We went down the narrow alleyway checking that the area was safe. A black earth pony took position at the end of the alley and checked both directions before he motioned for us to cross the street. We entered an abandoned straw and wood house, and quickly went alert, watching and listening for anything out of the ordanary. Picking up nothing we relaxed, only a small bit, but it was still there.
"Everypony okay?" called out the squad leader, a muscular white unicorn with a short gray mane. Everypony acknowledged with a grunt. "Well then lets get back to work." A collective hatred was spread through the room, but was quickly diminished by the task at hoof.
"Hey Star," I turned around to see a yellow pegasus with a silver and red mane trotting towards me. "What do you think of the training so far?"
"Hard as buck, I never had to run this much on the airship"
The pegasus laughed, "well get used to it, theres going to be a lot more running before the day is over with."
I groaned, "well thats just wonderful," the pony started to turn away but stopped when I asked "hey, how do you use this thing?" Gesturing to the cannon on my head with my wing.
"Oh its simple, just bite really hard." Yeah that wasn't complicated to manufacture at all.
"Thanks." The soldier smiled and walked away then suddenly...
"Take cover!" Pulses of energy flied around the house and busted through the fragile glass windows. I went up against a nearby wall and looked outside. What I saw was a another group of soldiers and a sergeant yelling at a light gray mare.
"What in Tartarus were you thinking? Those are friendlies!"
"Sorry..."
"Sorry won't bring your allies back to life. Let's move!" With that they disappeared from sight.
Well that was sure eventful. We meet back up with the leader and get our orders, we move out of the building and into a large street. Shops and homes line the sides, abandoned and run down.
"I don't like this, we shouldn't be out in the open like this."
Immediately we were ambushed, but not by ponies.
"Drone! Take it out!"
I spotted a large metallic bi-pedal machine walking down the street, firing on out position. I pointed my gun at it, held my breath, and clamped my jaw down hard. A sound mixed between an explosion and an electrical discharge vibrated through the air. The pulse hit a leg on the drone, but had no overall effect. I kept firing until I was hit myself, a blinding pain spread through out my body starting from my right foreleg, causing me to go limp. I screamed out but nopony seemed to hear me. They all fired their weapons at the lumbering beast until one of the blasts hit something vital. The drone froze, and slowly fell backwards. Once it hit the ground, somepony finally noticed me. They came over to me, did a quick look over and yelled out.
"Medic!"
I looked towards the pony who came to my aid, and saw the same pegasus as before I tried to sit up but he stopped me.
"Take it easy there, don't want you to make it any worse."
I complied with him and kept still, laying on my side. The medic came over and started looking at my foreleg.
"Doesn't look good, son. You'll need to stay off it until we can get it properly looked at."
I tilted my head down to look at what he was talking about, and saw something that made me sick in every possible way. My hoof had a huge hole in it, going right through the entire leg; there was a stench of burning fur in the air.
I felt lightheaded due to the loss of blood, now making a large, sticky puddle as I lay here, and probably not the first time today, I blacked out.