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// A Foreigner For A Volunteer 
// Story: The Red Sun Rises: Siege of Manehattan 
// by The Atlantean 
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In Canterlot, the shining jewel of Equestria, Princess Celestia received reports of her own from spies within the Crystal Empire. Most of them ended with the statement that the next report would be sent as soon as possible. Others ended abruptly, giving the assumption that they had been caught.
As she finished the last one, Celestia noticed the extremely small hoofwriting at the bottom mentioning the Gem of Power. It claimed the mine reached almost six hundred feet, and the Gem had not yet begun to curve back to the vertical centerline. The Gem also changed colors as the miners dug deeper, one color for every Princess before the Tribes, and the fourth color had just now been discovered.
A knock at the door snapped her mind back to the Canterlot palace. Shining Armour opened one of the great double doors to admit a Pegasus with a robotic left wing and a scar where his cutie mark would’ve been. His coat was a crimson shade of red, his mane and tail jet black with a dark blue stripe down the middle. Celestia peered into the hazel eyes of her visitor and saw a warrior from another land, one who had seen more death and destruction in ten to twenty years than she had seen in her lifetime.
“Princess Celestia, I come from the country Atlantis, a land east of Griffonstone. My name is Crimson Dawn, and I hear your are looking for recruits,” he said in his cold, deep voice.
Celestia stammered a response. “Well, I-I am, but I didn’t expect… uh, foreigners to volunteer.”
He laughed. “Forgive me, your highness, but I do believe I have family in this very room. I am no simple foreigner.”
“Who?”
“Why, you, Princess. I was married to your cousin about fifty or so times removed. Her name was Rose Thorn, and she was an alicorn before the Corsairs sold her the Dominion of Apollo and she was executed six years ago. The war between the Dominion and Atlantis ended in stalemate five months later.”
“There was a war going on and I didn’t even know about it? We could’ve sent aid.”
“My people are self-reliant, Princess.”
“Oh, okay.” Celestia processed what Crimson Dawn said. “Wait a minute, did you say I have cousins?!”
“Yes, your highness, I did. An entire branch of your family resides in Atlantis, with scrolls and texts that trace the family tree back thousands of years. I am honored to have wed a mare from your lineage.”
Celestia had the cutest, most puzzled look on her face since Discord wreaked havoc the first time. She stared at the stallion, unable to truly comprehend what he had just told her. The information continued to turn in her mind, seeming more outrageous every time she thought about it. At the same time, it made more sense as well.
It was at this time that Princess Luna decided to enter the throne room. The midnight-blue alicorn had a flowing mane of twinkling stars in deep blue, and a crescent-moon cutie mark shone behind her wings. She took one look at her older sister before bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Luna laughed so hard that she had to pause several times to take deep breaths before continuing.
“What seems to amuse you, sister?”
Luna finally calmed down a bit. “The look on your face was priceless! You haven’t done that since Discord turned your mane to cotton candy and started eating it!” She kept on laughing, despite Celestia’s failing attempts to talk some sense into her.
Finally, the eldest sister had enough. She boomed at Luna with the loudest, most terrifying Royal Canterlot Voice ever heard. “Luna! Enough of that!” Seeing that her younger sister had snapped to attention the moment she spoke, Celestia continued calmly. “The look on my face is irrelevant. What matters is that we have a volunteer for the defense of Equestria. And exactly how qualified are you, sir?” She turned her head to look at Crimson Dawn.
“Princess Celestia, it is well within my capabilities to defend against overwhelming odds. I have done so before-” he flapped his robotic wing- “at the Battle of Aquarius River.”
Luna perked up at the mention of Aquarius River. She had heard of the death toll from it, reaching almost five hundred thousand on the first day alone. The following two days became the untimely death of another hundred thousand each. The Princess of the Night had a newfound respect for this colt, since he survived the bloodiest fight in all ponykind’s history.
