Hundreds fell immediately, falling to the ground with chunks of donut dough missing, blown off by rifle fire. The legionnaires whooped and prepared to bring their swords to bear, looking on as the rifles went about their work.
‘MacArthur’s kept his troops trained,’ Ricky noted as he watched that nearly all of their bullets found a home in a donut man, wasting not. Impressed, Ricky ran back to Decius, easily visible over the heads of his much, much shorter troops.
“Hey, Decius!” Decius raised both his head and an eyebrow at Ricky’s calling, but didn’t comment as Ricky ran up to him. “I need the legionnaires ready for the push, we can’t afford to use much ammo.” Decius nodded curtly and began to shout to some of his centurions, reverting to his native language of Latin.
Satisfied, Ricky ran back to just behind the line of Americans, patting his soldiers on the shoulders and back as they continued to fire. Round after round poured out of the line, felling donuts like the trees from the Lorax. However, Ricky had specifically asked for the troops’ rounds to be limited to just 20, and now that order was beginning to show, as the fire began to lessen, before, after a few minutes, it died out, only a sporadic pattering left.
By now, Ricky had found MacArthur, but decided against giving him the order. This was a chance to make the troops recognize that Ricky was their de-facto commander, and he wasn’t going to waste it. Running to the edge, he cried out, “Fix bayonets! Spread the order to fix bayonets!” The cry began echoing down the line, until nearly all of the rifles had bayonets or were in the process of being attached to them.
Out of his peripheral, Ricky saw Decius run up towards him, and turned towards the Roman, who threw something at Ricky. Barely catching it, the item of scrutiny turned out to be a gladius, gleaming and razor-sharp. He looked back up to Decius, who said, “Try not to lose that.” Ricky smirked and told Decius, “We’re dry up here. Mind helping out?”
Decius found it hard to supress a smirk of his own as he replied, “Done, commander.” He then strode back to his men, yelling to them in Latin once again. The legionnaires got down into a running stance, weapons at the ready.
Ricky ran to the head of his entire formation, his eyes sweeping over the massive formation of donuts running rampant towards him, before turning back towards his formation. He smiled as he swung his gladius about, screaming one command.
“CHARGE!”
A tremendous roar rose from the humans as they began to tear at the donuts, running almost as wild as the unthinking donut men before them. And, of course, Ricky was at their head, screaming as he ran as fast as he could. He knew that setting an example, being a teen no less, would both shame and encourage his men into following him in. That was one of his greatest assets.
The clash was chaotic. The donut men had no weapons, so instead tried to melee with the humans. The Romans had to change their fighting style slightly, as stabbing straight would bring their gladii straight through the donut holes, but they quickly adjusted into stabbing high.
The Americans had more trouble guiding their weapons, but managed to get by thanks to their excellent training, using both sides of their rifle, their feet, and sometimes even their bare fists.
All in all, the donuts never stood a chance. The humans, led of course by Ricky, began to push through the donut swarms, forcing them back. But then, Decius, who had fought his way to Ricky and was helping form a great tag-team, spotted something.
“Brace! Counterattack!” He yelled over the confusion of the battle as a new wave of donuts swept out from the hole in the fortress-shop that stood imposingly just ahead of them.
And suddenly, the human army of 25,000 was being forced back across the field, the donuts literally throwing themselves onto the outstretched bayonets and gladii until there was a wall of donuts stacked up in front of the men. Some began to take steps back, but not a certain two.
Ricky and his new favorite Roman ever, Decius, had fallen back-to-back and were now being surrounded by a vast number of the hybrid donut-men. Gladii at the ready, Ricky and Decius began to weather the first of a literal tidal wave of donut.
Hacking and stabbing through all the enemy, Ricky looked over his shoulder and saw Decius was making comparable progress. The two of them were simply unstoppable, Ricky noted. He was way better at swordfighting than he had originally thought he was. ‘Seems that I have inherited some skills from my ancestral family,’ Ricky thought, a smirk on his face at his own thought process.
After another few minutes of slicing and dicing, the rest of the human army finally came to their rescue, breaking through their little pocket and letting the two quite weary commanders fall back and rest. The humans were now simply unstoppable, cutting through the enemy ranks like a hot knife through butter, or a knife through a donut, for that matter.
Edging closer and closer to Sombra’s fortress, the troops began to get frantic, forgoing training for sheer pushing power. It was a struggle just to keep them from breaking formation and running to the objective alone. Ricky didn’t want to lose anyone unnecessarily, especially to disciplinary problems.
Eventually, and with the help of Decius, MacArthur, and several centurions, the humans managed to stop the reckless pursuits, and the war machine rumbled to Sombra’s front door. This was the key point of the assault. If Ricky’s army could force its way through the donuts and into the fortress, the battle was as good as over. If the donuts could bring Ricky’s army to a halt, however, then the entire battle would grind into a stalemate, and that was a thing that Ricky and the army couldn’t afford.
“Damnit, men! Push!” Ricky yelled, and the troops, spurred on by this encouragement from a boy that they were already growing to like, began to push as a wall of bristling points of metal that not even the biggest, best army in the world could stand against. The donuts, being neither, fell in droves.
Finally, they were inside their objective, the building. It looked like a typical supermarket, rows upon rows of shelves. The donus had taken up defensive positions in between the rows, but apparently didn’t have the numbers available to garrison the very front, a valuable opportunity to organize and meet with the other commanders, as well as give the troops a chance to rest.
