It has been a long day patrolling with my unit. I was hot, tired and I wanted nothing more than to head back to base, get a shower, clean my rifle and sit in my air conditioned baric. But life sucks and I still had an hour of patrol left. If you haven’t guessed yet I’m a US Marine stationed in Afghanistan. I’m also a brony, and my favorite pony is Pinkie Pie. When I told that to my other brony friends… It suppressed them to say the least. Mainly because of the music I listen to. Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osborn, and exedra.
My unit was on patrol and like I said everything was going fine. We were having conversations with each other about different things. I was in the passenger seat talking to the driver about which is a better car, a Ford Mustang or the Chevy Camaro. I was going with the Ford and the driver was going with the Chevy.
Three out of the four in the back were talking about their home. What they were going to eat, what they were going to do with their friends, families and girlfriends and about the time the spent before leaving. One wanted to go and see his grandmother who is near death. The other wanted to marry his high school sweet heart. There was one guy who was not talking to anyone. His name was Drake White and he was disliked in our unit because he has a huge temper problem and whines about everything.
“How long until were back at the base?” He asked in his New Jersey accent. “I mean, we’ve been out here for hours.”
I couldn’t stand this guy. All he does is complain about every little thing. He never shuts up about how unmanly it is to watch a show for little girls and that we’re gays and need to be discharged. “White, you sound like a child asking ‘are we there yet’ every five minutes.” I yelled. “If you would watch the show and not be a closed minded dick… then you would understand why we like it so much.” Our whole squad stopped. They were all staring at the two of us, waiting to see who makes the first move.
White threw his hands up almost hitting me. “Well fuck you too, and if I remember correctly I outrank you, Sergeant Jonny Hartman.” He was getting ready to do attack me I could see it in his eyes. I don’t get why though, soldiers can’t hate each other. It not only agented the law, it’s very dangerous. If two soldiers are fight who’s to say one won’t go to the other side to kill the other. As unlikely as that sounds it’s a possibility and the government gust loves going on possibilities.
“That’s enough you two.” The commanding officer of our unit stepped between us. He was an older man. His skin was dark and had signs of stress everywhere. He looked at me then at White. I could tell he wanted nothing more than too beat our faces in. But he couldn’t so he settled for yelling at us. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told you two to get along.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “This is the last straw.” He opened his eyes and restarted. “One of you, if not both will be leaving.”
White wasn’t stupid, but he was a head strong. “If anyone should leave, it’s him!” He pointed a finger at me. “He’s a fucking brony and he should be out of the Corps of liking that faggot shit.” ‘Faggot shit.’ Can no one in New Jersey use proper grammar? (take that joke with a grain of salt if anyone is reading this from New Jersey.) He kept ranting on about how bronies are nothing but fag’s until someone else in our squad spoke up.
“Sir I think I just saw a hostile go into that building.” One marine said. I looked for myself. I saw one man with something, what looked like an assault rifle of some kind. As always, I checked if my rifle is loaded as rest of the marines did. The machine gunner aims at the man. The air feels thick and hot. A beat of sweat runs down my neck as I wait for what will come.
The man turns around and sees us. He looks shocked and starts fumbling around with his rifle. He ends up dropping it and then starts to feel around in his man dress. He pulls out what looks like a detonator and hits it.
There was a loud exposition and the shrapnel and shock wave hit the Humvee. The vehicle managed to protect me and the other marines. Well most of them. When I opened my eyes I saw our support gunner on the ground. From his head to the bottom of his chest is gone. There’s blood everywhere and to this day I swear the first few minutes were in slow motion. Once the shock wore off I heard gun fire coming from outside. I look through the cracked window to see insurgents all armed to the teeth. My captain was yelling at everyone to take up suppressive firing positions. I was one of the first to hear him so I went to the opposite door and tried to open it. But it was jammed so I resorted to kicking it down.
I kept at it until it finally gave up. I managed to make it out first so I went to the side of the engine block and started to fire back at the enemy insurgents. Once the rest of the men were out I left the engine block for better cover behind a large rock. Once there I started to fire. Behind the rock were White and my captain. I scoffed under the sound of gun fire. The last thing I wanted was White covering my six.
I looked to my peripheral vision to see him yelling something, but I couldn’t hear it nor did I care. I look back at the enemy, there was at least twenty of them. I shot one and moved to my next target. Once we killed most of them White got cocky and charged over the rock yelling something. It was a stupid move because when he got ten feet from us, he was shot in the chest.
