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The great species war as everyone had known it was preceded by a vision of the past.

A vision to one who would witness the changes in the world.

In his dream, the elder raccoon of his tribe had recounted wisdom to him as though he were still the young mancub so long ago.

It was a tribe of mixed furs who habitated a reservation on the east coast of the United States. Treeholder opens those rheumy eyes and stares directly into his own; meeting eyes like stars, uttering his distinctive wet cough from decades of tobacco use. "Little Creekrunner, do you understand the nature of wisdom?"

He thought for a long moment but could find no truth from his learnings, shrugging as he watched their breaths steam in the cold Winter morning.

Treeholder laughs with a series of desperate gagging coughs. "Knowledge finds a mind as water finds a body. We always take in too much, so alot of it is wasted. However, a great deal of knowledge clears the mind of dark thoughts and taint as it passes through and is forgotten. Hate is a foul impurity cleansed by a spring of new discoveries. Remember this always."

Blaine awoke the next morning hot and sweaty like a race. . . he immediately banished that thought as he turned on the t.v., sitting up in bed and toweling off sweaty hair on a pillow.

On the screen, a Catholic preaching golden retriever praised the will of god while declaring the blasphemy of all equine-kind, who would go to the hell for their sacrilege of seeing themselves as hedonistic gods of pleasure and pride. He smirked wryly before changing the channel to an early morning showing of vulpine news, where Ben Gleck admonished the United Kingdom for having a national equine pride week and accusing them of losing secular equality while he himself was oblivious to ignore that not only is the British royal family made of horses, but that the U.K. hosted a pride week for every other species in a spirit of fairness.

There was talk of an invasion; of horses wanting more out of the world and how they might enslave or torture other furries for their enjoyment. It would be a Totalitarian regime like Communism and Greek society combined. Horses would be free to do what they wanted, and all other species had to please them.

On the surface, all these rumours seemed absurd. However, history is full of instances where big lies are proven as truth if told enough times. Even in these times, an exploitation of proven knowledge was unavoidable and Blaine had heard talk of an insurgency on a digital warpath.

Digital Warpath had two definitions. One, it could stand for an anonymous meeting as a public demonstration which was organised on the internet in message boards.

Two, it could stand for a Bulgarian Aggro-Tech band with explicit anti-equine lyrics who stood out to a quickly growing segment of disenfranchised youth who had lost hope in a failing economic infrastructure.

Wherever these lies had been heard, both Digital Warpaths seemed to invigorate young tempers for war; everyone twenty-five and younger seemed eager to go to war with the purported enemy of the world--horse.

Two months after waking up that one morning, Blaine sensed something coming up in the works. Anarchy was approaching and it seemed to favor those who had lost their reason.

In the news at night, teens were going to jail regularly for mob beatings and murders of lone horse furs on the streets. Police were overwhelmed by the chaos going on in the cities. There were enough DW (Digital Warpath) cd's confiscated from the young offenders to circle the Earth one and a half times.

The music was especially popular with the tribes in the United States, as the group seemed to take great pains to imitate all kinds of different folk rhythms for different traditional native songs.

For a Cheyenne rain dance song, they screamed for a rain of blood to spray the globe in a sea from every artery on a horse that could be slashed.

The day that rivers would run with the color of rubies soon approached.

Outside his window, he heard as automatic weapons erupted and echoed in the air like millions of woodpeckers drilling in sporadic random patterns. It sounded like a civil war in a third world country or running through a war-torn city in a ww2 video-game.

He was alone in his leased apartment as he watched what was going on outside. Everyone--all kinds of young furs were running around with enough weapons to make a Colombian drug cartel jealous. At first, Blaine wondered where all of this had come from, but he supposed it didn't matter; they had guns and the rebellion had started.

Staring transfixed at the glowing fireflies of weapon blasts and cigarettes in the dim fading daylight, he was too distracted to notice two of his best friends from his tribe come into the door;

Felix was a red fox with cunning eyes. His naked chest was covered in blue snail shell swirls as a Celtic warrior might wear as a six pouch ammunition vest criss-crossed burlap straps over his pecs and abs, AK47 slung over his shoulder as though he were an Nicaraguan guerrilla fighter in a Latin America militia.

Ray was a black bear who had urban camouflage all over his giant body, a cradle of eight rockets slung on his back in a burlap pouch as he had an RPG-7 slung on a shoulder.

Blaine stared at them; the war had come and he couldn't believe it or gather his nerve enough to decide if he wanted to join.

Their eyes flickered and their bodies glowed bright orange with the glittering spiteful blaze of Molotov cocktails exploding with flame like fireworks outside his window.

As he looked at them, he faced the reality that he was going on the Warpath with the youth of his tribe and the city to do what the social attitude expected of him even as helicopters flipped and buzzed in the air like giant bugs and deployed military furs on roof-tops to try and discourage or snipe them. . .

Clydesdale core met for briefing two hours after the genocide started. They had been casually eating in mess or on leave with friends in London, but when the species civil war erupted, they were immediately withdrawn from non-essential activities to receive orders and assemble gear.

Clydesdale core, or corps de equus, were an elite heavy weapons group selected for special training for situations which called for one soldier with one chaingun to turn back a numerically superior force or defend a specific location until an evacuation could take place.

It was a group made up exclusively of draft horses as opposed to other strong species not because England was partial to equines, but because only draft breeds volunteered in large enough numbers to put a battalion together.

The standard weapon of a soldier in the force was an M134 aero minigun; a weapon normally carried only on aircraft or armored vehicles. Each soldier had to be able to carry the minigun, several spare batteries, and a tin backpack filled with a coiled belt of 5.56 bullets which numbered about six thousand.

The M134 was capable of stopping pretty much anything but tanks, but they had anti-armor support from the air anyway so they could easily focus all their attention on shredding anyone who got in their way as well as the occasional charging car.

Fred and Jenny slapped on their packs and holsters as they fed belts through the receivers of their weapons, but kept the safety on. They had been married to the corps as long as they had each other--15 years and no regrets. Together, they had done some terrible things, but together, they had also found some measure of peace with their haunted memories.

In briefing, they found out that they would be taken by Concord jet to America in an effort to stabilize the genocide. It was a N.A.T.O. mandate and the government of the United States was in chaos trying to keep the civil unrest from expanding outside of major cities.

Once there, they would co-ordinate with local military forces to establish temporary embassies to evacuate civilian horses too as troop strength could be bolstered to repress the insurgency and enforce a Martial law curfew until the situation could be sorted out.

On the way over, the married couple found time to be naughty together despite being on an airplane and despite there being a bathroom that was barely big enough for one large fur, but they managed to improvise in the coach compartment while their comrades ignored their passion out of consideration.

It was a mile high fuck club for two reasons in this case, as Jenny could have swore that was how long her mate was as he gave her a good steady plowing.

Fireflies lit up the night in the shape of old Soviet tracer rounds uttered from AK47's and light machineguns. It was a loud clatter like millions of small pots banging on the roads and walls of houses.

The spectacles of war shone in his eyes like the glistening lights of a fireworks display; hundreds of bursting towers of flame from decayed ChiCom grenades and Russian mortar round duds being thrown by hand. It startled him as he watched, and in watching, became a part of the show as a nearby dentist office owned by a now killed old mare went up in a pillar of roaring flame as the glass on the windows of the two-story building crackled like thawing ice in the heat and exploded in shards of betrayed stardust.

Far in the distance, giant footsteps or the thumping of big drums as a huge gun fired bullets or some other artillery that dwarfed assault rifle rounds by comparison. It had to be some kind of Howitzers-the Military must be using them to strategically fire teargas in congested areas of fighting, as white mists travelled down side streets about him like wispy armies of ghosts.

Blaine held his breath and eyes as the wind blew a potent wave at him. The phantom stung his eyes and burned his lungs red with desperate pain and choking before drifting on like some Valkyrie of Valhalla contending peace in a manner that bellicose beings of war could understand.

But no one seemed to heed the messenger of the mists as it spread through the city like a roving fog.

Up in the clouds, hell seemed to open up as the sky was on fire and whistling like a dirge. The moon seemed cast in a blood-soaked burial shroud hanging from amputated hips with the dripping of ashes.

In a cauldron surrounded by the fires of hell, each of them who revolted were now forsaken in the hot glow of war; baptised in the flickering haze of burning buildings or streets and cars aflame with the blood red hunger of a false sunset.

He walked on sore feet in a loose gathering of thirty or so other Warpath guerrillas. There was no leader, though a former Chess star seemed to take the initiative. Blaine supposed they gave the planning to him since he seemed too fragile and skinny to carry more than a pistol.

He would have peeled away and hid, hoping this miasma of fighting forms vanished so that he would have room to breathe once more. As much as he wanted to, there was a great expectation for him to go forth with this gangly bunch of teens and young adults like a small tide of conquest as greater waves threw themselves at the steady firm walls of the football stadium to no avail; red sea foam splattered on the pavement and lips of the dying as heavy pebbles splashed in their unnaturally crushing numbers.

The sight of so many bodies rushing towards one building amongst the hanging mist of blood in the air left a sour iron taste in Blaine's mouth while a fleet of helicopters fluttered overhead like giant annoying mosquitoes in various apparently random directions.

He watched as the stadium was flooded by the mess of angry bodies just as as a Chinook transport helicopter buzzed away-laden with escaping civilians far to the south across the river into rustic areas.

Jenny looked out the open hatch to the flames and scattered panicked ants below. Fighting in many wars and defending countless safe zones and embassies for United Nations Peacekeepers, she had never been called to serve as a riot officer M.P. in an oddly now uncivilized place such as America.

The very world had turned upside-down, and hell was in the sky as the scattered heaven of bomb shelters and cellars were the last safe refuge for those who hid from death and those who wished to remain neutral in this new place of madness.

She rode in a retrofitted Black hawk helicopter with barely enough room for just herself, her husband, and a small counter-terrorism ops pony mare named Sheila. Sheila was small--roughly the same height as her PSG-1 sniping rifle positioned on her shoulder. The weapon looked too big for her, and it seemed that the pony was deceptively too fragile to handle the recoil of the gun.

As the helicopter hovered on a hill in a large recreational park, Jenny and Fred hopped out on the short grass--making the Black Hawk lurch into the air like a slingshot from the sudden loss of weight before it zipped off to the top of a radio tower nearby.

The small form of the pony could be seen kicking out two decently sized green metal containers before jumping out. She busied herself with some things in both the cases before setting up a small satellite dish as she finished up and lay the rifle on the ledge and scanned the surrounding park with the scope.

With the lull in fighting where they were positioned, the two drafters decided to break into the K rations and have some dinner while they were waiting. After years in the service, eating in dangerous situations was almost natural.

They looked into each other's eyes and swapped souls; an eternity of love and lifetime bonding between them like a silk thread holding them together. Wind blew through their short-cropped Trojan-styled manes like a gust through manicured black grass.

Fred pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and put one to his lips before lighting up and putting them away. Since Jenny had never smoked in her life, he didn't bother to offer her one as he took short drags and looked in the distance toward the big fires and popping of explosions.

In the unlit atmosphere of the park at night, the tiny glowing tip of the fag seemed to illuminate Fred's face in a sickly burning glow as if being consumed. It was an oddly haunting image that Jenny couldn't shake from her head as they heard far off howls like wolves, but were actually some type of new weapon the National Guard had developed and tested last year.

She shook her head before looking around the park. If it weren't for the civil unrest in the city, this would be a beautiful place to stroll around-and snack on grass. Jenny bent down and plucked a few blades to try, enjoying the fresh taste in her mouth immensely. While not recognizing what kind of grass it was, the sweet bitter taste was still nice. Some horse and cattle furs were typically connoisseurs of fields and lawns as others were of wine or cheese.

They watched in bemused glory as the different Black Hawks retreated out of the city to the staging point forty or so miles away. For an instant, they seemed to have a foreboding regret at being left behind while a significant number of their contingent had been held in reserve at the base in case things didn't turn out too well--or maybe it was arrogance on the part of the supervisors to meet the mobs with a token force of elite soldiers.

The trees fluttered and dropped pink flowers onto the ground like snow. The ground was sparsely covered in the blossoms as if Winter had come early, and even the coldness in the blowing wind seemed to confirm it.

Suddenly, the pony radioed into them on their headsets and motioned with one arm towards something coming from the South-East vector of the park, and the two drafters eyes did not deceive them. Far off in the distance, a camouflage flood of crushing bodies rushed like a raging river towards them and seemed endless.

The couple took the safeties off their aero miniguns and supported them in both hands, sweat on their faces as they watched the approaching storm with experienced intent. Like a stream of lava, the countless furred and human bodies consumed the landscape and trod down everything in a stampede of unorganised haste.

There was no order, no sense of defense, no sense of self-preservation. These disillusioned young souls seemed intent on charging towards their deaths like samurai in a Banzai charge.

Both horses seemed to pray to whatever powers that be for this mob to give up or surrender before breaching the perimeter and forcing the specialists to fire on them with two weapons that would constitute a war crime if used in other circumstances, and a rifle that could kill someone from a mile away in the right hands.

This animated crowd did none of that, trespassing the 100 yard perimeter with a vicious arrogance and wildly firing weapons. The faces were murky and indiscernible in the odd darkness which surrounded everything.

The drafters gave the mob ten more yards to change their minds, but it was of no point. Kids and young adults swarmed forth and closed the gap quickly; bullets erupting from different weapons that had been smuggled into the streets via black markets and sympathetic gun shops.

Fred whinnied loudly like an equine god in protest of their sacrilege and opened up first; spraying them in a hot shower of four or five hundred bullets and almost seemed to wince as the civilians fell and toppled over one another in a scene reminiscent of cavalry meeting machineguns for the first time.

But it never seemed to end, and neither did the massacre. The horses were killing children in self defence, and the pain of this act never ceased; toppling bodies of boy soldiers implanting themselves in the drafter's minds for the rest of their lives.

Behind them, the pony sniper was picking her shots and blasting anyone down who brought up any weapon heavier than an assault rifle. On numerous occasions, blood blasted out their backs as the heavy bullets passed through them, or burst a grey cloud of brains out onto others like a Caligula-style shower.

Coupled with that, there was vomiting and people slipping in the mud that all the spilled blood had created.

For a moment, the three specialists thought they could rest. . .but it was an illusion as a fresh group of conscripts jumped over bodies and continued the assault so reminiscent of a pointless charge into superior weapons.

Blaine was struggling in the chaos of the park battle. So many dead and dying people under his feet that he thought he had been sent to hell. Hell. . .this certainly looked like it. Even outside the choking mass of buildings, the war had still progressed like a tumor in a dying body--spreading all over and bringing disorder to the flesh. He supposed there could be no greater invasion than an invasion from the inside.

Three guns fired from up ahead; two fast and one rifle. Bullets zipped around like angered hornets as the two fast guns zipped like chainsaws as an unbelievable amount of rounds flew through the air and chopped through bodies and felled them like trees; branches and roots snapping off like twigs and hurling through the air.

Felix crouched and fired his rifle, which seemed to snap out lead like it was hitting robocop or the terminator, bullets bouncing off their armor as if they were Zeus and Thor striking down his friends and schoolmates with the lightning of death.

He paused in his march as something warm hit his cheek. At first he assumed it to be blood, but he reached up to feel it and pulled his fingers away to reveal greying flesh which had come out of some random person's head.

Looking up he watched in stunned horror as Ray slowly fell to his knees and collapsed, but not before he got a brief look through the tall bear's head at the tower like some morbid peephole.

The fox threw down his rifle and tried to help Ray, but there was no course of action. The bruin had been instantly killed and not even all the king's horses and all the king's men could put the poor bastard together again.

Blaine watched and could not believe what was happening as Felix stripped down until he was naked and picked up a grenade from his belongings before he charged up the hill with other attacking youth.

It was such an awkward sight that he thought he had dreamt this whole ordeal. A lull in the guns as Felix was screaming like an animal and running quite fast with what looked like a furious last act before the fox fell down and a green ball was thrown through the air like a water balloon.

Fred saw it first. It looked like a small kiwi or eggplant, but contained a far more potent flavor inside. Before Jenny knew what was going on, her husband was dropping on the grenade as if doing a belly flop on a soda can. One or two seconds later, fire erupted from under him as his body jumped a foot in the air from the blast.

Her eyes lit up like an avenging angel as she raised her gun and erupted fury forth from the barrel like a volcano. Rounds snapped haphazardly like drunk bees and skipped on flesh like stones in lakes.

When nothing stood in the wake of her anger, the shire finally allowed herself some time to grieve for the crippling loss to her soul. There were the groans and screams of the wounded but nobody again raised a weapon against her.

The battle for the hill in the recreation park had been won, though at horrible loss and a deepening ache of despair she could neither forgive or forget.

Flipping over his body, Jenny felt a pain in her heart as she looked at Fred's glassy empty taxidermy eyes before taking the blood-soaked smokes from his pocket and lighting one up for herself--

Carrying on his torch.

Blaine lay amongst scattered lifeless dolls as he fought for breath from under a pile of discarded bodies and parts. Amazingly, he had survived the battle without injury and had been pinned under a pile of dead or squirming bodies.

He didn't know how long he'd fought to breathe or when everything had become silence, but the sounds of war were fading within hours. Fewer bombs and guns fired; as if the revolt was slowing like a runaway train that had crashed and slid to a halt on its side.

Digging through bloody clumps of flesh, bone, and clothing, Blaine gasped for air and struggled for survival as he pushed himself from the pile of death. After an eternity of scrabbling through his fellow peers and friends, he had reached the top and came to the realization that they were all dead.

Every fur and person that he had marched with was now under him like felled timber, and it was a maddening morbid thought that he was surrounded by them. He wanted to scream, but his tired body protested and wouldn't take him any farther.

When a helicopter shined a light on him from above and announced his survival, Blaine could only pass out and let an eternity of darkness take him while fingers crawled all over his skin like spiders.

His subconscious mind throbbed in the abyssal empty world for an eternity; eyes daring not to open for fear of being reminded of all the awful things that had occurred around. In this manner, his denial almost brought him into a maddening comatose delusion only fit for angered dreamers on the brink of insanity.

