33 Burning Sands
David - 4th of Solarus ‘15 EoH - Afternoon
As I looked into the swirling mass of the enemy, I realized that my tactics were essentially useless. If I’d had to command anyone, I’d just get everyone killed. Human tactics do not deal well with an enemy that can fly, let alone in formations so dense it looked like we were being assaulted by a cloud of giant gnats.
About the only thing I could think of was to get a few quad Flak 38’s and make one hell of a last stand. How the hell everyone else was either running about their duties or standing in position with a calm soldierly expression was beyond me. The hell did their boot camps prepare them for? Giant centaur demon rampages?
I’d spent the entire sprint over to a group of five large pylons wondering exactly how I could help in any capacity other than ‘shoot everything that gets close’. I was drawing a complete blank. That wasn’t good, I was a soldier, I needed at least a briefing!
Turning my head to the tall white princess whose name I didn’t catch and sure as hell wasn’t going to ask for now, I asked, “Alright, what’s the plan?”
She held up a hoof for me to wait and turned to face a group of a dozen or so unicorns and a few Gaians. Unlike Kev their suits had a sheath for a long feline tail, and digitigrade paw shaped boots, so I guess she was telling the truth about cosmetic alterations.
“In case I need to use the pylons myself, how do they work?” Sun-princess asked.
“The crystals at the top hold the arcane charge,” a unicorn called back while the others carefully went about casting spells or fiddling with knobs, “The pylons amplify the power, shape the spell, and project it… They are sort of like your horn, Ma’am. Only the spell is built in. Just put energy into the crystals or take it away.”
“And the controls?” she asked.
“For regulating the power and helping restore damage done to the shields.” A Gaian called, “no time to train you for them Your Highness, sorry.”
“I understand,” she commented, “myself and these people will cover you. Keep everything up as long as you can. Oh,” she suddenly pointed a hoof at me, “This unicorn is a transformed Diamond Dog, he’s quite nice and on our side. If the transformation is dispelled mid battle, don’t shoot him.”
“Good to know Ma’am!” A unicorn called.
Princess-what’s-her-face turned back to me, looking up at the sky uneasily. “These… devices are allowing us to nest shields. The big dome overhead is actually three layered shields, and we have smaller transparent shields beneath it covering specific locations, like the field hospital, and our battlemage’s trenches.
“We can selectively raise and lower the shield spells, allowing us to open holes in them for as long as we need while keeping the rest of the shields up. Luna’s plan is to open a large hole over there, allowing the swarm a point of entry that’s relatively small so we can fill it with spellbolts, arrows, and javelins, while limiting how many can attack us at once.
“But, last time we fought them they breached our shields, so we have the shields within the main ones to give us places to fall back to. I don’t think you can reach the enemy from this position with that musket, but if the enemy does breach the outer shield, we need to keep these mages and technicians safe until they can get the spell back up… Especially because we have some help from outside the shield in the form of… Eh, don’t worry about it. Just keep the Swarm off everyone here if they break through.”
I looked over at the spot she had pointed to. It was about two hundred yards away, and down hill from our own position. I could see a ton of ponies formed up in ranks, with five of the Neighponese A.L.I.C.O.R.N.s flanking the formation, which had an overall horseshoe shape around the spot I assumed they were going to open..
It was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked as if the Neighponese were forming the front line, with some of those super bulky armored ponies who vaguely reminded me of Warhammer figures forming a line behind them to cover everyone else. The especially interesting thing was the formation was three dimensional, with bronze armored pegasi forming a second level to the formation, and a flight of-
“A-are those dragons?” I asked looking at the slightly-bigger-than-a-pony winged quadrupedal reptiles in the distance with some delighted awe.
“No, those are Drakes. Dragons are much bigger.” Light quipped. “That’s about it though.”
“It would be nice to have a true Dragon for this.” Princess something-or-other mumbled.
“But, they still breath fire and stuff, right?” I asked.
“Depends on the color. Some fire, some ice, some acid…” A unicorn tending the pylons remarked. “Looks like we mostly have reds and purples… So fire and raw magic.”
I shook my head and resumed inspecting the formation. The ceiling over the horseshoe formation had some pretty big holes in it, but I supposed it would be hard to hover with bird wings.
I turned to look at one of the Gaians, “So, I assume you guys don’t have any attack helicopters?”
“Same reason you’re not using an atlatl.” She shot back.
