Something was coming, a dark magical presence, rapidly approaching, “Girls, something’s coming!” Twilight shouted to the others. They drew their weapons and started looking around, expecting something to come running through the snow any second. As it got closer, they saw, through the moonlight, the shapes of beasts, looking like oversized cats, with bone-armour.
“Perhaps they’re friendly?” Rarity asked.
Rainbow and Spitfire rolled their eyes and took aim with their weapons. First to fire was Spitfire, her gun glowed a brilliant golden yellow, and made a loud zapping-boom noise, as a bolt of energy blasted forth from the spike at the end, moving so fast it left a trail of light in the air it passed through. One of the cats was hit square in the head, the bolt travelling through its entire body before continuing out the other side, the cat’s entire body glowed a brilliant orange as it dissolved into vapour in an instant, leaving burning orange ashes in the air.
There came a loud whine from Rainbow’s rifle, a moment later followed by a cacophony of tzh-tzh-tzh noises, each burst of noise brought with it a burst of brilliant ruddy light that lanced out in a solid beam, each beam cutting deep through the target, and turning part of the target to softly glowing red ash. She only held down on the trigger for a second, but in that time twenty or thirty separate beams of energy lashed out, ripping dozens of holes in one of the giant cats.
Rainbow looked down at her weapon with awe and appreciation, “Woah… By Celestia…”
“You can awe over your weapon later, more are coming!” Spitfire shouted, taking aim at another bone-cat. Before she could pull the trigger though, a blur of cyan shot past and cut clean through the cat, slicing it in half, Spitfire looked behind her to see Rarity, her shortsword returning to its mistress’s side, held in a pale blue telekinetic field. As Rarity launched her sword at another target, Spitfire took aim and fired off another blast of orange brilliance, again exploding another cat into orange ashes.
Tzh-tzh-tzh-tzh-tzh-tzh-tzh-tzh- Rainbow unleashed another rapid-fire burst of light-beams, this time moving her weapon back and forth, washing her fire over the cats, and cutting down three at once.
Twilight was hopping with joy, “I couldn’t ask for a better test of my design’s abilities!”
“It would be nice if you could help!” Rarity yelled, launching her sword outward at another cat.
Twilight's wings flared and flew upwards into the air, raising her hands, feeling magic flow through them, her arms glowing a brilliant purple, little balls of light manifesting in the palms of her hands, so bright that they looked like miniature suns, and cast the arctic tundra in brilliant purple. She pointed her arms toward the remaining giant cat monsters, all of whom had stopped in their tracks and looked moments away from fleeing.
Twilight opened her eyes, glowing pure white with all the magic flowing through her body at this moment. She lowered her arms, pointing them at the cats, all of whom immediately turned to run. They didn’t get far, as a second later, she let go, and the twin stars of magical energy she had held in her palms flew forth, for the fraction of a second that they passed through the air they resembled falling stars. The blasts impacted the ground… It was a very simple spell, a modification of both telekinesis and a shield, designed by Clover the Second, during the Great Crystal War… It simply required a lot of power to cast, and Twilight had plenty of power, perhaps a bit too much power, as in her excitement, she let a portion of her might as an alicorn flow through into her casting.
The ground shook. From the points where the bolts of magic hit the ground there came great plumes of snow, dirt, and shattered rock, reaching twenty or thirty meters into the air… Were it not for their aura, the ponies below would have had their eardrums exploded and the shrapnel would have torn at their bodies… Only the monsters were harmed, and the explosions tore them to shreds, the pressure wave sent everyone on the ground flying backwards into the snow, and Twilight falling to the ground.
“Oww…” Rainbow whined, pulling herself free from the snow.
“Warn us next time!” Rarity shouted.
As Twilight pulled herself free from the snowy ground, she stared at the crater she had made, a bit embarrassed at letting so much magic into the spell… “S-Sorry, still getting used to my own power…”
“You’ve been an alicorn for, like what, two or three months at this point…” Rainbow said.
“I was excited!” Twilight replied, “Don’t tell me that you haven’t accidentally set off rainbooms when you’re excited… I’ve seen you do it.”
“You could have killed us!” Rarity shouted. They spent the next few minutes picking themselves and their dropped weapons off the ground and shaking them clear of snow. As they were getting ready to depart, Spitfire turned to the others.
“Something’s coming this way…”
“More monsters?” Rainbow asked, readying her auto-blaster.
“I don’t think so,” Spitfire pointed toward a flying shape that was rapidly approaching, easily faster than most pegasi.
Something had exploded off in the tundra… An explosion large enough to set off the seismic sensors in one of the military bases down in Mantle. The explosion was relatively small, but the sensors were calibrated to pick up anything from an exploding artillery shell to a leviathan attack, all to serve as an early warning system… Be it for a grimm attack, mine collapse, or hostile invasion. It served its purpose well, and had stopped several large-scale grimm invasions, and warned the military whenever a dust mine collapsed, helping to scramble paramedics and evacuation crews… But, this warning wasn’t one of those… The size and pattern of the explosion looked more like a cannon on a battleship striking the ground, and so the Atlas military responded.
A single dropship was loaded with the new AK-200 prototypes, if nothing else, it would serve as a good test of the machines before they would be revealed to the public in a few months. The ship flew off from the base and off into the arctic ice-fields. As they approached the crater, they saw four figures in the snow, “Fly us in closer and activate the speakers…” The co-pilot said.
