“Hey Twilight, look at this.” Spike called from between one of the towering bookshelves in the castle’s library.
“What is it, Spike?” Twilight asked, putting her transmutation book back on the shelf with her magic as she stood. Combing through the rows of books for her dragon assistant, she found him standing on a stool, an old dusty book in hand.
An old, dusty, glowing book.
Taking the book out of his claws with her magic, she brought it closer to her to investigate it. It was an old hard-board book, bound with strips of something she couldn’t identify. An old and faded two-tone gemstone sun adorned its cover, though it was long since cracked with parts of it missing. Slowly opening the book, its pages crackling as they peeled apart, revealing the miraculously preserved writings within.
It was a diary, apparently belonging to somepony named Sunset Shimmer. The pages were full of recollections of her daily events and schooling, though they slowly took a turn; slowly they turned from happy writings of lessons and garden visits, and became scornful remarks about “Her”, and how “She” is keeping her from her potential. Still Twilight read on as the pages became more and more full of hatred and vitriol, until they just stopped.
Gone were the hate filled comments, taking their place were pleas; pleas for help, for “Her” to answer her.
‘Why am I even writing these?’
‘It’s not like you’re ever going to read these, you never did before.’
The entries continued on for a few more pages, nothing but scorn for whoever was supposed to read these.
‘Please, just answer me. For once.
‘Please.’
That was the last entry for a while, page after page was just blank, or stained with something. Twilight was left thinking who this was meant for, and how it wound up in her library, as she slowly turned the old, stiff pages, until she found a new entry. A page stained with blacks and reds, and covered in harsh, jagged letters, rife with mistakes.
Major Sunset Shimmer
2nd Shock Division, 33rd Platoon. D(emon) Squad
District Commander
Canterlot
I know noones going to read this. And I know You arent reading this, you never read any of the others. Why change now.
But I need to write this down, Im starting to forget shit. Maybe somebody will actualy read this and get something from me, maybe they wont repeat the shit that I had to deal with.
I got my hands dirty, I took their eye for mine. Maybe now you can keep the world clean.
Ill tell you my tale, if you care to read it. May as well start from the begining. It doesnt matter when it was. Not like I remember anyway.
They found me in ruins of the Alpha exclusion zone, Id been living on my own there for weeks already, they sent somone to check when they saw smoke. And I landed myself in the hosptal for a few weeks from the shit I ate trying to survive. When I recovered I decided to enlist.
Well, more like I didnt have any choice. I didnt exist anywhere on this damn planet, and they offered citizenship trough service. So I signed my name, got a room and was put to work after I recovered. I didnt think it would be too bad. Id seen the guard training after all.
How fucking wrong I was.
Ysee, I had joined the Marines. The shit they put me trough make anything the guard did look like a milk run. While the Army fucks were doing 10K jogs, we were doing 20K runs. Their recruits were getting paced training in nice fields, and I got trown off a heli and trugded through mud up to my ass. They put me through hell day in and day out, but I endured it all. And I did good, got better, faster, stronger from it.
Little did I know, they threw my ass into the Raiders. Some punishment for people of my status.
I skiped the whole Private thing and entered the ranks a Corporal, getting my own squad of dumbassess to keep alive. And I put them through hell to get them up to my pace. 3 weeks of transfers and bitchin, and I had my squad of hardassed nutjobs finally capable of matching me.
Me, Aj, Pinky Pinkie, and Gilda were among the best of the FNGs. Setting records and climbing ranks. I made Sargeant in a year. And the shit kept pilling on.
That was where the entry left off, leaving Twilight to stare at the page with only more questions than she started with. Why were her friend’s names in this random old book she found? What could this mean about… about anything and everything? Did this mean that her friends transcended dimensions?
Did she? Was anything really real?
Was this all just in somepony’s imagination?
And will somepony please stop ringing that bell in her head?
…
Thank you.
Turning her attention back to the journal in front of her, Twilight started slowly flicking through the pages. Page after page of simple exercise and training descriptions, complaints of terrible food and new words for this “Platoon Commander”. Whoever that was. And it was all still rife with errors. Nothing but day after day, week after week of her daily routines, training her squad, complaining about food, equipment, and her leadership.
