I Have Returned Chapter 7:
Attack on Canterlot
Private Steel Strong sat atop the Canterlot Castle guard tower. He looked up upon her majesties Celestia’s grand sun. Its brightness forced him to raise his hoof over his eyes. While he did have to wake up early every morning, it was worth it for a job like this. Most ponies were jealous of castle guards, and nopony blamed them. The life of a guard, while was boring, it was easy. Equestria had never experienced a war in generations, all that he ever had to do was stand around, and get paid. It was the perfect way to live. Almost nothing ever bad happened, and if something did go wrong usually the princess, or the elements took care of it.
He took in a deep breath, and exhaled with a smile on his face. Another relaxing day, just like all of the others, and once again, nothing would go wron--
BANG!!!!
A loud nose erupted through the cold morning air, and the young guard’s life ended as a sniper bullet tore through his head at an almost unmatched speed. The resulting collision blew his head apart scattering bits of his brain all over the soldier next to him, who screamed in response before the next bullet hit him.
Back on the ground Jane marveled her kill, and simply said. “Boom, headshot.”
Her attention quickly turned towards Crimson, who shot the other guard. “Nice shot.” She told him. “But there are civilians in that building, so don’t shoot anyone without armor. Also, there will be two big horses in the building, one white one blue, only shoot to injure them.”
“Any particular reason?” He asked.
Jane thought about her response. “Let’s just say I want to have a little talk with them.”
“Fair enough.” He responded, before the two jumped from their hiding spot, surprising the ponies in the garden. Crimson grabbed his battle rifle, and Jane brought out her SAW. The two immediately started firing at the nearby guards. Bullets whipped through the air at a break neck pace, each of them hitting their targets with pinpoint accuracy.
Hear the gunshots; four more guards came around the corner. The instant they saw the two Spartans with their backs to them, they threw their spears hoping for a quick kill. Both of them collided with their targets, but their armors shields weren’t even nicked. This prompted both of the humans to turn around, and fire their weapons at the hopeless ponies.
After that Crimson and Jane ran inside the castle only to be greeted by even more guards. One by one they each fired magical blasts at their alien adversaries, none of which even affected the Spartans shields. Seeing this, the guards started to panic and run away as they were easily gunned down by Jane.
“Sheesh and I thought grunts were easy.” Jane said.
“Aren’t you enjoying this a little too much?” Crimson responded.
Before she could respond, a gasp of air came from one of the guards bleeding out on the floor. She walked forward to him as he scrambled to get up onto his hooves. He finally managed to get up, only to have Jane punch him down, and hold him in place with her foot. He looked up at her with fear in his deep navy blue eyes, and said. “Please, have mercy.”
While she couldn’t see it through her helmet, she looked down upon him with disgust. “Begging for mercy, you are a sad excuse for a soldier.” She said before releasing her foot, only to use it to stop on his neck, killing the young guard.
She looked up, only to see more guards in horror. Upon seeing what she did to their friend, they each dropped their weapons, and started to run away, or cower in fear. Jane Raised her SAW in response, and fired, brutally ending the lives of each pony in front of her. The two made their way by a near staircase, which lead to the main floor where the throne room was, and another very special room that she had to show to Crimson.
Jane was the first to make it up the stairs, only to have a pegasus guard fly right at her with a hoof extending as is it was going to punch her. With relative ease, Jane dodged her attacker (not that his attack would of hurt her anyways), and grabbed his back hoof. The guard let out a yelp, knowing that he had made a big mistake, and Jane hurled the pegasus with all of her might into a nearby wall crushing most of the bones in his body.
Two unicorns from the next stair level jumped down onto the Spartans hoping to surprise them. Crimson noticed them on his radar, quickly pulling out a magnum and shooting one before he could even get close. Jane on the other hand didn’t have the same reaction time. The unicorn landed on Jane, and started to charge up his horn for an attack. Before he could do that, Jane grabbed the horn of her advisory and ripped it off, causing the guard to scream in pain like a banshee. She threw him on the ground, and pinned him down, then she proceeded to jab the unicorns horn into his eye, and through his brain.
“So, how far are we from these artifacts?” Crimson asked.
“Not far, but we’re going somewhere else first.”
“Somewhere else? I thought our number one priority was to get those helements of armory, or whatever the fuck you called them earlier.”
“Elements of Harmony, and we will get them. But what I want to show you, will answer all of your questions.”
“Fine then.” Crimson Replied. “It’s about time I got some answers.”
The two started making their way over to the room she wanted to show him. They encountered a few guards on their way, which were of course dealt with easily, until they were standing in front of it.
