Dead Set on Living

“Keep those ponies at a distance!”

“Everypony stand back!”

Alex only faintly heard the shouts as he slowly regained consciousness.

“Did she just touch that thing?” asked a male voice.

“Yes, she did. It's covered in blood,” spoke another, “and apparently it eats meat as well, you fill in the blanks.”

“The blood is his,” a female voice corrected. “There’s no corpse around here and no animal gets blood all over when eating.”

Alex's body felt weak and shivered as a light breeze washed over him, robbing him from the warmth of the sun.

‘What's going on?’ Alex thought, memories flooding his mind.

‘Aren't I supposed to be... dead?’ He moved his hand to feel his throat and could feel the crusts of dried blood. ‘Where's the wound? What the hell is happening here?’

As he swallowed some saliva, a horrible taste made him gag.

‘Oh, great. A mouthful of dried blood.’

He collected as much as he could with his tongue, before spitting it out.

“Heads up! It's awake!” someone yelled.

“Be ready to subdue it,” a young male answered. “Shock it if you have to.”

‘Am I laying on grass?’ Alex thought, finding all the willpower to open his eyes.

‘Was I moved or some-’

He was laying under a tree next to a lake, and to make everything even crazier, he was surrounded by a group of colourful creatures. A fairly large circle of them surrounded him, being kept at a distance by some with what looked like curved golden armor on their bodies.

He noticed that all of them had a wide variety of colours. Some had horns or wings and were capable of speech, looking at him and the armoured ones with mixed expressions.

‘Whoa, what's this?’ Alex thought. ‘These are no ordinary horses at all.’

He was dumbstruck. ‘I must be dreaming,’ he pondered for a second. ‘I must be...’

The ponies with golden armour were all white or grey with blue or grey-ish white tails, just like the others, some of them had a horn on their heads, others had wings. All of them but the winged ones bore spears, the others had a sword and scabbard strapped around their waists.

‘*They're small, some two feet five,’* Alex estimated roughly. Immediately after he noticed the armoured ones were larger, if only a tad.

Taking another good look at the golden-polished armour, a little chuckle escaped him.

‘Soldier get-up? I’m seeing things, for sure,’ he thought, an odd feeling settling in. ‘So I’m not… Hospital, maybe? Heavy drug?’

“Stay down, creature,” said a pony with purple armour with golden trimmings. Another difference was that this pony had a lighter and darker stripe running through his blue tail, whereas the others seemed to have only two different colour schemes.

‘This one’s different,’ thought Alex whilst coughing weakly. ‘*Giving orders as well.’*

The pony spoke up “It needs medical attention, somepony get a doctor.”

‘They must think I'm hurt,’ Alex noted, ‘*which I’m not, strangely.’*

“On it captain,” said a white, female pony, referring to the voice before running off past the crowd that had gathered around the scene.

Alex tried to get up, but stopped moving as soon as the ponies pointed their spears at him.

“I ordered you to stay down,” said the captain, looking straight at him.

‘He's either scared, or as dumbstruck as I am. Probably the latter.’

Alex laid back down to avoid trouble, and a smirk formed on the captain's face before he spoke. “So you understand what I'm saying.”

Alex simply nodded.

“I'm Shining Armor, Captain of the Royal Guard of Canterlot,” he introduced himself with caution.

Alex was not sure what to reply. He coughed before he managed to answer. “Eh.. I'm Alex.”

“What are you, exactly?” Shining Armor asked.

“A cop,” Alex answered simply.  “What about you?”

The pony's lips twitched momentarily into a frown, and he glanced around him at the others, seeming looking for an input. None responded.

“How did you get here?” he asked. “And with what intentions?”

Alex simply shrugged in response.

The captain frowned deeply, a faint glimmer showing in his eyes.

“What is this place?”

The captain ignored him, glancing around at the other ponies.

‘Great…’

“Captain!” The white, armoured mare ran up to Shining Armor. “I got help from Ponyville Hospital. They're here.”

‘Ponyville, okay.’

Shining nodded. “Good, let's wrap this up. Lead them here,” he answered.

The pony disappeared into the crowd for a second and came back with two other mares. One was white with a pink mane and the other was yellow with a blue mane. Both of them had a cross on their sides.

As soon as they saw Alex they both stopped and gasped.

Shining noticed the startled mares and spoke up. "Don't worry. If it tries anything it'll get zapped," he said as a purple glow surrounded his horn.

The two mares approached him and laid down a stretcher.

“Levitate it on the stretcher,” ordered Shining, his horn still glowing, at the ready.

Aside of that he was going to be taken away, Alex had no clue of what was going on. The added hostilities made him feel pretty uncomfortable.

One of the surrounding guard's horn started glowing as well and Alex was surrounded by a white aura. He was startled at first but did not move however, as he didn't want a spear in his gut, nor did he want to get electrocuted.

Something was wrong, Alex noticed. The guard spoke up.

“I can't get him off the ground, he's resisting.”

‘What's he talking about?’

“Excuse me?” Alex asked.

“Try it again,” Shining ordered the guard before aiming his horn back at Alex. “You, stop resisting or I'll have to subdue you.”

“What?” Alex asked. “Resisting, how?”

Shining once again didn't answer him.

The guard's horn glowed once more and the same white aura surrounded Alex.

He felt like he was being pulled up for a moment, until the aura disappeared again.

“I warned you.”

Before Alex could respond, Shining's horn unleashed a blinding streak of white light. The beam hit Alex full on, and it felt felt like electricity shot through his whole body. The sensation was strong at first, but only intensified, making his already tired muscles contract painfully.

It didn't last long before the beam died down.

Alex grunted in pain, his heart racing by the painfully real sensation.

‘What kind of dream is this?’ he asked himself, still convinced he was dreaming.

He winced. A part of him wanted to get up and escape, the other part told him to stay down not to make the situation worse, if it could any.

The former part won. This psychopathic wizard horse was trying to knock him out!

He got up. There were small gasps coming from the crowd as he rose to his full height.

‘Ugh, bad idea.’

All guards quickly surrounded him with pointed spears, giving him nowhere to run.

“Look at the size of that bastard,” one of them said.

“Stars, it’s taller than Princess Celestia herself,” answered another, the observation causing the rest of the guards to nervously murmur among themselves.

“Silence!” another demanded, shutting everyone up.

Alex didn’t quite register the near-panicked comments since Shining Armor took his full attention as his horn started glowing once more.

The unicorn charged the spell again, even though the creature had nowhere to go.

He charged thrice the amount of energy in the spell. ‘Three.Three times should do it,’ he thought. His face was one of pure concentration.

Alex knew he was going to get attacked again, but couldn't go anywhere because of the spears.

“Hold him down!” Shining yelled with a cracking voice.

The guards quickly pulled their spears away from the human.

“Calm down, I-”

Alex could not finish his sentence as a pegasus hit him in the neck, causing him to completely lose his balance. Fazed, he fell down on the grass, and the guards made room around him, forming a circle with spears pointed.

Alex glanced at Shining only to get blinded by another beam shooting from the captain's horn.

He got hit in the side, all his muscles contracted painfully as an even stronger shock shot through his body.

He briefly cried out in pain. He felt his heart beating in overdrive.

He felt his body giving up once more, darkness filled his vision as he lost consciousness again.

End of chapter two.