Chapter Four: Universal Soldier

Canterlot

It was just about time for Luna to set her moon and Celestia to raise her sun. She walked along the large white marble stoned hallway. A red carpet was placed in the middle and ran along a grand hallway several servants who also walked in the hallway stopped and bowed before their highness. She gave them a soft smile and continued towards a large balcony. She looked up at the sky and watched as Luna came flying in

"Hello Luna" she said with a smile

"…Tia"

Luna had her wings spread wide with her nose up in the air

"Luna, are you quite alright?"

"I am doing fine my dear sister…"

Celestia turned around to Luna

"Luna I know there's something wrong with you, please tell me"

Luna stopped in her tracks and turned around and faced Celestia

"…the griffons are getting on my nerves and every time we try to talk to them about a diplomatic solution to keep peace between our two nations they keep pushing the issue about moving the border past the mountains into Equestria!"

"Luna, you have to keep your calm when talking to them. If you show any signs of anger they will use it to their advantage and-"

A guard came galloping and stopped in front the two of them. He bowed before the two princesses while huffing for air.

"Your highness, the patrol that went into the forest yesterday came back!"

"What happened, did they find the creatures?"

"Yes, they turn out to be hostile and they killed two of our best guards!"

"Tia, didn't you sent out three?"

"Yes I did. Where is the third?" Celestia said as she looked at the guard

"He's in the infirmary" he said

Celestia looked at Luna

"Luna I need you the rise the sun for me. I must attend to this matter"

"But Tia, I-"

"Luna I showed you how to raise the sun, it's not that hard to do. I trust you'll get it done so please Luna can you do it?"

"…yes…" she said with a groan

Celestia gave her a smile and walked with the guard in lead as Luna flew off the balcony. When they reached the infirmary the staff and guards all bowed. The guard was on the bed with his body wrapped around in bandages with several blood stains. His wings where missing several feathers and was bruised and scared. He weakly raised his head as the princess came into the room.

"You poor thing, does it hurt?"

The injured pegasus rose his head at the princess and started to speak with a weak voice

"They killed…they killed the others…I-I barely made it out. They walked on their hind legs and carried sticks that shot fire and lead…and they spoke a strange language… then one of them started to speak our language…"

He slowly closed his eyes while Celestia looked down at him. His breath was short and getting shorter. He laid his head back down. He closed his eyes and suddenly stopped breathing. The pegasus was dead and Celestia closed her eyes and tried to fight back the tears. She watched one of her best guards die in front of her.

"His wounds where too great, he had internal bleeding and couldn't stop it. I-I'm sorry your highness" said a nurse

"It's, It's alright you did what you can. Please inform his next of kin." Said Celestia

"Y-yes your highness" she said

A larger pegasus was standing just outside the room, Celestia hung her head slightly as she walked out. The pegasus walked along side of her. His armor was golden, just like the other guards but had dents and small rips like he was just in a battle. His helmet was also golden with a full plume of blue on top and also had dents and a large rip on the left side. He was a few inches taller than the other royal guard pegasi. He was always taller ever since he was a foal. He was always made fun of cause of his size and the other colts wanted to see how tough he was, this got him into trouble often by getting into fights at school. Just because of his size he was labeled as the bully.

"Captain Power Strike" said Celestia

"Yes your highness?" he said as he stood to attention.

"You and your best guards are to go into the Everfree Forest and find who their leader is and bring them here!" said Celestia as she spread her wings.

"Yes your highness" he said as he bowed. He walked away with a look on his face, a look only a soldier had after seeing of his fellow troops dying right in front of him. He wanted to find who has done this and take care of it himself, but he as orders and he must follow them.

Celestia walked out to balcony again and looked up at the sky as the run rose with a sad look on her face

"My visions are becoming real. I fear that a great battle will happen"


The Everfree Forest

Twilight slowly crept her way out of the cave and tipped-hooved over the sleeping Rangers trying her best not to make any sudden movements to wake them. David was leaning against the wall of the cave entrance looking up at the dark, clear morning sky. In the corner of his eye he saw the small purple unicorn looking back into the cave and not noticing him standing there. She turned around and gave a light sigh of relief but suddenly froze in her tracks to seeing the tall human looking down at her. The two of them stared at each other for a few moments. He then looked back up at the night sky

"I haven't seen the sky like this since, well, forever"

She looked up at him with a worried look on her face

"I-I thought you would be asleep" she said

"It's funny before I joined the army I only needed eight hours of sleep and I'll be recharged and ready for the day, but now I only need a few hours. Or sometime no sleep at all"

"But won't it affect your physical and mental health?"

