercharged and made of tungsten.

Birdshot is a type of shotgun shell designed for hunters to hit small flying targets(birds if you idiots out there couldn't figure it out) more easily. Birdshot makes it easier because many small pellets were packed into a single shell. Because birds are small targets, only a couple pellets would actually hit them but it is easily enough to cause death to any bird(except in the case of Cher Ami[look it up the name because Jesus Christ that should not be possible]). However, the griffons were much larger than mere birds so they'd be hit with much more pellets.

Now the average birdshot round is packed with 715 pellets. Multiply that by 12 and you get 8580 pellets. Now that's what you would call a "wall of lead".

Despite the thousands of pellets flying in the air a couple griffons had gone completely unscathed so Andy turned the magazine cylinder on the shotgun and switched it to the next ammo type, incendiary rounds. "How damaging could this possibly be?" Andy asked himself.

Andy fired exactly one round.

A cloud of fire erupted from the end of the shotgun and completely enveloped the two griffons that had survived the wall of lead from earlier. "Holy crap!" Andy exclaimed while looking down at his shotgun.

While Andy had paused to look at his shotgun, it had given the hiding griffons enough time to take shots at Andy. At this distance, every shot missed and only caused him to break out of his stupor. Not wanting to die, Andy blindly fired his shotgun but the short range of the incendiary rounds made each shot useless. When this tube was empty, Andy purposely fell backwards back into the trench.

"Pin him down! We don't want to lose anygriffon else!" the griffon captain ordered. The griffons sprayed at the section of the trench Andy was in, preventing any exit.

"Well this isn't pleasant" Andy said. He reached for his KRISS, only to meet nothing. In the whole ordeal, it had slipped off of him and was now lying outside of the trench. "Well, nothing I can do about it." Andy took hold of his M1216 once again.

The roar of an engine sounded out, notifying Andy that they had took command of the tank. Even through the gunfire, Andy could tell that the tank was moving closer to him.

He got ready to move into the next section of the trench. First, he rotated the drum magazine on his shotgun so that it was back to being fed with buckshot. Then, he moved over to be near the entrance of the next section of the trench.  

In one quick movement, he turned the corner and scanned the area. Two griffons were surprised to see Andy but their expressions ended with buckshot. "Huh. That begs the question. Why are these two griffons here while those griffons outside are killing me?"

To be fair, they probably thought the exchange of gunfire was just a byproduct of the battle that was still going on.

Also, it also might have been the fact that this section of the trench had been converted into a temporary ammunition pocket for and by the griffons. "Well, this is probably why" Andy said, looking at all of the ammunition crates and cans spread around in this trench section.

Just as he got ready to move into the next section of the trench, Andy remembered something. "Probably shouldn't leave all of this lying around" Andy said.

After a quick search, a box of griffon grenades were found. The griffon grenades resembled human grenades and looked a lot like pineapple grenades. Equestrian grenades were not like human grenades. Instead, they were stick grenades like the German Stielhandgranates. The stick shape allowed ponies to throw them more easily. Griffon grenades were spherical like human grenades. Why? Hands vs hooves.  

Andy picked up a few of the grenades and tucked them into his vest for any later use. Andy pulled the pin from one of the grenades left in the box that he found and started running.

What he had meant to do was run into the section of the trench that he had been in earlier. Instead, he had ran into the next section of the trench.

This section of the trench was occupied by an entire squad of griffons...

Luckily, nearly everygriffon inside was busy and had their attention directed towards the battle. Notice how the word "nearly" is used. A single griffon had noticed Andy and that griffon happened to be the squad leader. However, you would not be able to do anything if you, say, have your torso rendered into bits of nothingness because of supercharged buckshot.

The other griffons in the trench hadn't noticed this so Andy simply open fired on them all. The griffons were really close and he was armed with a semiauto railgun shotgun loaded with buckshot. It was a walk in the park.

