Sparks woke up with a start, looking around frantically. He was in the dimly lit artillery cover dugout, where he always slept. He looked around quickly; everypony was fast asleep, save for 382 who was out keeping watch. Slowly he became aware of a constant dull pattering outside. He looked up out of the dugouts entrance and into the skies above, their pitch black color telling him it was still night, and raining as well.

He looked himself over, the earth brown Calvary dye coating him once more. ‘Right, I’m Manifest Destiny,’ he thought with a subconscious nod. ‘Not Sparks, and not in a dream. Wait, the dream!’ He looked around frantically for his footlocker, which was sitting at up against the wall by where he laid his head as always. Quickly he opened it, as quietly as he could though for the other ponies sake. He levitated out a sheet of paper and a pencil. He had learned that unless he wrote down what had happened in his dreams he was going to forget, and he couldn’t afford to forget Luna’s advice.

Quickly he put the paper up against the wall and scrawled out a sentence.

Don’t choose to be someone that you’ll regret being.

There was something else that he had to write down; he was sure of it, but for whatever reason he couldn’t think about it. ‘Come on, it only happened a minute ago!’ he thought in frustration. He placed a hoof upon his forehead as he tried to think of it. ‘Wait, the wreckage! With the gasmask and the other pony! I know that I’ve had that dream more than once, and there has to be a reason for it! I need to find out what it means!’ He moved to put these thoughts to paper.

With a soft splash around an inch of water suddenly washed its way across the floor and around him, soaking his hindlegs and the ends of his hooves. With a start everypony in the squad woke up.

“What in the hay?! Where’d all a this water come from?!” Repeater asked in alarm as he jolted upright. With a near simultaneous “bump-bump” the twins hit their heads on the low ceiling as they shot up in surprise. With a hiss the water hit the lantern that they had on the floor, and the dugout went pitch black. Manifest quickly folded the paper up and stuffed it into one of his saddlebags.

Manifest felt a hard shove as somepony blundered into him in the dark. “Ah’m sorry,” Repeater said. For a moment the ponies continued run into each other as they looked for the entrance, then the dugout lit up with a pale white light from 736’s horn.

“Las Pegasus School of Magic,” he said mildly, preempting any questions that the others had. Now that he was able to see Repeater clambered out of the dugout, the others following behind. As Manifest crawled out from under the earthen roof he felt the rain fall upon him, a steady fall of light drops. Repeater immediately turned to 382, who was looking over the edge of the trench out west through a pair of binoculars.

“Partner, can ya tell me why the hay it’s rainin’?” Repeater demanded. “The dugouts floodin’.” 382 looked over at the gathering squad in surprise.

“Uhh, no. The dugouts flooding?”

“If it wasn’t Ah would be asleep,” Repeater snapped. “And Ah quite enjoy mah sleep.” Repeater looked up into the clouds. “HAY, IF YA’LL ON THE WEATHER PATROL CAN HEAR ME, KNOCK IT THE HAY OFF! YA’LL ARE FLOODIN’ MAH DUGOUT!”

Manifest could see that other squads were clambering up into the trench now, probably being awoken by the same flooding problems. Repeater glared up into the clouds still, waiting for an answer. Slowly it was getting lighter outside, the clouds now only a dark grey instead of pure black.

“DO YA’LL HEAR ME, KNOCK IT OFF!” Repeater yelled, getting some enthusiastic ‘yeah’s’ from several other ponies. A dark blur burst through a patch of clouds, vaporizing them for a moment. As Manifest looked up toward it rain fell into his eyes. He blinked it out, but as he did he heard a voice yelling from up above.

“We’re trying, but it isn’t us!” Manifest looked up quickly to the voice, an only just saw the blur fly back into the clouds.

“WHAT DO YA MEAN IT AIN’T YA’LL?” Repeater yelled, but the Pegasus was gone. Repeater looked at the squad. “What does he mean?”

“If it isn’t them, then it has to be the Unicornians,” Manifest stated. Repeater stood there and thought about it for a while.

“Why would they just have it rain? There’s got ta be somethin’ more goin’ on here,” he said. The rain continued to patter as the squad stood waiting.

“I don’t know,” Manifest concluded. Repeater was right though, the Unicornians were doing it for a reason.

“Anypony have a bucket?” Joe asked. Nopony answered. Some of them propped themselves up along the edge of the trench as they waited, for what they didn’t know.

Suddenly Repeaters eyes widened slightly. “Did ya’ll feel that?”
Manifest glanced around. “Feel what?”

“I felt it.” Cold Blooded said, and 382 nodded his head. The twins looked about in confusion.

“What are we supposed to be feeling?” 736 asked. Repeater raised a hoof for silence.

