Of mercenaries and.... Ponies?

by Lion Tale

Trigger Happy Ponies. Pt 2

Shining Armor stood in front of Team Sun-Butt — or that’s what he called them — briefing the team on the fact of they would have to secure the city as their own. As he had finished with the introduction of himself, a Royal Guard dashed into the room, out of breath.

“Sir,” he shouted as best as he can while panting. “We have Intel that there is makeshift base about one and a half kilometers away from here!”

The mercenaries stood up with their weapons, ready to take on the upcoming battle. They were anxious to get started. Because of the peacefulness of this world, it’s a bit hard to adjust to the soft life.

“Are you sure it’s a base?” the captain replied.

“Yes I am and we have sent a couple of pegasi to scout the area to make sure.”

Scout stood up with his Strange Winger ran out into the streets of Los Pegasus. However, before he could get very far, Shining Armor shot a spell to make him freeze for a minute.

“Now, where are you off to?” he asked.

Richard struggled to get free, but then gave out when he realized that he’s going nowhere. “I’m just going to give some guy a lesson.”

Pyro appeared without her mask on, so she can be able to speak clearly. “Maybe you should wait a few more minutes, and then you can go give Spy the best hit okay?”

Scout thought about it, then he gave the Pyro a thumb up, well, he tried to. Then the captain removed the spell placed on him, which gave Richard the ability to walk again.

“You know, being in that position makes you ache!” He rolled his head back and forth, getting the muscles back into shape. Then Richard pulled his leg behind him, and finished with touching his toes.

“So, when do we begin?”

Engineer walked out of the building where the meeting was held, then turned to the Shining Armor. “Is the city evacuated?”

The Captain turned to a nearby guard, who nodded his head. “Yes we are, just waiting a response from our pegasi to make sure this isn’t a joke. Then, maybe you can —“

A loud bang rang in the crisp, morning air, making everybody jerk their heads towards the origin of the sound. After a few moments of silence, a lone figure was flying towards them, with the red, rising sun behind. A minute passed with it slowly creeping towards the group. As it got closer, the mercenaries rose up their weapons, but lowered it when they had recognized it as a Royal Guard, but kept their fingers near the trigger just to be sure.

A guard rushed to its side as the guard slowly landed near the group. “We need a medic over here!” he yelled.

Arvin jogged out of the casino building where they had met up. Once he reached the pony, he noticed a few things different from the rest of the guards; one, he had a slightly blue tint to the whites of his eyes; two, although the guard was wounded, he would not have survived with these kind of injuries to the belly and neck, which were leaking blood at the time; three, he seemed slightly larger than the average guard.

But Arvin shrugged it off, and thought that maybe he had a higher rank than the others and probably had more luck than the others. But it still wouldn’t explain the eye color, which made the medic shudder about the volatile compounds that every special guard must go through.

As Medic switched his Quick-Fix on—he knew it would do as the name implies —and slowly watched as the yellow plasma shooting out of the medigun healed the pegasus guard. That’s odd I might need to find out why my color changed. Arvin stopped, and then bent down the poke at the pony’s head. The fast-paced breathing from earlier had slowed to a gentle, rhythmic, and quiet pace. It had surprised the German that the pony had fallen asleep, but it wasn’t significant.

Scout poked the guard, only to receive a mumble. He looked back up at Shining Armor, “Does this mean we can go now?”

Shining sighed; he knew that couldn’t avoid this anyways. He looked at all the Mercenaries, and then nodded, getting a cheer from the group. Once the group marched away, he looked at the nearest guard and said, “Get me a hidden post nearby the battlefield, if you can find out where it is. Follow the group; it would be easier if you did.” The pegasus guard saluted and then flew into the sky.
The Captain looked back at the building where they had made temporary camp; The Four Dragons. “Let’s go! We need to pack up and be ready by the time our watchman comes back! Let’s go! Move it! Move it! Move it!”

(….)

Scout was running in the general direction of where the shot came from, until he saw the most horrifying creature; it was black with several holes along the bottom of its legs; long, green, oily hair that also had holes in it; a central green section in the middle; wings that belongs to a bug; and a horn that jutted in three different sections, at with a sharp edge at every bend.