"Well it's kind of hard to get some shut eye when you have bullets buzzing over your head and explosions going off a few feet away from you"

He looked down at Twilight as she sat down on her haunches and nervously tried not to make anymore eye contact with him.

"Where you off to this early" he asked

"Oh I was, uh…uh, going to-"

"If you were going to tell your 'princess' or whoever is in charge then go ahead, I'm not going to stop you. She is not our enemy but if she sends her armies to attack us then we have no choice but to fight back. But that's the last thing I want to do right now. All I want to do is get the rest of my men back to base safely. We killed all of the bad guys so you have nothing to worry about, except if there are more of those manticore things or whatever then you should have us escort you to your home, what was it called again?"

"Ponyville"

"Ponyville, hmmm strange name but since I seen a 'manticore', talking dogs, and a pony with HUGE eyes that can use 'magic', at this point I am not going to be surprised what will I run into next."

He sat down on a large near-by rock and took off his helmet and let the cool air flow on his head. After a while she started to relax and used her magic to pull out a parchment and a quill from her saddlebag. David looked at her as she did this with an interesting look on his face

"So how exactly does this 'magic' work?" he asked

"Well first off only unicorns can use magic and the really gifted ones, such as myself, can do anything from levitating objects, to creating spells, and even teleporting. My friend Rarity uses magic too, but she is not as powerful as I am. She is more into fashion and not into spells. Celestia is the most powerful one in all of Equestria. She has the power to move the sun. She can move to moon too but that job is left to her sister, Princess Luna."

She went on and on about the magic in her world and how it can solve and create problems. Like one time she cast a spell on a plow to bring it to life during winter wrap up. She thought using magic would help but only made it worse. She also told him about the song they sung for to get them motivated.

"What the hell is 'winter wrap up'?"

"It's where we get the town cleaned up for spring. It was first founded by earth ponies who didn't use magic they did it all by hoof for hundreds of years. There are three teams; each has their own job to do. The earth team takes care of the crops, the animal team wakes up the animals from hibernation, and the weather team takes care clearing the skies. Canterlot is the only place where they use magic to clean up winter. If we don't complete it in time it throws all of the other seasons off. It's kind of a headache. We where almost late one season but with my organizing skills, we got it done just in time."

"So let me get this straight, you all sing a song about wrapping up winter and if you don't complete is in time it throws all of the other seasons off?"He said as he ran his fingers though his hair, "This is a strange world"

"Don't you have the same in your world?" she asked

"Well one thing for sure is that we don't sing songs, we just go about our business like nothing happened. The only thing that we do is change our clothes to whatever the weather is like"

"How does the seasons change in your world, I am pretty sure that they don't change on their own"

"Actually they do. One pole and hemisphere of the Earth will be directed away from the sun at one side of the orbit. And half an orbit later, about half a year later, this pole will be directed towards the Sun. This is the cause of the Earth's seasons."

She blinked at him several times

"Then who raises the sun and moon?"

"The earth orbits around the sun giving us day and night, and the moon also orbits around the earth from its gravitational orbit"

"Do you have magic in your world?" she asked

"Not really. Magic in my world is nothing like yours it only exists on stage shows and is more of a skill if you know how to make the audience think its magic."

"Then what do you use to create spells and solve problems?"

"We don't use magic for anything. We use equations, mathematics, chemistry, and a whole lot of other shit that I was into when I was younger. Science is our magic."

A light purple aura surrounded the quill and parchment as she wrote down everything they been talking about

"…so, I know I asked you this before but are you really a scientist?"

"No, not really."

"…oh" she said in disappointment

"But, I was on my was to be one"

Silence fell upon them again bit only for a short while. David started to chuckle

"I can't believe that I am another universe, oh man if my college professor could see this now. I wrote an essay about universes and how I said that alternate universes can exist, but not just on TV shows and movies. He thought I was wrong and he gave me a 'C' and went on this whole spiel about how I was wrong and my theories where nonsense. That jackass made a fool of me saying that's impossible alternate universes exists even though I have valid argument points. You see space is massive and my species only explored a small portion of it. When I mean small I mean a VERY small portion. Billions and billions of galaxies are out there with the possibility of life. We sent out probes to explore our planets in the solar system and a sent an exploration vehicle to another planet. The furthest mankind has been into space was the moon. Come to think about why the hell we haven't gone back, it's fucking 2015 and we are fighting each other over the dumbest shit and…"

David looked down at Twilight. She looked at him with a worried look and gave a sigh, "...sorry, didn't mean to off on a rant"

Twilight continued to write

"One thing that I did noticed was the stars, Orion's Belt, Ursa Major and Minor, all of the other consolations are there in the correct locations in the sky but the fact that we are in alternate universe does not make much sense to me. Makes me think that this might be Earth, well another Earth…what?"

