Falling Into the Unknown

I felt myself drawn slowly from my dreamless sleep, the fog inside of my head evaporating quickly. I sat up with a start, surprising the dark blue pony one foot away from my head.

“Wha- what?” I asked, stuttering a bit, still in the process of waking up.

In front of me, Amber Star groaned. “Thank Celestia you finally woke up. I’ve been shaking you for the past two minutes. I had to yell into your ear to get any kind of reaction. How deep do you sleep, anyway?”

I grinned in reply, before answering. “Not very deep, actually. Mostly, I’m just tired after that battle. Is it the next day already?”

“Actually, it’s six o’ clock in the morning, and cleanup efforts are still going on. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza wants to talk to you, anyway, as do a few of the Elements.”

“Fuck…” I said in a low voice. Amber raised an eyebrow, almost comically, staring at me.

“What does that mean, anyway?”

I chuckled before looking at her. “Well, it’s a curse word. The literal meaning is ‘to have sex’, but it’s generally a curse word, for example, ‘He’s a fucking idiot’, or ‘fuck that’. Don’t go spreading it around, though. Unknown words are my secret weapon.” I finished off with a grin, which she didn’t return.

Azure walked up to us, outfitted in full armor, minus the enchanted helmet. “Amber, get your flank in armor. It’s a new order, sent out by Shining Armor. He wants to be prepared if the Changelings attack again. Tyler,” He said, pausing at the use of my name, “I’ll take you to Cadence. Follow me, and stay close.”

I nodded, and followed him out of the room, passing sleeping ponies along the way. I shifted the weight of my pack on my back, pausing to wipe imaginary dirt off of my BDUs. We walked up several flights of stairs, eventually reaching the main hallway, where we took off in a seemingly random direction. That seemed to happen a lot in this confusing mess of a castle, and the fresh repair jobs didn’t make it any easier. They looked nice, but powder and the occasional Changeling body dotted the ground.

Finally, we made our 6th left turn, and emerged in a slightly larger hallway. Azure stopped, pointing towards a door to the right with his hoof.

“She’s in there.” He simply said, before taking up a guarding position outside of the door. I shrugged, and pushed on the door, opening it.

Inside, the pink pony I identified as Cadence was sitting on a cushion. She noticed me, and motioned towards a chair across from her. I walked over, setting my bags and my rifle on the ground, before sitting on the chair and staring at Cadence.

“Hello, Tyler.” She said in a singsong voice. “I didn’t get much of a chance after the wedding, so I am here to ask you some things I really want to know. Do you follow?”

I really didn’t see how I could not. “I do, we can begin.”

She nodded, and looked across at me. “First off, I am curious as to your species. What are you called again?”

“We are called Humans, although the scientific term for our species is Homo Sapiens. We are bipedal, obviously, and omnivorous.” At that, Cadence flinched, though it was hardly noticeable. A small pile of pillows behind her moved, but I completely missed it.

“What do you mean by omnivorous? Do you eat meat?” Cadence said slowly.

I nodded. “Yes, I can, though it isn’t what I would call a necessity in our diet. We can do fine without it. The apples I have stored, in particular, seem to be full of a ridiculous number of nutrients. I can find other sources of protein. Also, no, I can’t eat flowers, hay, grass, or other plant matter like that, although I can eat most vegetables and fruits.”

She sighed in relief. A moment later, however, the pile of pillows behind her exploded, leaving behind an excited-looking purple unicorn. The same one that had, yesterday, told me that she knocked me out. Wonderful. Cadence slowly looked behind her, and then hit her face with her hoof, similar to a Facepalm.

“Twilight Sparkle!” She said, in a scolding tone. “Princess Celestia told you not to come here.”

“But I wanted to know more about it! The creature!” The purple unicorn said, obviously pleading.

“Hey!” I said loud enough for them to hear. “I do have a name, you know! Also, if someone tells you to stay away, they probably mean for you to stay AWAY.” I glared at her.

Dejected, the purple unicorn walked out the door, opening and closing it. By Azure’s laughs, I could tell he had heard the entire exchange. Cadence sighed, obviously both annoyed and saddened by the interruption.

“Sorry for Twilight. She can get a bit… Overenthusiastic sometimes.”

I nodded in agreement, and Cadence pulled out a small, half-page list, obviously of questions. Before she could ask any, however, the white unicorn that I knew others called ‘Shining Armor’ burst into the room, interrupting Cadence before she could speak.

“Cadence, I want to be here when you interview the monster.” He said, paying no attention to me.

“I HAVE A NAME!” I yelled, tired of being referred to as ‘monster’ and ‘creature’.

“I don’t care!” Shining replied, apparently ticked off at me.

Cadence surrounded Shining in a light blue, picking him up off the ground. She glared at both of us before turning to the white unicorn.