“This isn’t…” Light said, suddenly stopping mid sentence.
I looked over to her with a confused grunt. The mare quickly rushed over to the Princess and gently tapped her shoulder, “Princess Celestia, this isn’t the entire swarm. Part of it is somewhere else.”
Thank you for saving me an awkward question, random mare! I filed he Princess's name away in my brain more carefully this time.
“How do you know?” the princess asked face instantly hardening into a deep concern.
“I… I can hear them. A little.” Light replied slowly. “Some are here, some are someplace else… I think Chrysalis is here… I’m not sure.”
“She is probably holding some of her forces in reserve.” I quipped, “She has… well… a lot. There isn’t room for all of them at any breach they may make.”
Celestia nodded slowly, “That’s likely. Excuse me.”
She taped the gem in her necklace with her hoof gently. “Luna,” she said pausing until the gem glowed purple for an instant, “The Swarm is holding some of it’s forces somewhere else.”
“Is your source credible?” Luna’s voice answered sounding as if she were a few feet in front of Celestia.
“Yes. It’s Lightstride.” She answered.
“Thank you for the information, Ms. Light.” Luna thanked, “Tia, please ask the Field Marshal to give them our little surprise early. Open the shield once it’s all clear, we’ll need to bait their reserve into the open.”
The Princess nodded and tapped her gem again. “Field Marshal Lak.” She paused, the gem flashed, and then she continued, “Field Marshal, this is Celestia. Is your wing ready? We need them now.”
“Enemy moved faster than you estimated?” A weathered female voice asked.
“Yes, they also have a reserve somewhere. Luna wants you to hit them now to try and draw them out.” Celestia informed.
“Understood, bunker down.” The voice replied.
I blinked twice. “Did she say bunker down?”
Jade nodded, “I think so.”
Advanced civilization. War. Surprise… Oh!
I turned my attention to the sand below me and started to dig a pit as quickly as I could.
“Uh, what are you-” Lily started.
“Bunkering down before they drop whatever ordinance that is!” I exclaimed, focusing on digging.
I suddenly found myself joined by Jade and Lily in my hole-digging. I’m glad at least two of my friends came from sensible town. Unlike everypony else who sort of just kept going about their business.
“You know,” Lily remarked, “you would dig a lot better as a dog. They can dig through rock in a few minutes.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, both my eyebrows raising.
Jade looked up at me with a shocked expression, “You didn’t know Diamond Dogs could dig?”
“Wait,” one of the shield-mages demanded, “How the buck does a Diamond dog not know he can d-”
The sky erupted into bright spots of white! The ground heaved! Five straight lines of white dots blazed into existence to form lines across the entirety of the dome. Each light was accompanied by a sound like an anvil hitting the deck of a battleship while being struck by lightning.
In the heartbeat after the light vanished, the dense clouds of swarming changelings remained.
“Princess,” the Martial’s voice crackled a moment later, “We got a few, but they have a shield of their own. We could breach it, but from what we can read it’s about twice the strength of yours. Anything we fire would hit you guys below… Sorry.”
Celestia sighed wearily and tapped her necklace to reply, “Unders-”
“Ah hell!” The Martial cursed, “We have a few thousand breaking off to pursue. We’ll take care of them and swing back for another run. We can at least pick off a few hundred at a time. Good luck down there.”
I looked up curiously. A few thousand? Did that leave any noticeable gaps in their swarming cloud?
No. No it did not.
Fuck.
“Luna,” Celestia sighed, “They’ve set up their own shield.”
“Ponyfeathers…” Luna muttered in response. “Alright, we’re trapped here for the moment. She’s gotten smarter… Open the shield, let’s see if she takes the opening.”
The mages quickly worked their magic. A round portion of the shield at the formation’s base flickered and died. The Swarm kept flying around the perimeter. The sound of their buzzing now amplified to unsettling levels.
The masses surged.
The masses heaved.
The hole remained unused.
A minute passed.
The Swarm flowed around the shield, their solid barrier of bodies remaining intact.
“Twilight, see if they are an illusion.” Luna’s voice crackled faintly.
“They are real.” Twilight said hesitantly after a few moments.
I turned to look to other places along the shield. I was no general, but sometimes a soldier's intuition was better than five years of officer’s school. There had to be something they were doing. Something about their movements had to show some sort of plan or another.
