Chapter 2: Seeing (mostly) unseen.

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“Seriously captain,” Ghost said as he walked along the river, keeping both eyes on the surroundings. “What the hay do you make out of this? Did we stumble on a pocket of natural LSD or something.”

“I've got nae a clue Ghost,” Soap said, “So fer now, adapt an' overcome. What do yeh make of the landscape?”

“So pretty and nice that I could puke,” Ghost told him, looking around. “It's like some five-year-old girl's storybook, this place. Worst thing is that this place should piss me off but it doesn't...” Soap looked at Ghost, knowing very well what the colt... guy, meant. He felt that too. “In fact, it makes me want to pick flowers, perhaps eat them too, and skip around like an idiot.” Ghost continued and Soap stared towards the stallion. Was that really Lieutenant Simon Riley, the SAS's best and most ruthless soldier speaking?

“That's... nice,” he added lamely after a while. They needed to get out of here soon. “Get down!” he hissed a second later, Ghost following suit and leaping in behind the shrubbery where Soap had hid. Only seconds later something dashed past on the river, blurring by in front of them so fast it was like a missile flying by. Something vaguely blue with other details in other colors shot by, leaving a trail that honest-to-god seemed like a rainbow at surface level. Their heads whipped to follow it and the thing changed heading after a few seconds, flying up into the air and decelerating until it came to a halt about three-hundred meters up in the air.

It was a pegasus. It was sky blue in colour yet its mane and tail were in all the colors of the rainbow. It was too far to make out any other features however both Soap and Ghost were flabbergasted by it. That thing must have gone almost at the speed of sound! It had torn up a furrow in the water at it passed them by!

After only a second of hovering the pegasus descended again, weaving a pattern across the sky with such sharp turns that any aircraft they knew of would have been torn apart even attempting something like that. And all across the sky it left a rainbow streak in its wake.

“Holy...” Soap said as he watched it vanish. He idly noticed that Ghost's wings were trembling. “Ghost, yeh okay?” he asked now, recognizing the signs of of distress.

“I've never wanted to fly more in my entire life,” Ghost whispered now, his breath ragged and his voice shivering. “I see that and I want nothing more than to follow her. I want to fly... I need to fly!” Soap put a hoof on Ghost' shoulder and pushed him down a bit.

“Stay on the ground Ghost,” he hissed, “I need yeh tae keep yer head straight on.”

“Yeah,” Ghost whispered, “Yeah... I'm fine... I'm cool.”

“Come on, we're going back to the rendezvous point,” Soap said, half-dragging the still spellbound Ghost back towards the slope.

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The orchards were evidently fertile as could be. Roach could almost smell the apples growing on the trees from fifty feet away. Lying flat on his stomach next to Gaz, he watched the orchard with squinting eyes.

“No farmhands or machines,” Gaz stated as he watched the trees, “They seem to be running this joint the old-fashioned way.”

“Blooming hay,” Roach muttered, too focused to even care about how his expletives got warped. “Those orchards must be magical or something. I grew up near one of these and this one makes that one look like it was dead.”

“So what does Orchard-colt see?” Gaz grinned at Roach, who gave him a dry look.

“Check the apples,” he said, “They gotta be a pound each or something, the average apple's half that. They're way too red too... way too juicy-looking...” he continued, trailing off after a moment. The unicorn looked at the apples with wide eyes, not realizing that he was starting to drool a bit.

“You know,” Gaz said. The hunger was reminding them both of its existence. “I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think it's time to revisit our childhood.”

“What?” Roach asked, hurriedly wiping his mouth with a hoof as he got snapped back to reality. Gaz grinned at him.

“Scrumping!” he said as he got up, still keeping a low profile however. “Come on, we're gonna do some foraging,” he told Roach as he advanced on the farm swiftly but stealthily.

“You serious LT?” Roach said, getting up to follow the stallion. “I don't think the captain's gonna approve.”

“He'll approve when we've gotten hold of some food,” Gaz told him, “I didn't see any field rations on your scrawny flank. I take responsibility for this. We are in unknown territory and out of supplies, I think Price can overlook a few apples for survival.”

“Your neck LT,” Roach said as they reached the fence. Despite being ponies they could still move as well as they had when human strangely enough.

“Sack by the fence, three o clock, two hundred meters.” Gaz said, “You grab it, I snag some apples.”

“Roger,” Roach said, beginning to move along the fence quickly. Broad daylight and clear weather made this really risky, he knew that. Still though Gaz made sense in a way. None of them had eaten for two days before entering that cave. There hadn't been time. He therefore didn't make too much of an issue about it, taking the sack from from where it lay folded over the fence. It felt weird using his mouth to move things but at the same time he could feel the amount of dexterity he had in it now compared to earlier. “Bloomin' hay,” he muttered as he dragged the sack back towards Gaz, who was looking up the nearest tree. “Here, any bright ideas on how to get them down?” He asked as he dropped the sack in front of Gaz.

