War Is Organized Murder and Nothing Else
Tran sat up against the headless dragon's corpse and let all of the energy leave his body. He didn't have much left in him to keep on using. He hadn't slept since this all started either and he was sure that he'd loss his entire body's volume of blood twice over. He needed a vacation.
Applejack trotted up to the lone soldier and sat beside him. She was one of the very lucky few who were unwounded and she was very grateful for that fact. "How are yah holdin up?"
Tran weakly looked at her and shrugged. The ketamine was still holding him together but it wasn't gonna be enough if this kept up. "Alive."
Applejack pulled out a cigar and lit it up. She took a few puffs before giving it to Tran. "Yah sure as tartarus don't look like it." Tran took a deep puff from the cigar and inhaled it. He knew you weren't supposed to inhale cigars like you would cigarettes but at this point, he had other pressing concerns. Applejack chuckled. "Thank yah." Tran looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "For fightin for us. Fighin for yah own country is your duty but fightin for somepony else's country? For somepony else's freedom?"
Tran smiled and did a mock salute. "I won't be dying for your country... Yet."
Applejack returned the mock salute. She took the stetson off of her head and stuck it on Tran's helmeted head. "Ah'm glad ah had the honor of fighting alongside with yah. Might as well be part of the family."
Tran took the stetson off of his helmet, took off his helmet, and stuck the stetson on his head, fixing it so that it was tilted upward. That was right about the moment when Rainbow Dash and Gilda walked up to them. Rainbow opened her mouth to speak but closed it when she saw Tran wearing Applejack's stetson. She took a second to process before opening her mouth to speak again.
"Howdy there Applejack." Tran tipped the stetson. "Aside from your transformation into an unkillable weirdo, Gilda has some ideas on what the griffons will try next."
Tran looked to the griffon and waved his hand, motion for her to speak. She pointed at the outer cluster of foxholes that made up the outer defense points. "Well, we don't have enough soldiers to fill all of the foxholes anymore." At this point, everyone had gathered up the remaining griffon(pony?(man?)) power and positioned them near the center machine gun nests. "And I'm assuming our... Their air scouts have reported that along with the current condition of whoever's left." At this point, out of the nearly hundred ponies they started out with (not counting the chain of command), only half was still able to fight. Of those that could fight, only a third of them sported zero wounds or injuries.
Tran let out an irritated snort. "From what I was able to see when you went back to their line, they were getting in more manpower."
Gilda nodded. "That general you shot wasn't here when we started and I saw some other fresh meat. I don't know how many reinforcements we... They got but its going to be a lot if they brought in an officer that high AND another Jaeger."
Applejack balked. "Another Jaeger!" she exclaimed.
Rainbow Dash snorted. "Applejack here," Dash started, pointing at Tran. "Already shot him."
Applejack turned to Tran. "Damn, did he even do anythin? And how many's that make by now?"
Tran shrugged. "Four, five if you count her," Tran said while pointing at Gilda. "And only thing he did was try to arrest her."
Applejack chuckled. "Are yah tryin to kill all of them?" she asked.
"Anyways!" Gilda loudly said, trying to get back to the topic on hand. "There might be a big attack real soon and I don't know what itll be or how we'll handle it." She took out her submachine gun and aimed it at Tran's chest, pulling the trigger. The bolt dropped with an exaggerated click. "Most of us are running out of ammo here."
Rainbow Dash pointed over at the machine guns they had setup. "We still have plenty for the machine guns. We can take their ammo and give it to the soldiers."
Tran shook his head. "Don't. The machine guns can put out more firepower with less effort."
Applejack reached down on her belt and pulled out a mace. "Guess we're gettin our hooves dirty then."
Rainbow Dash nervously trotted in place a little. She still had ammo but was close to empty. Being a dogfighter, hoof to hoof fighting wasn't exactly her expertise. "Is everypony gonna fight hoof to hoof?"
Gilda smirked, looking at Rainbow Dash. "Scared?"
She was scared but that wasn't the reason why she had asked. "Most of us are wounded. Some can barely walk. You want them to fight like that? Against griffons who have ammo?"
