Prelude to Battle
BLEUGH!
Chrysalis, back in her natural form, laughed hard, trying hard not to cry from laughter. “You know, watching you puke your guts out is pretty funny, seeing as how the last time I teleported you, it didn’t have any effect on you.”
Pale-faced Ricky was a few yards away, dry heaving at this point. “Last time wasn’t nearly as far!”
Chrysalis nodded slowly. “Good point. However, that’s irrelevant. Discord, where are we?”
Discord put a claw to his chin. “We should be somewhere near the town of Arbor Hollow, south of Ponyville and on the west border of the Everfree Forest.”
Chrysalis jumped back in. “Are you serious? We could only get 120 miles from Canterlot!?”
Discord just shrugged. “Even for me, teleporting three people that far takes a lot out of you.”
“Okay. Give me the laydown. What is this place and what landmarks are there, or anything even remotely interesting or important.” Ricky, finally done, rejoined the discussion.
“Only one prominent landmark of any interest; Arbor Hollow Hill; elevation 267 feet above the main town. The town itself straddles the southern extension of the Canterlot Rail System, and the station here leads to either west to Las Pegasus, south to Appleoosa, or north to Ponyville. I have also stationed a changeling hive about ten miles from here.” Chrysalis, suddenly a wealth of information, said.
“Okay. What do think Celestia will do now? Where’s the nearest army?” Ricky continued his queries.
“Well, the Equestrian Army is divided into five sections. The South Task Force, stationed in Appleoosa, is probably the one that will pose the biggest threat, as it’s only a two hour train ride to get here.” Chrysalis stated.
Ricky took that in for a moment, trying to weigh his options. Then, something dawned on him. “Which direction is the hill?”
Chrysalis didn’t say anything, but instead just began walking past Ricky, while he quickly turned around and followed her, along with Discord.
After just a few minutes of walking, the hill became painfully obvious, towering over the entire town easily. The climb was like second nature to Ricky. After all, he grew up in Scotland, where hills are as common as sheep.
Summiting the hill, Ricky realized something very quickly. “Well then, this is quite the commanding position.” The hill easily sighted not just the entire town, but covered the railroad tracks, the edge of the giant forest, and everything else within about a mile or so.
"Okay," he turned back to face his comrades, "I have an idea. Stand back, this is gonna get crowded fast." Ricky declared.
Right before he could punch the button, however, a new voice butted in. "Hey! Who are you ponies?!"
The voice in question belonged to quite the muscular stallion, as the group quickly found out. His muscles rippled under his light blue coat, and he stood almost a head taller than Ricky. His expression was currently set to 'Interrogating Glare'. Stomping up to them, he demanded "What are you doing up here?!"
"What, is this not free land? It's none of your business, you little shit! Wanna fight me over it?!" Ricky suddenly advanced on the stallion, who gave no ground. In a matter of seconds, they were face-to-face.
"Oh yeah?! You and what army, twerp!" The stallion shot back.
"Why you little..." Before Ricky could really explode, the stallion began to turn around and walk away. Furious, Ricky was about to storm down and tear him a new asshole, but the dull throbbing pain in his jaw held him back. Instead, he turned back to face the other two. "Okay. Ready?" The draconeqqus and changeling nodded, before moving off to the sides.
A mere second passed between hitting the button and hearing Jarvis. "Yes? May I request some identification?"
"Ricky Welfork."
"Ah yes, Mr. Welfork. What do you require today, sir?" Ricky put a finger to his chin for a moment.
"Hmm." He hummed quietly as he thought. "Why don't you just bring all of them?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Thank you, Jarvis." Three regiments were now swarming the top of the hill.
Eventually, the four commanders, minus MacArthur temporarily, and Chrysalis were on the edge of the hill, gazing out on the landscape.
“Yeah,” Ricky was saying, “the longest range guns we have should go here. If we can attack them before they even get near, we’ll have this in the bag.”
