//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: The Howlers' Delight 
// by Night Striker 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 4


Somewhere in the Everfree Forest

“Somepony! Anypony! Help us!”
The screams echoed out over the Everfree Forest and into the ears of no-one. The dark shadow drew closer and closer to the poor couple that had made the bad decision to wander into the Everfree Forest. They cowered underneath the glowing red eyes and sharp teeth of the monster. They drew closer and closer to the poor couple until they were in range of their deadly claws.
Their bloodcurdling screams cut through the air.
Silence returned to the forest.

Garret

I woke up after a strange dream of seeing a poor pegasi couple die. Dismissing that as PTSD, I continued the endless struggle to open my eyes. That’s when I felt something warm on my side.
I cracked my eyes open a bit and saw a red and orange mane in my vision.
“What the hell?!” I yelled, scaring the poor mare awake. “What the hell?! Fast Skies, how did you get in here?!”
She slowly pointed a shaky hoof to the large hole in the side of my tent. A loud smack echoed around the barn, waking up all the soldiers in the process. When they all wandered around, trying to find the source of the sound they all noticed the hole in my tent and burst out laughing.
“Yeah, yeah, real freaking funny. Laugh it up, assholes.”
I walked around a bit until I found the small group cooking MRE’s on the engine of the Humvee. “Why aren’t you just using water?” I asked, walking around them to see it better.
“Well,” one of them replied sluggishly, most likely one of the drunks. “It’s better to cook it this way because it saves the water for drinking. Not to mention that since we are Delta we get the cars that can run on bio-fuels.”
I shrugged and took some of the eggs and sausage and sat down with a big ‘ol mug of coffee.

Fast Skies

I woke up in Garret’s tent without a clue of how the buck I got in there besides a hole in the tent wall. After fully waking up and chugging enough water and Tylenol to kill a Hydra, I decided to find where the commander went.
I saw him over in a seat in their horseless carriage eating, so I decided to go and join him.
When I landed next to him he jumped and laughed at the funniness of being scared by me. After he asked the soldiers to get me a cup of this “coffee” that supposedly wakes you up.
After I tasted some of this, which I instantly labeled as just a flavored form of caffeine, I continued along chatting and watching the CO eat. That’s when i noticed some sort of brown food that smelled strange. While the commander was too busy chewing to answer my question of what it was, I took one and started to eat it.

Garret

So here I was, just eating breakfast and drinking some coffee, when Fast Skies scares the shit out of me. It was all funny, though. That was, it was until she decided to eat one of my sausages. I immediately slapped her across the face, getting her to spit it out. She then burst out into a huge temper tantrum. But I can understand that part... Sort of...
So after she stopped crying a bit, I apologized and told her that she was trying to eat meat. This seemed to shock her a lot because she had almost swallowed the damn thing but after I told her this she bawled her eyes out again and started to thank me over and freaking over until she put me into a choke hold. I swear she would put a WWE champion to shame. After that nothing really eventful happened until the girls ran in.

Twilight

I was taking my morning stroll along the Everfree Forest when something strange caught my eye. When I walked over to it, I found that they were two bodies. More specifically, the bodies of Lightning Storm and Cloud Kicker. Two of the best weather ponies around. Why they were dead I had no idea. Why they were in the Everfree Forest I had some idea. The two had been dating for months now, but what killed them, I had no clue. The only marks of the attackers were long scratch wounds running along the length of their bodies, cutting deep lacerations into their bodies. I saw a long shadow snake around the tree. It looked bipedal almost.
I ran into town and didn’t stop running until I arrived at the library. I ran into the library and called for Spike. I wrote a letter to Princess Celestia on red emergency parchment. It read as follows:
“Come quick. Something bad is going on. Twilight.”
Immediately after Spike sent that letter, a bright flash filled the library. When it dimmed, Princess Celestia appeared before the girls. Twilight quickly explained what had happened and about the humans to the Princess. Although disturbed that they had so quickly murdered her guard, Twilight hastily explained that they were acting in self-defense, and that they had not gotten used to Equestria yet. The Princess wanted to immediately see the humans, so they set off in a sprint towards the barn.