By the time the tube feeding the M1216 with buckshot clicked empty again, every single griffon in this section of the trench was reduced to heaping piles of ripped apart flesh. With that dealt with, Andy jumped down and covered his head.

A massive explosion washed a good portion of the first trench line and if Andy wasn't wearing his sealed set of armor, he would have died. Andy got back up and started dusting himself off. A pair of griffons decided to interrupt him, coming from the next section of the trench.

Almost immediately, he slammed the buttstock of his shotgun into the face of one which sent the victim flying into the wall of the trench, before pointing the shotgun at the other. When Andy pulled the trigger, it went click. He forgotten that the current tube it was on was empty.

The still-unscathed griffon raised his weapon only to be punched in the face by an armored fist. Of course, Andy was wearing armor that enhanced his strength to a superhuman degree. The punch was strong enough to send the poor victim flying backwards with a broken beak and a fractured skull.

This was a complete surprise to Andy. For one thing, this armor was actually a newer version that his brother had been working on and was stronger than the armor that he previously wore. Two, he caved in the face of a griffon with a simple punch. The surprise only lasted a second because he remembered that there was another griffon in the trench, except this one was alive. The cylinder on the shotgun was cycled again. Now, it was being fed by the last twelve rounds left in the shotgun which happened to be slugs.

One round was fired. The slug hit dead center on the griffon and like the buckshot, it caused the griffon's torso to explode, though it did leave large chunks instead of mush like the buckshot.

Two more griffons flooded into this section of the trench and were completely surprised at the sight of Andy. Andy raised his shotgun and fired twice, missing both times. Instead of trying to take on Andy like every other griffon so far, these two decided to duck back into the section of the trench they were previously in.

"Crap" Andy said. To compliment the situation, a grenade was thrown in. The small explosive device landed behind Andy. When he finally turned around to try to get rid of the thing, it exploded.

It sent him flying backwards a few feet and onto his back. It was a miracle that none of the grenades or ammo strapped to his chest exploded though it may have been the fact that he had shielded himself with his shotgun. When Andy finally got up, he found that his shotgun was ripped in two. "Damn it."

Tossing the two halves away, Andy drew two of his many M9s. Instead of waiting for griffons to come, he just rushed into the next section of the trench.

That may have been a bad idea considering he found himself faced with an entire squad of griffons. This time, he did not have a shotgun and nearly everyone inside of the trench was aware of his presence. Half of them outright flew away from terror while the other half open fired.

Every round fired had absolutely no chance of actually harming Andy and none of them would be stupid enough to try to use a bazooka in this small environment. At first, he was surprised. Getting shot at is not something that is easy to get used to. The surprise passed before  he raised both pistols and started shooting as fast as he could.

Andy wasn't as good at dual wielding as his brother. One reason being that he wasn't ambidextrous. It didn't really matter. If you're pulling the trigger as fast as you can and you're wearing armor that makes you invulnerable to rifle fire from your enemies, you'd be fine.

By the time all thirty shots had been expended from both pistols, every remaining griffon in the trench had been hit at least once in a lethal area. While the 9mm round was a small round, it was still a bullet supercharged from a railgun modification.

Andy took one look at both M9s. Both were empty as expected. He holstered both and pulled out another pair of M9s.

Then a very obvious announcement was made. "Find the human! He's here somewhere! Radio this in!"

"Oh damn" Andy said.

"There he is!"

He looked up to see three griffons pointing their firearms at him. "Gah!" Andy exclaimed before the three griffons open fired. Of course, their bullets had no effect so Andy fired back. His bullets definitely had effect on the three griffons. This was blatantly obvious when all three griffons started falling to the ground.

With those three dealt with, Andy ran into the next section of the trench. This section of the trench was significantly smaller. It was a radio depot and three griffons were inside. Two were sitting in chairs in front of radio tables while the third was standing guard. Andy raised both pistols and shot the guard twice before aiming both pistols at the two radiogriffons.

