Thank you all so very much! Thank ya'll for reading and such, even though it must be a horrific bore and trial to sit through my drivel. Thank you, my fifty-six followers. Thank you, all my readers. Thank you everyone who has ever liked, commented, or gotten suckered in by a link on TvTropes or Equestria After Dark. I couldn't have done it without you. Brohooves all around!

I know that I've been slow on the update front, and I apologize. Summer has started, so expect laziness, but at least regular laziness. I have another short piece in production. Well, tell me what you think, please. Thanks.

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I Did Not Want To Die.

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BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Gunfire rang out from the florist shop window and into the almost deserted had-been beer garden. I looked at my fire team leader, Gefreiter Schlager. He brought his head and G36 back inside, shouting, “Los wir gehen!” We obeyed, following him out into the ruined, bombed and burnt out ruins of what had once been Grazny’s main shopping district. Booted hooves clopped and clacked on the ground, cracked and torn.

I remember this place from when I was a child. Mother brought Traube and I here for ice creams. A corpse lay underneath our favourite leafy sycamore tree, an expanding puddle of blood and moans coming from the stirring limbs. I hugged my M4a1 more tightly against my chest and kept running. We heard helicopters droning from behind us.  The one pony in our Chechneyan zebra outfit, a foreign volunteer unicorn, turned his brown body to see them, obscuring his eyes from view with his chestnut mane. The eyes went wide and the voice was unusually high. “Federal Defense Force – Bundeswehrmacht!” I cursed under my hot, ragged, breath. My heart thumped like a farmer’s cart over the cobblestones of this hilly district.

We dove into a mostly-pristine boutique in an eerily orderly shopping mall. It had been one of my favorite haunts in my youth; my friends and I were always here whenever we had the time. It was the same one I’d met a cute filly as a teenager. Gefreiter Schlager pulled out his map. He poured over it for a minute before growling and giving us all a very grim look. “Meinen Kommeraden, we’re boxed in.”

I wracked my brain before interrupted him. “Gefreiter, there are tunnels underneath this place They can get us back to north central.”

They all turned to me, cocking their heads. The Gefreiter raised his eyebrow. “How would you know, Flechte?

I blushed. “Well, um, when I was a colt, a certain filly and I would…” He smiled and waved with his hoof.

“Gut genug. Show me where.” I grabbed a pen I always kept on my person and scribbled on the map.

“Ankommender!” BOOM! The storefront exploded. I leapt into cover, raised my M4a1, deactivated the safety and began to fire on what must have been a platoon of federal troops without cover. The Pony, Bronco, laid down suppressive fire with his FN Minimi. The Gefreiter gave orders to pull everyone out. I saw several soldiers fall to our righteous bullets fired in defense of our homes. I killed a few myself – how dare they destroy our beloved home?

I dropped a third magazine of the fight, eighth of the day, and insert a new one. I hit the bolt release and felt it shut with a comforting click in the chaos. I fired back again with semiautomatic, as per the gospel of our instructors, one of whom had been an Equestrian Eclipse veteran. I heard their shouts in my head, guiding me through the harvest of death. With every few shots, their number grew fewer as one finally went down under my hail of lead. The M4a1 thundered comfortably in my grasp. I pulled the trigger again. CLICK. Silence – the loudest sound when you expect a bang. God, please, no!

Bullets whizzed by and guns thundered around me. I removed the magazine and reinserted it hard, ramming it all the way in. –CLICK– shit! I pulled the charging handle and looked inside. Two rounds were trying to occupy the chamber simultaneously, like a 308 trying to squeeze into a 223. Frantic, I tried to get them out, but to no avail! The extractor refused to grab the cases.

FWIP! A horrible, burning, sensation shot through my right breast. I yelped in shock and pain, then I hit the cold checkerboard linoleum floor. I saw blood bright and red stain the black and white tiles. I tried to get up, but couldn't breathe. I didn't have any strength; my body just didn't respond.

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