Twilight looked up at him with amazement.

"What did you study when you where in college?"

"Cosmology, I was on my way to get my-"

Her eye grew wide and had a huge smile on her face, then she jump up to him and placed her fore-hoofs on his leg. He jumped a little to have two lavender eyes staring back at him.

"Whoa!" he said. He leaned back with a surprised look on his face

"This is so wonderful, the fact that I met another sentient being that knows about the universe as much as I do make me so thrilled!"

"…uh, yeah, glad I could help?"

David gently pushed her hoofs off but still sitting really close to him

"Ooh, I have to take you to the Canterlot library in the Starswirl the Bearded wing. It's full of books and scrolls about spells and magic! Everything you need to know about Equestria and the universe is there! I am getting so excited!" soon the excitement left her face, "Oh-no I completely forgot!"

"What?"

"The princess told me to stay out of the forest. If she found out that I disobeyed her she will be very mad at me. This is bad, really bad! She'll send me to the moon for one thousand years!" She paused for a moment and took in a deep breath, "Well you can't really blame me, I mean I wanted to see what the creatures looked like, guess I found out first-hoof" She said with a sad look on her face

"Well if it's any consolation, my superiors are not very happy with me either. Whenever they give me an order to follow, I follow that order in my own way…and the fact that I do pretty stupid, wreck-less shit…"

"Well yeah I think wreck-less is putting it nicely" she said as she rolled her eyes

They both shared a small laugh. Twilight cleared her throat and straightened up

"So, I heard that you didn't finish college. I don't mean to be rude, but do you mind telling what happened?" she casually asked

David un-slung his M4 and placed it off to the side. He crossed his arms and legs and gave a light sigh as he leaned back

"I just started my fourth semester. I had almost straight A's in all of my classes. I was on the dean's list, just met the girl of my dreams, and I was promised a position at NASA when I graduated. My life was set, I felt like I was on top of the world and it couldn't of gotten any better. But, I made a horrible decision."

"What happened?"

David looked up at the sky and sighed, he didn't want to go too much into detail. He didn't want the little unicorn to know how horrible his world is like. But since she has seen firsthand…firsthoof of what humans are capable of, she wanted to know more

"I dropped out of college and joined the army…"

"…dropped out of college and joined…wait, why would you do something like that? Graduating from college is more important than joining an army." said Twilight. She stopped and gave him an upset look, "What was going through your mind at the time?"

"I don't know, spur of the moment I guess…"

She had a look of disapproval

"*pfft* whatever…" he said as he rolled his eyes. He continued on, "My mother didn't take the news as well as my then girlfriend, lucky for me they both supported my decision even though she wasn't happy that I dropped out. But my old man was a different story, he told me straight to my face the day I told him what I did, 'quit the army and get your ass back in to college or I'm kicking you out of the house'. I was at the age where I was man enough to take responsibility for my own decisions but I was still living with my parents at the time and I had to follow his rules. Care to guess what happened next?"

Twilight looked at him as the morning sun slowly started to creep over the tree line.

"Don't you miss them, your parents I mean?"

"My mom sometimes, my dad, eh, sort of. With all of the stupid shit I been doing in the army they think I'm dead."

"I think that's a horrible way to think about it, don't you write letters to them? Why don't you go see them when you get back to your world?"

"Maybe I should…maybe not, let's just say I am still not on that good enough terms with my father…"

"You should always have a healthy relationship with both of your parents. I have a great relationship with my parents."

"Now that I am thinking about it, maybe I should have stayed in college. I was going to be set for life and I lost it all. I was going to help out humanity search the universe for other worlds with life, but now I am killing other human beings that threatened the world's safety, my world's safety. I threw it all away because my fucking patriotism got in the way. The choice that I made ruined my life"

She continued to write down the notes on the parchment. She looked up at the sky along with him.

