//------------------------------// // Chapter 4 // Story: A New Misson // by itsjustteal //------------------------------// "Princess Twilight." A guard pony, covered in golden armor, and an iron short sword in its sheath to its side, stood at attention. Twilight looked up from what she was doing and looked at Sergeant Red Hoof. "Yes, Sergeant ? Is everything ready to go?" She stood up and walked over to the window. "Yes, Princess. Our supplies have been gathered, were ready to go, just waiting for the go." He replied, still at attention and as stoic as he'll ever be. "Alright. I suppose Spike and I have all of our needed necessities, why don't we go outside then." Twilight suggested and proceeded to walk outside, with Red Hoof following behind. With the sound of the library door closing behind Twilight, she smiled at the sight in front of her. There was about twenty to thirty Royal Guard troops mulling around, talking to each other. One of them just happened to look Twilight's way, and snapped to attention. The other guards were quick to notice, and in seconds, all of them were at attention. Twilight tried to cover herself with a hoof, and chuckled sheepishly. She heard footsteps behind her, but did not look back. "So, are we ready to head out?" Twilight heard Spike say from her left. She looked towards him and smiled. "Not quite, Spike. We're still waiting for a few ponies." She replied. "Don't tell me, are the gi-" Spike was cut off. "Yes, Spike, they are coming." She said with an air of finality. Spike wisely decided to keep his mouth shut, let he be told to stay behind instead. One by one her friends started to show up until all of them were present. In total, there were six of her friends, including Spike. Twilight had gone over what the situation was and told them what they would be doing and what role they were to play if something bad were to happen. Twilight turned to Sergeant Red Hoof. "Alright Sergeant, we're ready to go." "Yes, Princess," Red Hoof turned to the rest of the men. "You heard the princess, boys! Double time it, move out!" ~ "Alright boys, what's our game plan?" I asked, while the three of us were sitting around the remains of the morning's fire. Mark raised his hand first. "I don't know why we never tried this before Sarge, but we could try the comms? Maybe we could get a hold of the guys at command." Hm. Gotta hand it to him, not once did I think of using the radios we gathered in the Chinook. "Alright that'll be first on the list," I looked over to Nick. "What about you? Got anything?" "Sorry, but I don't know what to do in these situations. I trained to be a pilot, not ground forces." "Understandable. Alright Mark, hand me over the Walkie. Lets try hitting up someone." Mark fished the walkie out of his bag and tossed it to me. I raised it up to my head, held down the button on the side, and spoke. "Delta 4 this is Echo 2-1 come in." I held down the button and was met with the sweet sound of nails scratching on a chalk board. I switched channels rapidly to try and get a signal, but nothing happened. I brought the Walkie back up to my face. "Command this Echo 2-1, I say again this is Echo 2-1, how copy?" I desperately tried to scan through the channels, and as I did, our faces grew with worry. "You think that it was busted during the crash?" Nick asked. "Yeah, I would like to hope that. Better than what I'm thinking." It better have been from the crash, because it's that or the Walkie wasn't picking up channels, obviously, but its highly unlikely that it would happen, because it is transmitted and received through satellite. "I had really hoped that it didn't have to resort to this. Men, we've been forced to go dark. We have no way of contacting Command. If we are lucky, we should be able to find an enemy patrol around here." I sighed. "I think we should move, sir." Mark softly announced, probably not wanting to bring anymore attention to us than we already did. ~ "Princess, we think we found something! Come quickly!" The sergeant called out. Twilight raised her head from Celestia's most recent message, and quickly started to trot towards Red Hoof. What Hoof had found startled the girls. Lying in a clearing was a scorched wreckage of some kind, and it looked like somepony had thrown metal all over the clearing. "What is it?" Twilight questioned Red Hoof. "I'm not too sure, Princess." He answered with a frown, wondering if it was safe enough to get close. "But whatever this is, somepony didn't want us to get anything from it." Anything the girls would've said was cut off by loud roar far off into the distance, causing all eyes (and weapons) to point towards the general location of the sound. "Who's there?!" Dash yelled out, flying upwards a few feet. Due to the thickness of the trees and foliage around the clearing, she couldn't get a clean line of sight on whatever caused the noise. ~ "I think that's the edge of these bloody trees." Mark quietly called out, having taken point. After a moment, he let out a curse and quietly backed up. "What is it?" I whispered once he returned. "...I don't even know what that thing up there is, sir." He answered, looking behind him. "But I know for damn sure it's hostile. Almost walked into it eating a deer." "Right. Let's get around this clearing as quietly as possible." I muttered, causing Mark to return to his position and lead us away. A roar behind us told the three of us that we'd been found. "Run!" I yelled, not wanting to become some creature's lunch. Mark stopped long enough to grunt and lift Nick over his shoulder, before running. I ran after him, ready to help him should he fall. We saw a light ahead of us and we both ran faster, breaking free of the forest and hopefully losing whatever was chasing us.