Letters from the Battlefield

by Eneko95

Nine ponies, nine letters home, nine bits of headcanon and character exploration. The vignettes are in the order the "Meet the Team" videos were released. Update: Now with clearer divisions between letters!

Letters from the Battlefield: Nine PF2 Vignettes

First: Heavy Weapons Mac
Dear Granny Smith,

Ah don't think anypony in Ponyville would believe me if Ah told 'em what Ah went through this week workin' for RED. Sometimes even Ah'm not sure Ah do, but Ah'll tell ya anyway. Ah'm part of a nine-pony team composed of AJ an' her pals, me, Miss Zecora, and that Ditzy Doo character. Best as Ah can tell—and don't tell anypony this, cause it's top-secret—Princess Luna's created exact duplicates of us in an attempt to overthrow Princess Celestia. She calls them Builders League United, or BLU for short.

Sounds like a dime novel, don't it? Well, it's true, and our job's to keep them off RED property. Ah mostly provide cover fire for everypony else. (One of th' few times Ah appreciate being so dang huge.) "Everypony else" often doubles to mean Miss Fluttershy. How she got roped into this chaos as our Medic Ah'll never know and ain't sure Ah want to, but we're all mighty proud of her for doing it. She's an absolute peach an' the best part of the team. Ya know she and AJ built this contraption called a medigun that heals us quicker than Winona can run? We even get invincible red armor if she uses it for long enough! That's why she gets behind me a lot; Ah'm basically unstoppable once that charge goes up.

The titchy purple pony who recruited me (never caught her name) told me Ah had ta build mah own minigun ("mini," mah flank. Ah gotta use both front hooves to carry that thang) as part of this job. Ah call it Paula Red, after that crime-fightin' niece of yours in Fillydelphia you told us about. To be honest, Ah had to ask AJ for help—mah ham-hooves ain't exactly precision instruments. Is that cheating?

You got Braeburn in from Appleloosa to help out while AJ an' Ah are gone, right? Tell him Ah appreciate all the hard work he's prob'ly done so far and Ah'd vote for him if Ah could. Ah hope we get a day off soon so's Ah can see you and Apple Bloom again. Ah miss y'all and Sweet Apple Acres something fierce.

Best, Big Macintosh
P.S. We owe Miss Fluttershy a barrel of Golden Delicious apples. Ah won a bet with Miss Zecora.

Second: Soldier Ditzy
Hay, Dinky,

I guess you wanna know all about my new job on RED. It's really dangerous, but it's a lot of fun! I get to fire rockets at magical copies of me, Rainbow Dash, all her friends, and Big Macintosh! They all deserve it; they know what gets us mad as well as we do, so they call me "Derpy" when I'm doing well. (I whack them extra-hard with my cloud shovel just for you, muffin.) One of them isn't so bad, though—the BLU version of Zecora. Remember her? She's that nice zebra in the Everfree who helped us plant our herb garden. Anyway, we met at a Vinyl Scratch concert, and our friendship kinda took off from there. I'll send you some pictures of us goofing around later. You'll love them!

Everypony else looks at me funny when I talk about what we do together, though. Like I'm not supposed to have a friend on the other team even though she's exactly like our Zecora. That doesn't make much sense to me. Twilight said that one of the first things she learned about friendship was that it can show up in places nopony expects. Why would she have a problem with living proof of that? Me and (BLU) Zecora get along great, and we both know how it feels when other ponies cut us out and make fun of us cause of something that we can't control.

Speaking of other ponies, how are you and Sparkler getting along? I'm lucky I could find somepony to take care of you on such short notice. (And I know you like Dr. Turner better, but his lab is no place for a filly. It's not even a place for me!) I heard somewhere she likes stargazing; you two could try out the telescope Time Turner gave us for Hearth's Warming some night.

Love and muffins always, Mama
P.S. Please send some of those blueberry muffins we made last week with your reply, OK? A pony can only eat so many apple fritters, even if they are hoof-baked by Applejack.

Third: Apple-engie
Dear Apple Bloom,

First off, Ah wanna thank you fer helpin' me build mah machines. Your modifications worked like a charm, and now Ah can take a sentry or dispenser "along for the ride." It's almost like a unicorn built it instead o' two earth ponies! Speakin' of unicorns, Rarity says she hopes you, Sweetie Belle, an' Scootaloo have grown outta tryin' crazy stunts to get yer cutie marks. (Ah dunno how you didn't find it earlier, frankly, what with how you dang near rebuilt mah old tree house in one day. But that's just me.)