“I, for one, am very interested in these ‘guns’, as you all call them.” Decius commented as Karl sent some runners to call up his battery and the American battery.
“You know what an onager is, right?”
“Ah yes, the affectionately named ‘wild ass’,” Decius nodded, “But, pray tell, what does that have to do with these machines?”
“Well, imagine an onager, but it could shoot over ten times as far, and was accurate to almost a pinpoint.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Decius said, a tone of finality permeating his words.
Karl jumped in. “Just you wait, Roman.” Before the discussion could get any more heated, MacArthur returned from his inspection.
“The soldiers, minus the Romans, have completed their foxhole work, and are now awaiting the enemy in cover.” Ricky grinned happily, before turning to Chrysalis.
“The plan is a go, Chrysalis. Get that enemy army up here!” Chrysalis nodded, before running off as well.
Down in town…
The normal weekday routine was in full swing down in Arbor Hollow, with the shops and stalls just beginning to open their doors. Ponies trotted around the small town, enjoying the crisp, fresh morning air.
The peaceful morning was suddenly disturbed by a frantic pony coming down from the direction of the hill. The predominantly white-colored mare ran straight into the middle of town. “There’s humans up on the hill! A whole army of them!” Passer-by were drawn in by her screaming.
Eventually, a crowd had gathered around the panicked pony, clamoring to hear her warnings. Suddenly, the crowd began to part, revealing a stallion pegasus, adorned with a cap that read ‘Post Office’. “What’s all this about needing to deliver a message to the army?"
As soon as Chrysalis mentioned the word human, the messenger suddenly took off, speeding away as fast as he could. "Wow. Ponies really are scared of humans, for whatever reason." Chrysalis dismissed that train of thought quickly, as she realized that the others were waiting for her.
The ponies never noticed that one of their own was missing, with them being far too preoccupied trying to protect their town.
Back on the hill...
Discord had left shortly after Chrysalis returned, apparently to "neutralize the Elements of Harmony," as he put it. Ricky and the other commanders had been improving their defenses on the hill, which was now ringed with foxholes and trenches, and watched over from every angle by machine guns and giant pieces.
On the top of the hill, a small watchtower had been constructed from trees dotting the hill, which also provided the dual purpose of clearing out the lines of fire for the guns. Ricky and the other commanders stood by the base of the tower, circled up.
“-and that’s when we’ll take the Grossdeutschland, and sweep down.” Ricky spread his arms, smirking. “It’s the best plan we’ve made up so far.”
“Just make sure you signal quickly. We can’t have too many die in just this battle.” Decius added, which prompted Ricky to nod. Suddenly, a high-pitched wail cut through the debate, stopping it dead in its tracks.
“That’s a goddamn train whistle.” Ricky began to run. Cresting the edge of the hill, he could just make out the form of a train rumbling down the tracks, barely visible in the dying afternoon light. Ricky shook his head, his face contorting into grim determination. “Okay, boys! This is it! Get in your designated holes! Someone, get on these pieces!” A couple of German and American artillery crewman rushed up to man the guns next to Ricky, and a couple more took the other battery.
Ricky, satisfied with his troops so far, turned to the cannon crews. “Okay boys, load some high explosive rounds.” The men bent down next to the small wooden crates next to them, slowly lifted shells with red caps on the tops out of the crates, and put them inside the breech-loader on their guns, mostly Pak-41s for the Germans and 155 millimeter GPFs for the Americans. “Americans first, they’ve got the better power and the longer range.” The American aimers nodded and began to crank the valves that elevated the gun, and aimed the guns towards the tracks.
“You boys ready?” He got a nod and several affirming shouts. “Alrighty then. Fire!”
The guns roared. Huge plumes of smoke billowed forth from the barrel, and the breech-loader spewed smoke like an angry house-fire as the crew opened it up to begin the process of reloading. Far away, the tracks began to light up, as explosions landed all around and on them, tearing up the steel and fling wooden trestles all over.
