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// Chapter 2: Life or Death 
// Story: MLP FiM: Aspects of Emotion 
// by Edge Maverick 
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MLP FiM: AoE: Chapter 2: Life or Death

All the ponies who had earlier prepared themselves for Luna’s speech now stood dumbstruck. 
All except for Ghost who immediately broke out into an insane laughter, “You honestly expect me to believe that line of bull! Ha! I sit in a cell for a month to rot away and be left to my own devices only to find out I’m Equestria’s final hope? This is a twist. Tell me Princess, is that how you treat all your heroes?”
Luna sat in silence for a moment, her eyes closed and her head down before looking up at the Unicorn colt. “Be glad your getting a second chance, plebeian, it was my sister's decision to let you come up from your cell.”
Ghost decided to shut up after a comment like that, only mumbling to himself as he gave a cold grimace.
After watching this event unfold Azure Flame stands up, his red and orange mane standing out against his blue coat and making him a target for attention as he spoke, “Princess, if I may ask, what’s in it for us? We are but simple ponies, most of us anyway. What are we to do against the forces of evil that scour the land?”
Luna looked with confidence toward the other Unicorn, “There is an arsenal, open to the militia to door down on the right as you leave this room. Once you have armed yourself with what you think you would need, enter into the room behind me. It is the war room, where we shall discuss the plan.”
“But Luna, I don’t think that-”
“Are you questioning your Princess?”
“No. Mam.” 
Azure looked down in shame at what he did, still disliking the idea of putting his life on the line, hero or not, this was just too fast.

Many of the others thought similarly. Golden Leaf was still in shock at the very idea that he was special at all. Black Mist was ready to test himself, but wondered whether or not he was truly, mentally, ready for what was to come. Bacard knew that, hero or not, the day was fast approaching that he would see the field again, and it wasn't a fun experience to begin with. Ghost, was getting excited at the idea of just seeing the outside of this castle again, no matter what the consequences. 

Sparking Sun walked toward the group, “If you would all follow me, I’ll be supporting you in equipping yourselves.” 
The group then followed, reluctantly, with the exception of Bacard and Ghost. When they cross the hall and step inside, the feeling of war begins to loom over them, while most of it is bronze, and rather beaten up, walls upon walls of weapons and armor still stood ahead of them, and along with it, the entirety of Equestria’s final battalion, a hefty six hundred ponies stood crowded gathering all the items they felt comfortable with.

“Does this place always look so,” Golden pauses for a moment, “deadly?”
“Always.” answers Bacard before walking in to the crowd.
“And boy do I love it!” shouts Ghost as he looks hungerly upon all the weapons.
Azure looks to where Sparking had been only to find that the white alicorn had left, most likely tending to duties closer to his stature. Not finding him, he leaves the rest of the group to their devices and begins to contemplate why he was here. “I've lived in Unicorn Valley all my life until Discord took it with everything else. I get here and have a chance to stay at the castle due to my privileged status as a true magi. Now that I’m here I find myself being shipped off to fight in a war against monstrosities so terrible that they've crippled our country and slaughtered our friends and family, including mine. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel right now, but I now I’m upset. I don’t like this place, not one bit.” He thought to himself. A slap on the hindquarters reminded him he was alive as Ghost looked at him and spoke, “Get outa the way if you're not gonna grab one.” and proceeded to pull a short sword off of the rack.
Meanwhile, Bacard found what he was looking for, the mare from earlier, who had fought in the sparring matches and won. She was in her armor and carried three short swords, all of which were bronze and showed the kind of claw marks that could only come from Chaos Daemon themselves. Her coat was a light green, and her mane was short and curly, her eyes glistened with the subtle pain of loneliness. 
“Hi there!” Bacard started, having to speak up over the ramble of readying soldiers.
“Hello, was there something you needed,” She looked with her eyes to see his name tag, “Bacard.”
“Yes, you see, I saw you crying earlier after your spectacular battle, and I was kind of wondering why?” Bacard questioned.
“Do you always like to peek your head in where it doesn't belong?” she retorted, a nasty, yet civilized tone to her voice.
“That’s not what this is, it’s just, if there was something wrong, I wanted to, you know-”
“Help? I was crying because the sparring match just wasn't the same as getting the chance to sink my blade into the things that murdered my friends and comrades. I was crying because I realized that at this rate I’ll never get a chance to get my revenge on Discord, and at this point, I would be willing to make a pact with evil incarnate if it meant getting the chance. So tell me, do you think you can help me?” She said with a look of cold determination in her once sad eyes, her expression slowly shifting from melancholy to sadistic rage the more she spoke.
“No…” was the only thing Bacard could say, and while she was obviously broken, he still felt some attachment. He felt like he could relate to her in some fashion. And in some, sick way, he felt the same about all this, although he could never admit it.
The two stood there for a moment before Bacard broke eye contact and looked to the ground in nervousness before making his way to the group of “Heroes” for which he was expected to join.
They all seemed shockingly cheery for a group about to face their deaths, and so Bacard stayed quiet, feeling just a tad out of place.

