//------------------------------//
// In Formation 
// Story: Modern Warmare 
// by Beatleboy62 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 4


Get In Formation

Outside the throne room, all six ponies and all of the Task Force, minus Price, were waiting for Price to finish his audience with Celestia. Remembering what she had said earlier, Soap asked Twilight a question.
“Twilight, you said you were Princess Celestia’s prized student?” He questioned.
“Yes,” she replied, “why do you ask?”
“Just wondering is all. We have a Queen back where we’re from, but your Princess seems to actually be in charge.”
“What, is someone else in power instead of your Queen?” Twilight asked Soap.
“Well, it’s complicated. About three hundred years ago, the Royal Family used to be in power, but started losing it as the country’s needs changed. Now the Queen is no more than a figurehead and an extension of tradition more or less. We have a group of people who get together and vote on things. Our Queen’s held the throne for about sixty five years, how long has Celestia been in power?”
Twilight replied without skipping a beat, “Over a thousand years at least.”
Soap and the others leaned forward, amazed. “A thousand years? How?”
Looking at her friends, Twilight said, “I’m going to assume that your land is quite different from ours. I can explain more when we get back to the library, but we need to wait for your friend…”
“Price.” Soap said.
“Price. As soon as he gets back, we can leave.”
As if on que, Price walked out looking quite calm. “Well, she knows just about as much as we do lads. Nothing.”
“Now what should we do?” Nikolai asked, “It’s not as if we have some safe house here filled with supplies that we can go hide in until backup arrives.”
“About that,” Price said, looking at the ponies, “I don’t wish to impose on you all, but the Princess said that you wouldn’t mind quartering us in your homes, only for a bit. We understand if you can’t, we’ll just take shelter in our crashed-”
“Nonsense!” Rarity said, “I’m more than sure that we can help you, we wouldn’t just push you out in the cold just because you’re new here, what kind of hosts would we be if we did that? The only problem is, I only have enough room at my boutique for one of you, I couldn’t run my shop if there were six of you running around.” She looked at her friends, “Would any of you care to help?”
Applejack crossed her hooves, “Well, ah’m sure one of you can stay up in the loft of my barn, lots of room up there.”
Pinkie smiled, looking at them, “Mr. and Mrs. Cake have a spare room under their shop, I don’t think they would mind letting someone borrow it.”
Fluttershy looked at the floor, talking quietly, “I have a spare bedroom at my cottage, and I’m sure the animals wouldn’t mind too much.”
Rainbow Dash looked at and spoke directly to Nikolai, “You’re not afraid of heights, right? If you can find a way to keep from falling through the clouds, you can stay at my cloud house, you seem cool enough.”
Finally, Twilight shrugged, “There’s always an extra couch at the library, besides, I’d like to ask you a few more questions about where you come from, perhaps I could even help you find a way back.”
Each of the soldiers relaxed a bit at the prospect of having a warm place to sleep for what seemed to be the first time in forever. After sleeping on the United States’ submarines and TF 141 safe houses for the past few weeks, this was a pleasant change of pace.
“Well, if Nikolai’s going with the rainbow one, where should the rest of us go?” Soap asked.
“Ghost is pretty quiet, perhaps he should go with Fluttershy.” Nikolai said, shrugging.
Fluttershy squeaked, looking up at the scary man with the mask, “Ok.”
Rarity looked at Soap, his shirt was in shreds from the Osprey crash, and he hadn’t either the time to change or another shirt to change into, “You can come with me Mr. MacTavish, I’ll have that shirt patched up for you in no time at all.”
Soap perked up a little, “That would be great, thanks.”
Next, Pinkie Pie bounded up to Roach, “Why don’t you come with me? You look a bit sad; you just a good old-fashioned Pinkie Pie welcome party!” As she said this, confetti seemed to magically appear from behind her.
“Soap?” Roach said to Soap, a bit unsure about how to respond to Pinkie.
“Roach would be more than delighted to go with you Pinkie, and he thanks you for your hospitality,” Soap said, to which Pinkie Pie smiled gleefully.
“Twilight,” Price spoke up, “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to go with you, I’d really like to know a bit more about this world around us, knowledge is part of my job description after all.”
Twilight smiled, saying, “I always love to help somepony...err...person learn, I’d be glad if you came with me.”
Seeing that they were the last ones, Applejack approached Yuri and extended a hoof, “Well then, I guess that means you’re coming with me.”
Yuri extended a tattooed arm and shook her hoof in return, “Thanks, it’ll be nice to have a full night of sleep for the first time in a while.”
Twilight looked around, smiling, “Now that that’s all settled, I think we can head back to Ponyville. We can talk at the library before we go our separate ways for the evening.”
And with that, they proceeded back to the chariot, and back to Ponyville.

