Éire became conscious, but instead of opening his eyes he kept them closed and started to slowly feel around with his body.

He felt his shirt and underwear were still with him. He felt he was on a bed but there were no sheets. Straps, his wrists and ankles were strapped to the edge of the bed with what felt like small leather belts.

He could also feel a little discomfort on his right arm and belly. ‘oh, the bear, right. There was also a little horse...pony? What the hell happened?’

Dunwall finally decided to open his eyes, he was not met with what he expected. The room he was in was not very big. To his right, there was a big window. He noticed he was in a high building ‘The tower...’ he could see the whole city, and the peo- creatures that inhabited it. More ponies just like the ones he had saved.
To his left there was a small wooden night table. He looked at his body, he was indeed strapped to the bed.

But what shocked him the most was that there was a pony standing right there in front of him. It had a red coat, blue mane, dark blue eyes and a short sword tattoo on its ass. It turned around and left the room through a set of white double doors. Its hooves hitting the floor the only sound that could be heard.

Èire was just lying there in silence lost in his thoughts, which were mainly of the sort of ‘Where in bloody fuck am I’ when he heard several sets of hooves approach his room. Through the door entered several ponies. All had a different set of mane and fur colour.

There were two that looked like normal miniature ponies ‘Okay...’.Three, including the little one he had saved, which had horns ‘What?’. Two who had wings ‘What?!’. And finally, four who had wings AND horns ‘WHAT?!’.

While the pony he had saved reached up to his thighs; a regular sized one was as tall as his chest; and the ‘special ones’ he called them, were slightly taller.

The little pony with the shiny coat started approaching him when a purple pony with wings and horn spoke. Yes, it bloody spoke. “Wait! Don’t go near him! At least not yet.”

‘But...How...They could speak? He could understand them? In the SAS I was trained to keep my cool under a hail of bullets and artillery shells, not this.’

Putting all the ‘What the fuck is going on?’ thoughts aside, he spoke. “Where am I?”

A white one with wings and horns which had what seemed like an ethereal mane took a step forward. “Who are you?” her voice was a kind, motherly one. But Éire also felt an air of authority in it.

He sighed “Captain Éire Dunwall, 22nd Special Air Service regiment. Who are you and where am I?”

“I am Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria. but right now you are in the Crystal Empire, lead by Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.” Celestia pointed towards a pink pony with, wait for it, horns and wings too!

The special one in question walked up to him, putting on her best ‘I mean business’ face. However, a veteran SAS soldier like him could see right through that. Éire though he would started calling them ‘he’ and ‘she’ instead of ‘it’, since there were clearly sentient and intelligent beings.

Cadenza was now to the left of his bed, she fixed him with a long intimidating-wanna-be stare and then spoke. “What were you doing covered in blood with one of my subjects? Answer me truthfully or you’ll feel my wrath.”

Dunwall had to suppress a giggle, this was a young ruler. “Listen mate, you really need to work on your intimidation, you don't scare me a bit.” Princess Mi Amore’s jaw feel a little and so did her act. “As for your question. I saved that little one over there for a polar bear, sustaining heavy injuries in the process. I carried her here, and, with the last of my strength, fired my flare gun.” he looked at the filly with sympathy for a second, before turning his head back to Cadenza “She...I also saw two other dead ponies there. I...I think they were her parents...”

This was incredibly hard for Éire to day, since he had lost all his family too when he was little. Though he had learned to deal with it, it was still painful to remember.

At that moment, the little shiny pony broke into tears. The purple one hugged her “There there. Don’t worry Crystal Fury, it’ll be alright.”

‘So that was her name, huh? Crystal Fury, it is a nice name.’

“How did you get here?” Celestia asked as she walked to the right side of his bed.

“I don’t know. I was...I...” suddenly, memories flashed before him. His squad being dropped off by a chopper. They silently advanced on the town. Then the insurgent opened fire on them, a bullet denting his helmet. They got to cover, behind a cement wall. A grenade had killed Mark and Tom. Then Barry got hit. And then...then a bullet reached him. There were three men, they argued for a few moments. One of them aimed at him with a pistol, he remembered looking at the barrel, he begged for his life, and then everything went black.
Then that...void? What was that? He was falling through darkness, then he felt pain. Fianlly he woke up in the snow.

“I was on a classified mission, in which me and my squad died, I don’t know why I’m here. This is probably a hallucination while I am bleeding, lying in the ground waiting to die.” he said after coming out of his trance.

