First Battle Of Harvest II: Sky Chocked With Ashes
CAMP RÉVOLUTION, NEW PARIS, MARS, JANUARY 21, 2524 (MILITARY CALENDAR)
Isabel Miles was having a really bad day, I mean a really bad day. Not even thirty seconds into the course, she had already lost two Marines under her command and the barrage of bullets suppressing her was not helping her self-confidence.
As the bullets continuously kept on targeting her position, her mind was also under its own constant fire, but instead of bullets, it was fear.
What do I do?
“Private!”
Everybody is gonna see me fail!
“Come on!”
The Helljumpers will never let a loser like me join!
“Snap out of it!”
Mom will probably kick me out of the house!
“Gah!”
MY LIFE IS RUINED!
“Goddamn it ma’am, if you don’t get your shit together, pull that brain of yours out of your ass and back into your skull. I swear I’ll throw you into the middle of the crossfire myself!”
The sheer thunder of the Marine’s voice brought Isabel back into reality. Even though her expression was still in its terrified state, she wasn’t afraid of the incoming projectiles anymore, she was afraid of the man in front of her.
“H-huh?” She shuddered.
“Under the United Nations Space Command Defense Force directive number seven, paragraph six of the immersive training environment program charter, I am authorized to relieve you of command for the duration of this training exercise until proven otherwise. Do you understand?”
Even though she did not apprehend half of the words coming out of his mouth, Isabel nodded shakily.
“Alright, from what I heard, you’re the fastest runner out of the entire training facility, am I correct?”
And again she irregularly nodded.
“Okay good, I want you to run” –he pointed at one of the columns at the far end of the hall– “to the third last pillar over there.”
She hesitated for a moment but obeyed anyway, fearing that the rookie-turned-superior would have her hide if she did not do so. But before she was able to turn away from the man, he grabbed her forearm to signal her that he was not finished with his instructions.
“But first, I need your helmet.”
Okay, this had her question the man’s orders.
“Trust me on this,” he said with assurance in his voice.
Convinced, Isabel turned her helmet over to him. As she pulled off her headgear, her multicolored hair was exposed to the hot and dusty air of the Complex. Her hair had colors of perfect vertical rainbow stripes; they were short but disorganized due to her irregular combing.
“Huh, nice hair you got there,” the man said amusedly.
The man removed his own helmet to reveal his short shaggy chocolate-brown hair. He then pulled out three odd-looking black flash bang grenades, a detonator and a bio-foam canister in his rucksack he brought along.
Isabel’s eyes widened at the sight of the flash bangs. “Like, what the heck?! Why didn’t you use those in the first place?!” She bawled.
“The target is too distant to be subjected to the stun grenades’ effect unless she is not taking shelter. So I need some way to keep her eyes open and herself exposed for them to produce proper influence,” he said in an emotionless tone.
“How do you know the sniper is a she, and why don’t you just pass those blinding-light-in-a-can to me? I can just run over to that pillar there and toss the flash bangs at her hidey-hole.”
“First, I know her. Second, you may be fast but her itchy trigger-finger is faster,” he said bluntly. “Besides, I like to keep things interesting.” He smirked.
That caught Isabel’s curiosity. “Alright, keep talking.”
Meanwhile, at the end of the hallway of the Training Complex, a lone silhouette figure could been seen crouching behind a support column, firing at the Marines who were taking cover behind another pillar farther up the hall with her trusty XBR55 Battle Rifle, having it set to semi-automatic.
She recalled the moments when the Marines arrived at the scene.
After those two idiots walked straight into her line of fire, they were dealt with swiftly and without hesitation. While the woman who had simply fired at her with abandon suffered the same fate as the first two. Now there were two more Marines left she had to deal with, the squad leader and Him.
No matter how many times she tried he always seemed to win these kinds of training simulations. Unfortunately for him though, his assailant was prepared and had an advantage of her own. She was recently able to ‘acquire’ a prototype infiltration armor which used photo-reactive panels to simulate the surrounding environment like a chameleon, rendering her almost invisible. The only problem, though, was that she had to stay still to blend into the background. Nonetheless, the assailant kept on firing at the last two last soldiers.
She then looked down at her rifle’s mounted ammo counter to see that it had five more rounds left before her magazine exhausted all of its training ammunition.