Both radio operators were unarmed and had no weapons near them. "Tell your allies that I have started moving south down into this trench line and you get to live" Andy demanded.

"Why the should we?" one of the radiogriffons asked. To answer the fool's question, a bullet tore off his left wing. He immediately fell out of his chair and started screaming from the pain and shock of such an injury. While he screamed, Andy looked at the other griffon.

The uninjured griffon quickly got to work and started working the radio. "This is an emergency broadcast. The creature designated as A dash 2 has started moving south into the southern sector of our captured trench." Just as he finished, Andy slammed one of his M9s into the back of his head, knocking him out.

Andy looked at the screaming griffon on the ground before he kicked him in the face and knocked him out also.

Then, to compliment Andy's luck, a team of nine griffons flew by. Four of them outright noticed Andy so Andy did what he thought was best which was to start shooting at them with his pistols.

Obviously, this was a stupid decision because using two pistols at the same time is a horrible way of trying to take out flying targets. Not only did he miss many time while wasting all of the ammo in both pistols but he attracted attention to himself.

What worsened his situation was that he also attracted himself the attention of one griffon Talon tank. How Andy had known that he had attracted the attention of the tank that was chasing him earlier was the distinctive roar of a Talon's engine.

"Of course"Andy said. What happened next surprised him.

"Hey. Andy?"

He recognized the voice. "Nick?!" Andy yelled out.

"Tank's destroyed!"

Lots of gunfire and several explosions sounded out and Andy heard quick footsteps. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" A few seconds later, Nick jumped down into the trench next to Andy.

The first thing that Andy noticed was that Nick was armed with his 1887. "Where's your minigun?" Andy asked.

"Shot up and useless" Nick replied. Nick then noticed that Andy was armed with two empty M9s. "Yours?"

Andy holstered both pistols and drew a single M9 this time. "I don't have a minigun" Andy replied.

He facepalmed in response. "I meant your KRISS!" Nick said.

"Lost it somewhere, running away from the tank. By the way, how did you destroy that tank out there?" Andy asked backed.

"Can opener" Nick replied. "Where's your shotgun?"

"Broke it" Andy replied.

"How in the hell did you break a shotgun?" Nick asked.

"Magic" Andy replied. "Say, why do you think they're not attacking us?"

"One of us is a big red flag for the griffons. There's two of us, one of which is the biggest and strongest of us" Nick said.

"So they're probably calling for a ton of backup" Andy said.

"Oh" Nick said. "Well, shit."

"How much ammo do you have?"

Nick worked the lever on his 1887 and a spent 10 gauge shell popped out. He then checked both of his revolvers. "Absolutely two rounds for the shotty and five rounds for the .500. You?"

"Three full pistols and three spare mags" Andy replied. "Hold up." Andy peaked out of the trench and saw an advanced squad of griffons. He immediately started firing with his single M9. He only hit two but the fire drove off the remaining griffons. "Make it two full pistols and three spare mags."

Nick looked at the dead guard that Andy shot earlier and grabbed his dropped weapon. It was a submachine gun and it was relatively small for Nick to use.

Then, both of them heard the same "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

"Logan?" both of them said. Both Andy and Nick peaked out of the trench and found Logan running towards them. Behind him was a line of griffons shooting at Logan with a variety of weapons, including bazookas. Every few seconds, Logan would turn around and fired back at the griffons with his UMP.

Nick open fired with the borrowed submachine gun and Andy open fired with his pistol. Nick, unfamiliar with the gun and surprised by the rate of fire, missed nearly every shot. The shots that actually did hit were useless because they hit body armor. When it clicked empty, Nick threw it. "Stupid piece of shit!" Ironically, it hit a griffon in the face and knocked the unfortunate guy out.

Andy looked at Nick. "What?" Andy said.

When Logan finally reached the trench, he jumped down into it. "Fuck that was a shit run" he said.

"Tell me you have ammo" Nick said.

