Fall of Cleveland: Your Kids Are One Time Zone That Way

>You are a soldier in A Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment.
>You've left your home at Fort Carson in a convoy bound for Peterson Air Force Base.
>Not a terribly long drive, this; both installations are near Colorado Springs.
>You've all been watching the chaos in Cleveland on the news.
>Now that the city's been evacuated, the President has ordered military intervention.
>Some units were in Cleveland already helping evacuate the civilians.
>Mostly National Guard guys.  Your unit will be amongst the first regular Army to arrive.
>The company commander, a Captain, will be briefing you as you wait for the C-17 that will be carrying you to Akron.
>From Akron, you'll be riding in CH-47s to your new home, some airport a few miles outside of Cleveland.
>It takes a while for the airlines to get their traffic out of the way, since Peterson shares its runways with the City of Colorado Springs.
>The planes you'll be taking are from 445th Airlift Wing in Dayton, Ohio.
>They also helped get people out of Cleveland during the evacuation.
>While you wait, you kill time in the terminal by watching the news.
>The view from news helicopters shows a city choked with fluffy ponies.
>Parts of it are flooded with sewage.
>The area around that theme park looks like someone blew up a cotton ball factory with paintball bombs.
>The Captain tells you about your objectives in Cleveland.
>First, you have to clear and secure the airport.
>Lost Nation Municipal.  Sounds familiar; the Army evacuated people with Chinooks from there.
>Second, you are to determine just how bad the situation is in the airport area.
>Doesn't seem too hard.
>Before long, your company is piled on to a C-17 for the flight to Ohio.
>Fortunately, you don't have to share the hold with any equipment; that's coming behind you on other planes.
>About twenty minutes after you're airborne, you realize you're not alone in the hold.
>An orange and yellow fluffy pony is waddling about, with one green and one blue foal clinging to her back fluff.
>She's screaming about something, but you can't hear her.
>It's probably about the noise, of which there is a copious amount.
>She waddles from soldier to soldier, hugging their boots and trying to climb in laps.
>She gets nudged away.  Sometimes, she gets kicked.
>Her foals fall off when that happens, and she spends a few minutes finding them, hugging them, and helping them up onto her back again.
>You wonder how she even got in here.
>Perhaps she was looking for shade.
>Oh, she's coming over to you now.  She leans up on your legs, screaming something.
>No idea what; you can't read human lips, much less fluffy pony lips.
>On a whim, you pick her up and put her in your lap.
>She clings to you as hard as she can.
>You look over at the Captain, who just shrugs his indifference at you.
>She stays in your lap for a while.  Her foals are squirming around, so she shifts herself and starts feeding them.
>Somehow, it's all very cute.
>It stops being cute when she shits on you.
>Now the loadmaster is giving you an amused look, and a few people are laughing.
>You throw the fluffy pony off your lap and try to clean it off.
>The rest of the flight to Akron is spent watching the fluffy pony waddle around.
>Once you land and park and the rear doors are opened, you can finally hear her talk.
>”Pwease hewp fin' babehs!”
“They're on your back.”
>”Haf mo' babehs!  Fwuffy wookin' fo' nummies in big pwace, wose babehs!”
>She must have been a stray wandering the base.
>Her other babies are thirteen hundred miles away now.
>She follows you out of the plane and over to the waiting CH-47s for the forty-five mile trip to Lost Nation.
>There are some fluffy ponies wandering around, maybe a few dozen or so.
>”Pwease hewp fin' babehs!”
>When your helicopter takes off, she gets blown away down the tarmac, losing her remaining foals to the mighty wind.
>Other fluffy ponies suffer the same fate after trying to give the Chinooks 'huggies'.
>You're beginning to wonder what the problem is.
>You didn't see any massive fluffy hordes outside just now.
>That all changes a few miles outside of Cleveland.
>There's some sort of tower thing...looks like spaghetti?
>The ground is covered with pastel blobs.
>They thin out some as you go north, away from the tower, but not much.
>You arrive at your destination, the down-wash from the Chinooks blasting clean an ellipse on the tarmac.
>Your chopper lands near the largest of the hangars.
>You exit the Chinooks with your company.  They leave to go back to Akron, get the rest of the battalion, and your vehicles.
>They'll need a few trips to accomplish this.
>Meanwhile, your orders are to clear the airport grounds of fluffy ponies.
>Once the loud noise is gone, the fluffies are very friendly.
>”Hooman fwuff wook funny!”
>”New fwiend!”
>”Sowwy, make bad poopies...”
>”Pwease take to sgetti wan'!”
>They waddle and hug and shit everywhere.  The smell is unbelievable.
>And there are, quite literally, thousands of the things.
>”We'd better get to herding,” the Staff Sergeant says.
>You take another look over the scene.
>Maybe you should have volunteered for Syria instead.