Tran dug through his gear and pulled out two drum magazines for his and Gilda's submachine guns. He handed them both to Gilda. "I only got the one in my gun but I have many other weapons I can shoot with." He pointed to Rainbow. "We need to lure them in closer before ambushing them."
Gilda folded her arms together. "And how are we supposed to do that?"
Tran shrugged. "Y'all can figure that out. Its mite hard for me tah think right now," he said, copying Applejack's drawl.
Everyone heard the sound of hooves running towards them, the source being Blueblood in a mad rush. He didn't have the time to attempt to stop so he just ran straight into the dragon's corpse, painfully crashing into it. The pain didn't even register into his mind as he blurted out, "We've got something in the east!"
Blueblood, Rainbow Dash, and Gilda immediately ran off while Applejack sat beside Tran. Tran took off the hat and stuck it back on Applejack's head. She fixed the hat on her head so it was properly seated before getting back on all four hooves. "You take care, ya hear?" Tran said. Applejack snorted and trotted off in the direction that the other three went off in.
-X-X-X-
They came from the east. the first sign was the disappearance of the griffon scouts in that area and the sounds of troop movement coming from that direction, mixed with what sounded like people banging on pots. It was followed by smoke grenades being thrown from the griffon side, towards the pony's defenses. The smoke quickly spread out and removed both side's ability to see each other from medium and long distances.
There was a pause. Nothing moved. Other than the sound that continued, it was as if time had paused. That was when griffons exploded out from the smoke screen. Half were on foot (paws) while the other half came from the sky. The machine guns setup in the middle of the pony defenses lit up, aimed at the griffons coming from the sky while everyone on the ground fired at targets of opportunity.
Blueblood's grimaced up as he fired round after round from his carbine. Just as the machines woke up and turned their direction towards the airborne targets, a bullet zipped by and grazed his horn, breaking it off. The cluster of nerves protected by bone that made up a unicorn's horn meant that Blueblood fell to the ground as he clutched his head in intense pain. Blood poured from the remainder of what used to be his horn as the battle raged on.
He screamed and then felt someone grab his coat and haul him up to his hooves. His face met Applejack's as she ran her hooves across his body, seemingly groping the stallion. "Yah ain't that hurt, Bloody. Come on!" Blueblood seemingly fell down to the ground again but he returned into a shooting stance, having picked his carbine up from the mud. He brought it up to bear and searched for a target only to realize that the gunfire had paused on both sides.
Applejack raised her stetson while she scratched her head at the sight that everyone had stopped to look at. "What in the sam hell?" Out in the open, from the smoke screen, came a bunch of rectangular boards. Sheets? They were all next to each other, side by side evenly, in one long line. Each one was one meter wide and almost three meters tall.
That was when rifles poked out over the tops of the sheets and fired. The first wave of rounds they fired took out the remaining machine guns. Everyone armed with a rifle lit up again as the shields started to close the distance between the two groups. None of the small arms fire or even grenades did anything to shields. The shields completely obscured whoever was using them and they were quickly making their way towards the defenses.
A very small earth pony, a short mare, not a filly, moved around behind the defenses towards one of the humans. Of the four humans, only two were busying themselves with trying to defeat the mysterious shieldsmen, Eric and Logan. The mare poked at the human to get his attention. Eric turned to look at the mare as he paused his shooting. Before Eric could ask any questions, the mare handed Eric a stick grenade that had the explosive heads of six other grenades bound to it.
Eric took the grenade and threw it at the incoming assailants, hitting one of the shields. When it exploded, two of the shield users' shields completely shattered while a few others went tumbling down. Before the ones with shattered shields could hide behind the shields of their comrades, their identities were revealed. They were minotaurs. Minotaurs that were wearing very sturdy looking steel plate armor. All of them, minus one were wielding a spiked club in one hand and a dagger in the other. The one that wasn't, was wielding a large basket hilted broadsword. What was this, a renaissance festival?
