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First battle

Cozy sat at the table, staring at the black stone. "Before our defeat, I persuaded Tirek to help with this. He was able to seal its effect, but now I need a powerful pulse of magic to activate it again..." the pegasus rested her face on her hoof, wondering where she could get something like this. Her gaze traveled over the maps of Equestria that covered the wall in front of her. Countless dot-cities, arrows showing troop movements. Maybe she should have lost a couple of times to lead the ponies into rebellion, and escaped during it. Hearing the click of the lock, she hid the stone in one of her curls.

Princess Twilight entered, surrounded by the many things Cosy had asked for. Of course, not everything was there, for example Twilight deemed "anything that could fire magic, for self-defense," unnecessary, but she-

BAM

Sparkle flew out into the hallway a second before a huge closet fell into the passageway. When she looked around, she realized Cozy had used strings for maps to tie the closet to the door, causing it to fall when someone opened it.

"Oh, good morning, princess! How did you sleep?"

"Cozy Glow!" Twilight entered the room and approached quickly.

"You're not very happy. Do you think I should have built a ballista out of the closet? I was hoping some guard would come in here."

Twilight lifted Cozy up with her telekinesis "The guards won't interact with you. I'm working on your project personally, all your tactics will come out on my behalf."

"Golly, don't tell me that... no one else knows that you set me free? What about honesty, what will Applejack think?"

"Applejack won't think anything anymore."

"Yeah-yeah-yeah, all your friends are dead and your people are terrified. But don't worry, Miss Princess, you found a good pony to steal her glory!" Cozy flipped in the air with her back down, looking up at Twilight from below.

Twilight smiled slightly. "If I wanted your glory, I'd have turned myself to stone by now."

Cozy's right eye quivered, and her smile became much more feigned. "Good one."

"Get dressed, we're going to the front." Twilight set Cozy on the ground, beaming a white robe at her.

"What's that for?"

"So no one will recognize you." with these words, the princess began to magically straighten Cozy's curls. She cried out, clutching at the place where the stone was wrapped.

"Wait! I... а... this haircut has religious significance to me!"

Twilight squinted. "I didn't expect you to be religious. Unless you're going to bring your god to their knees and take their powers for yourself."

"Of course I am! I'm from a small village, and only its inhabitants have the right to touch each other's hair. Sooooo.... I have to untangle the curls myself. Yes."

"Okay..." said Twilight, not letting her guard down. "Actually, we never could find out where you're from. Your name wasn't mentioned in any registry."

"Of course. You thought Cozy Glow was my birth name? I've used a huge number of names. ColorBell, Puls Star, PearCake..." Cozy covered her mouth with her hoof, putting a rock in it until Twilight could see, "I don't think I can even remember some of them anymore."

Twilight sighed. "Okay, get changed, we have a lot of work to do."

The new outfit was uncomfortable. The hood almost covered her eyes, and her loose hair kept falling over her face. Cozy had forgotten how long her hair was.

Twilight looked at her plan with horror. "You're going to use the locals!"

"Of course, we need as much military force as we can muster before the coming attack. I'll write you a rousing speech and you'll read it to the crowd. I assure you they will be ready to behead themselves."

"But you put them in the vanguard, where the enemy will just blow them away."

"That's the point. The enemy will break in, and our main forces will surround them."

"It will cost us thousands of lives."

"Without that, we'll lose the whole town."

"Even forgetting how horrible it is, the people might revolt when they find out we're sending women and children to the slaughter!"

"Ugh, where's your lauded equality when you need it so badly." Cozy tilted her head back with a mutter. This discussion promised to be a long one.

Cozy and Twilight walked down from the meeting room to the barracks. Several hundred soldiers were preparing for the coming battle, cleaning their weapons or training. Another hundred were resting, talking.

The princess walked to the center of the room, beginning some sort of speech. Cozy wasn't listening; she'd spent three hours arguing with the most impenetrable, morally correct idiot in her life. She took a seat next to some soldier, a red colored stallion, she think.

"Bad day?" he asked in a calm voice.

"You bet it was," Cozy muttered back. "Had to argue with my... ahem... guardian."

"Problem child?"

"Well, as long as I'm not trying to take over the world, I'd call myself an angel incarnate." The stallion laughed, and Cozy smiled as well, more at his laughter than her own joke.

"I don't see a lot of kids here. You must be her "special student," right?"

"You could say that. And you just got caught up in this army, just like the hundreds of thousands more stallions who were rounded up to be used as a living wall."

The stallion frowned. "You know, I had connections in the government. If I had wanted to, I wouldn't have gone to the front lines. But when my sister died in the siege of the city, I just couldn't sit on the sidelines anymore. She was the best sister ever."

"Are you here for revenge?"

"I'm here for this war to end soon. I want my grandchildren to see a peaceful sky."

"Heh, you seem like the romantic type."

The stallion smiled sadly. "Yup."

The beginning of the battle was hard. The barracks were set up in an old church, and Cozy and Twilight watched the battle from its tower. Directly behind them was a huge golden bell, which swayed now and then in the cold and sharp wind.

Cozy had to compromise. "Cannon fodder" was assembled from local factory workers, police, and volunteers over the age of 16. The rest of the residents were gathered at the other side of town to evacuate in case of defeat. Twilight could not use teleportation on them all - it would have created a large magical trail that would have been seen by enemies, and the railroad tracks had been destroyed by a recent diversion. Basically, the plan was that if the fight was lost, the inhabitants would rush into the nearest forest where they might not be found. Not the most reliable plan, but they had nothing better.

Alicorn and pegasus watched as the enemy swept away the vanguard, and the blood under the Imperials' hooves turned red. Cozy clenched her teeth. The flanks began to converge, closing the enemy on both sides. "Come on, just a little more..." no, there was a hiccup. They started closing too early, and a third of the Imperials were left free. "That's okay, it's fixable, they're about to break up the rest," Cozy reassured herself. "Come on, come on." Sweat began to run down her face, immediately becoming icy under gusts of cold wind. Every muscle on her face seemed to tense when finally, after an hour from the start of the battle, the enemy was completely surrounded.

"Yes!" she exclaimed, jumping up, and in the same second the ground shook. Twilight managed to catch her before she fell over the railing. "What's going on?" shouted Cozy, her voice barely audible behind the deafening rumble.

"I... I don't know!" Twilight replied, teleporting herself and Cozy not far from the church. The building continued to shake, its walls covered in cracks.

No, not just the building, the whole earth shook, forcing even the armies of Equestria and the Crystal Empire to stop their fight. Huge crevasses opened like jaws, and the mountains trembled as the huge green mass burst from beneath them. A colossal river of slime covered vast areas before forming into a vaguely spherical shape. A mouth appeared on the giant slime's body, and somewhere in its mass a bow tie and a cylinder hat could be seen.

Author's Note:

Pray the Smooze!

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