Bein' the RED Engineer is a lot harder than Ah thought it was gonna be. Ah gotta stay near mah sentries (our sentries?) all the time or that fink the BLU Spy'll sap 'em, for one. She can make herself look like anypony on our team, even me or Big Mac, so Ah gotta look for anypony actin' funny around me all the time if'n Ah value mah back without a butterfly knife in it.

Then there's the BLU version of Ditzy Doo. Ya couldn't find a pony more dangerous with a rocket launcher if you tried. She has this move called a "rocket-jump" where she jumps and fires a rocket at her hooves to get places faster…yeah. Even though the sentries have a 360° range, it takes perfect timin' to get her mid-jump. Zecora an' her sticky jumping can be just as much if not more of a pain in the flank. (Don't ever tell her Ah said that, hear? Ah mean BLU Zecora, who's not really Zecora anyhow.)

But just guess who mah greatest ally's been this week—Pinkie Pie! Some o' Princess Celestia's other employees gave her a flamethrower (don't ask), a fire suit, and the go-ahead to "burninate" the other team. Burninate is her word, by the way, not mine. Ah convinced her to stick close to me most o' the time and help me fend off BLU Spies—fire's pretty good at exposing them, plus watchin' that unicorn run around like a headless chicken screaming "Fire, fire, FIRE!" is just plain hilarious.

It's tough bein' away from the farm for so long at a time. Ah got Mac and mah friends with me, but it ain't really the same. Sometimes Ah even think Ah can hear mah sentries talkin' to me, Ah get that lonely. Don't laugh, it's a serious concern for me. Ah heard Mac talking to his gun yesterday (which Ah helped build, by the way) like it was really Cousin Paula Red. Granny'll tell ya who that is and why Mac named his gun after her if you ask nicely.

Mah biggest comfort is that Ah'm doin' mah team a service by sticking around and building things for them. Ah even helped Fluttershy get started—she had this idea for a device that'd heal us super-quick, but not much of a plan to build it. Her medigun works like magic, which Ah think might be involved in there somewhere. Who knows? (Even Ah'm not sure what she brought out to build that sucker with.)

Yours truly, Applejack

Fourth: Democora (translated from Zebra/Brayle)
Honored Mother,

These Equestrian ponies are all crazy! In my very first day working for RED, I was shot at multiple times (once with a glowing rocket), set on fire, whacked off a cliff by a false Rainbow Dash, and nearly blown to pieces when a false me (Twilight calls it a simulacrum; she knows far more about magic than the rest of us combined, so take her word for this) caught me in a bomb trap. Anything for Princess and country, I'm told, but this is just excessive. At least our Respawn technology lets us come back after we die. (It's not dark magic, I don't know how it works, and I'm not sure I want to.)

I work now as what Princess Celestia calls the "Demopony." That means I launch small bombs at the other team or lay traps of "sticky bombs." Sticky bombs are tiny spheres with spikes all over them that stick to flat surfaces. Their launcher has a special trigger used to set them off and give other ponies a nasty surprise. Tell Father his chemistry lessons and book on gunpowder paid off—I can make my ammunition all by myself from my obi!

All right, perhaps not all of it. Twilight helps me with some of the more challenging components. I even helped her make a special splash potion that lets her deal more damage to opponents covered in it one time. She said she'd name her newest "sniper rifle" after our town when it's finished. Where she learned to build a gun is beyond me and everypony else but her.

Knowing that ponies who've never seen a zebra before trust me to help protect them is immensely gratifying. One of them has taken a particular shine to me—Ditzy Doo, a wall-eyed gray pegasus. She's somewhat of an outcast, as I was before the Elements got to know me. Ditzy has become a great and honored friend of mine: We talk a lot about our families, and she says she'd love to meet you all (bearing muffins) if she ever gets enough money to go to the Flatlands. For some reason even I don't know, I've bonded quite well with the BLU version of her. My team has some serious doubts about this, and I understand why, but…I won't break my friendship with her. She's exactly like the real Ditzy, so how bad can it possibly be?

May Chukwu protect our home, Zecora

Fifth: Rainbow Scout
Dear Dad,

It's been a hay of a first week working for RED, Princess Celestia's new company. (Stands for Reliable Excavation and Demolition.) My team and I have to fight perfect magical copies of us, with our weapons and personalities and everything, every single day! Twilight (she's our Sniper now) says they're the result of a super-crazy-advanced spell, called "simulacra." I say Princess Luna's loco in the coco for even thinking she can clone us and get away with it.

Yeah. Believe it or not, she's starting a revolution. Celestia told us that she created those copies because she needed the Elements of Harmony, AJ's brother, Zecora, and Derpy (why she would need Derpy is anypony's guess) to oust her and replace the government with her "New Lunar Republic." Our job is to keep those fakes off RED property and by doing so maintain the Princess' rule. I've never heard a weirder story in my whole life, and I hang around with an earth pony version of Surprise. (You remember her, right? Cloudsdale party planner? Really good at sneaking up on ponies?)