Realizing that they might be facing a real threat, the minotaurs started charging and once they got close enough, some could see that they weren't completely covered up. Their arms, necks, and lower legs were exposed. By now, they were too close by then for anyone to take advantage of that weakness to take an aimed shot at, especially at the speeds they were now moving at.
Fortunately, there was only two dozen of them. Unfortunately, there were two dozen of them. They were fresh into the fray, well rested, uninjured, well fed, and not battle weary.
Eric and Logan looked at each other, remembering/knowing that they were empowered by chaos magic and physically stronger than normal, charged out from behind cover and both tackled a minotaur of their own before a move could be made by their respective minotaurs. It was a huge mistake. For the two humans, the instant their body impacted a minotaur, they were stopped dead in their tracks. It was akin to tackling a tree. The two minotaurs almost snickered at their attackers and forced the humans off of them, throwing them to the ground on their backs like they were ragdolls.
Eric had the slightest inkling in his mind that tackling a significantly larger and armored foe would have resulted in that happening. The instant he hit the ground, Eric drew his revolver and fired a round into his foe's unarmored leg. The .357 round absolutely ruined the minotaur's leg, turning the bone it struck into worthless bits of shards. The minotaur dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, screaming, and before he could continue, Eric dumped the rest of his revolver into the minotaur's face. Some of the .357 rounds struck helmet and simply splattered against the metal but one went through an eye slit and silenced the minotaur.
Logan, on the other hand, obviously wasn't expecting the resulting outcome with the minotaur he tackled and fell to the ground, mentally stunned. By the time he realized what had happened, he noticed the minotaur was menacingly approaching him, club in hand. Logan, horrified, crawled away in the mud as fast as he could and he could see that the minotaur was reveling in slowly walked towards some prey. It could have easily done something serious to Logan if Eric hadn't shot the Minotaur in the neck with his secondary sidearm. The minotaur's slow predatory walk towards Logan had made the minotaur's neck an easy shot for Eric to take. Logan turned to face his savior, who was still lying on the ground in the mud like he was, and silently thanked him.
Meanwhile, the rest of the defenders were no where near having the same success in facing the minotaurs. Ponies were naturally a quadrupedal species, meaning they were nowhere near as skilled in hand to hand(hoof?) fighting as bipedal creatures. The other minotaurs were clearly aware of this fact. Groups of four or five ponies would gang up on a minotaur of their own and pay dearly for facing an opponent that were much better trained in fighting this close. Hastily thrown bayonet thrusts would hit armor. The ones that were aimed at unarmored parts of the minotaurs, would be parried by a club before being followed with a skillful jab from a dagger.
Applejack, in her judgement (done without any fancy schmancy schoolin's) had ditched her long arms completely before sneaking behind a minotaur that was occupied with removing his dagger from a fellow soldier, and bucking one of the minotaur's legs with as much force as she could muster. The minotaur's leg buckled and bent in a direction it shouldn't have been bending, sending him falling down. Applejack then quickly drew a mace and struck down at the minotaur's face with it. To her surprised, the mace was parried by the minotaur's spiked club.
Applejack was quite astonished at her opponent's accomplishment but then realized the minotaur had, lying from the ground, swung out with his other hand with the dagger. Applejack, out of reflex, reared up out of instinct. The minotaur then quickly swung out with the club and managed to get a good glancing blow on Applejack (still rearing), and knocked her backwards, onto her back. The minotaur tried crawling towards the cowfilly, club and dagger at the ready, but was stopped when a fellow soldier buried her bayonet into the back of the minotaur's neck. Realizing the threat was gone, Applejack relaxed on her back, taking a second to get her mind and heart back together.
Elsewhere, the leader of this assault team, the minotaur that was wielding a basket hilted broadsword, locked eyes with a fellow sword wielder. The minotaur addressed his adversary with a sword salute. Blueblood returned the sword salute using his cavalry saber.
Before the duel could start, a bullet pinged off of the leader's helmet and he turned to face whoever had the audacity to do such a thing. He did so, just in time to parry a bayonet thrust from a pony, using with his sword. After the parry, the minotaur knocked the pony's rifle and bayonet completely out of the pony's hooves before he picked up the pony and threw him at the general direction of Blueblood.