They were moving like the threads in a loom, only every thread kept moving instead of stopping to form a row. Their eight fold helix pattern started at the very top of the shield dome and spiraled over and under it’s arms as it ran down the sides. It was an intricate and complex pattern which would have been amazing if it didn’t look like a blanket made of death slowly pull itself down over us.
Down…
Wait a minute…
I squinted at the closest edge of the shield where it met the sand. The Swarm was only moving down. Not one line moved back up. Unless they were pulling back at ground level to loop up again…
“Jade,” I asked urgently, “How well can changelings dig?”
“Pretty well.” She answered. “Wh-” Her eye widened mid-word. Jade hopped out of the still in progress trench Lily was continuing to expand and shouted, “Please tell me the shield extends under ground!”
There was a two second pause, followed by a frenzy of flashes of magic and shouted orders. Then the earth heaved again. A giant blister of sand pushed up from the ground just behind the infantry formation! A thousand changelings burst from the sand in a flash of green flames, arcing skywards only to fall like living artillery shells into tents, people, fortifications, everything.
At the exact same instant the Swarm began to surge through the hole in the shields. Instantly the mass of soldiers exploded into light of all colors! Rays of scorching light streaked through the ari, bolts of denser magic slamming into the ground, changelings, and others.
The sound of spells, screams, shouts, and flames echoed off the shield. I grabbed the M1 off my back, futility fumbling for the trigger with my hooves.
“Gah! I can’t fucking fight like this!” I growled. Spinning I grabbed Lily’s shoulder, “How do I change back?”
“Just will it!” Lily cried, horn blazing blue as the sand around us heaved itself up into a crude earthwork wall. “Uuf… Why did that take so much energy?”
A shield-mage jumped into the now pretty decent trench, her pale blue fur and blue-gray mane covered with sand. “The sand is cursed, Second Thaumaturgy War was fought here. This used to be a jungle six thousand years back. Don’t try magic on it again! … But thank you.”
I closed my eyes and did my best to remember being a Diamond Dog. Was that all I had to do?
Something thumped into the sand beside me, ruining my concentration. A Gaian, dark green armor, no robe, and carrying a pretty large weapon I could only describe as an Imperial Storm Trooper’s heavy blaster as designed by the Mass Effect crew, under the condition it look like something from Flash Gordon’s armory.
“Good thought on the trench there, mate!” She called, snapping a bipod down into position.
I closed my eyes again, focused…
A loud explosion shook the ground! Sand flew everywhere! A volley of energy rays sliced the air just over my head, cutting a massively bulky changeling to pieces as it stood up from a small crater!
“Gah! Fucking hell!” I growled angrily. War is not conductive to focu-
A bolt of green fire slammed into the sand next to me, instantly fusing the grains into a lump of glowing red glass.
“Ah shit…” the Gaian muttered, “‘scuze me.”
She suddenly pulled herself over me, a large chunk of her left side exposed thanks to a huge chunk taken out of her armor. The smell of burnt hair and flesh signed my nostrils as she slid over me and wrapped the mage in a hug, “Sorry hon… I got five minutes tops. Try not to die without me, okay?”
Her ears drooped. She wrapped an arm around the injured woman and nodded, “Okay… It… it just takes a week right?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll still remember everything.” She answered, stripping her helmet’s faceplate off to give the mare a kiss, before sliding a pair of brass knuckles on her hands and jumping up onto the top of the trench in one fluid movement, “Right! Let’s see how many I can take out before radon poisoning sets in!”
“The hell do you mean a week?” Someone else asked, “She’s going to die!”
“Cloning vats are awesome!” Yet someone else shouted over the sizzling of spellbolts.
“Oh that’s such horse apples!” A distinctly pony voice grumbled, “We stay dead and you all come back? Why the buck arn’t we just fielding you guys?!”
“I’m sorry the tech won’t work on ponies and there's only a few hundred of us who are important enough to get backups. Why don’t you use that anger to push that line back?” Someone else shouted back.
I took a deep breath, doing my best to clear my head. I needed to block everything out. Needed that moment of silence. Just fucking one! Because fucking hooves can’t pull a god damn trigger!
A flurry of green flames pelted the area! Liquefied sand ran down the trench walls. Jade yelped in pain! I snapped my head around, I could see the smoke drifting off the charred slice taken out of her head. I could feel her pain, see her flinching only feet away.
I felt my bones pop and grind. Hooves split into hands in a flurry of green sparks. I grabbed my M1. I vaulted out of the trench.