It reminded him of the black cloud that had chased him back at one of those Boston parks. He started to back away, but a green aura surrounded him and firmly placed him on the ground with green goo shot from its horn. His heart started to race, but slowed once he noticed his teammates appearing around the corner he had turned. They gasped and Heavy pulled out his Flaming Beast and it had started to whir to the suitable speed. But Engineer pulled his hand in front of gun making Heavy stop the gun and lowering it.

“Who are you?” Engineer asked. “Are you part of RED team?”

The creature giggled. “Who is this RED team you speak of?” It answered in a voice that’s enough for it to classify as female.

Almost immediately, a few people dressed in RED designs and logos appeared, making Scout panic once again, but in a more frantic way. As they slowly walked towards the BLU team, there were black, smaller creatures that looked similar to the large, female creature.

“Hey cockroach!” Scout yelled. “You think you can release me? This has been the second time this happened!”

“Of course not you fool,” The creature snapped. “I’m going to keep you here until—“

RED Spy put his Ambassador against the creature’s head. “Better think twice mademoiselle, or you’re going to be gone in next few seconds.”

The creature gulped, this was the first time that she actually felt defenseless against anyone else other than the time of the end of the invasion.

A smaller, black creature put his hoof on Spy’s leg. “Please don’t hurt our Queen, she’s the only pony we got left.” It looked up at him with begging eyes, almost on the verge of tears.

Spy couldn’t help it and he took the gun off of her head, never once removing his finger off the trigger. He thought he was better than that, but something was off on these “changelings”.

Engineer walked up to the Queen. “Ma’am, will this be where we’re fightin’?”

The Changeling Queen — face blushing with anger — looked at the Engineer. “Yes we will. Do we need to talk about boundaries?”

“Would be greatly appreciated.”

“Very well then,” She raised her head, and explained where the borders were.

It was a fairly small area, to both mercenaries; it was roughly the size of 2-Fort, only with streets, buildings and a small walkway in the middle. Both spawns were inside a casino, directly across from each other with a large street substituting the small river. Complete with an underground sewer system.

As the rules were talked on—such as no changelings unless they have ponies along too, no prisoners, and no magic— Engineer held his hand out. “Do we have an agreement?”

At first, the Queen looked at the gloved hand, but then held out her own hoof. “I accept your terms, my name is Chrysalis.”

Engineer grasped her hoof. “Conagher, Dell Conagher. Hopefully we meet again, just not like this.”

The Queen only grinned in response.

(….)

The pegasus sped back as fast as she can — could’ve even rivaled the Wonderbolts — and found the Royal Guard Captain. Her heart raced, not only at her own haste back to The Four Dragons, but at the fact Queen Chrysalis and their own team shook hooves.

She landed in front of Shining Armor, and briefed everything she can before passing out from exhaustion.

Shining looked at the now downed pegasus before realizing what he had heard, the battle is almost starting!

Quickly, he healed the guard, and woke her up. “Can you lead me towards the battlefield?”

She nodded and then slowly flew back towards the now battling mercenaries. They already started, but it was still safe to land on a top a building, which coincidentally was across the street from the changelings.

Shining Armor wanted to attack them so badly, but it was the mercenaries’ battle, not theirs. So he had turned his head to the field, just in time to see a RED Demoman blown to bits from a BLU Soldier. As Soldier rocket-jumped away with his Festive Black Box, Shining Armor was somewhere else, vomiting whatever he had left of his wife’s cheese omelet.

(…..)

Arvin ran from the spawn room behind Richard. The medic was able to keep up, with the help of the Quick-Fix, and reached into the street. A nearby grenade from an enemy Demoman nearly caused him to explode, but he was saved by a friendly Soldier killing the Scottish man. Arvin reached the inside of the base, this time following Heavy, leaving Scout to do his job.

An announcer yelled into the earpieces of the teams. The announcer was female, but the name she had introduced was not as surprising. Of course she could’ve had better, but apparently the name Speaker Box was the best thing to come to mind. Of course, she reminded them of the old announcer, but at least this one sounded younger and energetic.

As the German reached his Ubercharge, both of them reached the Intel deep inside the building. Once getting it however, RED Spy uncloaked and backstabbed Heavy. Arvin grabbed the briefcase and tried to melee the Spy out of the way, but only ended up getting stabbed on the arm. Medic then pushed the Spy out the way, and then ran out the room.

