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Implosion4,348 words
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Implosion

The sun was low in the sky, just beginning to set on the peaceful town of Ponyville. Ponies began entering their homes and sitting down either alone or with friends or family for dinner as the town’s streets became practically desolate and void of life.

On the outskirts of town, a certain shy yellow mare by the name of Fluttershy was tending to the animals that resided in and around her cozy cottage, which, much to her relief, allowed her to care for each animal without any unwanted confrontations with other ponies.

“Time for lunch, everyone!” she called, her voice like silk to all that could hear it. A crowd of various small creatures then gathered around the bowls she had placed in what one could only describe as the living room of her cottage. Several assortments of food were in each bowl to cater to the needs of each animal. All the animals began to eat from their respective bowls of food; all but one.

“Now, Angel, if you don’t eat your food now, you’ll be hungry later.” Fluttershy said in a soft voice. The one she was addressing was a small white bunny, who currently had his arms folded and his head turned away from her, a pout plastered on his face.

“C’mon, Angel...” she said, slowly cantering towards him. He looked back with one eye and then immediately sped towards her, jumped on her head, stomped on it a few times and then proceeded hopped out of the nearby open window.

“Oh, Angel...” Fluttershy sighed, a clear tone of defeat in her voice. She briskly cantered to the window and looked outside to see where he might have scampered off to, but was instead greeted by a loud, thunder-like noise that had come from the direction of the forest behind her house. This elicited a small ‘Eek!’ from the timid mare and had caused her to fall back onto her butterfly-adorned flank, shaking in fear from the sudden noise.

She had sat there shaking for a good couple of minutes before deciding to go into town and seek help.

“You’re good to go, Kozak”

Staff Sergeant John Kozak was the engineer of Ghost Team “Hunter”. He was currently on a mission to eliminate the last remaining Raven’s Rock forces in Primorsky, Russia. But, there had been rumors that they were in possession of a nuclear warhead, and since this particular base was so close to the North Korean border, the Russian government dared not touch it out of fear of an international incident.

This was also the reason why Kozak was going in alone; he was the only member of the team able to fully identify a nuclear presence and disable it. Even a small team of four was too risky, as it rose the chances of their presence being discovered, and would probably lead to Raven’s Rock detonating the warhead before the team even got close. This was their contingency plan, they were leaderless and had nothing left to lose.

“Alright” Kozak replied.

“Now, Listen;” the voice on the radio demanded “this is just a recon mission for now. When, and only when, you find any hard evidence of a nuclear device in the headquarters, you have permission to disable it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Good luck out there.”

The radio crackled off as Kozak began to move from his observation point towards the direction of the base.

Twilight Sparkle was in the middle of reorganizing all of the books in her library when she heard a loud knocking on her front door. She sighed as she walked to the door whilst still holding many books in the air with her magic. She proceeded to open the door to gaze upon an out of breath Fluttershy out on her front porch.

“Oh my goodness, Fluttershy!” Twilight said with clear worry in her voice. The magic she had been performing to levitate the books had dissipated as her concentration had been turned towards her friend Fluttershy, who was clearly distraught enough to come running to her library in the middle of Ponyville all the way from her cottage on the outskirts of the town “Are you okay?”

“Twilight *Gasp* you have to *Gasp* come quickly!” Fluttershy said, struggling to breathe properly.

“Okay, Fluttershy, calm down! Take a minute to catch your breath and then tell me what happened!”

As Kozak crept through the forest separating the observation point from his target, his camo active to avoid any unnecessary hostile engagements, his Holographic Information System (HIS) began to flicker.

“What the hell?” Kozak asked, to no one in particular.

“What’s the problem, Kozak?” the voice on the radio asked.

“Something’s wrong with my equipment. The HIS is acting up.”

“Could be the terrain.”

“No offence, Major, but the last time you said that, it turned out our system had been hacked.”

“Hmm... Fair point.” the voice on the radio said with a contemplating voice “I’ll run diagnostics on the mainframe so we don’t have a repeat of last time. Be on your toes for any Spec Ops soldiers.”

“Got it.”

As Fluttershy took a few moments to rest on one of the chairs in the library’s front room, Twilight took it upon herself to assemble the rest of her and Fluttershy’s friends. She had sent Spike to fetch them as quickly as possible, and had told him to tell them that this was a matter of urgency, which, from Twilight’s perspective, it most certainly was.

