OOC: Do not post unless you have applied on this thread. Those who are cleared, move out and move in. This thread is a battlefield. Go to town! Otherwise, keep it realistic, don't pull any stupid crap, and remember the Great War.
"Pick 'em up and put 'em down, Marines!"
Sargent Avery Johnson, Halo CE
It all began on the 22nd of November, the day Clorinth declared war on Sinovet. It was a terrible day, a day when 144 years of peace was broken and the great Sino-Clorinthian war began anew. On that day, Clorinth struck it's first fateful blow an begun a war that would be fresh in the memories of all those ponies for ages to come.
November 22nd, 2013
Scarborough Beach, 100 km west of Harpie Point
Northern Sinovet
The sun was setting on the eve of war, shining its red light upon the light sands of Scarborough State Beach. A cold marine wind swept these sands and rushed over the lemon grass that grew in the sandy plain beyond. The wind blew past an armored steel box on treads, sitting unmoved on the sands. A menacing cannon sprouted from this steel box, pointed against the red sky. A pony sat propped against the steel of the tank, his brown trench coat fluttering in the wind. The pony's face was covered by a gas mask, his legs wrapped in cloth an his hooves in gloves and boots. The pony held a machinegun in his hooves, unmoving and silent.
Suddenly, a streak came from the sky. The gas mask swiveled to track it. The pony brought up his machinegun, coming up off the tank. The steel of the tank now lurched and began to drive across the sands. The tank's cannon turned around, and lowered to the horizon, aiming out over the sands to the ocean. More streaks came from over the horizon. Now, the region on the inside of the pony's coat crackled. It spoke of orders and lines, but the pony already knew what to do. The machinegun ready, the pony advanced, low to the sand, across the plains. The tank bulldozed through the dunes nearby. The streaks loomed in closer. The pony saw, through the dark lenses of the gas mask, other ponies wrapped in large brown trench coats an gas masks. The ponies advanced along the sandy flats, before coming to Scarborough State Beach. The ponies stopped and looked out from cover as vessels neared from the oceanic haze. The tank took up position, and another crept up from across the sands. Sinovet's forces gathered on the crest of the dune. Behind them, the streaks made landfall, casting dust and earth into the air in great rumbling booms. Nopony turned to behold the explosions that swept the empty sands where they had one been. They were all dead set on the line of ships that advanced ominously across the water.
The air itself shook as a tank fired it's gun. A shell leaped in an instant from the tank's gun to the hull of one of the advancing ships. It was a perfect hit. The other tank too opened fire. A volley of shells flew out to greet the invaders as their ships came close to land. However, the ships were not unarmed, and their own guns returned fire. Now, the tanks scattered, and the infantry hunkered down behind dunes and bushes. Guns were held up and hooves placed on triggers. The first ship made landfall. All hell broke loose. The ponies in the sand opened fire at once. A vicious hail of bullets greeted the new ponies that came out of the landing ship. Grey Clorinthian uniforms were ripped up, and blood stained the fair sands of Scarborough State Beach.
Another ship made landfall. The brown coats split their fire, and bullets began to fly every which way. Some straggling Clorinthians raised their own guns and opened fire. Sand was in the air, as was steel, lead and tungsten. The tanks were roving across the sand at full speed now, sweeping the beach with their mounted gun, dropping shells on the landing ships with their main cannon. The beach roared with gunfire, and more and more invaders drew onto the sands of Scarborough. Now, more brown coats moved up from across the plains. Some ran through the grass and sand, others rode the steel backs of the silver grey tanks that charged full speed through the dunes and dry bushes. These tanks opened fire as soon as they saw the enemy on the beach. The Clorinthians had tanks of their own on the beach now. They were sinister, weapon studded affairs, much like Sinovet's own. Shells were roaring across the beach, throwing up sand and metal and bodies. Up in the sky, metal arrowheads dropped from the heavens, brining death with them. Explosions rocked the Clorinthian ranks as the aerial Darts bombed them again and again. As the sun began to set, the twilight was lit up by the burning corpses of tanks and ships, and the flashes of explosion that shook the beach.
Scarborough State Beach was choked with bodies by the time the sun had dropped below the horizon. It was a grizzly sea of grey uniforms and blood. And yet, more Clorinthians came forth, un-phased. The Sinovet brown coats were equally tenacious. They held their ground unmoving, pumping metal into anypony who dared contest that fact. Their tanks rampaged across the sands as bloody marauders through the high seas. But then they began to pop, one by one. The Clorinthians were innumerable. The whole beach was lined with their landing ships, all 14 kilometers of it. The brown coats burned through their munitions, and still more came, from over the corpses of those who had come before them. The line could not hold. One by one, the brown coats got up and fled. It was a deep and dark night when the last brown coats ran through the sands, throwing their weapons aside as they charged full tilt through the sand, running for their lives as shells and bullets followed their every step. They dodged and weaved and hoped for the best. One was blown into the air, landing in the path of another. This other skirted the mangled corpse of it's comrade without breaking stride. Only when he was at safety did the brown coat look back from behind a dune, on Scarborough State Beach. It was full of corpses of ponies and tanks. Desperate forms, lit up in the flames of Sinovet's defeat, ran about the sandy plains.
Indeed, the war had begun.