Logan tossed the mag currently in his UMP and replaced it with a fresh one. "Now? Just this and another spare" Logan said.

"Pistols?" Andy asked.

"I'm out" Logan said. "You?"

"Two for the shotty. Five for the hand cannon" Nick replied.  

Andy held up the pistol he was using to provide cover for Logan. It was empty. He holstered it and drew his seventh and final M9. "This and three extra mags."

"Wait, what happened to your minigun?" Logan asked.

"Shot to hell" Nick said.

"Why are you here?" Andy asked.

"Message over the radio said that there's an opening in this area" Logan said. "Where's the nearest enemy ammo depot?"

"Blew it up" Andy said.

"How far was it?" Logan asked.

"Two sections south" Andy replied. "Next one is probably a few dozen sections north. What next? Is it going to start raining men?!" Just as he had said that, Austin fell out of the sky and into the same section of the trench they were in. "I blame my brother."

Logan helped Austin to his feet. Once up, Austin began dusting himself off. His armor was heavily damaged. Most of the armored plates had been ripped off, the face visor was cracked, and half his body was scorched pretty badly.

"What the hell happened to you?" Logan asked.

"I was riding one of our tanks when it exploded" Austin said. "Thank god Tran knows how to make armor."

"Do you have ammo?" Nick asked.

"I was blown up. The fuck do you think?" Austin replied.

"All we need left is Ike, Alex, and Tran" Nick said.

Logan and Nick looked to Andy. "Nope. I'm not going to say it. Not going to say it" Andy said. "Mhmm mhmm. That is not my job."

[youtube=https://youtu.be/144EHUjPt_o]

"Why are you looking at him like that?" Austin asked.

Nick reached into the inside of his trench coat and pulled out a radio. "Hey Ike. Where are you?"

A few seconds of radio silence passed before he answered. "Hiding behind a destroyed tank. You?" Ike's reply said.

"Is the tank missing its entire left side?" Nick asked.

"Yeah. Why?" Ike replied.

"You might be right behind the tank I destroyed minutes earlier" Nick said back.

"Andy, pop a smoke" Logan said.

"Red or green?" Andy asked.

"Does it matter?" Nick asked.

"Purple it is!" Andy said. He pulled out a smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it out of the trench. Instead of purple smoke flowing out, white smoke spewed out of it. "Good enough."

"Alright Ike. Look for white smoke" Nick said into the radio.

"Yeah I see it" Ike replied. That was when gunfire erupted from the outside of the trench. All four of them peaked out of the trench and found Ike doing the exact same thing that Logan was doing earlier. The only difference was that Ike was wielding a Tommy Gun. Not long thereafter, Ike reached the trench and joined them.

"How much ammo do you have?" Nick said.

Ike paused to catch his breath. "What?" Then he realized what Nick asked. Ike looked down at his Tommy Gun and ejected the drum still on it. "Sixty left in this mag and another spare drum, four .44s still full, and a shotgun with 6 rounds. Why?"

"We're almost out" Andy said.

Ike looked at Nick. "What happened to your minigun?" he asked.

"Is everyone going to ask that question?" Nick said. "Shot to hell. Can't use it."

"I could use that shotgun" Austin said.

"What happened to all of your guns?" Ike asked.

"I blew up" Austin replied.

"What?" Ike asked with a look of confusion.

"Just, big explosion" Austin replied. Ike shrugged and took his shotgun off his back before handing it to Austin.

"What could possibly go wrong?" Logan asked.

Andy, who had been reloading the pistols numbers 4-6, stopped and glared at Logan. To add insult to injury, a very familiar voice started barking orders. "Platoon numbers four, five, and six to rush them from the front! Send four walking tanks to support them! Seventh platoon, attack them from the back. Use your bazookas!" It was the same griffon captain from earlier.

"This is your fault. I blame you" Andy said to Logan. Logan laughed before he popped out of the trench and started firing at the incoming griffons.