"Have you ever thought about quitting the army and going back to college?"

David looked at her and laughed. She tilted her head and had a confused look on her face

"Are you kidding me? I have the greatest job in the world. I would never trade it for anything."

"But you said joining the army ruined your life"

"True I did say that. I've been in the army just over 12 years and all of my promotions and medals that I have earned in those years would have been a waste. Besides it's all I got left…"

"Didn't you mention you had a mate?" she asked

"Mate?"

"Your mare friend"

David took off his helmet and showed Twilight the picture that he kept there. Twilight looked down at the picture, he was in his formal military attire and she was wearing a black dress with thin black shoulder straps. He had her left hand is his right and has his other hand around her waist. They both had smiles on their faces. Her eyes grew a little wide, the first thing she notice was the way her hair was cut, almost the same style as hers. The only difference, she had dark brown hair with two-toned purple highlights.

"She, she looks almost like me, if I was one of his kind…" She thought to herself

"Something wrong?" he asked

"Oh, um nothing…"

"I-it can't be, alternate universes may have other versions of us. So that means that this female human is…me"

"…she called off the engagement after I…was…um, incarcerated…" he said

"Incarcerated?"

"You two were about to get married?"

"Yep, it was going to be perfect but then I had to go and fuck things up"

"Why did she called it off?"

He put his helmet back on and stood up and walked a few feet away. He places his hand so his hips and turned his torso to the side stretching out his muscles. Then he dropped his arms to the side turned around and gave her a slight smile.

"That, my little pony friend, will have to wait for another time, for now I have to find some food for my men and I"

"Food? What kind of food does your species eat?"

"Meat, fruits, vegetables…mostly meat"

"M-m-m-meat?" said Twilight as she dropped her ears and scooted away several yards

Hearing that his species eats meat made her extremely worried that he is going to kill her for food.

"But we don't eat horses…err, ponies. My world uses them as helpers and sometimes pets. So don't worry." he said

She gave a sigh of relief. She perked up again and trotted back up to him with a smile

"I have a friend who owns an apple orchard and she has plenty of apples I'm sure she wouldn't mind giving away. I have another who is a pastry chef who makes delicious cupcakes." She said

"That sounds wonderful, fresh apples are definitely better then the crap they serve us at the mess hall. As for cupcakes I guess I can go for one, you have no idea how much I want a cupcake." he said with a smile

Twilight smiled back. The morning sun was shining down at the entrance of the cave. David closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun shine down on his face. He inhaled and exhaled like he was taking a breath of fresh air for the first time.

"You know I never really had talked about this before. And to be honest I feel a bit more relieved talking about what happened about quitting college, joining the army and my ex and I breaking up. So uh, thank you for listening and…yeah" he looked at her and then the other way like he was almost afraid to admit sharing his feelings.

"You know, he's not that bad looking for a creature of a different species. No, I can't think about him like that, we just met. Besides, I don't think he is thinking about the same about me!" She thought to herself.

The silence was broken when a PFC came running up to him

"Captain, the…" The PFC looked down at the pony with a blank look on his face still surprised to see a strange talking purple horse. But he wasn't the only one surprised, the other soldiers started to question each other about their leader and his sanity. Most of all they wanted to know where they are and how are they going to get back home. Some even started to question his leadership. David cleared his throat and stood up in front of Twilight like he was hiding her from view.

"Is there something you wanted to tell me, private?"

"Oh, um, th-the agent wants to speak with you, sir"

David and Twilight reached to the cell, the agent was locked up in he was lying down on his back with his hands behind his head and his legs propped against the wall. Once he seen David and the pony he sat up right with a smile on his face. David stood in front of the cell looking down at him with an upset look on his face. He was quite surprised to see him smiling after he put a gun to his face and threatened to kill him.

"You look cheery for someone whose about to get their ass thrown in federal prison" he said

"Well I was thinking I can barter for, oh let's say, immunity"

He looked at him

"Fucking seriously?"

"I can help you turn in Baryshnikov"

"This is wasting my time" David said as he started to walk away

"I can tell you what the NPR has in store for the world, why they are here, and why you're involved"

David ears started to perk up. Twilight was about to follow him but then he stopped walking and turned around looked back at Alex in the cell. He then started to walk back.

"Why the hell do you want to tell me what they have planned? For all I know you could give me false information!"