“Shit!” The captain yelled. “Jones, Hernandez, Hartman give me covering fire I need to get to White before he dies.” The captain was not that fast. He was in his late 30’s and was going to retire with his wife in two weeks. I couldn’t let him go, he was going to get shot and we are just barley holding off the enemy. Besides, my life is worth as much as a pile of dog shit. I took a deep breath. I was one of the fastest runners in Afghanistan, but I knew that I could die while trying to run to White. Once I felt I could, I bolted for it.
I got to White and dragged him behind the Humvee and tried to medically help him. Witch wasn’t much considering all I could do was to apply gauze to a wound. I looked at his chest. The bullet hit him next to his Beretta M9. I felt or saw no blood so I pulled the cord on his CIRAS vest. His vest caught the bullet but the shock of it is what got him.
“White, are you ok?” He didn’t answer. “Damn it White, talk to me!” I yelled. I started to shake him. I was worried that he was dead because of the shock. I stopped shaking him and his head started to move.
“If you shake me again I’ll kill you, ya’ fucking brony.” I started to laugh at the fact that he was all right. Although a part of me wanted him to be dead. He looked down at himself and looked more pissed than a Rottweiler when he sees his master attacked. “You took my vest off! I can’t believe you did that in a fucking fire fight!” he looked around for something but couldn’t find what it was.
“Where’s my rifle?” White asked. You know it’s really strange on how he can ask so many questions during a fire fight. He looked over to where he was shot and there was laying a M4A1 assault rifle. White turned back to me. “You left my rifle? I can’t believe you left my rifle. That is the one thing a marine needs and you left it!” again he was scolding me during a fire fight.
“It was either the gun or you.” I said as I was starting to regret not getting the rifle instead of this whiny thing they call a man.
He surged, “Good point.” He reached for his vest and pulled his side arm out of the holster and took better cover behind the Humvee. We started to return fire at the enemy. White and I were working as a team for once. Not going at each other’s thought, but working together at a single goal.
“On your right!” I yell as I enemy came out of cover.
White shot him. “He’s down.” He fires two rounds and his slide locks back. He goes back under cover. “I’m out.”
“Here,” I say tossing him one of my spare magazines for my pistol. He accepted it and topped off his weapon. I came out of cover and shot one guy. I move back to cover and reloaded my rifle. “White, I’ll move to that rock.” I point to my left. He nodded and started shooting. I ran to the as fast as I could. The sound of bullets zipping past me… I can still remember this day. Once I was behing the rock, I returned fire. Two enemies went down. My rifle jams and I cures at the gas impingement system, wishing I had a piston rifle in this desert.
I took out the magazine in the rifle, pulled back the charging handle back to clear the jam and reload. White ran out of ammo again and I saw him reaching for a fresh mag in his vest. Why he didn’t leave it on his belt? I have no idea. I look down to see how many magazines I had for my rifle. I had four out of the six on my vest and the two spare on my belt. I went back up to see that there is ten left and two more came to support their allies. I smile to see that we are getting more of combat. I know most people find killing people wrong, but these men killed civilians and my fellow marines. It was right time to face judgment for their actions.
The other marines moved up to us and fired at the enemies. Two were shot in the head and another enemy was shot somewhere in his mid-section. I didn’t get a good look. The captain moved next to me and started to fire. “Hartman, if you do something as stupid as that again, then I’ll kill you personally.”
I smiled at the fact that he cared for my wellbeing so much. I took a quick glance at him, he almost looked angry at me for going after White instead of him, but he looked relived too because I was safe. I looked back to the battle. There were five men left. One marine to my side shot one man and the captain shot another one in the head.
My rifle ran dry and I switch to my pistol. I fired it twice and one enemy went down. I got back behind my cover to catch my breath. I reloaded my rifle and went back up to see only two enemies left. I raised my rifle and fired. I missed the one on the left of me. The men to my right fired and killed the last two men.
After my adrenaline was down, I had to take a leak. So I went off the battlefield. Once I was finished I was buttoning up my trousers when a man tackled me to the ground. I was way from the squad so they didn’t see me get attacked. He got on top of me and started to hit me multiple times in the head until if felt unconscious. My last thought was I was finally going to get what was coming to me.
