The Bear, The Eagle, and The Ponies

by ObssesedNuker

Chrono Crunch

Disclaimer: My Little Pony is owned by Hasbro. Command & Conquer is owned by EA Games. Please support both companies.

The Bear, The Eagle, and The Ponies

Chapter 1: Chrono Crunch

Workers Apartment, Outskirts of Ulan Bataar, People's Republic of Mongolia

"This is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever been in! Haven't the commies ever watched a movie? We're supposed to accomplish our mission against all odds! Or accomplish our mission and then get backed into a corner but get rescued in the nick of times by the cavalry! But no… instead intelligence screws the pooch and we get dropped into the middle of what has to be the whole fucking Red Army! This is bullshit of the greatest, grandest, and most spectacular-!"

"Lance-Corporal, if you don't shut up and focus on shooting, I will save Ivan ammunition by putting my second-to-last round in your head! NOW KEEP FUCKING FIRING!" Captain Adam Gins did not silently mutter a prayer when the complaining corporal did as he was ordered. Instead, he substituted firing a burst from his assault rifle down at a squad of Soviet infantry who had broken cover to charge the apartment. Then he, and the rest of his fire-team, put as much distance between them and the window as possible, ducking behind a counter as they did so. They had been firing from that side of the room for too long.

Sure enough, the far wall blew in as a salvo of dumb-fire helicopter rockets smashed it apart. One of Gins's men hadn't been fast enough and his body was shredded by concussion and shrapnel. Given how badly the mission had begun, the Captain considered himself pretty damn lucky.

The officer and his company had been holed up in a worker's apartment smack in the middle of an industrial plant when they realized how much trouble they were facing. The building's steel-and-concrete construction might not have been very comfortable, but it held up to almost anything short of concentrated artillery fire or an all-out air strike. And since either would wreck the surrounding industrial facility, something Gins guessed (correctly, by the looks of it) that the Ruskie's did not want to do, that meant they were 100% safe from simply being shelled into oblivion.

Of course, with firepower out of the question the Soviets had resorted to their favorite stand by: sheer numbers.

The fighting had been going on for three hours non-stop. A trio of Hind gunships and six or seven T-64 tanks periodically broke cover to fire shells, unguided rockets, and missiles into the structure at whichever rooms they thought the Allied soldiers were hiding. Under the cover of this bombardment, Soviet infantry would try and storm the apartment, to be met first by withering gun fire from the Allied troops on the first-floor and then if they were lucky enough to survive that, they faced brutal hand-to-hand combat.

Already the company had repulsed five successive attempts to breach the structure, the last of which had (much to everyone's consternation) a tesla trooper. The power-armored fiend cooked most of a squad before someone managed to fire a shoulder-launched rocket at point-blank range into the bastard. The shooter was never identified… he had, after all, fired a rocket launcher in close-quarters, a death sentence even without the exploding warhead bit, because of the back blast.

A new figure that came running through the kitchen door at a crouch almost got three-rounds in the chest for his trouble. The newcomer dove towards Gins and almost slammed into a private taking cover right next to the Captain. The GI swore noisily, but Gins ignored him. "Lieutenant."

Second Lieutenant Gerard Mullivan, British Army, gave a grin at his commanding officer. "Bit of a spot we are in, isn't it sir?"

"Can't you ever stop with confirming the stereotypes?" Gins didn't wait for an answer, "What's the problem and why couldn't it come over the radio?"

"We have a Hip coming in from the north. Also, our radio's stopped working… I think there might be a tesla tank in the area."

The Captain's blood almost froze in his veins. A transport helicopter, probably with Spetznatz to finish them off in coordination with a ground assault, was bad enough. But a tesla tank? Gins had seen them burn through a M62 MBT's frontal armor with as much effort as a hot knife through butter.

"Try to hit the heli and keep your rockets ready."

"All well and done, sir." Mullivan paused and gave Gins a quick salute, "Just make sure not to die Captain."

And with that, he scurried off.

Of course, Gins knew they were all dead; he was down to two magazines and one of those was in his gun right now. As he popped out of the newly-formed hole in the wall to rake the ground with automatic fire, the captain knew Corporal Kinns was right: it wasn't goddamn fair. Intel had chosen the worst drop zone possible and now the Soviets knew that the Allies knew that the Soviets were close to copying Chronotechnology. The burning remnants of the company's IFVs a few blocks over were a testament to how badly intelligence had fucked up.

The Captain squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a dull-click. One magazine now… and two of the tanks had appeared again, pouring cannon and machine gun fire upwards. Another assault was coming…

This would probably do it.

Soviet Industrial-Military Complex, Outskirts of Ulan Bataar, People's Republic of Mongolia...

