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Chapter 1: Arrival (Rewritten)4,322 words
Chapter 2: First Contact (Rewtten)4,676 words
Chapter 3: Lock n' Load (Rewritten)5,309 words
Chapter 4: Warning (Rewritten)4,769 words
Chapter 5: Prep (Rewritten)4,438 words
Chapter 6: Homecoming4,144 words

Chapter 3: Lock n' Load (Rewritten)

As the armored aliens run about to defend the castle grounds, Kelly slowly gets up to her feet with the help of her human companion, and reaches up to her cracked visor with her own remaining intact arm, still feeling a little dazed.

“Captain, we might need a backup on this.” Kelly looks around, seeing some technicolor creatures limping away from the wall with bandaged limbs and bodies, some being carried away entirely to get in the castle.

She looks up at the wall itself and sees some of them running around, shooting out arrows, spears, bolts of colored auras coming out of their hands, and even shooting modified, Winchester-like rifles, but instead of a standard one shot loading system, it had some type of feeder to the side of the gun with a magazine feeding through it. But they weren’t shooting out plane metal slugs, to her, it looked like they were shooting out some type of glowing objects out the end of their barrels. There were also green balls of light streaking overhead, either hitting the castle to create scorch marks or flying into the clouds with a burst or dissipating in the air.

“Their numbers are declining, and by the looks of it, sir, they won’t last too long.”

“Back up will arrive in a few minutes, Kelly. Just h-hold out a little longer.” His voice cracks as if he was in a hurry.

Kelly looks at her charge beside her and then looks around for the purple alien they met eariler. As she spots it talking to the blue winged alien and also a heavily armored orange one, she walks over to them with Snowlet right behind her. As she walks, she notices the purple one had a pair of wings as well, neatly tucked away behind its dark hair.

“Hey!” it jumps in surprise and turns back at them both, a surprised expression written on its face. Kelly gently brings Snowlet up front; points a finger at it and to Snowlet. Kelly gently pushes the woman towards it; lifts up a thumb to herself and points back towards the wall. She reaches down and brings out one of her magnums, briefly spinning it around with a finger and then grips the handle, switching the safety off with her finger.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash stares at their visitor in awe and shock. One moment ago, they saw it being blasted away and losing its left arm in the process, but now its standing right in front of them, with its smaller device drawn out with its remaining arm while the other occasionally sparks with arching electricity.

Twilight points at its torn, sparking arm, “Aren’t you in pain?” she asks. It looks at its arm for a brief moment, moving the remaining stump of a forearm, then simply shakes its head ‘no’. This confuses her even more, but mentally shakes her head and looks at Rainbow Dash to her right, “Rainbow, can you bring it up to the wall with the others? I think it wants to help.” She says.

Dash felt a little uneasy but steps forward and glares at the alien visitor, “Do any funny business, I’m dropping you.” She says to it sternly, but all it does in response was turn around and waits. She growls but lifts up the somewhat heavy creature and flies off.

“What… in tarnation… are those thin’s?” Applejack speaks up. Twilight turns around and looks down at the shorter visitor, only managing to reach the height of her shoulders. It looks between the two of them nervously like a frightened mouse.

“They came from the thing in the sky, right over there.” Twilight points.

AJ looks to where her friend points and her eyes shoots open, “What in the hay!? When did that thin’ show up!?” she adjusts her hat and gently scratches the scar on her right cheek.

“Just today, AJ. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think our visitor wants me to keep an eye this one. I’ll be with Princess Celestia if you need me.” She finishes and gently begins nudging the alien towards the castle entrance where everyone injured were dragged in. In all honesty, she was scarred to the core, but she wore her brave mask to keep others from getting too scarred as well. She wonders if her old teacher felt the same.

Kelly drops down onto the roof of the wall and her carrier starts informing the others by shouting and pointing at her. She moves over to the edge to see what creature blew part of her arm and attempted the kill her charge. She didn’t expect a variety of beetle like creatures attacking the fortress.

