"Um, excuse me Lieutenant Steel Hoof, but King Sombra has the new battle plans here for you to look at."
"Ah, excellent! King Sombra's strategies are flawless in their design. With these we shall have control of the enemy camp by the break of tomorrow's dawn. That will be all, Private."
"Er, well actually sir there's...well..."
"You should go back to your tent and inspect your tools, Private. You'll want them in good condition for when we strike at the foe tonight."
"Well, before that sir, there's something that's been concerning me recently..."
"Don't let fear grip you, my boy. Celestia's soldiers will stand little chance against us, the cowards."
"What the - no, no sir, that's not the thing troubling me."
"Oh?"
"You see, sir, it's...well, uh...h-have you, like, looked at our flag lately at all?"
"Our...flag, Private?"
"Yeah. Have you noticed...anything unusual about it?"
"Well, now that you mention it Private..."
"Yes?"
"...I have noticed there's a slight tear in the upper corner of the flag. But I'm sure it's nothing a good sewing kit can't patch up, right Private?"
"First of all, we don't have any sewing kits laying around. And secondly that wasn't the issue I was getting at...sir."
"Then what's the problem?"
"Sir...our flag has an image of King Sombra devouring helpless ponies while raping six possibly virgin mares with tendrils of darkness. And I don't think consent was given beforehoof."
"Right...soooooo...what about that?"
"Lieutenant...are...are we the baddies?"
"What?"
"Are we on the bad guy team in this war?"
"Are we - I, you, it - No! No, of course not! What the hell makes you think we're the villains in all of this? Have you been listening to that nonsense propaganda the enemy keeps spouting out?"
"Um, maybe a little bit. But..."
"You know I could report you to King Sombra and have you demoted to toilet cleaning duties for consideration of treason, Private."
"We don't have toilets sir. It's just a big hole we fill up with our dead. But it's just that I've been looking at our army for a while now and I couldn't help noticing things."
"What sort of things?"
"Well, for starters sir, I don't really know why we're fighting a war against Equestria in the first place."
"Isn't it obvious, Private? Princess Celestia tortures us with never-ending daylight! Her relentless sun burdens all living creatures with heat and kills the life of the very land itself! Have you forgotten how barren the earth beneath your hooves has become because of her ceaseless day cycles?"
"Well to be fair sir, I think Princess Celestia has more pressing matters at hoof considering how frequently King Sombra has us attacking her kingdom. I'd be very surprised if she even gets an hour of sleep at all. Plus I think us lot fighting her forces nearly three times a day isn't helping the land to grow flowers and grass again, either."
"Well...I...uh...oh...well, okay Private. You make a good point there, but it doesn't imply that we're the baddies in the slightest."
"Well what about the fact that her soldiers have nicer armor than we do?"
"What's that supposed to mean? Look at our protection, Private! They look cool! There's spikes embedded in the armor! Spikes! Everypony knows that spikes make armor look cooler!"
"I...guess so, sir. But I was referring to the fact that the armor Celestia's soldiers wear is bright and shiny. It's a lot nicer to look at than our own armor. Our armor is all dull and bland colors with really weird helmet crests."
"Well I...I suppose the Equestrian armor is admittedly more appealing than our own, Private. But still, they don't have badass spikes to make themselves look tougher, do they?"
"And talking about the spikes thing, while I suppose they are kind of cool in concept, every time I'm out there charging into battle, I always worry about tripping over myself or some random stone and falling on to these pointy things. I mean look at this, sir! There's spikes in the neck plating! That's got to be a health and safety violation at least!"
"Oh, nonsense Private. You're just over-reacting."
"Wilson tripped over somepony's spear the other day and wound up in the medical bay with four spikes sticking in his throat. Every time he speaks he makes four different whistling sounds. You're telling me this armor is safe?"
"Okay fine. Perhaps our gear needs fewer spikes. But..."
"And why does our armor have to look intimidating to begin with? The Equestrian's armor doesn't look frightening; it looks more heroic and noble than ours."
"Oh, that's an easy one! To strike fear into the heart of the enemy, of course! I mean it'd be ridiculous if we charged into battle wearing flower crowns and friendship bracelets now, would it not? You have to look scary if you're going to make the enemy less likely to fight back, am I right?"