I can’t remember much after that.
Lily - 4th of Solarus ‘15 EoH - Afternoon
I figured, as a veteran of two of Applewood’s bigger raids, that this battle would just be a really big version of one. This was absolutely nothing like a few hundred hungry peasants attacking with the goal of raiding a warehouse. This was an uncountable mass of people with their only goal being to kill us all.
I winced as a flurry of spellbolts slammed into the sand just above my head. I hadn’t dug this thing anywhere nearly deep enough!
Faust’s blood, why did the sand resist magic so much? I was down at least a third of my full strength from making a six pony wide hole in some sand!
My breath came in rapid gasps, I could hear people shouting around me, but not anything they were saying. It was all lost to the sheer panic response of being in a hail made of fire!
I vaguely noticed someone jump out of the trench as a spellbolt splattered against the shields my earrings provided. I felt the piercings flare with heat for a brief instant as the shields struggled under the bolt’s energy, then cooled, fortunately still working.
That had been motherbucking close!
The hay was I doing here? I barely knew how to fight! I was already low on power! Where the buck was Princess Celestia!? I needed that promised teleport, now!
Jade’s pained cry snapped me back into the moment. I twisted to see how badly she had been hurt. I felt a rotten boiling in my guts. I should have put up a shield this whole time, this was all my fault!
I flinched as I saw the line burnt across her head, taking a half hoof deep chunk clean out. Thank Faust she was a changeling and thus didn’t have a central nervous system, or that would have been fata-
David burst into green flames, transforming back to his dog form with the most vengeful growl of rage since the dawn of time! The second his hands reformed he grabbed the gun he’d been given and vaulted out of the trench, narrowly being missed by two separate bolts!
Oh no! Nopony ever told him changelings aren't killed with a head shot! It's not a vital organ! He thought they’d just killed- Wait, had Jade been hit in the hearts too?
I quickly glanced down, Jade groaned and pushed herself up, sparks of magic knitting the head wound shut. “Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow!” She moaned.
“Keep your head down if you’re not firing!” The blue mare next to her hissed in a distressed tone.
“Wait… Did David just jump up there?” Jade asked me with a horrified expression on her face.
“Oh bick mich!” I groaned.
I couldn’t let my friend get himself killed because he didn’t know interspecies anatomy!
I gathered my hooves under me and jumped out of the trench. I could see a huge chunk of the battle now. The densest part was where the hole in the shield had been opened. The entire area was an indistinguishable mass of eldritch fire, flashes of lightning, and smoke.
The rest of the camp was filled with isolated clusters of besieged ponies fighting off the Swarm from all sides. Like the one I was in. Completely surrounded including overhead, with only a half dozen pegasi keeping the airborne changelings from just hitting us from the air…
A combination of a sharp crack and a dull thud managed to pierce the sounds of battle. I saw a changeling jolt a full three feet up from where it had been hovering then drop to the sands in a heap, the entire barrel scooped out as if by a giant spoon!
What. The. Buck. Did. That?
I saw David out of the corner of my eye, turned my head just in time to see him smash the flat section of his weapon into a changeling’s face, pin it under foot, flip the weapon around and-
Oh. That’s what did that.
That was no musket. That thing kicked up sand like a small wind. Also it just fired three times in a row.
Three changelings converged on David from above! I threw a spellbolt, grazing one’s back. David spun, somehow hearing them through the chaos, shot one, side stepped, and punched a second as it passed, turning and shooting the third as it shot by.
“David! Jade ist in Ordnung! Gehen Sie zurück zu decken!” I called, reverting to Germane in panic as six bolts peppered the ground in front of me.
I saw his ears snap back. Something pushed him into a deeper rage than before! What the hay-
Oh bucking hay! He’d fought Germane speakers last time he was in a war… You’re a bucking idiot Lily!
David swept his gun up and fired multiple rounds, a loud absolutely delightful ping accompanying his last shot. I had no idea what made that ping, but it was a lovely sound. It was like seeing a single rose amid a field of smoldering embers.
A green starburst exploded in my face! Earring burned! Static crackled as my shields failed!
Right! Fighting now!
I put all the energy I could muster into throwing up a shield, the best one I knew how to do! Four layers, each made of small sections, rotating so no part could be hit twice in succession.
