Dimension: My Little Pony
Planet: Equestria Earth
Specific Location: Freezelock pass in the Frozen north
Time: 32 hours after the arrival of the Brothers in Arms corps
Flaming Star with Spike near his tent, overlooking the Freezelock pass. They had been standing there for twenty-four hours. Spike had fallen asleep on Flaming Star's back as they waited for Twilight to return. Flaming Star sighed. He understood that they were working off of the alliance's train schedule, but he really had expected them to be more prompt in sending military hardware against them. He couldn't understand why they were being so slow. But perhaps he was being impatient; in truth, it pained him to be away from Twilight for so long.
Suddenly, Rainbow Dash rocketed out of the sky and landed next to Flaming Star, startling Spike into wakefulness.
"Wha? Who? Where?" he yelled as he woke up, teetered on Flaming Star's back, and fell off.
"Hey Flaming Star!" said Rainbow Dash, "how are you?"
"Not good I'm afraid," sighed Flaming Star as he continued to glance at the sky, "I am worried about Twilight. She insisted that she go off to oversee a very important operation… she has yet to return."
Rainbow winked at him as she patted his shoulder with a hoof. "She'll be fine, you'll see," she said, "I've known Twilight for a good, long time, and she never leaves her pals hangin'."
Flaming Star grimaced, "I certainly hope that is the case. So, what brings you here?"
"Oh yeah," said Rainbow as she pulled out her letter from him, "Do you REALLY think I'm a worthy candidate to be commander of the Cloudsdale army?"
Flaming Star smiled and nodded, "Of course I do! In fact, Sunset was the one who personally recommended you. Why, do you think you're not up to it?"
"Oh, I know I'm up to it, I'm just unsure I SHOULD do it though."
"Why?"
"Well… From what I know now… I don't take losses very well. I know it's embarrassing, but I really can't take the sight of blood."
Flaming Star's eyes gentled. "I understand," he said, "war and violence are not pretty things. This isn't a game. However, Sunset has placed his trust in you, and I think it was well placed. You are really the pony for the job."
"But I don't know anything about commanding!" exclaimed Rainbow.
"Perhaps you do, perhaps you don't, but that doesn't matter. You're not going to do it alone: Commander Hurricane XII, descendant of the Commander Hurricane who helped found Equestria, will be co-commanding with you, and mentoring you every step of the way."
"What? Wow! I get to work with Commander Hurricane?! THE Commander Hurricane?!
"You certainly do. I've struck a deal, and she has agreed to help teach you about what it means to be a leader as you two control the Cloudsdale airforce."
Rainbow Dash smiled, almost dreamily. "This is awesome…"
Flaming Star winked, and was about to reply to that when his eye caught smoke on the horizon. His heart froze. The war train from the alliance was coming… Twilight had failed.
He turned to look at it as it came barreling along the Freezelock pass towards the tank emplacements. It wasn't the sight of the massive armored vehicle streaking across the train tracks that truly worried him, it was the implication that Twilight had somehow failed in her task that the train represented.
"Twilight… failed… How is this possible?" he said, his minding quadrupling in its revolutions as he desperately tried to comprehend a legitimate excuse for why his fillyfriend failed her task.
"Failed? What? Twilight?" said Rainbow, completely at a loss.
Flaming Star pulled himself back into the present. "It doesn't matter now," he said, "we will have to worry about Twilight in a moment. What we need to do at this very moment is prepare to repel this train. It cannot get into Equestria!"
Flaming Star snatched up a radio and spoke into it. "Prepare to repel the train! Fire at will in thirty-four seconds!"
Rainbow spread her wings so that she could fly in closer, but Flaming Star grabbed one of her hoofs. "Stay with me, Rainbow," he said, not taking his eyes off the oncoming train, "this could get ugly."
"Do we have anything to worry about?" asked Rainbow Dash as she landed on the ground again and folded up her wings.
"No… I don't think so…" muttered Flaming Star, almost inaudibly as he squinted at the train.
The train slowed a tad as tanks fired at it. Most of the shots missed or hit the armored sides at an oblique angle, causing a bounce. The train then rotated massive turrets towards the tanks and took aim. At first, Flaming Star wasn't in the bit least worried. The tanks were safe within the nooks and crannies of the pass, keeping them safe from any form or Armor Piercing Composite Rigid shells, or even High Explosive shells. Then he noticed something usual… They weren't regular cannon turrets. They were Heavy Turbo Laser cannons regularly seen on Galactic Empire Star Destroyers in the Star Wars dimension.
"My… God…" whispered Flaming Star, his heart turning to ice. The cannons fired, and all hell broke loose. The alcoves that the tanks had used for cover simply exploded, annihilating the said cover and the tanks using it. In literally seconds, the cannons had decimated one… then two… then three tank emplacements. Hoofs shaking, Flaming Star seized a radio and yelled into it.
"Every tank retreat! I repeat… EVERY TANK RETREAT! GET OUT OF THE PASS!"