"Are you sure no damage has been done to the plant?" Major-General Gennady D. Voroshilov, commander of the 233rd Motor-Rifle Division and commanding officer of the Ulan Bataar Soviet Military Base, asked the major in front of him.

"Nothing that will affect the facility's operation, comrade general." The major's voice held complete conviction. "And the American raiders will soon be dealt with. They are using one of the on-site worker apartments for shelter and have repulsed five attempts to storm it so far, but are running low on ammunition. This next attack should overrun them."

"See that it does." Voroshilov issued a stern look at his subordinate, "And make sure to inform Moscow. Premier Romanov will need to know that the Allies have discovered our investigation of their chronosphere…" The general then gave a small grin, "And will probably be glad to also know that the disrupters work as advertised."

"At once, comrade general." The major saluted and went off at once to fulfill the order. Voroshilov glanced at his watch and stood-up. It was good to know that the plant would be fully functional again once the Allies were cleared out. So far it was the only facility in the communist bloc that could produce the parts needed for the project. More would come in the future… but only if the work at this base succeeded.

The Allied commandoes probably thought that they had been located so far away on purpose, given the way the chrono-disrupters worked. That would be a blow to their morale. No matter, the raiders were contained and if anything with them changed, he would be informed immediately. For now, Doctor Zelinsky was about to conduct a new test run of the first prototype Soviet chronosphere.

The trip to the experiment area took less than five minutes and Zelinsky, as seemed to be his habit when something important was about to occur, was a bundle of nerves. The general tried to put the scientist at ease "Calm down, Comrade Zelinsky. Even if something goes wrong, it is not your fault. This is simply a straightforward copy…"

"I know, I know…" Zelinsky muttered, "But I can't help myself."

"Just get on with it… what is the experiment procedure?"

The doctor paused, blinked a few times and then visibly forced his composure into something more calm. "Yes, well… we shall start first, of course, with inanimate objects."

The testing chamber was behind safety glass and contained what was obviously the Chronosphere experiment, the half-exposed orb glowing with readied power, and a pedestal with… "Any particular reason we are teleporting a Rubix Cube?"

Zelinsky smiled sheepishly. "I find the game to be mentally stimulating."

The general merely nodded and glanced around at the other assembled scientists, military men, and even some party bureaucrats who were here to observe the test.

"Let us begin the experiment!" Zelinsky said, "Power readings are good. Feeds are good. Tachyon output is within expectations..."

The doctor rattled off a list, sometimes containing words too convoluted for Voroshilov to understand, much less pronounce. The military men and other non-scientists also seemed completely lost.

"… and everything is good!" Zelinsky gave an awkward grin, flipping the guard to a red button and placing a slightly-trembling finger over it. "Three… two… one and-!"

He pressed the button.

On the quantum scale…

The mechanics of chronotechnology are interesting, to say the least. The first model of the teleporting device ever built, by the Allied Treaty Organization during the Great World War 2, was fraught with lethal problems when used on biological specimens. Unless a person was inside a building or vehicle, they simply ceased to exist. And even if inside a vehicle there was a small but quite noticeable chance that something bad would happen to them.

Horror stories were everywhere of teleporting tank crews fused to their vehicle's interior, aircraft suddenly exploding on arrival for no apparent reason, filled personnel carriers teleporting somewhere successfully only for their passengers to be reduced to anatomically impossible boxes of flesh, bone, and muscle. The most unique story was of the USS Philadelphia, which was to be teleported from the United States all the way to Great Britain. The ship made the transition, but when it arrived the entire crew immediately went insane and killed themselves by whatever means they could find: knives, guns, jumping from the crow's nest, drowning themselves in the ocean, even bashing their heads open on the deck. And nobody knows why.

The new chronosphere, updated and now used by the Allies, was much safer. The problems that existed with the previous version were gone, except for the lethality to exposed humans. The Soviet prototype chronosphere was a near direct copy of the Allied one and thus was supposed to be just as safe. The problem, as the Soviets were to learn later, was their new chrono-disrupter fields. Nobody had ever thought what would happen if they activated a chronosphere inside the disruption field.

There wasn't any truly grandiose explosion, no tremendous thunderclap, no shaking earth. All that happened was an odd hiss, a faint blue dome appeared over an area twenty kilometers in diameter, centered on the building where the experiment was taking place, and then vanished. When the dome disappeared, what had once been a sprawling Soviet military facility and a somewhat larger factory complex were just gone. In its place was nothing but the soil just underneath all the buildings.

At least, that is what happened from the perspective of someone on the outside. From within the affected area, everyone was rendered unconscious the moment the button was pushed.

Unknown Location...

"Ah… god… damn… what did they hit me with?"

