This War of Ours

by Swan Song


DAY SIXTY-THREE

HELP!” shouted a voice from the streets below.

“Dinky, ammo!” shouted Sweetie Belle. “NOW!”

“Got it! Catch!”

A magazine soared through the air and was immediately snatched by a green aura of magic. Sweetie Belle slammed the fresh mag into her rifle.

“Suppressing fire!” she yelled downstairs.

“On it!” Apple Bloom stuck her assault rifle out the window and began firing madly, causing the aggressors to duck behind the makeshift barriers they had set up in the street.

Sweetie Belle stuck her rifle through the gaps in the railing, swiveling the barrel on the bipod to the streets below. She eyed the scope, focusing on a piece of cover. A sliver of hair stuck up from behind it.

BLAM.

The shot echoed throughout the town as a bullet tore through the flimsy piece of cover. A spray of blood surged from behind it—she had hit her mark.

“Alright, Scoots, sniper’s down! Get the last one!”

– — T H I S W A R O F O U R S — –

“Got it!”

Scootaloo stepped out the front door, decked head to toe in makeshift armor and hefting the Gryphosi pistol in her foreleg.

“Behind the barrel!” came Sweetie's voice from upstairs.

Scootaloo swiveled, acquiring her target. With a mad dash of speed and a pump of her wings, she blazed straight towards the barrel.

The stallion behind it stood up, grinning maniacally as he raised his rifle.

BRATATATATAT.

He fell to the floor with no further ceremony.

“Too slow,” said Scootaloo with a grin.

I think that’s the last of ‘em!

“HAH!” Scootaloo grinned. “Crusader Citadel sixteen, Stupid Bandits nil!”

“Actually, I hate to admit it, but Stupid Bandits one!” shouted Apple Bloom from the doorway. "Remember the first time?"

“Will you two morons shut up and get those ponies in here already!” yelled Sweetie Belle from upstairs.

“Right!” Scootaloo cupped her hooves to her mouth and called out. “Diamond! Silver! Mister Filthy! Miss Sterling! It’s all clear, come on over quick, while it’s safe! We'll cover you!”

“I PREFER RICH!” yelled a voice in reply, as several figures emerged from cover and hastily made their way to the Library.

Scootaloo quickly gave them a once-over as they approached—the former high-society ponies were a ragged mess, covered head to toe in dirt and muck.

“Thank you, Miss Scootaloo,” said Mister Rich, his bloodshot eyes glimmering with grateful tears. “You’ve well and truly saved our necks, you have.”

“We can’t thank you enough,” agreed Miss Sterling, bowing politely.

Scootaloo smiled back. “Just doing what I can. Go on. Get inside to safety.”

He and Silver’s mother stepped inside. Sweetie Belle then turned to Diamond, who was in an utterly wretched state of uncleanliness.

“Nice,” she said with a grin. “Love the new look.”

“Oh shut it, blank flank,” she spat back at Scootaloo.

“Actually, err…” Scootaloo said, holding a hoof to her chin and feigning indecision. “Naaah, maybe I’ll tell you later…”

Diamond’s eyes widened. “Oh, don’t tell me—“

With a wide grin, Scootaloo hefted her armor up. The two fillies peered at the mark that adorned her haunches: a radiant circle of light, with a sword and a rifle crossed together upon it.

“What is it?” asked Silver.

“Beats me,” admitted Scootaloo. “Sweetie Belle thinks it has something to do with ‘courage and restraint with the use of force’, or something wordy like that.”

She leaned in and stage-whispered loudly.

“But, I like to think got a cutie mark in being totally badass.”

A moment of silence passed.

“…It suits you,” said Silver Spoon finally.

Scootaloo’s eyes widened disbelievingly, and she opened her mouth to respond—

SCOOT!” came a panicked from above. “There’s more coming!”

 “Oh crap oh crap! Girls, get inside and keep your heads down!” Scootaloo unceremoniously shoved the two fillies through the door and slammed it shut, before running into the field and sliding behind a fallen tree branch.

She loaded a fresh magazine into the Gryphosi pistol.

“We’ll be ready for ‘em.”

“Hang on… something’s strange about this one!”

“Huh? Why, what’s wrong?”

“One sec, it looks like… wait… oh my Stars…”

“C'mon, what is it?!” Scootaloo yelled, starting to lose her patience.

“Scootaloo. Apple Bloom. Just look.”