Once Arvin had reached back outside of the building, he got hit with an arrow through both of his knees. He fell, releasing the briefcase letting it side, only to get picked up by Richard. He crawled as fast as he can, until he saw a RED Pyro appearing. Then saw bright shades of orange before heading into HUD mode.

Richard saw the medic burn, and tried to throw his Flying U towards the Pyro, but missed. He dashed into the building, but not without a splash of vomit hitting his face.

“Alright! Who did that?” He yelled before seeing Shining Armor hanging over the edge of the roof of a nearby building. He sighed, and then ran into the building to bring it back to the intelligence room.

Once there, he placed the briefcase on the table, and opened it to reveal several battle plans. He knew that he would have to leave it here for it to be further investigated, but there was no major base right now. So he would have to look in it very carefully — and hopefully remember— before burning it with the help of the Pyro.

As if on cue, she appeared with a very specially-made Rainblower, no idea why it was called the Rainblower since it only blew fire, but it was maybe because of the design. She removed the filter that has caused her to not be able to be heard clearly, so now she can talk freely along other team members.

“You need anything?” She asked.

“Yea I do,” Richard grabbed the pieces of paper, and piled them on the ground. “Do you think you can burn these?”

If the Pyro could smile with the mask on, then you would see the biggest grin she has done in a while. Without any hesitation, she spewed flames out the flamethrower and just cocked her head to the side. In less than a minute, the pile of papers had turned into nothing but ash.

“Gee, thanks Pyro!”

“No problem! Glad I could help someone.” She replied.

Scout had left the room to restock on ammunition and switch for some new weapons. He really wanted to try out the new bat he had gotten from that store guy. But it can wait once he was facing some ponies.

Once he had reached the spawn room, there were a multiple sticky-bombs sitting at the outside of the door, with a giggling Demoman. But he didn’t last long until his head was blown to bits by Richard’s Force-Of-Nature. It had left a stain on his shirt, but at least it rendered the sticky-bombs useless.

He made a dash into the Spawn Room, seeing no one inside kind of made him a bit uneasy.

As he changed from the bloody shirt, into a fresh, clean one; the announcer spoke. “Now, since the BLU team has successfully captured the RED team’s Intel, it is with my great pleasure to mention that a new objective is in place. The BLU team must hold off the attack of the RED team until the RED team fails to advance any further with invading BLU team’s building, failure to do so will give the RED team the ability to claim the city as theirs. The length you must stronghold the building will be five minutes. Return to the spawn-rooms to restock your ammunition and you must stay there until I give each team the clearance to leave the room.”

Richard rolled his eyes. So basically defend our spot until the RED team would time goes out, great! He took a look into his weapons backpack and found the Changeling Killer. He glared at the bat, and then returned to change his clothes. He stood and finally falling to temptation, Richard grabbed the bat and decided to use it.

The Boston boy stood next to his now appearing teammates, who had all the same glum look on their faces. They knew this would be a big challenge, and are willing to do so. They had to do this multiple times, but this time, it was for a deeper meaning.
As they lined up inside the spawn room, the team grew anxious, for multiple reasons of course.

A few minutes passed, it was obvious that it was either now or never. As Soldier was about to say something — most likely charge — the announcer decided that the BLU team should get started on defenses. The team rushed out, with a battle cry from everyone, it was clear that it would be the best five they would ever have.

(…..)

Shining Armor was standing on top of the building, hiding the best he could with whatever coverage he had. The unicorn stared across the street towards a common enemy; Queen Chrysalis. It took all the endurance he had to not teleport over there and slap the bug out of her. Of course that could be done later, when he actually had the time other than standing and watching the battle.
Shining was getting impatient by the time fifteen minutes passed. The other guards were bored out of their wits and decided to play with some cards. The card games spread crazy like wild fire as soon as the human known as Spy decided that it was time to bring some fun to this world. Nopony knew how to play this “Poker”, or this “Blackjack”. But at least it was taught.