After a long rest in her quarters, Jenny went to see the commander of the legion. There was little to be said of the incident as she spoke candidly to the big leopard spot shire with a patch over one eye and a revolver the size of a chair.

Lt. Colonel Raych smoothed back his close-cropped mane and nods toward the others present in the briefing room and was about to leave, but was distracted by an odd request from Captain Trevenale; a lesser officer who oversaw matters in Jenny's own 50 member battle-group.

Initially he was ignored, as Raych did not like the more out-spoken of his senior staff, but one word caught his ears which deserved merit. In the Captain's request, there was talk of a prisoner taken in the untimely action. Frankly, besides matters of utter war, Clydesdale Core did not have any protocols for dealing with civilians captured in hostile operations.

It took some light discourse amongst themselves, when they noticed Jenny hanging on in the rear inauspiciously. From there, despite her protests, she found them unanimously decide to saddle her with the burden. Jenny wasn't particularly enthralled over the arrangement--especially since he was part of the mob which had killed her mate.

Sighing with exaggerated exasperation as she clopped down the tiled halls to the hospital wing, she passed by many of her and her husbands friends, who knocked gloves with her as she walked through them.

It felt like a great insult to be a babysitter to one of the horde who caused her such pain. She was almost wishing she had finished him off before the rescue helicopter saw him climbing out of the bodies like a blood-covered rat.

With a giant hand clutching the doorknob to the hospital wing of the newly-converted office building, she almost broke it while walking inside and ducking her head; knob still in her hand and looking like a silver blueberry in comparison.

She looked over him, sleeping on his side in a little made up cot, and was tempted to strangle him from all the rage which still resided in her body from the death of her husband. It was ironic that she had been given the responsibility of guarding the one person she wanted to kill the most.

Sitting in her fury for a moment as a smoldering volcano, she observed him for a long moment as he slumbered like some small wounded animal that had been rescued from the streets. As Jenny thought about it, he truly looked pathetic and unworthy of her efforts.

Blaine was coming out of the deep pit of horror as he roused awake and found his body ached in many places due to the way he had been put on the flimsy cot.

When he rolled the single green burlap sheet from his legs, he twisted just enough to see that he wasn't alone. Blinking twice, he saw the giant brazenly glaring creature stand across the room from him in fatigues and a sports bra that kept her mammaries tight to her chest while giving her such interesting cleavage.

For a moment, he could only stare at her, and she merely stood stiffly like a statue; piercing eyes stabbing his soul with a cold calculating hatred. After that moment passed, he opened his mouth--only to be told to shut it as she relayed the conditions of his imprisonment, as well as her unhappy part in it.

Blaine could only nod his head dumbly as she declared her utter distaste for him and everything he did in that sophisticated United Kingdom accent. It was obvious some sort of fury passed through her like a vengeful ghost.

It was at this instant when he began to have concern over his well-being. He had been caught in a time of undeclared war, and could easily be executed for treason or sent to prison for the rest of his life for his part in the revolt. However small, he was a valid scapegoat to blame for the incident as all the others had died and were no longer held to account for their actions.

After a token moment of silence between them did she finally shake her head in exasperation and leave out the door that was barely big enough for her while another much smaller equine came in.

This was a smoke grey pony in an intelligence officer's dark blues. He casually clopped in, smoothing his cropped mane with a small black comb before taking a chair a few yards from the cot. Crossing his arms, the Lt. frisked his tail about as he cleared his thick neck with a grunt and prepared to talk.

By the time the horse had finished an hour or so later, he left the room with a smug grin and called for a briefing of his superiors to reconvene. It was an odd hour, as Blaine had been interrogated, but not in the harsh manner that he had been accustomed to in movies; it was simply a matter of answering some questions which he had no reason to lie over.

In his mind, Blaine owed loyalty to no one; not to horses and not to the mob who had incensed his friends and got them killed. In fact, he would have been angrier at the horses for the death of his tribal fellows if it weren't for his cool logic interrupting that irrational circle of grudging hate.

He passed through eternity with only his memories to haunt him before that strange custodial creature appeared in his cell again. She crept through the doorway with two 2-liter bottles of cola gripped in her hooves looking like the tiny bottles that came out of vending machines in comparison to her size.

As she slammed one down on the ground by his bedside, she hastily twisted the cap off hers and gulped it all down effortlessly like a machine. He could only look in awe, as it would take him two or three days to finish this bottle on his own.

Wiping drink from her chin, she grinned and told him all about how the suppliers bought most of their soda in 2-liters because it was cheaper (80 cents a bottle) and most of the troops in the core were so large that they drank 2-liters like a cup of water from a fountain--nothing.

Having no thirst, nor any desire to beg her mighty mareness to go to the bathroom, Blaine turned back over in his pathetic bed and tried to sleep. And as he drifted off, he wondered if his horrid memories would end or if the nightmares of sleep would stop.

Jenny sighed and left the small ad hoc detention room of the community center-converted-base as she went down more winding halls into the indoor basketball court where salad was being served to the equine soldiers as they waited in line holding plates and waving their tails lazily about with casual snorts or hushed squeals.

She took up a plate for herself and stood behind a red roan male beast with fur and hair the color of rust as she began to notice odd things in the facility. Nothing major, just small things she had noted day to day as she went about her duties and training on the temporary base.

The first thing she noticed was that the non-equine military furs were no longer present at the headquarters as they had been before. She would have attributed this to the war continuing in the other major cities and that they were needed elsewhere, but the departure had a rank odour about it.

Second, those in charge--officers and staff--were not talkative today and roamed about with these nervous implications in their eyes as though they were aware of some impending storm that could not be prepared for or escaped.

She walked past the serving trays until she came to the chopped purple-skinned onions. For some weird reason, she was the only person she knew of who would fill a plate with enough to make onion rings for a restaurant for a year. Jenny had a mountain of the veggies on her plate and smiled wryly as it induced tears in everyone she walked past; everyone except herself.

Eating these things for so long, she had built up an immunity to the acid-producing fumes of onions and their somewhat unpleasant strong taste.

Though, there was one odd thing she couldn't dismiss as coincidence. In the week or so her unit shared with the American militia, their non-equine members sure went through a lot of cheap earbuds like nothing. She would have stopped thinking about that if it weren't for her curiosity as to what they had been listening to which was so important to dedicate all those limitless hours at rest.

As she was in the middle of her lunch, the hair was standing on the back of her neck like cactus quills. Something was definitely in the air and it was coming soon. With her animal instincts still active, she could be just as wary of disasters such as tsunamis like other creatures.

A hurricane of steel came to greet the base. With a flurry of helicopters slicing through air like jackhammers, the ground and walls shook to the random things exploding outside like tiny supernovas impacting the soil and concrete. Her legs trembled and wobbled as she tried to stand on a floor that suddenly felt like a ship tossing at sea, her half-eaten lunch crashing to the floor as chairs and tables vibrated.

She quickly made her way to the armory like all the others even as she heard a clamour of small drums from some hallway far away on one end as the U.S. military forces betrayed them like nothing had happened between them.

It was ridiculous and unbelievable! First the yanks invited her unit overseas to help stop a rebellion, and now they were usurped as protectors into some undeclared little petty war. She ducked her head as the ceiling caved in nearby with a heavy rain of fiery asbestos plaster pieces and smoky ashes. Numerous soldiers had already easily dodged around the odd mess here and there as small rockets exploded on the roof launched by helicopters.

A roar of a million lions sounded out as the fuel depot exploded with a giant whoosh of fiery rage. More shaking and chaos ensued as the sane world she once knew was now collapsing around her with one section of roof at a time.

Jenny shuddered as burning bits of wall and paint rained down like cherry blossoms; the little flaming things like dying flowers in glory of their last moments of life.

Blaine shuddered as an impromptu hell washed over the base like a chaos of lucid nightmares. As the base shook, he watched the door frame bend and creak as the door suddenly popped off its top hinge and blew outward like a cork as he looked out cautiously toward the hallway and could see the flurry of fiery bees buzzing through the air like light-speed fireflies.

Right outside his newly-opened prison, a firefight was going on as a hive of angry hornets zipped around in sudden bursts of light as shouting and screaming echoed off the walls. A barrage slapped across the space like random fists as he dropped to the ground and watched burning black holes suddenly pop into the walls as the deafening noise of the feverish fight brought a rapid dropping of wounded and dead on both sides of the corridor with muted thumps on the plastic tile.

There came a call erupting through the nasal tones of talking horses: to repel the invaders back into the streets and hold back the torrent of spilling bodies as bullets cracked into wood like the breaking of chain links. On the floor, a few of the spent casings rolled by the doorway, still smoking and hot as he stared and waited tensely for the fight to end.

As he watched the frantic battle, a green thing rolled right by the scope of his vision and exploded at one side of the corridor, shaking the walls and filling the hall with dust as a burst of shrapnel scraped through walls like flying buzz saws.

There was an announcement for "cover" as two ponies piled into his narrow cell, crash-landing on his cot and sending it smashing against the opposite wall as they immediately straightened themselves into crouching positions with pistols drawn. Blaine remembered that most ponies were part of the sniper and special forces elements.

While he lay there watching, they ignored him as though he were dead, hammering on the wall with their shoulders and crashing through it like two equine sledgehammers as they fell out the other side and fired at the ranks of the assorted U.S. military furs in their two assault squads; easily taking down three or four with raking fire as five heavily armored drafts charged down the hallway and delivered hard blows to the enemy with the wide smoking muzzles of their huge weapons like battering rams as Blaine heard bodies smashed against walls and thud lifelessly to the floor.

There was barely any stirring from the downed non-equines as the Clyde core continued their counter-attack towards the lobby. He shuddered nervously, both at their power and their teamwork. It was clear they had been trained to be an effective unit together as the sounds of war continued on further away.

As he stumbled out of his former prison, he saw the soldiers lay bleeding and bruised all over the ground and propped against the walls like mannequins while the white walls were painted with scattered pellets of blood like a hemoglobin sketchpad.

He was tempted at first to pick up a weapon, but was afraid that he would be shot at by either side if someone saw him carrying it. Giving the thought some consideration, he picked up a pistol that he could hide in one of his deep pockets.

Then he tucked an M-16 bayonet in his beltloop like a sword as he slowly went down an alternate hallway than the one the horses ran down for fear of getting shot for being mistaken as an enemy.

It looked like human hunting season on the base, and that nobody was on his side. With all the chaos, he had to make it out by himself and hope that either side would assume he was a civilian since he was dressed like that.

While Blaine travelled across an open corridor, an otter in fatigues and a combat-visored helm raised a long weapon at him, running and firing.

He shook with fear as bullets flew about him like flies before he could gather his thoughts and jump behind the opposite wall into another short hallway just as two more of the military furs were rounding a corner.

As they saw him skidding on the tile of the floor on his stomach, they raised their weapons as a reflex, shooting mindlessly like giant robots as the otter turned the other corner just in time to catch the hail of lead rain in his body like a random pattering of smoking water.

When they emptied their guns from the two or three seconds of firing, they dumped empty thick banana mags on the floor and reached into their pouches to reload.

Blaine surged forward like a poisonous snake, jabbing the bayonet into the boot of one of the furs, making them drop the new clip on the ground just as the other was cocking their rifle to fire.

He pulled the pistol out and threw it as hard as he could right at the fur soldier's head, knocking him unconscious, picking the loaded weapon up right as it fell through the air and putting the gun to his shoulder while he still lay in the prone position.

As the other fur pulled the knife from his hindpaw, he pulled a handgun from its holster to point it at Blaine, forcing the human to obliterate him from point-blank range with a fully loaded clip of 30 rounds, sending the rodent crumpling against a newly blood-painted wall with black smoldering bullet holes like a leopard.

Resting for no longer than a moment, he picked up his handgun and the sidearms of the two other furs he downed, preparing himself for anything as he strolled into a lounge with all the weapons hidden in his clothes to keep him from being too obvious a threat.

The horses would hopefully see that he was unarmed and the military furs would probably be overconfident if they came upon him by surprise. While Blaine felt the heavy cold metal of the small guns lightly slapping on his thighs and ass through his pockets, he came by a bunch of drink machines that had been smashed open and lay on their sides in a barricade blocking a hall.

Noticing that one was still plugged in, he took a bottle from the forced-open plastic cavity and gave a wry smile, resting against the wall with a bemused sigh while he had himself a free chilled drink. It felt good to have something cold against his lips and in his mouth as the heat in his invigorated body slowly went away.

As he lay propped on a humming machine failing to refrigerate itself, a sharp clattering noise of breaking windows came from nearby just out of sight in the hallway he had just left. Decent-sized footsteps thudded on the floor from heavy rubber boots as he craned his head a few inches to the side to try to get a peek.

When the intruder started coming in his direction, Blaine took another drink for himself from the machine, accidentally cutting his wrist open on the jagged plastic as he did his best to silence a sudden gasp while rolling around on the other side of the barricade to hide from the next danger. He landed on his side with a sudden burst of pain that threatened to momentarily suffocate him.

No sooner did he fall than a series of bullets popped wetly into the chassis of the soda vendor, cold drink spilling all over the floor in a murky mix of sweet color like alien blood. His heart palpitated as those feet came closer like some unstoppable Goliath. While he didn't know what it was, it couldn't be a horse as they wouldn't be breaking into their own fortress with a hostile situation brewing outside.

Blaine rubbed his wrist, trying to see where he was cut while the hulk of death stomped its way up toward where he was hiding, obviously seeing some of his blood on the plastic and scraped on the side of the machine from where he vaulted.

Plans went through his head for how to deal with this problem, but he dismissed all of them as ineffective since the intruder would obviously shoot at any moment they saw him and was quite good at it. Blaine's only saving grace was that the machine stopped all the bullets that were meant for him.

As his gaze wandered frantically around, he noticed that there was a stairway a couple feet from him. While Blaine saw a huge horn as thick as an ostrich egg poking up over the edge of the vendor from where he lay hiding, he made a bold effort to chuck himself down the long flight of stairs like a chopped log. Banging his limbs and parts all over the cold concrete steps with scratching thumps, he landed face-down at the bottom landing with a slow trickling of blood from his head as he realized he was going slowly delirious and light-headed from a concussion.

Reaching down, he felt a harsh bruise on his thigh from where he had smashed it against the cold soda bottle. He didn't know what to do; he was tired, in pain, and felt like sleeping now that his skull was practically split open by such a bunch of hard blows. For a long moment, he was too tired to care about anything but wanting to sleep. He lay there as he felt some huge THING thunder down the stairs slowly like an elephant, the presence so massive that it gave the impression that a dark cloud of mass was drifting and thumping down each step like some stone guardian or golem.

His eyes barely registered anything, all hazy and blurry from his injuries as he waited for the behemoth to step on him. The steps came closer, crashing like lightning cracks as he vainly tried to get his muscles to work and failed in misery. A faint thought that he could be paralyzed from the neck down entered his foggy mind and scared him.

The heavy feet stopped as the god-like figure was apparently bending down to pick something up. Probably a handgun Blaine had dropped in his messy tumble down the stairs. As the figure picked it up and resumed his casual march down the stairway, he could suddenly hear two muffled hoof-beats as if a couple horses had covered their feet in rags to keep from making too much noise as the mysterious figure lurched like a monolith of flesh just long enough to see something huge and heavy drop down the stairs.

Blaine recognized the sound and quickly tried to take control of his body as he rolled a few yards away even as the soda machine crashed down onto the landing, pinning a huge pissed off and dying rhino under it--along with his foot; which awakened his grogginess enough to realize everything that was going on.

He gasped from the immense pain and tried to pull his foot from the jagged corner of the machine that had crushed it. As he shook himself loose, he felt that nothing was broken even if his body hurt all over as though he'd been thrown off in the middle of a steeplechase.

Both horses, giant drafts, were staring at him with weapons ready and unsure how to deal with him. For that matter, with his confused slurry of thoughts, Blaine didn't know how to deal with himself now that dripping warm rhinoceros blood was sluicing right into his clothes with a sticky grossness of filth that he couldn't get out of his mind.

But he was alive. Despite all his struggles and pain and hazards, he was still alive and fighting everything around him. If he had to, he would fight the horses at the top of the stairs, too, to survive.

The lights winked out as if a great mass of eyes, leaving him in the dark as a resounding long burst of tracer bullets followed him downstairs like yellow bright bees, making him shudder nervously as he watched, still too injured and shocked from his fall to move away into cover as zipping rounds snapped into the walls and floor, pinged off the discarded vendor, or thudded wetly into the dead body.

As one of the flesh-hungry hornets found the muscle in his side, a sudden energy galvanised his body into action towards escape; limping and crawling slowly away from the mad flashes in the dark like a stray mongrel, hiding behind a nearby wall in a corridor as muffled hoofbeats pounded down the stairs after his trailing agonized body like hunters on a chase.

Fear finally came into his being as he realized that no quarter was given; the horses were killing every non-equine they found in the base with the same kind of reckless abandon that him and his friends once pursued.

He waited, propped against a wall in the adjoining downstairs corridor and hoping he would somehow be overlooked or passed by as he noticed through a haze of low-lit orange emergency lights that a nearby floor level air-conditioning maintenance grate had been left shut by only one screw.

The plan came to him easily as he stabbed at the screw carelessly with his stubborn fingers, covering it in a slippery sheen of his blood as he struggled to concentrate on it like some great puzzle. Finally, he took the blood-crusted bayonet and used it as an impromptu screwdriver to get the damn thing out.

With haste and clumsy movements of his skittering shaking hands, the panel fell loudly on the floor as he crawled inside just in time to hear the corridor fill with a loud traffic of flying bullets like white raging sharks in the air; the two buff stallions chasing loudly on the tile right after him and unable to go in to follow or level weapons due to their size and height.

One of them made a casual show of shooting his minigun through the walls and caused Blaine some nervousness as the armor-piercing shrapnel pinged and bounced all over the metal tunnels of ducts as if in some ore processing line in a smelter facility.

He felt his hands around in the dark confines and tried to push the sizzling pieces of shattered bullets away from his crawling narrow path as the depths stretched on into near darkness. It was an abyss that loomed ahead like a lightless mouth as cold air howled through the rectangular chutes like stale breath.