The train’s conductor had no time to react, as the distance between the train and the broken trestles was only a few hundred feet distant, far too short for any real stoppage.
Wheels screeched against rails for a few more seconds, and then the train ran off the rails, throwing up huge plumes of dirt.
Train cars filled with soldiers crashed against each other, and the cars crumpled up against each other like soda cans crushed underfoot. Some cars were flung up into the air, before gravity threw them back down to the earth, like some sort of natural crusher. Others toppled over, slowly sliding to a halt in the dirt.
“Cease!” The smoke shrouding the hill slowly lifted, like some sort of demonic curtain. It revealed a site of carnage. Decius whistled slowly.
“So, Decius? So unbelievable now?”
“With all due respect, sir, shut the hell up.” Decius shot back, still maintaining his stoic demeanor. Ricky just grinned even wider.
A few minutes later, down at the train…
“Casualties report, Sergeant!”
“About 300 total casualties, of which 200 were killed, and 100 are in no condition to fight.”
Major Spear Wall grimaced. “Well, round up the boys. They won’t come down and attack us.”
Sergeant Standing Rock frowned. “But sir, we’ve already lost a lot of good ponies.”
The white armor-clad major looked at him. “Sergeant, they’re blocking the way around them for a good mile or two with those ballista-things. The way back is a march through the desert to get back to Appleoosa, one that none of our troops are ready for. We came here ready for nothing but a fight, and we’ll damn well give ‘em one.”
Standing Rock suppressed a sigh. “Yes sir.” He duly saluted before walking away.
To be honest, Standing thought Spear Wall was a vainglorious pony, only wanting to fight in order to advance his standing in Canterlot. ‘Why else would he tell us not to bring anything but our weapons?’ Of course, Spear Wall had tried to pass it off as hurrying for the sake of the town, but Standing suspected a different cause: Spear Wall wanted to get here before the human army had a chance to move into one of the other sectors.
The problem was that the humans had vastly superior tech, as they had just proven. Every pony had also heard the stories, the firelight tales. Humans fought wars incessantly, humans ate other creatures on a whim, friendship and love was scarce among the human society. And if the tales did them any justice, Standing was doubtful at best that the small army could beat the enemies before them.
Nevertheless, he would be imprisoned as a deserter if he didn’t follow his orders, no matter how brain-dead they were. “Well, can’t do much thinking about it.” Standing grumbled as he trotted off.
The task of rounding up the other ponies had taken a bit, but eventually, the army was formed into a rectangle, with the long side facing the hill. Spear had take up a position at the front of the line.
“Ponies of the army, proud servants of Celestia! I know you may be afraid of the humans, their weapons! I know you have lost friends already! But what would they want? They would want you to do them justice! What would Celestia and Luna want you to do!”
At this point, the crowd of ponies was beginning to get excited, a few stray sounds reverberating off the army.
One of such was definitely not the explosion landing in the middle of the ranks, eviscerating a dozen ponies and blowing off limbs of a couple dozen more.
All of a sudden, everything was in motion. “Come on, ponies! Let’s not wait any longer!” The ranks broke, and the army disintegrated into a mob surging towards Arbor Hollow Hill. Swept up in the charge was one Sergeant, whose only thought was of what he was about to face.
“Celestia help us,” Standing whispered as he joined the charge.
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5714200 Basically.
5714704 yep
5724517 It'll be here soon (maybe)
Oh come on don't you think you're exaggerating about humans? We may fight wars but we double the amount of the magic of friendship.
5960620 *noticing the age of the comment* Mind you, the ponies here are incredibly racist and oft demonizing of anything that isn't their own kind. Story-wise, anyway.
6120461
Hie plot #1: Human land in Equestria and is demonized, later ponies realize their mistake insert love/friendship here.
Hie plot #2: HUMAN IS DEMONIZED AND TAKE NONE OF THEIR SHIT, THEY THEN PROCEED TO WAGE A WAR OF SORTS WITH THE HELP OF OTHERS! Insert sad death/war win here.