~Part 4~
Kim
I was awoken with a jolt early in the morning, prior to the sun's ascension. I normally would have figured the noise I had heard to be nothing more than a nocturnal animal searching in the night for food, but something was different. I crept towards the window nearest me and peered out into the night. The full moon gleamed in the sky and illuminated the land with a piercing cyan glow. A dark figure caught my attention in the corner of my eye, so much so that I quickly and clumsily turned to see it. In doing so, the combat knife that rested in its sheath at my side slipped enough to fall out with the momentum of my body. As it collided with the floor, the dark figure turned. I froze but for a moment, then slowly slid away from the windowsill, hoping that whatever or whoever it was had not seen me.
I stepped with extreme care down the creaky staircase. Before entering the room below, I poked my head out and scanned the room. When I found it was clear, I carefully slid open the window to the left of the door and crept out. I crouched in the shadow of the cottage, listening. Waiting. A brisk winter breeze came from the opposite direction and brushed the grass. I watched the grass as it fluttered carelessly with the wind. After around a minute of waiting, I heard a whisper. "Idong Sigan!" My eyes widened as a void seemed to collapse around me, leaving me in utter shock at what I had heard.
Shit. How the hell did the North Koreans get here? I thought to myself. I knew I couldn't let them get away. Who knows what they would do to this place or the ponies living in it. I had to act fast and stealthily or I would be compromised. Going to wake the others would take too long, so I was on my own. With a sudden gust of wind, the Koreans began to move. I saw my opportunity, too. I crawled to the corner of the cottage and readied to my attack. I looked out into the meadow to see that they were no longer concealed by the tall grass that surrounded the small grove of trees in front of the cottage. 3 North Korean soldiers crawled out into the moonlight with little more than grass and weeds on their backs for makeshift ghillie suits. The gust ceased, and with it, the Koreans. Before they could continue, I leapt out of my cover and dove on the lattermost soldier, driving my knife into his back. Before the others could react, I pulled the suppressed .22 from the dead soldier's holster on his hip and fired 2 bullets into the point-man's back, and one more in the back of the middle's knee, restraining him from walking. Before he could turn around to fire at me, I jumped on top of him, crushing his back with my knee and covering his nose and mouth with the inside of my elbow until he fell unconscious.
I removed any weapons from his person, tied a cloth around his mouth so as to gag him, tied another strip of cloth around his wrists, and dragged him into the cottage. I threw him onto a chair and tied him back. The others came down in time to see me pulling up a chair in front of him as he began to come to. I sat down and shined my knife.
I decided to start with something rather discouraging. "dangsin-ui guggaga jeonjaeng-eul hangboghaessda. deo isang ssaum amu soyong-i eobs-seubnida." He stopped struggling against the bindings and his face dropped, as I told him of how his country had surrendered the war. I continued to tell him of how their beloved leader, Kim Jong Un had been arrested. He flashed a sinister grin.
"No. You arrested a double." He protested, "He is here in Equestria, safe from the dictatorship of America. You cannot stop him now." although his accent suggested otherwise, he spoke English as if he were born in the States. He turned and uttered something Korean into his shoulder, "naneun tahyeobhago issseubnida" then looked at me and grinned again.
A small red light on his shoulder turned on with a high pitched noise that increased in frequency. It was a bomb. I grabbed the back of the chair and swung it around, getting enough momentum to throw him into a distant corner of the room. I tackled the other Americans to the ground just as the bomb detonated. It was a somewhat small explosive device, thank God, so it did moderate damage to the corner of the cottage, but aside from a relatively large splinter or two, we were unharmed. The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. Everyone in Ponyville heard the explosion, no doubt, so it was best that we haul ass out of there, lest we become discovered. We gathered our gear, retreated to the forest, and were gone without a trace in 5 minutes.
We spent the next 3 days or so processing all that had just gone down. We discovered the presence of the North Korean army here, attempted to interrogate one, with moderate success learning that Kim Jong Un could possibly be here. Could the soldier really have been trusted? We had no idea if it was a lie that would eventually lead to our demise, or if it was the truth. If the latter was true, we would have no was of knowing, and we would surely come to our demise trying to figure that out. We considered leaving Equestria and leaving the ponies at the hands of the North Koreans, but what if they were to try to return to Earth? At times like these, although there is sufficient evidence as to why not to trust Washington with this kind of decision, it would be best to get help from them, anyway. We were a small patrol of 5 operators and a scientist, and we were powerless without additional forces to back us up. After much discussion, it was decided that the scientist and two operators would go back to Earth and inform Washington. The scientist would stay on Earth because of safety reasons, but if the Kim Jong Un we arrested back in Pyongyang was really a double, we would either need to get the real one, or prevent him from returning to Earth, both of which options would require more than 5 operators to do.