Once she fired her last shots and the weapon’s ammo counter finally reached to zero, her reflexes took over; her finger pressed the magazine release button located on the left side, shaped as an arrow pointing down towards the housed mag in the stock.
Suddenly, the squad leader threw a large olive object towards her and sprinted in the direction of one of the nearby pillars. Luckily though, she had already replenished her weapon by the time the object was in mid-flight.
The assailant had to eliminate the closest hazard so she swiftly aimed her battle rifle at the threat and fired upon the incoming object.
The object was knocked back to the ground by the sheer kinetic force of the tactical training rounds, before the assailant then saw that the object was, in reality, an olive-green combat helmet.
She silently cursed herself for falling for such a simple trick. The assailant then marked her weapon towards the pillar where the squad leader took cover.
The assailant held her fire, waiting for the squad leader to pop her head out of her cover.
Suddenly, another helmet was thrown at her by the other Marine. Knowing that it was another diversion, she fired at him instead of the distraction. The man, however, had already taken cover even before the assailant fired her weapon, thus most of the rounds simply spattered red paint onto the concrete pillar instead.
Great, now she had two separate and distant targets to deal with. She directed her rifle back to the pillar where the squad leader was taking refuge.
Then a thought came to her mind, why did he chuck a second helmet at her anyway? He knew that he was not able to trick her twice… unless.
The assailant looked back down at the second helmet that was thrown at her.
It was definitely your average standard CH252 helmet, but the strange thing was what was inside it. There was a yellowish white foam-like substance covering the insides of the helmet and it looked like someone jammed three black canisters into the substance as well.
The assailant tried to figure out what those canisters were, before it hit her like a ton of bricks.
Ah crap.
Those words were the last thing on her mind before she was blinded by the cleverly placed flash bangs.
When the flash bangs were remotely set off by Johnny-come-lately’s detonator, Isabel did what the man instructed her to do. She stuck her rifle around the corner of the pillar and fired her weapon blindly at the general direction of the bio-foam covered blur, making sure she didn’t expose herself along the way.
The assailant fired her weapon wildly in response to the suppressive fire and completely missed Isabel due to the blinding and deafening effects of the flash bangs. The assailant’s rapid movements made her infiltration armor materialize, leaving her wholly exposed to the opaque world.
After exhausting a full mag of TTRs, Isabel pulled back her rifle and began to replenish its ammo. After she reloaded her weapon, she fixed her rifle on the assailant to finish her off only to see Johnny-come-lately was aiming his M6C Magnum Sidearm at the assailant’s back.
A single bang echoed throughout the entire compound, ending the training exercise.
FLUTTERSHY’S COTTAGE, DATE UNKNOWN
Twilight was still trying to grasp what Isabel had told them.
Advanced ranged weaponry, dropping onto the battlefield from orbit with the usage of metal pods, containers that can blind and deafen anypony. The things he would do to get one of those.
Twilight gulped at her last thought.
“S-so you’re a soldier?” asked Twilight.
“Well Duh,” Isabel said bluntly, “haven’t I made it clear to you guys?”
“So, did you kill anypony?” said a voice coming out of not Twilight Sparkle but somepony else. The two unicorns and the human turned to face the direction of the voice to see Fluttershy riddled with anger. “I said, did you kill anypony?” Fluttershy said again grinding her teeth.
“Yes,” Isabel nearly hesitated to speak.
“Pull out that thing on your chest,” Fluttershy gestured at Isabel’s sheath on her chest plate.
Even though Isabel knew the consequences of taking it out in front of the ponies, she cooperated anyway. As Isabel breathed out noisily, she pulled out the weapon. The weapon in Isabel’s hand is revealed to be a twenty-centimeter-long combat knife. In Equestria’s standard, it was considered a short sword.
“While in the water you tried to use that on Rarity, why?” Anger still in Fluttershy’s voice.
Rarity mumbled an “oh my” upon hearing that she could have been a potential victim.
“Hey, what else am I suppose do? I had to force her to yield before things could get nasty!” Isabel bellowed.
This is when Twilight intervened. “You tried to kill Rarity?!”
“There’s a difference!”
“I can’t believe that our dear Rainbow Dash would attempt to harm me in such a way,” Rarity joined in the argument.