David fiddled with his gun a moment, swept it back up and continued firing. The airborne changelings drawing his cold, wordless, wrath. I had to get him out of here before-
A changeling zipped down behind him, horn glowing as it charged a bolt!
I jumped, throwing myself into the path of it’s dive, shields sparking as the changeling crushed itself hitting the barrier, throwing me into David’s back, knocking us both flat.
A loud ‘scree’ trumped from somewhere behind us, followed a fraction of a second later by a pink shield racing over the two of us, pushing the Swarm back, but sliding harmlessly over the two of us.
“You two! Get back here! The shields won't stop them for long.” Princess Celestia shouted.
I looked up, the mages working the shield-amps had extended a shield over our position, making a small safe spot in the chaos of battle that protected the pylons and everyone nearby. The bulk of the Swarm smashed against the shield, or threw spellbolts at it, flashes of energy sizzling up as the shield’s power was slowly drained.
I turned to help David up as I slid off of him, only noticing the half dozen burn marks from spellbolts then. He was hurt bad. Back, arms, legs, neck…
“Gott nein!” I gasped, quickly holding a hoof to his neck to check for a pulse.
It was there, faint, but there. Just unconscious. Good.
I carefully picked David up in my magic and carried him back to the trench.
“Is he…” Jade whimpered as I lowered him to the kinda-safety of the trench’s bottom.
“Nein, he’s alive…” I sighed. “He thought you died when you were shot.”
“Everypony!” Celestia called, “The battle is going poorly. Luna has asked me to put all my power into these shields. We cannot let them take us down! Everyone who can fight needs to expand those trenches and get ready to attack the moment they break through! Luna is sending reinforcements the second they have an opening to get through the enemy line!”
The sudden flurry of activity blurred together into a chaotic mess of digging, packing sand into walls, and mages conjuring salt and iron dust to paint wards onto the ground. If only my particular art didn’t take time had calm to use! I could make each pony’s skin as hard as iron, maximize their magical throughput so they could use as much power at once as their horn would permit!
Digging was good too though. Yes. Earthwork fortifications! So far they were pretty helpful! Hahaha! Oh Faust I was so dead… There were millions of them! Millions of them and maybe a few tens of thousands of us…
Maybe I could get a pass on account of being Dusk’s friend? I hoped that’s how it worked. I mean, I’d let my friends not die if I were Death. Please don’t actually be dead… Please just be recovering and thus able to put me back after these things turn me into paste!
I didn’t notice until the fourth time my name was shouted that the watch Sky had given me was glowing through the side of my saddlebag. I took the small thing out with my magic, hoping it wasn’t about to explo-
“Oh thank bucking Celestia!” Sky’s voice shouted, a tiny static image of him on the watch face, “Tell everypony around you to get the buck down!”
Something exploded behind Sky, three sapphire shelled Changelings suddenly flying across the background as if thrown. “Sky! I can’t hold them off forever! Give up and let’s go!”
“One minute! I finally got through!” Sky shouted back.
“W-was?” I asked in horrified shock.
“We’re being hit, hard!” Sky yelled, “They dug through the floor. I guess they realised this would be your fallback point. Look, you need tell everypony to find cover! Kev and I were trying to get a torpedo bank online to provide artillery support, the Swarm broke something when digging through, and something launched.
“I have no bucking clue what it is, and I can’t abort it because the controls are fried! It was sitting in a tube we hadn’t checked yet. Everything was locked onto your position because we were going to fire as soon as we cleared the last- Just get down! Everypony get down-”
His voice melted into the sound of shattering glass as the entire world turned white.
Sound came back first. There was a sound like rushing wind and a raging river. It consumed everything in the world.
Sight came back second. I was sliding down a flowing river of sand on the side of a huge crater. It was like a huge lake bed just appeared beneath us.
I slid down the side, ponies, changelings, piles of burning something, it didn’t matter everything slid down the steep rim, tumbling into a heap at the flat bottom.
I lay there groaning, battered, bruised, and deaf in one ear at the bottom of a pile of bodies. Some alive, others not. After a few seconds I started to squirm free of the pile, slowly pulling myself free.
I was now standing in a flat crater bottom, maybe a hundred meters across, with the entire battlefield packed into it. The sky was mostly changeling-free now, but plenty of the Swarm were worming their way free of the sand on the crater walls, floor, and from the pile of bodies. As I watched, surviving ponies began to resume the battle as the Swarm seemed to just take the cataclysm in stride.