Celestia mentally noticed Luna’s respect for Crimson Dawn, and decided to follow her. She nodded and said, “Crimson Dawn, I accept your offer to join our defense on the one condition that you swear your complete loyalty to Equestria for the duration of service, here and now.”
The soldier swore to the Sun, Moon, and Stars that his total loyalty was to Princess Celestia. For his first orders, he was to command the remnants of the Manehattan defense and keep Sombra’s dark army from taking the city. He saluted, and left.


?          ?


Several days later, Crimson Dawn stood before what was left of Celestia’s army, weakened from repeated defeats and countless losses. He wore the hardened steel armor of Atlantis, with the flexibility of leather with protection better than a thick wooden shield. A special weapon, strapped to his side, screamed advanced technology at the spears and swords of Equestria. It was a gunpowder weapon, one he acquired during the furious last stand of his army against the Dominion of Apollo. Even better, it was a repeater, and specially made for a Pegasus to use.
“By order of Princess Celestia herself, I am to lead this army in the defense of this city. I am Crimson Dawn, a Pegasus from Atlantis, and I have seen more warfare in the last twenty years than this army hopefully ever will. If you wish for qualifications, I can tell you that I received the Atlantean Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly stalling the enemy advance while the rest of my army set up for defense on Day Two of the Battle of Aquarius River.”
Murmuring swept through the ragtag Equestrian Army. “Did he say Aquarius River?” “I think so.” “A Medal of Honor?” “What’s that on his side?”
“Our main goal is to defend the port. If we can hold it for a month, I can have reinforcements from Atlantis arrive and we will then drive them out. Also, we don’t have the ponies to achieve victory, so I want a recruitment station to get every last mare and stallion who can fight. Captain, that’s your job.” He gestured to Captain Thunderstrikes, the last high-ranking pony left in the army besides First Lieutenant Midnight Shadow, who was then promoted to Captain. Several other officers were promoted to fill in the higher rankings, and the soldiers were dismissed.
Afterwards, Crimson Dawn had the new Captains meet him in the temporary headquarters in the Dynamo Plaza, near the piers built for larger ships. One of the residents had offered his shop there to the army, and they gladly accepted. Now, Crimson and his officers stood around a table with a zoomed-out but highly detailed map of Manehattan and the surrounding isles.
“From what you tell me, the enemy camp is right here,” he said, placing a marker on the Cypress Field area, about five kilometers away. “And you say with our current supplies, we have two weeks before we’re overrun. Gentlecolts, that’s not acceptable.”
The Captains and First Lieutenants all began to talk about the situation. Each one either repeated somepony else, or disagreed. After about ten seconds, Captain Midnight Shadow spoke up.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, guys. Supplies are everything.”
Crimson was intrigued. “Explain.”
“Supplies are everything. Without them, we don’t defend the city, we don’t take down their Pegasi, we don’t communicate with Princess Celestia. We have to pull back to our side of the Bricklyn, Withersburg, and Tartarus bridges. Now.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the rate we’re using supplies, we run out in exactly six days, fifteen hours and forty-five minutes, not two weeks. If we pull back to just this island, we can get them to bottleneck across the bridges. They’ll have to. We shut down all trans-island traffic: taxis, ferries, the whole shebang.”
“Whoa, ferries? What if we need to bring stuff to the Tartarus Bridge area? The streets are too crowded,” another Captain commented.
“We worry about that later. The more we talk here, the more time we waste that could be used to stock up. I’ve been looking at this for the past hour.”
“That’s the deal?” Crimson asked.
“That’s the deal.”
“Alright. As soon as we get some form of organization is this army again, we’ll pull back across the bridges. In the meantime, we’ll only have half as many to defend the port with. I want you guys to talk to the ponies who set up the supply lines. Then I want you to talk to the ponies who actually run them. Find out how to get every last calorie and, arrow, and drop of water out of all these towns.” He walked over to the oversized calendar. “I want this mark all the way down to August 29th with supplies to spare. We never lost an Equestrian city to this army and we’re sure as hay not gonna lose one under my watch. Failure is not an option!”