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We kickstarted the device, charged it up, and sent Ed (Medevac the wounded), Will (Evac the civilians from danger zone), and John (to be our messenger) back to Earth. We knew Ed wouldn't be able to return due to his wound, but he and John could both still inform Washington of the situation at hand. Meanwhile, for me, Martin, and Mark, it was finally time for a little R&R… sort of. We hadn't anything to do until we heard back from Earth. Rainbow Dash had returned to Ponyville to lie low, as some ponies knew that she was at the cottage at the time of the incident. Fluttershy (we later learned) was being interrogated by the guards as to what happened. At the time of our interrogation, Rainbow had kept her upstairs so as to give her an even more blurry image of who we were, so now she can't explain why there were two dead humans on her back lawn, or why her house was a total fucking wreck with blood on all the walls and a large scorch mark in the corner. But there was nothing we could have done to help her without the danger of getting killed.
We camped out in the trees of the Everfree forest for another 2 days. We had no idea of what was going on outside the forest, and we still weren't supposed to hear back from John for another 3 days. On that second day, we realized that we might be able to accomplish something if we didn't sit on our asses and carve sticks all day. Martin and I decided that it was in out best interests to explore the forest a little and see what we could find. Mark stayed back and watched over camp (or so we thought, for when we returned, he had a sack of coconuts that he refused to explain), while Martin and I went deeper into the forest. We hiked for at least 2 hours when we came upon a dirt path with tracks in the soil. Not just horseshoe prints, which were the only thing we expected to find, but long rows of deeply depressed soil, as if a 5 ton elephant dragged his hind legs along the path in a mechanical fashion. In case it isn't clear enough, not only were we dealing with royal guards and North Korean infantry armed to the teeth with lightweight automatic rifles, we were also dealing with North Korean heavy artillery.
"Shit. Why would they even consider that they would need tanks here?" Martin asked rhetorically.
We followed the tracks about 7 kilometers down the path, thinking we were headed deeper into the forest. We were all too wrong. We saw some buildings coming up, and thats when it hit us that we were back at Ponyville. "Well shit." I said, "And here I was thinking it was taking us to a base of some sort. Wait a second… There were no tracks here earlier today. They arrived recently." I reached for my back, only to find that my radio was off. I turned it back on and talked to Mark.
"Where the fuck were you 4 hours ago?! I was trying to call you and tell you that there are fucking tanks haulin' ass into town. I haven't seen them in a while; if I went into the open, I would have been shot to shit by the 15 infantry guys they got there!" He was breathing heavily. I explained to him that we had our radios off, and we started to follow the tracks about an hour before.
Suddenly, there was a loud Pop! We looked towards the town to find a large plume of smoke rising. We could hear screaming, followed by gunshots, followed by more screaming. Smoke rose from the buildings now in multiple places, and the screaming continued. The ponies ran everywhere, even towards us. They ran for the forest, hoping it would grant them refuge from the North Koreans. Martin and I got off the path and hid in the trees. Our radios screeched on. It was Mark, telling us to get back to our encampment. Martin and I ran back as fast as humanly possible with 30 pounds of combat gear through the dense jungle-like forest. When we arrived, Mark was loading all our spare magazines with bullets. He tossed us cleaning kits and told us to clean fast. Rainbow had already arrived, too, and she carried with her information about what happened. She told us the whole story as we cleaned our rifles.
"Everyone was gathering at the town hall to hear the mayor speak, when whoever those guys are rode in there on a few of those things and started demanding things. Nopony had any idea that they were even saying; we’ve never even heard their language before! They thought we were ignoring them, so they fired a warning shot that actually killed three unicorns and a pegasus, and then when everypony was running and screaming, they started shooting at us! Even the guards were taken by surprise, so most of them were killed too!" She began freaking out beyond measure, so Martin took a mild sedative (Originally brought for the scientists to capture house-cat-sized creatures) and injected her. She dropped in a deep sleep.
Even with all the intel in the world, 3 operatives cannot take on an entire platoon of 15 foot soldiers and 'a few' tanks. We needed back up, but to get it, we would have to wait.
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