//------------------------------//
// On The Line 
// Story: Strange Bedfellows 
// by BRBrony9 
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Twilight had spent some time just sitting in her room. Not very long, but long enough to think over what exactly she had just seen. She certainly had no reason to doubt that Princess Celestia had indeed done what she had claimed, and when word came through from the Imperial fleet, that was the confirmation and the proof that, perhaps, a tiny part of her mind had sought. The Chaos fleet had been destroyed, the message read, or at least the part of it which had been threatening their allies. Apparently there were still other enemy vessels in orbit, which did not surprise Twilight. After all, she had seen them with her own eyes through the telescope earlier in the day.

What Twilight felt was a mixture of relief and revulsion. Their allies, though alien, were still helping the ponies retake their land and force the vile enemy from their homes, and their help would surely be vital in defeating the renewed threat to Equestria, both in the form of the Daemon and the Chaos warships. What other surprises they may hold up their sleeves could only be guessed at by her, as she lacked the knowledge of their forces, command structure, weaponry, ships and capabilities to make any kind of judgement. But on the other hoof, Celestia had shown little hesitation and no remorse in the destruction of an entire fleet of space-faring vessels of frankly gargantuan size, containing who knew how many humans. Yes, they were the enemy, and yes, they were threatening to destroy Equestria and her ally, but something still rankled with Twilight. This was not the mentor she knew from her youth.

But, she rationalised, this was not the Equestria she knew from her youth, either. Things were very different, totally different now. There had been fights against great peril before; Discord, NIghtmare Moon, Sombra- but the nature of this threat was entirely other, something nopony had expected or been able to plan against. Even Celestia had been caught out, though she had maintained her usual calm demeanour through the whole ordeal of the first invasion and the subsequent fight back. Twilight had most decidedly not done the same. Panicking was part of her nature, not a blind hopeless panic, but a reasoned, rational panic. While she had always accepted that there were aspects of life that could not be controlled or planned out in the minute detail she so enjoyed, she always sought to minimise those aspects in whatever ways she could. If something could be smoothed over or avoided entirely through planning, then she would do everything she could to make it happen. The less she was not in control of, the less could go wrong.

But the invasion from the stars was so far beyond her control that it frightened her. Not just beyond her control, but perhaps what had made it so terrifying for her was that it was beyond Celestia's control, too. Her whole life, Twilight had been watching the Princess rule. Even the lands beyond Equestria's borders essentially submitted to her will in these modern times, though they made great shows of not doing so formally. With control came order, and with order came stability, certainty. That was what Twilight strived to experience at all times; it was just her nature, that was all, she told herself time and again. Living in Equestria and being so close to the Princess herself had given Twilight that stability for most of her life, save for occasions when peril threatened. But even then, she had always been supremely confident, either in her friends, the Elements, or that whatever plan Celestia had put into place would come to pass in just the precise, detailed way she had intended it.

And they always had, until faced with the one possibility for which Celestia had no plan, could not have conceived of one sensibly. There was no precedent for anything like this before. Even the wildest fiction writers making the most outlandish claims might have baulked at telling such a story for fear of ridicule, and yet here it was unfolding before Twilight's very eyes, reality, not mere prose. No words on a white background, these, but real life and with real consequences.  

Twilight could see the consequences for Equestria. Death, destruction, decay, division. Loss and grief on a grand, apocalyptic scale. But what the consequences would be for herself, she did not yet know with any truth or certainty. Her faith had been alternately shaken and restored, brought low only to soar to new heights. Her broad, basic trust in Celestia's word and wisdom had never wavered, but at introspective times like these, she now wondered if perhaps, sometimes, it should have. 

As was so often the way in these new, troubled times, her reverie was broken by a loud sound. This time it was a wail, mournful and deep, echoing out across the rooftops of Canterlot. It was a sound she had not heard, so far as she could recall, since she was in Ponyville on the morning of the invasion. It was the sound of the raid sirens, the mechanical devices used to alert the population of a town or city to approaching danger. They were most commonly sounded when a dragon raid was imminent, hence the name, but they were also used to warn of natural hazards such as tornadoes, floods or Parasprite infestations. Twilight had a feeling they were not being sounded this time for any of those more familiar reasons.

A loud knock came on the door before a guardspony opened it. 'Miss Sparkle, please come with me at once. The Princess has requested your presence in the throne room.'

Twilight gathered herself and her thoughts and followed the guardspony out of her room. She did not know what was going on, but trusted- there was that word again- Celestia to fill her in on the pertinent details. They made their way quickly through the corridors of the palace and into the throne room, where the Princesses were already gathered. Celestia addressed her simply and quickly.

'Twilight, the humans have informed us of enemy aircraft on course for Canterlot. You and your friends are to gather and lead as many of the civilians as you can down into the catacombs.'