"Um… Flaming Star?" said Rainbow Dash, almost in a whimper.
Flaming Star looked at Rainbow, she was pointing at the train. He followed the direction of her pointing hoof and saw that one of the cannons was pointing straight at them.
"Well…" was all he managed to say before the thing shot them and blew up the entire perch.
The ledge crumbled and collapsed, barreling down the side of the hill in a massive landslide of rock and rubble. It crashed to the ground kicking up colossal clouds of smoke. Buried beneath this labyrinthian pile of massive stones were Rainbow Dash, Flaming Star, and Spike. The train rolled away in the wake of the retreating tank emplacements as it carried on towards Ponyville.
The pile of stones from the destroyed ledge suddenly shifted, and Flaming Star crawled out. He was relatively unhurt, thanks to his immense strength. Gritting his teeth, he managed to drag out a bloodied front hoof. He pointed it at the tracks a kilometer ahead of the train.
"I'm sorry Equestria," he whispered, "They will be no supplies coming this way again… but I have no choice."
With that, he unleashed a massive blast of explosive energy. The bolt sizzled through the air and hit the tracks just as the train was passing over it. The explosive blast derailed the train, causing it to tumble over, and the tracks themselves flew high in the air like a ballet of twisted metal and railroad ties. The explosion then caused the Freezelock pass to tremble… then collapse. A massive hail of stones and rocks roared down to block the passageway entirely in an explosion of stones that most certainly triggered tremors throughout the land. The train, that had been derailed, slowly skidded to a stop. Suddenly the doors to several of the train cars opened and alliance troopers and light tank vehicles akin to M2 Bradleys rolled out into the land of Equestria.
Darkness began to slowly eat away at Flaming Star's vision as he began to pass out. Grinding his teeth, he dragged himself from the pile of rubble. He rolled limply down the stack of stones and came to a rest at the bottom.
"Rainbow Dash?" he yelled, gasping for breath in the dust-choked air, "Spike?"
He tried to get up, but simply collapsed to the ground and passed out.
It was the sunlight from a rising sun playing across his face that awoke him. His eyes snapped open and he slowly got to all fours. His body was one throbbing mass of pain, but he quickly collected his faculties as he glanced around. In the distance, the massive armies that had been stored in the war train from the alliance gathered in large groups, all preparing for word from the alliance. Flaming Star swore as he turned to look at the pile. Somewhere underneath that pile was Rainbow Dash and Spike, dead or alive he did not know.
Raising a trembling hoof, Flaming Star called upon his vast reserves of power to reduce the gravity around the stones. Slowly, one-by-one, the slabs of rocks lifted into the air. In a couple of minutes, he had cleared the area to reveal two small, disheveled forms at the bottom of the pile: Rainbow Dash and Spike.
Eyes wide with fear, Flaming Star limped as fast as he could towards the two. Stumbling, he reached them in a cloud of dust. Quickly he kneeled down and rolled first Rainbow Dash and then Spike over. He placed a hoof over Rainbow Dash's neck as he felt for a pulse.
He sighed with relief as he felt it, ever so faintly. He then turned to Spike and searched for a pulse as well. It too was present.
"You two are one of the toughest groups I have even worked with," he muttered to himself. He was personally surprised that any pony had survived that rockslide. With his conscience at rest with respects to the welfare of his two friends, Flaming Star's mind turned to Twilight. What had happened?
He gave a shuddering sigh. There were so many possibilities, so many things that could have gone wrong. Had she been captured? Had she simply not managed to detonate the Yolk pass in time? Had her plan simply been sabotaged? He couldn't comprehend all the ways. However, he was then pulled back into the present as Rainbow Dash groaned and shifted in the dust.
Eyes brightening, Flaming Star quickly limped over.
"Hey, Rainbow, are you okay?" he said into her ear.
"Just five more minutes…" she muttered.
Flaming Star lifted her head with a hoof and said, a little louder, "I need you to wake up."
"Go away…" mumbled Rainbow.
Flaming Star blinked. After a pause, he took a deep breath and shouted, "RAINBOW DASH! THE WONDERBOLTS ARE OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR! THEY WANT TO TALK WITH YOU!"
Rainbow Dash's eyes shot open and she looked around in a frenzy. "Wonderbolts?! Where?!"
Then she saw her surroundings and remember what had happened. She slowly shut her eyes again and forced out a single word. "Ow."
Flaming Star helped her sit up. "Yes, I know. Ow. We need to get Spike up, we can't dawdle here any longer, we need to take action."
Rainbow Dash groaned again. "Action? I feel like I was run over by a stampede."
"Well, you aren't exactly wrong. It really just depends on whether you were thinking about a buffalo stampede, a cow stampede, or a rock stampede."
Rainbow blinked. "This isn't funny, Flaming Star," she said, "What are we going to do?"