“Just watch,” Gaz said as he reached down, spreading the sack wide open under the tree before turning around and kicking the trunk with his back hooves. Over a dozen apples were shaken out of the tree and rained down on the ground. Curiously, an inordinately large amount landed in the sack directly. Roach could only flinch at the loud sound however and quickly moved to put the other apples in the sack as well.

“Let's get out of here fast,” he said, “I don't care to...”

“Stop right there ya thievin' varmints!” someone yelled from further away. It was an angry, female voice with a southern US twang as broad as it was unmistakeable. Roach grimaced now.

“Aw hay...” he muttered, looking to see another approaching. She was still quite a distance away, meaning they couldn't see much of her. The only real thing they could see was a stetson hat coming through the underbrush further away towards them at a full pelt.

“Run,” Gaz said plainly, Roach needing no more convincing. Accelerating to a full sprint, he leaped over the fence and started a wild dash through the underbrush. Gaz was right beside him, carrying the sack of apples yet still matching his speed.

“Don't think ya'll getting' away so easily!” their pursuer yelled and Roach looked back, seeing how she was keeping up with them.

“Good idea LT!” he hissed, “Just some apples, what's the worst that could happen?”

“Just like being little again,” Gaz grinned. “Head for the river, we go upstream and dump the sack there! Take as many as you can carry otherwise.

“I'm a blooming horse!” Roach hissed as they slid down the sloped riverside and Gaz rolled his eyes while still running.

“As the yanks say; adapt and overcome,” he said as they started dashing along the riverside and took a hard left up at a fork in it. “Stab some with that horn of yours if you can't think of any other way!” They had still managed to keep far ahead enough that the mare chasing them didn't get a good look at them. That was what would move this from the Price or Soap murdering them to simply punishing them.

“Get back here!” their pursuer yelled, utterly incensed. She seemed to take quite the exception to their little caper and Roach did his best to not consider the entire situation. Four hours ago he'd been fighting for his life against Makarov's vengeful goons. They had been on the run for weeks and were cornered, tired, hungry and rapidly running out of ammo. Now, only a few hours later, he was a pony, an unicorn pony to boot! He had come to a magical fairy land and was at the moment scrumping apples from another pony who now was chasing them.

This just couldn't get any weirder.

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“Seems to be an average rural community,” Yuri said as he watched the village from the slope they were lying down on. “If you mixed Soviet propaganda about how life at the kolkhozy were with a kid's book,” he added with a mutter. It truly was an idyllic place. The first thing one noticed was that this place was indeed inhabited by ponies. Ponies in all kinds of colors, natural and unnatural both, were wandering the streets in a prime example of how a quiet, peaceful small town was. The houses were generally built in a vaguely european style, sort of alpine in a manner. The streets were wide however and several houses could be seen that had a very unique appearance. One of these was a building that looked pretty much exactly like a gingerbread house.

“I can't spot any industry beyond a few shops,” Price agreed. “There's a railroad at the far side of town... seems to be a train at it. From how it's facing... it's probably going to the castle up on the mountain there.” Price pointed a hoof towards the castle that could be seen high up on the mountainside far away. Almost precariously it hung there, balancing on the steep mountainside like it was glued there. Its spires rose high into the sky and the banners fluttered proudly in the breeze. Price couldn't see any way of getting there but supposed the train supplied a route.

“A suburb to the royal palace?” Yuri asked, craning his neck to look closer at the town.

“Dunno,” Price, “I can see multiple infil- and exfil-points though, that's place's a Swiss cheese. Biggest problem might be how flat the surrounding landscape is.”

“I agree,” Yuri said, “It seems that large tree at the middle of town is a building as well, I can see windows. A town hall perhaps?”

“A library,” the pink pony lying in the grass beside them both said as she lowered the binoculars she held in her hooves. “A nest of books and all sorts of dangerous stuff.”

Captain John Price had been a special forces soldier for decades. When others had retired or become staff officers Price had remained in the field and age hadn't dulled his fangs. Twenty years had forged him into a dangerous old wolf of a kind few could equal. His body simply refused to weaken, only becoming more and more stringy and hard-bitten. His senses and skills were as sharp as they always had been.

Yuri was much the same. Having been trained by the utterly ruthless, even sadistic, drill sergeants of the Spetsnaz he had gotten weakness beaten out of him brutally. What had emerged was a beast of war that didn't know the meaning of the word weakness. As Russia had fallen apart bit by bit he had remained strong and lethal. Even the terrible events that turned him against his old brother in arms Makarov had only served to further fuel his need to be the best fighter possible.

