Upcoming Firefly bonus chapter plus new chapter of Call of Duty: Equestrian Warfare · 11:15pm Nov 22nd, 2016
Hey folks...
For a special pre-Thanksgiving treat, I have a new Firefly bonus chapter for you, due to be released tomorrow morning. Bonus #1, you may recall, was the Equestrian order of battle; Bonus #2, the Gryphon one. Bonus #3? Equestrian military awards across all service branches, from the Defender of Harmony on down. It's not just a laundry list of achievement medals; you'll learn some very interesting things about the different Equestrian military branches and their philosophy on awards.
Also, for something completely different... I've recently completed two new chapters of the near-total rewrite of Raven Regios' Call of Duty: Equestrian Warfare, which is a CoD/MLP crossover based on Call of Duty 4. It's been... an interesting challenge to say the least. I'm not familiar with the game series, so I had research it and the characters involved, and then edit/rewrite the existing story in present tense as per Raven's instructions. It's honestly not my favorite thing to work on, but for the time I have put on it I would like to see a bit more interest in it.
To whet the palate, here's an excerpt from chapter 13, a lead-in to a climactic battle for Ponyville with ponies allied with US and British troops against Russian ultranationalist rebels and their diamond dog allies:
Sergeant Foley bids Mayor Mare farewell, all thoughts of the coming party forgotten as he steps outside to radio his improvised team for an emergency meeting. Within minutes, the Rangers, S.A.S. men and Marines are all present in the Mayor’s second-floor conference room, joined by Spitfire, two more uniformed Wonderbolts named Fleetfoot and Lightning Streak, and a rather handsome armored white unicorn stallion with a mixed blue mane called Shining Armor, flanked by several Guardspony officers.
Their private meeting is quickly invaded by Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and several other ponies, who demand they be allowed to take part. “This is our town, and we’re gonna fight for it!” Rainbow Dash insists, crossing her forelegs while remaining in a hover.
“If my brother is fighting, I’m fighting!” Twilight Sparkle proclaims, silencing any further protests from him.
“Quite so! I’m not letting them destroy my boutique!” Rarity agrees. “Such ruffians as these Russians who would threaten our family and friends should be met with all force we can muster!”
“Or my farm!” Applejack puts her hoof down hard. “We all got hogs in this fight, partners!”
“Think I’m gonna stand by while they ruin my party?” Pinkie Pie adds, looking unusually intense. “No meanie-weenie rebel Ultra-whats-its are gonna take this town while we’re here!”
“Oh my. Um… I don’t want to fight, but, um… I don’t want to leave my friends to do it either,” Fluttershy offers tentatively. “I don’t want to see anyone hurt, but… I’ll be there if they are!”
“I appreciate the offers, all of you. But this isn’t a game,” Vasquez warns them. “This is war. The rebels don’t respect anything or anyone. As far as they’re concerned, you submit or you die. They will come to kill and conquer, and they won’t care if you’re ponies or humans, military or civilian.”
The ponies all look at each other, then give an answer that is about the last thing any of the human soldiers ever expect to hear from their pastel-painted mouths. “Then we’ll just have to kill them first!” Rainbow Dash speaks for all of them, then lands and presents herself to Spitfire. “Rainbow Dash reporting for duty, Captain!” she gives the Wonderbolts captain a facsimile of a salute.
The barest of smiles cracks Spitfire’s face. “This is a little sooner than we planned to induct you, but it looks like you’ll be joining the ‘Bolts a bit early, Rainbow Dash,” she tells the younger mare, who beams with pride. “We can use your speed and skill. Go with Fleetfoot here once this meeting is done. She’ll get you outfitted.”
“Yes, ma’am!” she says eagerly, beaming.
The human soldiers are still dubious, but also know they can’t order any of them to stay away, remembering that Rainbow Dash and Twilight both participated in the earlier fight and likely saved their lives and the town by doing so; pony strength, flight and magic making them far more than the helpless civilians they often encounter back home. “Welcome aboard, everypony. Okay, here is the situation we face,” Vasquez begins, the mingled human/pony crowd gathering closer around him as he unrolls a map scroll obtained from the town hall records department. “According to the Wonderbolts recon flights, the Russians are there in roughly battalion strength—they counted at least 300 rebel soldiers in the area, with around 16 vehicles, 100 Ammo crates and about 30 tents,” he recited. “The vehicles include a mixture of older BMPs and BTRs… and at least one T-90 tank,” he said, causing the humans present to groan and wince.