“I told you, I’m not the Rainbow Dash that you know!” Isabel spelt out to Rarity.
“Where’s the real Rainbow Dash then?!” Twilight brought herself back into the fray, attempting to gain the upper hoof in the argument.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?!”
The argument between the ponies and human persisted for the next few minutes which felt like hours for one little reluctant creamy pegasus. Fluttershy, now regretting having even brought up the subject, slumped back down and curled herself into a ball. She was until that time angry at this strange being, Isabel, who could have harmed Rarity or worse. She was no stranger to death, burying her animal friends who could no longer keep their little hearts going or more natural causes. But all she wanted now is to stop the fighting before things get out of hoof. The quarrel, however, had nearly come to a conclusion.
Twilight attempted find a loophole in Isabel’s story. “How about the theoretical alternate dimensions you brought up, what made you think you’re in one anyways?”
She couldn’t contain the truth anymore, Isabel’s rage had reached its boiling point. “Because-”
But before she could give Twilight a piece of her mind, knocks on Fluttershy’s door created a cessation amongst the combative arguers. Nopony in the room could undertake such a task of answering whoever was at the other side of the door.
“Sugercube, are ya'll alright?!” a southern drawl shouted in concern for the shy pegasus behind the door.
Then another burst of knocks came on the door, trying to get somepony to answer it. When the owner of the voice was unwilling to wait any longer all the ponies and the human could do was stare as the pony let herself in.
She was an orange pony with a blonde mane and tail wearing a Stetson. She had no appendages showing that she was either a pegasus or a unicorn, the only thing Isabel could describe her as was a ‘regular’ pony.
“I saw one of ‘em flyin’ thingamejig came crashin’ near yer place, so I came runnin’ as fast I-” Her concerned speech came to a halt as soon as her vision came across the object that the black beast was possessing. Isabel took notice of what the orange pony had been staring at. Isabel looked down at her combat knife.
Fuck me.
“Everypony run! Ah’ll hold her off,” she said as she came charging headlong at the dangerous creature.
Isabel’s ODST training kicked in, she flipped her combat knife to a reverse grip and brought herself up to a fighting stance, knocking over the chair she had sat down on earlier.
But before the orange pony could buck the defiling creature, a purple barrier was placed between the cowpony and the soldier, causing her to slam right into the magical wall.
“What in tarnation?” she yelped in surprise. “Twilight, get out of here! That thing is going to rip ya into shreds!”
“Relax, Applejack,” Twilight reassured her as the magical aura around her horn vanished along with the purple shield. “She’s with us.”
“But the thing got its sword out!” Applejack protested, her eyes still narrowed at the beast.
“It’s just a big misunderstanding,” Twilight faced the battle-ready human, “right, Isabel?” The marine simply nodded and placed her combat knife back into her sheath. She then turned to the fallen chair, reverted it back to its original standing position and promptly sat on it, arms crossed.
“Why does it have Dash’s middle name?”
“It’s complicated, I will explain everything later once-” Suddenly, Twilight’s discussion with Applejack was interrupted by the hotheaded dare devil.
“Hold up.” Applejack was fazed to hear the creature talk in Rainbow Dash’s voice, especially without a mouth. “What’s up with the light show?”
“What do you mean?”
“The force shield you seemingly laid?”
“Oh, that? It’s magic!” Twilight’s enthusiastic response seemed like she wanted to show her magical abilities in front of Isabel just to show that ponies are not totally defenseless.
“Riiight,” Isabel said not entirely convinced.
“You don’t have any magic?” This might be the advantage Twilight needed over the human if she tried anything funny.
“Heck, magic isn’t even supposed to exist.”
Isn’t supposed to exist? Twilight’s mind repeated those words.
All the ponies exchange glances at each other.
“Will you give us a moment please?” Twilight asked Isabel.
“Yeah sure, you guys do that.”
With Isabel’s approval, the ponies huddled in a circle.
“Twilight, what the hay is going on here?” said the enquiring cowpony.
Twilight murmured something about how it was possible for Isabel to do half of the things she did without magic before she answered Applejack’s question. “I’ll explain everything once we bring her to the Princesses.”
“How do ya reckon we do that?”
“Simple, I’ll just put a knockout spell on her.”
“Do you not think it is somewhat harsh knocking Rainbow Dash out cold and dragging her all the way over to Canterlot?” Rarity said.