Making his way through and cutting his hands and shins on broken bullet pieces or punctures in the steel/aluminum siding of the corrugated segments, he slid along the cramped passageway leaving a rapidly-drying trail of his blood behind. Blaine had probably lost enough to make him fall unconscious any moment, but he had to fight all the groans and sharp pains in his body in order to stay alive.

Waddling along became an automated habit as he went along at a pathetic pace to get out of the metal freezing tube. In a few minutes of going through, he found a very dull sheen of light reflecting off the walls toward him.

When he was over at the grate and managed to recover the sensitivity of his burning eyes like some mole man, he found the grate to be secured loosely to the wall with two screws at the top corners. It was probably lazy work on the part of maintenance workers since they only had manual screwdrivers on their person at any given time and undoing eight screws was probably too much work to do or keep track of without losing.

When he went up to the panel, Blaine pushed on it and found the bottom wasn't secured so it bent upwards like a stiff mudflap on an eighteen-wheeler. He easily crawled under it and right into a chilling sea of blood draining from three giant equine bodies.

It was so grisly that there was threat he could vomit at looking at it: the dead horses were all face-down on the ground in prone execution style with holes in their heads, but the most ghastly sight was the fact that their shoulderblades had been cut apart with knives to make them stick up in the air along with a large serrated clump of red bleeding flesh to look like wings.

With that observation, he turned his face to puke out the drink he had a bit before as three dead blood-pegasi were arranged neatly before him like camouflaged firewood. He had never been so aware of the hate for horses until he saw how even their bodies could be so desecrated. He was transfixed by the horrid sight of them and so distracted that he didn't hear the noise of marching boots down a twisted corner of the hall till they were loudly on top of him.

When Blaine realized that more errant soldiers would happen upon him, he ran in the opposite direction but tripped over one of the dead horse' chainguns just as he took a few desperate steps, landing on his face just as five or so U.S. military furs happened upon him laying on the ground.

They raised weapons just as he found his senses. Time stilled as his frantic senses and perceptions went into overdrive. He knew it would be impossible to kill all of them with just a pistol, and he could probably only get off two shots or so before they retaliated. Blaine whipped out a 9mm beretta, a sidearm he had stolen from one of the three furs he had taken out earlier, and fired his courtesy two shots.

He wasn't aiming for ten spots though, finding a more vulnerable target instead of heads. Even as one bullet glanced off a green spherical M67 grenade hooked to one of their belts, the other following bullet pounded neatly into the neck of the explosive and set it off; launching the five troops in all directions like lifeless rag-dolls as they smacked into the walls or flipped through the air like somersaulting kites, a spray of blood raining on the area as a burnt leg landed by him with the boot still attached.

Again he was amazed. Every moment of desperation and tactical gambles managed to keep him alive in these miserable corridors. It shocked him to realize that all of his unrealistic plans and strange maneuvers had saved his life. Blaine couldn't help but wonder whether he had some inner soldier or not, considering that lack of training hadn't been a hindrance in his random struggles.

So far, he didn't even count any injury from the blast of the grenade as the five soldiers had absorbed the whole blast. It was unfortunate for them, but he was glad he was alive and they weren't capable of raising a gun to him anymore. That was probably a foul way to think, but he had fought through hell and nearly died numerous times. At least after that, he felt entitled to have some liberty with his conscience.

He felt truly alone as everyone was trying to kill him and it wasn't some delusion as he had been pretty much attacked by everything that saw him. When Blaine caught his breath and patched up his seeping and aching side with a couple strips of cloth ripped from uniforms of the various bodies, he went on to continue his search through the base. Maybe if he found one of the equine CO's or XO's, he could be safely moved out before either of the warring parties managed to finish the job.

As he walked down halls that had been emptied of everything but bodies, Blaine couldn't help but be gripped by an odd sense of a wasteland. It was like he were travelling through a desolate frozen expanse of Siberia or Antarctica. Everything he saw was lifeless, as was appropriate for a hostile solitude in a place where his only allies were the pair of guns in his pockets.

When he arrived at the crook in the hall, where a short stairway was located on the other side, he heard more boots coming up them in a casual march. Two or three sets of feet, but they were unawares so he felt he could take them. Just as they were going to reach the top and turn the corner, he stabbed out with the bayonet. The jab barely missed a vulnerable throat and slashed through the strap of a helmet instead, which he grabbed in midair as it began to roll off the soldier's other shoulder, to smash it on the fennec's temple like a hammer. He whirled like an animal and used the helmet like a boxing glove to protect one fist slamming in the stomach of a small bear while slamming the bayonet neatly through the collarbone of some canid before doing a dropkick to push them backwards down the stairs.

The fennec landed with his head smacking the railing to break his neck and the grey wolf dug the bayonet from his chest and artfully tossed it up at Blaine from where he lay on the ground. He dodged it just in time to watch the blade get embedded into the wall behind up to the hilt in the thin layers of plaster. While he looked awkwardly behind at his bloodied bayonet with a thin streak of blood running down the wall like the building had been wounded, the wolf raised his rifle and put his finger on the fore-guard grip and trigger for the-

Blaine jumped away from the stairs and hastily rolled the unconscious body of the fennec even as the grenade rumbled and killed everything in its range.

So in one instant, the wolf was dead, the fennec was dead, and the bear was dead. Blaine managed to cling to life like the soldier version of God's Job despite every misfortune that happened to him.

He coughed as black sulfurous smoke invaded his lungs and little chips of plaster fell from the ceiling in random droplets like snow. For just a moment, it felt like a solar eclipse as the explosion dwarfed all the light and blasted out all the nearby fluorescent lights in the roof. Blaine held his breath and was careful not to touch any of the debris from the long thick bulbs as they had trace amounts of mercury in them. When the human came by the shrapnel-smacked bodies of the three furs, he finally decided that his minimalist attitude was pointless.

Everyone on the base wanted to kill him regardless of what he carried or wore. With that revelation, he slung a vest of salvaged banana clips onto his chest and put M203 grenades in his empty pouches and pockets, picking up a couple M67's and the wolf's CAR-15, which looked intact despite the encompassing destruction of the blast.

With enough artillery on his person to make John Rambo look like a boy scout, Blaine walked the halls with an inflated confidence like a terminator, now feeling ready for anything that came after him despite his injuries and all the horrors he had witnessed. Things no civilian should have seen but a military man might have been trained to prepare for.

Jenny looked down the long hallway that she had been ordered to guard with a young Ardennais draft named Chester. Chester the jester they call him behind his back; a horse always quick to crack a joke faster than a bullet. She got sick of dealing with his mode of amusements even as he barely even took his job seriously while she had her weapon resting on the soda machine barricade and aimed down the corridor to wipe out the first non-equine thing she saw.

This was the first time that she had dealt with a betrayal by a major power and she didn't like the implications. She had dealt with numerous treacheries, but these were incidents in third world countries where loyalty was bought with gold and fluctuated like power-lines in an electrical storm. While she expected turncoats of the various mullahs and sultans, America's deceit had driven her nearly into madness from unexpected shock.

There were the signs and suspicions, but it was an unpredictable and unexplainable phenomenon to see such an established country turn on its rescuers.

Her thoughts halted as she heard scuffing and careful walking down the floors toward her position. They had recently sent out a couple scouts who had muffled their hooves with torn up t-shirts to fool the enemy, but they hadn't reported back even though they were due to be back an hour ago. Jenny's over-sized finger was already on the trigger as Chester stopped fooling around and got his ass together.

The scraping came closer. Fifty yards away and about to turn a corner that was far enough to make someone look like a person suffering from dwarfism. The profile of the group wasn't equine, so she hammered them with her electric paintbrush and colored the walls in a dripping sheen of crimson as they slumped down and died; some slowly, some fast, but none raised weapons beyond the initial long burst which smacked into them.

The XO of Clyde Core, Raych, went towards them and appraised the far off carnage with a nervous brushing of his short mane with a cheap black comb, sniffing the blood in the air like a salty copper mist and snorting with a shake of his head. Even being a combat action trooper and then commander hadn't stilled his distaste for the aroma of blood over the years, Jenny noticed with a candidly blank expression while watching his behavior.

It was a worrisome predicament as she realized this whole thing had turned into a siege situation. They couldn't escape without a plan or outside intervention, as armed air support and armor were prepared to tear any survivors apart.

No, it seemed more like the situation was on par with a miracle since nothing came easy and everything looked impossible. A simple heavy weapons battalion couldn't hope to hold out against the whole strength of the U.S. military, and that was the reality. All the yanks had to do was rain down enough firepower to collapse the rec center into a pile of plaster and broken bodies--why weren't they? Was this some prolonged benediction of cruelty?

Blood drained from the warm corpses as they looked at the portrait of macabre at the corner of the hall. All those bodies would either hopefully a deterrent to those coming through or a warning to be careful, or a sign post to other horses regrouping to the CP. Whatever their new purpose, they no longer retained the original dignity of the previous forms; just green sticks to mark the road for wanderers.

She snorted angrily as Chester leaned close to the hot barrel of her weapon and used the red almost burning muzzle to light his cigarette as casually as taking a shit, even though he seemed to mock the dead by using their murder weapon as a simple lighter for his own brief pleasure. It was disrespectful with a tragic twist of humor.

Then again, she remembered a quote by Voltaire; "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth". Her eyes hardened as she lit up on her gun as well, lightly nibbling up ash like it were grass.

Blaine shoved in a 40mm grenade for his attached M203 as if he was putting D cells into a stocky round flashlight. It felt oddly reminiscent of his civilian life before this, except that it was a weapon. It was an expensive and dangerous weapon that could kill many people at once like a fiery leaden fist.

The world ceased to make sense anymore. It felt like he was a commando Alice in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, and everything that he didn't understand was trying to kill him with the ferocity and deceit of ten jabberwocks' combined.

A scraping came down an unseen intersection while he listened; scuffing boots followed by the sudden popping of small caliber bullets from pistols. When the human crept around the corner, he saw that half a dozen bodies were dripping and steaming with escaping warmth or the smoking of shrapnel still lodged in their flesh. Further ahead, a large Browning machinegun had been set up with sandbags obscuring the whole section of the other side in a waist high barrier.

The gunner hadn't yet seen him, but it was likely guaranteed that he'd be noticed quickly. Interestingly, the gunner was distracted by a pistol battle going on between his comrades and a small group of unseen attacking forces who were going at the flank. Blaine could see that the lion was wheeling his 50. cal around to face the assault, which would give him a chance to take an advantage. With another few degrees of separation, the sandbags put him out of the big gun's line of fire.

Tempted, he twisted around the sharp corner and ran like he was trying to catch a speeding train. It wasn't an easy act, and the lion saw him in a blur of movement just as he came into sight, struggling to shove the gun back into position. Twenty yards and gunning it like a receiver for the winning field goal, Blaine was galloping like an antelope to get out of the lion's hastened arc of fire before the fur could kill him like the six others.

Perhaps a few feet away, and the gun was aimed at him. Right as the trigger was depressed and a burst shattered out like speeding hammers, Blaine was jumping and clearing the obstacle as well as the bullets meant for him. He found himself tackled on the lion just as a raccoon and lynx nearby fell to the floor and dying in their cooling fluids.

He coughed from the impact of the fall, a pissed off lion now biting and clawing at his throat and all Blaine had was his rifle to keep the predator at bay. Holding it lengthwise over the felines' throat, he sweat rivers down his face and drenched the fur below him in a salty desperate rain while they wrestled and struggled.

Blaine screamed out as a set of claws ran along his wrist and then another along the front of his shoulder by his pecs with a shallow raking which felt like hot coals sowing shallowly into his flesh like branding tattoo guns. He struggled to throw the lion away from him as the other fur used this change in leverage to flip them over with his snarling roaring drooling face above the humans' with that mane hanging loosely in his eyes like a golden fog, leaving him blind as the fierce hunter shook him unmercifully and dug his claws deeper into Blaine's body.

The sharp nails pierced into his muscle like thick needles, spinning around and causing him much agony as the lion pushed against the rifle until he was level with the human's shoulder, where he sank his dripping savage fangs up to the bone. The level of horrendous power and aggression behind those jaws was unrivaled by anything Blaine had ever known. He quickly found himself unable to stay conscious as he finally passed out from all his trauma and challenges with the full expectation of dying.

In the shadows of his glimmering helplessness, he heard the echo of a bullet in his tomb of thoughts like a dull footstep in an empty chamber. It seemed death came for him, and he finally welcomed it.

She had chain-smoked two packs in her nervousness when three ponies arrived, dragging a beat up corpse with them down the hall. He was a human and there was blood coming out of every limb and patch of skin as well as rips in his clothes like some wild animal in the jungle had attacked him.

When they came closer, she saw he had on civilian clothes and had a whole bunch of ammo in a vest on his chest. It was ridiculous that someone had abused a body like that and she assumed the three troops were bringing him back to the base camp to have fun with him like victors in war are wont to do with the cadavers of their enemies.

Jenny hailed them with a snort of impatience; this was a desperate situation and they didn't have time for these kinds of shenanigans. As they fussed with the human, she thought they were being smarmy to mock the body as if it were a king, but she held her breath as they shocked her by yelling out for a medic. Even as another pony with his distinctive red cross emblazoned uniform came up behind her and crawled over the barricade, she finally saw the human was still alive but barely breathing.

Still, as she watched curiously and the three troops stripped the ammo and weapons from him, Jenny lacked the imagination to understand how he had managed to stay alive despite the fact that he had obviously been torn apart by everything that he encountered.

The body was still, but bounced on occasion as the medic tore a bullet from his waist and then sewed up all the dripping scars with a suture that had a thread which quickly glowed a bright ruby by the sparkling of the overhead emergency lights.

She watched carefully as this very different battle was being fought. The doc was sewing up the wounds or using a soldering iron to cauterize any areas that were bleeding excessively before he went down to fewer priorities and branded the rest of the bleeding areas that a band-aid couldn't help.

It was a lively frantic struggle before the medic declared his work satisfied and the troops led the human back toward the barricade even as recognition dawned in Jenny's and Raych's eyes with a flood of wonder. This was the same prisoner they had caught not twenty-four hours ago, and he already dripped with blood as though it were sweat and carried an armory of weapons on him like an undecorated veteran.

Such a bewildering sight had her shaking her head in disbelief, unable to comprehend what she saw. This human seemed bound to her fate since she had seen him three times; more than any other horse had, and he always came on her radar like an annoying mosquito. Strangely, she developed a certain fondness for him like a casual woman might feel when she was accustomed to seeing the same feral cat everyday in odd places even though she never fed it.

His vision fogged in an unbelievable musky haze as something dripped at his side. When he looked over it, he saw some kind of tentacle-less jellyfish with a long tentacle going from its bulging body leading to his.

Almost a sight for a panic, eyes cleared enough for him to see an intravenous bag the size of a basketball as it pumped what must be a monstrous amount of fluid in his body. Another tube came out of the corner of the sheets and led to a bucket.

Faint traces of urine wafted over to him, confirming that he had also been given an involuntary catheter through his penis to remove the excess fluid that such a large infusion of liquid might bloat his body with. After all, with nowhere to go, all excess water goes to the bladder to balance out the body.

Despite that annoyance, there was probably no part of his body which didn't hurt or respond unfavorably to movement. He had to wonder if all this suffering was worth being alive, considering the fact he couldn't even get up.

As he roused, the dull thumping of echoing gunshots and bombs continued. So, the war was still going on and he was an invalid--no, a prisoner again. Blaine faintly remembered the ponies looking after him as they jabbed him with needles or fed him painstakingly with a spoonful of soup broth at a time.

In fact, he should probably feel hungrier than he was, but there must be drugs in him which had the side effect of suppressing appetite--morphine chiefest amongst them. He couldn't hold any illusions that his body had a faint drug-induced buzz from some kind of highly controlled substance; that was the kind of stuff they typically issued to soldiers and medics for emergencies like this.

It probably wasn't uncommon for a trooper to overdose on some painkillers when shot so that he could get back into the fight ASAP. Such reckless thinking led to more severe damage or even death from blood loss, but those are small concerns to worry about in the midst of a heinous fight to the death.

Again, he wasn't alone. She seemed to find some morbid humor at always finding herself at his bedside. Blaine could see it in the big girl's eyes as she quietly stared at him and the blood-covered bandages all over his skin like crimson sticky leaches. Sadly, as disgusted as he was by his battle dressings, they were probably the things keeping him alive as he had been hemorrhaging blood like a leaking birthday balloon.

A medic soon came into the room holding a syringe with some turquoise stuff in it. As he grabbed a tube coming out of his wrist, Blaine realized this was how he was being given his morphine or whatever that was. Instantly as the fluid squirted in the back of his hand, he felt an odd fire circulating up his vein into his whole arm.

Soon, the sensation turned into a numbing inferno that felt like a furnace under his skin and then nothing. As the chemicals crept into his shoulder, his whole arm felt dead; no feeling of any kind came from it. He could still move his fingers and joints, but it was worse than having a limb fall asleep. Blaine was immediately disassociated from his arm, like it belonged to someone else or he was seeing someone wave their hand in a movie: it felt unreal.

Then it went up his neck like a flashing painful sunburn. It was like heartburn in his veins as the fierce chemicals went into his head and then to his heart like tabasco or curry in the blood. Whatever this was they'd given him, it wasn't a painkiller. It felt like something more sinister.

His guard didn't raise her head or indicate any wrongness in the situation, so he assumed that everything was fine or she was ignorant of the full details. Whatever this was, his head was floating and separate from everything going on in and around him like a camera; always watching but helpless to act.

Was he dying? If that was true--if he was being euthanised, he couldn't afford to let such a stupid thing drag him down if he needed to live. Then his thoughts came to a sudden halt--

Why did he need to live? Up to this point, his instinct had been controlling all his impulses and actions like a wolf in his psyche. His actions were desperate and always served his primal instinct to survive. Before now, before being cut off from his emotions, that was all the reason that he needed to stay alive.

Now, his calm cool logic interceded and gave him no reasons except for minor foolhardy ventures that weren't worth his energy when compared to the cross he'd always bear for all the friends and loved ones who'd died before him. Last living member of his tribe, and with friends now in a pile of bodies, there were no reasons to keep fighting.

