Razka was sitting behind his desk at CHECKMATE’s headquarters. He was looking over the latest battle reports on his computer. The reports were indicating that the American forces were closing in on him. He could feel the fear and anger of his imminent failure building.
“Sir!” Janet shouted as she burst into the office. “The Americans have entered the building, we need to-”
A bullet pierced through Janet’s throat, spraying blood all over the carpeted floor.
“No!” Razka shouted. As she collapsed, several US soldiers stormed into Razka’s office. The chairman pulled out a Desert Eagle and shot the soldiers dead. He rushed over to Janet and cradled her head.
“Chris…” Janet whispered, blood pouring out of her neck. “Where were you?”
Christopher shot up out of his bed trying to catch his breath. After his breathing returned to normal, he noticed that his sheets were soaked with sweat. He looked at the red alarm clock on the nightstand and let out a heavy sigh seeing that it was four in the morning. Knowing it was futile to try and get anymore sleep, he decided to take a shower and get dressed.
After having a pleasantly warm shower, the chairman dried himself off and started combing his hair. As he looked in the mirror, he noticed heavy bags under his eyes and quite a few new gray hairs. It had only been a couple of days and this whole ordeal was already getting to him mentally and physically.
Once he was dressed, Chris left his room and made his way to the kitchen. When he reached finally reached the kitchen, he was surprised to see that there was light seeping through the cracks of the door. The man cautiously opened the door and what he saw was quite a sight. Princess Celestia, the holy co-ruler of Equestria was feasting on a chocolate cake at four in the morning. The alabaster alicorn had a fork up to her mouth and was about to take another bite of the cake when she saw Razka staring at her.
“Christopher!” Celestia jumped, quickly putting the fork down. “Um, what are you doing up so early?” she nervously asked, embarrassed the human had caught her feasting on an entire cake before the sun was even up.
“I can only imagine what would happen if the public knew about this,” Razka said with a chuckle. He took a moment to look over the kitchen. There were at least four ovens and there were drawers and cabinets probably filled with plates, silverware and countless other supplies. His eyes stopped when he spotted a coffee maker, already filled and hot. “Have you considered my offer?” he asked, slowly walking over to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup.
“I’m not going to give you total control of my army.”
“If you want me to help you then I need to able to do things my way. I can’t get back home if you and Luna are dead.”
“So that is your main reason to help us, just so you can go home?” Celestia asked.
“Why of course, what other reasons should I have?”
“Ummm...How about saving our world as one of them.”
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t give a damn what happens to your world. Our interests align right now and that is why I am agreeing to help you. Besides, with me leading instead of your useless commanders, I’ll win this little war of yours in less than half the time it would take them.”
The princess let out a heavy sigh. “Fine, you win. We need to stop Sombra now before he can gain anymore momentum," she said, finally giving in.
“I want everything you have Sombra and his activity lately as soon as possible. I want to have a plan of attack before the end of the day.”
“Of course. Now if you’ll excuse me, it will be time for me to raise the sun soon.”
Razka silently nodded as Celestia left the kitchen.
“Razka?” Razka looked over to his left to see Luna looking at him with a concerned look “What you said before, its not true is it?”
“What?”
“That you’re only doing this just so you can go home, right?”
“*Sigh*....Look I’m not keen on seeing your world enslaved by a demonic shadow spirit, but you must understand that this is my ticket for me to get back to where I belong. I hate being here. Not knowing what’s going on with Checkmate.”
“Is that all you care about? Checkmate?”
“I have spent years plotting my uprising. You have no idea how much it truly means to me. Once I’ve dealt with the US, I will be able to secure my legacy. But instead of being where I belong, I’m here, forced to deal with your fucking problems!” Razka roared, his anger rising but quickly stopped to see Luna with her head down. Normally Razka wouldn’t care for such little things as other people’s emotions, but somewhere deep within his heart he felt that he crossed some line. “I’m sorry. I’m under a lot of stress right now and I’ve gotten very little sleep.”
“I know, I saw your nightmare. I want to help you.”
“And you are by trying to get me in contact with Stahl. It’s just that I can’t stand being kept in the dark. Waiting. Speculating. Worrying. I've never been in a situation as bad as this.”
“Well by seeing your nightmares, it’s no wonder why you are so on the edge.”
“Any luck with contacting her yet?”
“I think I can get into her dreams. We can try tonight if you want.”
“I would like that very much, thank you.” Razka said with a small smile as Luna smiled happily but couldn’t help but think on a question she wanted to ask him ever since she saw his dream.
