New to Equestria

~ Sniper ~

I was maybe a street away from the vampire-infested building. Instead of running straight at it I took a early left in an attempt to flank around and get the jump on the remaining enemies.

I'd arrived in a large parking lot, occupied by several civilian steam wagons, when something dark moved in the corner of my eye. I stopped myself on the side of a wagon and pulled out my iconic forty-five, hoping the seven round magazine was loaded with silver bullets as well.

The dark figure had been just to my right on the backstreet, if it hadn't been for the fence between the parking lot and the road the vampire would've likely just rushed me. Considering what I've seen from them so far, it seemed strange that my quarry didn't just leap over the barrier.

Light footsteps sounded behind me, I turned around in time to fire at a robed figure attempting to stab me with a shortsword. The bullet hit their sword arm and they dropped the weapon, but did not stop. The vampire pounced me and I fell, my gun falling from my hands, just inches away.

My hands found the disgusting creature's throat, latched on, and pushed it away. I saw it's face, old-looking, saggy eyes, slightly pale, but nothing out of the ordinary. Easily passable for a human if he hadn't had his fangs bared at me with fresh blood on his mouth. The vampire grabbed onto my own throat and squeezed with one hand, I felt the inhuman strength.

I tried to gulp air in panic and almost lost my grip, the vampire began to smile, cheeky bastard.

I place my right knee at the vampire's tailbone, and planted my left leg outside his right. The guy was heavy, but I pushed him off to my left and didn't give him time to recover before I grabbed my sidearm and emptied the magazine into the recovering vampire.

"Rest in pieces." I sneered, before spitting on the vampire and walking away.

~ Silver Tongue ~

"That's one way to treat the dead." Monochrome said disapprovingly as we looked upon the scene.

I shrugged. "I don't believed they deserved anything more."

"You spit on it's corpse."

I turned to face the mare. "A slight offense compared to what they did to those enforcers, you didn't see what happened in that scope, the way they were ripped apart." My voice grew in volume. "Those men, they had children, wives, parents, siblings. These disgusting creatures had nothing, their families were first to die because of the vampirism."

Monochrome thought for a moment, before stomping the ground. There was a deep thump and a echo before the scenery around us shifted and blurred as it moved away from us. Indecipherable blurs of objects passed us by before coming to a gradual halt mere seconds later.

The sniper was on one his knees, beside the corpse of one of the machine gun-toting enforcers, the one that had advanced towards the robed vampires. The first vampire i'd put down lay to the side to the man's corpse, the pool of blood around it's head long since stopped expanding.

The enforcer was alive, actually. The only visible wounds were four bite marks to his neck, but there was something wrong, the man was non-responsive and his pupils were dilated.

My past self slapped him on the cheek a few times. "C'mon, come back to the world of the living here."

He resorted to shaking the man, but still to no avail.

The sniper sighed and got up, inspecting the obviously-dead troopers splayed upon the ground, reaching under the collars of their shirts before pulling off their pairs of tags, keeping one and placing the other in their mouths.

While he was doing this, he was oblivious to the man rising behind him.

"The enforcer..." Monochrome started. "Was... Did he..."

"Infected?" I finished for her. "Yeah, we weren't aware of how it was transmitted at the time."

The enforcer, or the thing it now was, approached the sniper. It's hand were twitching, same with it's eyes. It opened it's mouth and exhaled loudly. Causing the unaware man to turn his head sharply to the new danger.

But i'd hesitated, not completely aware of what was before me, it was the enforcer, but his skin was beginning to char from the sunlight. The vampire picked up his prey and threw it down the street, were he tumbled before hitting a brick wall, and didn't move. The vampire began moving towards the immobilized sniper, about halfway, the vampire began to actually burn, and succumbed to the flame before reaching his target, it was as if it wasn't even aware of the burning.

The area fell silent, for the most part, the only sounds coming from deep within the building and was easily distinguishable as gunshots and screams.

Monochrome looked at me. "I understand you were 'overwatch', but did you not have a commanding officer looking over you all?"

I nodded. "Yes, in a separate building, but I learned later he'd been the first to die. It's the reason reinforcements never came."