“I have ta agree with Rari-” Applejack was now even more confused by the mention of the aerobatic speedster. “Ya say what now?”
“Applejack darling, did you not notice the dreadful armor she is wearing?”
The apple bucking cowpony took a glance at the mysterious figure, spotting the cutie mark on her shoulder pad before she retracted back at her friends.
“Rainbow’s cutie mark… ”
“Horrifying, is it not? Having delusional memories and being trapped in a body that is not truly yours.” Rarity said with certainty of Dash’s fate.
“Wait what?” Twilight was boggled with Rarity’s idea of Rainbow Dash being turned into a human.
“This is taking us nowhere,” the librarian let out a breath in frustration. “Lets take a vote on whether we should take her to the Princesses or not.”
Twilight turned towards Applejack. “I say that we ought to let her talk.”
Next was Rarity and she had a disappointed expression. “I’m sorry Twilight dear, but it seems that this is one of the few times that I have to agree with Applejack.”
And lastly was Fluttershy who had been silent for the most part. “I… umm.”
“So, what is it going to be?” Twilight demanded.
“I think we should let Isabel stay.”
“What?!” Twilight said in disbelief. “Fluttershy, you were mad at Isabel a moment ago and now you are rooting for her?”
“I’m- I’m sorry, she mentioned about being a soldier and the knife and…” Fluttershy was about to burst into tears before Rarity stepped in to soothe her sorrow.
“It’s okay Fluttershy, I am sure Rainbow Dash did not mean to do it.” Rarity’s persuasion seemed to relax the Pegasus.
“I guess it’s settled then. We’ll listen what she has ta say.” Applejack said.
Everypony turned back to the Human to see her fiddling with a strange silver curved object.
When Isabel saw that the ponies were done with their convention. She placed the object back into one of the bags. “You guys done?”
The ponies nodded with the exception of the purple librarian who simply gruffed.
“Okay, as soon as we landed…”
HARVEST, FEBRUARY 23, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR)
Rainbow Dash slowly regained her senses. There was static interference in her visor and multiple cracks in her pod's windows. The monitors that were still working were filled with static.
The static interference vanished in her visor. Rainbow Dash scanned through the pod’s glass to find that her drop pod had landed her into a dense forest. She took a glance at her pod to see if her equipment was still attached to their respective positions. Thankfully, they were still in place.
She still had the assault rifle that Deen gave to her, an integrated sound suppressor and muzzle brake SOCOM pistol, and a couple of frag grenades. Pleased with her armaments, Rainbow Dash activated the explosive bolts, leaving a satisfying boom as the HEV's hatch burst outwards.
Her boots took their first steps out of the titanium pod and onto the crunchy dead leaves. She trained her rifle in search of the enemy only to find the sound of wind breezing off her armor and heavy breathing within her own helmet.
Sighting the non-existent threat, she lowered her rifle and attempted to contact the rest of her teammates.
“Hello? This is Private First Class Isabel Miles to Echo Team, please respond if you receive, over,” she said over the radio.
“This is Corporal Deen Kaleel, are you alright?” She heard him crackled over the receiver due to the reception.
“Yeah I’m good, what about you, Deen?”
“Oh, well, it could have been better…”
“Meaning?” Dash questioned.
“We’ve lost two of our guys to one of those aliens. Apparently they have some kind of agglutinant spherical explosive composed of, my guess is, plasma and has sophisticated internal mechanisms that even I could not apprehend.”
His complex and intellectual exchange, unfortunately, was not able to penetrate Dash’s dense skull. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She was rewarded with a sigh from Deen. “The ETs have sticky grenades, so if you see anything sparkly and blue, don’t get in its way. The grenade detonated when one of us tried to pull the explosive off his chest.”
“So who’s left?” Rainbow Dash said, dismayed to hear that they already lost two ODSTs.
“Just you, me and the Sarge.”
“Damn it, I thought that old man would finally get what’s coming to him.”
“You know he's listening to this, right?”
Dash’s eyes widened. “Wait what?! Sir I didn’t mean to-”
Deen chortled at Dash’s gullible fright at the mention of the non-commissioned officer tuning on their frequency.