"Well the NPR does not like let anyone live once they are captured by the enemy, when they found out that I didn't kill myself when I got caught by you they will kill me. They don't want to let anyone know about their plans."

"Why the sudden change of heart? You do realize that you will be executed for killing my soldiers, so you're fucked either way."

"Look Dave, do you want to me to tell you everything or what?"

David got very suspicious as to why he wanted to talk to him suddenly. He slung his M4 around his shoulder and crossed his arms. Twilight pulled out a blank parchment and her quill.

"…talk…"

Alex sat up Indian style with his hands on his knees

"The NPR wants to take over the world and get rid of the corruption that plagues the governments. Especially Baryshnikov, he wants to reshape the world and tired to seeing his soldiers dying for a worthless cause. But he can't just waltz right into the Kremlin and ask to take over; he wants each nation to go to war with each other. Remember I told you he caught that terrorist trying to blow up the Kremlin? When he was interrogating him he told him about the NPR and what they want to do. Somehow he was convinced to join them. The NPR needed a power source to power the teleporter; he told them about the convoy carrying the nuclear materials that they needed. But they needed a scapegoat, and that's why Iran took the fall. The NPR stole the teleporter and they are going to send a bomb to a major city around the world and tell each government that the other sent the bomb to them. So in turn each nation will go to war. And when the dust settles the NPR will seize control over the major countries."

"So why am I involved?"

"You've foiled several of their plans in the past. They were all perfectly orchestrated, each plan brilliantly thought out but then you had to go and fuck things up. The surprise attack you pulled in Karkand, the raid on that hotel in the gulf of Oman, and most recently the infamous battle in Dubai. But those are just only a few. The leader had enough and wanted you dead so you won't fuck up any more of his plans so that's where I came in. I pretty much gave your general false intel so he'll put you on a mission to where I kill you. But Baryshnikov wanted to see how tough you where since he had heard so many stories about you. You see Davy, the leader of the NPR is pretty much fed up on how the world is and the only way to fix it is by war. War brings peace"

David blinked at him several times

"With peace achieved no more men and women will go fight a pointless war, they won't have to die for a pointless cause." Alex continued

"That, has to be the most stupid thing I have ever heard. We can't have peace just by starting a war; we need to achieve peace without firing a single bullet! But world leaders need to get their heads out of their asses first then they will realize they need to focus on things that matter!"

Twilight had her quill and scroll and took down notes

"This 'NPR' wants to take control of their governments. Ending all wars by starting major one? That doesn't make any sense. What a dangerous world they live in. Whoever this leader is, wants to make their world a safer place. Couldn't they sit down and talk instead of fight?"

"Cortez, don't you want your soldiers to go back to their families alive, unharmed, instead in a wheel chair or worse a coffin?"

"They all signed up knowing what they were going to get into. They all knew the risks, if it was up to me I wouldn't let all of those young men and women join the army and die in that fucking pla-"

He paused and had an almost sad look on his face. Visions of soldiers that where under his command flashed before his eyes. He took his hands and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at him with an angry stare. Twilight could sense that David was going to do something dangerous to Alex, before that could happen she stepped forward and sat down a few feet from the cell and placed herself right in front of David to make sure that he doesn't do anything. She turned her head around and looked at him.

"If you don't mind David if I asked him a few questions"

He threw his hands up in the air her and walked away and leaned against the wall on the other side. Twilight's horn glowed and quill and scroll came from her saddle bag

"First of all I would like to know is why you are here in Equestria. Are you here to take over our world? We are peaceful equines that wish no harm to either of our races." She asked

"Well sweetie the only thing we want from this world is the rich natural rescores that is in these mountains. Once we are done harvesting with what we need, we'll leave like we were never here. Our original plan was to take over this world."

"I am surprised that you are not as shocked as I was to find out that she can talk" said David

"Surprise Cortez, I have been here several times before. I was apart a scout team to search this world we discovered. It was not too long we found the rich natural resources in these mountains to build the bombs without rising suspicion. We stumbled upon these caves along with those mutts and the diamonds"

"Why did you kill the diamond dogs?" asked Twilight

"They attacked us once we stepped onto their land" said Alex

"But you trespassed" she continued

"We defended ourselves"

"I know they are bad, but there was no reason for you to kill them. You invaded their home! Why do does your species need to kill? It doesn't make any sense. It frustrates me to no end!"

David placed his hand on her shoulder in order to relax her.