'I...what?' Twilight blinked. 'Uh...yes, Your Highness, but...'

'No buts, Twilight. You do not have your Element, and the other five must be protected,' Celestia informed her.

'I know, but...' Twilight exclaimed, though she was not sure exactly what she was objecting to. Perhaps it was a result of her earlier introspection, just deciding to stand up to Celestia in some tiny way, rather than blithely accepting whatever she had to say. She quickly returned to her usual self with a nod. 'We'll round up as many civilians as we can, Princess. But what about you?'

'We shall be defending the city,' Celestia replied. 'If these new enemies wish to try and take it, then they shall receive a rude reception. We shall see to that ourselves.'

'Where is my brother?' Twilight asked, glancing around as she could not see him.

'Shining Armour is already at the wall,' Luna chimed in. 'He has taken command of the military operations to defend the city.'

Of course. Twilight should have known, but she never liked the idea of her brother being exposed to danger. It was, of course, his job to do exactly that, and Twilight was deeply proud of him for it, but his workload and the perils of service had increased significantly since the Chaos invasion. How many guardsponies and soldiers had been lost? She had no idea, and she wasn't sure her brother would know either. Proper record keeping had been all but abandoned out of necessity, as ponies scrambled to react to the invasion and then to try and keep the fabric of Equestrian society from coming apart at the seams.

'Be swift, Twilight. Take the civilians to the catacombs,' Celestia urged. 'Come, sister, Cadence. We must go.' The trio of alicorns teleported away with a crack of displaced air, leaving Twilight alone in the throne room. She blinked, taken aback by the suddenness of their departure. A guardspony hurried to her.

'Miss Twilight, this way. Your friends are waiting for you.'

Twilight nodded. She had a task to perform, delegated by the Princess herself. She knew that her friends would be able to accomplish it, and that she had to help them. It did not matter that she was not being allowed to fight- she knew that she would only get in the way of the soldiers. She was no tactician like her brother, not a strategist like Celestia. She was but a student, a bookworm, with a lust for knowledge but not for power.

And so she found her friends, the other five Elements, anxiously waiting in the courtyard of the palace, not knowing what was going on, only that they had been summoned and escorted by guardsponies. Twilight quickly filled them in, and they went to work; together, as always, to protect those around them, to do what they could in the face of danger. Elements or not, that was their true calling.




Above the city, a vast dome of coruscating purplish-pink energy appeared, springing into life seemingly from nowhere. Some ponies recognised it from a previous incident. This time it was Princess Cadence forming the defence of the city, as she had for the Crystal Empire in the struggle against King Sombra. Alicorn magic had not been tested against orbital weaponry; the Canterlot shield that had collapsed under the onslaught after the initial invasion had been powered by multiple unicorns, and had failed. It was hoped that an alicorn would offer considerably more resistance. Although Cadence was weaker than the royal sisters, she did excel in defensive magic, and if she was powering the shield it would allow Celestia and Luna to operate freely in protecting the city in a far more active role.

Guardsponies and soldiers lined the walls, rifles at the ready, cannons and firing embrasures manned. It was not the first time the city had come under attack, and it would probably not be the last. The ponies were well trained in its defence, and they were ready for the enemy to come at them once again. Celestia and Luna waited below the shield. Perhaps it would be enough for the enemy to see the shield, and realise they could not break through. It was unknown what awareness these current invaders had of the actions of their predecessors. If they knew what had happened to them, then they would know that their aircraft could not make it through the shield; they would be dashed to pieces, as surely as a ship would break upon the harsh rocks of a storm-wracked cliff. If they did not, then the fight might be over before it even began.

Spotters in the highest towers sent out the alarm. They had spotted enemy aircraft, incoming fast from the south. Guns were trained. Ponies crouched down over their sights, taking aim, just in case they could somehow strike a fatal blow. The cannons and anti-air guns were eager to engage, as they knew from previous experience of airship crews that such weapons could destroy the human flyers, so long as they led the targets properly and took careful aim. The aircraft came in closer, now slowing down. It seemed they had to strike the shield and be destroyed.

But then something unexpected happened. A dark red glow suddenly filled the sky in advance of the first incoming jets, rapidly spreading and coming into contact with the defensive shield. There, a tremendous battle occurred, at a sub-atomic, molecular level, all but invisible to the onlookers, as two impossible forces struggled against each other. The aircraft got perilously close to the shield wall before there was a flash, and an opening was suddenly torn in the shield. Into the breach came the fighters, the bombers, and the landing craft.

The gunners opened up from the ramparts, and their fire, perhaps surprisingly accurate to the Chaos pilots, brought down two of the leading fighters, which spiraled away into the ground. The aircraft swept on over the city walls, and the bombers released their payloads. Fire blossomed on the wall and in the streets, killing several dozen guardsponies and soldiers with blast and shrapnel. Ponies ducked into cover as bombs detonated around them, while others stoically remained at their posts, blazing away with the rapid fire anti-air weaponry, stringing hits together and causing a bomber to explode in mid-air before it could disgorge its weapons. 