“I’m just kidding Dash, I’ve isolated this transmission just between you and me, besides Sarge is too busy taking potshots at some diminutive looking ETs, most likely just cannon fodder by the looks of it.” And as if on cue, two digestive shots of a M392 Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR) crackled through Deen’s side of the receiver and a cheerful cry from the sergeant rang afterward.
Rainbow Dash’s distress instantly turned into annoyance. “Deen, when I get my hands on you I’ll-”
“You’ll what, kick my blueberries?”
“That’s exactly what I’ll do!”
“If you say so Dash, I hope you don’t mind walking twelve miles if you’d like to do so.” Deen said cheerfully.
“What?”
“That’s what I said, you’ve crashed twelve miles off course from our original objective.”
“Great…” she said in an irritated tone.
“Hey, come on, look at the bright side, Sarge authorized us to go weapons hot a couple of hours ago so now you can shoot anything that moves, well except for me of course.”
“Very funny,” Rainbow Dash deadpanned, “and what do you mean by a couple of hours?”
There was a moment of silence before Deen spoke again. “Hey Dash, may I suggest looking up?”
She complied and what she saw made her murmur a curse. The sun was steadily rising from the distance indicating that it was nearly dawn. She then checked her Heads Up Display (HUD) in her helmet’s visor to see how long she had been unconscious. It turned out she had been out cold for several hours.
“You missed a lot of action Dash, the Sarge and I took out a platoon of those little rascals, Sarge says that you missed all the fun too. We had to fall back though after they brought out the cavalry. It seems they have, let make it simple for you, gorillas.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Dash said, not believing what he had told her.
“I only kid’ when it’s appropriate, Dash.” Deen made it clear to her. “But other than that, they seem to resemble a cross between a large ape and a rhinoceros, very fascinating extraterrestrials indeed.”
Rainbow Dash cracked a smile. “Whatever floats your boat, egghead.”
“Dash, when are you going to stop calling me an egghead?”
“Until you stop being one,” she replied gleefully.
Deen heaved a sigh. “Well anyways, we’re held up in a hotel not far from the seventh space elevator, waiting for the militia to recapture the Tiara space station. Once they’re done with that we’ll call in the pelican for evac, I suggest you should find your own holdout. We’ll pick you up until then.”
“I don’t know if you can see this but I’m smack in the middle of a forest.”
“Hold on, let me see your position’s coordinates.”
After a full minute of only the sounds of leaves being blown by the wind, Deen responded back.
“Alright, I’ll send you a waypoint that will lead you straight to a farmstead not far from there.” A cyan diamond navigation point and a distance indicator, in meters, showing how far away the waypoint was from her position flashed on Dash’s visor.
“I don’t think a cowshed would be very protective,” she flippantly said.
“It’s either that or the trees, your choice.”
“Fine,” she said in an annoyed tone.
“It’s good to hear some rationality in you, Dash. And remember what I said.”
She recollected what Deen had told her earlier. “Avoid giant monkeys and sticky blue balls of death, gotcha.”
“Good, I’ll see you in a few, Deen out.” Deen cut off the signal.
After spectating her surroundings once more, Rainbow Dash began her jog to the designated route that was given to her.
Rainbow Dash kept her pace and her rifle directed as she trekked through the countless number of trees and trod on the dead leaves underneath her feet. The number of trees was staggering, they were organized in a lined fashion and it looked as if the forest could go on forever.
Her journey was about to end though, Rainbow Dash’s nav point showed that she was less than four hundred feet from the objective.
Then suddenly she was assaulted by a round object dwelling on her helmet. Startled, she shrieked in fear when she thought of the clingy grenade that Deen had told her about. She removed her helmet and threw it as far as she could. Rainbow Dash then ran behind one of the trees to shield herself from the blast.
And then she waited for the non-existing detonation of the equally non-existing grenade. A considerable amount of time later, Rainbow Dash peeked around the tree’s trunk.
Her helmet was lying on the decayed leaves and next to it was an unevenly round red object. She regained her footing and strolled to the mysterious object. Dash calmly picked it up and studied the object, studying its details.
She then took a bite of it.
“Just an apple,” she said to no one in particular while chomping the juicy apple.
Dash eyed her surroundings to see a number of apples attached to the trees’ branches.
She swallowed the grinded mush of the bitten apple. “I knew that,” she swayed herself.
