CH14
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PART: I Daylight Reprieve…
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Ponyville
8:15 AM
Miguel had never been injured many times enough to land him in a hospital, at least not a civilian one; he had been shot at swung at blown up more times than he could remember, and yet that wasn't even the half of it. Twilight from what he could tell when she interacted with his mind had actually experienced just one of the few things in his life that would have driven a normal human being insane, to which it did.
But from what he had learnt from Twilight, Celestia had cut away those memories to stop her from going mad, thankfully she succeeded and Twilight seemed oblivious to the seriousness of the memories she experienced, if she ever learnt of the terrible horrors he had suffered, he felt that she'd throw up.
There were only a handful of people who know of Miguel's past, and they're mostly dead now considering how many years that they themselves had fought in the war. Miguel knew that Twilight held a close relationship in the sense she cared for him, but she didn't understand to the greatest extent to what he had gone through.
She probably did know of his relation to the project but probably not how long he had been a part of it. He turned his mind away from his own ghosts and looked around; they had been wandering through Ponyville's streets for about the last 20 minutes, Twilight had been grasping Miguel's arm for the whole time dragging him in one direction or the other.
Ponies had taken to noticing the two of them; Miguel had known to ignore the looks as he had been given worse looks by the covenant, he was a helldiver of course. He had expected nothing less, he had hacked and slashed his enemies to shreds and the covenant learnt that the easy way, he suspected that there were a few that followed Zaro that held a deep fear of him and other helldivers.
Twilight continued holding him close as they strolled through the town, as they headed inwards to the market; there was a noticeable air of excitement from the populace, ponies pointing and shouting about the recent changes. There were groups of colts hurrying off to a UCAF and UNSC transport where they were busy getting recruits.
The recruitment site was a bit FUBAR; the marines had to deal with roughly a crowd of hundreds, at least half the population of Ponyville packed into such a sizable area, there was noise from everyone, the marines shouting out orders to get the people organised, mothers and sister, daughters and lovers all there to say goodbyes or inquire. The many colts in the area had bags, some bigger than their backs, it seemed many had come from further regions.
"Wow, how many arrived in the time that the announcement was made?" Twilight asked aloud.
Her question however was answered by a timid and familiar voice.
"More than enough."
They turned about to see a colt in full armour, his blue and navy mane brushed around to one side, his armour was plain silver and grey one shoulder had an icon of a shield and stars, he stood roughly 6ft tall. Twilight's face brightened up and she exclaimed excitedly.
"Brother!"
He opened his arms as she rushed over to him and hugged him, she stood away from hugging him and then she began.
"I heard you were coming over, should have prepared."
"I know you love to prepare for anything, sorry about not contacting you first. But Celestia said that you were at the hospital in Ponyville looking after your 'colt friend' who was hospitalized." He explained.
Twilight remembered Miguel and then motioned over to Miguel.
"Miguel I' like you to meet my brother, Shining Armour."
Miguel walked over and greeted him.
"Good to meet you." He said neutrally.
Shining raised an eyebrow.
"So you're the human that Celestia had brought back? I heard about the small report the medical staff made back at Canterlot, when Twilight entered your mind. What the hay was that about?" He inquired.
Twilight knew the protective side of her brother and tried to interject.
"Shining, it was an accident; I never knew what exactly was in his mind, sort of my own mistake." She conceded.
He looked at her and then back to Miguel.
"Twilight I know I'm not dad, but still when I heard what happened I was worried. The report had me going back as soon as I could, Cadence agreed to comeback as soon as possible."
"She means what she says; it was an accident, one that thankfully Celestia had managed to correct." Miguel stated.
Shining wasn't so sure about the human, he had been in many negotiations in his career, he heard about Miguel being an experienced warrior, one with a history that was even longer than his own. A seasoned warrior, engaged in a relationship with his sister? He wasn't sure about having such a person around Twilight.
"I know what she means, doesn't mean I have to completely agree with it, you're someone I will be keeping an eye out for." He stated directly.
"I understand, and I'll be sure to respect that." Miguel replied.
Twilight watched as Shining backed off and then asked her.
"Twilight, how has things been?"
"Busy." She admitted.
