III

"We're here, dumbass." I head the Scottish accent and I instantly knew it was Conner. I lifted my head from the train seat too see the dimly-light early morning sky as I rubbed my eyes a little before standing up to get off.

As soon as me and Conner were off the train, we heard a friendly "Hello there!" We looked in the direction of the voice to see a small, light-violet unicorn with a baby dragon by her side and a warm smile on her face. "You must be John and Connor, right?" Conner and I nodded. "Okay, well, my name is Twilight Sparkle. I'll be showing you both to your houses after I show you around a little."

After a short tour of the town, Twilight led us to our… single house? I thought we were living in different houses, but I guessed I was wrong. Whatever; as long as Connor didn't fuck up my workspace, I'd be fine with it. We thanked Miss Sparkle and headed into our house to get settled in… and hopefully set up some rules so Connor didn't go bat-shit crazy all over the place. It turned out that we did have separate rooms, which was a relief for me, but I would still have to learn how to sleep with one eye open or something to make sure that Connor doesn't booby trap my entire room.

About two hours after we had first gotten to the house, I heard a knock at the door. I didn't know who in the hell wanted to see me considering not a single pony here knew me… well, besides Twilight, but she seemed to have been rushing the tour, so she must've had something to attend to. I decided to just open up the door and see who it was. I opened the door to see nobod- I mean nopony was there. Instead, there was a huge set of boxes and in the distance, I saw a grey Pegasus in a mailm- er… mailpony's hat. She must have just brought them there one by one.

I grabbed one of the boxes that looked like it had my basic gunsmithing tools in it. When the top of the box was open I saw that it was some of my tools. It was my set of checkering tools, my hand gravers for engraving, and some other tools. I unpacked all of the boxes that had tools in them, and the only box left after that was huge. I didn't know what it could've been… My car? "Hardy-har-har Celestia" I thought, opening the box. It turned out that it wasn't my car (thank god); instead it was my drum kit.

I set up my drums in the corner of the large living room that me and Connor would now share. As soon as everything was set up, I started playing Almost Easy by Avenged Sevenfold. It felt really good to play the drums again. I hadn't had the chance to for a really long time.

At the end of the song, another knock came from the door. I opened it up to see Twilight and her small dragon companion again. "Let me guess" I started sarcastically. "You're here to complain about the noise."

"No" She said. "I come with a message from the Princess. She wants to know what the most effective and easy-to-use weapon you can make is."

"I'd say a M4A1" I suggested. "I've produced civilian legal versions of the M4, but I think I can make an M4A1."

"What's the difference?" the little dragon butted in.

"M4A1 is normally used by U.S. Special Forces because it's small and powerful, as well as fully automatic unlike the M4" I answered. "It's also compatible with a HUGE amount of different attachments like grenade launchers, sights, etc."

"But would it work for ponies?" Twilight added.

"Probably" I thought out loud. "I'm not sure. Oh, and everypony will need a sidearm just in case!"

"Sidearm?"

"A small gun that you can use as a backup for tight spaces when things happen like reloading would take too much time or you're out of ammo" I explained. "That's where Connor comes in. He's a better pistolsmith than me."

"Is there any one in particular that you would recommend?"

"I'd say an M1911" I said. "It may have a small magazine, but it's pretty good in power and you can tell it's good because its model is over 100 years old."

"Okay! I'll tell the Princess" she chirped happily.

"WAIT" I spouted, stopping her in the middle of the doorway. "You've also gotta tell her that she can't expect a lot of these too soon. Me and Connor hand-craft these things from fresh materials, so it can take longer than you'd think."

"Okay, that's good to know" She said. She then turned around and went into a slow trot towards her tree/house. I decided to tell Conner about our new assignment. I would be making the M4A1s and he would make the M1911s. The only issue was, the U.S. already didn't like Equestria connecting to its borders without permission (not like they could get it anyway), and now we would be making guns for the Equestrian military that were already frequently used by the U.S. military. Would that piss them off even more? I couldn't tell, obviously, so I just hoped for the best and went to go tell Connor.

"Yo, Connor" I greeted, entering his room.

"What's up, brother?" he responded in his thick Scottish accent.

"We got an assignment straight from the Princess" I told him. "We gotta get her military some good weapons!"

"Then what are we gonna give them?" he asked

"I'm gonna be making M4A1s and you'll be in charge of M1911s."

"Those are both U.S. military weapons" he said, unamused by my weapon choices.

"Yeah, but they're good weapons and they'll provide a great defense for Equestria" I countered.

"Don't you think that the U.S. already hates Equestria enough as it is?"

"I would care, but I'm all out of fucks to give! Equestria is unprotected against any other human-inhabited nation" I snapped. "Equestria goes to war, and every single pony here will die! We need to give this place good defenses, and dammit, that's what I intend on doing!"

"Okay, okay" he said quietly.

"Plus, in exchange for our services, we get food and shelter."

"Alright then, let's work" he said, suddenly eager, probably at the thought of being homeless and hungry.

"Wait, dumbass" I stopped him. "We don't have any materials to work with."

"Okay, then tell me when we do get some materials to work with, so I can make some masterpieces!" In the meantime, I remembered that I had brought along some materials I bought on my own to make a gun for myself. I decided to get started on that, considering I would probably not have any time to work on it later. After 2 hours, I was in the middle of making one of my all-time favorite guns: The M1 Garand Semi-Automatic Carbine, the first rifle to be a standard-issue weapon to ALL infantry of a nation. It was even called "the greatest battle implement ever devised!" It was a very interesting rifle indeed!

It had an eight-round internal clip that was inserted into the top of the rifle and ejected automatically. It was also made to be gas-operated and air-cooled. I think it is by far the coolest WWII weapon out there. I hadn't made it too far in the construction when I stopped, but I did know what I was making and I knew that gun almost inside and out.

About 10 minutes after I had stopped, I got another knock at the door. I got up and opened the door to see another package at the doorstep. I opened it to find tons of fresh ingredients for making firearms… It was time to get to work!

Me and Connor were ready to roll. It only took a few hours for Conner to complete one or two M1911s. We still needed to test them to make sure they weren't malfunctioning, but he was done with what was absolutely required. It took me a long time to get a perfectly crafted M4A1 rifle fully made and ready for testing. It may seem like we were going really fast, and we were, but we were trying to make as many parts at a time as we possibly could. A lot of the guns were turning out very well, and by 10 P.M. we had made some good progress… kind of… Obviously, we didn't get super far, but I got about 4 M4A1s done, whereas Connor had twice as many guns made. We decided that this was good enough for one day, considering we had been working almost all day now, and we felt like we deserved to get a break.

We decided that the next day, we would test them, tweak them and then I would get them ready to ship to Canterlot (with ammo and personally written instructions with hopes that it would help prevent any accidental casualties). I was completely wiped out from that day. I was up at around 4:00 A.M. when the train got there, and we had worked for hours and hours and hours. I was just glad we were making some pretty good progress. Something had just hit me: we were so far away from our old homes. It felt very, very strange in such a new place, but I shrugged off the feeling considering that it was my new home and I would have to get used to it sooner or later. I fell asleep as soon as my eyes closed after that…

I just didn't know what was going to happen later…

Chapter name from the song "So Far Away" by Avenged Sevenfold