Throwing away her unfinished snack, she picked up her helmet and positioned it back onto her head. Rainbow Dash was glad that she didn’t damage the faceplate, but the truth was that she essentially needed to exert a force stronger than a swinging titanium baseball bat to crack the resilient glass-like material.
Rainbow Dash resumed her trek. Later, while on her way she found a dirt path leading to the farm. So she marched along the pathway knowing that she was not far now.
Upon reaching the farm’s entrance, Rainbow Dash’s HUD flashed a three worded text displaying the property’s name.
>> Location: Sweet Apple Acres
FLUTTERSHY’S COTTAGE, DATE UNKNOWN
“Wait one gosh darn minute, yer saying that mah home on some alien planet?” Applejack said.
Twilight and Isabel had already told Applejack most of the details of Isabel’s story earlier but the mention of the Apple’s farm on entirely different world had raised a few eyebrows.
“Yes,” Isabel said, “wait no you’re Jack from this universe and the Jack I know is from another so it’s not the same.”
Isabel gave out a short pause before realizing what the cowpony had just said. “Hold on, did you just say that Sweet Apple Acres is like right here, like, right now?”
“I did.” Applejack answered Isabel’s question.
“Oh god, she’d been fighting for so long…” Rainbow Dash muttered softly.
Rarity overheard Isabel’s near unintelligible words. “I’m sorry, did you say something darling?”
“Nothing,” It was obviously a lie, “everything’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah I’m fine,” she retorted. “Can I just get on with the story?”
“Whatever makes you happy, dearie.”
Isabel took a moments pause and released the lungful of air she had been holding before carrying on with her tale.
SWEET APPLE ACRES, HARVEST, FEBRUARY 23, 2525 (MILITARY CALENDAR)
The rainbow-helmeted orbital trooper sauntered on the footpath as she observed the scene around her. The landscape was filled with dead mottled gray and brown stumpy creatures with pointy packs of different colors on their backs; the carcasses’ cobalt blood gave out a metallic scent as it entered the trooper’s nose receptors.
“Yo Deen,” Dash patched her through to Deen’s receiver.
“What’s up?”
“I think I found your buddies.”
“Come again?”
“Short, stubby, pointy backpacks,” she said straightforwardly.
“Ah the methane breathers or at least I think that’s the compound they respire through the containers on their backs.”
“Deen.”
“It’s amusing to see their oversized forearms supporting them to move in a similar manner to chimpanzees.”
“Deen…”
“Hey, have you noticed that their blood is blue? Probably due to high copper content. It could also be possible that they’re somehow related to crustaceans or-”
“Deen!”
“Oh! Ugh, sorry about that. Force of habit I guess.”
“Uh-huh, did you guys pass through here or what?” Dash said as she gently kicked one of the lifeless grey aliens’ bodies, checking whether it was indeed dead.
“Wait, you mean the farmhouse?”
Dash’s pupil’s dilated at that very moment. Her muscles tensed and her body went to a crouch position as she leveled her assault rifle, its barrel swinging left and right in search for its concealed target.
When Dash did not respond to his last statement, Deen had already guessed that whatever killed those aliens might still be in her vicinity.
“Relax Dash. Whoever killed them could be friendly.”
“Or they could be hostiles and this might as well be a trap for all I care,” she said dryly.
“Okay there’s that, but either way you should approach the farmhouse with caution.”
Dash looked up ahead and saw what she was searching for, the farm house that Deen had spoken of. Right beside the farmstead was a ruby red barn, a coup occupied with lifeless chickens, and a couple of animal pens which is filled with numerous farm animals that suffered the same fate as the flightless farm chickens.
Isabel gazed at the homestead, looking for any signs of life. The only thing she saw was darkness within the structure, indicating that either the resident had already left the premises or remaining hostile alien forces had set up an ambush and were now waiting for the right moment to ensnarement the ODST.
“Dash, the ONI officer just called in. The Militia are about to recapture the Tiara and we’ve got orders to move out now. Looks like we’re going home earlier than expected.”
Before she could ask about the ONI officer, she heard distant cracks in the sky and felt the soft rumble beneath her feet. Dash turned to the source of the disturbance only to see one of Harvest’s space elevators in the far distance slightly bending off course from its original position.