She had never seen Fluttershy like this before; sure, she had seen her scared and downright terrified enough to curl into a ball and cry, but she had never seen her so assertive at the same time. It showed how serious whatever Fluttershy had witnessed actually was.

After a few minutes, Spike had returned with Rarity and Pinkie Pie, both Rarity and Spike were panting heavily, yet Pinkie Pie seemed to be totally fine, bouncing in place like usual, as though she had only walked around the corner, but had undoubtedly kept up with both the posh white pony and the small purple dragon.

“Spike!” Twilight shouted, obviously aggravated at the baby dragon “I told you to get everypony!”

“I couldn’t find Rainbow Dash, so Applejack offered to go find her!” Spike said, raising his arms defensively.

“Well, do you know how long they’re going to b-” And, as if on cue, a rainbow-coloured blur sped through the open window and across the library, and then crashed into the adjacent bookcase, knocking over half the books that were stacked there. The blur was infact a familiar rainbow-maned pegasus named Rainbow Dash, who was currently sitting against the near empty bookshelf upside down under a pile of books that was as high as her chin.

“Heheh...” the pegasus chuckled nervously “Sorry about the bookshelf, Twi.”

“Dang it, Rainbow Dash!” a familiar voice called from the doorway “I told y’all if ya sped off like that you’d end up causin’ trouble!”

“But you said that it was important!” Rainbow shouted back.

“It is important!” Twilight interrupted “Fluttershy has something to tell us.” Twilight side-stepped out of the way to reveal a now-frightened pegasus hiding behind the chair which she had occupied just a moment ago.

“Well, what is it, sugarcube?” Applejack said, making her voice as calm and soft as she could.

“W-well...” Fluttershy stood up slightly “I heard a loud thundering noise come from the direction of the everfree forest, but it sounded much different to a normal thunderbolt...”

“Hmm, that is strange...” Twilight brought a hoof to her chin “I think we should investigate this strange phenomena...”

“But it came from the E-E-Everfree F-Forest!” Fluttershy squeaked in protest.

“And that’s exactly why it needs to be investigated!” Twilight rebuttled.

“It’s probably just some pegasus messing about with some clouds!” Rainbow Dash said “I mean, it’s not really that big a deal, is it?”

“It didn’t sound like any thunderbolt I’ve ever heard...”

“...then it’s settled.” Twilight nodded “We better go out there and see what might be the source of the loud thunderbolt Fluttershy heard!” There was an underlying tone of giddiness and excitement in Twilight’s voice, which was understandable, due to the pony’s passion for all things sciency and her compulsion to find out as much as she could.

“Well, alright, Twilight...” Applejack said, with some hesitation in her voice “Ah guess we’d better get ready to move out.”

Kozak was now halfway through the base, opting to go the stealthy route without killing anyone, as he deduced that it would cause more trouble than it’s worth, and he wouldn’t have to worry about hiding the bodies.

His HIS status had gotten worse, as it was now pointing out hostiles that weren’t actually there, buzzing from time to time, and giving statistics that Kozak knew were not correct.

“My gear is still acting up.” Kozak whispered into his radio.

“Well, we ran diagnostics several times and found nothing. Looks like the problem is local, Kozak.” the voice on the radio said.

“It’s been getting worse since I entered the base. Think it might be that the enemy has some new hardware?”

“If that’s the case, you better get your ass in gear, Kozak.” the voice on the radio said, a tone of worry evident “Whatever it is they have, it must be big if it’s interfering with your HIS.”

“Roger that.” Kozak did exactly as he was told, and picked up the pace. He was moving noticeably faster now, but not so fast as to disengage his active camouflage. His HIS was showing a large group of hostiles up ahead of him, but Kozak wasn’t sure if they were actually there, or if they were another glitch, so he decided to slow down a bit and took cover behind a guardrail.

Kozak peeked over the railing to get a look, and what he saw was in fact a large group of hostiles. He could hear them speaking Russian, and decided to listen in on what they were saying. Kozak spoke immaculate Russian, so it was no problem for him to figure out what they were saying.

If he were not wearing a mask over his face, a slight look of shock would have been able to be seen on the soldier’s face. But his training as a soldier had taught him to confirm any intel with hard evidence, so he made his way to an office-like room where there were papers strewn on a lone metal table at the edge of the room.

“Sir,” Kozak said “I can confirm that the enemy is in possession of nuclear weapons...” he put his hand around his chin and began to rub it “...a whole lot of ‘em.”