It would be so easy to give up now, since he'd lost everything--even the voice of the animal inside him; howling for release. There was only the burning pain going down his thighs to his feet to remind him that he felt anything at all. In this corpse-like state of living, he thought about things he hadn't before. Ideas came to him about morbid things he'd only feared and dismissed before.

When ten minutes or so of this passed by, he realized something very significant: he wasn't dying. If he were, it would have happened by now. Instead, he was in a zombified state of observation while unable to move anything.

The fire in his blood was strange and familiar. Was this the hot tempo and beat of heart like a soldier? Like those countless many who drove him into violent fever?

The more peculiar truth was that his state was timeless, intellectual,and errant with the erratic hours like a bane of sputtering limbo.

When his eyes opened after a long rest, one of the horses was holding up a Blowpipe; a British-made but very shoddy anti-air and armor system to be carried by infantry. He knew what it was and what it could (or couldn't do would be more accurate) without having seen one before in his life.

At this confusion, he was told about the recent developments in his head. Namely combat nanites which not only healed the body but passed on information to the brain like a military version of google. As his left eyelid tweaked in an overload of information and training instilled in his intelligence at a blinding rate. So much so fast: he felt helpless before this flood of malevolent knowledge.

It drove him dizzy before settling in him like a rough hewn stone. What--what had they done to him. Blaine looked at his hands and without thinking, envisioned hand-to-hand ways to kill someone just by reaction. Some sick little gift, surely, to give a natural pacifist further resource to extinguish.

Then again, what was he now? Something miserable that only knew of fragile things and wonders of the world.

He dared stare at those concerned creatures watching over him, death pumping in his veins like molten lead. A strange and alien passion overtook him as Blaine found a bare body responding to the only mare in the room. The primal wolfish instinct that kept him alive up to this point; it had washed away in the subtle reprogramming of the robots. Now he had this foreign impetus of a screaming stallion inhabiting the same body as him and it had one all-consuming thought: it wanted to breed.

And so strong was his lust from so many years of celibacy and masturbation that the man-horse was more than willing to let this odd conquering beast of power and charisma control his flagrant new passions like a fool.

The equines in the room sensed it. Responding like a herd of cattle seeing a train come through and leaving the tracks to make way. Everyone except the big draft mare, who mourned but also knew of the needs for those who suffered weird impetus and behavior imposed by an injection booster meant only for horse anthro soldiers.

Her heat now flooded the room with every nervous twitch of those thighs. Clearly the threadbare panties she had been issued were incapable of masking any scents. The very thought of all these mares in heat around the males in the unit must have been an unbelievable chaos to deal with.

While she disrobed by taking off a gray sports bra and canvas desert fatigues, he spied a juicy cameltoe through her bent over butt as well as an outlind of a small donut; likely her anus. This stimulus invigorated him and so doing, another surprise greeted him.

Whatever the length of his penis had been previously, the nanites must have found him ill-equipped and altered him in this area too. For the most part he was human, but now on his crotch was a complete set of genitals belonging to a stallion.

Pink testicles, sheathe, and a foot-long penis greeted his startled eyes when the human threw back the tenting sheet on his waist. Not that he was too blind to see the benefits of a horse-sized dose of testosterone from two egg-sized testes, but this was clearly something that would take some getting used to.

When the mare turned around long enough to look, she blushed and smiled, letting those inadequate panties fall to the floor as she stepped out of them with a shy nicker in greeting.

Without thinking about it, Blaine responded in a welcoming roll of sound from his lips like a muted raspberry followed by an assertive snort. It seemed this was what she wanted to hear as the mare leaned down on him to kiss the glans of his new horseflesh, sending intense shivers down into his body like warm prickles of ice.

Two separate halves of consciousness both anticipated her next move. Since this was a moment to have some genuine bliss, Blaine should have been more excited. Unfortunately, that's seldom a thought that comes in the mind of a skeptic during the wages of war.

After the treatment to save his life, it proved more and more difficult to figure out who he was. Would he have bred this mare if he were not infused with these pesky machines? But hell--she looked and smelled good; she was the living version of the apple of Eden.

Her ears flittered forward to hear his shortening breaths of lust as she crawled on the floor where he was laid out until that huge crotch and dripping black stone of pussy lay poised over his tip like a waiting mouth.

He stared a long moment, unable to bear the torment of this passionate temptation any longer. Her vulva quivered like a shivering black hare struck by cold. The poor pathetic thing seemed anxious to warm itself up on any nearby source of heat, and his new cock seemed the conduit.

Her thick pouting labia split open as the mare's sloppy folds took his cock in with slow measured impalements. The mare's thighs throbbed uneasily with muscle as she sunk her hot flesh onto his strawberry tower as slimy drips came down his shaft; oozing with the speed of honey while streams thinned to become spiderweb strands to cling on his loins like hangin fishing line.

As his erection became engulfed in a mare oven, it felt like the immersion into her body was an endless dive through seas millions of leagues deep. She seemed to go on forever, or perhaps it was because he'd never experienced what it would feel like to have a penis sixteen inches long in comparison to his measly seven.

Suddenly he was brought to the surroundings of the room when the penetration stopped and she was resting that large pelvis on his crotch and a large muscled posterrior on his thighs. The mare carefully upheld her weight on her own to keep from crushing his frail mostly human form.

If he were truly a horse, such precaution would not be needed. Since she had such great bulk, the female performed with care to keep from shattering his pelvis into dust. Even with extreme restraint on her part, Blaine felt her power. At any moment, he could suffer the bends under the endless ocean of this shimmering sweaty mermare body.

Completely full with his cock, he knew how inadequate he was since he had yet to feel the draft's cervix graze his glans; an instant orgasm for some breeds of stallion.

Not that the slow and steady way wasn't an unsatisfying method to run a race. Blaine only hoped his first time with a mare wouldn't embarass him as she surely had at least a dozen partners who knew what they were doing.

She neighed shyly, able to feel his pre pump into her body and flood her passage with his steamy trickles of silver; drips coming back down through that juicy plump labia to bathe his crotch in both their communal smells.

As his newly minted flesh spread her channel open, a curious fancy took him as Blaine wondered if there was anything softer than this utterly yielding female mouth; pliant wet muscle crawling all over his pole in caterpillar contractions while the man lay back and set the bulk of effort to the experienced mare with the vigor, which was appropriate.

If her art as a mare could be said to be anything, it was an odd aura of subtlety that hung around her due to obvious experience through many couplings. True he fancied her ample breasts, but they were an appetizer compared to the feast of dessert that was a scalloped chocolate pie between her muscly thighs, and he badly wanted to put some cream in there to savor.

He hung on every smell, sound, and sensation for which he imbibed of that radiant equine body. Blaine's cock had her fiercely impaled to the full length even while the mare's vulva and vagina flowed over his skin by warm increments of raised and lowered pumps of fervent bulging legs.

Her luscious mound heaved a long sigh for relief, spasms crawling all over her inner sanctum. Blaine felt it like random hands squeezing all over his long length in quickening strides. The pulses on his tip were especially fierce and unmerciful. After mere minutes of copulation, unfettered instinct got the better of him and made the human douse this lecherous steed's pussy in an endless gush of quicksilver.

When his seed struck her cervix, it was like ringing a bell for she went off loudly with satisfied unintelligible boasting nickers and whinnies of bliss, her cunny and its radiating petals flowing with the sweet saps of their combined fluid now flowing into his crotch as a sexualized equine bath while his cock stayed hard even while her marish climax pushed his length all the way out like an unwelcome suitor.

As his cock left her, she looked into his eyes with a warm expression bordering between gratitude and a mischief of unsated seminal hunger. Unpaired, they had marked each other as herdmates eternal.

While horses in the wild practiced polygamy, in anthro equine society it caused too many problems. The only polygamy anthros had came from gay harems of wealthy stallions. Here, it was just him and her. Really, that was no bad thing even if he were hung like a pony rather than a large draft.

They lay together for a long period, but it was not to last. War was still about like a rude neighbor spying on all the houses. Tender relationships had come about full circle, but the battle was yet going on. Rest lasted long enough to recover the energies from sex and no more.

But whatever happened, Blaine no longer did it alone. He now had comrades in a new 'tribe' and was as ready as nanites could make a human.

There was an hour free to rest after the sex. Not long and not due to decorum or courtesy, but because everything was still in chaos and plans were yet being made for survival. The greater cruelty was the end of this shallow bit of peace, for as the nightmare dragged them from embraces' dream back into a wasteland, vain closure had been revisited and made the end of lustful love not a parting but a hellish longing.

Bigger troubles loomed ahead as the commander addressed the troops over all the radios. He had a voice like the boon of an aristocrat; noble yet dread-hued overtones covering his words like a dirge.

Many things Blaine would forget in his life, but not the dignified gloom of that speech; the message imparting on him a hint of that glory like an aged unicorn in its final hunt: the one where it is slain and the horn taken by men who had forgotten meanings behind hallowed wonders.

It was so striking, he could remember it in every word and emotional inflection of tongue or nare:

"These are dark days when we cannot distinguish our friends from enemies. Many of you fought with me against the IRA, but this is nothing like that. Even in those yonder days, we knew where our support came from. People knew we were the heroes and were proud to have us.

Now we're lucky to find a single fragment of sanity in a segment of disturbed populace. I know this is all horrendous to you. Fighting the same folks we'd been allied with through a hundred years of war. Fighting those who came to our rescue not once, but twice.

But now we cannot let feelings of betrayal guide our eyes. Training must stay the course for our passions and the core will be our nation if nothing else. Our suffering will come to a head soon. The only question which should be in your minds is who will survive: who has the right to live?

I stand in defiance of murder. It will not take hold so long as I draw breath. Let this army be my blade as I point it at those who would stand in the way of freedom. As long as a weapon can be raised, Clydesdale Core will stand and defend all those who cannot protect themselves."

He threw on spare fatigues meant for one of the ponies as Jenny grabbed her holster with its almost ridiculously big magnum and tossed it at him. Blaine looked at the exposed wooden grip of the handle and saw a side view of a pegasus carved on both grips.

The weapon had alot of scratches and dents but was otherwise operable. She said it was her mate's old gun and how he could have it. Strangely, by looking and feeling it, he got some impressions of the previous owner.

It was already loaded and the safety was switched on so he didn't need to fuck around with it. Instead he put on a white t-shirt and secured the semi-auto under an armpit like a Dirty Harry mimic despite having to adjust the straps to fit his waist first.

He gave the horse one more thoughtful look before taking the left hallway where he knew an armory had been hastily set up in one of the recreation center's restrooms.

Once he got inside, the faint smell of rusting metal, oil, and sulfur hit his nose as one pony oiled and cleaned a few handguns upon a white black-stained towel on his lap while another used a simple lever-activated machine similar to a button puncher like those round shiny pins they pass out at elections; packing powder and a bullet into a spent casing before laying it in a box with other reused bullets labelled 'ready for primers'.

They looked up from their jobs only long enough to see that he wasn't a threat before going back to the dull but necessary tasks of military life.

Laying against the walls inside the handicap stall were ten of those drafter miniguns that could wipe out a mob in seconds. How he had managed to survive hundreds of those bullets flying at him was a miracle only god knew.

Peering inside the stall nearby, he saw a cache of captured assault rifles and a bunch of bandolier vests full of magazines like desert leaves gleaming with gray and bronze sap. Since the condition of all these M-16's and CAR-15's were highly suspect, Blaine was fussing with each one until finding an M-16 that wasn't so fouled by powder residue or or gore from point-blank executions that it was serviceable.

The clip inside it only had four bullets left so he had to replace it with a new one; cocking unnecessary as a 5.56 NATO round was already chambered. While the M-16 only had a burst feature and the CAR went full auto, single shots were all he needed as long as he could keep calm to maintain a steady aim.

After taking his gun and a vest with six mags as well as a belt with four more and an empty canteen he grabbed five grenades from an empty microwave box; green M61 balls almost spilling onto the floor as if apples on a grocery shelf.

Jenny had apparently went to the locker area to put on her ballistic armor and limb coverings. Kevlar-lined inch thick plates made the drafts look like hulking tall knights and stopped all shrapnel except 50 calibers, which were anti-material anyway and could penetrate anything except tanks.

He saw her at the bottom of a long stairwell like the one he'd rolled down. Two of the giant beasts were snorting nervously as two pairs of eyes watched around suspiciously through sinister-looking helmets that covered their giant heads like a cross between armored helms and draconic masks; giant Union Jack's sewn on their shoulders and practically fluttered with their martial equine pride.

Horses and ponies cramped in this tight landing area did their best to get out of his way as he went to Jenny's side. As he sidled up to her dull gleaming bulge of a thigh, he got a last look at something beautiful before everything turned to shit.

No sooner had the two drafts smashed into the barricaded door than a flood of bullets like a wide river of light poured into the small chamber and struck everything exposed by the widening crack in the double doors.

It felt like his nightmare all over again as the javelin-nosed bullets erupted from American guns with the sounds of loud popping firecrackers or an odd hoorendous death rattle of thumping chain links as two SAW's on bipods tore into flesh and pinged off armor equally.

Blaine had a weapon and was surrounded by allies, but this was the most helpless moment he knew. The clouds seemed to erupt with reddish blood of thunder as anyone able responded with their own weapons.

Almost reminiscent of a redcoat defense box during a Napoleonic battle; an amassed block of firepower ready to explode like a humongous shotgun blast.

The drafts in front started first, bleeding a little from ambiguous wounds as they dropped both machinegunners as if they had been hit by a wall. Their bodies danced erratically with splattering dashes of blood as random bullets struck them.

Finally roused from his stupor, Blaine put the M-16 tight to his shoulder and looked down iron sights. The rear sight was a circle inside a football goal post. The front sight was a trident with a short middle prong and the other prongs bent outwards like the disjointed upside-down legs of a hippie peace symbol.

When he had someone lined up in the trident, he fired and sent three rounds into someone hiding on an upstairs hallway that came outward like a second-story shopping mall balcony. The grouping was horrid; catching him in his chest plate and allowed the troop to shrug it off like Superman.

He was surprised to feel something heavy dropped on his back and was almost deaf and blinded when a pony fired an unsilenced PSG-1 right in his face and snapped the target he had just failed to kill with a solid hit to the head that made the enemy crumple to the floor like a puppet who just had his strings cut.

The battle progressed with a stampede of angry beasts like the running of the bulls in Spain; Blaine ducking out out of the way against a nearby corner in the wall as the gatling guns tore apart glass encased advertisements welded to two-sided economical benches as the final two enemy reservists pushed over a soda machine and ducked behind for cover as they fidgeted with empty weapons.

The nearest draft had flanked their cover and was going to dispatch them, but a ball of fire engulfed him and left a lingering mist of white smoke in his place. When Blaine looked up, he saw a human in chemical weapons gear laden with white phosphorus M34 grenades like a Christmas tree with shining yellow fist-sized pineapples.

Given respite, the hiding enemies slapped new mags in their rifles and thumped out bullets like a neighborhood fireworks display; muzzles of their M-16 flashing with the tell-tale six fingers of a light flower opening its petals.

As one swung a gun at him, he raised his in response but was surprised to see Jenny catch all the incoming rounds in her impenetrable armor before rewarding their boldness with a razing inferno of her annihilating cannon. Against that sheer display of power, one slumped dead on the vendor and the other was twitching on the ground; paralyzed and slowly dying of blood loss and multiple organ failure.

When he saw the festive death raising a hand to pitch another portable inferno, Blaine was ready. Rolling away from his protector, he snagged one of those odd funnel-like Blowpipes from a nearby body and aimed up before firing.

The satisfaction of burning that prick to death in a blast of fire and shrapnel was short-lived as a glass skylight shattered and rained down on them like a glittering rain of jagged hail. He got some scratches on his arm and fragments in his hair, but things were otherwise fine despite some deadly guillotine shards coming down and managing to shatter harmlessly on the floor.

As they left, he looked back on the mess they created. It was easy to tell which side had won a given battle: the horses moved onto the next position after laying waste to everyone in sight while the enemy stopped and wasted their time to deface the enemy corpses like some grim form of graffiti.

To his surprise, it was actually one of the ponies who continued the assault by crouching against a corner in the wall and leaning out an inch. This slight movement provoked fire from three sources as the horse waited for two to reload before popping out of cover and firing several 3-round bursts from his L85A2 into them; the rapid sound of the firing bullets oddly like the quick loud gallop of a horse.

Everyone seemed wary when they went around the corpses left by the pony. Seldom nowadays did an American soldier die without a primed grenade that only needed to drop out of position to cause havoc. It was clear this detachment took that lesson well and allowed no more risks than necessary.

The next room greeted them with an ambush but it wasn't the core that was going into a slaughter. While the reservists thought they had good positions behind metal supply bins and their snipers snug on an upstairs catwalk like fledgling grim reapers, a surprise was on its way.

Blaine could hear them on the other side like nervous vipers waiting to strike, but a headset on a nearby pony announced some codewords and everything in that room was a confused jumble of automatic weapons and suppressed rifles until all was silent and he walked through the door into a fresh tomb; the bodies of all those enemies inside slumped in different ways with all of their heads obliterated in some way.

Since this was a dimly lit drop off point for eighteen-wheelers, the next door must lead to the parking garage on the other side of the street where the jeeps were being held. The impression he got was that they were still in their shipping containers on top of the roof so the U.S. forces had missed the opportunity to sabotage them since the containers were marked with the logos of a generally known shipping company.

Ironically, the need of the British to outsource travel needs to an unaffiliated third party had saved most of the supplies and fuel Clydesdale Core had brought with them for this upscaling engagement.

A couple friendly snipers climbed out of air-conditioning ducts as a draft opened the door and made ready to make a dash across four highway lanes into the city block's garage.

Whatever it was worth, Blaine admired the big horse. As good as his armor was, it'd do no good against a razing by a little bird helicopter or a charging vehicle driven by one of the mad millions. Once on the other side, he kicked in the gate and started waving small groups on while observing the traffic. Most of the cars went their ways but a few veered off the road and actually made a pass at them.

When the twenty or so soldiers were on the other side, it was just him and Jenny's turn. To his surprise, she lifted him up and tossed him like a doll where a ready shire dropped his gun just in time to catch. The whole episode left him violently ill and almost ready to have a heart attack. It wasn't every day a bodybuilding horse threw him like a baseball.