Growling, Scootaloo stood up and peered into the distance. From the eastern approach, a solid wall of multi-colored objects was advancing on the Library.

“What the…”

Scootaloo squinted her eyes even more, and slowly, the mass of color began resolving itself into individual objects.

Tanks. Huge, hulking tanks. And besides them, ponies. Uniformed ponies. Soldiers, marching down the street en masse.

“Scootaloo,” came a voice to her right, and Scootaloo turned to find that Apple Bloom had stepped up next to her, staring towards the sky, her sister's Stetson resting in a hoof. The other one was pointed upwards. “Look. In the sky. It’s a zeppelin.”

As Scootaloo looked up, she spotted a grand airship, swiftly approaching Ponyville from overhead.

“What the hay is going on...?” she said in awe-struck disbelief.

With a crackle, a voice emanated from the zeppelin over its loudspeakers.

A very familiar, scratchy voice.

“…is Colonel Rainbow Dash of the Equestrian Armed Forces!” it echoed, carrying throughout the whole town and for miles around. “By the power invested in me by Princess Twilight Sparkle of the Principality of Equestria, I hereby declare martial law upon the township of Ponyville and its surrounding regions!”

She blinked. She blinked once more.

“No friggin’ way.”

“In accordance with the terms of the Equestrio-Gryphosi Ceasefire of 1104 AC,” continued the voice, “all EAF and DPRG troops are now ordered to lay down your arms! Repeat: The Equestrio-Gryphosi war is over! Lay down your arms, surrender peacefully, and you can return to your homes and families!”

There was a moment of silence, before the speaker crackled again, and it began to repeat the announcement the hawkish language of the Gryphosi.

As the zeppelin zoomed overhead the Golden Oaks Library and disappeared from sight, Apple Bloom slowly turned to Scootaloo.

“Scoot… is this real?” said Apple Bloom breathlessly.

Scootaloo slowly turned to look at her. The Gryphosi pistol slipped from her hooves and clattered to the floor.

“It’s over,” she whispered in reply. “We’re done.”

– — T H I S W A R O F O U R S — –

Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle stood in the doorway of the Golden Oaks Library. Across from them, several meters away, were Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity. They stood at the foot of the boarding ramp leading to the zeppelin, which had finally landed in the clearing just in front of the Golden Oaks Library.

Compared to the Crusaders—who were decked from head to toe in armor that had been clearly been thrown together from whatever various scrap and debris they had scavenged over the last several months—the three adult mares wore cleanly pressed military dress uniforms, bearing the colors of the Equestrian army.

The two groups of ponies couldn’t have looked more different.

And yet, by the hardened, tired looks on the faces of the three sisters that stood before them, Scootaloo knew that they had been through as much of Tartarus as the Crusaders had.

It was only mere seconds before the two groups had broken into a run, sprinting towards each other. Together they met in the center, leaping into each other's arms in a moment that had been far too many months in the making.

“It’s over,” cried Scootaloo, losing all of the bravado that she had built up over the months as she bawled into Rainbow Dash’s unblemished dress uniform. “It’s finally over.”

Rainbow Dash hugged Scootaloo tightly.

“Yeah. It’s over,” she replied in a tired, cracked voice. “By the Sun and Stars, it’s finally over.”

Rainbow held Scootaloo out.

“You look like you’ve been through the Halls and back.”

“Heh… yeah… and you look like you're about to ask me to the Gala.” She snickered, then sighed in exhaustion. “I guess we’ve changed a lot, haven’t we.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess we have.”

They released their embrace.

“Shit, sorry,” said Scootaloo, chuckling. “I just got snot all over your fancy clothes.”

“Hah!” Rainbow Dash ruffled Scootaloo’s hair. “I may be a changed mare, but I ain’t Rarity!”

Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash giggled lightly.

“I see you did exactly what I told you, kid,” Rainbow Dash said with a grin, staring at the cutie mark now visible on Scootaloo’s flank.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash smiled. “You were brave.”

Scootaloo smiled. Then, tears formed in her eyes again, and Rainbow Dash moved to hug her as she began bawling once more.

Everything that had happened. All the death. All the sorrow. All the pain. The sleepless nights of shelling and bombs, the gunfire that peppered the sky. The evil and the greed and the selfishness that had torn Ponyville’s streets apart.

And they had survived.

“It’s finally over,” she whispered once more, her voice muffled through Rainbow Dash’s dress coat.

“…Yeah. It’s over.”