When I woke up, I found that my hands and feet were tied together with duct tape. There was barely any wrapped around my wrist so I could rip. The work is sloppy like they let a rookie tie me up. I decided to wait until I know my chances of escape. I looked around to see that I was in the back of a pickup truck. We were going extremely fast, as if they wanted to get out of the open. I started to look around the truck. On both sides of myself there were two men. They both carried AK-47’s and some kind of pistol, it looked Russian.
I decided to wait for an opening so I could overpower one of the men and escape. They were in deep conversation talking in Arabic. I looked around again to see if I didn’t miss something. On my third look I saw that the back window was tinted so I couldn’t see inside. I looked back at the man to my right. His holster was on his left side and the pistol grip was sticking out of the front. We hit a bump on the road that sent me on my back. We must have been deep in the mountains.
I decided that it was now or never. I ripped the tape that was holding. I quickly sat up and hit the man next to me in the balls. It was a bitch-like move, but I had to get him on the ground. I grabbed his pistol and shot him in the heart then I turned to the other man and shot him in the head. The sound of the truck must have muffled the pistol going off. I feed myself and took one last glance at the men who I just killed and jumped out of the truck.
Hit my leg on the truck and because of that I hit the side of my head when I hit the ground. I saw the truck get smaller and smaller as my head became lighter and lighter. I was going to die. After all the shit I did this is how I die. It’s fitting, you know. No one to bury me and my corpse will probably be eaten by wild animals. I closed my eyes as I felt something warm surround my body. It didn’t feel bad. It felt safe. Like it was going to save me. That was my last thought as I fell unconscious.
I woke up in darkness. Manly because my eyes are closed. I mentally laugh at the stupid joke. I feel a sharp pain in my head that felt like a worm crawled in and started to eat at my brain and anything else was in my head. I start to wake up as the feeling in my body came back. The ground felt strange to me it felt like I was laying down but it felt different from the hot sand. The ground felt solid and cool. Also no light shinned though my eye lids. Maybe the insurgents found me. Maybe right now I’m going to be tortured for what I have done to the people of this country. Well my testacies are still were they always have been so I must not be captured.
I open my eyes and it was night. I began to look around to see that I was in a cave. Great some sheep herder probably found me and now I’ll have to work as his slave or something. Why does my mind wonder when I wake up? I look out of the cave to see the moon is out in full tonight. I start to get up and a sharp pain enters my side. I look down to see no blood or ripped clothes so I must have broken something when I jumped off the truck.
I try to get up again but I’m stopped by a voice that in no way can be real. “Please sir, lay back down.” The voice belongs to a woman, it’s mature and rasp. I get up fully and look for the woman. But she is hiding for some reason. I take a few steps and the pain flares back up. I grab my side in pain, it was like being stabbed in the lung. One of my ribs must be fractured.
I look around. “Who are you and why did you save me?” she didn’t answer. It was too quiet and I was getting impatient “Tell me who you are now!”
“I’m sorry but I can’t.” I think I heard a hint of fear in the woman’s voice.
“Why?” I ask. I don’t understand why she doesn’t want to come out? She doesn’t sound Arabian. I can’t tell where she’s from by the ascent but she isn’t American, maybe some European country.
“Because you won’t believe what you see.” I laughed lightly what could she be an alien? This was getting old fast and now I’m starting to get angry. “Come out or I will find you.”
I hear her sigh. Then I hear a horse trotting. I turn to my left and I can’t believe my eyes. A Sapphire blue alicorn was standing right in front of me. She had what look like a cobalt blue mane and black jewelry. She looked to be about five feet tall and her hoof shoes give her another inch.
“My name is Luna. I am a princess from another planet.”
This can be real. Princess Luna co-ruler of Equestria is standing right in front of me. “You can be real.”
“Rest ashore I am real.” She told me.
“That’s it” I threw up my arms. “I’m dead, I’ve died now I’m stuck somewhere and this is all just some weird after life.”
Luna rolls her eyes at me. But come on, this I a pony princess from a cartoon made for twelve year old girls! How can she be real? It’s impossible!
“I am real, soldier.” She says.
“You’re a talking blue horse!” I yell. “You're not- Hung.” She didn’t let me finish my sentence because she hoofed me in the stomach which didn’t help my more than likely cracked ribs. I bent over and grabbed my stomach. “Fine you’re real.”
She smiles at me. Well if she is real then who else is real? Thor? I Sit back up and look at the magical creature and I smile back. It wasn’t real but I felt like being nice. She posed no real threat and she could help me.