As soon as the Captain decided to play a game, the announcer spoke from the intercoms saying that the game is beginning in ten seconds. But, those seconds was gone before anypony made any popcorn for the next match. Shining looked back at his guards; they were grinning like mad-mares, excited — although the kind of excitement is debatable—, and were a bit jumpy. He sighed, wondering how got this group.

He looked back into the battlefield, and saw the helmeted human jumping back and forth from building and back. How the human never died from the explosions at his feet was anypony’s guess. Shining looked once again towards the other human with a helmeted head, and saw a device that had fascinated him for a while. He kept his thoughts only to him and his guards. The unicorn shuddered at the thought of Twilight talking to him forever about humans and how they never used any magic.

An explosion from a nearby building broke him from his trance; it was close enough to hurt some eardrums, but enough to where nopony was damaged from it. But a limb of Richard sent him back over the edge once again, hurling whatever he had left inside his system. Eventually by the end of this day, he might need to check if his organs are still there.

“Sir, are you okay?” A nearby guard asked.

“I’ll be fine.” The Captain lied, he hated doing it but it works.

“You need to eat,” The guard patted his back. “You’ve been vomiting too much and you need to drink water.”

“Guard, what is your name and rank?”

The guard saluted, “My name is Flash Sentry and I’m First Class Private, why?”

“Then you are promoted to medic reserve,” The Captain coughed. “I’m going to grow a wing if I keep this up.”

“Sir, I don’t know anything about being a medic, or in any case, how to bandage you up.” Flash sighed. “I just use common sense even though most ponies think I don’t have any.”

“Nonsense!” The unicorn exclaimed, giving him another coughing fit. “Everypony has them; some are more different than others. Tell me; are you interested in mares?”

The guard blushed, “I prefer both mares and stallions; but right now, I have my eyes on one specific mare.”

“What is her name?”

“Twilight Sparkle.”

“…” Shining Armor stood there, gaping at what he had just heard. Calm down, maybe it’s just another Twilight! I mean, odds are it’s not my sister! Whatever you do, don’t do it! Do not murder him!

“Sir, are you okay?” Flash waved his hoof in front of Shining.

He shook his head, trying to completely clear what happened in his head. It’ll be easy! Just toss him into the field, and hope for the best!

“Yes, no need to worry,” He gave the best forced smile he can. “So tell me, what does she do for a living?” It better not be my Twily!

“Well, she’s a princ—“ Flash started before somepony grabbed him and took him to the medical tent.

So it’s true, I ought to give her a talk about this guy; he seems suspicious, he’s probably a changeling spying on us! He looked at the Changeling Queen as he thought to himself.

He looked back at the battlefield, two minutes left according to the announcer several seconds ago. Shining Armor hoped that this team wins this one.

(…)

Dell tried as much as he can with his mini-sentries to protect his team, but with the enemy Demoman making surprises with his grenade launcher; it just doesn’t seem to work at all.

So he pulled out his Jag and started to construct larger sentries, fortunately, the Demoman decided not to blow up his dispenser, which made it easier and quicker to build.

Once the sentry was a level three construct, he pulled out his Frontier Justice and just let the kills rack up. As much as gruesome that sounds, at least Dell knew that he did a job well done. Until a Spy tried to put a sapper on his constructs, only to get slain by Sniper with a Bushwacka.

But that left Engineer with his clothes smelling like urine. Something that isn’t easy to get rid of.

Sniper chuckled and then left Dell to do his usual business. As he stepped outside, he was met with Richard who happened to get chased by an enemy Pyro.

The Australian quickly reacted by switching to his Huntsman and pull out an arrow, only for it to catch the flames of the enemy Pyro. Once it was on fire, he took the arrow and jabbed it straight out, hitting the Pyro with intense accuracy into the mid-abdomen. As the tip plunged deeper in; the Pyro paused and then slowly looked up at Sniper. The Pyro then clutched at the arrow, but didn’t make any attempts to pull it out. As the enemy fell, it shifted from the Pyro, into a changeling. The creature looked back up at Sniper with its bright blue eyes, and then the eyes went dim and lifeless. Never did it once mutter a word, but there many whimpers and tears had been shed.

As the ooze of bright green blood came from the chest of the changeling, the announcer said that the battle was officially over due to time running out.

Richard and Sniper both looked at each other after staring at the lifeless body.

