Duke sipped slowly from his glass and set it down gingerly on the bar. He felt that he had to show some respect to the drink and not just pound it down as he saw so many other operators here do. It was a glass of Macallan 18, a good drink. Duke always preferred quality to quantity.
When Duke returned to the princesses back in Equestria, they immediately showed him the way out. Luna brought him and OGA into her chambers and down some staircase to a special pool that they could see Earth through. All they had to do was hop in and wham; they were teleported back to Afghanistan as if nothing had happened.
They made their way back to the base and found out it had been several weeks and Duke and Frost were assumed KIA along with OGA. When they walked up to the gates to the base, they were ushered in by a bunch of MPs and rushed to a special building where there were a bunch of CIA guys trying to figure out what to do about the botched mission.
When they went in, Duke ha da whole story planned out, but OGA decided on the honest route. At first, they all thought he went insane as a prisoner, but apparently, OGA had a hidden camera on him, some tiny thing, that took pictures of everything that had been happening. When they saw the pictures, Duke had to relay the entire story to them, from dropping in, to Frost’s death, and to the last rescue. It was a tale that had everyone on the edges of their seats.
Duke was sent back stateside to deal with more CIA officials and other guys, giving them his story and explaining that he didn’t understand magic. Eventually, the Air Force got him back, and he was given a desk job for the time being. They didn’t know anything of what happened, but the official story was that he had evaded capture with Frost and Frost was killed in a last assault that resulted in OGA’s rescue.
And now, here Duke was, two months later, finished with his workday and getting a drink. He knew Frost would have shared it with him, so whenever he took a sip, he did it slow in remembrance of his old friend.
Other PJs had asked him about the mission, but Duke stuck to the official story and it was obvious that he was lying. No one could ever know that there were other beings in other dimensions who could pull people away at will; everyone would panic. Even if that was totally unreasonable.
In the end, Duke just hoped that Amel was doing alright at this point. It was all he could do for her now.
Duke took another sip of his drink and sighed. He wasn’t sure what he was doing any more.
A bell rang by the entrance, signifying that another patron had walked in. Duke turned to see if he could guess what kind of operator walked in. This bar was popular with special operations guys, and he could usually tell when someone walked in whom they were with.
The guy who walked in was tall, not terribly bulky, and had a knowing look on his face. Unfortunately, that was all Duke could gather about him, and so he turned back around and sipped at his drink.
He wondered if it was time for him to pack up and leave the Air Force. Everything was off, now. His fellow PJs looked at him strangely, and they could tell he wasn’t quite right any more. He had other jobs he could take, too; a Combat Rescue Officer had a lot of prospects out of the service.
Before he could continue his thoughts, the chair next to him was pulled out and the man who entered the bar sat down beside him.
“Hey there,” the man said.
“Hey, Duke said. He took another sip. “Just a fair warning, I don’t play for that team.”
“Ha, I had a feeling,” the man said. “Neither do I.”
“What brings you here?” Duke asked. “Most guys come to this bar for one of two reasons, and you’re not partying or mourning, from the looks of it.”
“I’m here to pick up the wife,” the man said. Maybe he wasn’t special ops. “She owns the place.”
“Does she?” Duke said, surprised.
“Yeah. She’s actually running the bar tonight, since the usual gal couldn’t make it. She has someone else coming in in a few minutes though,” the man said.
“Huh,” Duke said.
“I can see you aren’t here to party it up,” the man said.
“No,” Duke said.
“I hear you,” the man said. “Life can hit us pretty hard sometimes.”
“No kidding,” Duke replied. He was starting to hope the mean would leave soon.
“But the only thing we can do when life knocks us off the horse is get back on,” the man said. “Fight forward and push through life like the stallions we are.”
Duke nodded. “I know,” he said. “I know it well.” The woman who had been serving Duke cam ever.
“Hey hun,” she said, leaning over the bar and giving her husband a kiss on the cheek. “Just a minute, I’ll be right out.”
“Solid, babe,” the man said.
“You’re a lucky man to have a woman in your life,” Duke commented.
“Yeah,” the man replied. “Especially one who understands the life of a SEAL.”
Duke looked up at him. “Well, I had a feeling you were spec ops when you came in,” Duke said.
“Yep,” the SEAL said.
His wife came out. “Ready to head out?” she asked.
“I’m always waiting on you, Cinny,” the SEAL said. He turned to Duke. “And by the way… some mutual friends wanted me to tell you that Frost’s miss is doing alright.”
Duke stopped dead in his tracks as the SEAL and his wife turned to walk out. Slowly, he turned around to look at the couple walking away. She was holding his hand tight, walking with a strange sway in her step.
“Hang on,” Duke said. The couple turned around. “I never caught your name.”
“My name?” the SEAL replied. “My name isn’t important. But you can call me Harkness.”
No more words needed to be said, and Harkness and Cinny turned and left the bar. Duke held his drink motionlessly in his hand, still with half of it left, and nodded his head slowly.
Before the new bartender came out, Duke set his drink down and pushed it away, left his tab and tip on the bar, and walked out, ready to face whatever awaited him as he took of into that wild blue yonder.
Is there a chapter missing? We go from mid-chase into an epilogue.
If this had been spellcasters round, I would think Duke got hit with a concussion blast or dream field, after all, someone usually gives up the fight when they think theyve won and its all over.
Very jarring even so, but theres been other occurnces as bad for these poor sods.