As soon as he was set down, he watched his mate run across the roads as the assempled congregation began its way up the layered tiers of the garage to the roof. Here, he realized why everyone else hadn't joined the assault force: apparently this group was a scout patrol assigned to break the blockade and secure a thrown grapple hook for a zip line as the roof of the rec center was actually taller than the garage, strangely enough.

With that type of speed, the rest of the force could be dispatched rapidly where it was needed. As thye snuck to the top, the ponies moved ahead like ghosts and made short work of those snipers ordered to overwatch detail.

After things were clear, there was enough reprieve to admire the stars and moon above, a faint windy chill settling into his skin while he waited at ease for the grapple line to set up and stretch across the ravine-like street.

Several more horses went down the line on harnesses with hooks attached before making way for others coming down or steel supply crates sliding down and smashing so hard into the pavement that it dented the fronts in.

He watched long enough to see the commander drop down and give orders before following the mob of horseflesh breaking into the shipping containers by shooting off the padlocks and appraising the supplies within. Mostly jeeps and canvas-covered supply trucks, but also petrol barrels or additional metal crates.

He'd been told Clydesdale Core received alot of the equipment as a hand me down from the more prolific SAS, which means Pink Panthers and Blowpipe missile systems not even the Taliban wanted during the Soviet-Afghanistan war.

The sound of tingling metal links and loud cocking of big guns caught his attention. Each of the jeeps had two .50 caliber machineguns on swiveling arm joints. Some of the cars were already being driven from the containers as wounded flew down the line on specially designed hammock stretchers to be caught and passed to another set of hands arranging them in a couple of the covered trucks.

From all those fights, only eight were so badly incapacitated that moving was impossible; the rest were less seriously maimed or dead. The remaining trucks had to carry the fuel or some of the troops as panthers were loaded down with crates.

It was a sad waste, but everything else had to be left behind. Extra clothing, food, medical supplies, plasma bags, and a few boxes of spare weapons or gun parts. The convoy was ready to move, but by then it became too hazardous to retreat.

The enemy units had surrounded the building with two Abrams tanks and a ring of manned humvees; turrets aimed upwards and ready to fire any instant. As encirclement came from below, a spear thrust came from above; four Chinook helicopters dropping off Army Rangers via four rapel lines hanging over the edges of two opened bays like thick black legs.

By the time anyone could respond to the rapid deployment, twelve soldiers had dropped out into cover as the transport swung away and another went in its place with a fresh batch to release. When the first four were on their way down, a missile hit the Chinook's wide olive drab belly and splashed the men in shrapnel, making them fall down and crumple on the ground.

The other squads slid down too fast for the bullets to hit them as the helicopter buzzed away; the damage to its armor minor. Immediately, the commander split up his troops into two groups; the ponies to take on the deploying Rangers and the drafts to deal with the armor massed below like a desert-colored snake. When he saw the bunch of horses split up, he thought it a mistake.

But Raych proved to know what he was doing as the bulky big horses picked up supply crates or worked in tandem to lift the big two-car shipping containers to toss them below. Blaine looked over the railing to see a falling giant container hit a tank and crunch its .50 cal; bending the cannon like a limp tan dick.

Other five by three containers landed on humvees to dent the roofs in and wreck their turret guns. With the bottom force handled, he'd forgotten the firefight until he looked up from the wrecked tanks to see a fox with red fur raising a gun at him.

He probably had a second to react before the guy shot him. As Blaine went to raise his own rifle like reflex, a small steel crate came out of nowhere and flattened the vulpine against the concrete barricade like a battering ram; cracking all his ribs audibly and making him slump on the ground in a blood-drooling slouch. Clearly, he didn't know what happened.

Blaine thanked his tall stallion rescuer and joined the new fight, popping off single rounds where he could see any glimpses of those Rangers sneaking around. For fear of igniting any fuel, all of the drafts were ordered to use pistols only instead of those fearsome chainguns.

When he managed to get a good shot at someone, he fired at their side and made them stagger forward like a surprised punch in the kidney as the hit distracted him long enough for a Clyde to smash his helmet in with the butt of an oversized revolver. That turned out to be Raych, whom aimed his gun skyward and smacked a little bird with a 40mm grenade to knock it out of the air like an expensive egg drop.

So! That gun was a Colt Python modified to fire the M203 launcher grenades! Blaine had never seen such a thing as no one had built any handgun like that except for flares. He wondered if anyone had made speed loaders for it, but supposed not since one gun customized like that was bizarre enough.

Then again, big horses did things in big ways; it was to be expected from the draft breeds. Someone tossed out a grenade and gave him no warning as the blast smacked two soldiers against a shipping crate and knocked him on his back unconscious; burying him in a shredded pile of ply wood.

When he awoke again, only a few minutes had passed and he was careful not to move since five enemies hid behind small crates like a pile of sandbags and made their plans. It felt like an eternity of laying still and watching them until they left his proximity thinking he was dead.

He snuck up behind them as they moved off, cooking a grenade to throw it in front of them. Three were blasted backward as two dove and rolled out of the way to return fire from behind a pair of parking lamp posts; bullets miraculously missing him like they were a drunken firing squad.

One got a pop to his face that made his body collapse over the pole while the other was picked up in a not so friendly bear hug by a white Shire; who squeezed until the wolve's eyes popped out and his ribcage smashed into the neck of an hourglass before being dropped to the pavement like a broken bag of fuzzy shit.

Another soldier took a zig zagging spatter of bullets into his torso; throwing his weapon and falling off the balcony with his arms spread out like going backwards into a pool.

Too engrossed in all of this, he barely managed to see a shadowy form distorted like a mist as it crept behind a sedan and took cover behind the tinted windows thinking he hadn't been spotted. Blaine raised his weapon and popped off rounds through the driver and passenger windows; dropping one target and making the glass crack into spiderwebs.

Aside from random gunfire, the situation had been stabilized into some sample of normalcy. When he heard shooting from below, he saw the gunner on the humvee turret. Considering all options, the human took out a grenade and dropped it right in the circular opening to kill both inside. Lucky shot or skill of the new brain? So unaware of its processes, he couldn't be sure.

With everything pacified, troops turned to the current task. Now that the vehicles were loaded to default capacity, the convoy went on with its six supply trucks and four jeeps.

Since he was new to this unit, he didn't know where he belonged but an eternally patient Jenny grabbed him by his shirt collar like a puppy and put him in the second jeep with her and two ponies who either drove or manned the forward passenger gun while she took the rear emplacement and humored him with one of those antiquated missile launchers that couldn't hit shit unless it was on the helipad or nicely obliging.

He flicked on the infrared screen as the engines roared to life and started a snaking procession through four stories of garage to street level. Besides sniper activity pinging off the metal armored sides, there was no obvious resistance. Even the fierce fleet of American assault helicopters failed to make their token appearance. Blaine could only assume they were being held in reserve for a larger action somewhere further along the highway.

Even down a couple streets things were bearable. It seemed like every mile without unpleasantry was meant to bring out their confidence and relaxation like an asphalt lullaby. At least, until they got to the city limits heading Southwestward towards Texas. There was no mistake then; they had to make a stand while gunning the accelerator as in front, a huge fleet of attack helicopters came over the horizon like dozens of black suns. No disguising the facts here; in a land against air battle, they were deficient for the fight.

Naturally, having that much heavy weaponry aimed at a person would make them stop to stare in fear and maybe shit themselves.

If he were still a civilian, that might be true. These beasts of war were awing and frightful, but even J.R.R. Tolkien gave Smaug the wurm a weakness. Waiting on the horizon like buzzing billboards made them perfect targets for the Blowpipes.

Realizing that, he crouched down and raised the weapon to his shoulder. As soon as he acquired a lock, he fired and smacked an Apache in the canopy; the missile deflecte upwards and exploding in the main rotor to bring the bird down.

The rotor still spun without the vehicle, twirling into a nearby grassy hill like a frisbee and getting stuck like a giant black ninja star.

One cheap shot was all they'd get. When the one went down, the others scattered and strafed in a flanking maneuver on the sides while firing vulcan cannons that sounded as if loud continuously burping giants. Salvoes of lethal rockets fly free with whistles and screams of igniting propellants.

He found himself ducking from bullets amongst some thin canvas rucksacks as one rocket flew over his head with a thick smoking trail of blue-gray smoke.

In his opinion, horses made terrible officers. Blind obedience to commands made them horrible at giving them. It was a rare beast who had the right qualities to make decisions and Traych had such adaptability. To be the leading officer, one had to think on the fly. He was no different, luring the helicopters into firing unguided rockets at each other with precision timing on the accelerators and brakes.

A dozen had fallen this way into stream and field alike. The rest were damaged and far slower than before; a blessing on those infernal blowpipes. A salvo of ten were let loose and finished off the rest with a sky now full of falling cinders of gasoline and smoke.

One disaster had been averted thanks to a careless and overconfident flanking maneuver that made it too easy to exploit the helicopter's own armanents. Blaine hoped other such engagements would also have an easy solution, but luck was fleeting and undependable like a fire in rainfall.

The commanding Shire broke apart his revolver and replaced the spent grenade casings, flicking it closed again with his fuzzy oversized wrist. Six empty shells clattered on the ocean of black highway and crunched under the armored run-flat tires of the convoy.

Blaine took this time to put a new missile into the Blowpipe at his side, fidgeting with the clasp until he could get it closed up. He was ready to go again even if it felt like he were using a slingshot on a gryphon. All anyone could hope for at this point was that death would come cleanly. Larger caliber rounds hit with enough velocity to disembowel like a seppoku knife; hardly a pleasant diversion.

Of course, just when one bullet was dodged, they came under the barrel of another. Luck seemed fickle like that as a shadow almost swooped on them across the moon like a bird. The new threat was a relic from three wars. It was a silent hell to everyone from the Vietcong to the Taliban.

Most people would be lucky if they figured out that this plane would kill them. Blaine hoped his luck exceeded the norm as Puff the magic dragon readied a side-mounted vulcan gun to raze the battlegroup into tatters.

Again, luck played a role. As a soldier tossed a flashbang into the air and told everyone to divert their eyes from the coming burst of light, they'd find out if puff was on nightvision or thermal imaging.

A hum of bullets struck across the road and into the trees with a careless waver of bullets like Rambo on an M-60. As luck would have it, they made it into a tunnel carved into a mountain and stopped within until a plan could be made or until the attack plane had to refuel. It could be gassed up in flight, but he hoped the enemy hadn't thought that far ahead.

Blowpipes weren't designed for this. Some helicopters were valid targets, but puff flew too high and fast for even a Stinger or Javelin system to be effective. The only response they had to the aerial infantry shredder was evasion; that was a terrible plan to count on.

Blaine found himself in an anxious wait as more petrol was put into the cars now that they had a lull in the combat. He wondered how the helicopter transports of civilians and wounded were doing, but it was just a distraction from his new duties. They'd make it or not; things were that simple.

Okay, now that he remembered, puff was a C-47 cargo plane converted into a lead-spewing death machine. The propellers buzzed as the craft made orbiting runs around the mountain expecting their exit. The only true godsend was that it had an array of electric miniguns for 7.62s -- not as devastating as the antimaterial .30 cals on an A-10 Wartog but still scary.

Well, spooky might have been invulnerable as a ghost, but Traych had another trick up his feathering. The C-47 must have switched to infrared by now and that made it blind to something else. Alarms blared in the highway tunnel as a sprinkler system covered everything in a foot high of liquid nitrogen derived flame extinquishing foam.

He was cold and shivering, but it was a small complaint since everyone might as well call themselves invisible to the sensors onboard that damned plane. As long as it was on infrared and kept thinking they were in the highway tunnel, it would be too easy to escape.

When everyone looked like a snowman and the cars were parade floats, the convoy went on at fifty-five or so miles per hour. Fortune had always been at their side before, so it was a relief when the metal dragon continued to circle in ambush over the mountain. By the time the foam dissipated, escape would be complete--for now.

There was another ten minutes unmolested and nervous action on throttles before flashes came from up ahead on both sides of the road. Twenty infantry in a flanking maneuver in the brush amongst the highway. It took a bit of coordination for the machine gunners to arrange intersecting fields of fire to obliterate the opposition in raking arcs.

Heavy rounds shredded up the branches and leaves like a hedge trimmer as the noise of so many guns threatened to make him deaf. He thought they were going to make it through, but brakes shuddered in this procession and almost decked him overboard.

He wanted to know what was up, but when heavy gunfire came from ahead, he already got his answer. A force of three humvees had blocked the road and razed the front jeep in blasts of heavy lead as leading element responded with fifties of their own and a flurry of screaming missiles.

When the enemy gunners were scratched off the roster, the convoy went on the move again even while a pony ripped away his launcher with assertive impatience to blast the final vehicle.

The exhaust erupting from the rear had caught Blaine by suprise and knocked him out of the jeep to the side of the road like a fiery kick in his head.

He thought he was alone as the convoy sped right by and ignored his fall from grace, but two heavy forms jumped from moving jeeps and in the darkness, all he could see were equine faces in flashes of gunfire as two chainguns tore up whatever was left of the ambushers. It was too dark for him to contribute, and the aiding horses had it handled anyway.

With burning diesel to give some light, he saw that one of them was Jenny. Since he'd felt alone without her wonderful presence, it was all he needed to know.

Behind her, the other horse was checking the humvees and gave up as none seemed serviceable. From the impression he got off her, there was a long distance to go and they would, to be ironic to their species, be hoofing it to the destination.

Initially that was the plan but a radio tower loomed ahead with a studio nearby. At least if they went there, it would give a good view of the current location. It certainly offered better scenery than the bodies catching fire like corn husks.

As they made their way there in the dark, it was a tremendous relief that all enemy activity in this area had ceased once the ambush and blockade action had been torn apart. Not that he needed it, but Blaine retained all of his carefully selected kit aside from the missile system that had blasted him out to begin with.

Certain feelings of shame washed through him. Guilt over not being with the others to contribute his part. He wasn't a part of the core, but they'd tactically adopted him. Just like being madly in love with Jenny, that was enough.

Horse affection wasn't blatant and shallow like a dogs; Rather, it was more stoic and ambiguous like a stubborn father from a fifties sitcom. Men in that age were not obvious with feelings, but they had them. To show there was that love beneath him gave satisfaction.

Traych had never been careless with his emotions, but in the short time Blaine knew him, the huge stallion was a regimental father to all those in the care and even bothered to care about those not formally enisted in it.

In most combat situations, unlikely peoples come together for survival. The commander took that a step further too. In his standoffish way, he felt warm and approachable.

Back to the current situation: they'd made good time and were at the front entrance; glass doors like an office building would have as the big black horse strode up and smashed them to pieces by wielding his gun as a battering ram. A wall of shattered glass fell on the floor like broken bits of ice as heavy hooves crunched on the mess as if upon a crackling ice floe over a lake.

Jenny got to a light switch and slender fleurescent bulbs in the ceiling came to life. It looked like the station had been closed for the night and not abandoned as they first feared. An active building attracted more attention, but also had water and maybe a break lounge to raid for food.

Blaine was enough of an idiot not to pack himself provisions and the two drafts could certainly try the grass outside, but anthro horses hadn't eaten grass dietarily for thousands of years except for curiosity and BDSM petplay reasons. Otherwise, they ate vegetarian K-rations or whatever nice things a grocer could sell.

As his sexy mare mate bent over one too many times, his eyes transfixed on her round bubbly ass in threadbare combat fatigues and that tail in the way as if to propel his urges further. Her butt looked fantastic. No sooner was he tempted to reach a hand out and grope those soft silicone-like mare cheeks -- than a horse boner popped in front of his pants like an oblongated triangle.

Blaine had to take her in the ass all pretty and bent over like a real mare; anus surely tight as a virgin mare's slick cunny. She chuckled at his expense. The human hardly thought it was so funny that he had an erection pointed surely as an arrow to that fine chunky draft butt.

Not to say that crude humor wasn't universal amongst species, but he felt that everyone in the core had gotten used to his new embellishment and exaggerated equine horniness by now.

She giggled and wagged her large butt, amused by his frustration. The draft was going to tease him for a while, Blaine knew it. She was going to strip and drive him crazy with that shimmering bod and round booty until he either died of a heart-attack or blue-balls. Well, he could always have at her like an aggressive suitor. Since she was in an exaggerated period of heat, that fine mare could barely spurn him no matter how assertive his advances.

Without care he lost all of his clothing below the navel and inched his way to her hindquarters cautiously, expecting a kick or any protest. Jenny rested her arms on a white painted plaster wall and leaned over all upper weight on it which made the wood brackets inside creak like monsters and some of the ceiling crackle and fall from the buckling pressure.

As she looked over her shoulder with a friendly snicker and a shy 'come hither' wink, Blaine had no thought in his head beyond tugging down the back of her pants and making his pony poker at home in the pulsing welcome folds of her cute uniquely-shaped anus.

He came at her slowly and mindlessy like a zombie hungering for mare muff. His head was swimming deliriously with so many passionate female pheromones that the human was suprised by his blindness to be taken in force by the black stallion right behind.

Panicking, he mistook the unexpected sizure of his small neck in those strong silky midnight arms to be a premedition of rape. It took him several minutes of reassurance in his terrorized state to finally realize he was merely being held. But held for what? He'd never been physically restrained like this since he was a child getting vaccinations.

What could the two horses have planned that she would expect him to hold still for? She did a little trick employing her missing panties. Perhaps after a number of years of watching different nature and discovery shows, he'd guess at the answer to all of this odd horseplay.

He watched, held in the arms of cock-block denial as Jenny reached down with one hand to unclip her pants. Her tail poofed from the hole in the back as the fatigues fell like a curtain of waterfall in a tan puddle around her ankles.

She promptly kicked out of them and spread her legs far more generously than even a strip and cavity search demanded. The seat of her panty briefs barely covered those giant honeydew melons of buttocks and when her legs grew apart, her panties slowly snuck up into her wide crevasse of ass and became a thong, faintly outlining a cute dimple of anus and a narrow band of pussy which flopped with winking estrous contractions that made the scrunched up lingerie look like it was breathing, a calm path of mare water staining the cloth in wetness as if a spill and dribbling on the floor in sparse droplets of equine breeding slime.