"Relax Twilight, go over there and do, some magic…stuff" he said

She groaned and took in a deep breath and walked off to the side and sat down on her haunches. She used her magic and pulled out a parchment and quill.

"The creatures kill everything that gets in their way even if it means killing their own kind. I wonder what David goes through every day."

Alex raised an eyebrow from what David was doing. David watched her has she walked away with a clam relaxing look on his face. After a few moments of silence Alex suddenly started to laugh

"What so funny" asked David

"Can you believe how dumb the terrorists are? Really, fucking, stupid!"

"What did happen to Al-Qaida and the Taliban? I know for a fact that they didn't decide to disband or turned themselves in. They can't be that dumb" asked David

"We've been using them as test subjects for the teleporter. We strapped fake bombs to them and told them that they will be sent to key locations in Washington DC and around the world to blow up several federal buildings. Somehow they believed us. When we sent them through the teleporter and when they came out the other side, there was nothing but a pile of dust."

"Haven't they caught on to what you've been doing?"

"Well they did catch on, once they found out what's been happen their buddies they tried to retaliate and even some had the balls to send a message to the CIA, unfortunately that message never got out."

"So why I am not a pile of dust?"

"I thought so too after seeing you disappear but I guess we perfected it. We thought we had to wear some kind special hazmat suits in order to pass though the portal without harm, I guess not anymore."

"Is there a way we can get back to our world?"

"There is, but there will be several NPR soldiers"

"What about that remote?"

A PFC came in with the wrist remote and handed it to David. He examined it and looked like it was homemade. Wires sticking out the side, a few buttons looked like they were off a mobile phone. It was pretty much a large wrist band with a small LCD screen attached with Velcro. Two D sized batteries attached to each side powering it.

"I didn't know that the NPR had a shop class, this looks like something a kid made" David said as he examined it

"It's the prototype; Baryshnikov has the much better model. He can be anywhere in the world to activate it, but this one you have to be in a pacific spot. It's a pain in the ass to get it working right but it works"

"Is that the magic you where referring to?" asked Twilight

"Yeah, the teleporter can fold time and space on each other to make long distance travel shorter. It's extremely complicated than it already is. I can go more into detail if we had spare time"

"Well I would love for you to explain it to me, if we have time maybe we can-" Said Twilight

"Do you two want some time alone?" Alex interrupted

"Um, what do you mean?" ask Twilight

"I seen the way he looks at you, little pony. But don't get me wrong Cortez, if like animals that way then I am not the one to judge."

Twilight blushed slightly as she rubbed the back of her head and looked up at David. He ignored his statement. Silence fell upon the room, with the exception of crackling sound of the flames from the torches that hung along the walls. Alex stood up and leaned against the wall as Twilight and David examined the device.

"Alright so all we have to do is go back to the field and the portal will open?" asked David

"That's right, but you need the code which I have." Said Alex

"Give it to me"

"No"

"And why the fuck not"

"Because I told you I want to barter, a full pardon"

"Like hell that's going to happen, I saw you kill my soldiers' right in front of me! For all I know you could have told them secrets about the CIA!"

"My brothers you tried to save where killed only a few feet away from that Osprey. They died in vein, all they really did was say that they gave to her was their condolences. My mother wept for days on end and I felt helpless. Once I found out that they were under your command I wanted to get back for what you did. But I am over that, for now. I am pretty sure that you are pissed too, I mean they didn't even give you a fair trial; they just threw you in jail and forgot about you for six months. Six whole months! And then you got out you lost all of the respect from your superiors that you worked so hard to earn. You where kicked back own to captain where you remained for the past three months." Alex

"First off I told that pilot to keep that bird on the ground because he knew that we had men on the ground. But we were under heavy fire, I understand that. But they where only a few feet away, I could of ran out there and carried them back but I couldn't. I am sorry for you and your mother's loss, but I can't speak for the whole damn army. I can't turn back the hands of time and go back and help them." Said David

"Before your incarceration, your leadership was brought up several times in the debriefing report. And I must say a lot of it was negative more then you think. Some it even said your abuse of power, lack of communication to the generals, and property damage just to name a few. At one point there was talk about a dishonorable discharge." Alex continued

David had a look of shame; he sat down and leaded against the wall and hung his head slightly. Twilight came up to him and placed her hoof on his shoulder.

"Are you alright David?"

"I…I'm fine…"

"Do you want to talk about this?"

"I think now is not a good time to share my feelings."