While the army began to set up a small number of sentries and sit down to catch a breather, Ricky met with the other two commanders. MacArthur smirked as the three convened. “Jesus kid, you fight like a man possessed! I saw you single-handedly cut through twenty of those bastards.”
Decius, meanwhile, just shook his head and chuckled. “You know, we should spar sometime.”
Ricky nodded, smiling. Then, his face hardened again, and he turned to face his army. “I think it’s time. But I have a plan,” he gestured for his commanders to lean in close, and they talked for the next minute before breaking the huddle, MacArthur going to the Americans and both Decius and Ricky heading to the centurions keeping order in the ranks.
After a few minutes, the war machine began rumbling into the rows. The Romans were leading, in a peculiar formation. They were packed close together, shields in front, with their flanks protected by the shelves on either side.
The testudo formation was going to work, and it was going to be unstoppable. With the Americans just behind and shouting encouragement to their Roman comrades, the army made swift progress, especially up the sides, as Sombra seemed to forget about them when deploying his small contingent of reserves, sending nearly all of them into the middle to get trampled and cut down by the swords that darted in and out of the wall of rectangular shields.
Eventually, they reached the back of the store. Cutting down the last donut men that feebly tried to stop them, the men came face-to-face with Sombra, who was currently working furiously at the ovens behind one of the counters, presumably to pump out more donut soldiers. Ricky worked his way to the front of his men, who stood silent and at the ready. He walked in behind the counter and stood for a second, still amused at the fact that Sombra still hadn’t noticed any of them yet. Walking even closer, he tapped Sombra on his massive wither.
Sombra, who had been sweating from working so hard, turned slowly and tiredly; upon seeing Ricky, however, he was imbued with a new sense of energy.
“AAUGH!” Sombra screamed, jumping away in fear like someone in the middle of a horror movie. Ricky hunched over, trying very, very hard not to burst out laughing. It was a losing battle.
“Bwahahahahaha! Your… your… bwahahahaha! Oh God, you should’ve seen your face! Too rich,” Ricky hooted, standing back up and trying to stay upright, cackling.
Sombra, after managing to get his hair back down, glared at Ricky, and, unnoticed by the Scot, began to prepare a spell that would, per Sombra’s thoughts, ‘blow off a limb, maybe kill him if it’s a good shot,’.
Ricky, while still laughing, suddenly said, “I wouldn’t try that if I were you. About, oh, 150 rifles are trained on your head right now.” Sombra looked up. What Ricky said was true, there were quite a few humans aiming their sti- rifles at him. The way Ricky said it, though, was what had truly spooked him, almost as casual as if he was discussing the weather. His horn powering back down, he replaced his glare with an apologetic expression.
“Now, let’s discuss the terms of your surrender.” Ricky continued, beginning to stride back and forth in front of Sombra.
“First, you will lay down your… donut-making tools, and never rise up again. Basically an unconditional surrender. Second, we are limiting your donut consumption to one box of a dozen per day.”
Sombra looked torn between happiness and sorrow: happy that he got to keep his donuts at all, and sad that his supply was being limited. However, Ricky wasn’t done yet.
“And lastly,” he extended a hand down to Sombra, “I want to be friends again. Do you accept these terms?” he asked, grinning. Sombra looked between the hand and Ricky several times, before slowly nodding and placing his hoof into Ricky’s palm.
“I accept.”
The soldiers cheered and began to lower their weapons. As they walked back out from behind the counter, Ricky leaned over to Sombra and said in a hushed tone, “You know, all those rifles were empty.” He then continued to walk, while Sombra stopped, pupils wide and jaw down. He eventually managed to collect himself enough to run back up to Ricky and nearly yell in his ear.
“And you knew that! Why would you do something as braindead as that!” Sombra demanded incredulously, waiting some for explanation.
“Sombra, war is a game of chance. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote, ‘Only the element of chance is needed to make war a gamble, and that element is never absent.’”
A pop signified Discord’s appearance, prompting Sombra to sink lower to the ground. Discord was currently wearing a foam finger and waving a flag in his talon, both of which said ‘Ricky is #1!’
“Discord, what in the skies above are you doing here?” Ricky asked, sounding exasperated.
“Why, I came to watch and hear the terms for the surrender!” Discord exclaimed, looking at Ricky like it was obvious.
“Well, he’s bound not to rise up against us, and I limited his donuts to a dozen a day…” Ricky was going to keep talking, but Discord cut him off.
“Take away his donuts, they’re the reason all of this even happened!” Discord flailed his arms, obviously not very happy.
“Hey! Compromises are necessary, Discord. Be happy we won.” Ricky stated flatly, leaving a bewildered Discord to stew in his thoughts.
And so Ricky left the whole scene, delivering both a crushing victory and lessons to two of his comrades. “I need a damn nap.”
Canterlot Castle…
Luna was now in the Dreamscape, poking around the different dreams. After searching for a while, she found the one that she had herded into it’s own special corner of the Dreamscape. The dreams of Ricky Welfork, convicted criminal, sat inside this bubble. Thankfully, it was lit up, showing that Ricky was dreaming in one way or another.
She took a deep breath, before touching the swirling bubble with a hoof.
“Let’s hear his side of the story, shall we?” And then she vanished, destined to end up in the mind of Richard Albert Welfork.