“I assure you Éire, this is no hallucination.”

She was right, is this was a hallucination, why this? Why this world? Why didn’t he die before? But still, this could not be real. This was paradise perhaps? No, in what paradise does someone lose their parents? ‘Goddamn, I guess I’ll have to go along with this for now.’

“Died? Classified mission?” a special dark blue pony with a same coloured ethereal mane walked towards the end of the bed “Were you a soldier?”

“Special forces soldier, and I still am.” he looked at the straps holding him down “I’m not going anywhere.”

Celestia stared at him for a moment before turning to a white coated pony with mane that had different types of blue and nodded to him. That pony’s horn glowed blue for a second, so did the straps, and then they disappeared.

Éire had never seen anything like it and he immediately reached for his pistol only to realize he didn’t have it. He back up against his pillow as he sat on it. “What the fuck was that?!” if these ponies could make straps disappear, what else could they do with their horns?

“Relax Éire, it is just magic.” Celestia tried to comfort him.

“Just magic? J-just magic? Just magic as in ‘I use this everyday’?”

“Magic is part of the daily life of ponies, yes.”

He was in the shit. If the ponies wanted they could easily kill him with just a thought. Even though they didn’t seem hostile, you never know.

“Are you implying there's not magic in your world?!” the purple pony with wings and horns said as if he had said he didn’t know what air was.

“Oh, of course there is. I levitate bullets to my enemy's heads to kill them!” Dunwall always used sarcasm and jokes in weird situations, though this was another sort of weird it still counted.

“K-Kill?” a yellow coated and pink mane...pegasus? said horrified “You killed other beings?”

Every pony in the room except for Celestia, the blue special pony and the unicorn that had released him wore a variant of horror and a little fear in their face

‘They are horrified about war. I should have seen that coming. This world is a five year old’s mind after all.’
“Yes.” he replied with a serious face as memories of what he had seen all those years played in his mind.

“But only bad people, right?” purple spoke, until he knew their names, he’d just called them the colour of their fur.

Éire just gazed at her and then looked down. He had never killed an innocent person, but he had seen other soldiers do. And the worst part was he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

After a few moments of silence Celestia’s horn glowed, and, from below the bed, his rifle levitated to his lap. “What is this? I was told it tore holes into a big, strong polar bear as a knife through butter.” she asked. Now almost every pony in the room was backing up a bit.

Éire took the rifle, released the magazine, took out the cambered bullet, put in back in the magazine, and set the rifle down. “There, it is unloaded, it’s harmless now.” he sighed “This is an assault rifle called L85A2. It shoots 5.56x45mm NATO rounds” he showed the ponies the magazine so they could see the size of the bullets “from a 30-round magazine at 940 meters per second with a maximum effective range of 400 metres.”

Now EVERY SINGLE pony’s jaw dropped, threatening to hit the ground. At that moment a pegasus pony with blue-ish transparent, crystal maybe? armour bust through the door.

Calling to his amazing reflexes, Éire loaded the magazine into the gun, pulled the bolt chambering a bullet and aimed at said pony at an incredible speed. After a few second he realized there was no threat, so he once again unloaded the rifle and set it down.

“Yes?” Cadenza asked the guard as she raised an eyebrow.

“We found the bodies your highness. It was horrible, there were gutted an-”

“Shut your bloody mouth!” Éire yelled at him as he jerked his head towards Crystal Fury, who now was on the verge of tears.

However, that pony didn’t seem to care “What? They're her parents? Look buddy, I’m just doing my job here and giving a report. Not my fault she’s here.”

Suddenly, the SAS Captain's rage reached unimaginable levels. “Listen mate. Unless you want to get seriously hurt, get the fuck out of here now.”

The reckless guard got very angry as well, and, without warning, lunged towards Éire with his hooves aimed at his face. The human deflected the hit with his rifle and then brought the butt of the L85A2 to the temple of the pony, knocking him out.

The white pony got in a fighting position, upon seeing this, Éire reloaded the rifle and painted it to him.

“STOP! Shining Armour, stand down!” sounded dark blue’s voice.

After a few tension-filled moments, Shining relaxed and sat on his haunches, his gaze never leaving the human. In turn Dunwall set his rifle on his lap, but he did not unload it this time.

“Princesses, I have an idea.” said purple special “Leave me and him alone. I will ask him questions about he and his world and viceversa. Then I’ll make a paper with all the important information for you to read.”