While in the chariot, the Task Force finally got a clue of just how big and amazing this new world around them was (as the first time, they didn’t want to look for fear of falling). Canterlot for example was an entire city perched impossibly close to the edge of a cliff, with picturesque waterfalls running all around it. Nothing from their home world even came close to it, with its lovely white, purple, and gold color scheme and the seemingly unending spire of the tallest tower, reaching up as if to touch the midday sun.
Looking out at the landscape, they could see a large desert to the west, a city even larger than Canterlot to the north, the Everfree Forest to the east, with smoke still billowing out of the Osprey crash site, and another, yet somewhat less densely vegetated forest to the south. While these were just the main highlights, one could still see hundreds of small towns and villages interspersed every few miles. Truly, it was an amazing place. 
After landing back in Ponyville and proceeding back to the library, Nikolai stopped Price outside of the doorway.
“I faintly heard a gunshot while you were with the Princess. What happened?”
Due to muscle memory, Price set his hand down on the gun, “She wanted to know what my gun was. I couldn’t say no.”
“How much did you tell her?”
“Almost everything. I told her what we are and what we do, including the fact that we’re just trained killers.”
“What did she say back?”
“Not much, just asked me whether or not I enjoyed killing.”
Nikolai raised an eyebrow at this, “Do you enjoy killing? Seems like a pretty important question.”
“How so?”
“Well, the fact that she asked you makes me finally think that this world isn’t just sparkles and rainbows. Would she really have asked you that if she had never dealt with it herself before?”
Price nodded, “Well, along with that, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know I answered ‘no,’ so she doesn’t know we’re all crazy idiots with weapons. Yet.”
Smirking, Nikolai patted Price on the back, “C’mon, let’s get inside, it’s colder than a Russian winter here.”



Inside the library all of the humans sat in chairs that seemed just a bit too low to the ground for them. Twilight set a large book on the table before them as the soldiers looked over the cover. It appeared to be covered in leather like material, with a golden unicorn head in the middle of it, with bronze clasps and casings along the edges of the book.
Soap studied the cover, “What is it?”
“It’s a short history of Equestria, presented in a way that I think you’ll all be able to understand.”
As they stared at the book, Twilight opened the book and began reading:
“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, there were two regal sisters who ruled together, and created harmony for all the land…”

Twenty minutes later…

“ ...and with the six new bearers of the Elements of Harmony, harmony has been maintained in Equestria ever since.”
Trying to process all the information that had just been given to them, most of the Task Force sat with their faces in various forms of confusion and misunderstanding.
“Wait, just to be clear here:” Soap cleared his throat, “The two Princesses raise the sun and the moon,”

“Yes,” Twilight nodded.

“Each of the Princesses are thousands of years old.”

“Yes, go on.”

“One of them went insane and was banished to the surface of the moon.”

“Yes.”