“Wha-” It was the only thing Deen could say before loud snaps were heard miles around as the soaring tower began its screeching collapse.
“Deen!” Dash cried through her receiver.
“Get to shelter, now!” he ordered.
Rainbow Dash could not tell whether he was ordering her or possibly the people around him. Whomever he ordered though, Isabel followed them and made her way to the farmhouse.
After she reached the homestead, she leaned on its door and watched the destruction unfolding in front of her. The space elevator’s long carbon nanofiber thread burned through the atmosphere, creating a long red flaming spectacle of devastation across the yellow sky. The starting ends of the thread finally came down screeching as it began to wrap around the planet.
Dash kept observing the space elevator to see the base of the structure was somewhat intact. The enormous thread had nearly crushed one third of the platform and smoke began to appear around it. There was numerous metal debris all around the platform; debris that used to uphold the tether.
“Deen?” Dash asked, partially expected to receive only static.
Which it did for a moment, before she heard someone picked up Deen’s helmet. “It will take more than forty miles of falling metal to stop this sergeant!” he shouted loud enough for the helmet’s receiver to pick up his voice.
“Good to hear you’re still kicking Sarge. How’s Deen?”
“Corporal, Miles wants to talk with you!”
She heard the helmet being tossed, whishing through the air and landing on top of the palms of someone’s hands. Next was the sound of the helmet being sealed in somebody’s head before a familiar voice reached Isabel’s ears.
“Sup,” Deen calmly said, sounding like the fiery space tether had never crashed over his head in the first place.
“Sup? Sup?!” Rainbow Dash’s fury burned through the receiver. “After nearly getting killed by a tumbling space elevator, all you could say is sup?! I should have been there, I could have-”
“And do what? Use your hidden inner super strength to stabilize a seventy-thousand-kilometer tall space elevator?”
The large silver haze began covering the platform as tiny flakes of ash descended from the firmament within and around the ruin’s vicinity.
“Okay I’m sorry about that, but there’s nothing you could have done. You’re miles away from where we were and there’s no way you could have stopped the lift from falling.” There was some sympathy in his voice, but only just .
“Dash, the pelican will arrive shortly and that farmhouse you’re at sounds pretty comfy right about now.”
“Is that a suggestion or an order?”
“It’s an order, Dash. The elevator’s destruction was the biggest bonfire on this planet’s history and most likely caused every ET within a hundred clicks to start heading in our direction. So bunker up ‘til we get there, alright? Deen, out.” Deen clicked off his helmet’s receiver, ending the conversation.
With no other options, Dash placed herself beside the farmhouse’s door preparing to breach inside. She activated her helmet’s Visual Intelligence System, Reconnaissance’s (VISR) low vision enhancement feature, causing her eyes to wince marginally due to daytime-lighting she was in but she quickly regained her focus. She kicked down the door, producing a loud thump and moved into wholly pitch black room.
The only thing Isabel saw inside after entering was complete darkness. Before she figured that her VISR was busted, her prophecy of a possible ambush had come true.
The room’s inbuilt ceiling luminosities turned on without warning and a single bubbly voice cheered out afterwards.
“SURPRISE!”
Dash’s VISR magically decided to start working and promptly introduced her vision to the solid white wall of blindness due to amplified effects of both the room’s lighting and the low vision enhancement feature of her VISR.
The sudden sightlessness caused her to accidently send out a burst of her assault rifle. Each round landing directly on all three of the room’s ceiling illuminations. The last thing before the darkness consumed Rainbow Dash’s vision again was a bright flash of pink.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Lol Pinkie
looks interesting I shall read later.
2874842
You mean the story cover or the ones in the chapters themselves? Well I found pictures of ODSTs on the web and I simply edit it to my pleasure. Thought to tell you the truth it isn't the best out there and I think someone with better expertise could have done it better.
not bad
2879678 Oh Celestia imagine what the human pinkie will be like her surprises will probably literally come out with a bang or boom...... Most likely a Boom.
I can't wait for the next chapter!
:odstdash:
i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/293/051/bb8.jpg
i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/585/507/e5e.gif
This
3102950
You really, I mean really want me to continue this story, aren't you? Geez fine, I'll get on to it now.
3102962
OP replied to my comment.
OP said he will deliver!
MOAR
3172565
'Kay.