A platoon is typically made up of 15-35 people/griffons/ponies and three platoons were rushing the five of them at the very moment. This meant that there were a minimum of 45 griffons to a maximum of 105. Between the five of them, they had 332 rounds of ammunition.

Now any idiot would assume that 332 rounds of ammunition is enough to take out somewhere between 45 and 105 people/griffons/ponies. Haha. No. Just no. Here is the reality. People miss... A lot. There is also a reminder that Ike and Logan had fully-automatic weapons so misses are going to happen a lot.

The first person to run out of ammo was Austin. He had been using Ike's M1014 and it was only loaded with 6 rounds. Fortunately, the shotgun was loaded with buckshot so it was relatively easy to hit targets. With six rounds, he was able to take out five griffons.

The next person to run out of ammo was Nick. He was armed with his 1887 and a .500 S&W revolver.

The shotgun itself was only loaded with 2 rounds that were both 10 gauge buckshot shells. The massive size of the 10 gauge round meant that an absurd amount of pellets could be packed into one shell so  there was almost no need to aim with it. Couple with the railgun barrel, being hit with two pellets was considered lethal. Luckily for Nick, he was shooting at a decent distance so the spread on the shotgun was absolutely massive. With a mere two shells, Nick was able to take out 4 griffons!

The hand cannon was a similar story. The handgun, if it could be called a handgun, fired a round that could punch through multiple bodies. The cylinder only had five rounds so Nick tried to use them well. The first shot had hit a griffon smack dab in the torso and caused the unfortunate soul to completely explode into oblivion. After that, the same bullet hit another griffon in the neck and decapitated the fellow before flying off into nowhere. The second shot missed entirely so it waste. The third shot hit a griffon in the left foreleg and crudely amputated the limb. The fourth shot grazed a griffon's left side. However due to the immense amount of power in each trigger pull, the bullet had tore open the griffon's body where it touched. The last shot was another miss. Five shots, four griffons down.

After Nick, Logan ran out of ammo. He was using a UMP45. With the magazine inside the gun and the spare one that he had, 90 shots were available. Unfortunately for the sake of accuracy, the UMP45 was a fully automatic firearm though Logan was not an idiot. He fired in bursts. With the first 45 rounds, he took out nine griffons. After a reload, the next 45 rounds were used up to take out another 7.

Then, Andy ran out of ammo. He had been armed with 4 M9 pistols. Each pistol had been housing full 15 round magazines. Unfortunately, pistols are hard to use at long ranges so Andy's performance had suffered slightly. When the first pistol clicked empty, three griffons were down. When the second pistol clicked empty, four had gone down. When the third pistol clicked empty, another four had gone down. When the last pistol clicked empty, three more had gone down.

Obviously, Ike was last. He had the most ammo. With the spare drum, Ike had 160 rounds for the Tommy Gun. There was just one issue with the Tommy Gun. What was the issue? Well, the Tommy Gun's issue is that it's a Tommy Gun. It's a Tommy Gun! A high rate of fire and a giant magazine makes it really tempting to just spray with it. Being accurate with one is just something that you just don't do.

The first drum was only loaded with 60 rounds. In five seconds, all 60 rounds were expended. While firing full auto is a bad idea because of the recoil it generates, Ike's armor absorbed most of it so he was decently accurate. With 60 rounds, he was able to take out 5 griffons. The next drum was full so it held 100 rounds. Like the first drum, Ike just mag dumped the whole thing. In 8 seconds, 100 rounds were expended and 11 griffons were down.

Instead of using any of his .44s to take out any more griffons, Ike just dropped back down to hide in the trench as did everyone else when they ran out of ammo.

"How many are left?" Logan asked.

"Before I dropped, two dozen or so" Ike replied. "Oh and those three copies of our heavies are still alive." Ike pulled out his four .44 magnums. He handed one to Logan, one to Nick, and one to Austin. He kept the last one for himself.