Sam
        “For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good felloooooooow...” sang the soldiers and Fast Skies or “Sky” as she has now been called, celebrating a private’s birthday with a horribly out of tune song. Meanwhile, I was less-than-enthusiastically participating, more interested in my book than the singing.
        The singing quickly stopped when the barn doors slammed open, followed by blazing sunlight as a very tall figure walked in. While I had observed that most ponies in this land, apparently called “Equestria” by the natives, were a little over four feet, this one was at least six feet tall, taller than even me and the soldiers. This pony had both a horn and wings, a combination I had not yet seen, white fur, a multi-colored mane, and several pieces of jewelry. This must have been the Princess Celestia that Twilight had mentioned.
        “Hello. You are the Princess, I presume?” I asked, casually looking up from my book.
        “I am Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria and Bringer of the Sun. You are the humans that crashed into Equestria?”
        “We are.” 
“Care to explain why one of my guards is dead?”
“Yeeahhh... Sorry about the dead guard... It was a tense and confusing situation.”
        “Tragic, but it is forgiven. Although, there are other matters at hand,” the Princess said.
        “We found two dead bodies,” Twilight spoke up.
        Garret did a spit-take. “Bodies?! What the hell happened?!”
        “My pupil, Twilight, came across the bodies of two pegasi in the Everfree Forest. She says that they appeared to have been killed by creatures with claws of some sort.”
        “We haven’t figured out exactly what it is, but it’s nothing that we have seen lately. It’s actually very uncommon for ponies to be killed by some other creature...”
        “Alrighty, then. Let’s go check it out,” I said, closing my book. Some of the soldiers looked uneasy at the prospect.
        “Wait, why do we even care?” a soldier asked.
        “Well, we don’t have anything better to do,” Garret pointed out.
        “And besides, you soldiers care more about the protection of civilians than your own lives, right? Well, I’m a civilian, I’m going to check it out, and my life is at risk. Now, you can either let me go out there and possibly die a horrible death by the claw of a monster, or you can help us out.”
        “Meh. You can go on your own,” a soldier replied. He was promptly punched in the face by Garret
        “Well, it’s decided,” Garret said. “Let’s go.”

Garret
        We drove for a bit into the Everfree Forest, following a moderately-used trail that led deep into the woods. The entire time, the ponies seemed uncomfortable at the thought of riding in a carriage that didn’t have the need to be pulled by other ponies. When we arrived at the spot that Twilight indicated, I had the drivers form a perimeter with the Humvees and put a man on each gunnery turret. This created a large protective field of view for us to work safely in.
        Sam stepped out of the Humvee I was in and walked up to the bodies, seemingly untouched since Twilight found them. He crouched next to them for a minute, examining them.
        “Well, they were killed by something with claws. It seems that they were killed instantly, given their expressions. I wouldn’t say that they have been here long, since nothing seems to be growing on them and that they are still faintly warm... But it’s been a while. They were probably killed late last night,” he reported, standing up.
        “Horrifying,” Rarity commented. “What beast could do this?”
        “I’m not sure. Do you know of anything that could do this, Princess?” Sam asked.
        “There is nothing that comes to mind. However, there does seem to be traces of evil magic here. Pure evil...” Celestia said.
        Everyone was silent for a moment. Evil magic seemed like such a fairytale until it was staring you in the face.
        “Well, we might be able to find something if we look in the Canterlot libraries,” Twilight said.
        “Canterlot?” Jake asked.
        “Canterlot is the capital city of Equestria,” Celestia replied.
        “Well, a bunch of humans walking into Canterlot can’t seem good to the ponies there... Is there some kind of way we can transform ourselves? Temporarily, though?” Sam asked.
        “Sure, there’s something I can perform. I can actually make it so that you transform on will, too,” Celestia answered.
        “Well, that simplifies everything,” Sam replied. “Let’s perform it back at the barn, okay?”
        “Wait,” I interrupted, “What about the Humvees?”
        “We can store ‘em in a barn,” Applejack replied. “We’ve actually got a few ones we don’t use too often, so they make great places to store big things like them Humvees.”
“But I don’t feel so good about leaving behind four trillion dollars worth of weapons and vehicles.” I said.
“Garret, shut up,” Sam said. “They’re definitely not four trillion dollars. More like four million dollars. That I needed in funding...”
“Well, I’m sorry that we were kicking Iran’s ass so you don’t get your precious little lab blown up,” I replied.
“Meanwhile, I’m furthering humanity’s knowledge of the universe, but whatever,” Sam retorted. “Let’s just leave them in the shed. I think the Princess can put some powerful seal on the door to keep robbers out. Besides, what pony can even consider driving one of these?” He said as he slammed the hood of the Humvee. I cringed for some reason.
“Lyra can,” said Twilight. “Now that I mention it, she did draw some creatures called ‘humans’ in school...”
“Son of a bitch, they invented us,” Jake said.
Sam and I countered this by pulling something that should be in the Three Stooges.
The three of us were eventually pulled apart and turned into ponies by Celestia’s magic, along with the rest of the squad.
“Son of a...” Jake said. “How the hell do I turn into a human again?”
“Hm... Interesting. I like it,” Sam said.
“Pussy,” said a soldier.
Jake was turned into an earth pony, Sam was turned into a pegasus, and Garret was a...
“Ha! Look at me i’m so awesome!” I said galloping around.
“Whoops,” Celestia said, and used her magic to remove his wings. “Can’t have your dreams be fulfilled that easily, can we?”
“Aw...” I said.
“That was for Golden Star’s untimely death,” she said, and brought back his wings. “And this is for helping us.”
“Whoop!” I shouted, doing a backflip in the air. I continued to trot around Sam, taunting him until the other soldiers joined in the taunting with the CO causing one big pony-pile on Sam. Celestia couldn’t help but laugh at the sight.
“Take that, science!” an overly-religious soldier shouted.
“Celestia,” I said, after prompting her to turn to me. “I have one question that’s very important.”
“What is it?” she asked, sounding concerned.
“I want us to bring our weaponry with us, just in case.
“But why would you do such a thing?”
Suddenly a roar was heard.