“Tell me again why you needed all of us out here, Twilight.” Rainbow Dash moaned. The group was now at the edge of the Everfree forest doing one final check on supplies.

“Well, the Everfree forest is a dangerous place, and it’s best to travel in groups when entering it.” Twilight said.

“Okay, what I meant to say is; tell me why you needed me out here, Twilight.”

“I must agree with Rainbow Dash, Twilight. Surely you don’t need this many ponies to come with you for a quick trip into the Everfree forest.” Rarity added.

“You two quit yer bickerin’! Ah thought y’all was supposed to be the element of loyalty, Dash!” Applejack said.

“Hey! I’m completely loyal to my friends, it’s just that...” Rainbow Dash trailed off and looked in the direction of the forest and took an audible gulp.

“Yer scared, ain’t ya, Dash?” Applejack taunted, a devious grin on her face as she prodded the rainbow-maned pegasus.

“Am not!”

“Well, I’m super-duper-extra-crazy excited!” Pinkie Pie shouted, bouncing around the group.

“How can you be excited? We’re going into the Everfree forest!” Fluttershy questioned.

“Yeah, but there could be mysterious ponies in there who are feared by the town because they’re totally misunderstood, but they’re actually really nice ponies and they like cupcakes and I decide to organize a party for them and they’re really happy about it and thank me so much for doing it!” Pinkie Pie took a deep breath after she had finished.

“Uh, Pinkie Pie?” Twilight asked “Didn’t you just describe what happened with Zecora?” Pinkie Pie stopped bouncing for a moment and looked at Twilight, her face showing she was deep in thought.

“Hmm... I guess I did!” she exclaimed, and continued to bounce around the group of ponies. Twilight opened her mouth to argue, but was stopped by a hoof on her shoulder.

“Don’t bother, Twilight. She’s jus’ bein’ Pinkie Pie.” Applejack chuckled. Twilight sighed in defeat and turned to face the other girls.

“Does everypony have everything?” she asked. All the girls nodded, including Pinkie Pie, who still hadn’t stopped bouncing “Alright, then. Let’s go girls!” And with that, the group set off at a moderate pace into the Everfree forest.

“Kozak, you’re gonna need to do something about those warheads.” the voice on the radio commanded.

“Affirmative.” Kozak replied.

“Make sure you mai- -tain radio- -tact” the voice on the radio became distorted and began cutting out.

“Say again, Major, you’re unreadable.”

“Ma- -ain rad- -ontac- -t all tim-” the voice became more distorted.

“You’re completely unreadable, Major!” Kozak was now becoming frustrated at the faults forming in his equipment.

“Yo- -uipment is ma- -ioning, Koza- -e’re cuttin- -adio transmiss- -n to av- -d any po- -ible secur- -y brea-”

“Damn radio!” Kozak swore under his breath “Looks like I’m on my own...” Kozak continued through the base, heading towards the area where the intel had shown the weapons to be. He snuck through empty corridors and weaved through obstacles to avoid hostile confrontation. He stopped in front of large steel door, which was closed and, after the soldier attempted to open it, proven to be locked.

He reached behind his helmet and pressed a small button. This had activated his magnetic vision and allowed him to see past the wall surrounding the door. His equipment seemed to be fairing better now, with less static and incorrect information, but his radio still wasn’t working. Behind the steel door was a large warehouse-like room, and Kozak counted twenty hostiles, who all seemed to be guarding the group of large shipping containers in the far corner of the room.

The magnetic vision had shown, what Kozak could only assume were, multiple nuclear warheads inside each container.

“Jesus... this is enough firepower to start World War 3!” Kozak’s voice had become weary, due to the fact that there were more warheads than he had gathered from the intel. He looked around for an alternate entrance into the warehouse “Dammit, there doesn’t seem to be another way through.” He gave an exasperated sigh and deactivated his magnetic vision.

He examined the area surrounding the door more thoroughly, and discovered a small grate in the wall.

“Looks like my crawler drone could fit through there.” Kozak pulled out his miniature quadrotor and placed it on the ground. It transformed into a small UGV. He proceeded to pull off the grating and then drove the UGV into the small vent, where he maneuvered it through the labyrinth of an air ventilation system.

It finally exited the maze at the far end of the warehouse, which elicited a small sigh of frustration from Kozak. He activated the UGV’s camouflage, which was similar to his own optical camo, except it was much better at keeping the UGV unnoticed when it was up close to hostiles than when he did the same.