“I need to get back to my branches base.” I say breaking the silence. “Can you help? I’m in no condition to walk a far distance.” In truth I have no idea where the base is but if we can fly and hopefully not get shot down by anti-air guns then we should be fine.
She shook her head. “No. first off if I’m seen like this then I’ll be captured and dissected. Secondly I have no idea who you are so what to say you won’t rape me?” Well she does have a good point. On the first part. First off I don’t clop. And secondly I wouldn’t rape anything.
I hear noises coming from outside. It sounds like voices. I motion for Princess Luna to crouch down. She tilts her and gives me a funny look. I motion again to get down and she still does nothing.
I give up and whisper “get down someone is coming.” She nods. I try to crouch but it send a stabbing pain up my side so I settle for walking slowly. I slowly move my head out of the cave, carful to not expose too much of my body. I look forward to see three men carrying AK-47 assault rifles. I curs under my breath. I look closer to see that they are wearing chest rigs and the magazine pouches are empty. Either they were in a fire fight with another unit or they were the ones attack my unit and captured me.
I look back into the cave. Luna is crouching behind a rock. I have to protect her. I know I don’t know her but she is defenseless. I have to. I jog back to Princess Luna. “There is three men armed just outside.” I look back to the opening. “They look to be low on ammo so that means there must be a weapons cache’ some were.” I turn back and start to look around. “Look for anything that is out of place. A net of tarp more than likely.” She nodded and starts to look around.
I went to the back of the cave and started to look but there was NOTHING! The cache’ must be somewhere else. I look back at the entrance and the three men are inside. The cache’ must be in here but where! I stay in the shadows at the edges of the cave. I just need to wait for the right time to strike.
The men are now right next to me. I wait until the pass. I look down to see a good size rock. I decide against using it because I’m scared to bend down. Now that the two are in clear view I can see that one has a pistol at the side of his chest rig. It’s facing towards me so I can grab it with ease, but I can’t see any spare magazines so it could be out of ammo. He also has some grenades on him. I could take one the get the hell out of this cave and blow them to hell. But I can’t see Luna so there is a chance I could blow her up too.
They are behind me now. I slowly come out of my hiding place. I see the pistol clearly. But his grenades are on his back so I can get that easier. I have to choose. I reach for the pistol but the man turns around, he’s looking straight at me. We stand there for a second before I break the tension by breaking his nose with a right hook. I grab his pistol while he grab his nose. Now that I have a closer look it’s a Beretta m9. They must of took it form a soldier, there’s also a possibility that it could be mine. I take a few steps back and shoot the man with the broken nose. The other try to raise their rifles but I’m too fast and shoot them both twice in the head. They fall to the ground along with the sight adrenalin high that I was on.
I look around the cave to see if there is any more enemy’s, but really I’m looking for Luna. I don’t see her. This is bad. Really bad. What if one of the bullets over penetrated and hit her. What if she’s dead because I didn’t look ahead to see if she was behind me.
“What if she’s dead and it’s my fault.” I say allowed.
“I’m not dead but you might if you don’t get that looked at.” I hear coming from my left. I look over to see Luna running out to me. “Your bleeding Hartman.” she touches my side and comes back up with blood on her hands. I look down and see that I was shot by my kidney. My mind is racing with questions like why can I not feel the pain of be bullet and why am I not getting dizzy from blood loss.
Luna lowered her horn to my wound as it glowed a light blue. “I can hold of the bleeding for a while but you will need a doctor.” Great just what I needed, some quack telling me that I need surgery or something.
“I can take you but I will not go in with you. Not like this.”
I start to feel light headed. Luna’s spell must be wearing off. “Can you turn into a human?” I ask. “It doesn’t matter if I’m just two clicks away I will die if I don’t have help back to make it all the way.”
She looks left and right. “I’ll need some clothing.” She looks to the dead men in front of us, “and one last thing. I’ll need to drop the spell on you to turn into a human.”
Well then this is a problem. I could bleed out as she turn into a human. But if she doesn’t then she’ll be captured and killed. “Do it.” I say looking her in the eye.
She nodded “I will when it is time now help me get the robes off this man.” Luna grabs the dead man with her magic and I start to disrobe him. The top back of the robe is covered in blood. I don’t want Luna to wear the thing but it’s either that or she’s naked. On second thought- What no, stupid, stupid thought. Don’t think that again.