“Shining. Armor.” She said slowly. “Calm yourself, and stop insulting Tyler. Him and I are having a friendly discussion, or were, until you ignited a firestorm.” She turned to me. “Tyler, stop blowing up on everypony. I know you are… Unhappy with the way ponies are treating you, but do be careful with what you say.” She set Shining down and gave each of us a last glare, before clearing her throat.

“As I was about to saw before we were interrupted, I have a few more questions. For one, do you belong to a nation, if any?”

Shining sneered. “It says that it is, but that can’t be true.”

I gave him a small glare. “I already told him, Celestia, and Luna, but I’ll repeat it to you.”

“Remember,” She said, “As the Princess of Love, I can sense emotions like that, and I can tell if you are lying by the lack thereof of said emotions.”

I nodded. I never intended to lie. “I am a citizen of the United States of America, the most powerful country on our planet. While we are neither the most populous nor the largest, we do have the technological innovations that many others do not. Our country has a population of around 300 million – for reference, the world population is around 7 billion.”

She stared at me, jaw hanging slightly, all the while writing what I was saying down.

“We have a standing armed force of 6 million, with plenty of reservists. Next question?” I said, causing her to shift on the pillow for a moment.

She looked at the paper, apparently looking for another one to ask. “Ah, here we are. I was wondering about how…”

Two hours later, I felt like I had run a marathon. Surrounded by a small stack of written papers, Cadence excused me to go back to wherever I was staying. I felt Shining give me the eye, but I didn’t care. I walked outside the door to find Azure leaning again the wall, asleep from the wait.

Azure found out, first-hand, how annoying I could be. I got as close as I dared to his sleeping head. I opened my mouth, and prepared my line.

“STAND AT ATTENTION, PRIVATE AZURE.” I yelled into his ear.

He shot up, immediately at what I assumed was attention.

“Sir, yes, si-” He cut off as he looked at me. I was laughing my ass off, literally rolling on the ground.

“Oh my god! You should have seen your face.” I nearly cried as I laughed.

After a minute of me calming down, Azure and I walked through the halls, headed towards the guardroom again. He led me on a journey through the hallways, taking turn after turn before finally arriving at a familiar staircase. We started walking down the stairs.

Azure trotted alongside me as I contemplated the last few days. I had finally made two friends, and one possible enemy, though it didn’t take a genius to figure out that I had probably already made a couple in Ponyville.

I looked over at him. “Azure, was your sister really the one I knocked out?” I asked.

“Yea, she was. That was kind of a mean move, don’t you think?”

I shook my head. “Fuck mean, she would have told other ponies as soon as I let her go. Also, knocking her out was an accident. When I saw her, I kinda spooked out and fell backwards, doing a kick at the same time. It hit her, she konked out.”

Azure blinked. “I was worried about her, you know. First the message about troubles in Ponyville, and then my sister… Foalnapped! It was crazy for a bit, until we found you. Thanks for taking care of her, anyway. You could have seriously hurt her. I’ve seen what your weapons can do,” He said, gesturing towards the Sa-58 I had slung over my back. “And you could have used them on her, but you didn’t. Why’d you tie her up, though? She couldn’t get away anyway, from what I heard from fellow guards. Even though she might not have noticed it, she had a sprained wing; impossible to fly with it until they checked her out.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t know, and I couldn’t take any chances, so I had to use to vine. I don’t like using ropes before the second date, though.”

Azure and me both cracked up, with him giving me a look that was a combination of ‘I’ll get you later’ and pure laughter. We finally reached the guardroom and looked around inside, noting that very few ponies were still here. Most that were here were seated at the tables, drinking water and resting. A few were even eating sandwiches – filled with hay? I shook my head and sat down on an empty bench, with Azure beside me.

“Aren’t you supposed to be guarding something, Azure?” I asked him. He shook his head.

“I’m assigned to guard YOU. How about that?” He said with some irony on his voice.

“How about that.” I said, deadpanning.

I sighed. With nothing better to do, I pulled off my backpack and got out an apple and my remaining water bottle, already half empty. I ate the apple, washing it down with a fourth of the water. It was a wonder I didn’t need more, but then again, everything seemed to be weird in this world, so why not less hunger? I wasn’t doing much to burn energy, either, apart from blasting away monster invasions and running all over the goddamn castle.

I fished my laptop case out of my backpack, quickly pulling it out and setting it on the table.

“Azure,” I said, “Is there somewhere I can play on this? Or would anyone mind if I did it on the table?”

Azure waved his hoof in the air. “Feel free to do it anywhere.”

“That’s what she said.” I replied, earning another amused grin. The score was at Tyler 3, Azure 0.

I pulled my laptop out of the case, opening it and turning it on. It booted up quickly, attracting little attention from the ponies around us. Azure still stared intently at it, but I digress.

The desktop popped up, and I looked over at Azure.

“You’re a pegasi, right? You can fly?” I asked rhetorically. He nodded his head.

I gave a small grin. “You should love this, then.”

