Everfree Imperial Garrison
1:47 P.M.
“You?!”
“Naturally. Who else would be in command of all Imperial ground forces on the planet?” General Aerin gave the shocked Element-Bearers a sardonic grin from the seat behind his desk. “Welcome to my domain. Can I get you some refreshments? Water? Brandy? Cheese and crackers?” The ponies silently shook their heads. “Suit yourselves. So tell me, what do you think of our living arrangements?”
“Oh, they’re absolutely dreadful!” Rarity exclaimed. “Everything’s so cramped, and the colors! Black everywhere! I think the only things I saw that weren’t a shade of gray were those red banners! The lighting’s almost as bad. It’s either too harsh or too dim. You could really use a proper interior designer. Now, I know it isn’t really my field of expertise, but I know some truly gifted ponies who –”
“This is a military base,” Aerin snapped, dropping all pretenses of politeness. “It’s not supposed to be elegant. It’s designed to store troops and their supplies in the most efficient manner possible, allow for easy deployment of those troops, protect important technical systems and command rooms, and be cost-effective. ‘Looking nice’ doesn’t appear anywhere on the list of requirements. It’s functional, not fancy.”
Rarity responded with an indignant humph. “If you didn’t want an honest answer, than you shouldn’t have asked. Besides, it’s not like something can’t be beautiful and still work well.”
“No, but that costs extra. The Imperial coffers may be deep, but they’re not infinite. At least this place is clean and safe. Hell of a lot better than the Coruscant underlevels.” He murmured the last sentence to himself, almost inaudibly. Then he gave his head a small shake. “Anyways, the place does what it has to, and that’s all that matters. Making it cheerful would be unnecessary at best, and counterproductive at worst. We don’t need our troops getting all happy and soft. Make them feel too comfortable, and they won’t be ready to face the brutal hardships of war.”
Pinkie Pie gave him a confused look. “You… don’t want to be happy?”
“NO!!!” His unexpected outburst caused the ponies to leap back, eliciting a low chuckle from the Inquisitor, who was standing off to the side. “I don’t want to be happy! It’s not my place to be happy! It’s not any of our places! We’re military. It’s our job to suffer, to die, so that others don’t. We’re karking heroes. And happiness has no place in the life of a true hero.”
Twilight spoke up nervously. Aerin was clearly unstable, but then, so was Discord, and they had managed to reform him. “Heroism isn’t about suffering, it’s about working together and helping others. On our own, none of us would have been able to defeat Nightmare Moon, Discord, or Tirek. But together, we can overcome any challenge. We get our strength from our friendship. If you would just –”
In an extraordinary display of agility and speed, Aerin threw himself over his desk and tackled her to the floor, fastening his hands around her neck. “Don’t you dare talk about those things!” he practically spat in her face. “Heroism? Friendship? You alien filth don’t know the meanings of those words!” Her friends stepped forward to defend her, but were cut off by a hum and a blood red beam of energy appearing between them and the general. The room was filled with tension for several seconds before Aerin stood up, breathing heavily, and sat back down in his chair.
Malen deactivated his lightsaber and stepped aside to let the Element-Bearers run to Twilight’s side. Shakily, she got to her hooves with a series of wracking coughs. “What…” she began, only to almost collapse in another coughing fit. Almost half a minute passed before she managed to fully regain her capacity for speech. “What do you mean?” she asked in confusion. She would have been furious about the unwarranted attack, but she was even more curious about the human’s strange reaction. “What do you think they’re about?”
His gaze met hers. She expected the hatred in his eye, but she was shocked to find a great deal of sadness there, too. “Heroism and friendship – true heroism, and true friendship –” he said quietly, “come from the exact same thing: a willingness to take on the pain of others. You can’t eliminate pain – happiness is a zero-sum game. The mark of a hero and a friend is that he intentionally and uncomplainingly accepts the pain himself, so others can have the happiness. The difference between a hero and a friend is that a hero bears the suffering of those he doesn’t know, while a friend helps those he does know. All soldiers are heroes, and many of us are friends.” He sighed heavily. “I had a good friend once.”
Reaching into his right sleeve, he pulled out a letter opener with a golden handle. He turned it over in his hands. “He gave this to me when I was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. A family heirloom. Said it brought him good luck, and that I’d need it more than him. In four hours, he was dead. See, my promotion was done in the field. This corps was assigned to Kashyyyk, to help keep the Wookiees in line. Damned beasts rebelled again while we were there, and it fell to us to contain them until the stormtroopers could arrive. Colonel Harkin got torn up by a berserker; as his division’s First Major, I got his position. I made Duron captain of my security company, so he was with me in the FCC.” His single eye defocused, staring off into nowhere. “They killed one of our shock troopers, got his launcher. Dur saw the smoke – just him. Instead of trying to save himself, he jumped on me. I lived, barely. I was the only one. Got another ‘promotion’ after that – here, to Major General and this desk. Without my eye, I couldn’t fight alongside my men anymore. I was a liability. But I still serve, making the hard choices, deciding who lives and dies in order to bring about the greater good.”
He slipped the knife back in his sleeve, and locked his stare on Twilight again. “That’s what heroes do. They sacrifice. But you aliens don’t do that. You think only of yourselves! What have any of you lost for your ‘heroism’? A little of your oh-so-precious time? Hah! You give up nothing, and you get everything you ever wanted!” He pointed a finger at Rarity. “You’re an up-and-coming socialite and commercialist, with prospects that are only improving!” The accusing appendage shifted to Rainbow Dash. “You got a spot in your precious stunt group, and their explicit admission that you’re better than them!” Finally, Twilight. “And you. You were elevated into royalty. You’re the only one in your whole group of hedonists that’s lost anything – a house you had lived in for less than three years. And you got a giant palace in return! None of you are heroes. You don’t deserve the title. All any of you aliens do is take! That’s why humans will always rule. Because we’re willing to make the sacrifices, to give up everything for a greater cause. And you ponies are even more vile than most. You don’t even kill in your ‘battles’! Never do any of you think, ‘No, I won’t give up just because I’ve been beaten senseless. The cause I fight for is more important than my life. I won’t stop until they’re forced to kill me.’ By Chaos, you don’t even cripple! None of you keep fighting when the battle is hopeless. You just give up. ‘Oh, I’ve been overcome, I’ll just sit out the rest of the battle while my brothers-in-arms fight on around me!’ There are no glorious last stands for you, only cowardly surrenders. I know about the Siege of Canterlot. And I know that there wasn’t a single damned casualty. Not a single pony fought so fiercely that they killed a changeling, or that the changelings were forced to kill them. They were all captured. You creatures are disgusting. Get out of my sight.”
Twilight couldn’t believe it. He thought he had a position of moral superiority because he killed? “We don’t kill because we care about our opponents. They’re still –”
“I said get out!” He seized a bottle off his desk and hurled it at her. His rage threw off his aim and it shattered behind her, filling the office with the scent of alcohol. Obviously, he had become totally unreasonable. The Element-Bearers quickly hurried out of the room before he could turn even more violent, followed by Malen. Staring at the door as it hissed shut, Twilight wished she knew how to make him see how self-destructive the path he had chosen was – before it was too late.