//------------------------------//
// Extinction 
// Story: Preemptive 
// by Cynical Brony 
//------------------------------//

	Shining Armour had awoken, but not before being plagued by nightmares of the horrors of what had befell his country within the last month. Knowing that the things that attacked him and his country would arrive soon, he simply sat upright and enjoyed the peace as it lasted. 
However,as he heard the dreaded sound of metal striking the ground, as he had so many times before, he could only imagine what Canterlot, the final city still under Equestrian control, would have to face. With his heart beating, he teleported onto the ramparts to check on the ballistas, catapults, and archer towers that had been erected on the walls surrounding the city. But he knew. As he wondered, inspecting the defenses, he knew it was only a matter of time before they were overcome.
He had been there for the Battle of Ponyville. The Defense of Trottingham. Even the damned Fall of Cloudsdale. He chuckled at the irony of the title given to the name of that last one. 
But the attackers were nothing to laugh at. They came in droves, piling in by the hundreds, not stopping, unrelenting, merciless....once they had started, they never stopped. However, the most horrifying part was that they were always getting bigger, different machines during each assault, each wave getting new weaponry and an even more dangerous array of firepower. 
It had started with a giant, two legged, two armed, metal monstrosity appearing towards the north of Equestria, but only after a flash of light and an explosion rocked Equus, and, without saying a word or without a hint of attempting to communicate, began to make strange structures that began making even more weird things that just multplied. The princesses said it would be fine, that it might only want peace and knowledge.
Not hours later, bipedal, fast moving, pony-sized monsters the Guards had dubbed "LABs", for "Light Assault Bots" had been seen. They were equipped with two crossbow-like wielders on each of it's appendages on either side of it's body, which may have not been that powerful, but were enough to dent the chestplates if you were unlucky enough to get hit by one. But, there were hordes of them and that had been enough of a problem. However, other monstrosities started joining their ranks within hours. Giant weapon platforms on treads, with a ballista-like contraption mounted on it which caused explosions wherever it lay it's eye upon. 
Eventually, the things that were coming against them got more and more powerful, such as the giant, flying saucer that attacked cloudsdale, whilst a giant beam of blue came from it's orifice in the center, and destroyed anything in it's path. It also stored hundreds of machines similar to pegasus, in the fact they flew fast and dealt extreme damage upon anything else in the sky. But there were several other types of creatures that came from the fathoms of that damned disk, anything from huge, slow angels of death that flew from above, and dropped a light that erupted on the ground causing nothing but pain and suffering, to silver-colored rectangles equipped with some sort of magical rapid-firing machine that sprayed green bolts to everything within it's reach.
And now, they were at their last stand. He shivered at the thought of having to face these again. He had already had to teleport out of each battle, as his forces had been overwhelmed each time. He already pleaded to the other nations for help, but instead, they had closed their doors and grew selfish and greedy, protecting only themselves and leaving the weak nations to die; and before long, Equestria was all that was left. There were still several different races inside of Canterlot, but Griffons had proved to be invaluable to their defense; they could take to the sky and go head to head with the beasts of the air, or land, and tackle the overwhelming ground face on. 
But there weren't that many left, there weren't much of ANYTHING left, but they had to make due. After all, they wouldn't go down without a fight. Shining could only hope that Celestia had a Deus Ex Machina up her sleeve, one that would let them win a war, to show them a path for victory. I mean, she had to, right? We always won, we're the good guys, right?
Shining nodded to three young fillies that trotted by, fillies he had recognized as Scootaloo, Applebloom, and Sweetie Belle. He sighed. Everyone had to fight now, even the young. It was a damned shame, they seemed like they had long, happy, prosperous lives ahead of them, with talents, although unbeknownst to them, their determination would've gotten them far in life. Would've. The situation was hopeless, they couldn't hold off the aliens for long. But they had to try.
Shining picked up one of the Magic Rifles that had just recently started production, their main weapon of defense, a long, metal, rifle able to load cartridges that housed magic trapped in crystals, which fired at sonic speeds, and packing a major punch, as well. Unicorns had experimented with the Zebras, in trying to come up with different varieties of weaponry in order to combat the new threat. Although they were successful, all of Equus was still losing.
Shining walked to one of the archer towers, and looked over Canterlot, once a great city full of wealth and the rich, now turned into the last remaining stronghold on their world. It made Shining melancholy, to see that it took the extinction of almost the entire indigenous population of Equestria to work with other races. But it was too late now; the monsters were closing in, and unless Celestia had an ace up her sleeve, they were doomed.
As the breeze rustled Shining's mane, a bright flash of yellow shone from behind him.
"Really makes you wonder, to see that it took so much, so much loss, to make us be more cooperative, right?" He asked, knowing full well that he should be addressing the near-diety mare as "Ma'am", or "General". But he decided not too; he knew she wasn't one for formality.