Blueblood's eyes widened and he dove out of the way of the thrown pony, covering himself with the mud that made up the ground. Blueblood quickly climbed back up to his hooves, sword at the ready, just in time to parry a sword slash with the flat of his saber. Blueblood was quite accustomed to his cavalry sword but most of his sword experienced was while it was used in conjunction with it being held in his magical telekinesis. Due to his previous horn injury, he was forced to wield the sword by hoof, something he was still relatively practiced with using.
Already unbalanced from having to get back into a fighting stance from dodging a thrown pony, the force from parrying the sword slash from a much, much stronger and larger opponent sent Blueblood recoiling from the sheer momentum behind the opposing sword. By the time Blueblood recovered and was ready to send his own sword slash, the minotaur punched Blueblood straight in the face. It took him all of his determination to keep himself from going unconscious. This left him completely open to attack, something that the minotaur easily noticed.
Blueblood was done for, if somepony else nearby hadn't picked up a clod of mud and thrown it into the face of the minotaur. The minotaur screamed in anger and tried to remember where Blueblood had been, wildly swinging the sword with the strength of anger. There was an opening. He full on blocked a wild full forced blind swing from the minotaur but... The cavalry saber could no longer handle the mistreatment and snapped a quarter of the way up the blade. There was no time to mourn. Blueblood dropped the sword and reared up, planting the jagged remains of his horn into the blinded minotaur's throat.
The minotaur grabbed Blueblood in a bear hug but his strength died as quickly with his ability to breathe. Once Blueblood was free, he looked at his broken sword. Blueblood leaned down to pick it up as he got ready to shed some tears. He, along with his tears, paused, when he realized something. Blueblood picked up the minotaur's claymore. It needed a new owner. Looking around, Blueblood locked eyes with Rarity, who was sheepishly holding up another lump of mud.
Somewhere else, the instant the minotaurs were revealed, Gilda had immediately charged forward while beating her wings to provide additional forward momentum and speed. She let this dash with her claws out, aimed at the neck of one of the minotaurs but he must have seen her coming as by the time Gilda was close, he was already swinging with his club at her. Gilda saw the counter at the last second and angled her wings to direct her body aside, barely missing the brunt of the attack. However, what she didn't see was the minotaur's other hand with the dagger. The razor sharp dagger left a long, deep gash through her left wing, cutting through most of the feathers and leaving her squawking when the pain registered in her mind.
Her right wing was still attempting to direct her body through the air but without the help from the other wing. As a result, she spiraled into the mud, tumbling nearby. The minotaur was about to follow up with a club strike before she could react but he redirected his attention to the sound of somepony screaming at him. The minotaur turned just in time to see Rainbow Dash charging at him, rifle and bayonet leading forward. He sidestepped as she sailed on by and swung down with his spiked club, shattering the rifle in two, right in front of the rifle's chamber.
Before the minotaur could capitalize on the opportunity, pain shot up through one of his legs. Looking down, he saw Gilda with her claws buried deep in his flesh. He reactively kicked his other leg into the traitor's face just as pain flared into the side of his torso. Rainbow, using the front half of her rifle that the bayonet was still attached to, had stuck it in an opening in his left side. The minotaur swung his dagger hand towards the pegasus but she had jumped backwards away from him, dodging the blade.
The minotaur jumped away from the two, blood seeping from his armored torso. He took a very quick glance around this small battleground and let out a long whistle. The minotaur somehow managed to replace the dagger in his hand with a grenade and he dropped it to the ground as he ran away from the dogfighters. The other remaining minotaurs had copied the same maneuver and dropped grenades of their own. The battlefield quickly found itself devoid of active fighters.
The grenades eventually exploded, as expected, and screams of pain were heard. They came from those weren't fast enough to react to the enemy's retreat or... To the Equestrian's horror. Many of the ponies who had fought the minotaurs and didn't fare as well as some others, they had been too injured or consciousness to even run away from the grenades. Even worse, there were some who had tried to evacuate one of the ones who weren't able to move on their own, becoming a victim of the tactic themselves.