"I can relate, as I stated Cadence agreed to have us come back to Equestria, she's sent a message back to ensure that her council would be able to deal with the current crisis while she's here for a while longer. But I doubt she'll stay around any longer than she needs to. Same with me, just with the royal guard being rearmed and prepared, I've received orders to come here to help train new recruits as soon as possible." He explained.
"Oh, how the recruitment going?" She inquired.
"At the moment? Nearly 3000 from outlying regions across Equestria, various ponies going into various sections of the military, we have a number of officers coming in from Canterlot, but many recruits are coming in from Trottingham and Neighton, and it's quite not there either, we still have many coming in from various other places." He replied.
"So it's going to get much a lot more crowded?" Miguel summarised.
"Pretty much, there are a lot of ponies being directed to Ponyville, it's the best place for your alliance to train them, and the best place to equip from what Celestia's been telling her generals." He said with a shrug.
"So what about you, aren't you joining?" Twilight asked.
"I am, however I've been reassigned as a special task force that Celestia gave to Luna, we're being reorganised from the Royal Guard into something that she calls, the Royal Equestrian Service, something about having a special task force capable of operating on high risk tasks. There was a plan made by Celestia some years ago during the mineral wars between the dragons and the griffons. She's decided to let Luna go through with organising it herself." Shining replied.
It made sense, having a special task force meant that they didn't need to send an army to do a single thing, or having to risk more lives in dangerous tasks where a small team of properly skilled officers or troops could accomplish. That didn't put Twilight's mind entirely at ease; she was concerned of course that her brother might get killed in the process of his missions, but if he was willing to carry it through she decided to support him.
"Hope that goes, well, but I'm kind of confused, how is Luna organising the whole task force?" Twilight inquired.
"I'm not really meant to say, she's taking them from the best skilled officers and troops out of the royal guard and our meagre military, it'll take a week or so to get us organised, but by then we'd be being sent out to test out scenarios that the UCAF had offered." Shining gestured to the UCAF recruitment site.
"From what I remember, those tests were for UCAF Helljumper, the ODST program training scenarios using holographic projected recreations of all likely combat scenarios and objectives and putting a team through their paces in failure or success missions. Smart, but difficult without a capable team, it's supposed to sort teams effectively." He recited from the training programme he had been given.
"That's what you say, I'm not sure, and this holographic training simulator sounds rather different from any normal training routine, even for the Night Guard they've never been trained in open situations of combat to be sorted." Shining expressed.
"It's meant to make a soldier think on his feet, failure of command as well becomes something that needs to be corrected in making a capable team, it works its way through the ranks of a team." Miguel explained.
"So I can imagine, well hopefully we'll have a capable task force of aiding in the war, I know I'll be busy." He sighed.
There was a shout over from a group, a crowd of Equestrian soldiers appeared, they seemed to be a mix of regular guards and some newer faces, but also some of the royal guards. Shining had to leave.
"Looks like our first group's here, I need to get those soldiers sorted." He pardoned himself as he left.
Twilight waved him goodbye as he went off to his duty. Miguel had a feeling that Shining was a warrior of honour and respect, but also someone, who hadn't seen as much conflict as he had; it was a sure thing that Shining was probably going to find the coming battles a challenge. Speaking of coming challenges, it seemed another had arisen.
A barmy group of stallions and mares had gathered into a large cluster there was raucous laughter and yelling, a few UNSC marines were watching at a distance along with UCAF, it seemed they were all cheering over an arm wrestle. Miguel and Twilight went over to see who was challenging who.
There was just a young looking marine, UCAF, or so his uniform said on a shoulder pad, he was small for someone who was a helldiver, but he was strong, he had brown hair and dark blue eyes. The other on the other hand was a stallion with a white coat, and a short buzz cut hair, he had red eyes and looked like a mix of a champion weight lifter and a steroid user.
"Come one Snowflake this guys a small fry!" One mare yelled.
"Jeez this kid's not breaking a sweat, how the hell's he doing that?" The UNSC marine asked to his friends.
The marine that he could identify was from Jace's unit, Jordan Hartman. Twilight asked.
"Who's the kid going against Snowflake?"
