"Son..." My father's voice washed over me, giving me a renewed sense of strength, but also making me ask a burning question I've had for a while.
"Dad?, How are you talking to me?" I yelled into the abyss.
"I'm not. What you are hearing is a manifestation of thoughts and observations you might have missed, but your sub-conscience picked up and saved." replied my father's voice.
"So basically, I'm hearing myself?"
"Correct." the one-word reply came not from my father, but from the Alicorn Princess of the Night, who positioned herself next to me, just barely in my field of vision.
"Luna?, what are you doing here? How are you here? Why are you-"
"I am the Princess of the Night. Tis my duty to observe key subjects in their slumber. In your case, I decided to visit out of curiosity. I, as well as my sister, are wondering greatly what you are up to at this time. We see that you rescued our niece from the Crystal Empire, we are in your debt once again." said Luna.
"Well that answers a few questions actually. But what does my sub-conscience need to tell me?" I yelled into the abyss.
"Train, and train hard. These ponies are willing to defend this land with their lives, you need to prove to them that they can." replied my father's voice.
"We still don't have our magic, what's the deal with that?" I asked.
My father replied, "Soon it will be back. Time is a very effective medicine if you let it do it's job."
I felt the scene begin to fade away, the sun was rising and I would soon awake, "Wait! I have more questions!"
"You will answer them yourself, In due time however..."
I awoke with a start, "Luna?" I looked around the basement now loaded with weapons and ammunition, but the Princess of the Night was nowhere to be found.
"Grayson? Are you up? Why are you looking for Luna?" asked a small purple scaly figure.
"Hey Spike, Luna visited me in my dream last night. Wanted to see what I was up to."
"Oh, That's it? She visited my dream once." replied Spike.
"What'd she say?"
"That I don't have a chance with Rarity..." He trailed off.
"Wait, you mean-"
"Yeah, I kind of have this crush on her. Please don't tell anypony!, I mean, I'm pretty sure she knows but just to be safe-"
"Isn't she a bit old for you?" I inquired.
"Well actually, with the way dragons age, we're not as far apart as you might guess."
"Alright then, your secret is safe with me."
I leaped out of bed, quietly setting my feet on the ground and resetting the sheets with my hands so as not to disrupt my sleeping brother, and followed the dragon upstairs. I stepped into the main room of the library to see Bruce showing Shining Armor how to use a handgun.
"So you take the magazine and insert it into the gun like so," Bruce slid the magazine of .45 ACP ammunition into his FNP. Shining Armor copied the motion with his Five-seveN.
"Alright, now I push the little lever," Shining Armor said as he racked the slide into position. "and I'm ready to go."
"Now to unload it, push the mag release," Shining Armor looked over at him with a lost expression, "The little button on the side."
Shining nodded and ejected the magazine. "There's still a round in the chamber, pull the slide back to eject it." I said. He nodded at me and pulled back the slide, ejecting the 5.7x28mm round. It landed with a faint rattle. Spike picked up the round as he walked past,
"So this can kill things," he said as he examined the bullet.
"Yes, give it back and go eat breakfast." I said. I wasn't normally demanding like this, but I was tired. Spike surrendered the round to me and I placed it back into Shining Armor's pistol magazine.
"Tip, keep out of reach of children." I told him. He nodded and walked down to the basement with Bruce.
I followed them into the basement where Bruce had grabbed his rifle of choice, an HK416 fitted with a foregrip and AimpointCompM4 sight. Shining Armor was looking around at the wide selection of rifles. He settled on a SCAR-L with an ACOG sight.
"So what's the plan here?" I asked. Shining Armor was examining his rifle as I walked over and equipped my ACR.
"We need to train a few ponies as drill instructors then let them train the majority of the new army." said Bruce.
"How long's that going to take?" I asked.
"About a week for the first guys, give or take. So long as we train them like Bruce has been training me." Shining said.
I'm a capable soldier, there's no denying that. But Drill Instructors are much different. If they could take some kid fresh out of High School and turn them into a trained killer, I suppose I could show some technicolor ponies how to at least defend themselves.
"Alright, I have a feeling it's going to be a long few weeks." I said.
So there we were, in Canterlot. Shining Armor and Cadance had moved from the library back to Shining's old place in Canterlot. Five days after Shining Armor first picked up his Five-SeveN, he was screaming at recruits like any respectable Drill Instructor. Me and Bruce were whipping ponies into shape as well, surprisingly not very many had broken down in tears. I heard a few muffled sobs emanating out of the bunks at night, but that was it. Today was the last day of all-out drills for me. While these newbies lacked the combat experience, they could at least teach each other the basic skills of fighting.
The last group was an interesting one, "Welcome to, Pull the Trigger, 101. I notice a lot of you seem to, for lack of a better term, do it wrong."
The recruits glanced among themselves, a blue unicorn with purple eyes and a mane of light blue and white who had an annoying habit of talking to herself in the third person. A brown earth pony with an hour glass cutie mark. And a Minotaur. Yeah, Minotaur. A bit full of himself, but could definitely hold his own.
"Whenever you fire on your targets, you never aim down your sights so you spray bullets all over the place and all you end up doing is wasting ammo." I concluded.