“Well… I suppose it’s good most of their stronghold is in my hooves now.” A very horrifyingly familiar voice said nonchalantly. “We wouldn’t want another one of those, now would we?”
I turned to look in horror at an entirely unscathed Chrysalis's, calmly trotting towards me, only a few body lengths away. “Now then, where were we before your idiot friend interrupted us?”
I felt my heart size up in panic. She was literally resuming right where she left off? Why? What was the point?
“Ah yes, that’s right.” Chrysalis laughed, horn starting to blaze green.
Oh. Buck. No!
Stats
Page generated in 0.032 seconds
Total duration
699 users online
793,204 hits today, 2,156,967 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
"You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind!"
[Nuclear Launch Detected]
"Never know what hit em..."
BUCK YOU CHRYSALIS!!!!!!!
Ok im better now
Kinda
AAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Why chrysie why!!!
damn, very chaotic, I do wonder why david jumped up like he did, maybe he thought jade died?
anyways, anticipation...
and thanks for the cliffhanger, very well done
6821667 Her "press to engage evil bitch mode" button got stuck.
6821699 In humans, head shots are generally fatal :P Not so much so when your species brain is actually a few dozen smaller nerve clusters strung all through out your body, because you're an insect.
6821730
I know right? It's almost like making the third wheel Alicorn into a badflank is a good idea or something...
Yeah maybe! That is certainly one option of about 4. She could also be trapped somewhere mysty.
They are very black and white simplistic sorts of things. They have to be in order to work as they do.
... Damnit? Is that climatic point so easy to predict?
Well, it doesn't quite replace the one hit, kill anything evil nature of the Boonstick, but that should work pretty well.
Nah, not quite but... WAIT! The ping :D Total upgrade ^.^
6821709 benifits of a bug I suppose, thrice as hard to kill
6821776 Yeah. Though in general putting a big hole in one still works. Because their indices are pressurized and insects can explosively decompress...
6821793 well holy shit...
damn you evil author and your cliffhangers!
*waits impatiently for the next chapter*
6821978 Tomorrow :) I just chopped the scene in half and posted the first bit today. To get Eon to STFU with his "but cliffhangers are awesome!"
6821983 oh... uh... damn you Eon! XD
And then things really went to shit.
6822010 Equestrian bootcamp: A one week hotel stay in Ponyville.
Shoot her!!!! SHOOOOT HER!!!!!
I wonder why she's got such a mad on for poor Lily....? I suppose she knew that Lily was carrying Clover's spellbook? C'mon, Luna, bust back up to the surface of the pile and rip Chrysalis' wings off! Although I'm fairly sure it's going to end up being Jade or David that ends up killing her, that doesn't mean you can't put her through some of the pain she's caused in the meantime!
6822109 It's simple realy, the nicer you are, the better your horror tastes.
6822012
....David is not going to survive that
6822226 No mere mortal can.
You use the pylons to construct buildings or units. Now, if you don't have enough pylons a voice from the sky will tell you that "You must construct additional pylons!"
Orbital Friendship Cannon activated...
Pretty impressive array of allied forces for this fight, even if they're still outnumbered by the Swarm.
Aww hell. That's kind of a big thing to miss, Luna.
There we go. I mean, it's not a good idea or anything, but at least we'll see some machine gun action finally.
Huh, you know, I was hoping that "David goes on a Rambo style rampage" moment would accomplish more than killing just a few changelings before he got taken out of the fight.
Surprise mid-battle aerial nuke? Well, a lot of the Swarm was out of their shields and in the air attacking the Equestrian redoubt, maybe it did more damage to the enemy?
Okay, yeah, that seems bad.
Geeze, and they've more or less lost the Sapphire hive, too? This isn't going well.
6822012 And Discord is the drill Sargent
... Dusk may have interfered directly but Dawn is obviously just tap dancing on the line that isn't supposed to be crossed and is taunting everyone to do something about it... Or so it seems at the moment.
Chrysalis...
YOU SHALL PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES BY THE ORDER OF THE INQUISITION!
6873492 I will send the impirile guard and were did they go.
Meenwill ohhh cheese
Probably some Italian and Turkish speakers as well. Though really, Germany and Japan seem to be the only things that kept the Axis up, they were just really good at it.
It’s either that or the fact that nobody else’s Axis contributions ever get talked about. Gotta love that US schooling system.