//------------------------------// // The War // Story: Forgotten Soldier; Wrong War // by rocketlvr //------------------------------// Victor woke up in carousel boutique; he had no recollection of how he had gotten there as his last memory had been getting shots for pain before getting stitches. He hated needles and vaguely remembered being held down as he punched somepony in the face. He stretched, yawned, and scratched his nose, only to find that he couldn't scratch it. His hand was swathed in a decent amount of bandages, and as is custom with Murphy's law his hand had an itch. He tried to ignore it, but it only got worse. Eventually, he decided "screw this" and carefully unwrapped his hand, as the last of the bandages came off he saw the work which the doctors had done. His hand looked quite good, a few stitches were on the sides of his had with one large one going across his palm but other than that not much damage was visible. Incredibly carefully, he flexed his hand and felt no pain, he repeated the action faster and concluded that the doctors had done damn fine work. ***************************************************** Chrysalis smiled, her army was ready. They had dealt with Trottingham with ease, no word of its fall had reached royal ears. Discord's corruption had converted nearly all of the Griffon and Minotaur armies and the entire outer settlements of Equestria. Due to the entire corruption of the border towns her entire army was literally able to walk right in. She would attack first with the ponies, not only to protect her own more valuable forces but to also crush Celestia. She knew how much her "beloved subjects" meant to her, and she wanted to see Celestia destroyed. ******************************************************** Victor was sitting at the kitchen table in Carousel Boutique. Sweetie Belle was cooking with the Crusaders because they wanted to see if they could get foreign food making cutie marks. Victor had already disabled the smoke alarms and was prepared for the worst. He was instructing the creation of breakfast burritos and dear god was it terrible. He was an awful chef himself, having subsisted near solely off of MRE's, graham crackers, and chocolate bars for the last 3 years in service and cooking nothing more sophisticated than instant scrambled eggs. All the windows had been opened previously but that did almost nothing to let out the smell of burning tortilla, and egg. The fruits of their labor 15 minutes later resulted in 4 tubes brown mush trapped in side a haphazardly folded, slightly burned tortilla. He looked at their hideous creations and took one tentative bite. His mouth set on fire and turned inside out as the overpowering burned bread flavor mixed perfectly like an elixir of death with the hot sauce they later used to drown it in to unsuccessfully try masking the burning taste; he lobbed the wretched thing out the window and attempted to wash the flavor out of his mouth with hot chocolate. The cutie mark crusaders who had also tried them did the exact same thing. "This is terrible!" Applebloom said "Well cooking is definitely not one of our strong suits" Sweetie Belle replied "Maybe we can get our cutie marks in poison brewing" Scootaloo said wryly. A feminine scream sounded from outside, "maybe she tried one of those burritos" Victor joked. His laugh was quickly silenced by the hatchet which spun through the window, getting lodged in the wall not 10 inches from his head. His training snapped in almost instantaneously "get upstairs NOW" he said as he picked them all up and carried them upstairs. He dropped them off in Rarity's bedroom, who wasn't there at the moment because she had decided to leave for a walk the second she knew Sweetie Belle would be cooking. "Lock the door, and don't open it for anyone except me and Rarity" "Where are you goin'?" Applebloom asked with a face of concern. "I'm gonna go and find out what's going on, hatchets don't just fly at heads for no reason. Do NOT open this door okay? and DO NOT leave the room, someone really dangerous could be out there and I don't wanna see you get hurt." and with that he shut the door and left. Sweetie Belle locked it and Scootaloo asked "did he just say someone instead of somepony?" "I think so" Applebloom replied "That's so WEIRD!" ************************************************** Victor ran downstairs to the room he had been sleeping in. All his stuff was there, he threw on his helmet, armor, and vest grabbed an m4 and a USP .45 and left the house. The first thing he saw was a pink pony with a daisy cutie mark sitting outside the building staring off vacantly into space. "Ma'am what's going on out here? I heard a yell and an axe flew through our window....... Ma'am?" He gently shook her shoulder and she flopped over exposing the back of her head, or what was left of it. "Oh Fucking shit! What the Hell!?" her head looked like it had been smashed with a ball peen hammer or a bat. Large amounts of brain were splattered about. He was about to to call for help when another pony ran up and bucked him causing him to fly a few feet and land on his back underneath a colossal stallion. His coat looked a grey red and he had a face of malice. "Just where do you think you're going ape creature?" he reared up and tried to bring his hooves down onto Victor's head. He rolled away at the last second and brought about his m4 and fired two quick rounds into the pony's chest. The pony screamed in agony before collapsing to the ground, but Victor paid it no attention as he was already looking at the war zone around him. There were burning buildings and several corpses; grey coated ponies wielding everything from clubs to axes to swords and they were all chasing after vibrantly colored normal ponies. Victor shouted out at no one in particular "What the HELL is going on?!?!" His outburst went unanswered but his attention was suddenly diverted to a scream that sounded an awful lot like Rarity's. "Just what do you think you're doing ruffian?!" She said as she bucked a knife wielding pony to the ground. "YO RARITY!" Victor cried out waving. She turned to look at him and promptly galloped over. "Victor, what's going on?! I was on my way to Sugar cube