The horrid creatures varied from; the four winged fliers with thin, stick like bodies, resembling more like living skeletons than anything else. The ones with horns jutting out from their foreheads were a little taller than the fliers, they also had wings but didn’t seem to use them for flight, more like a cape. Lastly the ground troopers that looked like they were pumped with steroids by the moment they were born or created. The caped insects were a head taller than their flying brethren, just about the same size as the aliens beside her, but the hulkish creatures were nearly a head taller than her native allies and appeared more robust. Every single one she sees had one thing in common; all their left forearms looked like little canons, shooting at their enemies. But the canons varied as well; the fliers had more thin, long and sleek looking ones with a sharp ‘beyonet’ at the very tip, the horned bugs looks a little plain and normal but had two, one foot spikes at each side of the weapon pointing out, but the big ones' canons, like their bodies, looked robust with small holes covering near the tip with a sharp, axe like blade at the bottom of their ‘barrel’. All in all, to her, they were huge bugs with a nasty sting of their own.

Too bad for them, like every bug in their breeding farms, they were the prey and on the menu. She then briefly wonders how they tasted, sense her favorite snack-bug were salted cockroaches, but quickly dashes those thoughts away to keep on track.

I shouldn’t have skipped, lunch she thinks to herself.

She looks back towards the castle and sees her charge was being led to the castle doors, and the orange one going towards the gates with a shield and a large warm hammer on hand. It went out the gates and begins shouting out orders with the blue winged alien as the gates closes behind them. To her, it seemed they were ready to die to keep their enemies at bay.

A green bolt suddenly flies right over her head, causing her to duck in surprise. She calms herself, embarrassed with herself with such a rookie mistake, then her helmet speaks to her while she turns back towards the city, “Activating Shields.” Her whole-body glows from head to toe for a moment, revealing plates of small hexagons all over her body, and some on her left shoulder and arm, but fades as it got close to the torn forearm. She looks back down the wall and sees her new allies battling it out, both sides going an all-out war, but the bugs seemed to be winning by sheer numbers. She can hear screams of battle and pain on both sides, but sense the insects tried to kill herself and her charge, she’ll gladly help her new friends defend.

“T-minus, ninety seconds till arrival, Commander.” A feminine voice says to her through her earpiece.

“Better hurry up.” She urges, draws up her arm and takes her first shot… her first ever kill.

The flier she aimed at cries out in pain as green blood sprays out the wound and the body falls down to its allies in a heap. She feels a wave of electricity flood her body, her mind briefly ringing alarms to tell her what she did was morally wrong, and her hand holding the gun felt heavy and trembles. She wanted to drop the gun and run back to her charge, she wanted the war to stop, but all that were from her youthful, innocent subconscious. She was warned something like this would happen eventually during her early years of training; only shoot when necessary. In times of war, nearly every time was necessary to aim to kill and survive, and this was war. She than begins a mental mantra to keep her calm and collective, and thinks back to when their captain spoke in a funeral, years ago.

“The strength of the pack is a wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. This, simple line says so much more than a simple team effort. It represents family, kinship, loyalty, and respect for one another. Every piece of the group is important, no matter what anyone tells you that, they are not. It is the only reason why we are here today, travelling between the stars, breathing and living. We must look out for one another more-so then ever before, even if it means trading your own life for another. Today, we are here to morn a loss of a Peace Keeper. A fellow citizen. A fellow family.” He finishes, then all the Peace Keepers stood at attention with their right fists pressed firmly on their chests to where their hearts were located. Then, all at once, they chant the line, and so does she as she grips her magnum tightly.

“The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”

It might have been self-delusional, boarder-line stupid even, but it was one thing that Kelly and her kind was good at; Determination.

She brings herself back to the world and begins shooting the fliers right out of the air, off the walls and rooftops, killing with expert precision of her senses and handling of her gun. She finishes her third magazine for her pistol and was about to load out another as her backpack juts out another cartridge for her at the side of the pack, only to quickly feel the back of her suit pressing against her skin, indicating something was incoming from behind, but she was too slow to react in time. The alarms within her helmet goes off as her shields were broken.