Flaming Star's eyes hardened. "We need to fight back. Obviously some creature foreign to this dimension is supplying the alliance with weapons. Knowing Sunset, I don't think he ever gave out plans or innovations pertaining to Heavy Turbo Laser cannons. Someone supplied the alliance, and they did it without anypony ever knowing."
"Demons?" asked Rainbow Dash as she wiped dust off her face.
Flaming Star bit his lip. "I don't know. Maybe."
As Rainbow Dash continued to wipe the dust off her body, Flaming Star went off to Spike and shook him.
"Eh? What?" mumbled Spike as his eyes opened a little, "Twilight?"
"No, sorry, it's Flaming Star," replied Flaming Star as he helped Spike to his feet. Spike shook his head and said, "What's going on?"
"Well, where should I start?" said Flaming Sat with a sigh, "Twilight somehow failed her task in blowing up the Yolk pass in Bray, the train barrled to the Freezelock pass where it met our tanks. Somehow the train was armed with advanced technology from another dimension and blasted our troops into oblivion. It then proceeded to blow our overseeing ledge into dust as well. I managed to destroy the tracks and Freezelock pass then, but they managed to get part way through and successfully unload all their hardware and troops."
Spike rubbed his head. "Wait," he said, "could you go back to the part about you wondering where you should start? I blacked out for a moment."
"Twilight… failed something?" asked Rainbow Dash incredulously. In most situations, she would have thought something like this funny, but not this time.
"She was supposed to stop that war train before it even reached the Freezelock pass," replied Flaming Star, "she didn't do so."
"But that doesn't make any sense!" exclaimed Rainbow, "Twilight never fails anything! What happened to her?"
Flaming Star sighed. "I have no idea."
All of a sudden, Spike, who had been looking at the sky, pointed up and said, "Look!"
Rainbow and Flaming Star looked at where Spike was pointing and saw a hot air balloon slowly descending on their position. The group stepped back as it slowly came to a landing. Charging up his hoofs with lacerating plasma, Flaming Star slowly moved up to it.
"Who is in there?" he said sharply, "get out and show your hoofs!"
A mule climbed out and sat down. He raised his front hoofs high as he said, "Don't fear, I am a friend."
Flaming Star pulled the energy back into his body and said, "Who are you?"
"I am the Bray senator Martique Muleen."
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at him. "What do you want?"
"I have precious information pertaining to why Twilight failed to destroy the Yolk pass." He said.
Flaming Star's eyes widened a tad bit, though the rest of his face did not register anything. "Very well," he said coldly, "what is it?"
"We were betrayed!" exclaimed Martique, "Pontius, the prime senator of Bray, double-crossed us! Twilight and I went to destroy the pass, but when the time came down to it, we were apprehended by Irrum soldiers! I managed to escape by stealing a hot air balloon that I had tied down near the pass, but Twilight, who had tried to resist earlier, had been knocked out and carried away. I knew that with Pontius obviously siding with the alliance, I could not return home, so I came here to carry the news to you in Equestria! Did you manage to stop the alliance war train?"
"Does it look like we did?" said Rainbow Dash harshly.
Martique looked around at the decimated Freezelock. "Um… yes?"
Flaming Star nodded to the armies of the alliance in the distance. "You mean no."
Martique looked where Flaming Star was looking and saw the enemies. He sighed, "There is nothing we can do now. Bray has sided with the alliance."
"Pontius, the prime senator betrayed Twilight?" said Flaming Star, "In that case, I think it is time for me to pull a trick of my own."
"Like what?" asked Spike.
Flaming Star grinned, "I can use my powers to teleport into Bray. I will apprehend Pontius with ease, and then force out of him the location of where Twilight is being held. I will then rescue her. A piece of cake really, I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner."
He then turned his back on them and opened a portal. What he saw cause his stomach to turn to ice. Usually a portal was a thin ring of rippling energy, with a clear view of the other end of the portal. What he saw when he opened a portal was a solid oval of energy. He closed it and then tried to teleport there. He shimmered, and then simply rematerialized again. He tried again. And again. And again. He then tried to teleport to Canterlot, that failed as well.
"Um… what happened?" asked Rainbow after a pause.
Flaming Star blinked, almost convinced he was just having a really bad dream.
"They've… they've blocked Bray off…" he said breathlessly, "I cannot enter any place in that land, or Irrum, or Equus, or anyplace."
"How is that possible?" said Rainbow, who began to feel very anxious.
"It's not really," said Flaming Star, "that technology was only in its prototype stages during the traveler-demon war, and after the war ended, the technology was abandoned completely. This should NOT be possible!"
"It looks very possible to me," muttered Martique.
Flaming Star sighed and turned to the group.
"We need to get to Canterlot," he said, "and warn the Princesses of what is happening. We need to get ready for what is to come. Something very powerful and evil is helping the alliance, and we have no way as of yet to stop it."
"Then let's go!" said Rainbow Dash, "We Equestria ponies always find a way to overcome evil! That's something Sunset taught me. To the hot air balloon!"
"Let's just hope that Sunset is still right," sighed Flaming Star.