"That's not a kid, he's a helldiver, and he's a sergeant if I recall. He's supposed to be Jace's platoon chef." Miguel replied aptly.
Twilight was shocked.
"He's the chef of a platoon, and he's that young?"
"He's 17, and he's had a number of years probably going through military cooking schools, and those chefs have a very high record of explosives and precision for them." He replied.
"What, so he's the explosives expert and the chef?" Twilight perplexed.
"No, he's the tactical weapons expert, and he's the platoon's chef, and it makes him a nifty marine especially in long term missions, but I doubt that he's a good engineer. Probably better and blowing things up than fixing them considering his training likely would have involved a lot of fire." Miguel explained.
"So why is he so strong?" Twilight asked.
"You might not know it, but helldivers themselves receive a special augmentation and training program of their own in the UCAF compared to the rest of the UCAF marine forces and regular military. It's not surprising that he's holding his own against the guy with the bigger arm, his bones and muscles are all bio-augmented." Miguel replied shrewdly.
It was just then that Snowflake was tiring out that the helldiver turned his arm in the other way that the muscular Pegasus was flung to the side of his chair unable to hold balance from the sudden assault of the helldiver who had been smiling the whole time. The Pegasus was dazed from the change and was towered over by the young helldiver that put his hand out to help him up.
"You need to work on your posture aside from that, you did well." Jordan stated to the stallion still baffled at the immense strength of the teenager.
A loud applause from the crowd and some mumbled sentence of annoyance about losing bets people went away from the arm wrestle and Miguel waited to meet the chef. Jordan was busy dusting his hat when he saw Miguel and saluted.
"Sir, its bloody good to see you up and about."
"It's good to meet you as well helldiver, how was the match?" Miguel asked.
"I've had better." He smirked as he flexed his bio-muscles.
It was odd to see how the bio-muscles of a helldiver looked, it wasn't like the normal human arm, the lines where certain veins pumping blue blood cells were next to green ones, the whole pigmentation of Jordan's body had green veins running through him, of course this wasn't as apparent in many helldivers, Miguel being one of the few special cases, but James being a fully grown helldiver. Bio-muscles tend to fuse into the body's deeper veins and arteries, at least when they're older.
"Sargent, what exactly is your current priority?" Miguel asked.
The marine put his hand on his chin and then recalled his primary duties.
"I've got cooking to be done around in 30 minutes, gotta move all those potatoes from the Frevis stock and then, I've got another 2 hours being spent on roasting dinner up. Marines don't always like their food being materialised by the replicators. Oh, and some pink chick came around looking for human chefs, the requisitions officer looked like he was going to shoot himself when he came to see me about her. Don't exactly know how she could do that to one marine though, poor Jake." Jordan finished as he put his uniform webbing back on.
Twilight rolled her eyes, and smiled at the thought of Pinkie driving the poor humans insane with the talk of food, parties, and fun. Miguel seemed to have a ghost of a smile on his face also thinking of the same thing, he then saluted the marine before he headed back into the field kitchen.
"So I guess that Pinkie's going to be adding her culinary skills to the galaxy?" Miguel asked humorously.
Twilight shrugged.
"She's Pinkie Pie."
"That I am!" They heard as Pinkie suddenly popped above Miguel's shoulder with a big smile on her face.
"Heyya Twilight!" Pinkie smiled as she leapt off of Miguel's shoulder.
"EEK!" Twilight exclaimed and jumped away as Pinkie landed on her hands near her and smiled.
"Humans are so great! They've got so much to show me and their kind of fun is amazing, it's different, like funny different, not ha ha funny, more like serious funny. But then again, being in so many conflicts tend to do that, but enough with that, they've got so many awesome chefs, one flipped me a pancake the size of a pizza and not those silly, Pizza Hut pizza mia pizzas, like those big ones, oven fired ones are the best, but so expensive!" Pinkie rambled on at least for another 10 seconds before Miguel grabbed her as she did a cartwheel.
"Pinkie, don't you have an important appointment?" Miguel asked with a very strange smile. Miguel never smiles from Twilight recalled, unless it was something very special or sincere.
Pinkie replied.