Not one word was said between them two about this for a while.

(….)

As the team walked out towards the Carousel Boutique, they started to wonder why they would want to. But overall, it was probably because it was out of boredom. With nothing to do around to do other than help out, it was a boring time for the nine. Ten if you counted that mysterious German Shepard that liked to follow Arvin, Richard, and Pyro around.

Once everyone reached the Boutique, a white unicorn appeared with a rack of white suits. The team looked at the suit blankly, then realized that it meant for them.

A couple tried to walk away, but they were stopped by the Elements surrounding them, except for Rarity of course.

“Now, now, now,” Rarity started. “Would’ve been very rude of you to try and walk away from what you’ve agreed on.”

Scout raised his hand, “I didn’t agree to anything! I just came!”

Rainbow Dash coughed, but nobody understood the joke.

“Well then,” The unicorn started. “I would like a nice line to try these on if you may.”

Spy walked up to Rarity, and then picked her up. “One question if I may.”

“Of course.” She blushed.

“How did you get our measurement without us knowing?”

“I gave her the measurements of our spare uniforms!” Pyro exclaimed.

Spy stared at Pyro, then put Rarity down. “My name is Jacques in case you were wondering.”

The team nodded in agreement and surprise, they didn’t expect for Spy to be so open about that kind of business. But then again, this world has done more outrageous things to the team. Pyro would be a great example.

Once the majority of the team got suited up with their appropriate uniforms, Scout was the only one left.

“No way am I wearing those things! I’ll just stick to my old one.”

Rarity scoffed at him. “You mean those drab things? They’re so gloomy and dreary! These are more suited to your tastes my dear!”

Scout looked at his team; Sniper had a small mark of the purple one’s butt tattoo on his right bicep; Medic has his backpack customized with the quiet one’s tat; Pyro had balloons at the same place where the pink one’s tattoo was; Demoman had weird swirls on his arm; Jacques had diamonds on his right pocket; Heavy had a green apple on his minigun; a few others didn’t have tattoos on them that looked similar to someone else’s mark.

Scout took a look back at his uniform again, no matter how much he didn’t want to deal with it; he was going to be forced.

In fact, it hasn’t been touched at all, not even removed from its own hangar and rack. So Richard decided to take a look at it, almost reflexively, he threw it back at the rack. He didn’t want to know why there was a cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt on it.

“Dude, what’s wrong?”

Richard looked back, only to see the rainbow terror. He knew this was real, and he had to face the truth. Either tell her, or just keep it as it is; grin and move on.

The answer was obviously the latter.

He ignored Rainbow’s question and went inside to put it on. It was difficult to the pants on, but other than that; it was so light and not quite as baggy as the old one. The Boston boy jumped in them, only to fall a bit slower, how he had noticed was a mystery, even to him.

He walked to where everybody was waiting on him; apparently they couldn’t leave unless everyone had worn them and at least approved of it.

Once he had walked, he was suddenly ambushed by the rainbow pony and was asked the usual question.

“How do they feel?”

Richard took a few seconds to stretch, jog in place, do a few arm swings with an air bat, and jumped twice. He took a second to review, and then said, “I like it!”

“Good!” Rarity beamed. “Then you would love the additions I had done to it! I had added a spell in which makes you fall a tad bit slower than what you’re used to.” Explains a lot

“I’ve also added Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark onto where your arm patches go.” Okay, that’s creepy, but I can deal with a rainbow bolt on me right?

“I’ve finally added small tiny wings to remind you who your partner is.”

Scout stood there gawking at the last piece of information given to him. So they’ve decided to make me a flying thingamabob. That’s just great.

He turned towards the rainbow pony, which seemed to try and give him the best poker face she can make. But unfortunately, it didn’t work against him.

“You told her to add wings did you?” Richard pointed a finger towards Dash.

She whistled, trying to pretend that it wasn’t obviously her. But it just made it worse.

“Oh, I’m so going to get you Skittles, and the first thing on the list is that I’m going to slap you so hard, that you’ll become nothing other than gray colors. Now get over here!” He roared.

As soon as he started to run, Dash was already out the door, giggling.

Comments

[SuperPinkBrony12]

Well no wonder rainbows make Scout cry.