Well...that was somewhat anti-climatic. *shrugs* but I'm not complaint.
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Something went wrong when I uploaded the chapter. I fixed it now, the full chapter is up.
7008015 now I can be sastifed.
It was a happy-sad ending, why u do this?
memes.at/faces/y_u_no_crying.jpg
Well that was a great story actually. Sad to see Frost go like that. I do however like the closure that Duke received in the end though.
Ah, I aologise for not realising there was part of the story missing, too many varyiations in how things are handled in the stories on site.
Was the last guy Captain Jack and an equine freind on a closure drop off by any of several methods?
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Not sure who Captain Jack is, Harkness is from my earlier stories
Had a*
End quote before 'Duke'.
Regardless, this story is fucking fantastic, and so were the originals. Glad I stuck through the entire way, well worth it.
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And it was a pleasure to have you along. I hope you can enjoy my new story as much as these!
Gotta admit, I was not expecting the story to end so immediately like that. Nevertheless, the story have been a pretty great read. I feel sorry for poor Duke, but in the least, he can still be able to move on, especially knowing that Amel was doing fine.
C&Cs for Chapter 71 and 72 will be PM.
It was fun reading this and watch it develop! This is a great story!
Great story, great ending.
9/10 ending.
-No revenge on Celestia for using Frost & Duke in her own selfish scemes. (Which I'm insanely mad about, now. God fucking dammit. I'm going have to write my own spinoff or something eventually)
Other than that, perfect.
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Go for it lol. Just be sure to check it with me first
7008960 New story? Fuck yeah I'll have a read man.
Klasse. This is one of my favourite stories on fimfiction. I still blame Celestia for all this misery.
Thank you for this story, for it made my breaks at school and work so much more interesting!
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I'm glad you enjoyed it! If you liked it so much, check out my new story, Into That Wild Blue Yonder. It's another tale of adventure and battle.
7012456 Already added it to my (currently pretty long) read-later-list
Seems pretty interesting!
Been reading since you posted the first chapter and holly mother f***Ing cow did I get hit with the feels on the last chapters man. Just 8/8 m8t 8/8 feels bad for amel now (hope I spelled that right). Just I have no words no words.
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Haha, glad you liked it!
Ok, I just got caught up and done reading this after falling behind a while back, and while I like what you did overall, the ending felt very rushed. It felt like there were a lot of critical conversations we missed or were simply told happened in a very flat and boring way starting after Duke's confrontation with Celestia. There was no conversation with Aprotelese about what Celestia did, there was very little conversation with OGA (he never even got a name ), there was no final confrontation with the princesses, and there was no meeting with the CIA. The result was that what should have been the climax to the driving plot lines and conflicts of the story fell completely flat because you failed to add a few thousand more words to properly wrap up the story which really hurts the work as a whole. The final product isn't bad per se so I'm leaving my thumbs up, but it is disappointing so I probably won't be reading your new story.
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Sorry to hear that. Feel free to read what you please
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O_O never realised that oh my god
Thank you for this story.
I see alot of other comments fuming about loose ends, but in my opinion that really enriches the piece. Not everything gets resolved, real life ain't so dramatic.
Expect two horrible doodles from me in time. Your hints are, "You are silly," Amel said. and in the case of the Nightvision, put it on for a moment to see how it felt. You brought this upon yourself for creating such enthralling works.
A question. is this a sequel to any of your other stories? I've seen heavy implications, is the reveal the reason why you didn't link the others?
Heh, I still ponder the silly idea of horses doing situps. Once again thank you for a really well written piece. Good luck on your future endeavors friend!
impressive effort!
I just started to read the story. Seems like an interesting plot. However you definitely need to explain all the abbreviations more (e.g. OGA, CGI). Not all of us are in the military, US Americans or even native speakers. It would really help to get more into the story.
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A lot of them honestly are just designations that don't mean much. OGA is a phrase I heard that stands for "Other Government Agent", CGI is the common term for Computer Generated Image, stuff like that
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She's made some rather questionable decisions, you shall see
Best thing I've ever read.
i dont normally swear like this but THIS WAS FUCKING AWESOME BEGINNING TO END....R.I.P Frost mahn
Nice story. The characters are very realistic with stregthes and weaknesses. Especially the ending points that out and rounds the story up nicely. The story pace is well chosen and the grade of detail is very good. Just some points I criticise:
- Make a list of the abbreviations you use. It's hard to figure out these over the course of the book and some I still don't know what they mean.
- It would be nice to point out that there is a prequel (I assume the story of Harkness, that will be the next story I read. ;) )
- Some characters seem to act strangely, I assume that is because I haven't read the prequel
- I really liked the part in Amels home country (for got the name at the moment). It allows much freedom about the writing and is refreshingly different from many Fanfiction stories. In the second part it is a bit hard to understand, why they are moved to Ponyville. It seems tactically stupid, as Ponyville has few war infrastructure, but maybe it's because they had close contact to humans before.
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A lot of things make more sense when you've read A Colt to Forget and A Colt Once Forgotten, ideally in that order. It's a little over 500,000 words, so it may take some time to finish it all and understand everything
They're also rated mature because violence and stuff
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Yes, mature is not a problem. But as I said, it would help for people to say there is a prequel to this one. It only comes clear somewhere in the middle of the book.
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Or when you start reading ponies at work. And then call your co workers faggots for not being a 'horse fucker' XD
i finished the story last night D; why did he have to die?
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Because I knew it would mess people up :P