The faint trace of her sex had somehow become potent and fresh like the smell of baking bread across the street from a shop. He closed his eyes, trying to sample what he could of her heating goodies as his cock flared and increased its dribbling of pre as if sweat in a sauna.

Blaine sighed, his heart giving beats like a drum solo in a slipknot concert. To contain this excitement proved difficult; the more he knew and smelt of her, the more instinct took over any thoughts or choices he was certain to have.

A certain playfulness also overcame him. Briefly, he was tempted to bite on her ass or snap the panties against her labia like a rubber band. He also wanted to just pound those buns in his open palm endlessly; a kinky spanking the horse would likely never forget.

Instead, she was in control and not that he minded so much. It was just since there was unfairness to him having a horse's libido also gave him a horse's impatience to fuck something.

Helplessly watching and struggling in the stallions arms, the shire crooned softly into his ears and reached out his oversized hand with its white cotton fluff on the wrist to delicately stroke along the shaft of his ponycock as if to remove some of that foul tension which had wound itself precariously in his thighs as if sexually caused cramps.

Blaine immediately calmed himself down, his breathing slowed as the giant hand continued to play ever softly on his proud equine organ as a massage. He opened his eyes and looked right at Jenny's gorgeous round brown butt; cock almost cumming with rivers of pre like a garden hose and got the shire's hand and his own thighs and balls covered in the musky stuf.

The vapor rising out of his own fluids made him far hornier! The black horse sensed it and let blaine's cock loose from his grasp immediately for fear of making the human go off. THe human could only whine in urgency as his crotch humped at air and made that pony fun size cock flop around with his indignant attemps to reach her from a dozen feet away

There might as well been a teasing board between them like people used at stud farms; there was no way he'd cross that distance with the male hulk restraining his actions.

Somehow satisfying some criteria of her standards, the mare ever slowly crawled from her panties until her tail fell loose and that cute mocha asshole came into view. He could feel something growing on his back and knew this show was also getting the shire hard as well.

Slowly, the pussy drenched floss was peeled from her muscular crack like a sticky white strip of saltwater taffy; a faint outline of a heart as the hole where her tail came out was now on display as the panties hung on her knees as a hammok and continued to leak with morsels from that over-excited slit of horseness.

Panties out of the way, he had the chance to admire the squirting juice coming out of her pussy in a brief spray each time she whinked and exposed that red ghost of fervent estrous. It seemed everyone had sprung a leak. Since the shire was getting his shirt and coat wet with his hidden full-length boner, one could hardly say any of them were seaworthy.

The stallion walked slowly toward her and Blaine thought he would finally get to mount Jenny. Of course, horses had their own rituals and there were other criteria to deal with.

Instead of his cock, the shire shoved Blaine's face at her anus and pussy; filling his nose and every inch of skin with her experience. When assertively ordered by the stallion to lick and slurp at her fluids hidden in those loose horsey folds, he couldn't comply fast enough.

His head swam with her sex candy as his boner felt like it grew even larger, if that were indeed possible given limitations of the flesh.

One of her winks blasted him in the face with one of those powerfully feminine squirts of mare cum, almost of strong enough vigor to make the human faint.

He loved eating her nectar out; it was suprisingly filling like sex soup. She uttered a low affectionate nicker, gently pushing her butt back into his face and fucking his nose on tight vaginal muscles in an aggressive vibrating milking motion as if to give a sample of what was to come next.

He found it difficult to believe he had missed out on this kind of skill. Apparently the first time they'd fucked, Jenny had witheld some suprises for a later time. This demonstration was certainly proof of that.

While still horny, both horses were right. This was paradise sucking the honey from her sexy slimy folds and he wanted to live under her short pretty tail forever.

All that toasty body heat melting into his cheeks, nose, chin, lips, and forehead was nearly orgasmic by itself. When winter came around, he wouldn't buy a hat or ski mask, he'd be buried in her inviting furnace of ass until Groundhog day.

While he'd been busily drinking her ambrosia of Epona, the shire had continued to play with his cock and softly rubbed along the smooth warm skin of his scrotum. Neither of them could see his face, but he was certainly blushing hotly from all this stimulus being plied to his body from two different angles.

The throbbing clitoris punching his bottom lip finally made him beg for mercy--for any chance to get this raging hard horsecock some relief from this odd itch all over the skin. It was an odd tingling he had to get rid of like an annoying inflammatory burn from Spanish fly; just ground up parts of mildly poisonous beatles.

Maybe sensing his breaking point, the two sexy beasts relented and while blaine had regret over leaving that wet silken pussy, he knew there was some other company which he could gladly offer the steaming female orifices. As he was precariously drawn from between her cheeks, he could clearly see all the spit he'd left behind from a prolonged stay in her cookie jar; her hairless genital skin and anus almost soaked to blackness as if fresh chocolate icing on brownies.

Blaine made ready to arch his body to take her bulging hole with its tightly wrapped layers of muscled skin in the shape of an asterisk, but he felt his penis deflected and pushed at the entrance of the lower opening as if to insist that this was where the real party was happening.

He was given a few tantalizing seconds of Jenny's mare bean popping against his eager tip with the same presence and frequency of big rain drops. This was probably the better art of teasing as he anxiously waited to penetrate and fill the waiting tunnel with hardened maleness.

His knees scraped against her still warmed panties. Yet another reminder of a submitting female's sexuality in the narrow sensory reality of his awareness.

Blaine's flared tip dribbled pre all over her labia and bounced a little along the outside of her sex with every excited impatient beat of his heart. It felt like the moment of completion couldn't come fast enough as he still lingered at the threshold of those parting muscular lips.

Ecstatic grunts and snorts of a horny animal left his throat in guttural cat-calls as an abyss of potent sex awaited his first triumphant thrust into the hot marish folds of his lover. It threatened to tear him apart, but all control over the speed and actions in the union were effectively out of his control.

He gasped as his thick tip sunk in her wet juice-lubed pussy with a loud sloppy noise from the sliding of an unlubed cock slowly melting into her aching hot love tunnel.

It felt somewhat abrasive on the first couple of experimental thrusts and he never managed to get farther than a few more consecutive inches at a time without pulling out and getting more mare honey on the rest of his shaft.

Once all of his rigid stallionhood glistened with her divine fluides, it was safe to go on into her tight gripping cunny without the nasty tugging sensation of dryness that felt like his cock was getting ripped apart at the loose foreskin.

As he pumped in and out of her shiny quivering labia, he made certain to have the mare woman's most desireable feature in his staring eyes at all times. Looking down at that pretty tail covering his cock in a curtain of hair, he absolutely adored such a beautiful round ass. Some men loved breasts, he loved chunky curved butts and was glad she knew it.

There was a temptation to do more than look, but he was constantly reminded that he wasn't in charge of anything. By expedient or mercy, the only thing allowed to him was his cock and where his head pointed. Two courtesies he gladly did not take for granted.

Her shapely bottom shivered and wiggled like jelly as he pounded into her and made those heavenly rear cheeks ripple like water with each slam home into her welcoming cunny. One of the stranger sensations came not from her, but his new anatomy. While the new penis and sheath took some getting used to, what he wasn't used to was having a pair of golf balls in a leather sack smacking wetly against her clitoris and inner thighs or the odd breezy feeling that came of the clammy chill from the vaginal fluid over his scrotum catching the A/C breeze and cooling on his skin.

It wasn't so bad a feeling; just weird. With time Blaine was certain he'd be used to these strange changes in his anatomy in short order. Well, that or Jenny would certainly try her hand at helping him to do so. Pleasant girl: aside from her sensually rounded body, she had an affection and tenderness akin to no other he ever met.

There came a regret over him for not knowing this sexy creature sooner. But that is all regret truly is; a vain longing for alternate knowledge. Instead, he was more than content to learn about her now, since this was the opportunity to do so.

His cock felt alternately cold and hot with every ram he forced between those zig-zagging muscular lips. She continued to wink her pussy on his cock, slapping a clitoris on his balls as he felt the corner of her angled fleshy sex on his fuzzy hanging mare-fillers.

While not exactly a virgin, he hadn't felt anything grip his dick so firmly. Each winking pulse flowed around his shaft with the contractions of hundreds of unnamed muscles lining that powerful vagina. Deceptively strong: able to keep a vacuum seal with a penis, it felt more like she could crush it or eject him out at a moment's notice. Such a wild beast. He couldn't help but admire a tenacious hungry tunnel like this. In moments, she had a pattern of bodily rhythm and pounded her large meaty ass into his thighs and belly to swallow as much of his length as she could.

Finally after a minute of this, she shoved her pussy down to his hilt and surrounded his glans in the tight hot flesh of her cervix. Once he felt his tip forcibly line up with the small tight hole of her womb's opening, he gasped as his nuts floated Close to his body and pumped cum directly through a connected urethra into the more than eager uterine lining.

It was at this moment, when he was allowed to relax and rest over her wide fuzzy back with a cock deeply flared in her body, that he realized he had truly bred his first mare. Tired and sweaty, he was none the less elated and let the accomplishment melt into his body with a certain delirious sense of pride.

Never had he worked so hard to give sexual pleasure to another. Blaine's legs trembled and felt all funny like jelly as a result. He almost fell out of her a few times but still managed to hold it together until all pleasure ebbed away with his penis softening and falling out of her with a messy gush of her urine, sex fluids, and both of their cum.

Still, he lay prone over her back and butt as the black horse went to the entrance and set up trip-wire grenades in case of attack. Experience had taught them all to be wary for any hostile action and even the satisfaction of sexual intercourse with a fine horse woman couldn't distract them from that fact.

He wanted to linger on her welcoming hot flesh a bit more before embracing the callous harsh concubine of war; that fine temptuous bitch who despoils with loss, violence, and misery.

It would be a bittersweet nicety compared to the events that would follow it. In a way, a marriage had been consecrated. A night sleeping alone together was lacking however. Given the state of affairs, vigilance was called upon and it was vigilance that would be followed.

Clydesdale core had a more profficient methodology for guard duty. It meant that while he and Jenny could not sleep together, they could have some time at sentry duty together, or so he thought.

When it came to the drawing of the lots, both horses unanimously agreed that Blaine should sleep first. He didn't like the arrangement but it was a vote against him so he really had no choice. While he knew they did it out of kindness for him, he would have liked some say in the matter.

Grumbling, he obeyed the order and dropped into a nearby leather padded lounger, using a four pack of toilet paper like a pillow. Dispite his disappointment, Blaine got over and found himself quickly asleep.

Satisfied her mate was asleep, Jenny climbed a ladder to the roof with the other horse close behind. The maintenance ladder shuddered under their combined weights but held regardless. On top, the vantage point was amazing. Except for some drifting smoke, the stars were clear and out in force like battallions of fiery angels. She wished to share quite a sight with Blaine, but then again, she also needed a few hours to think by herself if only to satisfy a nagging worry.

It wouldn't do to have regrets and second-thoughts. Certainly not in front of him! There were worries over being joined with a human-horse hybrid. Firstly, were they combatible for breeding if she decided to retire?

Other horses had managed to adapt to failed sexual criteria, and adoption in equines wasn't the kind of selfish exanthema that humans harbored. Secondly, how much of Blaine was she courting and how much was this new horny beast inside of him?

If she were to truly love someone, it would be genuine from the heart and not some intoxicating influence which placed a stranglehold on the libido. Surely this new force was as scary to him as it was to her, yet it was certain to keep him alive when nothing else could.

So really these were oddball questions she should bring before him. Maybe as far as he was concerned, the influence of the nanites in his blood and brain were already a normal part of his life; Jenny certainly couldn't imagine what it would be like not to be a horse.

Probably a moot point, but there was no point in speculation over these details. What he was is good enough: alive. Alive and unmated at the perfect time to form a bond with an unpartnered mare still withering like a dying tree from the loss of her lover as surely he was the water which sustained her life.

She had dwelled on these thoughts during the dull boring routine of sentry duty. Since the job entailed looking at nothing, the mind was always occupied with idle thoughts that came to the surface.

With the matter of Blaine somewhat satisfied, she contemplated the odd little tidbits which she noticed prior to the treachery and all those tireless battles. Well, tireless was actually an oxymoron; endless fighting was certainly a restless commodity but not those soldiers who fought it. If she weren't a draft with muscles genetically built to handle the excruciating amounts of work, activity and stress, she certainly would be seeking her bed right about now.

It was proper to send the human to bed since he lacked such stamina. The sad thing was that most horses were expected to work like machines. Even if they had less limitations, it didn't feel fair. Life isn't fair, war isn't fair, but strength for fighting and being vengeant gods among soldiers; that amount of evolutionary prowess was a singular blessing not merely to her but all the species of horsedom.

So busy was she in persuing ghosts of the mind that she barely noticed the sudden thickening of the shadows in a nearby copse of rustling trees. It could have been dismissed as natural, but even on a moonless night , stars still managed to betray soft glimmers of metal and skin even from this distance.

She wished for a sniper on standby to confirm, but it was just her and another assault troop; half of a functioning team. That subtle concern out of the way, she gave some thought on how to subtly warn the human without giving away their position on the roof.

So far they had some camouflage since their weapons were down out of sight and their fur was too dark to reflect starlight as it had on caucasian humans' faces or the occasional white-furred soldier in the ranks such as an arctic fox or siberian tiger.

The other horse had already caught wind of the intruders without her needing to prompt him. If they discovered this position was being occupied, Blaine wouldn't need any waking; the firefight woud more than gladly oblige her request.

A flawless clarity only given to the moods of water had entered her eyes like a thoughtful twinkle. It was a strange soldierly calmness which came over her on rare moments when all time ceased and every muscle in her body was directed by a force which felt alien and out of her control.

Such action was known well by the Samurai. It is said that in a battle where two opponents of equal talent meet, a thousand years are lived and glimpsed in the single stroke of a sword. Awareness is heightened to such a degree that the senses move faster than the body and make every swing and parry an eternity. This is a claim of the Samurai class for 'the good death'; where a single duel is drawn out into the eons like many lifetimes lived at once.

Without fear to unsteady her hand nor uncertainty to make hesitation upon her reflexes, Jenny was free to become a part of this expanse of combat zen like the worryless millions of warriors before.

She leaned down to cock the weapon idly resting on her thigh. In one moment of brilliance, it became as an extension of her eye. Where ever she looked, the glance of death itself would fall with the bright inferno of meteorites on the skin of foes; biting like fiery bees into the flesh.

A dreamless sleep was disturbed by monstrous sound. What seemed like two roaring dragons uttering cries in challenge and answered by the songbirds with popping firecrackers for voices. Blaine shuddered a moment begging his ears to adjust to such a vile collection of noise.

Whatever the hell was going on, it woke him just in time to roll out of the lounger as the hand grenade trap at the entrance had been sprung. Metal shards zapped through the air and caught the small package of toilet paper on fire like giant marshmallows.

Blaine spent a moment stomping the paper rolls out before turning to the sound of crunching glass left in the wake of the explosive. If the trap had hit anyone, it was only a delay at best as more troops stormed through the smoking lobby.

Using the lounger like a heap of sandbags, he pushed it over and rested the foregrip of his weapon on it like a hasty tripod to steady his aim. He ducked his head and looked down iron sights in wait for the first invader.

They didn't dissappoint in this regard. Even though the two horses were heavily engaged, that didn't stop the first floor of the radio station from turning into a bullet party. As he sent three bullets into his first guest, others quickly shrank back into the cover that a particle board wall covered in plaster could afford; which was little better than his own erected defense.

Having stopped their frontal assault, he pulled the pin from a grenade and let the spoon fly off like a spinning brass casing before waiting two seconds to chuck it like a hot potato. The potent ball skipped on the linoleum floor like a stone on water and surely blew up in their collective faces like a bouncing betty.

There were no movements for a while after that but he surely knew they would try something and keep going. Stubborn like hungry ants, they could only be scared off briefly until resuming a pattern of desperation.

Blaine gave it some waiting; the only thing he could do since exposing himself from cover to go look would be a bad idea. Survival meant making smart choices and not necessarily the right ones, either. As he listened to the blasts of the horse's guns, he became curious whether or not they had held the rest back or if more would trickle in.

The wait was killing him; he must have been sweating nervously on the butt of his rifle for hours, but in fact, it had only been ten minutes. Sure as he thought it, an ownerless shotgun swivelled around the corner and roared, peppering the air above his head with a thick cloud of buckshot before slinking behind once again to be pumped for the next blast.

As others gained bravado and peeked their guns around like metal puppets, Blaine decided he'd had enough of this bullshit and chucked another grenade. It had been cooked sufficiently and rolled neatly in their position like a bouncing fat grasshopper to explode in their faces.

What followed was a flash of fire and the vomit-inducing smell of cooked skin and muscle on their unarmored bodies; three thumps on the ground and two wet smacks agains the wall like raw meat as a cloud of plaster rained from the walls and ceiling nearby from the intense shockwave of the small yet violent blast.

Now that things had settled down in his area, he wondered if it would be a good idea to sneak out to the lobby and check if the shotgun was still operational dispite the grenade he just set off by it.

Emboldened by previous success, he did just that. When he was a foot out of cover, he was rewarded by hail from a lone weapon. Blaine fired off a random stream at his attacker while rolling quickly back into safety where he could think better.

More bullets thudded and stopped in the upholstery until the enemy weapon ran out. Blaine rose to return fire, thinking the enemy was still dumbly reloading their weapon out in the open like a novice.

Instead, a pistol answered his own reaction and pinged off a swarm of buzzing 9 mm. Bullets aimed at his face which by luck he managed to dodge in time. Prior to now, the enemy soldiers must have thought they were dealing with a civilian. It certainly seemed the same mistake wasn't being repeated.

Blaine hurriedly ran through the options in his head for how to safely deal with this prick and came up empty. By the time he cooked another grenade to toss, he'd be overrun and killed before it could leave his hand.

Crouching against the metal and leather couch, he noticed a solid hard lump pushing against his ribs and remembered what it was. Immediately, a plan came to him as he heard a fresh clip click into the enemies' weapon.