“Ya’ll feel that?” Cold Blooded and 382 nodded again.

“What is it?” Manifest asked.

“ The ground, it’s shakin’.”

“I’m not feeling anything,” Joe said.

“Joe, it’s shaking,” Cold said bluntly. Manifest thought about it for a second. ‘Its raining, the grounds shaking.’ He connected the dots suddently. ‘Oh Celestia.’

“Get in the dugout!” Manifest said. Repeater opened his mouth to protest.

The ground heaved violently, simultaneously accompanied by a horrifically loud “BOOM!” The shockwave of the explosion knocked Manifest against the wall of the trench. He stumbled back up to his hooves as a clump of mud splattered onto his back with a thud.

“GET TO THE DUGOUT!” Repeater yelled, even though everypony in the squad was already scrambling to get in. Manifest spun around and leapt into the entrance first, landing with a splash in three inches of standing water. Quickly, he ran off to the far end so that everypony could get in. The twins followed behind him, Bloody catching his horn on the low entrance. 736 came after, then 382, then Cold and Joe, and finally Repeater. The room was packed tight.

In the near darkness of the dugout Repeater yelled out, “IS EVERYPONY HERE?” Yet again Manifest could barely hear him, his ears still ringing from the explosion. The ground shook again, and another BOOM emanated from outside the dugout. 736 lit up his horn again, and Repeater did a quick count. “Alright, we’re all here,” he said in relief, another sound of thunder from outside nearly drowning him out.

“What do we do now, Sergeant?” Manifest asked. Repeater looked around at everypony’s feet, then smiled and reached around to his footlocker. He grabbed up his hat, now waterlogged, and placed it firmly atop his head. Another explosion happened outside as the barrage began in earnest.

“Well everypony, Ah guess we wait.”

Dear Amber,

I’m writing to tell you that I’m alright. The Unicornians have started shooting their big guns at us but

A particularly close explosion shook the dugout violently, causing Manifest to tear his fourth attempt at writing a letter. With a sigh he let it drop into the half foot of warm summer rainwater that had accumulated in the dugout. He opened up his footlocker, which now floated and groaned. Everything in there was waterlogged, no doubt due to the gaping hole that was now in it thanks to the twins periscope modifications.

“Muddy. Bloody. Do you think that you can fix the giant holes in the footlockers you made so that all of our stuff doesn’t get soaked?” Manifest said without looking up. Outside another round went off, shaking a bit of dust from the roof of the dugout.

“Well, my fine pony, we’re actually working on that right now,” Muddy replied. Manifest looked over his shoulder; the twins were levitating one of their footlockers above the water, clearly stumped as how to undo the giant holes that they had made in them.

“Wait, all your stuffs waterlogged?” 736 asked in alarm. He quickly turned and threw open his locker, then immediately deflated in defeat. “All my newspapers are ruined now.”

“Ya’ll hear that?” Repeater asked as he leaned up against the back wall of the trench, hat pulled down over his eyes. “Ya better fix your inventions, or we’ll run ya outta this trench,” He said, his giant smile the only part of his face not obscured by his hat. The twins shot him an angry glare. “Calm down ya’ll, ah’m just messin’. Ah can feel ya starin’ at me by the way.”

Another round hit outside, but by this point it had to be pretty close for anypony in the dugout to take notice. 382 spoke up. “Do you think that we’d survive a direct hit?

“Nope,” Cold said. “That would be the end of the war for us.” 382 looked downtrodden.

“Celestia Cold, work on your bedside manners,” Joe scolded. “You can loosen up, we’re all friends here.” Cold stared at Joe pointedly, then rolled his eyes and looked back to 382.

“Alright, it depends on how smart they are. If they’re dumb as a box of rocks then they got their fuses set to impact detonation, and then if a round hits our roof we got a 50/50 chance of crawling out. If they put it on a delay, then the round will penetrate right into here and go off. Splat. We’re history. And if it hits outside our door then we die of overpressure, regardless of any fuses they have, because our lungs will pop like balloons.” He looked back at Joe. “Was that better?”

“No. That was much worse. You couldn’t have done it any worse than you just did.” Suddenly Joe started to chuckle. “You should be a medic, and treat all you casualties like that.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Cold said. Suddenly Joe stopped chuckling. Manifest saw it too.

“Holy Celestia,” Joe said. The twins stopped what they were doing, and Repeater lifted the brim of his hat.

“What’s happenin’?”

Joe pointed at Cold Blooded, “Cold just grinned.” The pony that he was pointing at had a face that could be etched in stone. “He only did it for a second but he grinned!”

“Naw, he couldn’t, when they assembled him at the Canterlot Royal Ordanance they didn’t make that an option.”

