I love to take girls on a romantic date at the beach
Long ago, the great ones rose to become stars.
The rest of us louts stayed down here, in the warmth, with our friends beside us, and our enemies before us, as well as a good share of food on the plates they fed us.
I can still remember the griffon war, the tragedies that ended the peace that the pegasi had been so clear on enforcing from the beginning. I remember hearing about the skirmishes on the borders of our territories. Many a tale had spread of the battles, from pegasi having their wings ripped clean off to the high guard dropping from the sky in clouds of blood. At first it was a shock to us, a moment of pause to lament before the coming storm. This would last until the first Pegasus found his voice, and made his roar heard to all. The griffons had attacked, and the pegasi answered with one voice, one cry.
The cry for war.
Of course, I was one of the first young stallions to sign myself into the military. All that business about protecting Equestria, about serving a higher cause had not been lost on these sharp ears of mine. I wasn’t too clever at the time…
I can still remember hearing commander Hurricane coming to the camp to give us new recruits his speech. All some quite pretty and inspiring words about how we shall answer the griffons blow for blow. About how my platoon was selected for our prowess, our skill above the rest of the newbies. We were the vanguard because we had the greatest chance of squashing these foolish bird-brains. Who were we to doubt the words of our great and powerful general?
Oh, I’m sure that he gave the same speech to every new platoon, standing there in his gleaming armor, convincing us green boys that we actually knew how to throw the spears we had been handed. How to crush the bones of our enemies. He convinced us that we wouldn’t piss ourselves the moment we saw eight feet of rage and claw diving towards us, intending to wet their beaks with our blood. What he should have told us was to not fly directly through cloud cover, you’ll see why.
We just listened, we were soldiers after all. That’s just what we called ourselves; soldiers. The defender of the innocents. Strong, resolved, and in control. We needed to convince ourselves of this just about as hard as we had to convince our enemy. As you can guess, not as convincing as it may seem. Talk is all good but when they do see the piss on your legs you sort of lose your threatening stance.
This is how most of us thought, until we faced our first kills. The first tick on a long list of lines…uncaring, unfeeling, just lines on a paper that told us we were winning. I personally like to think of my line as a little trade, their life for mine. I don’t pay in advance.
I think I believed we were winning, I flew with my squadron, sure I would survive, sure that I was justified in my cause, how couldn’t I be? I was just about the most morally compassed pony you could meet! I hadn’t even killed any-pony, just helped where I could. I thought, “With the work we are doing here, how many we’re taking down, these battles will be over before you know it, and we will be victorious! I might even get a shiny new medal!” That was about the time I met my first griffon death squadron… my first kill.
We were patrolling, as months went this had been a pretty good one, the battles had been growing more severe, but they were farther and fewer between. The griffons were growing weak, we’d tell each other…ourselves… when we spoke. This two month war would be over soon. I tell you, the claws on my back didn’t feel weak to me.
One minute, we were flying through the sky, our commander leads us through some heavy cloud cover. Come out the other side, and I’m falling; claws on my back, tearing my flesh like tissue paper. Warm blood on my back, screeching in my ears, oh… there was the piss I had mentioned earlier. Of course, no training had worked its way into these bones; I just spin, closing my wings and dropping, the screeching and claws still deep in my ears and back. Did I fight? No, I just kept dropping, that way the blood would all fly up and I wouldn’t have to see it.
The beast on my back seemed desperate to join me on my fall, its weight speeding us up, helping us to meet our mutual friend the ground even sooner than Mr. ground had expected. Perhaps a nice little tea party, like the ones that ponies have as children would be waiting for me on my arrival… I honestly don’t know, I never found out.
In fact, some sense had come back to me. Odd, since sense would be the last thing you expect moments from death. Still, sense had me and I fell into her sensual embrace. I turn my whole body, hooves pointed at the sky, a little blood trickling up towards that cloudy white world above. Thinking about it, perhaps it had not been sense that had made me turn. I mean, how did I expect to survive, land on the griffon that seemed to clutch at my back now like an impatient lover. I suppose that I just wanted to see my sky one more time before I saw no more.
The jolt, the splash, and I knew we had landed in water. Strange I don’t remember seeing any water, yet there it was, and it was surprisingly soft. The claws were gone from my back, and I was beginning to feel a bit light headed. The next adrenaline rush was exactly what I needed.
Claws now grab me from the front, splashing water crashes down on my face as the presumed dead griffon attempted to use me as a lifeline to get back to shore. Honestly, it wasn’t even caring about killing me now, wasn’t even worried about me, just the water surrounding it… It should have worried more about me.
Well, I was weak too, and I certainly wasn't going to be the one to drown here and now, after my ludicrous fall survival. Before the griffon can react I wrap my hooves around its fat head and force it under the water. It fights, but I’m stronger, my back is hurting, not my front. Eventually the struggles stop, and I finally greeted with the sight of my newly departed friend.
Whoever she was, she was beautiful… for a griffon. Much of her has left my mind but I can still remember those eyes. So full of fear… not hatred or rage like the high ups had made it seem like every griffon had at birth. No, there was just… fear.
I can’t forget that look she had; it was too much… like my own face at the time. Though probably not as pretty. Still, I consoled myself the best that I could. At least I had a new temporary raft to shore, all the better to get to the sand and make it from this hellhole. I was not the only soldier to make use of this strategy, and I suspect I was not the last to find himself in my position.
I got back to shore, and of all times life now decides to sucker punch me, as if it couldn’t do that while I was in the water. I pass out from blood loss right on the beach I had finally managed to paddle me and my raft to. Apparently I was found by the after-battle cleanup crews that the griffons liked to use to collect their dead for funerals. They took me, I can only assume to use as a prisoner of war, but before I even come to the war decided to end itself.
The two princesses had finally arrived on the scene…
Those two… our protectors they called themselves at the time. They show up while I’m lying in a griffon med tent, go off to griffon central, and I assume they pouted very hard at the king until he conceded defeat. They talk him into ending the war by, of all things, feeding him!
Turns out the whole three month war, as they called it, had started because the king hadn’t gotten his weekly hit of the old sweets. And in his grumpy stupor he decided that the pegasi had interfered too far in griffon matters. So the good old princesses shoot him up his sweet sweets and now the fair king sees the error of his ways, and tells his soldiers to return home. The fool wasn’t drunk no more and he promised to be a good little griffon king.
So the sisters take their leave just about the time I wake up, and I spend the next three weeks sitting on a bed smoking with some feathery chaps who had tried to kill me last month, mostly about their folks back home. I get out, and am returned with to the pegasi military. Where commander Hurricane meets me with a shiny new medal and a polite “Get out of my sight.” I get to retire from my amazing service to the nation with my back half gone, and my wings hardly seeming to twitch without trying to rip themselves from my body. I was done in my military career.
Still, it wasn’t all that bad. I got to see the world, from all different angles. Met a girl, killed her. Learned how to swim. A nice vacation at a prison camp. Some really strong herbs for pain, I was higher than I had ever flown for months after my little tour.
Finally, I found that I had an amazing sense of humor.