Raising his rifle as a decoy, he paid close attention to the location of the fire as he unholstered the magnum and fired blindly right through the furniture until the enemy bullets stopped. When he shot off five rounds in quick succession, all was silent so he rised to peek around. His cleverness had earned him a lucky headshot, as far as he could see; the enemy combatant had a blown skull like a gutted pumpkin which oozed blood and liquified brain on the floor.

Now that he was free to think, he noticed both of the horse's weapons had gone empty. The whooping roar was replaced by the uncertain blasts of thunder cracked out by their sidearms; which should have qualified for artillery pieces. Even wielding his was difficult because of its size and recoil.

Regardless, without their chainguns, he knew their combat effectiveness had diminished considerably. Handguns work only for emergencies; and since this was, they were in deep shit. No resupply, no retreat, no reinforcement. If this situation were to improve, it would all be up to him since the two horses could only use their handguns, sadly their hands were too large and fingers too thick to handle any of the weaponry like humans and medium-sized furs carried.

In a lull in the fighting, he gathered up all the weapons and ammunition from the bodies in the lobby which had been hidden from sight by a wall and an open doorway. Tossing them behind the couch, he then wandered outside into the chilly sulfur-filled air to grab more equipment from bleeding corpses.

It was when he came to a tree with a skunk collapsed against the trunk that he noticed a thick twig had gotten stuck in the trigger guard. If he had pulled the gun up without looking, that mistake likely would have killed him. His eyes widened as inspiration struck him; who said one needed fingers to shoot a gun? In a favorite movie of his, one guy had managed to shoot a gun using a carrot since all his fingers had been broken. Coming to that realization, he gathered weapons and bullets in earnest before standing by the roof, much to the equine's confusion.

Blaine quickly outlined his discovery as he asked for a line to be dropped. No way in hell would he make endless trips up the ladder when they could just pull up a rope loaded down by captured equipment.

Satisfied they had enough after ten or so trips, he went back in the studio to find 'sticks' that were a bit more rigid and could sustain rough treatment in heftier equine hands. Finally, he decided to tear collapsible antennae off of some old T.V.s and an odd radio or two. The job likely called for malleable material so he went with it.

He had felt a horse's grip before. If they weren't careful, they could easily break bones like toothpicks. In the midst of a battle, giving them a wood stick as a firing mechanism was like asking them to keep a chicken egg from breaking while doing a gymnastics routine on uneven parallel bars; it just couldn't be done.

When he had deposited whatever he had collected in a convenient duffel bag found under the security desk at the lobby entrance and secured it to the rope, he considered them taken care of and went to the painstaking task of pushing his bullet-filled sofa in front of the swinging doors as a barricade and moved all his guns and extra clips behind that same desk in the wide large-roomed lobby, awaiting the next attack. Again it could not come quick enough to discharge his boredom. A bad thing, because he was sleepy now after all the adrenaline which caused havoc in his system in random bursts throughout the event. Unfortunately, rest was a weakness; if he gave in to it, he would probably die.

Instead, he did his best to occupy his brain and hands. He started by loading the rifles and the shotgun so they would be fully prepared for the next engagement. Blaine also set up the fifteen or so grenades he'd picked from the bodies in two small green rows; set inside an old cardboard box with insets for christmas ornaments. Macabre way to celebrate, once he got to pondering the wierdness of it

The loud rapid pops of dozens of firecrackers came from above; Blaine would be bored no longer. He had his weapon set up on the countertop; using the box magazine in the bottom of the weapon like a monopod to steady his aim as he looked down the plain sights to find foes to engage.

Despite his shitty lack of natural night sight from all these bright lights, he didn't have any trouble seeing the skittering shadow formations come up to the studio amongst the cover of trees with excessive branches and folliage like Willows or some other species.

The enemy quickly made his job a fuckload easier. Erratic flashes of gunfire in the dark lit up the night like mutated bursts from fireflies. He quickly sighted one bunch indicating a small squad laying suppressant fire and struggled to hold his weapon as he sent a full clip, thirty bullets, into their direction and hopefully in their bodies.

A random enemy flare had been fired, showing three soldiers either dead or so wounded they were combat ineffective. Strangely, this was the first time he had incurred wounded so he was at a loss what to do about it.

Killing them felt too inhumane, but leaving them there was also despicable. He couldn't take them captive; they didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention rulings and so couldn't be trusted as prisoners.

Not something he could devote much thought to until after the firefight. If he lived after this, it would be something to think about. If he didn't, there was no point in wasting his energy thinking about it. On the trail of that though, he realized he was in command! Hadn't he admitted that horses couldn't take the initiative unless they had certain rare talents for it like Traych did? So far, standing orders of 'kill everything in sight' had served them well, but that wouldn't last much longer when the helicopters came.

As he was thinking through that, a shadow lurched from the doorway like a dark arrow with a black knife in hand. He shot a single bullet through the ear of a darkly clothed raccoon in his special ops battledress and then was empty as the critter crashed into him and took them both down to the floor with a crash.

Blaine barely managed to bring up his rifle to block a downward stab of that menacing blade aimed for his throat. The strength of the enemy soldier proved immense and gradually pushed down on him until they could smack the gun away.

He struggled to think and survive at the same time. If he made a mistake against this highly trained veteran, he could die. Last time he had an enemy on top of him like this, his ass was saved by a bunch of ponies. Overhead, the struggle resumed. Apparently no-one knew knew an ally was already taking care of it.

Well now! This was a perfect time to give a demonstration on friendly fire! As he heard the shooters coming closer, he knew they would be skittish as fuck and fire at any sudden movements they saw.

He gave it all his strength and willpower to push the growling raccoon back, landing a kick squarely in the assassin's chest to make him pop up like a whack-a-mole. Blaine watched in satisfaction as a burst of bullets decapitated him with a sudden imploding collapse of blood, brains, and bone. The corpse slumped over the information desk with half of its head gone as Blaine flopped a grenade over the counter and grabbed another fresh rifle as smoke filled the lobby and made breathing difficult for a few seconds.

Regardless, he had survived the engagements so far. It was a strange feeling of relief bordering on immortality. He came through all that shit smelling like a rose despite their best efforts. What's more, he took out a good chunk of their guys.

Once the smoke cleared, he was at the counter again. This time, poised with a SPAS-12 with its semi-auto feature clicked on so that he didn't have to bother pumping it each time. This make also had a ten-round box attached to its tubular magazine receiver, giving him eighteen shells. Another magazine and two haversack pouches filled with loose rounds sat lazily on the table any time they were needed.

Just as he got all his arrangements satisfied to his need, another wave of assaulting troops moved in for the kill. It didn't make any sense; if they wanted to kill the horses, there was an easier way to do that. Likewise, they weren't really committed to killing a human; Blaine had just always somehow ended up in their way.

Was it too unlikely that they were going through all this effort just to capture a radio station? It didn't exactly make sense unless they hated rap music. So then, what other explanation could there be for such an animated offensive against such a low-priority target?

Maybe this place wasn't as useless as he assumed it was. The enemy had a chance for over an hour to call in air support or armor, but refused to do so. They didn't even use explosives; Blaine had been tossing all those. It all meant that they wanted this place intact and free of collateral damage.

Blaine would have to find out why and do it before they succeeded and took the place back in one of their desperate, ill-thought-out attempts.

Jenny sighed, preparing herself for the annoyingly boring task of loading empty weapons discarded on the ground. She and Sam had picked them up out of a pile at random, emptied their clips into the foes, and tossed them aside for a fresh weapon.

Now, they had the trouble of looking for all these tossed weapons all over the roof and putting new magazines into the receiver for the next onslaught. Still, it could be worse: she could be dead.

As the horses roved on the roof looking for their expended rifles, she couldn't help but admire Blaine's ingenuity. Even in a dire situation, he used his head and brought new hope to a bleak battlefield. Unlike the rest of the humans, he had been easy to capture on numerous times, was amendable to reason, and was polite and respectful when needed. Blaine acted like the only American in this country. The rest of them acted like suicidal legions of goblins or orcs with an unjustified grudge.

While busy loading a belt into a magazine, Sam pointed to something in the distance.

At first, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to a uniformly black blanket of darkness a male away; like a patch of shadows crept forward from clouds obscuring the faint subtle light from a full moon.

But Sam wasn't pointing at something inside the mass; he was pointing at it, and that was when she realized what it was. A marching contingent of soldiers in a formation size not seen since the battles between Napoleon and Wellington.

She wondered who's Waterloo it would be as she rushed her attempts to get all the weapons ready in time, foreboding shadow creeping ever closer in one intent.

Even down to two Clydesdale core noncoms, she wanted to make this battle an Alamo they'd never forget.

Blaine had some time to think over the erratic behavior when a hole popped in the ceiling from where a hoof had stomped through an inch of wood and several inches of plaster. He looked up through the hole, got a nice look up Jenny's clothed cameltoe, and received a warning from the horses about a coming threat.

From the way she described it, he didn't have time to think about it too much before they got there. He had maybe ten minutes of spare time to figure out what was going on and at stake before they took back their prized piece of 'beachment' property, and they would do it too. Enough troops had been mustered to make even a five-star general blanch.

Since no amount of bullets or firepower could stop such a force, he hoped that the secret he discovered to their motives and spent his time exploring the station. The explanation behind this insanity could be anything. In fact, Blaine could stare past it without knowing.

A faint noise came to the disc jockey booth. The station had the whole night's broadcast recorded and playing in automation. Nearby a switchboard with lights and different dials and buttons was a pair of headphones oversized enough to cover the whole ear. Whatever was playing on the radio, he could hear it from where he was standing like an intoxicating little murmur of seduction.

When he edged closer, he heard drums, electric guitars, and a baritone chant in a foreign language. Somehow it animated him. Even unable to understand the words or not being close enough to the playing music didn't diminish its power. The song was somehow telling him something.

It was telling him to kill horses.

By miracle, he had been augmented enough into a horse that he was immune to resist the message. If he hadn't had the nanites changing his body and brain, he would have been a mindless killer out for genocide by now.

Satisfied he had found the answer to this insane new world, Blaine went to go tell the drafts clomping loudly all over the roof as if the mice crawling in the rafters were bulking up to try out for sumo. He didn't have the chance to leave as an ambush was sprang and brainwashed special ops soldiers made to kill him like ninjas, shadows out of nowhere with combat knives painted black like wasp stingers.

Blaine wasn't just fucked; he was royally raped in an elephant gang-bang. Assuming all the enemies had a ways to go to reach him, he didn't think that there was some already here waiting to make sure the secret would never get out.

A brainwashing wave had been invented to control the masses and activated to kill the only species that could resist its reconditioning powers.

Four silent specters pounced at him: two wolves, a crow, and a human with a face blacked out by charcoal dust. Stupidly, he'd left all of his weapons in the lobby except for the holstered oversized magnum in his armpit. Not that it would matter; they'd kill him easily before he drew it. The only thing that saved him from death was his utter silence and their indecision on how to dispose of him.

It was an unwritten rule inspired by their presence; if he screamed, he was dead. Now as they climbed from their hiding places and inched toward him, he knew escape was impossible. Going for the door would land a knife in his back.

Instead, they carefully came toward him with the likely false conclusion he'd draw his gun or other hidden weapon to take some of them out with him. He didn't actually have such an intent, seeing it as a failed gesture that removed survival from the scenario.

If he wanted to live, he had to let them close the distance and rely on his improved peripheral vision and horse-like reflexes to perform the next phase of the plan. His body was lithe and muscles were limber and flexible enough for the plan. To survive, there was only one way out:

Dance around knives.

Blaine relaxed his muscles into a forceful meditation. The only thing truly under his control was his eyes; the rest of his body would move according to commands from the subconscious. Otherwise, he'd be too slow to move in response to their attacks.

Muscles flexed lazily like they were made of water. When they were close enough, the crow made a downward jab with his blade which he sidestepped so that the blade pierced a wolf's chest instead and made the canid bleed profusely from a ruptured aorta.

The other wolf made a horizontal slash across Blaine's throat as if to bloodlet him like a cow or pig for slaughter. He curved his body like an S to avoid that and a stab in his back at the same time; jumping on the chest of the human and slamming down both his boots at once to break the man's ribs with his reinforced soles.

By resorting to the tactics of a crazy motherfucker, he had evened the odds in his favor in less than ten seconds. The remaining two wondered in horror how it was possible a civilian could kill two stealth veterans.

Then again, he wasn't a civilian anymore, was he? Civilians don't kill in war nor do they have any power to control it when the government is stubborn to finish the job. As he took the time to contemplate that, the crow took an underhand stab under his ribs only to be artfully parried by Blaine forcing the holstered gun at his armpits into the path of the rushing knife.

The crow made to stab upwards his eyes from there, but Blaine wasn't having that shit. He deftly leaned his head back while kicking out into the bird's chest to make the crow stumble backwards into a wall. The wolf made to run his knife through Blaine's back again, but the human ducked low.

The lupine slammed hard into Blaine's ass and doubled over in surprised pain as he managed to flip the furry bastard right onto the crow's outheld knife, impaling the wolf on one of his lungs and right through his spine as the sharp edge of the knife sliced through his body as he fell over its unforgiving rigid metal.

Fazed by the inexplicable guilt over killing a friend, the crow went on against him regardless. Blaine caught the downward strike of the feathery, oil-black wrist as the knife came an inch from his forehead and was carefully spun about to face the avian's chest where Blaine carefully aimed and headbutted the sharp implement into the crow's heart with two or three recoiling slams of his forehead like a hammer and nail, the crow too shocked by the ensuing pain to do anything about it.

It's hammer time, he thought, using one harder strike of his skull to impale the knife in the avian's chest to the hilt before grabbing the first wolf's knife (the cleanest of the four) and went to warn the horses of what he'd learned.

As he made it to the peek hole that had been pounded through the roof, he gave an explanation of the discovery but they still didn't know what to do with it. When they went back to the DJ station, disrupting the signal didn't work to deter the enemy. More proactive measures were called for and he immediately had it, hatching a plan in his head and outlining it to the drafts.

Jenny listened intently to the discourse and found it difficult to keep up with the explanation; Blaine used numerous words she wasn't familiar with so she asked for him to slow down and elaborate.

As it turned out, a little exposure to the hypnotic radio waves caused permanent alteration of normal thought patterns. That meant people already under its power could not be stopped even if the signal were turned off; the damage had been done.

Blaine's new plan was to use the wavelength at the opposite of the spectrum to erase all traces of the original conditioning. That would take time to do. Meantime, time could be bought if new orders were sent to the soldiers. The human checked over the sound mixing controls for the music computer and thought he could get the task done in minutes, which was good since their cursory ten minute lull was nearly over.

He said something about spoofing the carrier wave and handed over a rectangular transponder box that would boost the signal. The only problem was that one of the drafts got the job of putting this bloody thing on top of the five-story antennae next to the station and the other horse had to keep any straggling soldiers at bay while the deed was done.

Somehow in a godforsaken clusterfuck in the drawing of lots, she was tasked with a long night of exercise to tend to this matter as Blaine was busy doing a job of his own in the building. It wasn't the kind of work she looked forward to, but it still had to be done.

As Sam watched over the courtyard in between the antennae and station, his eyes and ears darted furtively about at any suspicious movement or sound and dismissed them as natural while keeping a death-grip on a fully loaded SAW 249.

She gave him the cursory nod of usual comradery and assurances, rushing to climb her unsuitably massed body up the crossing steel beams and supports. Maybe a pony could put up with this chicanery, but if a heavy horse were meant for such nonsense, they'd be born with long claws--or wings, she ammended quickly.

Halfway up, sparks popped all over the metal struts from extremely accurate sniper bullets. Now she was in a precarious situation, unable to scrunch her body any smaller, so she focused on the only thing she could do: her job.

Once Jenny got a quarter away from her destination, something hot struck her leg as though hit by a car. A flood of roaring pain quickly followed in the wake of the shock along with a slow warm trickle running down her thigh onto a form-fitting snug boot meant to protect the hoof from damage.

Despite the sudden appearance of the wound, the mare clung firmly to the bar and used her upper body strength to keep pressure off the injury. She chanced looking down and saw the chaos ensuing below, gunfire erupting in her direction like a sea of pulsing stars.

Up to this point, she had no idea how much lead was being thrown her way and now had no recourse but to wonder why she wasn't dead. At the top, she sat the box against the four-foot-long spire and made several revolutions with a two-pound roll of duct tape to make sure this damn thing would stay up here; if she had to climb up and endure all of this bullshit again, she'd sooner let the enemy kill her - not that they seemed particularly good in that endeavor.

Satisfied the job was done, both horses pulled back, Jenny albeit limping, to protect Blaine while he got the radio signal and speakers modulated for the initial countermanding burst of orders to tell the sleepwalking masses to hold their positions. With everyone halted like that, there would be time to wake them from this horrible dream rather than merely ordering them around like glorified robots.

Blaine messed with the switches to get the sound settings modulated properly for the subconscious burst of static out of three speakers he had moved to the station entrance, plugged into twenty or so interlinked neon orange extension cords jacked all the way into the DJ console.

He didn't know how many tries he had to get this right, but Jenny put a hand on his shoulder, exchanging love, trust and confidence with him in one gesture, giving the uncertain human strength to make the attempt.

He was concerned over the fact that she got shot, but the horse didn't seem to mind and he had to concentrate on his own problems, anyway.

Pulling down one switch to adjust the bass and another to fix the sound's wavelength, he thought he had it right. It took a minute or so for him to gather up his courage before making the attempt.

Just as he heard a loud rustling of trees like a heavy rain, he activated the counter-signal and sent out an ungodly screeching scream into their ears in one debilitating focused blast of noise. As expected, they halted and all was quiet in the forest while the hundreds of troops awaited further instructions, giving them maybe a few days to find a cure before they all died of dehydration.

He stared at his handiwork for a long moment before going right back to his post to get more progress done. When Blaine came back to the room, the Shire had picked up the bodies of the four assassins he killed, apparently dumping them unceremoniously outside in the grass to get them out of the way.

Stopping them was the easy part. The real job was trying to remove these horrible traces of control from their brains. It wasn't an endeavor that lacked complications, either.