The mass pushes her down against the edge of the wall, causing her to drop her gun on the floor, and said mass screeches, with a few more others joining around her as her alien allies were ether surprise attacked and killed, or backed away just in time to defend themselves. Quickly as she could, she reaches up and over her back and grabs onto something a little squishy, causing the creature on her back to wheeze and begins to struggle in her iron grip. She then throws her arm forward with the flyer going with, and cracks its cranium onto the outer-wall before dropping the body. Kelly swiftly grabs her large army knife from behind and twists herself down to her left to dodge a bolt of plasma aimed at her head. As she continues to twirl around, she brings out her arm and slashes her serrated blade across the shooters’ knees, severing arteries and tendons to bring it down. As it falls onto its bloody knees, Kelly forcefully stabs the end of the blade into the creatures’ skull, abruptly silencing its screeching pain.

She then dodges the insect that stood behind she just killed by leaning to the side and back, the thing trying to lance her with its bayonet with a screech. She continues to dodge every attack for a few times before she spins down low with her right foot out in a cutting motion, tripping the creature down on its side, dazed. Still going with the momentum, she front-flips with a bit more force with her other leg out instead, and smashes her heel down onto the aliens’ head like a swinging sledgehammer, ending its life that instant. Her allies then quickly takes the rest around her as she gets herself up and picks up her handgun, now looking over the battle once more to assist.

She then notices a horned bug beginning to levitate a piece of concrete boulder the size of her own head. Still being dumbfounded, she doesn’t notice the creatures launching the bounder at her with a screech. Before she could recover and react, the cement block shatters on impact, square on her chest, shattering part of her reactivated shield with a quick flash and causing her to stumble back and fall flat on her rear. She shakes her head, dazed once again from the attack and slowly gets back up to her feet.

“Shield recharging.” Her helmet speaks to her again and begins repairing the hexagons on her chest, one piece at a time.

“T-minus, thirty seconds.” The voice of a pilot informs her. Kelly looks ahead and sees four, tiny drop ships coming out of the clouds in the distance.

Suddenly a loud, thunderous roar erupts out right in front of her. She quickly looks down the wall and sees a large, armored, hulkish creature rising out of the concrete road. The orange alien shouts out and its teammates scatters out to try and get away from the large creature. To her, it looks more like a giant crab with a small head and a large cannon attached to its right arm instead, while its left looked like a cross between a large claw and a shield, similar to a hermit crabs’ fore-claws.

As it begins ramming the gates with its body, her alien allies began to desperately firing at it with everything they had, barely putting a scratch on the beasts’ shell. Kelly quickly jogs over so she could be right over the gates and pushes aside her foreign teammates.

The two aliens glares at her, but then looks on intrigued as she grabs one of her grenades, pulls out the pin with her thumb, and drops it down, but not before pressing the red trigger.

“T-minus, twenty sec-”

BOOM!!!

The explosion causes the large creature to fall back as it cries out in pain, its stubby legs blown off and parts of its lower section splatters all over the gates, walls and ground. She smirks, grabs the last grenade on her right thigh and tosses it over to a platoon of dark creatures. A few seconds later, they flew in the air, crying out in pain as well, some loosing limb, and a few blowing up entirely, limbs and gore scattering all around.

The drop ships flies over her head and hovers over the courtyard of the castle. The back hatches flies open as her fellow Keepers ran out and jumps down all of thirty feet and onto the yard with their guns drawn out, a few leaping from their ship and landing onto the wall beside her.

At least four to five dozen Peace Keepers were now at ground zero with her and begins assisting their alien allies with the current threat. The ships themselves drew out their Plasma Canons from the bottom part of the head of the ships and all start firing at the bugs with bolts of light blue, super-heated plasma, causing them to be either knocked down with smoking, charred holes or fly off like a ragdoll. As some of the fliers try to go up and onto the aircrafts, the ships’ defense systems activates themselves, bringing out small turrets all around the outer hall of the flying machine, gunning down any foe that got too close to the vehicle.