Manifest spoke up, “I saw it too; he grinned.”

“So did I,” said 736. Repeater stood up with a slosh of water and trotted all of two steps over to the pony in question, who looked as emotionless as ever.

“One’s a mistake, two’s a coincidence, but three ponies is a trend. Cold Blooded, is there a pony under there with actual feelings and the ability to convey them?”

“Maybe, Sergeant,” Cold replied. “But right now, I’m just wondering if my machine gun is alright.”

“Ah’ll take a maybe. Maybe in a few months we’ll catch ya laughing at somethin’!” Repeater slapped Cold on the back heartily. “ Ya’re makin’ progress!”

The dugout heaved again, reminding everypony that there was still a war on outside.

“Celestia, how long can they keep this up!?” 736 asked. Outside the dugout it was growing light outside. “It’s been a half hour now!”

“It’s 200 lb shells,” Manifest said. “They have to be getting fatigued from moving them, I don’t care how they do it either.” Repeater trotted his two steps back to his spot on the dugout wall and sat back down with a splash, putting the hat back over his eyes.

“Just wake me when it’s over.”

“Sergeant, wake up.” Repeater pushed his hat up as he opened his eyes. Manifest stood in front of him, all the ponies waiting as well. “It’s over, there hasn’t been a shell for about a minute and a half now.”

“How long have Ah been out?” Repeater asked groggily as he wiped some of the sleep from his eyes.

“About three minutes; never seen a pony fall asleep that fast,” Manifest said.

“It’s a talent that ya pick up when ya work the orchards,” Repeater said as he got up to his feet. He looked over his shoulder at his Marechester. The stock was coated in muddy water, and it would need some care, but it would have to wait. “Let’s head on up there, and see what there is ta see.”

He led the way, stepping through the water that had accumulated in the bottom of the dugout and trotting up into the rain and trenches. He quickly looked left to right; to the left was fine, but about fifty yards to the right a good portion of trench had been blasted apart. Luckily though it seemed that nopony had been hurt, the squads that inhabited the area over there now propped up on the edge of the trench.

“Cold, Joe, check your gun.” Repeater said. Cold threw off a quick salute and took off down the trench toward his tunnel, Joe not far behind. “Everypony else up on the trench.” Wordlessly the squad propped themselves up against the trench wall. The twins waved at him, and he looked over. Muddy levitated up one of the periscopes and motioned to it. ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Repeater thought.

“Don’t give anypony out there a target; let the twins scout it with their periscopes.” The ponies nodded as the twins put the tops of their periscopes up over the top of trench.

“Nopony out there, Sergeant,” Muddy said after a moment of looking, and quickly lowered the periscope to wipe the mirrors clear.

“Not a one,” agreed his twin. “What now?”

“Hay, what we always do, we wait some more,” Repeater said.

Field Marshall Shining Armor stood outside of the command tent, looking into the haze out west. A steady rain of water and artillery fell on the lines ahead, luckily falling short of where he stood. Clockwork stood to his right, the griffon to his left. Calvary Charge was up ahead in the trenches.

“How long has it been?” he asked. With some movement Clockwork flipped his watch open.

“Thirty-two minutes, eighteen seconds,” he said as he looked upon his watch. Suddenly, a Pegasus burst through the clouds and dived toward the tent, flaring his wings as he slowed and landed before the generals. Quickly he threw off a tired salute.

“They’re coming Field Marshall,” the Pegasus scout wheezed, winded from his flight. “They’re all coming by the thousands, in two waves. They’re two miles away from the frontlines.”

Clockwork immediately looked to the Field Marshall, “Given coordinates, I can start a barrage on them and force them back.”

“Do you want to win the battle, or the war?” the Griffon asked.

Shining looked over to the Griffon, waiting for explanation.

“If you bombard them now, you’ll push them back, and you’ll win the battle. But you won’t have broken them. Let them come.” He paused. “Let them smash themselves against the trenches, and once they realize that they can’t win, then we drop the artillery on them. We bombard them for 7 miles as they run. We break them here, in numbers and in spirits.”

Shining thought about it for a moment. “What if we can’t hold them?”

“You’ll hold them, your soldiers are ready,” The Griffon said. Shining thought for another moment. He took a deep breath before he spoke

“Alright, hold the barrage Clockwork; pre-sight your pieces 300 yards ahead of our trenches. We win or lose this war today.”

Author's Notes:

hello everyone! It's been a while since I've updated this, but I should be on a streak for at least a month starting today, so there is that.

Also, next chapter it gets gory, so I'll be bumping it up to a mature tag, If you don't have 'view mature stories' on, you may want to.