In all, he'd been working at the booth for hours at a time only taking enough of a break from the task to take a leak, not even eating as Jenny limped over to him on occasion with a drink.

She seemed taken care of, though, her pant-leg cut off at the swell of the buttock to show off a naked leg and thick iodine-smelling bandage wrapped around her thigh like the upper portion of a stocking.

The refreshments she brought were concoctions laden with caffeine. Coffee and soda; perhaps subtle ways to give him rest as caffeine was diuretic and had caused him to piss quite a bit. He took numerous fluids into his body over the course of a day and a half, fucking around with the switches and frequency knobs until he could get the signal right.

Then he found himself on the brink of successfully implementing the radio broadcast and literally changing everyone's mind. He took a moment to look at the blood caked on the walls; he really didn't have the luxury of hesitating any longer. If he cured them now, it might save equine lives in endangered circumstances.

He thoughtfully turned a knob and waited for changes to overcome the crowd outside. At first there wasn't much of a difference, but eventually they shook out of it. Whatever curse had been in their heads no longer lingered. Freely purged of this virus, there was a loud clattering of weapons as rifles, pistols, and knives fell on stones or exposed tree branches; the ones landing in dirt or grass merely made muted thuds.

He didn't want to leave his station for fear that the homicidal haze might overtake them again without warning, so he sent the Shire ahead to do that for him. Not that he was cowardly. It was just a matter of training. If your engineer or medic was your most prized wartime asset, don't risk them in frivolous ways that invoke possible harm or death; replacements might be awhile in coming.

When the stallion returned, Blaine had his confirmation. Everything was back to normal except for the gaps left in society by the deceased. Store owners, craftsmen, civil employees, workers, and the husbands, sons, wives, and daughters. Except for those, the world was a little less crazy.

His purpose over, Blaine reclaimed his rights as a civilian and fell asleep at the controls as millions of people awoke from a nightmare which had compelled them to perform the wickedest things against their will. Compared to that, Blaine's dreamless sleep proved ever cozy and comforting. Whatever the verdict may be on this fucked up situation, it could wait. He'd fought his ass off - the least everyone could do was wait.

The only part of the dreams he remembered was a blinding white Pegasus hovering above his head all cascaded by light like a star. A long ivory sash was wrapped around her body like a thick ribbon, covering her breasts and genitals in the slightest way possible while showing off the rest of her skin like the glimmering surface of a pearl.

She hovered closer to him and took something out of his chest. At first he thought it was his heart, but the way it glowed in a golden light proved otherwise. What was -

The Pegasus angel cupped it in her palms like water and launched it skywards as if a sparkling bottle rocket. "You have no more need for this. I unburden you from your humanity so that you might seek true happiness." She whispered, gentle and graceful as she flapped those wings and shot off like a comet to chase his essence.

Blaine came to sometime later, refreshed and oddly warmer than normal. It was when he reached up to clear his eyes that he noticed his arm was covered in brown hair and he had weird thick fingernails. It wasn't hard to figure out what had become of him. Whatever had been holding the nanites back had finally surrendered and allowed the rest of him to be changed.

The ultimate shock didn't come from the changes in his body. It came from a new nudity and a change of scenery. In a bed with red sheets surrounded by a room with dark maroon walls. The noises outside confirmed that it was night, all the weird nocturnal animals and bugs coming out to play and make their alien noises.

Not merely that; there was also a noticeable difference in the surrounding tone like they weren't quite normal. Blaine listened intently with much more sensitive ears. That was the point when he caught the sound of breathing. He turned his head towards the soft noise just as blunt teeth playfully grasped one of his long sensitive ears. Out of the corner of his improved peripheral vision was the blurry golden naked form of Jenny, the covers hiked up to cover her breasts like a strapless ball-gown.

The mare had sensual eyes: like hazy candles burning in the dark bedroom. He brought his head around to bear, giving himself a better view of that lovely face for which combat had overshadowed. Relaxed without pain or worry her full ambience of grace came to the surface in an unending ray of feminine splendor.

"Light up my life." He responded simply, taking a long wandering gaze over all those beautiful female curves barely concealed by a bed spread. Heart, mind, and body: he wanted it all and took none for granted, what emotions next overtook him were so much more elegant and divine than simple lust. Fighting for survival had made them comrades. Making love would make them one.

So much of his life was missing and so many questions unanswered. How did he fall asleep in a radio station and end up in a mare's bed in the U.K.? But if these questions truly mattered, why was he so lost in her opulent blue pearls of eyes like a wanderlust diver? Why did his body come to life under her amused affectionate gaze?

Every second spent in an eternity as his hands wandered curiously about, roving around on that sacred horseflesh like an oracle admiring a temple's statue. Each inch and hair on his fingertips must surely be more than mundane nature; she must be inspired by an unseen greatness. His nose came closer and took in the smells that made her unique.

Without trouble, he could find her for miles with his eyes closed whether she was in heat or not. His heart wandered eons of bright emotion as his fingers gently scratched little raised rows of fur in her ample shoulder and the swell of a breast where soft warm hair-covered flesh met an armpit, the raised lines making her look like a tigress.

In loving impertinence, he rolled over and put his lips to hers, his hand scraping under the covers like a tentacle past a rough, harshly textured bandage to squeeze curious assertive fingers on one large buttock. Digging a little deeper around, he tickled a fingertip against the dock area under the pretty mare's tail.

Jenny whined and grunted lustily, nibbling on her bottom lip as Blaine found his way to her anus and gave the sweet opening some soft rubs of a hard hoof nail while forcing his mouth into hers and sharing tongues. Because of the long wide shape of most furry muzzles, most oral was shallow at best, but that didn't diminish the experience.

By the time her lovely smells had saturated in his nose for a significant amount of time, he was already hard as a post and leaking his fluids on her fuzzy belly and mattress as her wondrously elegant eyes closed so she could savor his sexy strong pony smells.

A brief flehman came to her top lip while they were connected in the kiss, the action tickling his whiskered nose. Blaine tried to ignore the lingering tickle on his face as Jenny's hand sank under the covers like a submarine and grasped around the tip of his long cock. She gave the glans several slow squeezes like a stress ball, Blaine feeling as though he'd melt under such luscious intimate contact.

The draft broke the kiss, but continued her dainty smile with an amused look in her eyes as if to say that his cock belonged to her, that muscular hand still pulsing ever gently on his sensitive unflared equine mass.

He found it a moment of utter helplessness, now hornier than ever to ravish her honey-smelling sex. His cock thrust impatiently at her steady palm and filled it with a copious drip of his pre. How he wanted to take her - to claim her body for his eternal and unbridled fantasies.

The mare nibbled on his dark chestnut mane affectionately, whickering her desire as his mindless poking into her hand continued to fill Jenny with amusement. His head was thrown back with a sudden wave of bliss as he cascaded with his load all over her fingers, belly, and crotch with sticky cream of mushroom soup; glans blossoming like a flower into its full girth.

Her hand drew back, drowned in his hefty warm load of male juices. Her eyes playfully berated his uncontrollable impatience even as she licked the cum right off the skin and fingertips like a satisfied cat dwelling over her cream.

His shame was as brief as the deflation of his used and tired cock. Blaine panted on his back with the penis limp in his hand like a winding rope. Recovery caught on him quickly, though. In fact, far more timely than previous sexual experiences. He found himself gasping in surprise when an erection came back in little more than a minute. Normally, it had taken at least sixteen minutes to get back to work.

It took the pony a bit longer to get back in the game as his cock was more willing and full of energy than he was, making Blaine wonder if it had a mind of its own.

Earlier, he'd promptly claimed her from behind, but he didn't want a repeat of that experience. If he were to truly love her, he wanted to look into those distinct emotional eyes and share her pleasure. Blaine hoped that by watching the fun things he put her body through, he might remember the beauty and joy of her desirous contortions forever.

Lovely angel of delirious love, one could only hope for such a blessing of flesh and bliss. Much refreshed by a rest, he wiggled his body under the covers and then fell on top of hers. The heat of her smothering large breasts filled his face as his legs were upheld by hers. He felt his cock on her warm body, but his testicles practically roasted in the steamy furnace of Jenny's inner thighs and ovenlike labia lips flapping on his scrotum in an endless supply of affectionate genital winking kisses which were ever pleasant and mesmerizing to the sensitive fuzzy skin.

For the longest eternity, all he wanted to do was let her steamy body heat melt into his like a relaxing hot bath of horse. As sweat began to form, it was a fresh rain from her skin. Blaine rubbed his cheekbone against her breasts in loving adoration, hands feeling around on her furry sides, hips, and thighs. The only regret he had was not having a clear path to her butt to enjoy it, but there were far too many goodies in front to play with, so one bountiful feature was hardly a serious loss.

Perhaps this was the best way to enjoy a loving partner. The manner in which the heat of both bodies joined into one wave of tender warmth was the best metaphor that Blaine could think of as far as a clear essential of intimacy like sharing souls. Energy always flowed freely through willing conduits in such a way as the relationship of electricity and copper.

In the blink of two sets of eyes, so many secrets and trust had been shared that even the vague thought of death seemed to ache horribly in the heart like a grievous wound. Blaine had never found himself so unanimously attached to another. It was as if each held one half of the other's soul.

The wild look in her mate's eyes came as a weird contrast to his cozy comfortable body as she held his smaller slender pony shape cradled in ever affectionate strong arms, his breath a simple magic on the sensitive skin of her breasts and hardened black nipples.

For the long moment that they shared warmth under the toasty thick draping sheets, the mare was driven by some mild amusement to give a metaphor to those primal eyes and uncertain yet content twitches of his muscles. The imagery quickly came to Jenny, making her giddy with fond giggles.

This was the same look as her dead husband; an energetic and unpredictable behavior of the eyes. Blaine was her free and raging river. A small bundle of flesh that flowed and raced all about her skin like a stream forked around a great strong oak in a mild flood.

The smell he gave off was itself a gala of the romantically starved heart, enough to entice any lonely mare into dance and celebration. Her split roots which met a wide golden trunk oozed a long deposit of sap as if to invite the nearby bubbling brook to flow between and lap at her sweet sticky essence. The juice flowed freely, more than ample to guide one particularly long tendril deep within the knothole and sate her parched dark innards.

The normal expectation of a tree is patience, but she had been starving for warm nutrients far too long to wait. Jenny's womb had been unsated of the one single thing that it craved most. While a dildo was a poor substitute for actual needs she had, only one thing could end the chaotic urges driving the mare insane with lust.

She probed an arm under his belly and reached an assertive grip around the girthy two-inch-thick pulsing hotness of his cock, deflecting the tip deftly from her soggy soaked navel to the entrance of a spread vulva. It was easy to see the shock on the pony's face: he hadn't expected such an aggressive romp with a female. Jenny sympathized with his uncertainty, but her hungering pussy didn't give her the benefit of time.

There were months of uncontrolled lust as Blaine lingered in a coma initiated by the nanites. Besides the occasional cuddling with his unconscious body, she had nothing to stay satisfied. Now that he was awake and horny, she would collect on that primal debt, giving him a night of sex, intimacy, and bonding he'd never forget.

He gave a sudden gasp of surprise like a startled animal at the same time she moaned in a long sigh of relief as though taking a piss after holding it for hours. Her body writhed in ecstasy as the long equine lance sunk all the way into her pussy to the hilt. Once he was securely in her tight canal, Jenny wrapped muscular legs around his waist like a belt and locked him in place, escape now impossible until the stallion relinquished his supply of milk into the tight hot mare cavern.

The mare's new predatory nature startled him, but only for a second. In the next second, his thoughts were an incomprehensible blur as she stuffed his cock deep inside her. The scalding heat of her vagina nearly burned his ultra-sensitive glans. Combine that with the tight ribs that textured her tunnel, and it was almost enough to make him cum prematurely.

The muscular gripping rings of her tight pussy felt like his cock had shot through a hundred virgins in one thrust; each a gateway that seductively grasped his cock on each withdrawal and shove. As he felt himself bottom out inside her steamy orifice, hard warm legs wrapped around his body and made the draft female's interest clear. She wanted his seed, and would hold him hostage until she got it. A kinky game by a lovely dame if there ever was!

He gripped those large squishy breasts like life preservers, almost too afraid to let them go for fear of sinking in her. It seemed a ridiculous idea, but the suction of her love center was steadily nursing on his organ like a cow's teat to coax the milk out.

Again, he wasn't lengthy enough to feel her cervix, but with those powerful vaginal muscles creating a vacuum, it was certain to go to the right place. Not wanting him to get away, her legs were clasped securely around him and only allowed a few inches of freedom. It wasn't much, but even grinding his crotch against hers was enough to generate friction for a climax.

He felt countless ounces of pre ooze in her winding passages just as she drenched his crotch, cock, and balls in an endless gush of mare juice. It was a heady cocktail of vagina and pheromones, making him painfully hard compared to earlier romp's stallion salutes.

The boil came to him in minutes. Since both of them, were so turned on, it was easy to get something hot cooking between them. When Blaine's orgasm came, he blasted his loads painfully hard through a constricted urethra like a clamped tube. His first squirt touched the receptive flesh of her cunny and made her go off like a grateful oven timer, pussy screaming in convulsing vices of sporadic grips all over his length.

When he had given Jenny the last trickle of his seed, her powerful contractions forced his limp stallionhood out in one sudden gush of penis, cum, and mare juice. Both of them smelled musky in a mingled heady dose of each other's coital creams after that eruption.

Blaine was collapsed tiredly over her, his body spent from giving everything it had for the mare's satisfaction. He was so tired; the pony gave Jenny all of his seed. He didn't have anything left for her but love. Now that inner beasts had been sated by sex, things were significantly calmer and returned to the way they had been before: longing looks and sharing heat while hiding under the covers.

As the pony felt his breeding tool rapidly slither back into its sheathe, he likewise felt driven to crawl up Jenny's ample body like a pond salamander, laying his head at the nape of her neck and feeling the wonderful pulse of the veins in her throat against his skin. He felt her swallow a few times, a curious sensation to feel the vibration under the skin and fur as she made affectionate muted nickers and whinnies at him.

Her legs were already back down on the bed, providing him with a comfy place to position his. There wasn't any doubt that her natural sex perfume dominated the room, but he found the sweetly sour horsie aroma of the draft's body much more gratifying as it was a smell which represented Jenny in all the seasons and not merely the sunny ones which drove her libido crazy.

Jenny's mane was long and lush, softer than silk and reached all the way to her nipples. It was a wonderful change from when he saw her last and the draft had a Trojan style haircut as per Clydesdale core regulations. It smelled of almonds and wildflowers, shining like polished bronze for him to admire. There was also a feather or two: red and black, likely from the same species of kestrel that his adopted tribe once sanctified.

He took long deep breaths in her hair, intoxicated on every inch. The silky caress of every lengthy strand against his cheekbones and muzzle was almost enough to put him to sleep like a physical lullaby. This moment brought such joy to him that sleeping on her soft squishy warm curves was an enormous temptation.

In between all of this ceaseless female idolatry, lazy fingers rubbed and softly poked at the fattened meat all over her body. Muscle and fat wiggled under all his curious prods while Jenny giggled to the tickling touches roving around on her soft skin. Nearly every part of her body was a provocation of deep-seated longing that went much farther than lust.

Deep inside this confined world of endeavoring romance, there came no sound in the silence of Blaine's attentions except for the calming beat of that large draft breed heart. Compared to that, the noise of the insects and the conversations of drunken partiers meant nothing.

For he had found a more intoxicating wine than ever before known. There would be no sobriety from this insanity of love and lust nor did he seek any such treatment for the condition. Equal parts they meant to each other and equal parts come together to construct a clock which may continue to keep some shared blessing alive well past the toils of fragrant time.

Whatever might happen in the coming years, they were together now. The time was stuck in eternity like an elegant dream that the sleeper regrets awakening from. Strange indeed, that a nightmare ends in such a beautiful fantasy come alive, but perhaps that is the true essence behind hope.

He cuddled himself into her fur, trying to enjoy as much of the mare's ambient essence as he could. It was one of the best things Blaine had ever felt, just basking in her soothing hair like the sunrays of a welcoming Spring day at the tail end of a harsh winter.

Not that it truly felt like Winter during the war, but things were far more pleasant now, the curse of hate leaving the world - perhaps for good. One could always hope.

If not, this is the moment where love will return and make everything a better place, continuing a fight to combat the evils in men and furry hearts alike.

EPILOGUE

Digital WarPath wasn't the only band exploited for their point of view and prejudiced fanbase. It turned out quite a number of other groups with similar messages of hate had also signed on with the same record label, not realizing the true intent of the multi-national industry simply known as Briar Seed Records.

According to declassified documents, Briar Seed had accidentally discovered the subconscious sound command reflex and had done extensive testing on various species by asking them to do silly but harmless tasks to gauge their vulnerability to the suggestions. When it was determined that nearly any species could be controlled except for horses, the CEOs went into a brainstorming session to decide how best to use this power.

As it turned out, ruling the world wouldn't be hard if it wasn't for the horses, who would eventually catch on to the tampering. This dilemma would be amended by killing all equines, ensuring that nothing could stop Briar Seeds's total and unmitigated control over all the world's wealth and affairs.

Signing some staunch horse-haters had been the logical choice for disseminating the signal to large populations, eventually spreading it to every person - even ones that didn't particularly care for the hatred-spewing Aggro-Tech music.

What looked like rioting turned into a full military incident without anyone being the wiser. Then with troops and rioting civilians mingling, the true horror of the situation came true and infected everyone with the same killing message.

Things were peculiar during the period that Blaine was forcibly comatose for his transformation, but what he came to understand from the whole episode was that when the genocide had finally stopped, it was a nearly worldwide butchery compared to other despicable events in modern memory.

Once everything had been sorted out, it still didn't change Blaine's situation; the remnants of his tribe were gone. The last of the elders had perished five years earlier from natural causes and left just a few of the youth who chose not to renounce the old ways.

It would have ended like that with Blaine's brethren annihilated by Clydesdale Core's initial defensive manouvers, but now that he had been left without a nation and was transformed into a horse, there was a new tribe that took him in.

The episode ended the same way it began.

Two horses married to the core and each other.

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A 59 page work for VideoGame30 :P

Hope you all enjoyed.