“And you and your six friends, with no previous training in combat, were tasked with and succeeded in defeating an evil living goddess from your own world and purged her soul of all evil using the magic of friendship. Is that all?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“Good,” Soap said, jotting some notes down in his journal, “I just thought I was going crazy.”
After a few moments, Nikolai chimed in, “So, here, you don’t have anything like combustion engines? Or gasoline?”
“What?” Twilight questioned, “I’ve never heard of either of those before, I’m sorry. Most of the tools and machines we have here are either powered by ponies doing work, or unicorn magic; we don’t have a need for anything else.”
Nikolai shook his head, “Not that it’d help us, the Osprey,” he looked at the confused ponies, “The machine we were in, it’s destroyed.”
As it dawned on them that they might as well have been fighting in the 18th Century, Soap turned to Price, “Well, what should we do now, there’s not much we can do, is there?”
Price yawned, “Well, it’s late, and tomorrow’s always another day. Plus, not counting the few hours we were knocked unconscious, we’ve all been awake for the past 72 hours or so. I think we should all just get some sleep and try to sort this out in the morning.”
As every human went to leave the library following their assigned pony, Twilight stopped them all:
"And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you all please put your things in here on the way out? At this point, I think that the less questions everypony raised about you, the better." Using her magic, she pulled out a large chest out from under a table. There was no keyhole or clasp, it was obviously controlled by magic. As for what she wanted to put in the chest, Twilight was lying. She knew that those were weapons, but she didn't want to confront them about it, not yet at lest, she just hoped her ruse would pay off.

Soap looked at Price and nodded. After a few moments Price nodded, hesitantly, back.

"All right, everything in the chest."
Twilight watched as they put absolutely everything into the chest, the strange metal objects, green orbs with pins, little devices with buttons all over them, knives of all sizes, she surely would be analyzing them later and try to figure out what they were.

As she closed and locked the magical chest, the men were left with only the clothes on their backs and the watches on their wrists. Feeling satisfied, she turned to dismiss them all.

"Unless you have anymore questions, you may all rest tonight, thank you all."
As everypony and human left, Rainbow and Nikolai stayed behind. 
“Uh Twilight, we have a tiny problem here.” 
“What? Is something wrong?”
“He doesn’t have wings; he won’t be able to stay on my cloud.”
“Cloud?” Nikolai asked.
“But, I thought you said you could fly?”
“No, I said I fly these machines, I operate them. Standing on clouds is impossible for anyone where we come from.”
“Well, can’t you use that spell on him that you used on yourself when you came to see me at the Best Young Fliers Competition? That seemed to work pretty well.”
“I guess…Nikolai, hold still for a moment.”
The tough Russian stood firm and held his breath, bracing for pain, some sort of transformation, anything. Twilight’s horn began to glow as she pointed it right at his chest. Nikolai shut his eyes, hoping that it would be short. Then, as soon as it started, it was over.
“That’s it, I can walk on clouds?”
Twilight smiled, “Yes, it’ll be just like walking on the ground. Now the only other problem I see is…”
“Don’t worry, I’ve lifted heavier things.” Rainbow said reassuringly.
As they left, Twilight made one last note to the pilot, “Just come back in the next two days so I can renew the spell, otherwise you might fall through the cloud in the middle of the night.”
Nikolai quickly turned and waved a thanks before proceeding on with the cyan pegasus. Twilight looked back at the table and saw Price still staring intensely at the book, still trying to take in everything that he had been told.
“I…I just can’t understand any of this. Magic. Ponies. Dragons. None of this makes sense, and it’s very bad when I can’t come to the conclusion on something.”
“Well,” Twilight said, trying to be optimistic, “Like you said, tomorrow’s another day, and perhaps we’ll find out more.” She nudged his arm and led him over to the couch in the middle of the room. “There are more blankets in the closet if you need them, and please, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Price sat down on the comfy couch and let out a deep sigh of relaxation. “After sleeping on broken cots and hard floors for the past few weeks, you have no idea how nice this is, thank you Ms. Sparkle.”
Twilight giggled, “Please, call me Twilight, and really, it’s no problem.”
Price let out a small smile, “Ok then, thank you Twilight, goodnight.”
Twilight turned off the lantern and went up the stairs to her room, “Goodnight, Captain Price.”



Price lay on the couch for about a half hour before he knew for sure that he was the only one awake. He got up and crept to what he thought was the kitchen. He searched through all the drawers, but alas, no knives. He reluctantly took a fork and placed it under his pillow.
They were nice, but in his book they still couldn’t be trusted. Trusting was what almost got him beaten to death by Shepard. He had to keep a wary eye.
For now.