With the extra firepower, Kellys' human companions and their new alien allies begins driving the screeching bugs back. But the enemy were determined of taking over the castle, making it hard for everyone to keep them at bay.

A fellow human runs up to Kelly with blue and red stripes on his white armor and a red cross on where his rank was supposed to be located. He shows a new arm for her, “You might need this, Commander.” He says.

Kelly grabs the base of her left arm; twisted it with a ‘Click!’ and pulls it out. She hands it to the Medic and grabs the new one. She jams it in her shoulder as it powers up and she starts move it around to make sure it was fully functional.

Her helmet than speaks up, "Calibrating new prosthetic limb to the host... checking all senses; touch, temperature changes and ghost senses... checking brain signals... checking reaction time... Calibration Complete." She smiles and thanks the man. He salutes at her, putting the damaged arm into a bag just under his backpack and went off to do his duty, while the fabric tightens itself to keep the discarded or depleted medical supplies close.

“Commander Kelly?” the voice of her charge speaks through her ear piece.

“Speak.” She replies, draws out her rifle and aims it at the distant creatures, firing three burst rounds.

“Um… I think the leader wants to speak with you.” Snowlet says nervously.

Kelly stops her shooting and looks back at the castle entrance to see her charge, the purple alien and a taller, white one right behind her, the same tall alien she saw earlier back in the streets. “Everyone, keep the bugs at bay. I won’t be long.” She orders, earning a collective ‘Yes, Commander!’ through her earpiece. She swings her gun back onto the side of her pack, hops down from the ledge and lands with a roll to lessen the impact. She runs up to the trio and stops, looking up at the tall monarch. It speaks to her with a soothing voice and holds onto what looked like a gentle smile. Kelly turns her head at Snowlet, but the little woman just shrugs in response. Kelly looked to her side, “Captain, did you send in a Crawler as well?” she asks.

“Green light?” he questions.

“Green light.” She answers.

One of the four drop ships stops shooting down at the bugs, it then flies over to them, opening up its back hatch, spins around in mid-air like it was drifting across and a dog like, mechanical robot hops out. As it lands down, it starts rolling like a wheel going towards them, swerving around the legs of alien and humans alike, but the tall creatures hopping away in surprise as it passes by. Suddenly, the mechanical dog begins galloping on its four legs with a quick transformation from its ball form and halts right in front of them, sitting down like a loyal dog, dead still.

Its head basically looking like a large camera with one, big eye right at the front with a few sensors dotting it head and the whole body itself looking like a metallic skeleton with a few markings to address where things were.

Kelly looks back at the tall monarch as it and the purple one stare at the crawler in awe. The moment Kelly nods her head, four tiny projectors flare to life on the machines’ head, making a holographic screen in the air beside Kellys' head. The two aliens, and a few others around them, takes a step back in shock and awe. Just then, a little blue, human stick figure shows up on the monitor, waving happily at them with a smiley face. The monarch’s smile grows into a small grin and waves back in kind.

“That’s better.” Kelly mutters.

Just as she was about to ‘communicate’ a little more, a pained yell quickly catches her attention. She quickly turns back and sees one of her men fall off the ledge and land down onto the courtyard with a loud grunt. She quickly runs over and drags him away from the wall, gently settling him down against the large fountain. He thanks her as he covers his burnt wound on his left shoulder, hissing in pain, thankfully it didn’t look to bad from what Kelly sees. The medic quickly sprints over to her, lifting off his pack from his back and kneels down beside the injured Keeper. He asks him to remove his hand from his left shoulder, he nods and sees a nasty burn mark and a part of his armor blown off, its ragged metal edges red from heat. The medic carefully takes the shoulder pad off and asks Kelly to cool it off in the fountain.

As Kelly tosses the shoulder pad in the water, the medic opens up his pack and takes out a small gun like device and pops in a small glass of yellow liquid. He then presses the tip onto his fellow man’s shoulder inches away from the wound and the liquid quickly drains into him with a ‘ksssst!’. He then takes a round, white patch with a red ring outlining the edges and seals up the Keeper’s suite. “You’ll be okay for now, but take it easy with the shoulder. You’ll also have to be quarantined in the Medical Ward for any foreign, alien virus or bacteria.” The medic says to him. The injured man nods, gets up with a grunt with a help of his Commander and grabs his gun from the ground. Kelly looks into the fountain and sees the armor piece have cooled down, she fishes it out.