"That didn't stop you before"

He lifted his head and looked at her. She looked back at him and gave a warm smile. He smiled back and patted her on the head and scratched her ear with his right hand. She tilted her head and closed her eyes and enjoyed her ear being scratched. Suddenly she quietly moaned and David realized what he was doing and quickly pulled his hand back. Twilight opened her eyes and seen a surprised look on his face. She blushed and walked away and sat down with her back towards him. She rubbed the back of her head with her hoof pretending that didn't happen. David then stood up and scratched the side of his face slightly embarrassed.

Alex lay on the ground and crossed his arms and chuckled to what he witnessed. One again scilence fell upon them.

"You know Cortez, the NPR could use a leader like you. But your patriotism will get in the way. I can't really blame you. But if you still think about it, I can help you. I can help you turn in Baryshnikov, you'll get the respect back from the generals. Respect that you so deserve. You'll get your title back as Lieutenant Colonel or even better, General. I think General Cortez has a nice ring to it, don't you? That whole mess in Dubai will be gone from your record permanently, plus all of the other mishaps. All that I am asking you is to help me."

David looked at him for a while. Took off his helmet and looked a while at the picture inside. He stared at it for a long time looking to into the eyes of his former love. He sighed and shook his head; he placed his helmet back on his head and snapped the chin strap together. He stood up and walked towards the cell

"Can't believe I am about to do this" he thought to himself

"Private!"

"Yes sir?"

"Wake up the others, where Oscar-Mike!"

"Yes sir!"

Twilight looked up at David with a concerned look

"You're not actually going to help him go are you? From what I can tell he sounds very dangerous and conceiving. On top of that didn't he killed your fellow soldiers and betray your country? He's a part of that NPR group, doesn't that concern you?"

David looked down at Twilight and he continued to walk. Twilight stood as she watched him walk away.

"…and I thought he was the good guy" she thought to herself

David opened the gate to the cell and Alex stepped out, David came up to him and gripped is right arm tightly

"I am going to keep my eye on you. The second you fuck up, a bullet will be put in your head. You understand?"

"Sir Yes sir" Alex said as he mockingly saluted David with his free arm


Fort Sitting Bull

"Well Albert what do you have to say about yourself and your 'prodigy', eh?" said a man who was sitting in a chair that was in front of the general's desk. His hands was behind his head with a slight smirk on his face

"Can it John, you and I both know he's the one that could of get this done."

He was just less than 6 feet tall and had brown hair with a crew cut. He wore an army combat uniform with the ranking of colonel in his sleeve. His sleeve where rolled up past his biceps and on the left side of his chest has his last name that said 'Stanton' stitched on a patch on the front.

"All I am saying that it was a mistake to send him in. He's wreck-less, he's hard headed, and he's stubborn-"

"He sounds just like you John. Remember how you where"

"I don't know to be flattered or insulted"

The colonel sat up and walked over to the general who was looking out towards the mountain range that David was heading towards with the small convoy just a few hours ago. The general looked down at his gold pocket watch that was slightly worn. He popped open the cover and looked at the face with the cracked glass. Behind the cover said, 'This we'll defend' etched in silver.

"I think it was a mistake to send him into something he couldn't handle, I thought this would be a simple smash and grab mission. Not only we lost several brave soldiers, but we lost a couple of brave men in that AC-130." Said Albert

"You should have gave Cortez a choice to not to take the mission" said John

"I did, but I somehow convinced him that this mission would make him earn the respect that he deserves"

"The boy needs to realize that risking his own life to save his fellow soldiers isn't always the best thing to do. If he dies, we lose the best damn soldier we ever had."

"You and I both know that he can't die. I can't explain it to why but it seems like something about him just wants him to keep going…hell for all I know he might be immortal" said Albert

"…seriously?" said John with a cock-eyed look on his face

"He's a strong leader despite his 'ideas'" said Albert

The two of them looked out at the same mountain range

"What's our next move, sit down with our thumbs up our asses and wait for the NPR to come to us?" asked John

"Send in a MAF to recon before we send in any more troops. If we don't hear anything from him within the next hour, we send in reinforcements" said the general as he looked at his pocket watch again


A/N: I am sorry that it took SO long for this chapter to come out. I was busy with work, lost interest, just being lazy, etc. But the import thing is that I got around to it and it's finished. This chapter might be a little bit boring to some but it will help me move the story along. And as always thanks for reading! :)