"What. None for me?" Andy said.

"No!" everyone else yelled.

Gunfire erupted from the section of the trench adjacent to theirs from the south. The sound of it wasn't like any gun that the Equestrian military issued nor was it one that was used by anyone in their group of seven. It was a griffon weapon.

Logan took the lead and moved into the section of the trench where the gunfire was coming from. Revolver up, he had to be careful with his shots. When he found out who was firing, he lowered the revolver.

It turns out, Alex had been sitting in the section of the trench next to the five of them the whole time. He was firing upon the remaining two dozen or so griffons with the same top-fed machine gun that he stole earlier.

When it clicked empty, Alex picked up the machine gun and threw it at the griffons like Nick had done earlier. The gun missed and just hit the ground. Once he saw that his throw missed, hid back down into the trench where he saw the others.

"This is probably the only time we don't hate you" Logan said. "Get over here in with us."

The two of them moved into the section of the trench the others were in. "You did the exact same thing I did earlier" NIck said.

"I was out of ammo" Alex said.

"Is everyone out of ammo?!" Austin exclaimed.

"You don't have ammo?" Alex asked.

"We have four of my .44s still good" Ike said.

"Why the hell do you have nothing else?!" Alex yelled.

"And what is your excuse?!" Nick said.

"There's eight still left!" Alex said.

That was when Andy spoke up. "Actually, they're running away right now."

Nick, Ike, and Logan climbed up the wall of the trench and started shooting at the remaining griffons. Of course, they had six rounds each. Their revolvers quickly ran out of usable ammo and they hid back down into the trench.

"Now I'm the only one with ammo!" Austin said.

At that very moment, three griffons jumped down into the trench. These three weren't regular griffons, they were the walking tanks that some of them had encountered earlier in the battle. All three of them were armed with machine guns and they open fired immediately. Every now and then, one would stop to reload. A full full minutes of gunfire went by before they all ran out of ammo. Despite the ferocity of the assault, everyone was still standing.

"How in the hell was that supposed to work, you fucking idiots?!" Alex yelled.

Nick threw a punch at the closest one. The walking tank held up his gun to block in response. Of course, the block was essentially useless because Nick's fist went right through the gun and snapped it in half before impacting the griffon's chest. The griffon's armor did absolutely squat to block Nick's punch and caved in under the force of the punch. The griffon's chest caved in with the armor and his torso was made useless.

Logan the same thing as Nick and threw his own punches.

Logan's punch hit the griffon in the face and failed to do anything. Once again, Logan hurt his hand and started cussing. "Fuck! Shit! God fucking damn it!" Logan said. Nick laughed before ripping the machine gun out of the same griffons chest before swing the gun like a baseball bat at the griffon's head. When the gun hit the griffon's head, the barrel snapped off and the griffon's head jerk quickly. The hit had snapped his neck and he fell down to the ground.

The third griffon was surprisingly fell down to the ground, face first. Stuck in the back of the griffon's head was Andy's dagger. Andy had been standing behind the griffon where he had landed so he had the perfect chance. Reaching down, he pulled the dagger out of the griffon's head.

Nick looked at Logan, who was still shaking his hand. "Andy did better than you" Nick said. "Andy."

"Go screw yourself" Logan said.

Andy cleaned his dagger on Nick's trench coat before sheathing it. "Wait a minute" Andy said.

"Oh god. What is it" Ike said. "I hate it when you have a thought."

"Didn't they send a platoon to flank us from the back with bazookas?" Andy said.

Everyone turned around and climbed up the side of the trench to see their situation. Twenty griffons were readying themselves. Half of them were preparing bazookas while the other half were getting into grenade throwing positions, grenades in hand.

"God damn it Andy" Ike said.

"Now if only my brother would fallout of the sky" Andy said.

"No one is going to drop out of the sky and into our trench!" Ike yelled at him. Ike was right. Sort of. What made Ike's statement sort of right also made Andy's statement sort of right.

