//------------------------------// // Chapter 3; Betrayal // Story: Rangers Lead the Way // by HonestAJ4President //------------------------------// I know some of you are going, some of you are going some of you may even be doing both (Note, changed Celestia's and Luna's code-names to Sol and Crescent, respectively. Felt Charlie and Lima was too generic) The guards in Canterlot were awoken by the explosion. They scrambled to their posts, everypony wondering what was going on. After a few minutes, the windows in the throne room burst and humans in exoskeletons jumped through the now empty frame. A particularly brave guard shouted "BY ORDER OF THE ROYAL SISTERS, I ORDER YOU TO SURRE-" only to be shot by one of the humans. Another guard threw a spear, which fell harmlessly through the air before clattering on the ground. One human actually chuckled and the rest opened fire. The humans activated active camouflage and hid. Luna returned from a bathroom break only to discover that all her guards were dead. The cold metal of a gun's barrel pressed against her head. "I assume that you knew this was coming." asked the human in charge. "I knew this was coming, but I didn't know when." she muttered. "Then you will call for your sister. If you try to alert her of our presence, we will kill both of you." All of the Rangers disappeared, leaving only an outline of their body. "Sister, I require your assistance in a personal matter." called Luna. After a few seconds, a door in the distance opened and the clip clop of Celestia's hooves echoed off the halls. "What is it, sister? Have you fallen in love with one of the guards?" asked Celestia, the last sentence said noticeably louder. She came into view and the Rangers sprang their trap. Two of them moved behind her and the rest deactivated their cloak. "So, this is how you decided to do it. Impres-" she was cut off as one of the rangers behind her smacked her at the base of the skull, and the others did the same to Luna. "This is team Alpha-Sparrow, we have secured Sol and Crescent, and are moving out." the leader of the fireteam radioed. "Roger. Eagle, this is Sparrow. Sol and Crescent are secure, and the barracks have been destroyed. Moving to secure the train station." Sanderson looked out over Ponyville. Two surviving guards raced through the streets of Canterlot. "Where the buck are all the civilians?!" "I don't know! I knew those humans were bad news! This is just like those stories about the gryphons starting off all nice and friendly before trying to stab Celestia's parents in the back." "We need to get out of here... before the humans lockdown the only exit. Why did we build a capital city with only one exit?" They continued onward toward the train station before being stopped dead in their tracks by gunfire. Mostly because one of them was literally dead. A single gunshot seemed to be echo louder to the surviver. "Celestia's goodne-" he yelped, before being cut down by the cold efficiency that comes with firearms. The sniper who killed the guards we had just followed grabbed his radio. "Sparrow, this is Triggerman. Multiple guards EKIA. Locating Procurement team... spotted, Crescent and Sol are in possession... Negative sir, no casualties so far. Roger that, I'm leaving my nest. All forces pulling out, moving to Objective Tango-Sierra." Shining Armor lie in a pile of rubble that used to be his barracks. He was one of the few survivors when the Rangers' bomb went off. Outside, he could hear Rangers walking around outside, talking like guards did during downtime. "It's about time we did this. All that love and tolerance was making me go crazy." one Ranger commented. "Yeah. Been so long since I've had a hamburger, I would kill for one." another added. "We have killed for one." the first Ranger joked. They both burst into deep, hearty chuckles. A few seconds later, another voice and multiple footsteps joined the two. "Let's go, numb-nuts! All units are supposed to report to FOB Papa; Objective Tango-Sierra, and HVTs Crescent and Sol have been captured. Double-time!" one of the new Rangers shouted, obviously of a higher rank. All Rangers left rather quickly, jogging away towards the inner-city. After waiting a few minutes, the guards crawled out from their hiding spots. "What the buck is 'Objective Tango-Sierra' and 'HVT Crescent and Sol'?!" asked a panicked private. Shining Armor searched his mind, grasping anything he knew about the Rangers "Um, um, Twilly wrote something about a 'NATO Phonetic Alphabet' that they use. It's used to cross language barriers in military situations. Other than that, I don't know." "What are we gonna do, Captain?" asked a sergeant. "Let me think! Uh, we need to find Celestia and Luna. Secure the princesses, secure morale. Let's move to the throne room." Shining ordered. The band of misfits, consisting of Shining, the sergeant, the private, and one Corporal Flash Sentry, made their way to the throne room, quickly dropping to their stomachs whenever footsteps not their own were heard. They entered the throne room, they found the corpses of Luna's guards. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Shining chanted. "DAMMIT! We're too late." "Oh, crap. 'HVT Sol and Crescent' must be Celestia and Luna." realized Flash. Shining suddenly stopped, and tossed something around in his head. "'Papa', 'Papa', 'Papa'. I got it! Twilly told me that 'FOB' means 'Forward Operating Base' and 'Papa' is the NATO Phonetic Alphabet letter for 'P'. That must mean FOB Papa means Forward Operating Base Ponyville! Let's go! Hopefully these bastards haven't taken the train sta- oh buck!" Shining realized another thing. "Objective Tango-Sierra. Objective Train Station. Celestia dammit!" "What are we gonna do, Captain?" asked Flash, kicking around shell casings. "Give me a minute... I just don't get it. Why don't they fight with honor?! At least the gryphons or minotaurs give us advanced warning before a siege, but they came in the dead off night, unannounced." Shining vented. "Perhaps they're fighting the way they know how. We've seen how advanced their technology is; they fly without wings, get by without magic." stated the sergeant, trailing off. "I suppose, we should wait for them to leave, band together with who ever is left, and march for Ponyville. Hopefully there is enough to successfully defeat the Rangers. I mean, they only have thirty-six men." Shining ordered, not hearing the conversation about human technology. The band of misfits waited for hours. Eventually, one of the times Flash had scouted the train station out, all the Rangers had left Canterlot on a train. It wasn't exactly packed to the brim, but there wasn't a lot of room for the soldiers inside to stretch out. It took them some time to figure out how to work the steam train that was at the station. "Alright, all the Rangers are gone. They left on the train." Flash reported. "Good. Now we need to gather reinforcements. Split up, search everywhere." Shining ordered. The soldiers responded with a collective "Yes, sir!" and ran in separate directions. The search was somewhat successful. Canterlot was a ghost-town; it was like all the civilians had vanished into thin-air. The bodies of Canterlot guards littered the streets, all of them had bullet wounds, slit-throats, severe burns, or broken necks. However, twenty-one guards had been found and the Wonderbolts had joined the ranks. If they were lucky, only the Rangers from Canterlot and Ponyville had joined forces at Ponyville as a final stand. Shining Armor stood on a scaffold used to punish criminals, preparing for a speech. "Okay, stallions. We all knew that this would happen, wouldn't we. We knew those humans were trouble. But, we underestimated them. Because of their lack of magic, we thought them inferior. They aren't, they have proved that. The bodies of our brothers that surround us prove that. Now they have desecrated our grand city and stolen our princesses. We aren't gonna let them get away with it, though! We are the best of the best, Canterlot Guard Elite! Keep that in mind as we march towards Ponyville. We are going to go there and take back what's ours. Isn't that right!?" "Spotted, large force of guards. Marching from Canterlot. North-side. Defensive positions." a sniper scanned the horizon. Ponyville buzzed with activity from the Rangers. "Alright, now comes the fun part. Lock and load, men! Don't fire till ya see the whites of their eyes!" Sanderson shouted. He took a cuban cigar from an old case and a lighter he kept as a memento and a good luck charm. He put it in his mouth and started smoking it. He took a puff on it before he shouted "I LOVE MY JOB!" "Since when did you smoke sir?" asked the leader of the Rangers that formerly were stationed in Canterlot. "Long time ago. I feel that if-" Sanderson was cut of by an spear landing at his feet. "Jesus!" he blurted. "Permission to fire sir!" yelled a sergeant from the defensive line, a trench dug perpendicular to the road. "Denied... For now." Sanderson responded. He walked to the defensive line and looked to the small force of guards, who were practically on a suicide mission against a better trained, better armed, and greater sized force. "Captain Armor. I see you've survived our little excursion." Captain Sanderson called from the defensive line. "Do not speak to me like I am a friend you have not seen in years. You have no right murderer!" Shining called back. Sanderson looked taken aback, and something appeared on his TAGs. He then launched into a monologue "I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us." "I give you one chance, Sanderson! Surrender or be crushed." Shining shouted, somehow missing the point of the monologue. Multiple Rangers burst into laughter, Sanderson included "Your ONE advantage is magic, Captain Armor! We have firearms, better armor, better tactics, better everything. You barely had a chance from forces a century ago. Men! Safeties off." Seemingly thousands of tiny clicks echoed off the buildings of Ponyville. "I take it you will fight." called Shining. "You remind me of a British general from the eighteenth-century; Edward Braddock. He refused to adopt new, and better, tactics and it ended in his death. I will say this once Armor. Any sign of hostility will end with my men opening fire. And your swift defeat." Sanderson responded. "At least you were civil enough to not say 'Buck you'." Shining muttered. "Stallions, the tortoise!" he ordered. Very similar to a tactic of the Roman Legion of the same name, all of Shining's soldiers gathered around him as he cast his most powerful shield spell. "God, you are either fatally brave, or as dense as tungsten." Sanderson muttered before readying his own rifle and shouting "FIRE AT WILL!" In the immediate second afterword, dozens of firearms let loose a constant torrent of lead. The methodical and constant thud of light machine guns, the constant crack of a bolt-action rifle, the slightly faster thunder of shotguns. Shining almost immediately felt the strain of hundreds of small pieces of metal impacting his shield. If he faltered, even a little, his men would be massacred. This did not help his level of stress he was facing. Or that he was fatigued from the march here. "Fifteen meters! Detonate IED Alpha!" shouted Sanderson to a demolitions expert by his side. The expert grabbed a detonator and clicked it. If the bullets had been uncomfortable, the IED going off was being kicked repeatedly where the sun don't shine. If the shield faltered for a second, all occupants would have been dead or fatally wounded. It faltered for more than a second. As such, by the time it was back up, most everyone was dead. The gunfire ceased, as only the insanely determined would have continued on Earth. Not deterred, Shining grunted "Keep pushing!" to his two remaining soldiers. "For Christ's sake, pack it in you crazy bastard! It is OVER!" shouted Sanderson. "For the Princess, my stallions will lay down their lives!" shouted Shining. "Captain Sanderson is right, Captain Armor. This attack is a lost cause." announced Celestia, climbing the defensive line. However she was not bound, as Shining had expected. Also, Sanderson and his men were saluting the Princess. "Good job, boys. Not a single casualty." announced Sanderson. A resounding 'Yeah!" came from the Rangers. "What do you mean Princess?" Shining asked. "This has been a simulation, Captain. I told the humans to attack us as they would an enemy in their world. This is the result." she explained. "But none of these attacks were fair!" Shining complained. "Friend, all is fair in love and war, within certain parameters." Sanderson countered. A wave washed over everyone's vision, and everyone present was standing in the throne room. "Alright, I'll explain everything." An Hour Before the Attack "Alright boys, gather round." Cpt. Sanderson called all Rangers in FOB Ponyville into the command tent. "As you may have heard, tonight we're launching a drill on our military capabilities. The Princess said, and I quote 'Give us no quarter, fight us like you would in a war that would end all wars in your world.'. Now, that doesn't mean that the Geneva Conventions are not fully disbanded. Take prisoners whenever possible, civilians are not included in this... simulation I guess. Also, nothing will travel into the real world when this is over, so collateral damage is not an issue. Any questions?" Nobody had any. "Good. And one more thing; if you think some guards are around, talk over the top evil. I'm talking the bad guys in a Bruce Willis movie." He added. Throne Room In the hours that followed the end of the drill, the Rangers had to their bases and guards returned to their posts. Celestia and Luna talked of what to do. "It is obvious that we mustn't induct the Rangers into the Guard. We haven't revealed them to the rest of the world, and they are an extremely deadly fighting force." Luna pleaded. "Besides, the Hierarchy of the Gryphons would be outraged. They pride themselves on their military, and to find out that there is now a smaller military better equipped than theirs." "Fine, Sister. You were always more interested in military than I, anyway." Celestia ceded. Suddenly a Ranger burst into the room, ran to the Princesses and saluted before stating "We may have a gigantic problem."