After driving between the many boxes and shipping containers that occupied the large warehouse, and doing his best to keep the UGV from making physical contact with any hostiles, he found the door he was currently on the wrong side of. Kozak drove up to the controls of the door and activated the UGV’s EMP blast, a device capable to knocking out electronics up and stunning enemies within a fifteen-foot radius. Luckily, no one heard the blast and Kozak was able to maintain his element of surprise.

Slowly but surely, Kozak eliminated all but three of the enemies in the warehouse, either by breaking their necks, or taking out groups of two by lining them up and using one bullet to kill them. The final three enemies were all standing together, the one in the middle looking much higher-ranking than all of the grunts he had encountered in the base so far. He approached the group, but remained in cover to listen to what they were saying. He was, again, able to translate what they were saying with a high degree of accuracy.

“What is so special about these bombs, General Vadim?” the first grunt asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough, Zakhar.” Vadim replied.

“Well, it better be good,” the third soldier spoke up “because I don’t even think this many explosives would help us now.”

“Don’t worry, Viktor, these are no ordinary explosives!” Vadim boasted.

Kozak decided this would be the best opportunity to strike, and pulled out his silenced pistol. He jumped out of cover and quickly shot the two grunts in the head, killing them instantly. He then reached for Vadim and held him on the ground with his pistol pointed at Vadim’s head before he could even process what had happened.

“What’s so special about these warheads?!” Kozak questioned, a sense of urgency in his voice. Before he could ask again, Vadim headbutted Kozak and broke free, allowing him to reach for his pistol. Kozak gained his footing and quickly pointed his gun at Vadim, finding that the General had done the same.

“It looks like we are at a stalemate...” Vadim said “Who are you?”

“You’re in no position to be asking questions!” Kozak snapped, the fear of what the implications of these nukes might be rattling him “Now answer mine; what’s so special about these nukes?!”

“You want to know what’s so special about these nukes, American?” Vadim asked in a taunting tone “Why don’t I show you?”

Before Kozak could react, the russian pulled a small remote from his pocket with only one button on it. He pressed the button and dove for cover, leaving a confused Kozak shooting at the spot where the general was previously.

Suddenly, a loud beeping could be heard, Kozak turned to find that, to his horror, the beeping was coming from one of the shipping containers.

“Are you fucking insane?!” Kozak shouted “You’ll destroy this base, if not the whole of Primorsky, including yourself!”

“Ah, you are sadly mistaken, American.” Vadim said, in a matter-of-fact tone “These are not nuclear warheads, they are very... special explosives!” He chuckled.

“What do you mean by ‘special’?” Kozak questioned, still fully aware of the beeping that was now getting faster behind him.

“You see, these bombs do not explode, but rather, they implode!” He chuckled.

“They what?!”

“They have ten times the force of the Tunguska event, pulling in on the same point!”

“That’s impossible! The technology needed for that doesn’t even exist yet!”

“We are Raven’s Rock; we have enough money and power to create such things!”

“You bastard!” Kozak taunted, keeping his gun trained on Vadim behind his cover “Shut it off, now!”

“Again, you are sadly mistaken, American. There is no way to shut down the bomb once it is armed!” The general chuckled, his head peeking out of cover for just a moment. Kozak took a shot, and it hit Vadim directly in his left temple. He ran up to the corpse and searched for the remote the general had used to activate the bomb.

He had found it, but was instantly distraught when he found out it only had one button on it. He threw it to the ground, breaking it, and cursed loudly. Kozak had but one option: escape. He ran in the opposite direction of the bomb, moving his legs as fast as he could will them to, but it was too late.

Kozak felt himself being pulled back in the direction of the bomb. He hadn’t even heard it go off, and now he was being dragged towards his untimely death. He looked around as time slowed for him; guns, bodies, large crates and even the shipping containers were being forced towards the epicentre of the implosion, in fact, anything and everything within a twenty-foot radius was being sucked into the singularity, including Kozak himself.

There was complete silence, as though it was being sucked in as well. Kozak screamed an inaudible scream, even his voice had been silenced by the implosion. He felt pain like he had never felt before, it was the pain of each and every single one of his molecules being torn apart and pulled into the singularity, and then reformed, and in an instant, he felt nothing. All he could see was total darkness, when suddenly loud thunder-like noise rung in Kozak’s ears. He felt himself land on something solid, and then he passed out straight away.

“C’mon, girls! I heard the noise come from this way!” Scootaloo shouted, eagerly galloping ahead of her friends.