A day later, the group found themselves boarding a boat to head down the river at the base of Canterlot Mountain. They had gotten used to each other by now, and they tended to stay quiet due to the amount of nervousness held amongst the group. 
In only five hours they would be upon Neighagra Falls to see what had settled in after all the attacks. The inside of the falls held a cave where they had trained many an elite soldier a couple years ago, but when the Crystal Empire was retaken by Sombra, the operation was moved back into Canterlot. Or at least, that’s what their superiors had told them. Ever since they got on this ship they had been met by too many new faces for them to honestly keep track of, much to the dismay of ponies such as Golden Leaf and Azure, who weren't used to talking to people at all, much less an entire sixty four pony platoon. 
After four hours, the group had had enough, and ascended the steps onto the deck, hoping for excitement, instead what they found was a general sense of terror as a black fog came upon the boat and began to rise into shapes.
They all readied their weapons, including Golden Leaf, who had a spear, as they all backed into a circle with the other ten to fifteen soldiers still on deck ready to swing at anything that came near.
“What’s going on?” Golden Leaf said, hoping to get a nice peaceful reply.
“These are Sombra’s creatures forming in front of us…” Azure answered as he looked at the smoky beings with awe and wonder.
“Fabulous, now how do we hit them?” Ghost asked what he believed to be a smart ass named Azure.
“We will only have to hit them once for their form to dissipate, sadly, it seems that they've got us outnumbered five to one here.” Azure answered. 
“Fine with me.” Bacard spoke up as he prepared himself to strike.
“As with me.” Replied the mare from earlier as the shadow ponies stepped closer.
“This is not beyond my capabilities.” Stated Black Mist as he stared the creatures down.
Bacard looked to her again and said, “Incase we die here, what’s you-”
“My names Cherry Pie, and I can’t die yet, so don’t expect it.” She replied before lunging in to the shadows, swiping across two at a time and starting the combat. 
The soldiers went next, swinging their sword at the monsters and ending their fowl lives. But as the rest of the party moved forward to attack, Bacard was slashed at by one of the creatures crumpling him to the ground and forming a series of three claw marks on his face, all of them beginning to bleed profusely.
Moral was almost instantly broken as the group realized that these things could hurt them and began to fall back into their circle. One, two and then three of the soldiers fell as the creatures stole the initiative. 
“Everyone stand back! This spell could mean life or death!” Azure Flame shouted as his horn began to glow with a fiery blue aura.
The group parted for him as enemy after enemy flooded onto the boat.
“Work faster you fucking magi!” Ghost yelled back as he parried the attacks of three different shadow creatures.
“Now!” Azure said as a blue ball of energy lifted from his horn and then exploded into thirty or forty needles worth of energy, hitting everything around them, and annihilating the creatures.
Now standing in the front and turning to pose, a very large shadow beast, covered in bone and some flesh, formed in the shape of a lion and crawled up the ship behind him.
Azure’s fame was short lived as the crowd saw it behind him and cowered.
The only words that Azure bothered to muster when he saw the shadow form over him was, “You've got to be kidding me…”