At least I'm having some fun on the job. Everypony behind the scenes calls me RED Scout now. My job is to fly around the battlefield and take potshots at every BLU pony that gets in range, let the rest of my team know what's up ahead, sometimes grab a super-secret briefcase and get out before anypony can find me. It's the best agility training a pegasus could ask for. They even let me use your old baseball bat as my melee weapon! I'll send you a picture of the next Sniper I catch by surprise next week. You'll really enjoy the look on her face. Pinkie Pie also whipped up this treat called a Bonk cupcake that somehow prevents me from getting hurt by anything. I knew she was a fantastic chef, but damn!

I have to treat every battle as agility training or a game to stay sane. Pinkie's been a huge help in finding something to laugh at. I don't know how, but I can sort of understand her through her new gas mask. The higher-ups call her the Pyro now, which means she has a flamethrower, the ugliest fire suit I've ever seen, and a license to burn the other team to the ground. I stay away from her when she gets rolling. Pinkie might have scared me a little bit before, but now…she terrifies me, Dad. She really does.

What may surprise you the most is, I can't make myself tell Scootaloo what I'm doing. She's tough for a filly, as you already know, but flying around with a scattergun in hoof, dodging rockets and bombs and who knows what else, is WAY out of her league. I love my fans too much to watch my biggest one get herself killed because of me. You just don't do stuff like that.

Stay prismatic, Rainbow Dash
P.S. Thunderlane tells me he saw you at Day Lily's restaurant with a fancy unicorn marefriend. Congrats! Who's the lucky lady? Anypony I know?

Sixth: Twilight Sniper
Dear Mom and Dad,

You guys were right about how stressful this job would be. I feel like I've aged ten years this week. Even though I'm far from the actual front lines, I have to be on my guard 24/7. I'm always watching for BLU Scouts, Spies or Pyros that might find my perch and take me out before I can say "Oh damn." Every shot I make must be precise, well-timed, and perfectly executed, or I have to find a new perch before the other team gets me. It's ruthless, dangerous work, exactly the sort of thing you two warned me against when I signed on to RED.

All the same, I'm not quitting this job. I love you both and respect your opinions, but as a princess by technicality and student of Princess Celestia, I must do my royal duty and crack simulacra skulls open with my sniper rifle. It pays so well, and the challenge of only using my telekinesis in battle (and a daily communicator spell for Rainbow Dash's headset) isn't that different from what I normally do with my magic. There isn't really a place for most of the spells I know in battles anyway, except maybe as bullet enhancements. But that'd just be cheating, and you know me—I do not like cheaters.

What surprised me the most about this week is my sort-of partnership with Zecora. I probably told you about her—she's a zebra shaman who also happens to be good at making explosives. Just yesterday, she helped me create a splash potion (potion you throw at somepony) that'll let me deal more damage to my opponents! As soon as I figure out how to get that into a sniper rifle, I'll name it after her hometown of Neighrobi. Rainbow calls us "magic camper buddies." The description's quite accurate.

Spike travels around with us, so at least this feels partly like home. He doesn't fight much, just does odd jobs and sends messages. He'll probably send you guys this letter, actually. Tell Shining I'm doing great.

Love, Twilight

Seventh: Spyrity
Darling Sweetie Belle,

First of all, I trust that Carousel Boutique is running smoothly with you, Snips, and my dear friends Fancypants and Fleur-de-Lis in charge? Thank Fluttershy for Fleur—she still has a few of her connections from when she modeled for Photo Finish. And if anypony would know how to run a clothing shop, it would probably be a former model and her businesspony husband. If you're wondering about Fluttershy herself (as I'm sure you are), she's holding up splendidly under the immense stress of our new jobs at Princess Celestia's RED company.

Believe me, Sweetie, you don't know what chaos is until you've hidden among your dearest friends' magical clones with rockets and bombs and bullets flying everywhere, at everypony, trying not to get hit and praying your invisibility will last long enough. Until you've smacked a wrench out of the other Engineer's hoof to distract her sentry, then sapped it and backstabbed her. Until you've run for your life because you broke character for all of three seconds and everyone on the other team knows your true identity. Any of Discord's tricks are passé compared to one round of Capture the Flag. (Don't tell him I said that; this job's stressful enough without having to worry about what could happen to Ponyville in my absence.)