"Oh yeah, there was that awesome guy with the big stack of guns and explosives in his kitchen. But nah, I'm supposed to be here for at least the next sentence before the author writes how I'll be heading off and you two will be absolutely baffled at what I talk about." Pinkie finished.
They were absolutely baffled and then realised what she had just said when she picked herself up and then jumped away, laughing out loud like a mad mare. Twilight got back to Miguel's side and then asked.
"Will we ever understand what goes on inside her head?"
Miguel replied.
"I think it would scare even a Spartan."
Twilight nodded and they headed onwards to their next destination, the boutique. As they went through the market, Twilight noticed the various stalls being packed by ponies from out of town getting something to eat or others just there to sell things, but there was an obvious gap, the apple family stall remained empty.
Twilight looked around for either Big Mac, or AJ, she didn't seem to be anywhere in sight, as they passed by the stall they only caught the distant shout of the orange mare. Miguel had better hearing and then said.
"AJ's about 30 meters away behind that florist." He pointed over at a green painted house with straw roof.
"I wonder what's going on." Twilight said intrigued to the orange mare's current exploits.
They headed over where they found that there was a very large group of ponies gathered at the back of the florist it seemed that there were various ponies, and also AJ who happened to be on what looked like a makeshift stage with a whole cluster of ponies who looked like they were having a debate.
"I say we name ourselves the first Appleloosan Rangers!" A yellow colt with Stetson demanded.
"Hey I don't see your name on this unit, since when did only you get to name whatever you want?" A black Pegasus responded angrily.
"You may have helped us in the battle of Appleloosa, but that doesn't mean that you can impose on our unit, it's only because we got crushed together that we have you in our unit." A colt with caramel coat and brown hair replied.
"Well that's the whole point of this meeting, we've got limited time and we need to figure out our unit organisation, and designation, trust me I've been around and I know the military, we need this by full consensus from everyone, not just you." The black Pegasus replied.
"How about having a tie breaker?" A familiar rainbow haired Pegasus asked.
RD landed at the side of the black Pegasus and then explained.
"I was at that battle, and I've seen good ponies die, we both lost people at Appleloosa, and now isn't the time for argument, it isn't something we should be angry at each other about. We need to pull ourselves together in order to face these aliens head on."
RD's enthusiasm and determination as well as her reasoning seemed to help make the group's mind, the apple family seemed to agree with AJ stepping in.
"RD makes a really good point; we need to be together on this!"
It seemed to make more confident.
"Very well, I propose we have one unit, but separate different styles of training, I doubt that everyone can fly." The black colt offered.
"What should we name ourselves?" One pony asked.
"I say we name ourselves the Equestrian Rangers." AJ proposed.
It made sense no past affiliations aside from the ranger part, and being Equestrians, there seemed to be a lot more agreement on the idea of having a unified force. They all agreed.
"Then it is decided, we will be the first Equestrian Rangers Division."
There was a small cheer, it wasn't all great in the sense that everything had been fixed, at least it was progressing for them, they still had to organise how their force would work, and it seemed that yellow pony was going to get his fair share of work. Miguel and Twilight exited the rally and headed back into the streets of Ponyville it seemed there was quite a bit going on.
They headed onwards to the boutique undisturbed for the walk, at least until they arrived at Rarity's shop. At first it seemed normal, the model mannequins outside on their stands and the shop's luxurious decorations spiralling upwards, they found that the front seemed rather packed, a group of mares were busy looking in at the window.
"What the hay's going on?" Twilight muttered to herself.
"Excuse me ladies." Miguel interrupted.
The group of women jumped about to face him and they all grinned sheepishly.
"Oh, hey there…"
A blue and pink manned woman with cream skin nudged her lime coloured friend and they moved out of the way, even though the mare protested.
"Oh come on I want to see the humans! I need to see the humans…."
The others looke at her and back to Miguel.
"We'll be going now." One mare said for the whole group. They nodded and then bolted out of the way.
"Let me guess, Rarity's dressing the marines?" Miguel recalled Twilight's memories.
"Oh boy." Twilight dreaded the moment they walked in.