“Will do, Doc. Thanks.” He replies and begins going back up the wall with the others, his shielding coming back to life.

Kelly hands the shoulder pad to the medic and he puts it away in his disposal bag. She then feels light tapping on her shoulder. She turns around and sees the tall monarch with the purple one beside her, and Snowlet beside the purple one. The Monarch then points at the Medic with his equipment and points at an injured alien nearby, being cared for by one of its kind. The tall alien’s face took on a hopeful expression.

Kelly lightly shakes her head ‘No’ as the robotic canine quickly sits down beside her and projects out its display.

Twilight was beyond thankful the visitors had this dog-like machine with them, and that they practically saved their very lives from those monsters behind the wall. The devices they use to kill and drive the Changelings away were just a little louder than their own weapons but bearable, but the balls they threw shook the ground with tiny tremors and near deafening when closer.

As she watches the display make two figures, one was short and the other taller one, one of her own kind she guesses. The device thing, she guessed their Field Medic used pops up in between the two and injects it to their visitor. They zoomed in and a cut was healed with a flashing green check mark. But when it injects into one of her kind, it begins flashing red X.

She looks up at Celestia, “I think they’re trying to tell us, their medicine won’t work with us.” She says and Celestia nods with a sad sigh.

Celestia looks down at the short, armored creature and nods in acknowledgement. With that, it draws out its weapon from its back and quickly begins running back up the wall to help fight back. To their surprise, it doesn’t use the stairs and just jumps up against the wall with the help of small jets surrounding its body, quickly running up the wall and jumps, reaching out to the top with one hand and pulls itself up with barely any effort.

Suddenly, the little dog-things' ring around its single eye begins flashing red and projects out, showing an aerial view of Canterlot, the fighting happening in the map happening around them in perfect time. The map then zooms out, and in it shows a horde of Changelings going towards Canterlot from the north of the barren Waist Land. Both Princesses eyes gets wide in horror.

“Invasion…” Twilight whispers, covering her mouth in terror.

Their visitor then quickly comes back, annoyance clearly showed in its expression and the shorter one starts to frantically speak to the other as it points at the horde on the screen. The armored visitor looks up at Celestia for a moment then turns away to the side as it speaks to nothing. After a moment, it turns back to them and draws out her hand, causing the whole map to be flipped from being vertical and down to horizontal. Then a short rod like object, with a large head shows up, floating over the map, split into three, points towards the horde and hits the map, pixels exploding out as it did. It then looks up at Celestia and a button materialized in front of her, resting right on the map as it flashes on and off in color red.

A royal guard then went up to them, panting, “Princess Celestia! A horde of Changelings from the north is coming this way!” he says frantically, the fear in his tone clear as day.

Celestia takes a moment to look at the two visitors, a frightened Twilight and at the Guard. She then looks down at the map once more to see the horde slowly getting closer. She closes her eyes and looks at the armored visitor, “You do it.” She points at it and then down at the holographic, flashing button. It shakes its head firmly, points at her and down at the ground. Then gestures to itself and its alien companion, and points up towards the sky.

“Celestia, it’s saying this is your world, not theirs.” Twilight speaks up, now clearly shaking.

She takes a few deep breaths to calm herself and then looks down at the button. A second later, she presses down right through it, but then a red warning sign lights up on the map’s face and zooms out further. They then notice three small arrows rocketing towards their city, but three large target signs lights up on the ever closing horde of bugs. When the arrows got close to their city, they all look up at the sky and three rockets zooms over their heads and past the castle with blue afterburners. They look back down at the map and the moment they do, the ground shakes three times as the arrows hit their targets, companied by deafening explosions and the air pushing them as fine dust threw up into the air.

Then they waited. The map shows a large dust cloud covering the area, obscuring their sight from their enemy.