The landing craft approached, drawing fire from the ground as it became apparent what their identity was. Their objective was evident; guns were trained on them, and they opened fire, but the landing barges were much more resilient than the fragile fighters, and little damage was done by the relatively small and primitive weaponry of the ponies. Other forms of attack, however, proved much more effective.

Celestia and Luna swooped in, the royal sisters opening fire with blasts of magic that cut straight through the armoured hulls of the landing barges. Men inside were incinerated and badly burned, explosions ripping through the insides of the two craft which had been targeted by the Princesses. Down they went, slamming into the open ground just outside of the city walls, but other craft roared onward. The strange red energy formed again as the first aircraft reached the other side of the shield, making another opening for their egress after dropping their payloads. The landing barges came in low and slow, making easy targets but resisting the efforts of the pony gunners, who ducked as they swept in overhead.

It had been an unexpected turn of events. The pony defenders had been prepared for the enemy beam weapons to penetrate the shields, but nopony had been anticipating a breach in the shield in such a fashion. The enemy was not meant to be inside the walls, over the city. They were supposed to be kept at bay, yet somehow, their defences had failed them. Some force which they had not previously encountered had cut a path right through Cadence's shield and allowed the enemy aircraft to get through.

Celestia and Luna focused their efforts on bringing down the much larger landing barges, identifying them correctly as troop carriers that posed the real threat to Canterlot. The fighters could prowl and the bombers could cause damage and death, but only infantry could wrest control of the city away from its rightful owners, and neither Princess was willing to let that happen. Another of the landing barges exploded into a fireball, spraying shrapnel across the outer curtain wall of the city as it tumbled to earth. There were too many craft for them to engage them all, however. Large-scale magic could certainly have brought down the whole flotilla, but would have caused huge damage to Canterlot and many deaths among the defenders at the same time.

As a result, shuttles and barges made it through the duel gauntlet of anti-aircraft fire from below and magic from above. Small arms fire pinged ineffectually off of their hulls as they made their approach, the pilots lining up on any piece of open ground that seemed wide enough to accommodate the bulk of their craft. Braking jets flared and thrust vectoring systems kicked in, bringing the bulky, lumbering craft down at a steady pace. Ponies on the walls scrambled to try and rotate their guns, to turn the cannons around and either engage the landing barges, or whatever might come out of them.

A straggling fighter was blown to smithereens by Luna's magic, but the rest of the attack craft had made it through and out the other side. Some looped back around over the city, staying above the magical shield which, despite being holed twice, was still otherwise intact. Cadence had not given up her attempts to protect the city, and she struggled to close the breaches. Something was preventing her from doing so, fighting against her magic. Whatever the red energy was, it was now acting as a barrier of its own, crackling and pulsating around the edge of each opening and stopping them from sealing.

One landing barge settled down on a wide boulevard, the Boulevard of the Alicorns, the largest street within the city. Squads of ponies were hastily redirected to move and counter the enemy, and they took up positions along the edge of the street. The boulevard led from the heavily damaged station up to the palace gates, where artillery was already being wheeled into position, the last few spare cannons available to the ponies.  The ramp of the landing barge dropped, and out they came, screaming and shouting their war cries. Several hundred men, a motley crew armed with a mixture of weapons and wearing a broad collection of different uniforms.

Rifle fire met them, along with a cannon shell that detonated close by, killing a whole squad from the blast and shrapnel. They returned fire, not just with their small arms but with a pair of autocannons mounted beneath the ramp overhang which kicked up dust and dirt, blowing chunks out of the heavy ornamental flower pots and benches behind which the ponies were crouching. The high-calibre shells cut straight through exposed bodies, and several ponies died in the first volley of fire. 

The cannons on the walltop were swung around, lined up, and fired, blowing holes in the street and sending out a deadly wave of splintered paving tiles which sliced through the enemy infantry. Men tumbled down the ramp, thrashing wildly in their death throes as still more poured out behind them from the interior of the craft. A quick-thinking gun crew put a shell into the passenger compartment of the barge, turning it into a charnel house as men were torn apart, blood coating the walls as a squad was simply wiped out before they even had a chance to deploy and get their boots on the ground. The explosion also caused damage to the interior of the vessel, shorting out several systems and causing a small blast to rip through its lower flank as something inside detonated.

Ponies worked the levers of their repeating rifles as quickly as their hooves allowed. One particularly brave squad advanced under cover of a unicorn shield, pumping close-range fire into the enemy from the direction of the front of the landing barge, which had no defensive guns covering it. Other unicorns used their magic offensively, firing off blasts and discs of energy in a range of different hues. If one struck home, it would kill a man, or at the very least knock him down and incapacitate him. 