Neither of them had even begun to notice the third pony that now lay by their side in the grass before now.

“What the?!” Price startled and Yuri swore in Russian as he all but flew to the side, instinctively reaching back to one of his hindlegs after a knife that no longer hung there. For some reason Price noticed that the warping effect on curses worked in Russian too. The pink pony, meanwhile, was really, really pink. She was all but glowing with how intensely pink she was and her mane was fluffed and curly. Her intensely blue eyes looked to them as she perked up with a shamelessly cheerful look on her face.

“Hi!” she said happily “Who are you? I've never seen you before and I know EVERY pony in Ponyville so if I haven't seen you you gotta be new around here! Where are you from? The way you're talking makes me think Stalliongrad and Trottingham, is that where you are from? I've never been there, what brings you to Ponyville? Did you just come here?”

“Hey,” Price said now, having raised one hoof in what seemed to be an attempt at a calming gesture, “Mind lowering the pace there miss? We can't follow what you're saying.” Yuri, meanwhile, was not saying anything. He was shaking like a leaf from all the adrenaline and all the willpower it took not to act on his training. That Price could actually carry a conversation was impressive indeed.

“You're definitely from Trottingham!” the girl cheered as she began to bounce around, literally so. She was bouncing around them with happy skips, getting at least a meter's height per jump. “You sound just like Pipsqueak! Oh!” she suddenly startled, “I gotta tell him and then we can arrange a welcoming party for you!” With that, she all but flew away from them. Her hooves seemed to touch the ground but the velocity she got was way beyond what any normal pony should be able to achieve. In the dust behind her Price and Yuri stood, staring after her.

“What the hay was that?” Yuri asked after a few seconds, having a disbelieving tone in his voice.

“Don't know but we're scarpering, now!” Price said through gritted teeth, Their presence had been compromised and the old captain was not sticking around to have that pink tosser drag half of town down on them. Yuri and Price both retreated quickly, heading towards the mountainside again to regroup and compare notes with the other teams.

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“Right,” Price said as he looked around on his team. Ponified as they might be, they were still his team, still the best of the best, and he knew that they most likely would have had more success than his absurd run-in with that pink pony. “What do we know?” he continued, having drawn up a crude map of the area with a stick held in his mouth.

“Pre-industrial society by the looks of it,” Gaz began, “Despite the trappings of a post- one, they seem to rely on older methods.”

“Right,” Price said, “Why are you chewing on an apple?” he asked after a second.

“Because we recced the orchards,” Gaz said, “Decided to do some foraging. We had a bit of a run-in with one of the locals. They are horses, like us.”

“Gaz,” Price began now, growling, “Please tell me you did not steal from the locals first thing you did in this place? And got spotted too?”

“Negative on the second sir,” Gaz said, “She never got a clear look at us. Also if you don't mind me saying so sir, none of us have eaten a real meal in a week now. We can say we're sorry for taking ten apples out of a million later.” Roach was silently nibbling on his apple as well, not saying anything. Price merely looked at Gaz for a few seconds, his face unreadable. Still, having been at the captain's side for a decade now had earned him enough plus points that in the end the grizzled warrior only scoffed.

“I haven't forgotten about this,” he said, snatching an apple off the ground as well. Using your hooves to perform basic tasks wasn't that complicated it turned out. “Anything more?”

“They speak English,” Roach said, “Southern US English more precisely. The farmer chasing us called us “Thievin' varmints”.” He grimaced at how weird it all sounded.

“That might not hold true for all of them,” Price said, “Yuri and I had a run-in with one of the locals too, she spoke with a normal US accent. What more, she said that we sounded like we were from...” he trailed off now, still not believing his ears.

“From Stalliongrad and Trottingham,” Yuri said with a grimace, the others staring at him.

“You're taking the piss,” Gaz said with a slight twitch in his left eye. Yuri only shoot his head however.

“No my friend, I do not.” He said, “The worst thing is this; she sneaked up on us both, without either of us noticing her. She was bright pink, coat and mane both, and yet she all of a sudden she lay beside us on that hill...”

“Good tae know we weren't the only ones seein' pastel coloured ponies daein' the impossible,” Soap interjected now, “When we recced the river a... lil' sky-blue flyin' pony with rainbow hair flew past us. It moved like it was a missile, easily halfway tae the sound barrier. Ain't that right Ghost... Ghost!?”

“Uh?” Ghost said now, bouncing back to reality the stallion had been sitting silent and unmoving for the entirety of the debriefing. Price had assumed it was a case of Ghost being Ghost but no, he seemed genuinely and completely lost in thoughts. “Yeah, yeah sure.”