“Where’d they get a fucking T-90?” Dunn asks, hefting a rebel RPG—they’d found some Russian armaments in addition to the American and British ones. “The worst we’ve seen in Iran are T-72s!”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask them, Dunn?” Griggs rolls his eyes, making the Ranger fall silent.
“Continuing,” Vasquez says, giving Dunn a warning look of his own, “It’s unlikely they have enough fuel to use them all, but we can’t assume that, and all indications are that they’re going to move soon,” he pauses to make sure his words have sunk in. “Rebel tactics are to launch surprise attacks suddenly and in great numbers, attempting to overwhelm their opposition with shock tactics to make up for their general inferiority of soldiers and armor. Unfortunately for them, we know exactly where they’re coming out,” the Marine Lieutenant notes with a predatory smile.
Quickly, he begins drawing on the map with a quill pen, marveling inwardly at the mixture of modern and medieval warfare represented in the room around him. “If the road they’re building is any indication, they’ll emerge right around here,” He taps and circles an area along a road that runs by Sweet Apple Acres and Fluttershy’s cottage. “We want to contain them at the point they come out, which will be a natural chokepoint since that the road of theirs only allows for one vehicle to pass at at time. Leave the vehicles to us—we have weapons that can defeat them,” he nods to the Rangers, who now wield Stinger and Javelin missiles. “Their infantry is another matter—they’ll probably try to secure the exit before the vehicles emerge. We’ll set antipersonnel mines for them—explosive devices tripped by walking or running over them. We got a crate of those claymore mines, right?” he asks Captain Price.
“Indeed we do,” the S.A.S. captain gives a sly grin, deferring to Marine Lieutenant for the operation since the bulk of human forces are American and Vasquez seems to have become the unofficial human ambassador. “Properly placed, those will ruin your day.”
“Perfect. And for any rebel soldiers who survive that, we’ll set up kill zones in the orchards—interlocking fields of fire. My men will have the lead positions, and be backstopped by the guardsponies,” he nods to Shining Armor. “We know your soldiers can fight, sir, but these are our enemies and our responsibility. We prefer not to risk you if we can help it.”
“Understood,” Captain Shining Armor replies. “We’ve got your backs. We’ve already got a platoon patrolling the forest periphery. We’ll strengthen them to the two and hold the remaining platoon back here to protect the town.”
“Good,” Vasquez acknowledges, then turns to Captain Spitfire next. “We’ll need your eyes in the sky, ma’am. You’ll need to alert us to any flanking movements and give us warning when the various attack waves come in.”
The blue-suited mare shakes her head. “You’re wasting us. We can do far more than just scout, Lieutenant!” She deploys her wingblades again for emphasis, the other two Wonderbolts following suit.
“You’re more than welcome to pick off stragglers and snipers, Captain, but… I’m afraid those blades of yours won’t do much against vehicle armor.”
“That’s why we have these,” she replies, holding up a hoof-sized gem which she plucks from a chest pouch and holds up for all to see. “These are combat crystals we can throw or drop with precision. They come in several flavors—high explosive, fragmentation, and magma.” She taps several different pouches on her chest, each marked with a different color.
“‘Magma’?” the humans all ask at once.
“Allow me to demonstrate…” she twists the top off an orange one, then flies out the window and throws it as hard as she can against the side of the dead Abrams battle tank. It bursts open in a blinding flash of molten liquid… that burns right through the remains of the outer armor with a loud sizzling sound, leaving a gaping head-sized hole in the side.
“Holy…” Dunn whispers, thinking the ponies are suddenly far from cute and cuddly.
“How many of those do you have?” an equally awed Griggs asks.
“Enough,” she says somewhat coyly, motioning to her chest pouches on not just her, but her subordinates, who grin. “The problem is delivery. We practice with them, but still have to swoop in close enough to hit them with it. We’re quite fast, but based on what we’ve seen of your weapons… that won’t be easy if we’re seen coming.”
“They’d have a hell of a lot of lead to dodge, L-T,” Jackson confirms. “Maybe it would better to kill the lead vehicle with that javelin as it emerges and plug the exit with it. That’ll stack up the rest and leave them easy pickings from the air. Our winged friends can then just hover a couple hundred feet overhead and rain hot death on them,” he suggests, causing the pegasi present to give fiendish grins.