"But our helmets look like knockoff Predator masks, sir. Predator. As in the same Predator who looks scary as hell and takes the skulls of other creatures to add to his collection of bone trophies. When you make that comparison it doesn't really make us look like valiant heroes, does it?"
"Okay, fair enough. So we're not exactly child friendly in this war. But even so, that still doesn't make us villains, Private. It just means we're, er...a tad more extreme in how we approach things."
"And then there's all the murder we've committed..."
"Okay, now that's horse scat! This is a war, Private! There's going to be ponies dying on both sides! You can't tell me we're immediately evil for doing something that the opposite team is doing as well!"
"On the battlefield, sure it's anypony's game. But OFF the battlefield I don't think it's fair when we kindap unfortunate soldiers and bring them back here to throw them in small and unhygienic cages."
"Prisoners of war, Private. It happens."
"Well, Celestia's side never captures any of our soldiers. I mean, they beat us up and sometimes put an arrow in our knee - I mean, plot holes. Sometimes they might keep a couple of us for interrogation..."
"There you go! They hold our brothers-in-hooves as hostages! Torturing our poor ponies for information using horrendous instruments of cruelty!"
"The worst they've ever done was make one of our comrades listen to the Spice Girls and that song out of Frozen. We've broken legs and rib cages of our prisoners and even performed blood rituals right in front of King Sombra.Which he bathes in afterwards while drinking a martini."
"Well...er...it's...it's all just to lower the morale of the other prisoners, Private! To make them think twice about, er, messing with us!"
"We also cut off their hooves and even entire limbs, wings and horns, sir. I don't think they'd be able to 'mess with us' if they wanted to."
"Oh...kay, that's a good argument you made there. And now that you mentioned that, it does only now seem like we were crossing a line a bit there. But at least we let them go free, right?"
"They don't get very far without legs to walk on, sir. Most tend to bleed out after a few yards."
"Yeah...yeah, that, er...that doesn't look particularly good does it, Private?"
"Do you remember that one pegasus we captured a couple of weeks back?"
"Um...remind me Private?"
"The pegasus mare with the rainbow mane. We tore off one of her wings as slowly and painfully as possible just to prolong her suffering, and then one of our soldiers chewed off part of her ear. And she wasn't even involved with Celestia's army at the time. She was just foraging for some apples in a field when we took her in!"
"Right, in regards to the ear being chewed off thing, she attacked that pony first. Granted, it was a bit extreme what he did to her, but he did it totally in self defense."
"She lashed out because he was going to take the other wing off, sir."
"It was to keep her from escaping, Private! What else could we have done?"
"Well the words 'magic', 'rope' and 'shackles' spring to my mind, sir."
"Ah. In hindsight, that probably might have been the, er...the better options at the time."
"Oh, and what about those speeches we get every day, eh? Princess Celestia's always telling her soldiers to fight bravely in the name of justice and honor. If we're not the bad guys sir, then why do King Sombra's speeches always involve 'slaughter this' and 'exterminate that'?"
"Um...w-w-well, to, ah...motivate us and boost morale among our ranks through the use of aggressively extreme choice of words?"
"While also threatening all of us with promises of fates worse than death if we fail in our tasks and services, which I would like to point out we were very impolitely forced into doing without so much as a vote or even drawing of straws? Isn't that something a wicked tyrant would do to his people, sir?"
"Okay that's enough Private. I will admit that you've made a number of good points about our troops questionable ethnics in this war, but I am positive that there is a perfectly sound and reasonable explanation for everything we've done up to this point that somepony higher up in command might be better at explaining to you."
"By the way, did you know that Sombra's also cancelling all of our insurance policies and coverage's?"
"...Come again?"
"Starting tomorrow, Sombra's ending our free dental plans and taking away our life insurances. He says we won't be needing them anymore. Also something about 'crystals', I think."
"..."
"..."
"...So does Celestia's side offer free dental and life insurance?"
"I've heard due to economical troubles the dental's are sorted by their only surviving dentist, and the insurance payouts are a little steep, but you get a free pen out of it."
"Private, we're defecting to the other team effective immediately. Bring Sombra's battle plans with you. It'll help us with the bartering."
"Wait, so this means we WERE the baddies then?"