I took the robe and messily folded. “Now what?” I ask, but I should know the answer to that.
“Get on my back and hold on to my neck. If you pull my mane then I’ll drop you.” She must not like getting her mane pulled. She lays down so I don’t have to strain myself. I hop on and she leaps up and wrap my arms around her neck. I’m probably staining her coat with my blood. There was a slow trot to the opening in the cave before she spread her wings.
“What is your name?” she asked. That’s right I never to told her my name. “Jake Hartman.”
“Well then Hartman, keep your mouth shut and do not choke me.” I nod and she takes off into the night sky.
Luna took off into the night sky. I have flew before but not like this. And I have to admit it I didn’t like it. There was to0 many ways I could die. One is I could slip off and fall the next is I could die from blood loss. That and I’m afraid of heights.
Luna looked back at me. “Are you ok, you look like you’re going to fall off?”
“Really? I had no idea.” While Luna was pointing out the obvious I was looking for a base. As I was looking I couldn’t help but feel the night air. It was cool and crisp. It did not feel good the wind was forcing me to squint and to speak clearly I had to talk into Luna’s fur.
I looked to my right and saw lights. I tapped on Luna’s right leg for her to turn. To bad that I don’t have a pair of ruins. Luna looks to down to see the base.
“I’ll start my descent down.” She started to get lower. She landed about a half mile away from the base behind a rock formation. I got off her with ease and sat with my back turned.
“Hurry up and change I’m starting to get dizzy.” In truth I was dizzy ever since we left the cave but I was too proud to admit it.
She sighed, “You humans and your clothes. When I was in the, what was it called again? The UK I was arrested for being naked.”
I swear if she starts parading around naked at the base I just might have to kill a fellow soldier. Wait why am I thinking this? I don’t even know her and I’m acting like she’s my girlfriend.
I could hear her magic in grab the man dress. “This won’t do at all.” There was a bright flash. I turned around to see that the dress was changed into a pair of pants and a shirt. All of it was in black. She also turned her saddle bags into a backpack. It was a dark blue with her cutie mark on the middle pocket.
“Can you please hurry? I’d rather not DIE!” I could feel her roll her eyes.
“As you wish. There was another flash of light. I heard some rustling around until she spoke. “I’m descent by earth standards.” I turn around to see that she is human. She was around six ten with pale skin and green eyes. She still had her cobalt blue hair though.
“I’d change your hair color if I were you.” She huffed, with a click of her fingers, her hair changed into a dark brown.
“Happy?” she asked.
“No I’m still bleeding.” I say in annoyance. I mean come on first she had to change the cloths I gave her. Then she took forever to change into a human and get dressed and now she had to change her hair color because it would raise more questions than I need.
“Relax.” She said come to help me up. “The spell I put on you stops the wound from getting worse. It also slows the flow of blood to be you only lose and once an hour.” Well there’s some good news. Now that I know that I won’t be dying I think we should make it more convincing.
We start to walk towards the base. Luna lets me lean on here. Her body is warm. Warmer than a human body should be. It’s probably because of the spell that turned her human. “Take the spell off me.”
We stop walking and she looks at me like I just told her to shoot me. “What! That will kill you.”
“Look if I go in there with only an ounce of blood lost then there will be questions. And I don’t feel like saying a talking horse saved my life.”
She hit me upside the head. “First off I’m a pony not a horse. Secondly; you will die if I take the spell off.”
She had a point but I have a better one. “A patrol will spot us. They will see my uniform and that it’s bloody and they will come to help. Not take it off.”
She shook her head. “You better be right about this.” Her hand glowed and I started to feel pain again. I could feel the blood starting to come out. This was the last thing I wanted to feel but it had to be done. We continued walking until I felt like I was going to fall over. Luna wanted to stop but we needed to keep going. The more we wait the more blood I lose and I don’t feel like seeing if what I was told was true or not.
I was close to dead weight for the princess but I did the best I could to walk or lip. Why did I say to take the spell off? How much blood have I lost now? I saw lights ahead of us. They looked like headlights but I’m too dazed to think clearly. I think it was a Humvee. The vehicle stopped. I heard a voice boom on a intercom for a few seconds. I mumble something. I don’t know what it was. I saw four blurs coming out of the vehicle. The four were speaking with Luna. I couldn’t make it out. The men grabbed me and put me in the Humvee. The vehicle started move and someone was starting to work on me. Must be a corpsmen. This was a bad idea.