The door to the shop opened and the bell rang, they came face to face with their unexpected fears, Rarity had been dressing them, but it wasn't as bad as Twilight's memories were like. But that didn't make the awkward pose any less awkward. Rarity had one of the helldivers in his bare overalls including his under-skin webbing. The toned marine had posing for Rarity as she made measurements over his body.
"Oh welcome Twilight and hello to you Mr Miguel." She smiled as she rubbed her hand down the length of the back of the marine who shook.
"Oh sorry darling, I tend to do that." She apologised to the marine as she turned to face Twilight and Miguel.
"So this is what every mare's been peeping at?" Twilight asked with a smirk.
"Well-. What?" Rarity exclaimed.
"There was a rather large group of mares peering inside Rarity." Twilight gestured to the windows.
Rarity felt a little embarrassed and smiled.
"Well thankfully there wasn't anything to exposing." She mumbled the last bit.
"So what exactly are you trying to accomplish here? Aside from getting a very good view of my marine's exteriors." Miguel asked.
Rarity gasped.
"I would never…" She objected.
"Rarity I think Miguel was just joking." Twilight interjected.
"Oh…" She said somewhat deflated.
"Well what exactly are you doing with all these members of the UCAF?" Twilight asked gesturing to the 4 or 5 other marines sitting about, with one who waved back at Miguel.
"Well if you must know, I had a lot of brilliant ideas, including these new materials that they use in their suits and overalls and attire make my ideas flow, these suits are so dull and I wanted to spruce it up a bit, so I asked for some volunteers. Amazing that these boys agreed." She said thoughtfully.
"Well that's good and all, but doesn't this seem I don't know, a little redundant, I mean I don't think the UCAF would wish to mass produce your uniform in such a time, I mean it's good and all, but I don't see it happening very soon." Twilight stated.
"I know where you're coming from Twilight, and I do admit that in my opinion this was seemingly selfish, but I came up with a better idea, the uniforms that they use would also work for us as well, a uniform army is an efficient army. So I'm using their current overalls as templates for us, I wanted to give my idea a go ahead with princess Luna before the week was out. Which is why I'm somewhat ranting." She finished.
"I guess it makes sense, so how are the uniforms coming along then?" She asked.
"Fine, if only I could replicate the soft gel layer armour they use in their overalls it would be perfect to mass produce and look stylish, of course the marines don't tend to pay much attention to details on uniform and have directed me to ask the Requisitions officer about getting in a full sample of the gel." Rarity explained.
"So let me guess, you want me to requisition a small supply of translucent poly-fibre dextro-carbon gel, so you could experiment with it?" Miguel asked.
"Well if it's not too much trouble it would be appreciated." Rarity smiled sweetly.
"I'll be sure to note that down and ask the Rec officer about that." Miguel replied.
"Oh thank you dear, oh Twilight I almost forgot, Fluttershy wanted to speak to you about something important, she said she'd meet you at Ponyville, where the UCAF had set up a field clinic, she said something about helping, and I haven't had time to inquire as to what, but she says its urgent." Rarity advised.
Twilight acknowledged.
"Okay Rarity, come on Miguel, looks like your day just begun."
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Inter-System…
"Commander Faust, Eta arrival time, 38 hours and counting, should we try long range signal to contact any survivors?" May asked.
"No don't we know that anyone can pick those signals up and the last thing I intend to do is allow the covenant to know were here, keep and maintain silence for now, when we are sure that there's a beacon direct a signal then." She ordered.
"As you wish commander, shall I begin waking the crew? It's been about a week, I'm sure that they'll need time to readjust from stasis." May stated.
"Very well, permission granted. But I want everyone up." She specified.
"You mean them?" May, raised a holographic eyebrow.
"All of them."
"Beginning defrost."
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END PART: I
Sorry guys I ran out of time, I've been awake since last night, so around 38 hours straight I am really not doing well, ended up revising twice to make this readable, damn it I need sleep. So see you guys tomorrow and please send in your OCs, and any suggestions, critiques are welcome and such, I don't have any images to add to this sadly.
Oh to anyone only reading on FF.net there's images provided in FIMFiction.net yeah there's visual aids, and I can provide them here, and later on my account please check with me there if you have any FAQs.