“Do you...Blame yourself?”
“For what?”
“For putting Janet in the situation she’s in. I feel that the reason why you are having these nightmares is because you feel that it’s your fault.”
“She could die any day. Something could go wrong and she would pay the price, not me. The entire war was my plan, not hers. I threw her into this at the last minute and now she has to be the commander in chief.” Razka paused for a moment. “I’ll be better once I know what’s going on.”
“Well, if you ever need anything, please ask,” Luna said before she walked out of the kitchen with Razka following behind her as he made his way back to his bedroom.
It wasn’t until late in the morning that Razka heard someone knocking on his door. Upon opening it he saw a white pegasus clad in golden armor holding a file under his wing.
“The princess told me to give you this,” he said.
“Thanks,” Razka replied as he took the papers. He frowned when he realized that the papers were at least an inch thick. He had a lot of reading to do.
The chairman spent the next couple of hours going over everything the princesses knew about King Sombra. The more he read, the more he realized that he wasn’t dealing with a power hungry psychopath, but an incredibly smart and tactical tyrant.
Razka chuckled at the similarities between them. They were both ruthless pragmatics and knew how to win a battle. But the key difference were their reasons. Sombra did it for the pure sadistic joy it brought him seeing others suffer. Razka fought to build a better world, even if it meant having to tear down the old regime. Another thing that was different between them was that Sombra used his slaves as soldiers to fight for him while he used skilled and highly trained soldiers, especially fighting against the US. That would be a weakness Razka would no doubt exploit when the fighting starts.
Based on what these reports were saying, Sombra was in an all out blitzkrieg. It was an effective strategy if you moved fast and hard enough. But that left him vulnerable to an attack on the inside. Only problem was figuring out how to get behind the enemy lines. After at least another several hours of plotting and planning, Razka was satisfied with the plan he had. It wasn’t perfect, but as a great general had once said, “a good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan executed in a week.”
Razka was in the dining room with Celestia and Luna. Having skipped breakfast and lunch, he was quite hungry. But he also had his plan to share.
“So, Razka, you have a plan of attack?” Princess Celestia asked.
“I do,” the chairman answered confidently. “For the first phase of the plan, I’ll need to have most of your troops engage Sombra’s forces head on. Make it appear as though we’re simply trying to stop his advance towards us. We outnumber his forces in that region five to one, that means if he wants any hope of continuing his advance, he’ll need to send almost all of his troops to our front. While he’s bogged down trying to regain momentum, we’ll send a battalion sized unit to swing past his eastern flanks with little resistance hopefully. We’ll then have them punch a straight hole to the heart of his beloved empire. If we move quickly enough, he shouldn’t be able to reroute his troops before we’re in the capital.”
“But what if by the time our soldiers get there they’re not strong enough to take on Sombra?” Luna questioned.
“The two of you defeated Sombra once before, I assume you can do it again. Cadenza and Armor will stay back here in Canterlot. I have no use for them. As for me, I’ll be joining the two of you with the battalion.”
“This sounds very risky. What happens if our primary forces attacking Sombra from the north are overwhelmed?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied bluntly. “All that matters is getting to that son of a bitch Sombra by any means necessary. We can take a lot more losses than he can and keep fighting. He doesn’t have that luxury.”
The doubt in Celestia’s eyes was clear as day. “But do we have to risk so many lives?”
“I give her a solution and what does she do? She has to find a fucking problem with it,” Razka thought to himself. “If you have a better idea I’d love to hear it.”
“Well I may have a plan that WON’T cost so much lives.”
“And what is it?”
“What if we create a distraction?”
“What?”
“Since we have some personal history with Sombra we can lure him out. If we show ourselves using our magic it would no doubt provoke him to send most of his troops there. And we would be able to better protect our forces and minimize their causalities. While that is going on, you can still lead some of our forces behind his enemy lines while his army are distracted by us.”
“You have a point, but I think I’ve got something even better. Instead of you two we use Cadenza and Armor for the distraction. I still want you two by my side just incase the unit I'm with gets in trouble."
Celestia and Luna both nodded in agreement, satisfied with the adjusted plan of attack. “Then if you’ll excuse us, I believe it’s time for us to retire for the night,” Luna said. “We’ll go over the specifics of the plan tomorrow with Cadance and Shining.”
“Sounds good.”
“Oh and Christopher, I’ll tap into your dream tonight so we can get in contact with Janet,” the night princess added.
“I look to forward to it,” he replied with a grin. I'll finally be able to see how my war is going.