“What's the matter with you Ghost?” Price asked, “Get your heads out of the clouds!”

“I can't,” the balaclava-wearing pony said, “It's like I'm addicted, like I for the first time understand what my brother went through when he became a junkie.”

“Addicted to what?” Price asked. Roach was unabashedly staring at Ghost, the young man, or colt now, having known Ghost only as intimidating and sublimely deadly.

“Flying,” Ghost said despondently, “I want to fly, more than anything else. I don't know how, I tried all the way back here but I just can't and it pisses me off. Like I'm a smack-addict and someone's dangling a full syringe in front of me!”

“We need to get out of here soon,” Gaz said, looking towards Ghost with a freaked-out look on his face. “Now that he's saying it, I'm feeling the urges too.”

“Pegasus puberty?” Yuri drawled as he chewed on an apple, “It begs the question what the unicorns will experience.”

“Freud would have a field day, that's fer sure,” Soap grinned at the Russian. He liked Yuri. Usually he was so calm, almost withdrawn, but now and then real zingers could come from him. Russian wit Soap supposed. And yes, perhaps some part of it hung on that Yuri, like him, was a normal horse. He had no fancy-schmancy wings that made him act like a drug-addict, nor did he have a horn sticking out from his forehead which opened up for so many jokes. A good old, dependable pony of the earth, that was the way to be. Wait what?

Price, meanwhile, was about to blow a gasket. His elite team was crumbling before his eyes. Two men losing it to some new type of addiction and the two others laughing at them for it. Only Roach seemed to keep his head screwed on straight. Was it the horns that nailed it there? Were unicorns simply more sensible? It sure seemed that way. And why the blooming hay was he thinking about that?!

“Enough!” he snarled, smacking one foot against the ground in an attempt to restore order. It worked reasonably well and while Ghost still remained in his... whatever one would call it, and Gaz seemed to get issues too, they at least managed to wrap up what they had learned. The village, Ponyville, was a small community on the way to the castle up on the mountain, it was surrounded by mostly forests and plains with one big exceptions in the large apple orchards further away. There were, at the outskirts of said orchards, another forest. This one was bigger, darker and Soap's first impression of it was “bad news”.

“Every instinct I've got told me, 'stay out of there',” the captain said. “If there's dragons here, that's where they live.”

“Right,” Price said thoughtfully, having marked out the forest on his map. “Nothing to do about it,” he added after a while, “We'll have to approach the locals.”

“Yeh sure?” Soap asked, Price giving him a sour glare.

“No,” he said bluntly, “But look around you. Gaz is right, we haven't eaten properly in a week, hardly slept in days. Ghost and Gaz's in the grip of that desire to fly and we haven't god a bloomin' clue where we are. From all our available intel they seemed friendly...” He grimaced at the absurdity of the situation once more.

“Can't say I'd ever imagine pastel-coloured ponies tae be hostile,” Soap shrugged. “I just hope Gaz's and Roach's lil' stunt at the orchards dinnae mess things up fer us.”

“We're going there first,” Price said now, tossing his stick to the side “If it did, I want to solve it here and now. We can't afford to make enemies when we are in the dark like his.”

“How d'yeh wanna do this?” Soap asked now, looking at the others.

“Keep it simple,” Price said, “We're travelling, got lost and have been drifting around in the mountains recently. I'm handling the talking, the less details we give the better. Leave the talking to me, if they address you directly speak as little as possible. Got it?” he looked at the others with that old “Price-glare”, the glare that said “this BETTER have stuck or else...”

“Got it,” Soap said, Roach, Gaz and Yuri all following suit. Ghost gave a small, non-committed mutter a few seconds later too. Price glared at the soldier who had once been one of the SAS's absolute best, perhaps one of the three best on this team, and wondered just what was wrong with him. He realized it first after a second but he had actually raised one hoof to massage his muzzle in a gesture of utter exasperation.

“Roach,” he said after a second, giving the youngest of his stallions... men damn it, an acerbic look “You're responsible for making sure Ghost doesn't fall behind.”

“Got it,” Roach said, walking over to Ghost and managing to get him on his feet. Roach more or less pushed Ghost onto his hooves by shoving his head into the stallion's back. “Come on Ghost,” he said supportingly, “time to visit the apple orchards, you like apples don't you? We're horses now, horses like apples...”

“I personally prefer carrots,” Gaz added helpfully as they began down the mountainside.

“Ah shut yer gob, the both o' ye” Soap snapped at them both.

Author's Note

After the really positive response I've gotten I decided to update ahead of schedule. Thanks for your feedback and I hope I can keep entertaining.