corner for a quick bite to eat when all these ponies just started attacking us!" "Your guess is as good as mine-" He paused for a second as the knife wielding pony ran at them screaming. The m4 was raised, barked twice and the upper portion of the pony's head exploded before his body flailed around a bit then flopped lifelessly to the ground. Rarity stood there gobsmacked at his sudden and violent actions. "Don't worry he's dead, they just flop around a bit when you shoot them in the head." "I'm not surprised that that poor creature was flailing, I'm terrified that you just killed him like that!" "Well he was gonna kill us you know..." She glared at him for a moment before shaking her head and ignoring his statement. "We need to find Twilight" "Waaaaay ahead of yah" "Wait a moment, where's Sweetie Belle and her friends? are they okay?" "Yeah they're fine, hiding out in your bedroom. I told them not to open the door for anyone except you or me." "Oh thank Celestia, I think I should go check on them and keep them safe. You go find Twilight and the others and meet back here." She then galloped off to carousel boutique. Victor watched to ensure she was safe and then turned around to find the others. First was Twilight; Her house was the closest to Rarity's. In fact, he could see it from where he was. He made a mad dash for it. As he was running he saw a knife hurtling for him, he ducked it, Only to be forced into dodging several other pointed objects. He jumped over a dead pony with a sword sticking out of its chest and fired at another pinning a pony to the ground with a knife at its throat. The rounds hit it three times in the neck and chest. He sprinted the next 50 feet and made it to Twilght's house and tried to open the door. It was barricaded, and so he backed up fired a round through the window and jumped through it. He landed hard on the wooden floor and struggled to get up, only to be stopped by a wooden spoon held to his throat. Spike was "armed" with a spoon and wore a pot on his head as a sort of helmet. "Oh! Victor, thank goodness you're here. All these ponies have gone crazy!" "Yeah, I kinda noticed. Is Twilight okay? I'm trying to find everyone and get them to Rarity's place?" "Yeah, Twilight's fine. She's been trying to contact Celestia for the past hour or so. She's used everything from letters, mail, telephone, telegraph, even smoke signals! But she can't reach her." "Well, I'm afraid you both are gonna have to come with me." Almost as if on cue, a flaming arrow flew through the window, and set a book case on fire. "Preferably now" Spike nodded and they both ran upstairs to find Twilight sitting down in a corner of her room sobbing. Spike reached for her shoulder and she turned around with tears in her eyes. "we can't stop this, WE CAN'T STOP THIS!!!" she started crying and sobbing without so much as a single cohesive word. She lunged out at Victor in a sort of hug/crazy moment. He picked her up off of him and smacked her quite hard across the face. "TWILIGHT!" She had stopped crying. "TWILIGHT, FOCUS! WE NEED YOU TO FOCUS!!!" She was still shuddering but much more collected. She took a few shakey breaths before speaking. "You're right, I have to help them... everypony.... there's too much blood shed already. What's your plan?" "... follow me to Rarity's. I wanna gather everybody up and then act together. What about those elements of harmony? Don't you still have those?" "That's why I was panicing, they're... they're gone....and now we can't save anypony... we can't stop this....WE----" she caught herself and sighed. I have no idea why or how they're gone. The only ponies who've been aware that we've had them were that royal guard brigade during Pinkie's manticore party. But, Shining armor was with them so they'd never.... oh Celestia.... Shining armor..... he was....... NOOOOOOO!!!!" She starting smacking her head against the wall. "STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID..." "I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH HIM, I KNEW IT..... NOW PONIES ARE DEAD..... AND IT'S ALL MY FAULT!". Victor could smell smoke, he even saw the glow of the flames in the stair well. He put his arm around Twilight's shoulders. "Sometimes it's too late to save a man... We must hurry before we join them in death." He wasn't even sure if Twilight had heard or was listening to him, but nevertheless, he scooped her up in his arms. "Spike! come on! we have to get out of here now!" He ran towards the stairwell to find the entire lower floor engulfed in flames. He gagged on the smoke and ran back to Twilight's room. He looked around for an exit, the only one seemed to be a rather large window. Outside was a thirty foot straight drop to the ground. The only safe place to land was a very inconveniently placed cart load of hay a good 20 feet from the tree. Basically an incredibly dangerous long jump. "Jesus, this is just like assassin's creed... Hey Spike!" the little dragon trotted up to him "You couldn't jump into that cart could you?" "Of course not! It's way to far." "Fuck, okay... I'm gonna have to throw you." "Throw me!?" "yeah it's the only way!" "I'm a dragon, I'm fire proof, I could just head down the stairs!" "Well you aren't axe proof, and I recall three ponies with axes right outside" "R-really?" "Yes! now come on! I gotta throw you before the whole building comes down!" The fire was rapidly spreading up the stairs and the doorway was now ablaze. "Oh Shit! come on!" with that he dropped Twilight, grabbed spike by his legs and hurled him out the window. Time seemed to go in slow motion as the little dragon's arms flailed in the air. He miraculously landed in the hay cart unharmed and scampered out and away in the direction of Rarity's house. At that moment a flaming rafter fell out from the ceiling right in front of him. Victor picked Twilight up again, and looked around and saw that the majority of the room was now ablaze. Cursing repeatedly under his breath he backed up to a corner of the room, eyes set on the window. He draped Twilight over his shoulders, inhaled deeply and sprinted for the opening. With a great cry of "SHIIIIIIIIITTT" he cast himself out the window, aiming for the small cart far below.