Celestia pondered for a few moments before speaking “Very well.”

“Hold on. Can I have my things back please? You have my word I won't hurt anyone until they hurt me first.”

“I hope you are true to your word, Captain” and with that, she picked up the unconscious guard and walked out the room, follow by everyone except for purple special.

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Éire woke up in the same bed as the day before, except this time the ponies were nice enough to give him some sheets.

He had learned everything about Equestria. How Luna and celestia moved the sun and moon. All the species of ponies, and different creatures of the world. The polar bear he fought was actually called White Great Bear (No shit.) and it was one of the fiercest animals in the Arctic North, killing it was very hard, even with magic; however, it seems to have a weakness to lead projectiles.

He also had to comfort Twilight when she broke out crying when he told him about the horrible things of his world. He clearly didn’t fit here, at least not ponyland. She had told him the griffons and monatuars were constantly at war with the Diamond Dogs.

During several times in the talk he wanted to shot himself in the head due to the terrible horse puns that named the different cities.

The little filly Crystal Fury was out with her parents going to a place where it was a family tradition to take the children so they could be blessed by ‘Faust’, which apparently was their version of God. Interestingly enough, despite coming from a christian country like Ireland Éire didn’t believe in any god. So in his mind, they had died for nothing.

He sighed as he climbed down the bed and put on his trousers, then his shirt, strapped on his vest, put on his boots and gloves, strapped the helmet, checked his weapons and ammo and finally picked up his rifle.

Since he had been out for three days and his wounds had almost healed by now. Twilight would be there to pick him up and take him to the throne room.

‘Poor pony. Lost her parents at this age. What are they going to do with her?’ Éire, for some strange reason, cared about Crystal Fury. He felt responsible for her.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

Twilight entered the room. “Hi. Everyone already read the paper I wrote and know everything about you and your world. How are you feeling today?”

“I’m grand, thank you.”

“Good, shall we go?”

“Lead the way.”

“Okay.” she powered up her horn.

“What a-” was all the human could say before he felt a tingling sensation all around his body as he entered a purple void, and then just appeared in the throne room. He dropped to all four panting. “What the fuck did you do?!”

“I just teleported us.”

“TELEPORTED?!” after a little while he gathered himself, stood up, and looked around. At the end of the room there was a throne, in the other end a large set of double doors, a few windows, everything made of crystal; and that was pretty much it.

In front of him he saw everyone that was in the room the day yesterday except for Crystal Fury.

“Hello Éire, I hope the ride was a pleasant one.” Celestia said with a bemused smile.

“Fucking grand. So what are we doing here?”

“We are here to discuss what to do with you.”

“All right...Oi, what about the filly?”

“Since there is no one that can take care of her, we’ll put her in an orphanage in Equestria.”

Orphanage...He remembered his orphanage, it was horrible. The owners hit him; the food were processed turds; the beds were old, broken and uncomfortable; the other kids all made fun of eachother. He cherished the day he escaped that shit hole and joined the army.

He was not about to let that kid endure that “I can take care of her.”

“What?” Twilight was taken back by what the human had just said.

“I said I will take care of her.”

“Listen Éire, I know what you went through in your childhood and I know it was not nice at all. But this is simply not possible. I swear she’ll be in the best orphanage in Equestria.”

“That is the same I was told before I ended that in that place! Look, I saved her, I obviously mean no harm. Yesterday she wanted to be with them more than she wanted to be with you.”

“Éi--”

“Please, look, if you aren’t happy with how we live I will give her up.”

Celestia stared at him.

“Tia.” Cadence said “I will give them a place to live in the city and will personally watch over them. Give him a chance.” she could feel that he did care about the filly.

“Very well. However, there is one slight problem, two actually. One is introducing you to the world, the other one is what will you work as.”

Éire meditated for a second and then looked at Cadence “Didn’t Twilight say you were looking for a personal guard?”

The princess of love tough about it for a second “Yes I am. I never heard of a human personal guard before, but any creature can be. However, if you want to be my personal you must first pass some tests.”

“Alright.”

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Éire was standing in the training grounds outside the Tower. He had his rifle, pistol and knife taken from him.

In front of him, two pegasus crystal guards, two earth ponies and two unicorns.

The Earth ponies moved to flank him and the pegasi took flight while the unicorns just stood there.

‘If only I had a beer right now...’

Author's Note

Second chapter. I hope you liked it.

Also, if you like WW2 be sure to check out my other story 'Where is Home?'.