Tran had indeed dropped out of the sky but he didn't land out into the trench with him. Instead, he landed outside of the trench right into the vicinity of the platoon of griffons that were trying to flank Andy and the others. Upon landing, Tran stabbed two griffons in the back of the neck with his hidden blades. The stabs had been placed at the upper portions of the spine and resulted in their brains being disconnected from the rest of their bodies. These two griffons fell to the ground dead so Tran did not have to take time to pull his hidden blades from their bodies.

Tran then stabbed a griffon in the face through the eye on his left before slicing open the throat of a griffon on his right. By now, the other griffons in the platoon noticed Tran and tried to switch to their non-explosive weapons. If they tried to use an explosive, they would most likely kill themselves because of the close range. Unfortunately for them, it takes time to switch to another weapon. They couldn't just drop their bazookas. That could probably make it go off.

In the time that it took them to switch to properly switch to another weapon, Tran had drawn an axe. It wasn't just any axe, it was the Axe of Perun. The axe of Perun is one of the personal tools/weapons of Perun, the god of thunder and lightning. Perun also represented war, fire, destruction, and many other things that would take days to list. The axe itself was very similar to Mjolnir, the hammer that Thor wields in Norse mythology, and it functions similarly. If it was thrown, it would return to the user's hand(s).

Tran had also attached a thin kevlar cord to the end of the handle of the axe. It was fifteen meters long and the other end was attached to the . Why? Reasons. You'll see why

One griffon was abruptly hit in the face with the large axe and knocked him back into another griffon, knocking him down also. Tran quickly dashed to the nearest griffon to him and wrapped the cord around the griffon's neck. Just as he finished this task, the axe flew back into his left hand. Tran kicked him in the chest and his body flew backwards but rebounded back from the cord wrapped around his neck. There was no doubt that the griffon's neck was broken and Tran took the time to unwrapped the cord from the griffon's neck.

The time that it took Tran to unwrap the cord from the griffon's neck was enough for every other griffon in the platoon to ready their weapons. To avoid the obviously bad situation, Tran picked up the griffon he stabbed through the eye and used him as a shield, just in time to block their shots. Nearly every single fired shot was blocked by the griffon's body. The ones that did hit were blocked by Tran's graphene robes.

When some of them stopped to reload, Tran threw his axe from behind the dead body of the griffon shield that he was using. The axe hit a griffon armed with a bolt action rifle in the chest but subsequently did nothing to him. His armor had actually succeeded in block the flying axe. Tran grumbled for one moment before pulling on the cord that was attached to the axe.

Tran dropped the dead body of his shield while the other griffon was pulled into Tran's grasp. Upon Tran taking hold of the new shield, every griffon stopped firing. Every griffon lowered their weapons and looked at the situation.

"Sarge" one griffon said.

"Just do it" the griffon in his arms said. While they traded glances, Tran smiled and drew a throwing knife. "Just shoot!"

Before they could start firing, the single throwing knife flew through the air and found a new home in another griffon's neck. When they began firing, Tran threw the sarge forward and drew another throwing knife, nailing one griffon in the eye. Once again, they stopped firing to avoid hitting their beloved sarge which gave Tran enough time to draw another throwing knife. He didn't throw it. Instead, he used it to cut the cord connecting him to the axe still stuck in the sarge's armor.

Once free, the knife was throw and merely hit the helmet of one lucky griffon before falling to the ground. Just as the griffons started to fire again, Tran drew Yin and Yang before teleporting away. "Fucking magic!" one griffon said.

The sarge from earlier got up and a fellow griffon handed him a rifle. "Keep your eyes peeled."

"Magic is fucking cheating" another griffon said.

"They have magic. We have the numbers" sarge said.

"Does it look like it's working for us?" a different griffon said.

"Just watch out for the bastard" the sarge said. The remaining griffons grouped together and reloaded their weapons.