"Indeed. Sometimes, it takes the worst of life to bring out the best in us." Celestia replied, with a calm and collected face. She wore golden, elegant armor that had been specially made as a gift from the Minotaurs, only days before their country was desolated, not out of exodus, but out of nothing left to exit. Her face bore the scars of war, and a burn running down her left eye as an accident left from the massive explosion that had erupted as a result of a giant silo impacting the ground.
"Do you have something, anything to hold them off? We both know that we will lose, no matter how much of a fight we put up." Shining asked, praying that she did.
Celestia opened her mouth to say something, but closed it before words came out. "I have been too busy using my magic to protect this city from the giant missiles that caused the disintegration of Baltimare."...the very same city that had left Celestia her burn whilst she was caught unprepared. However, she had been able to raise a personal shield powerful enough to protect her from the explosion.
"I am sorry, Armour....I know you have tried, but all good things must eventually come to an end." She closed her eyes.
Shining knew what she was thinking about; the loss of her Sisters, Twilight, Discord....everything she held dear (ignoring the fact that Discord had only been recently reformed), had been killed within the last month trying to buy her time to live on, to continue to fight, to try to save her doomed kind, but it had all been in vain.
Luna, had fought in the first battle, in Ponslyvania, where she had sacrificed her and her guard to give the civilians to evacuate the area, and in doing so, sparked a fire in everypony, and Equestria's military might had tripled from the amount of volunteers inspired by her sacrifice. 
Cadence, who had stood by her lover in the defense of the Crystal Empire, and the monsters had endured the harsh cold and pressed inside of the Crystal Dome, after hitting it with unrelenting force for hours, and when Cadence had faltered, they had moved in and destroyed all the homes, slaughtering the innocent women and children, and making the Crystal Palace fall. Cadence had protected armor from the debris, and teleported him to Celestia, before activating the Crystal Heart and destroying anything within the Empire.
Twilight and her friends, who had made their stand at Ponyville, their home, the place where their adventures had begun, and had used the elements of harmony to carve their way through the hundreds of machines that marched to destroy their town, and had even managed to lead the Solar Guard to the newly made fort constructed by the defilers that appeared not just a couple weeks ago. However, shortly after laying their eyes upon the fort, not even the Elements of Harmony could withstand the might of the lasers that erupted from the shield domes they lay behind, and in a flash, the EoH were gone, followed by hundreds of four legged, black underbodied spiders had crawled out from behind the blue shields, and began to fire from their red-covered dual rifled tops that had ripped through armor, and only, truly, stopped by magic.
And finally, Discord. He may have had the most heroic display of all, protecting the entire city of canterlot from one of the missles the aliens fired, one of the kind that caused Baltimare. Before Celestia had been able to come up with a spell to protect their last stronghold from those ungodly bringers of destruction, and moved in front of one in order to absorb the damage himself. The explosion was spectacular, but with the cost of the God of Chaos, it only made everypony realize how close they were, how close they ARE, from death....from extinction. 
And here they were. The last city.  But that was when they heard it, the sound of the Metal Army approaching from the railroads leading into the front gate. 
"Here they come..." He muttered, shortly before he started yelling out orders and defensive positions. The battle may have been a decisive loss, but that doesn't mean they could take down as many as they could. 
"I must return to my post, in case they launch another Death Missle." She dubbed the missle, the one that destroyed so much, before teleporting back to the central castle, to keep watch for more incoming.
However, as soon as shining started to direct his troops to hold them at the chokehold that was the main gate, a myriad of giant, flying machines that harbored hundreds, no, thousands of the metal beasts, of the same kind that were breaking through the gate as Shining watched in awe, flew up the cliffs, and dropped them throughout the city, completely bypassing their air defense and their patrols with sheer numbers. And from there, Shining could only watch as Canterlot was taken, and as one of the monstrosities came face to face with him, he noticed a plethora of explosions rocking the castle, making it crumble, and kill anyone still left inside of it. 
"No..." was all he could mutter, as the barrel extended at him expunged a bright, blue, light that would be the last thing he would see.




________________________________________________Coalition Command_____________________07-24-3915______
_____________Debrief:________Commander_Maddox_____________________________________________________
_____________Operation:_PREEMPTIVE________________________________________________________________
_____________Status:_Success_______________________________________________________________________
_____________CLASSIFIED//:LEVEL5CLEARENCE_ONLY



Commander Maddox, congratulations! Another victory for the coalition, those aliens could have been making something worse than the Seraphim, something that we didn't know about. But, no one needs to know about our little operation, right? The other commanders that were dropped have been informed to stay silent, after all, the public would try to hang us for destroying alien life without reason, heh. But, after trying to reason with aliens the first time, we had spiraled into a war that lasted a thousand years, and the second time, we were almost driven to extinction! But this time, THIS time, we will not let anything else kill us off. Good work commander, good work....

-Brigadier Fletcher.