The other soldier nodded and flipped a few switches before descending. Meanwhile, down on the ground, the purple-haired faunus… With both wings and ears… And a tail… Pulled out a strange and archaic-looking camera and took a picture of the dropship, something that caught both the pilots off guard. Picking up the speaker, the pilot said, “Keep your weapons holstered, we’re coming into land…”
The four women… All of whom were faunus, two of them had wings and one more had a purple tail that matched her hair. What were they doing out here? And so well-armed too? Were they huntsmen, if so they were unlicensed… Which was even stranger to consider, when one of them didn’t have a weapon. The four women put away their weapons and came to stand in front of the ship as it came into land, two of them held themselves perfectly straight, as if soldiers, meanwhile the one with the dark purple hair looked bored, and the one with the striped purple hair looked… Excited? "They're probably White Fang, trying to collapse a dust mine with that explosion, be careful," The pilot muttered.
The copilot drew his sidearm as he left the comfort of the dropship and marched out into the cold night, meanwhile the pilot kept his hand on the dropship’s autocannon controls. “Who are you? And what was that explosion we felt?” The copilot shouted at the faunus women.
“That was me,” The one with the purple striped hair said, “I may have poured a bit too much power into an attack when we got confronted by a horde of large cat-like monsters…”
“You… Were confronted by grimm, sabyrs? And survived?”
The girl simply nodded her head, “Yes, my name’s Twilight Sparkle,” And gave a shallow bow.
The soldier didn’t know how to respond, “Umm… Abraham Locke,” Abraham moved back to the ship and pressed a button on his helmet, activating the comms. The woman, Twilight, staring at him intently, “Get the AK’s out here to patrol the area, we’re taking the faunus back to the Atlas Police Department for questioning…”
A door in the back of the ship hissed open and out stepped a series of… Machine-humans, they had the bipedal form of these people, but they were clearly mechanical, with white armoured plates around their legs and arms and torso, with a hairless, faceless, head. Twilight’s eyes went wide, “How did you get these things to articulate so well, where I come from, automatons like these are purely in the theoretical… Look at the movement, does it have some basic form of sapience, or are they given basic commands like most magical constructs, amazing how you blended the magical energies with the electronics, I wonder what kind of spells have gone into constructing this, judging from the blue glow you must be using liquid rainbow as a power source… Although it doesn’t quite feel the same as liquid rainbow, some kind of gemstone based tech like the stuff I have in my lab? Oh, you need to show me how you produce these things!” Twilight was hopping around, looking at the robots from all angles, talking so fast no one could understand a word she was saying.
The copilot raised his pistol, “That’s Atlesian military property ma’am, please step away from it.”
The one with the rainbow hair and wings raised her assault rifle, “Don’t you dare threaten the princess of friendship!”
The orange-haired one leapt in and shoved the weapon downward, “Dash! We don’t want to make enemies of these humans already!”
“No one threatens her, or any of my friends, like that!”
Meanwhile, the dropship’s autocannons turned to face Dash, the tri-barreled weapons already spinning up. The dropship’s speakers came to life again and the pilot shouted, “I said lower your weapons!”
“Rainbow Dash! As your commanding officer, lower your weapon,” The orange-haired and oranged-winged one shouted. Rainbow growled but lowered it anyway, the ship’s autocannon didn’t stop spinning up though.
“Forgive my companions,” The indigo-haired one began, “Twilight can get a little excited at the opportunity of learning something new, and Dash is a bit overprotective of her friends, and a little illogical too… We just want to reach the city over there, it’s rather cold out…”
Twilight had moved back to the group but still stared intently at the machines marching out of the back of the airship. Once they were all out and moving around, the copilot turned back to the women, “I’ll need you to hand over your weapons-”
“You’re not getting my Stormfire!” Rainbow shouted, hugging the rifle tight against her chest.
“You will hand over your weapon, we are the Atlas military, you are in no place to negotiate…” Came the voice of the pilot from inside the dropship.
“Please ma’am,” Abraham said, “You will need to come with us, I do not wish to harm you, but you need to be taken in for questioning…”
“Rainbow!” The orange-haired one replied.
“This is your last warning,” The pilot said from the dropship, “You filthy animals better lower your weapons or I will open fire…”
Abraham pressed the comms button on his helmet and whispered into the microphone, “What? Are you trying to antagonize them!”
“Are you an idiot! These animals are clearly White Fang,” Came the pilot’s voice, “They try to collapse a dust mine, then when we let the AKs go, they try to steal military secrets… And they haven’t dropped their weapons yet, probably just waiting for us to lower our guard so they can stab us in the back… Sloppiest bunch of terrorists I’ve ever seen…”
“Animals!” Shouted the dark-purple haired one, “We’re fighting for our lives out here in the cold, and you ruffians come by and try to arrest us! Worse, you threaten a princess with those alien weapons of yours!”
“Lower your weapon, now!” The pilot shouted over the loudspeaker.
“Rarity, we don’t want to get into a fight already!” Twilight shouted.
Abraham loudly whispered into his helmet’s comms, “Listen! Let’s just take them back to base,”
“I’m not letting these furry freaks anywhere near Atlas… Screw it, just get out of the line of fire,” The pilot replied.
“Argon you racist asshole-” Abraham started to shout into his microphone, but his voice was cut off by the sounds of the rotary cannons clicking into life. He turned to the faunus and shouted a warning, “Everyone! Get down!” And a moment later, the cannons were ready to fire, and all noise was drowned out by the sound of gunfire.
Abraham opened his eyes, expecting the snow to be painted with the blood of the faunus women, their bodyparts scattered everywhere by the tremendous force of the rotary cannon’s dust rounds… Instead, he stared, confused, at a solid purple wall that glittered as the rounds bounced off it.