We were training in a warehouse on the outskirts of Canterlot. We had set up a camp just outside the city for a makeshift training ground, it provided us with sufficient space and was far enough away not to disturb the daily city activities. The recruits consisted of Royal Guards and other ponies who wanted to fight for their nation. Rarity had been generous enough to aid in designing uniforms for us. As of now they were a black and white tiger stripe pattern for the wintry conditions around the Crystal Empire, as that where our first mission would take place.
"The Great and Powerful Trixie disagrees. I don't waste ammunition, the rounds passing by the enemy must surely scare them to the point of forcing them to take cover." said the most annoying recruit ever.
"Sure, suppressing targets can have an effect on them, but if you took the time to aim down your sights, from a stable stance, you can actually hit your targets as opposed to letting them barely escape."
"The Great and Powerful Trixie will humor you by trying to do as you say. My methods are still far superior." Good grief that mare doesn't shut up.
She took her TAR-21 assault rifle and approached the targets, stopping at the line of sandbags. She raised the rifle to her face and lined up the sights with the target. She opened fire and hit her target, there's a first for everything.
"It appears you were right, patience when taking shots is important after all. Thank you, Grayson." Said the Great and Sharpshooting Trixie.
"Alright, if it worked for her, it'll work for you. Show me what you've learned."
The last two scrambled to the sandbags and finished off the remaining targets.
"Nice work, you've dramatically improved in, everything really, Now head on over to the pit, Celestia wants to see you all run the course to make sure she's not throwing resources at nothing." I said. They ran off to run the course while I went up to the observation area of the course. I was at the stairs leading up and Bruce walked up. "So, how's it going on your end?" I asked.
"Not bad. For not having hands, these ponies can handle firearms pretty well."
"Iv'e seen some unicorns holding their weapons with magic, but most of them prefer to hold them with their forelegs and shoot that way." replied Bruce.
I imagined a squadron of unicorns pinned down behind cover and returning fire with floating rifles whilst laying prone. I chuckled at the thought. "To be honest, I don't care how they hold them. If they can consistently hit their targets it's fine by me. So where's Shining Armor?"
"He's up in observation. Is it just me or does he remind you of Johnson?"
I stopped halfway up the staircase at the mention of my old drill instructor, "So he's been screaming that much?" If there was one thing Sgt. Johnson knew how to do, it was making you feel horrible after making even the smallest mistake. How did he do this? Screamed. Loud. I credit that man with about 50 percent of my minor hearing loss. The other 50 percent is from overall combat, gunshots, explosions. All that good stuff.
"Yeah, that much. He even scares me! Somewhat."
We climbed up the remainder of the stairs to find Princess Celestia sitting inside a circle of royal guards, who would still be around even after the formation of the Equestrian Defense Force(EDF) for ceremonial purposes, and Shining Armor stood at the edge of the observation platform. I walked to get a better view of the course. As I stood next to Shining, I noticed that Trixie was next up. Following after Iron Will, the Minotaur, who had a final time of about 30 seconds.
Shining Armor called to her, "Alright, you know the drill. Timer starts after the first target pops. Good Luck."
Trixie nodded and approached the beginning. The first two paper targets were lifted into view by Shining Armor's magic, "Clear the first area, Go,Go,Go!" he yelled.
Trixie responded with two, controlled three round bursts from her assault rifle. Both targets were down and she was running to the next area: three enemies and two civilians. Trixie was quick in her reactions, she downed two targets with controlled bursts, then after pausing over a civilian cut-out, moved to hit the last target. Now she was on to the final part, the small-two story building with more civilians than enemies.
As she entered the building I saw her remove the weapon's magazine to reload. I quickly yelled, "Just switch to your pistol, it's faster!"
Trixie took my advice and quickly drew her SIG Sauer P220. She entered with the sights raised and I heard her fire three shots. I knew there were three targets on the lower floor so I knew she hadn't messed up. She reached the top floor and downed all four targets on the second floor. After she hit the last target she jumped out the hole in the second floor wall and sprinted to the finish, parallel to the starting position. She clocked in at 25.32 seconds.
"Good hustle, you knew what you were doing." I called to her.
"Yes sir, Thank you sir." She replied. This took me by surprise.
Shining Armor leaned a bit closer to me and said, "I hope you don't mind, I screamed a little respect into her."
"Thanks, I don't know how long it's going to last, but good job."
"So, are we ready to retake the Crystal Empire?" asked Shining.
"I don't know, you saw that they had vehicles and lots of them. Without some vehicles of our own we don't stand much of a chance."
"Well, where will we get our own vehicles?"
I thought for a minute, the only way we could get our own armored vehicles is if we built them. But I'm no engineer, I haven't the slightest clue how we would build tanks, APCs, etc, without any sort of blueprints, schematics or even a vehicle to reverse engineer.
"I haven't a clue." I replied.
"Well, at least we have a strong defense force capable of preventing HGC from gaining any other footholds in Equestria."
"Well so far, that's all we have." I said.
"Is that enough?" He asked.
"I hope so Shining Armor, I hope so."
It was then that Princess Celestia spoke up, "Your recruits certainly appear very capable of defending Equestria, you all have done very well."
The Princess' comment filled me with a strong sense of pride. We could do this, we will protect Equestria. We will succeed in our campaign. "Thank you Princess, I hope this demonstration will let you rest easier."
"It has Grayson, it has." replied the Princess.
I hope if we are invaded again, it won't be soon. But of course, knowing my luck, HGC will strike any day now. At least we're somewhat ready.