That was the first thing Gins heard as he came back to consciousness and it barely registered in his mind as he received more sensory information. Everything seemed bizarrely quiet, save for the rustle of wind through the trees and the chirping of distant birds.

Wait one moment… where did the trees come from?

"MEDIC!" The scream was surprising, but still perversely relieved Captain Gins of the awkward stillness when compared to his last memory. "OH JESUS CHRIST, MEDIC!"

Gins opened his eyes as he rolled to his feet, glancing around. Around him, his men also picked themselves off the ground in varying states of confusion and dizziness… except for the ones who wouldn't ever move again. The captain realized his mind must have been off kilter from… whatever happened because it took him a moment to realize that the group was no longer in an apartment, or somewhere that might look like Mongolia for that matter.

Instead, the thirty or so of his men that he could see, the ones that were still alive that is, were apparently picking themselves out of a variety of bushes, trees, and overgrown grass. They were in a forest, a very dense forest.

A rustling to his left caused almost everybody in the woods to turn and aim their weapons, but out stumbled…

"Lieutenant Mullivan, Sergeant Vince." The Captain said as the two men led another twenty or twenty-five Allied soldiers into the clearing. "What's going on?"

"Thought you would know that, sir." Vince replied, leaning against a tree in exhaustion. The short, but solidly built man looked extremely tired, but then they all looked that way.

"We woke-up just a bit away from here to that bloke yelling for a medic, Captain." Mullivan added, "We just kind of… stumbled towards here." The lieutenant fell silent for a few seconds and then finally added, "I think this is everyone…"

Gins looked around. There was just greater than a platoon strength force here. Only fifty to sixty living men out of what was once two hundred, and then he looked at the bodies and realized that the numbers could add up in only one way.

The man who had been shouting for a medic earlier was still now, even though he got what he wanted. As he watched, Gins saw the medic sigh and lean down to collect the dead man's dog-tag.

"Alright." The Captain muttered, then cleared his throat. "Alright! Rally-up! First things first: we gotta grab the spare ammunition and food, these guys…" He paused, "They won't be needing it any more. Get their dog tags while you're at it!"

The gathered Allied soldiers looked at their commanding officer for a few dumbfounded seconds, the disorientation from all the rapid events delaying their reaction. Finally, with a chorus of acknowledgement, they set to their grim task. Adam watched his men work for a few moments and finally turned back to his two more immediate subordinates. "Alright… now where the hell are we?"

Chronosphere Test Observation Chamber, Unknown...

The first thing Voroshilov awoke to was something he would rather not: the bald-headed head of the base's psi-corp detachment hovering over him. "Are you alright, Comrade General?"

"Yes." The reply was snapped out. "What happened?"

"Something went wrong… horribly wrong." Zelinsky cut-in from behind. The general turned to face the doctor and in doing so caught a view of the test chamber. The reverse-engineered mini-chronosphere within had… melted, for lack of a better word.

"Comrade General." The eerily smooth voice of the psi-corp trooper cut in again. "We must return to the command center immediately… the chronosphere accident has caused a… change."

"What do you mean?" Voroshilov snapped, but the psychic (the General was having a damnably hard time remembering his name… Vladimir, wasn't it?) merely shrugged.

With that non-answer, a grumbling Voroshilov stormed out of the observation chamber and was immediately met by two soldiers who were his bodyguards. They were tense now and held their AK-47's more nervously. Ignoring them as they fell into place right behind him, Voroshilov stalked down the research facility's halls, out the main door and into a blistering heat.

Ulan Bataar, despite its proximity to the Gobi, was actually rather temperate given its location, particularly in April. So it was with no small surprise that Voroshilov looked around at his base, the structures still in a recognizable lay-out, and realized that he was looking at a desert environment.

Just what the hell had happened?

End Chapter

Author's Notes: So, when I first happened into becoming part of the herd, my first instinct was to naturally throw a modern(ish) fighting force at Equestria. I contemplated the 40K (of course), Call of Duty, and Battlefield franchises before finally settling on the Red Alert setting because it would allow me to combine three things I like: warfare, the Soviet Union, and ponies.

Of course I have a plot, I can't just toss these things into a blender and call it a day. And some modifications have been made to the Red Alert setting, modifications that you may have noticed (the Rhino tanks being designated T-64's, for instance), but it's all in line with the actual setting. Don't worry though, we will still get plenty of that zany Red Alert weaponry we all know and love.

Oh, and you might have noticed it's the Red Alert 2verse. Red Alert 3 never happened!

Comments

brilliant... and you defiantly chose the best Red Alert verse. Red Alert 3 can't hold a wooden nickel to the epic-ness that was 2

[smoers06]

I liked Red Alert 3...