Countless times Twilight had to backtrack and re-read words and even entire paragraphs because of the misspellings and poor grammar. Until she found something different.
On the page in front of her wasn’t just another description of the same as before. It was her first mission.
It took up two entire pages as Twilight read it, enthralled by what was put to page, she read as Sunset and her team raided a house. Then stifled a gasp, nearly letting the book fall from her magic at the description of one of Sunset’s allies getting torn apart by an ambush. Twilight couldn’t look away from the page as she read about Sunset tearing the ambushers apart, horrified by what she was reading, but completely unable to look away.
Days and weeks went by as she flipped through the pages, describing Sunset’s journey from a simple soldier with only three under her command, as she climbed the ranks to Sergeant as she led her squad through “training” so harsh that would make even Tartarus be a vacation. Page after page was filled with descriptions of their training, of spars so intense they sent them to the hospital, of mission after mission as Sunset volunteered them for anything she could.
Turning to the next page, Twilight paused at the header.
“The Fall of Jackson.
If you made it this far, I may as well start putting some effort into this shit. It’s hard to write properly when you’re missing some rather important fingers.”
Page after page was dedicated to the Fall. From Sunset and her squad’s rushed deployment into the mega-city, to the block to block fighting with the Insurgents. Twilight read about a running battle across a massive highway, ‘firefights’ through towering skyscrapers; a chase through an underground railway, she read at the edge of her seat at the description of trains racing past them as they fought through the tunnels.
She gasped as she read about the Insurgents setting off a bomb, reading about those same towering buildings falling in on themselves; and of their restrictions being lifted. She nearly puked at the description of one of these ‘shotguns’ turning somepony into paste, but she stuck to it, skimming through the pages of horrifically descriptive violence as both sides only escalated.
Twilight’s breath hitched as she turned the page, slowly reading about the flying cannons that they called in to deal with the Insurgents; flattening ruins and levelling buildings, these spectres and angels were relentless in their hunting. She thought it couldn’t get worse, until she turned the page; and paled at the headline.
‘The death of a city.’
Twilight could barely believe her eyes as she read what happened, read of them setting off a bomb; a kind she had never heard of, not even in the ancient of ancient archives; something Sunset called a ‘Bio-bomb’. She didn’t know what it was, but the sheer description from Sunset was enough to make her sick. Scenes of thick green gas rolling through the streets, ponies rotting alive, and the screams of the dying ran through her head; one in particular stuck in her mind.
The description of Sunset as she watched one of their cats get enveloped by the gas.
‘The attack was fast and unexpected, a thousand already dead, and hundreds more soon to join them. Nobody could’ve seen this coming, no one could’ve expected them to be so suicidal to do this. Screams filled my comms, and nothing for us to do three hundred feet in the air but watch. And watch we did; as men died by the dozen below us, as gunfire rang out through the city. Nothing but a small mercy for the dead.
One such scene in particular stands out to me, a Leopard and its infantry caught in the cloud. There was nothing the crew could do but listen to their platoon die around them, one of the lucky tanks to be running sealed when the blast hit. Heh, lucky, bet they don’t feel like it.
I watched them through my thermals as they sat there for a minute, unable to comprehend what just happened around them. But then they acted, and while an act I can commend them for, it was one I would’ve dismissed them for; they fired.’
Twilight gasped again as she read the next part, face turning green as her stomach churned.
‘I watched as they racked their machine guns across their infantry as they writhed on the ground, the remote gun and their coax chattering as they turned and ran. We found them ten blocks away, having crashed into a store.
I still sometimes hear the sounds of them running over their infantry when I close my eyes.’
Twilight couldn’t take anymore, dropping the book, it clattered onto the table as she turned and puked her guts out onto the floor.
That was enough for today, Twilight decided, shoving the book away and standing up, idly magicing away her puke she started up the stairs. “I’m going to go lay down Spike.”
Unbeknownst to either of them, the book had flipped to a new page, and the glowing text that had appeared on it.
‘So, someone’s reading this, I can see you.
Now, who are you?’