Love in a War-Zone

by MidnightBlaze16

Chapter 1: Mission Breifing

Author's Note:

OK! SO I've had this idea a while but I never managed to get it down on paper…so to speak. I've always loved Sunset Shimmer, even when she was being a total b**ch. She's great as a character and I love her new-and-highly-improved personality in Rainbow Rocks.

The other main character is my MLP OC, Midnight Blaze, in human form. I might write another fic later with him in pony form but for now let's get started!
And that's all! Just to clear things up, Lightning Blade and Midnight belong to me, Candy belongs to my fellow brony Casey.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this, Seeya everypony!

BTW this is set 2 years after the movies.

Sunset Shimmer's POV

"Aw man, I'm so late!" I said as I bolted along the path. I got back from the basketball game Rainbow took me to see when I remembered the meeting. I was being assigned to a team, with a combination of newbies and pros. I didn't get a chance to grab so much as a snack before I had to leave. I checked my watch. 7:02PM. 2 minutes late!

Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap!" I ran even faster. I know it's not normally a big deal if you're only 2 minutes late for work, but that's different when you're a secret agent. I made to base a minute later and zoomed in.

"Sorry I'm late!" I yelled as soon as I entered the briefing room. Already sat there was Flash Sentry, Scootaloo, and two other people I didn't know. One had pink hair and eyes and blue tinted skin. Her hair style reminded me of Rainbow's. She wore a white tank top and ort blue skirt with a picture of cotton candy with a lightning bolt going through it on it. She had knee high white boots of a similar style to Twilight's. After a while this worlds Twilight moved into town and we befriended her, and Flash managed to get a date!

Next to sat a boy. He had short black hair and matching eyes. His skin was grey tinted. He wore a black jacket and pants over black combat boots. On his jacket pocket is a picture of two swords, a black on with a white outline and a blue one with a white outline.

"Do not worry. You are not the only one." Commander Quickshot assured me. I took a seat next to the girl.

"Hi. I'm Candy Bullet," she introduced herself, holding out her hand.

"Sunset Shimmer," I said, shaking it.

Candy smiled. "Nice to meet ya! I wish Midnight would hurry up though."

"Who?"

"My friend, Midnight Blaze. We're waiting on him. Typical! He's always on late."

As if on cue, the doors slammed open. In the doorway stood a boy, around 19 years old, with blue tinted skin. He had messy dark blue hair with a black streak and stunning blue eyes. He wore a Black t-shirt under a blue hooded jacket and black jeans. He wore simple blue sneaker underneath. On his T-shirt was an image of an eighth music note on fire. I don't know why, but my heart started beating faster as soon as I saw him.

"About time, Mr Blaze." Commander Quickshot said.

"That's your friend!?" I asked Candy. She nodded. Midnight comes and sat down in the last remaining spot-on the other side of me. I felt my cheeks heat up and I thought I saw him flush a bit red too. Commander explained everything and introduced everyone.

"Flash Sentry."

Flash waved.

"Candy Bullet."

Candy just smiled.

"Scootaloo."

Scootaloo just put on an 'I got this' expression. Man she reminds me of Rainbow Dash…

"Sunset Shimmer."

"Hi," I said nervously.

"Lightning Blade"

The kid in all black just said "Sup?"

"and Midnight Blaze!"

Midnight took this as his cue to stand up and do a quick air guitar solo. The commander was not very impressed, though the rest of us were. After that Quickshot gave us time to get to know our new teammates. Which for me only turned out to be getting to know Midnight. Turns out he's the lead singer and guitarist for a band he made with his friends, including Candy Cutie as the drummer. That definitely explains the air-guitaring and T-shirt design. I told about how I used to mean but was changed by the magic of friendship. "That's really cheesy y'know,' he commented. "Cheesy but true."

I told him all about how I survived that last year at Canterlot High School and then how I became a spy he listened though occasionally seemed to fall into his own world and just stare at me. When the briefing broke up, I was met with a rumbling stomach.

"Woah, somebody's hungry!" Midnight commented.

"Heh, yeah/ I was kinda late so I didn't get a chance to eat anything."

He thought for a moment before saying. "I got it! I know a good pizza place around here, I can take you! I mean, uh, y'know, as a friend," he suggested.

"Y-Yeah, sure, why not?" I say, blushing a little.

Midnight Blaze's POV

'Boo-yah!' I thought, silently cheering. I took Sunset to the pizza place. We ordered a simple Hawaiian to share and sat down towards the stage. I smiled when I heard the kids cheering as the curtains opened, revealing a purple dog with a red bowtie and guitar, a duck holding a creepy cupcake toy with eyes and a polar bear with a black top hat and bowtie holding a microphone. They were all robots of course, but the kids loved them none-the-less. I heard Sunset giggle as the kids sung along to the band's pizza song. I smiled, happy that she was happy. I didn't know what was with me-I wasn't usually that mushy. 'Do I have…a crush on Sunset?' I looked over. She was beautiful. Her sea-green eyes, her awesome red and yellow hair! 'Yeah. I do.'

Comments

[Waterpear]

I really think you should have dedicated more than a single paragraph for the totally-not-a-date.

[RavenWolfmoon15]

My best friend irl has fallen in love with this story :P

[ObeyBunny]

Okay, I just read the first chapter. I'm gonna put aside the grammar, punctuation, rushed pace, wish-fulfillment characters, the 'telling' and not 'showing' the narrative does, and the lack of distinguishing factors between the characters (their clothes and physical appearance don't count. Their personality and goals is what we look for)

Instead, I'm gonna say that the story would really benefit if you picked one theme, stick with it, and make it a relevant piece background. So far, the story seems to play with a lot of ideas and it doesn't seem to settle on what it wants. They're spies, but besides meeting each other in a role call, they do nothing spy-like... They go to a Five Nights At Freddy's pizzeria, and yet a haunted pizza place doesn't seem to influence the plot....

A quick rule of thumb: if you can swap out the background (character's job, the scene's setting) for something completely unrelated without changing the plot at all, then that background is a literary benign tumor-- a useless aspect of your story that doesn't help the reader's experience at all. Just like a tumor, cut it out.

Some potentially interesting ideas that could have been explored in this chapter:

"Love at first sight." Sunset and Midnight confuse 'love' with 'lust.' It's a cautionary tale about two teenagers who think they have a true connection with each other, when really only their looks and surface-level interests are compatible. Sunset and Midnight, thinking they're in love, rush into all sorts of commitment heavy things-- marriage, pregnancy, tied finances, burning bridges with their respective families, etc.-- before they realize they get on each other's nerves or they have completely dissimilar goals.

"Five Nights at Freddy's." Instead of being spies, Sunset and all those other characters are all just normal teenagers who get a job at Fazbear Entertainment. The story becomes either a slash fic or murder mystery as some of the teens are picked off and the rest try to survive. There could still be a romance subplot that develops as 2 people come to rely on each other to survive being holed up in the establishment.

"They are spies." The characters are spies, and most of the scene's settings have something to do with training to be a spy or doing spy work (as well as anything else the CIA does just for variety).