The room was open to the public often, so the door wasn’t locked. Jane opened the door with a loud creak. Equestria didn’t have electricity, so usually room would be lit by candle, which at the moment the room was not. Both Crimson and Jane turned on their flashlights attached to their helmets, and the room practically lit up.
Crimson didn’t know what he was looking at. The room was filled with paintings of horses with both wings, and a horn, you could barely even see the see the violet paint that adorned the walls. The only other things that were in there was some mahogany benches, for what he assumed that locals would sit on.
“What am I looking at Jane?” He said.
“These are paintings of all the rulers of this planet.” Jane replied, using horse instead of pony, knowing that that would only confuse her fellow solider more. “All of these horses are alicorns; each of them lives for about 5 thousand years. Except for this one right here.” Jane continued, now pointing at a painting of Celestia.
“What’s so special about that one?”
“Her name is Celestia, she is ageless. She founded the kingdom about one hundred thousand years ago. While many other alicorns may have ruled by her, she is the only true ruler of the planet.”
“Ok, so why are we here?”
Jane knew he was going to say that. “Let me show you.”
She started walking to the other end of the room with Crimson right behind her. Jane passed by countless princesses from throughout the years that she learned about in school long ago. Just as she was nearing the end she saw Luna, Cadence, and finally, her.
“Is that who I think it is?” Crimson said, practically knocked to the ground by this revelation. He was almost at a loss for words. The alicorn in the painting looked just like Jane.
“Yes, that is me.”
“So that explains why you don’t have any records prior to six years ago, let me guess, that was when you came to earth?” Roland intuited, appearing once again in her visor.
“Right on the nose Roland.” Jane replied while cracking a smile.
“Ok, so if you were one of this planets rulers…then why the fuck are you attacking this place!” Exclaimed Crimson.
That killed her good mood, and returned her expression to an emotionless glare. “I left that species long ago Crimson, I could care less about them anymore.”
“But this is the place you spent most of your life, how could you not care about something like that? More so, how could you blatantly murder members of your own species and take pleasure in it?”
He couldn’t see it, but Jane’s expression became much darker. “Do you know how many times I had a chance to go back Crimson?”
“No…”
“Twice already, and I was about to get a third chance very soon. I didn’t take it because I’m a part of humanity now.”
“But these are the people you grew up with.”
“People…. People…” Jane clenched her fist tightly. “People....”
He heard her tone and tried to retract that statement before something bad happened. “Well, not people but…”
Too late, Jane reached out and grabbed Crimson’s armor, pulling him up close to her in the processes. “THESE ARE NOT PEOPLE, THEY ARE FUCKING ANIMALS! They scatter in fear whenever danger comes, which you can clearly see. They have not made a single technological advancement since the kingdom was founded. For fucks sake, they eat hay. HAY! And they live in ignorance to the real world, believing everything is just sunshine, and smiles. Do you honestly think they would ever understand what we have been through?”
“You don’t know that they won’t understand.”
“I DO! I lived as one of them for years; I know for certain that they would think of us as monsters. When I left this world, I was as ignorant as the rest of them, but now I’m not. I am better than them now, better in every way now that I’m human. The past six years have changed me, for the better.”
Crimson sighed, releasing the breath he was holding. He had seen what it was like when Jane flipped her lid and it was not pretty. This on the other hand, was much more fierce than her past outbursts
“I’m sorry, it is just hard for me to believe that someone would chose fighting a never ending war, rather than stay in a peaceful world.”
Jane calmed down from her outburst at Crimson, and let go of him, causing the blue Spartan to stumble back. “I understand what you mean, but after seeing earth, and what the Covenant did to humanity, I couldn’t just do nothing and leave. I felt that I had to help, I wanted to become a hero for humanity, which is what I am going to do today by taking the elements of harmony.”
Crimson could only stand there, even with his helmet on Jane knew he had a blank expression plastered all over his face. Everything at that point that seemed to get quiet as the two stared at each other. The air was still between them, the only sound being the moving of their armour plates as they breathed, and the faint chirping of birds from outside. Even Roland himself was quiet. Then all of a sudden she could hear two voices coming from outside.
“Oh my Celestia, they are all dead!”
“Oh buck, we gotta get out of here.”
“What about the princess? We can’t just leave her in the throne room unprotected.”
“To hell with her, we have our own lives to protect.”
Jane chuckled hearing the two scared ponies. She looked at Crimson once again who was still just standing there quietly, unmoving. Her smile quickly faded.