The remaining sixteen minotaurs had gathered up not too far away, with a dozen or so griffon reinforcements who had landed in. They were tightly grouped up, the griffons amidst the process of rearming the minotaurs with a new long arm of sorts to fight with. The minotaur's primary rifles, periscope rifles, were permanently attached to their shields and had been ditched earlier.
The ponies were crestfallen. That assault had devastated the remaining fighters and some had lost their weapons in the ensuing brawl or in the process of hiding from the grenades. The minotaurs definitely must have expected something like this. Logan and Eric looked at each other and both of them drew two pistols each, ready to start firing. They were still breathing so they weren't done fighting yet.
Well...
The gathering of minotaurs and griffons exploded. It wasn't a tremendous explosion but it was akin to a perfectly fired round from a small mortar or... A rocket from a bazooka.
While the gathering of minotaurs and griffons were dazed, Tran and Wilson charged at the wounded group, firing their weapons. Fully automatic 9mm fire and semiautomatic but very rapid 10mm fire rained down on the group of enemies to further decimate their numbers.
To the defenders, they had no idea what was happening. By the time Tran and Wilson had ran past the edge of the defender's dugouts/defenses and were seconds away from being in melee range of the grouping, would other defenders join their charge. The two angry charging humans ran out of ammunition in their subguns at practically the same time so they dropped them in the dirt and drew sidearms.
Wilson had drawn his trusty glock, a pistol that has been with him since this chaotic adventure, and a recent addition to his arsenal. The pistol had been in the gun case that was inside of the dragon's corpse and it was quite a doozy of a pistol because of one very important fact. The minotaurs wore armor across most of their body. This wouldn't have been something that Wilson would have known but the armor that covered the minotaur's torso was the thickest and was capable of stopping up to rifle fire and heavy shrapnel. To save on weight, everywhere else that was armored up was only capable of stopping pistol fire and light shrapnel from small explosions. Of course, Wilson's new pistol was, well, a pistol. However, it was an FN Five Seven and it was currently loaded with 20 rounds of 5.7x28mm armor piercing ammunition. Naturally, Wilson was aiming high and the new pistol was converting the helmets into worthless colanders.
Tran had naturally drawn his .500 magnum, something that found no challenge in the full head helmets that the minotaurs were wearing, armor piercing ammunition or not (it was indeed armor piercing ammunition and loaded so hot that anyone looking at the load data would mistake its load data for artillery).
The two berserkers stopped just outside of double arm's reach firing their sidearms, one carefully while the other willy-nilly. The minotaurs and few remaining griffons started to recover just as a wave of charging ponies threw themselves into the meat grinder.
The first minotaur to recover enough from the explosion to react notice the two humans standing in front of approaching ponies. Grabbing a nearby ally (another minotaur), he sprinted towards the closest enemy to fight. He easily close the short distance between them and shoved his ally at the sniper before turning his attention to the medic. He weaved enough that any reactionary sidearm fire from the two merely grazed his helmet or his torso.
The minotaur instinctively swung his club at the medic who dodged backwards just in time. The medic grabbed at the club after the miss and tried to pry it from the minotaur's hands, giving him a good tug of war. It would have been for naught considering the shear strength and size difference between the two, had someone had not shoved a basket hilted broadsword into the minotaur's side. The blade went between the section where two plates interlapped and planted itself into some formerly undamaged flesh, giving the minotaur a significant emotional event.
Wilson, using his new club, swung it at the minotaur, who dodged it like Wilson had done early. Impressively, the minotaur had managed to do that, while a basket hilted broadsword was planted in the side of his torso. Blueblood failed to keep a hold of his new basket hilted broadsword and it seemed like being impaled with a long blade was the new trend, considering Tran was standing mere meters away sporting the same fashion statement. The minotaur still had his dagger, something he was quite adept at wielding.