“Ah don’t know about this, Scoots...” Applebloom said with a hint of fear in her voice as she dragged behind Scootaloo.

“Yeah, I mean, shouldn’t we tell the grown-ups about this first?” Sweetie Belle added, struggling to keep up with her two friends.

The trio of fillies had spent most of the day in their treehouse they had built on the Apple family farm, sitting around idly looking for ways to earn their cutie marks. Scootaloo had suggested that they try and earn their cutie marks in gliding, but was dissuaded by the other two fillies who were scared of heights; Applebloom suggested they try their luck at bowling, but the others thought that it would be a waste of time to do something they had already tried, and Sweetie Belle had just sat there thinking of excuses against the irresponsible ideas her two friends were trying to rope her into.

But their boredom was put on hold when they heard a loud, thunder like noise from the direction of the Everfree Forest. The Cutie Mark Crusaders, as they liked to call themselves, had found the noise, not scary or unnerving, but a perfect opportunity to earn their cutie marks. They all shouted ‘Cutie Mark Crusader: Investigators!’ at the top of their lungs, but Sweetie Belle was less enthusiastic than her two friends. The three had then set out for the Everfree forest in search of the noise they had heard.

But that was half an hour ago, and even though it seemed like Scootaloo was leading the group, none of the three fillies knew where they were going, and were now starting to lose interest in origin of the noise they had heard.

“We’ve been walking for half an hour!” Sweetie Belle whined.

“Man, you’re more like your sister than you think, Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo chuckled.

“Really?!” Sweetie Belle had suddenly perked up, ecstatic that she bore resemblance to her sister, a pony whom she truly looked up to.

“Ah’m fairly sure that was supposed ta be an insult...” Applebloom muttered under her breath. Sweetie Belle seemed to have caught wind of this, as she went back to her original annoyed face.

“I’m pretty sure it’s just a little farther.” Scootaloo said, attempting to reassure her two friends.

“W-we should turn b-back... it doesn’t seem safe around here!” Applebloom began to shake as she looked around to see trees with knots in them that resembled scary faces, and the phosphorescent fungi that were on the trees provided a creepy and mysterious ambiance. Applebloom’s eyes widened as she saw a pair of yellow eyes peering out from inside the bushes, making complete eye contact with her. She froze, unable to speak. She tried to scream, but it was as if her voice had been stolen by the owner of the unholy yellow eyes. There were a few moments of unnatural silence, which, to Applebloom, felt like hours.

“Who!” The sudden noise shook the bush and made Applebloom scream and jump into the air. She ran as fast as she could to catch up with her two friends who had gone on further ahead without her. The owl Applebloom had been looking at gave an inquisitive stare at the frightened filly for a moment, but then reentered it’s home in the bushes to continue resting through the day.

“Guys!” Applebloom shouted wearily at her two friends. They turned around to meet a yellow and red blur smash into the two of them, making them all crash into the bushes adjacent. They tumbled out into a clearing, all lying on the floor in a pile.

“Ow...” Scootaloo moaned.

“Where am I?!” Sweetie Belle asked, disoriented by the crash.

“Heheheh...” Applebloom laughed nervously as she picked herself up off the floor, facing away from the girls “Sorry about that, you guys.”

Applebloom did not receive a comment back from either of the two fillies, which she found oddly uncharacteristic of them. She turned around slowly to see what had caused her friends to be so unlike themselves, and was met by a sight she could not believe.

She looked on in abject horror as a huge monster was pointing a small metal object at Scootaloo’s head. Afraid of what this unknown metal thing might do, she just sat and stared at the monster.

“What the hell are you?” it asked.

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Mr_Anderson

Mr_Anderson #1 · Jul 9th, 2012 · · ·

first! But aside from that its an interesting story. hope to read more!

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123456789123456789 #2 · Jul 9th, 2012 · · ·

884518 Glad to hear it!

DudeITA

DudeITA #3 · Jul 9th, 2012 · · ·

I just want to know 1 thing... are you going to make him slain monsters and shit and then he's the new hero and blah blah blah?

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123456789123456789 #4 · Jul 9th, 2012 · · ·

884666 Not sure if I like that idea...

Only time will tell, I suppose!

DudeITA

DudeITA #5 · Jul 9th, 2012 · · ·

884680 That's the point, if you're going to make him kill then I won't even track this story... nothing personal it's just that i HATE stories like that.

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