“I have a job to do Brennan, and I am going to do it. You can think of me as you wish, you have every right to, but this is what I decided to do, and there is no turning back now, for both of us.” She turned around and started walking towards the door.
“Fuck.” Crimson said. “I’m too deep into this shit.” He finished before he started to follow behind Jane.
“Good.” She replied.
“Doesn’t mean I like it though.”
“Fine by me.”
She kicked the door down, startling the two scared guards. She pulled out her magnum, and proceeded to shoot both of them in head while Crimson stood behind her.
She turned right towards the throne room passing the stairwell from earlier on her way, stepping over the blood-soaked bodies of the ponies who were stupid enough to get in her way, until she stood before the door to the throne room. Jane could hear faint whispers from inside, although she couldn’t make them out. One thing was for sure though she recognized the voices, she knew who was behind that door and she was looking forward to seeing them again…if for completely demented reasons.
“I’m detecting 6 life forms behind that door Jane. I’m going to take a wild guess that chances are you know them.” Speculated Roland, once again appearing on her heads up display.
“You would be right Roland. Although, I was expecting 7 of them to be in there.” Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Luna, and Celestia, one of them wasn’t in there, but why?
“Well, this is sure to be an awkward reunion, I can tell that much.”
“That is unavoidable Roland; I knew I was going to see them eventually. Whether or not they like me is irrelevant, I left my old life long ago, I could care less about them. And while I would prefer not to, if need be I will kill them.”
Jane took off her helmet and dropped it on the floor, she wanted her old friends to be able to recognize her and what she was about to do.. She placed her hands on the door knobs, and slowly turned them. All of the sudden the whispers stopped, her heart slowed, and time seemed to almost stop. Tension, and suspense filled the air, so thick, you could cut it with a knife. This was the moment, the very moment she would show herself to her old friends for the first time in five years. It was time for them to meet Jane Arimondo.
____________________________________________________________________________
THRONE ROOM
Minutes earlier
Load noises, that was all they could hear. Over and over again load bangs, and screams of agony filled the air. None of them knew what was exactly going on outside the throne room, but one thing was for certain, it wasn’t good.
Fluttershy was in Rainbow Dash’s hooves quietly weeping, as the blue pegasi tried to comfort her.
“What in Celestia’s name is going on out there?” Applejack said.
“I don’t know.” Replied Rarity. “Maybe one of us should check.”
“Are ya nuts? You might get yerself killed.” Returned Applejack.
“I’m going to have to agree with Applejack on this one.” Started Luna. “It is far too risky for any of us to go out there, even myself sadly.”
The load banging noise, and screams suddenly stopped, catching the attention of the 6 ponies. The noises only had started a few minutes prior, so why did they stop so soon?
“Did we win?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Ah hope so Sugacube.” Answered Applejack.
One of the two guards stationed at the door stood up and said in a vain attempt to sound heroic. “Milady, we shall investigate.”
Luna could hear the fear behind his words, and the other guard looked almost shocked to hear his comrade drag him into it.
Before Luna could say anything he opened up the door and left, dragging the other guard with him outside before closing it.
The silence remained for a few more minutes until Pinkie spoke her first word sense the beginning of the whole ordeal. “Are we going to die Princess?” Her hair was completely flat, and it had seemed that all of her emotions except fear were drained from her.
“Of course not Pinkie Pie, I know we’ll be fine.” Luna reassured Pinkie, despite not knowing herself whether they would all get out of this situation alive and well.
BANG!!!! BANG!!!!
Two load bangs pierced through the silence, further worrying the ponies.
“Oh Celestia, I hope those guards are ok.” Said Rarity.
“Me too.” Replied Luna.
Suddenly they all heard steps coming from outside the room. They were quiet at first, and they thought it might have been the guards coming back. As they got closer, and closer, the ponies realized that the hoof steps sounded strangely metallic. They got even closer, until the point of which they could swear that whatever it was, it was right outside the door.
“What is it?” Rainbow whispered.
“Don’t ask me.” Applejack responded.
Suddenly Pinkie spoke up in a quiet scared tone similar to Fluttershy's. "Girls my Pinkie sense is going off, something very very bad is about to happen."
“Hey, I think I can hear a voice coming from the other side.” Luna intervened.
She was right, they could all hear a hushed voice coming from the other side of the door.
Their hearts started racing at a shocking pace, who could it be? Then it struck them, that voice was familiar. They all could have sworn they heard it before. A thump came from the other side, like somepony dropped something on the floor. They didn’t have much time to think about it though, because immediately after they heard the door knob being grasped, and turned very slowly, and with a single push, it opened. And what they saw, who they saw, shocked them to their very core.