Wilson charged forward and swung the club at the minotaur who easily parried the novice's televised attack but was unable to do anything against the large clump of mud that Blueblood had thrown in his face. This gave Wilson enough time to throat punch the blinded minotaur with a non dominant haymaker. Even though the minotaur's next breathe had died in his throat and was blinded, Wilson's punch had brought himself to be close enough for the minotaur to grab a hold of the medic and get thrown with as much blind anger that the massive bipedal bovine could muster up. The medic soared through the air away from the fight, leaving Blueblood standing between the minotaur he was facing and Tran, who seemed to be busy fighting someone else.
Blueblood, somewhat unused to all of this excitement, was shocked at the turn of events, leaving the minotaur enough time to regain his eyesight. Blueblood jumped backwards to avoid a quick swing from the minotaur's dagger. Blueblood bumped up against the side of Tran, who turned to look at the pony before turning his attention away. The minotaur closed the distance between himself and Blueblood as Tran calmly reloaded his revolver, not paying attention to Blueblood or the minotaur that Blueblood was facing, all while another group melee was raging around them.
Blueblood, with one hoof, threw another glob of mud at the minotaur who dodged the meager failure of a rather annoying tactic. While the minotaur was busy dodging, Blueblood used his other free hoof to quickly grab a hold of the bayonet lodged partially in Tran's leg and ripped it out, charging forward with it.
He charged forward with the blade, ducking down to evade an overhead reactionary dagger stab, and stuck the bayonet into the minotaur's unarmored left leg. The minotaur fell down to his side and while down, kicked the nearby Blueblood away with his other free hoof. Before either pony and minotaur could react, the cylinder of his reloaded revolver closed with a loud snap, directly both of their attention to him, despite the air being filled with the other sounds of melee fighting about. The minotaur's face temporarily had a shocked 'Oh shit' look under his helmet but it disappeared along with his head when Tran delivered a .50 caliber bullet.
The few remaining extremely explosion-concussed griffon and minotaur fighters stood no chance against the few remaining minorly-explosion concussed pony and human fighters, leaving a gruesome scene to everyone to behold. In the second round, not that many on the Equestrian side took any significant injuries. However, everyone took a severe injury to their mind and anxiousness when they all heard a long drawn out high whistle.
*PHWEEEEeeeeeee*
The defenders all scrambled back to safety and took cover, some needing help to move faster. Much to the defender's fears, the griffon position started exploding from impacting shells. The defenders look up to see what was going on and saw griffons taking to the skies only to meet fresh flying fighters. They could also see an incoming airship off in the distance.
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Steal?
11588925
i forgot to put in the title, whoops.
Boy, was this intense.
Iit liives
Why was someone shooting at you?
Closest I've come to being shot was my rear right tire on the 101 fwy south through Los Angeles
The next closest was in a fire fight Apple Valley
and I was a civi at the time...
Who you pissing off there?
Blueblood and Rarity support each other? I never thought I would want to see more of this
I see what u did with the cease fire. Ww1 the Germans and Russians stopped fighting to kill a shit ton of wolves that were eating live soldiers. I like the history nod
11589023
Dude's an active duty soldier.
11591833
Thought he was out due to medical
11475881
Don't spread misinformation please smoking doesn't dull the small of copper or gunpowder. If you're talking about decay it doesn't do nothing if anything it make the smell worse for you.
11591640
Thought it was the Germans who got ate by saltwater crocs.nope I was wrong apparently the saltwater crocs attack happen to the Japanese on Burma the fleeing Japanese soldiers fled through a swamp out of the 1,000 only 500 made it out of the swamp and captured by British forces. There's also the shark attack that killed 150 men after the uss Indianapolis was struck by a Japanese torpedo out of 900 crew men only 316 survived. Ironically enough both of these happen in ww2
11591852
Hm, must've missed it. Though it's possible he wasn't 'out' out.
11592370
This actually pretty funny.
Damn for someone who works with papers, Blueblood is doing fine except the horn
I guess he is like Sir Adrian Carton De Wiart. The man who could not be killed.
Mad Jack Churchill and Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart are my guesses.
11592668
i've been out for a year and half
11639342
Ah, my bad.