“Agreed,” Captain Price speaks up. “For the vehicles, you’ll have to hit something vital with them. Target their engines to disable them, or hit their storage magazines to set off their ammo,” he taps two places on the recon photo of the tank in turn as Spitfire nods her understanding. At that moment, there is a commotion outside, and two guardsponies enter, carrying a badly wounded…
“Oh no, Zecora!” Twilight exclaims at the sight of her zebra friend, her black and white stripes now running red from wounds of multiple AK rounds. “What happened?” she asks frantically, picking the exotic mare up in her aura and laying her down on a sofa, but the new arrival waves off her efforts and that of Fluttershy, who immediately tries to tend her.
“My wounds can wait. The enemy is near. My warning is urgent, my words must you hear!” she begged, biting back her pain.
“She said she had urgent info, sir,” one of the Guardsponies tells Shining Armor, giving him a quick salute. “She refused treatment until she’d spoken to you.”
“You know her?” Soap asks, not sure what to make of her rhyming—whether she did so normally or only now out of delirium.
“She’s our friend,” Twilight confirms, the others surrounding her and immediately tending her. “But what happened…?” she asks again.
“They held me captive. I escaped by chance… only by making my guards fall into a trance.”
“It was very brave of you, Ms. Zecora. You have information about the rebels? What can you tell us?” Price speaks up.
With effort, she focuses her eyes on the bearded human before her. “They have in fact been here for quite some time. With the diamond dogs they are now partners in crime!”
“The diamond dogs?” Vasquez makes a face. “Why them?”
“The why does not matter! So please cease your chatter!” she said sharply, only to wince again. “I heard the dogs talk and know where they will strike. That base you saw is but the head of a pike!”
“It’s ok, Ma’am. We know where the road they’re building will come out. We’ve got the forest exits covered. They won’t surprise us,” tries to reassure her, nodding to , who pulled out a medikit, readying a morphine injection.
She shakes her head sharply, ignoring the pain it causes her. “The road is a ruse! A lie and a feint! Even as we speak they are now lying in wait!” she got out before lapsing into a coughing fit.
Abruptly, a new Wonderbolt flies in, this one a white mare with a yellow mane, her uniform hood off and goggles up. “Apologies, ma’am, but we thought you needed to know this immediately—the human camp in the Everfree Forest is gone!”
“Gone? What do you mean, gone, Sergeant Surprise?” Spitfire rounds on her subordinate. “Explain!”
The lower ranked Wonderbolt cringes slightly. “Apologies again, ma’am. All I can tell you is that this storm came up, and we couldn’t see anything. When it cleared ten minutes later, the camp was empty of all humans and vehicles and there was nothing left a big mound of dirt in the center!”
“Storm?” Dunn asks, all but sneering. “I thought you hotshot pegasi could control the weather!”
“Not over the Everfree,” Spitfire shakes her head, giving the mouthy human soldier a glare. “Its wild magical energies make its weather untameable, else we’d’ve already leveled that base with a storm of our own.”
Several confused glances are exchanged. “But if they’re not using the road? Then where?” Hanks asks, a feeling of dread.
Zecora recovers her voice and points a shaky hoof outside. “Until they strike, they will make not a sound. Because they are now coming… from underground!”
As if to emphasize her words, there is a sudden and growing rumble outside of town hall, the ground shaking beneath their feet. Abruptly, the ground in the plaza caves in, leaving a huge crater out of which suddenly springs… a score of rebel soldiers and rifle-armed Diamond Dogs following by a T-90 tank and two BMPs surging up and out of of the dust, guns blazing.
As all hell breaks loose and the tank swivels its turret to target Town Hall, all Lieutenant Vasquez can think is that Pinkie’s party preparations are ruined.
... and the battle for Ponyville begins. You may notice I'm borrowing certain concepts from Rise of Firefly, and unabashedly at that. If you'd like to see a modern warfare crossover where the Royal Guard, Wonderbolts, and Mane 6 (eventually) go into full badass mode to defeat an unlikely invasion, by all means check out the story. If not, enjoy the bonus chapter to come.
You did wonderful things to that story, sensei. And the Firefly elements were a nice touch. Now I must look up reactive tank armor on google. To be honest, I don't know much about modern armor so much as the old WW2 models.
Just so you know, I actually have played all 3 of the Modern Warfare games, so you can ask me about anything you're unsure about, in case you haven't played them.
I have something for you on Google Docs, Firesight. It concerns TLaTU's next chapter. You might already know what it is.