'Scarecrow. Come in, Scarecrow.' A voice said, crackling with static. I groaned, pain racking my body.
'Schofield, come in.' The voice started sounding frantic, panicked even. 'Shane, answer me God dammit!'
My mind started reeling, as I recognised the voice. It was Book II. I tried to move my arm up to my mike, which was located on my helmet, to try and respond, but found I couldn't move my arms. In fact, I couldn't move anything.
'Great. This means I've been captured.' I thought, grimly. 'They'll probably torture me for information now. I thought I left all of this shit back in Serbia...'
'Shane, please answer me! We can't lose you. Not now, not ever!' Book II said, snapping me out of my thoughts. I heard deep breathing on his end, before he said 'Scarecrow, I'll give you ten minutes. If I hear no reply, I'll have to assume you're deceased. You have thirty minutes, Shane. Please, tell me you're fine...' The line went silent, much to my disappointment.
'This day just can't get any worse.' I thought. 'Maybe if I'm lucky, the torturer will turn on the mic, so my team can hear me squeal... No. I will get out of this. I'll take everything they throw at me, and when I get out, these bastards will get what coming to them!'
I started struggling slightly, trying to feel the knots that held me down, but strangely, I could feel none. It felt as if I was floating in the air, but that was impossible! I was immobile, yet couldn't feel anything holding me down. The weirdest part about this, was that I couldn't feel anything solid anywhere on my body.
'What the fuck is this?' I thought, just now realising that I couldn't do anything. Even such mundane tasks, like talking or even opening my eyes, were impossible. I started struggling a bit harder, but didn't succeed in doing anything, besides tire myself out. 'I hope the ICG doesn't have anything to with this. I've dealt with those fuckers way more than I'd liked to have.'
Truth be told, I'd only encountered them once, and that was two times too many.
My thoughts were, once again, interrupted by a voice. However, this one wasn't Book. It sounded young, frightened and definitely female, which confused me a lot.
"I think it's waking up, Spike." It said.
'Spike. That's an interesting callsign...' I thought. 'Also, since when did females do the torturing? The only woman I know that could, would be Mother, and she would never do this, without a good enough incentive. Not even Gant could torture anyone! What the fuck have they done to this poor woman? If I get out of this, these fuckers will pay...'
Once again, the voice spoke up, this time the fear replaced, mostly, with curiosity. "I'll let out for a bit, to see what it has to say, if it's even sentient. If it starts getting aggressive, I'll just hold it again. You ready to take notes, Spike?"
"Um, give me a minute, Twilight. I need to get some ink. This pot just ran out." A different voice said. This one was masculine, but sounded young, innocent.
'Christ, they even have children watching!' I thought, disgusted. 'And it sounds like he's gonna take notes, too! What kind of fucked up peop-'
Suddenly, the invisible force that was holding me dropped, and I collided with something solid, presumably the floor. As I landed, I noticed a few familiar things on my body. Namely my kevlar vest, my Desert Eagle, and I still was wearing my glasses, strangely enough. My eyes went straight to my gun, and I grinned, amused by the amateur behaviour, shown by my captor.
"Rule number 1 in a successive interrogation and/or torture," I said, pulling out my gun and pointed it at my captor. My thought processors immediately died, when I saw what was in front of me. My captor wasn't a woman. Hell, she wasn't even a human. It was a purple unicorn, and it could apparently talk.
Now, I thought the weirdest thing I saw was the mutant elephant seals, back at Wilkes ice station, but this revelation blew that out of the water.
My mind tried to come up with a coherent response, but the fact that a purple fucking unicorn was in front of me, made it incredibly hard to think. The only thing that managed to come out of my mouth, was a garbled "Wha-?"
The unicorn, however, didn't look quite so surprised, and only acknowledged the sound of my voice by widening her eyes slightly in surprise, (which were absolutely massive, by the way. Maybe about the size of my fist, if not bigger), and saying "Hm, so you are capable of limited speech. Some further tests will be needed to discern if you can actually communicate with me, or anypony else."
At this moment, a small, bipedal, purple lizard with green spines walked into the room, holding a feather and a small ink pot. "I've gotten the ink, Twilight. I think we're all set!" It said.
The unicorn, Twilight, I presumed, nodded, and turned back to me. "All right. First things first, creature. What is your name, if you have one, and what are you?"
It took a moment, but my mind finally thought of something that could possibly explain my situation. I could've been drugged. But then again, no drug I've ever heard of gives off hallucinations this vivid, so that idea was scrapped. This was, apparently, a reality that I was just going to have to live through.
I looked at her, (I was just assuming she was a female), incredulously. "I'm not going to give away any information to you, or anyone else. You obviously have no idea what, or who, I am, and I'd prefer to keep it that way."
She looked at me, as if she'd expected an answer like that. "I thought you wouldn't give out information, so I decided, while you were unconscious, to make a deal with you if you refused."
I raised an eyebrow, looking at her suspiciously. "What would that be?"