Las-fire blazed from dozens of barrels as more and more men charged down the ramp, spreading out rapidly into an approximation of a combat formation. Many lacked helmets or flak vests, while others wore riveted metal armour plates, or even hardened leather, which was no more proof against a high-velocity bullet than a sheet of paper would have been.  It might, however, protect them in the event that they should engage in close combat, and that seemed to be the primary motivation of many of the Chaos infantry, even those armed with lasguns which could penetrate magic shields. They began to quickly advance, partly to get out of the killzone that the ponies had rapidly established, and partly, it seemed, to close the range so they could get into melee combat.

That was not unique to this current band of Chaos forces. Pony strategists and tacticians had quickly noted the fondness of the enemy, even during the initial invasion, for getting into melee range. While an engagement would start at range, it would not remain there for long if the Chaos infantry had their way. Even when backed up by heavy weapons, tanks or aircraft, which could enable them to potentially wipe out a pony position from a safe distance, the enemy had shown a surprising propensity for closing the gap and fighting hand-to-hoof. While pony officers carried swords, and the enlisted troops carried combat knives, there was no great melee tradition in the modern Equestrian military; such charges and rushes had gone out with the invention of gunpowder, and with modern rapid-firing weaponry available to all sides, any charge by ponies or by any of their traditional enemies, save for the Changelings, would be to invite disaster and see your force whittled down in short order by accurate fire. The Changelings, with their mobility, flight, camouflage and magic, were still able and very willing to fight up close and personal, but the Chaos forces had no need to do so in most cases. Their ranged firepower was more impressive than anything the ponies could field except for the strongest magic, and yet they still rushed in to fight in close quarters, driven by some desire for dominance, to prove their physical strength and superiority, or just out of sheer, naked bloodlust. 

The Boulevard of the Alicorns was not the only place in the city where Chaos was making its landings. Two barges swung over the walls of the palace and attempted to set down in the gardens. Celestia suddenly appeared above them, teleporting over to intercept, and her horn glowed. The landing barge had just barely settled onto its struts and the ramp had just dropped. Men began streaming out of the hold, but as they did so, they felt the ramp move under their feet. The barge began to climb again, its engines straining to counteract the sudden upward force. Men tumbled from the ramp, some dropping down before they got too high to safely do so, others clinging on to struts and handrails inside the troop compartment to prevent falling. Some were not so lucky, and fell from the ramp, breaking their necks and backs upon landing. The barge could not overcome the force that was propelling it, and Celestia's magic succeeded in its objective, hurling the barge, engines screaming, into the mountainside north of the city. It detonated with a loud crack and a mushroom of flame. 

The other barge had managed to disgorge most of its troops before it became the focus of the Princess and her wrath. A sharp beam of magic cut the craft in twain, rendering it incapable of further flight. The men scrambled out of the troop compartment, spreading out across the gardens but met by heavy gunfire from the palace's defence contingent. There were ponies in the towers and windows of the main building and several outbuildings, as well as behind the statues and hedgerows of the gardens themselves. Celestia added her weight to proceedings, crackling golden lightning flashing across the grass and the bushes, burning men alive and singing the lawns of her precious gardens, a famous and well-loved attraction before the war that always lured tourists from right across Equestria. Now it was becoming a deathscape, with bodies falling left and right, bullet holes and pock-marks in the flowerpots and statues, and blood watering the flowerbeds and shrubs.

More barges were coming in through the hole in the city shield, despite Luna's efforts to stop them. She could only engage so many targets, and there were plenty of them. Some others looped round to enter through the other hole on the northern side of the city, thus dividing the attentions of the defenders even more. Celestia left the defence of the gardens to her ponies and turned to intercept the second prong of the Chaos pincer movement as it tried to force entry from the other side. The first barge through the hole exploded in mid-air as it was struck by a powerful blast of magic. Burning debris rained down upon the rooftops of Canterlot below, along with blasted, torn corpses that fell from the sky.  The next two barges tried to take evasive action, but they were slow, lumbering beasts and maneuverability was not at the top of their list of attributes. One ship dove for the deck and managed to dip beneath the rooftops, but the other was blasted into a useless hulk which plunged to its fiery grave just inside the city wall.  

The city was under siege again, beset on multiple flanks by the enemy. Its outer defences had been breached, but the ponies inside remained resolute in the face of such sudden danger. They had the example being set by their leaders, who many could see in the skies above, protecting them, defending them, and they in turn had to defend the civilians. It was their duty, and they were not going to let their Princess or their country down. More landing barges and shuttles came in through the twin breaches, more fighters controlling the skies, more bombers. The pony airships were fighting outside of the shield, and the Guard and Army fighting within. They were not going to relinquish control of the city for a second time. Not while even a single pony remained alive and able to raise their weapon.

At least, that was what they hoped.