Tran reappeared in the middle of their group and open fired with his two beloved pistols. They had no idea what hit them. Coupled with how powerful the two pistols were, Tran could shoot them at a speed that would make most fully automatic submachine guns jealous. Tran also was scary accurate with Yin and Yang too. Twelve rounds, six from each pistol, were only fired, all twelve griffons were hit one, and twelve griffons exploded.

Nick, Ike, Logan, Andy, Austin, and Alex was still watching Tran and despite being on the same side as him, some of them was scared. Who? Guess yourself. At the very moment, Tran turned and smiled at them. "Oi! No help?" he yelled at them.

-X-X-X-

I smiled at the six of my friends. "Oi! No help?" I yelled. I teleported away and reappeared in the same trench they were in, behind the six of them. They all heard me teleport in and were happy to see me.

"Tran!" Nick exclaimed. "Tell us you have ammo!"

"No" I said. "Obviously, I was using blanks." I snapped my fingers and felt my throwing knives and the axe of Perun returning in their sheaths/holsters. Then I took off my backpack and opened it up. "Tell me what you need. Logan?"

Logan dropped the mag from his UMP. "More sticks of .45 would be good and some glockazines would do good." I pulled out two crates from my backpack and literally threw them at Logan as hard as I could. One hit Logan in the face and the other hit him in the chest.

"I need some 10 gauge and some .500" Nick said.

"Wait, what happened to your minigun?" I asked.

"It may have been shot to hell" Nick replied.

"What? I have to fix that you know!" I exclaimed.

"It wasn't my fault!" Nick said.

"I still have to fix it!" I said. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a bandolier of 10 gauge shells and a small box full of .500 S&W rounds. "Andy?"

Andy shifted nervously. "Just some clipazines for the M9" he said.

"Where's your shotgun?" I asked.

"It blew up" Andy replied.

"..." I facepalmed. "KRISS?"

"I lost it."

"..." I was still facepalming.

"..."

I dug through my backpack and brought out a sack of M9 magazines. I handed the bag to Andy and he took it. "Careful. There's a miniaturized hydra living in that sack and for some reason, it has teeth that can bite through tungsten-titanium." I looked at Ike. "You?"

"Just some drums for the Tommy" Ike replied.

"See! Why can't you be like him!" I said. I dug through my backpack and pulled out a medium sized box. Handing the box to Ike, I looked at Austin. For some reason, he had Ike's M1014. "Why do you have that?" I asked.

"I blew up" Austin said.

I facepalmed again. After I finished, I looked back at Austin. "Can I see that for a second" I said while pointing at the shotgun. He looked at me weirdly before doing as so. With the shotgun in hand, I slammed the buttstock into Austin's knee.

"Fuck!" Austin said.

I pulled out two bandoliers of 12 gauge shotgun shells and handed it Austin with the M1014. "Don't explode again!" I yelled at him.

I looked at Alex. His flamethrower wasn't on his backpack and his entire body along with his guns was entirely scorched. "Where the hell is your flamethrower?!" I demanded.

He didn't answer for a few seconds. "It blew up."

I didn't say anything for a few seconds. "You're paying for what it took me to make it."

"That's not too bad" Alex said. Oh how he was wrong.

"The total cost of the materials is two hundred seventeen thousand bits for me to manufacture a single working unit" I quickly added in. In dollars, that's roughly 3 million dollars. Alex would never be able to pay that off.

"Holy shit!"

I dug through my backpack and brought out several drum magazines for the Saiga 12. "Maybe you shouldn't blow up the damn thing!" I yelled at him.

I zipped up my backpack and placed it back on my back. "Let's finish this battle. We've broken their line and they're losing morale." I spat out my gum and replaced it with a fresh piece. "Well, bands back together" I said. Everyone looked at me weirdly. "Well its true." I drew Yin and Yang and cracked my neck.

"Now this is just unfair" Nick said. "For them."

"No shit" Ike said.