I walked over to my body, the rise and fall of my chest was the only thing the betrayed the illusion of death. His helmet was dented, shades cracked, half-mask still on his face but had blood on the outside. The scope on my M24 was cracked and likely out of adjustment. I laid on my side, facing towards the street, and the corpses. My left hand rested on the concrete sidewalk, dog tags still in the palm of my hand.

I looked towards the entrance of the building, I could see fire spreading within, all other sounds had fallen silent.

My mood had become sour, to say the least.

"The building burned up," I told Monochrome. "Probably from one of the guys that went inside, four went in, none came out. A lot of money was put into this, but evidently not enough planning."

"You have my condolences."

"They hardly knew what they were getting into," I grumbled, clenching my fists. "Wont expect it, they said. Just a disorganized band of vamps, be over in no time, everyone was going to get home at the end of the day."

I turned to Monochrome and spoke stiffly. "I think that's enough for now."

She nodded respectfully, "Yes, I suppose it is, your fuzzy companion appears to be trying to rouse you."

Monochrome was walking down the street away from me, details were becoming distorted and warped. She stopped, and looked back at me with pleading eyes.

"Please don't... Wait, we haven't a name for you."

I didn't answer.

"I suppose we could always just call you 'Overwatch' then."

"No, that would imply I was any good at my job, my name is Silver Tongue."

Monochrome nodded. "Thank you, Silver. As I was going to say, refrain from letting this fuel your actions with anger and grief."

She left. All of a sudden my eyes were closed, and I was being prodded by a claw.

"Hey wake up, Du Hurensohn!"

My eyes peeled open to reveal Heckler, knelt down at my side, he bore a toothy grin as I began to show responsiveness. To his left was Echo, the mare i'd met on the train. She too smiled, revealing her fangs in a way that was somehow more cute that frightening.

I focused on Heckler. "What in the grace of Sol Invictus did you just call me?"

"Oh great, he's Solar." Echo said jokingly. "Guess some things just weren't meant to be."

I made a gesture towards her body, emphasizing that she was, indeed, a pony, and the two noticed this.

"Evidently." I spoke with my own smile.

"Ah there's our happy human." Heckler said, patting me on the cheek.

Chuckling, I pushed his hand away and sat up to get a good look at the two, Heckler didn't seem to sustained any injuries. Echo was fine, but looked tired, her smile had become weak and her eyes sagged. Being a batpony implied she was nocturnal, so it was surprising she was still awake at... What, noon, maybe?

I yawned and wiped my face with my hand before looking around. The hospital was about as populated as it was last night, but the staff looked less tired and more attentive. I noticed the energy drinks had been replaced by still-steaming coffee mugs, the staff strolled about, some holding checklists and tending to their duties.

Nopony had roused the weird-looking foreigner, slumped against the chair in the waiting area, so that was nice, they must've been more casual than human hospital staff.

"Well, happy to see you still in one piece, Silver. I held onto this for you." Echo spoke, undoing the shemagh around her neck.

She hoofed it to me, i'd completely forgotten, I gave this to her on the train so she wouldn't breath in the smoke. I nodded gratefully and began to wrap it around my own neck.

"So," I started. "What happened while I was gone?"

"Well," Heckler spoke up. "After you got thrown off the train, the big guy didn't last long, you pretty much did him in. When we pulled into the station it wasn't long before the guards arrived and put the dogs in chains and hauled them off. Echo and I looked for some pony in charge for a while before running into Twilight, we told her about you, and she flew off not longer back where we came from."

"Oh, also, there's a giant gingerbread house here, don't try to eat it, you'll just be disappointed."

I rubbed my neck, it was sore from the way i'd slept. "I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for sending the princess after me."

"No problem," He shrugged. "Apparently she was pretty clued in about humans in Equestria. How is she?"

"She ended up breaking one of her wings." I decided not to mention how, exactly. "We had an encounter with a dragon."

I pulled the silver necklace from under my shirt and smiled. "I had to use my suave ladies' man skills to get her to let us go."

Echo looked at the necklace curiously. "You made a promise with a dragon?"

I nodded in confirmation.

She exhaled stressfully. "That's going to suck if you fail her."

"Yeah. Yeah it will." I said, remembering exactly what i'd promised the dragon.