Celestia quickly unfurls her large wings, jumps up and with a massive wing beat, begins flying up to her watchtower.

“Celestia!” Twilight cries out for her former teacher as she flies up to her tower, her own wings starts to spread, but didn’t seem too confident on using them. She looks at the castle entrance and starts running in to go to their Princess.

Celestia lands down onto her watchtower with a thud; runs around the ring of ledge with guardrails. She stops as she sees the dust cloud, just half a kilometer away from her city. The Changelings had… It then clicks. She quickly looks over to her city and sees all the Changelings that were attacking stopped. Everything was quiet for the longest of time, the wind and the engines of hovering ships the only sound entering her ears. Then the monstrous creatures finally start moving, but not towards her, but away. She quickly looks back at the dust cloud, as it begins clearing from the east wind. A moment later, tiny, black bodies of countless changelings covers the Waist Land, with three large craters, forming a triangular shape.

“Prince-” Twilight suddenly stops as she sees the craters. She slowly walks over and stands beside her as she looks at the craters and laying bodies in shock. “How… wha…” she tries to speak bur fails.

“For such short creatures… they have powerful weapons…” Celestia quietly says.

Kelly and Snowlet walks up the steps of the wall and looks out into the battle-damaged city. As one of her Lieutenants informed, the bugs were retreating and long gone.

“D-did we win?” Snowlet asks.

“It seems like it…” the lieutenants says, raises up his assault rifle and looks through the scope. “Can’t… see… any of them…” he says, then lowers his gun.

“Still. Stand guard. Never know if they come back by surprise.” Kelly reaches up to her helmet to change frequencies and looks at the hovering ships with their canons ready, “Pilots, make a sweep of the city. Try to find any of those things lingering around.” She orders and the ships begins slowly floating around the city, scanning for any danger.

“What if we find them, Commander?” a pilot asks.

“Fire warning shots, drive them away from here. If they stay put and fire back… well, you’re the boot.” Kelly replies, earning four ‘Yes, Commander!’.

Celestia and Twilight watch as one of their flying ships begins shooting around a pack of Changelings, driving them out into the street. They continue shooting around them, but the black creatures start shooting at the ship with screeching battle cries. Celestia squints her eyes to see the device under the head of the ship changing from wide to a narrow barrel. It then starts shooting them with deadly accuracy, splitting the shells of the creature’s chest and shredding them apart. She winces at the sight and then looks down at the ground with Twilight.

“So… what do we do with them?” Twilight asks nervously as she looks down at the courtyard, gripping the rail tightly.

“We establish a Peace Treaty.” Celestia answers, looking down as well.

“What!?” Twilight steps back from her in shock, “You saw what they can do! The shooting, the explosions, and their ships!” she gestures to the patrolling ships hovering around their city.

Celestia looks at her, “They had no other choice, Twilight. You need to be a little more observant. They were trying to drive them away from the city, shooting at the ground around them with their weapons, but the Changelings stayed.” She then points at the large craters, “As you said, I’m in charge of this kingdom. They could have done this by themselves, but they turned to me for the order to launch their fast, explosive rods.” She looks back down at the courtyard and at the mechanical armed visitor, calling out orders and pointing out to its own kind, “They came here for a reason, Twilight Sparkle. They haven’t come all this way to fight. Traveling between the distances of the stars takes years.” She looks at her former student, “Before you were even born, I witnessed a tiny, barely noticeable moving star connect with another brighter one. Ever since then, the once bright star was out a few days before Nightmare Moon returned.”

“So… you think they came from that star?” Twilight asks, now feeling a little sorry for their visitors and from her outburst.

“We will find out soon once we establish a trust between our species.” She answers, turns away from her capital and begins going down the spiraling stairs with Twilight at her tow. She would be lying if she didn’t feel a little threatened by their new friends. They seemed more capable of destruction and invasion than their current enemy. She just hopes they stay peaceful to one another now and in the future.

Author's Note:

So, that's chapter 3 edited, I hope you enjoyed this.
Till next time, comment if you like, have a nice day/night and good reading, everyone.

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