As you probably guessed, most of what I listed did in fact happen to me. My job is to sneak around (sometimes invisibly) and take out BLU ponies who could cause trouble for us later. I go for the other version of Fluttershy before anypony else; a team without a Medic is a team that's half-beat. To do so more effectively, I've been given a disguise kit that runs on changeling magic and hologram technology, an Electro-Sapper, and an invisibility watch. (Sometimes I wonder if I've stepped into one of my favorite spy novels by some great interdimensional accident.) Honestly, this class fits me—I'm not particularly fast or strong or precise or a hoof with explosives. What I happen to be is observant, a great actress, stealthy, and good at surprising ponies. And of course, a bit of fabulosity never hurts in this line of work.

I hope you're trying those techniques I taught you to prevent stage fright. You have the strongest singing voice I've ever heard in a filly your age, and I'm sure your future audiences will agree. Always remember that while I'm happy to give you advice, the pony whose opinion matters the most to you should be your own. You've come a long way, darling, and I'm very proud of you.

All my love, your sister, Rarity

Eighth: Fluttermedic
Dear Flitter and Cloudchaser,

Thank you both so much for volunteering to feed the rest of my animal friends while I'm away. I do hope the bunnies haven't been giving you any trouble. Angel usually keeps them in line when I go into town or something, but since he's here with me…I can imagine the results. Oh, by the way, stay away from the raptor nests for about three more weeks—it's mating season, and I don't want you hurt on my account.

I already feel pulled in too many directions at once from sheer stress. (And I've been the RED team's Medic for all of one week.) Everypony depends on me/my medigun to keep them alive since Applejack's dispensers aren't terribly mobile. I wouldn't make my worst enemy do this job! The only reasons I don't quit are my duty to my friends, the great salary (what? I've gotta live!), and my duty to Princess Celestia. (It's a long, confidential story that you two probably wouldn't believe anyway.)

There's not much time to sit and think in a battle situation, so I do most of that in truces or before we start. I came up with an interesting idea I need to ask Twilight about—the Element of Kindness keeps me from going all "mad scientist" on my team. Rainbow teases me by saying Big Macintosh's presence has more to do with it than my Element (I told her one time). She's partly right—he can be very reassuring in his direct way, and he's comfortable with silence. I think he might like me, too. (DON'T TELL ANYPONY!)

Another interesting discovery I made is that my medigun charge pack lets me regenerate health! I have no clue how that happened, but I'm very grateful for that little feature. Without it, I wouldn't be able to survive Pyro ambushes. (Pinkie Pie with a flamethrower terrifies me more than a full-grown dragon.) Maybe Applejack put it in when we built and upgraded it. I had to ask Applejack to help me with it because I don't have the technical skills to back up my ideas. Not yet. Someday I'll never have to ask anypony for help ever again. Someday I'll be strong and brave and smart like my friends. Someday…

Sincerely, Fluttershy

Ninth: Pinkie Pyro
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Cake,

Sometimes I wonder what the hay I was on when I signed up for RED team. I mean, even though the other team isn't real, that doesn't really make it OK to kill them! Half the time I'm basically a flame-throwing distraction (it can get very painful, trust me), and the other half I follow Applejack around and protect her/her buildings. Or do my actual job, which is ambushing BLU from the side and getting rid of Spies. It's not easy, especially because a bright red fire suit is really obvious and ugly. A max range of about four and a half pony-strides using my shotgun (two and a half with my flamethrower and axe) doesn't help much either.

This job made me realize something weird—I'm actually jealous of Rarity. She's so much better at sneaking up on BLU team without getting her flank shot to Canterlot than I am, which is weird because I always thought I was the ninja pony. I wish I could get close enough to do maximum damage without getting hit. …Yeah, who am I kidding?

I get to work with my best friends every day, so this isn't that bad. Ooo! Something else pretty cool—the staff ponies gave me a super-special gas mask when we talked to them on Tuesday. You'd love it; it's a window into the brightest, most colorful, most sugartastic, happiest alternate universe EVER! I call it Pinkie Land, cause it looks like something I'd make up for a filly's birthday party. Pinkie Land is full of singing flowers and teddy bears and balloon animals, including a balloon version of Gummy! I shoot rainbows from a three-barreled trumpet and spread joy to cherub/foal versions of everypony!

…My friends are a little scared of me now because of my flamethrower and dimension-crossing mask. I keep telling them that I know Pinkie Land isn't in this reality, but they can't understand me through the mask. Well, Applejack and I think Rainbow Dash can, but that's only two, maybe three out of nine. I have to either talk with my hooves or write down what I want to say to get my point across. Friends shouldn't have to communicate with each other like that, but I don't have a choice anymore. It's sad. It really is.

Yours, Pinkie Pie
P.S. Sorry for moping my way through most of this letter. I just had to get all that bad stuff off my chest. Give Pound and Pumpkin my very very best. ^_^