"A question for a question." She replied. "I ask you something, you ask me something in return. Does that seem fair to you?"
I debated about it for a few moments, before nodding. "I'm asking the first question." I stated. She nodded, so I asked where I was, and what she was.
"Well, we're in my house, which also functions as the towns library. The town being Ponyville. The country we live in is Equestria, on the planet Equus." She said. I snorted at the obvious horse puns, but otherwise kept to myself. She continued, "My name is Twilight Sparkle. I am a unicorn, as you can see, and I live here in Ponyville, as mentioned before."
I nodded. I was right in assuming that this was real, as hallucinations never explained themselves. Well not normally. Anyway, Twilight repeated her original question; "What is your name, if you have one, and what are you?"
"My name is Shane Schofield, but you may call me by my callsign, Scarecrow." I said. "I am a captain of the United States marine corps. My race are known as humans, scientific name homo sapiens."
Twilight looked confused. "I've never heard of any species called 'humans'. I also have no idea what a callsign is, or what the United States marine corps are. Would you mind elaborating? And also, what was that thing you pointed at me earlier? It doesn't look very threatening."
I blinked. If she had no idea what a human was, then she probably wouldn't know what anything I said was. Hell, she didn't even no what a gun was! It was very obvious, to me, that she was very innocent when it came to war or fighting, or that her race wasn't technologically advanced enough to create weapons like humans had. If either of those were the case, then I wasn't going to bring it into her world.
"I'm not going to say anything, besides it is very dangerous, and you shouldn't ask me about anything to do with it, or the marines. From what you've shown me, you are a very innocent race. You don't have any major weapons of destruction, and I don't think you've experienced much loss, in the way of death, right?" She nodded. "Then I refuse to bring anything dangerous or life threatening into your world. I don't want to be responsible for innocent deaths."
She seemed a bit disappointed by my answer, but dropped the topic. She even asked her assistant, Spike, to scribble out all of the things relevant to what we just discussed.
After that, we continued asking other, more simpler, questions. I learned that, aside from regular ponies and unicorns, there were also pegasi here as well! Spike, who told me he was a dragon, which I didn't believe at first, since he's so small, but Twilight had also said that he was, but said he was only a baby dragon, took notes the entire time.
It all went fairly well, until she asked me about my glasses. "I can tell they aren't your real eyes, as you wouldn't be able to see out of them." She stated, pointing at them. "Would you mind showing me your eyes?"
I grimaced, and said, "I will take my glasses off, but do you promise me not to ask about my eyes? They correlate with the marines and other stuff I don't want you to know about." I explained, at her confused look. She reluctantly nodded, and I took off my anti-flash silver wrap-around sunglasses.
Twilight immediately gasped when she saw the two vertical scars, that ran down the middle of my eyes. Spike didn't understand what the big deal was about, until I told him they were scars. He looked slightly sick after that, as did Twilight.
After a little bit more discussion, I yawned, startling Twilight a bit. She looked at a clock, which was mounted on her wall, and exclaimed, "Oh, my! It's past 11 o'clock! Spike should've been in bed hours ago!"
I suddenly realised that I had no where to go. Luckily, Twilight was kind enough to offer me her spare room, which was right next to her study (the room we were in now), until I knew what the hell was going on.
I thanked her, and walked into the room, to find the bed was already made. From what Twilight told me, she was a fairly organised person, so this didn't phase me that much.
I settled down into the bed, and tried to remember what happened before I came to Equestria, to see if anything major had happened, but I couldn't remember anything about my last day on Earth, save for the fact that I was with Mother, Book II and Aloysius.
A clicking noise, that came from my helmet, which I had removed from my head while talking with Twilight , interrupted my thoughts.
"Oh, fuck!" I exclaimed, putting the helmet on. I had completely forgotten to contact Book II and tell him I'm fine! The message I got came from a very depressed Book, but was obviously a pre recording, so I couldn't reply. The message played on repeat for about half an hour, before the mic clicked off, never to be turned on again. The message was:
'Well, Scarecrow, it's been more than thirty minutes. You didn't respond, so as of now, you will be treated as if you'd been KIA. You were a great leader, Shane. Your team will miss you, hell, the entire marine corps will... In case you are still out there, and listening, I just want you to know that you were the best leader I've ever had, and probably no-one will surpass you. You are an inspiration to all of us, and your legacy will be told for generations. And, on a more personal level, you were probably the best friends I've ever had. Scarecrow, it was a pleasure serving you, and an even greater pleasure knowing you. I hope, sorry, we all hope you've made it to a better place... Goodbye, Shane.'
The recording ended with a choked sob, and I realised that I had lost my only means of communication with my world. I was alone, in a world of innocence and peace, which was no place for a grizzled war veteran like myself. I had no one to talk to on a personal level, about my experiences in battle. I had lost all of my team, my friends. I would never see Mother, Book II, Aloysius or any of my other friends again. I thought it hurt when I lost Libby, but at least I had people to talk to then, people that could relate to my position. But now, however, I was alone. Well and truly, alone.