I quickly started up Steam, which, I am very thankful of, has an offline mode where I can still play my games on it. I navigated over to the game called ‘Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition’, the version of the console game remade for the PC.

I started it up, and within five minutes I had started up the last mission.

I immediately paused it at the start and turned to Azure. “Since Humans can’t fly, we use machines called planes. They fight using extremely large a fast-firing versions of my gun, plus large, propelled explosive weapons. This game is a fictional conflict using them, however the weapons and planes are accurate to their real-life counterparts.”

I immediately unpaused it, and was met, as usual at the start of this mission, with a swarm of missiles. Azure watches as, in-game, I duel with several Russian fighters. Finally, I brought one of them down, and Azure gaped as the slow-motion takedown.

(For your information, AC:AH is a plane combat game. The events take place several years from now, facing an ultranationalist Russian force and a Russian civil war. The game using a built-in system called DFM [Dogfight Mode] to invoke VERY intense gameplay. Also, most of the time, when you kill one or multiple enemies, it will either switch to a camera following the missile or slow-mo on the plane itself. It’s pretty badass.]

As the Russian plane in-game fell out of the sky in pieces, another one came behind me, firing missiles. I quickly countered and slipped behind it, blowing to it pieces with a heat-seeker.

As the game went on, more and more ponies became interested in what I was doing. At the end of the mission, with Markov finally dead, the credits rolled as I turned around to see virtually half of the guard force in the barracks gathered behind me. I’m talking about ten or twenty ponies here, some actually bracing their front legs on each other’s backs to see over the crowd.

“Uh… Hi.” I said, mentally facepalming.  I had never been good with crowds, at least in social interaction.

One guard, a green unicorn I recognized as one of the ones who had chased me in the forest – no hard feelings – looked at me and asked a question.

“Is what happened on there really true? Is it real?” He said.

“It’s a fictional story, but the planes and such are perfectly real.” I answered.

“How fast do they go?” One of the pegasi asked.

I looked at him. “For the purposes of the game, the aircraft all fly below the speed of sound, but in reality some of them go up to two or three times the speed of sound.” There were gasps around the room at this.

“How?!” One of them asked. “That isn’t possible. How would their wings go that speed?”

“The plane is propelled by a jet engine. Since nobody here knows what that is, a jet engine is like a rocket.” There was a collection of ‘ohhh’s going around the room. “Basically, because of the aerodynamic shape of the fixed wings, it generates lift so long as it moves above a certain speed.”

This degenerated into a massive talk between the guards about the realism of powered flight, with some supporting and some opposing. I smiled, knowing they had to at least invent steel before they started trying to make jet engines, not to mention all the other things they would need to discover. Gunpowder, oil, refining, steam, coal, and so the list went on.

‘I could help them’, a voice said in my head. I ignored it, though, as I usually ignored that voice. Eventually, I hoped to get home, and I doubt they would let me leave if I become a source of technology for them. Speaking of which, I needed to redesign my escape plans. All my previous ones had been thrown out the window by a constant guard and a guardroom right in my escape path. I didn’t even know if I wanted to escape now, since I was having enough fun at the moment to last me a long time.

Eventually, the crowd calmed down. It was about midday by now, and the sun shone through several windows on the wall, casting yellow beams through the room. I powered down my laptop, planning on saving the battery. It was at 48 hours now, so I needed to make it last.

I turned to Azure, intent on asking a question.

“Hey, Azure.” I said, “Do you think I can ask Celestia for my knife back now?”

Azure quickly nodded, and together we climbed up the stairs for the third time in twenty-four hours. As we walked through the halls beyond it, I could see they had been painstakingly cleaned up, and all the fallen pillars replaced. Magic, indeed. All of the dead Changelings were gone, too, although I had to admit they made a nice decoration. Nothing like a few mutant corpses to spice a place up.

We reached the throne room from where Celestia and Luna were commanding. It was completely empty, except for the sisters, so we simply walked up. Azure gave a bow, and I simply nodded my head.

“Good afternoon, Tyler Maddox.” Celestia said.

“Good afternoon, Celestia.” I replied, earning a glance from Azure. “I was wondering if I could have my knife back now.”

“Certainly.” She replied, “We couldn’t find out what it was made of, anyway.”

A light quickly shone as she probably teleported the knife, and a golden glow handed it to me. I quickly slid it back into its sheaf, content.

“Oh, and by the way, the wedding is in four hours. You’re invited, by Cadence’s order.”

I quickly nodded and made my way out. Azure and I walked back to the guard room, both murmuring about the twisting hallways. At least Azure knew where he was going today, however. Which meant we both would have the cake. Literally. Or, at least, some of it. You know. For ‘testing purposes’.

Since it was apparently time for my midday nap, I went back to the guardroom and sat down against a wall. Taking my backpack off, I set it beside me, leaning slightly on it. I slowly closed my eyes, and drifted off.