Canada

I stood by the portal back home, a strange warmth rushing through it. "Well, there it is. One brand new portal back to your little paradise. Do take care not to hurt yourself stepping through." Discord jeered, resting his talon on the edge of the mirror.

I stared out at the other side, brown boxes covering up the way. "You know...I've been here a few months now, right? I got here before it started snowing...but it doesn't feel that long." I looked up at Discord. "...You're still a prick, but I think it get it."

Discord scoffed, "As if you'd--"

"Ever since I got here, ever since I stopped fighting, stopped being screamed at, the adrenaline stopping...I can think clearly. It was getting worse and worse, like someone talking at me, then shouting, then yelling and screaming and now.... You know back when I said I was stupid, I think I just wished I was stupid. The dim, the slow, they don't have to worry about the trauma's the thinking mind does." I rubbed my mouth, shifting my gear, "I guess it doesn't matter. It's like a man waking up from a grenade blast, a breif gasp of air from a drowning man before he's pulled back down and forced to swim for his life, fighting against a current that will never stop, waiting for his arms to give out."

"Um...wh--"

"Oh don't pretend you don't know." I snapped, "It feels like I put on a pair of glasses, like someone took a blindfold off. I was a mean, harsh, horrid animal. You're a devious, inappropriate psychotic, but why? I don't know, maybe I'm giving you too much credit--"

Discord seemed mildly upset, which from him might have well been him crying. "How about you go now...you put up such a fuss when I showed you it before, now go home!" He crossed his right arm, pointing to the portal with his left, back facing me.

"Indignant shit.... That's okay. Soon enough I won't even remember any of this. War...if you can even call what I do war, fucks up your memories. So...it's been fun I suppose." I turned to the portal, stetting my rifle's butt on the ground and pulling my only viable weapon from my back. Before long my busted rifle became an impromptu spear, the bayonet at the end still covered in mud and dried bean paste.

I pulled the rifle up and took my first step through the portal. It burned, mildly, but more so than the first time. "Ow, Christ...." I muttered, kicking a few empty boxes out of the way. My body burned as I stepped out onto the dull concrete floor on the other side of the portal, the warmth quickly enveloping my entire being. It was something I'd never felt back home, something that was always promised by fire, but never given.

But as my head passed through, a horrid noise graced my ears. Screaming. Some of the horrid noise coming from fear, and some coming from rage.

"Where's the fucking money!?" A familiarly tone to the snarling voice. I felt the strange warmth give way to a much more familiar one. I was home, I was back and ready. My hands tightened around my rifle as I got ready to return to my old life.

I rushed around the crowded basement, kicking crap aside and hurtling myself towards the way out. But amidst the violence, amidst the fight to come, I was already bleeding. My mouth was full of blood, my teeth starting to itch and burn. "Fucking- shit!" I screamed, slamming into the far wall of the boxy room. A loud clatter came from up the wooden steps.

"Who else is here!?"

I ignored the screamed, my body beginning to ache. It felt as if solid metal spikes were being driven deep into every few square inch of my being. But pain was my life, it was who I was meant to be. This was the first step, the first step in getting back to it. It had to be.

So with pain driving me mad, screaming growing louder, and a wanton blood lust filling my mind I raced up the steps. I kept low, ramming my weight into the door at the top of the stairs and knocking it off its hinges.  "What the fuck!?" The masculine voice that had been shouting rang loudly in my ears, followed by something I was far too familiar with.

A gunshot cried out, the sound near deafening aside from the sound of wood splitting. And so I swung my person around, bayonet held low, staring at a man dressed in black. His right hand clutching a pistol and his left grabbing the wall. I stood there, staring at the obviously frightened man. I watched his eyes dart down, spotting my rifle. "How the fuck--"

I straightened my posture, walking slowly towards the man, "Go on...do it, do it!" I screamed, jabbing at him with my rifle, "You've got the gun, fucking shoot me!"

The man was a coward, backing away from each step I took through the oddly bright house. Electrical lights bright and free of cords. "Who the fuck are you--"

"Shoot me!" I snapped, hurrying my pace, "I'm ready to die, are you!?" My body was tearing itself apart, the pain spidering out and filling every part of my body. It felt like I was dissolving.

I continued to step towards the man, watching his face contort with fear and horror as I turned my rifle sideways, throwing the weight towards the point of the bayonet and slashing at him. He jumped back, falling into a far more open room. A pair of other people tied up in the corner, sniveling and gawking at me as I towered over the would be gunman.

"Stay the fuck back man! I'm fucking crazy man!" The pitiful slinger screamed, tripping and falling to the floor. He scrambled back, eyes wide with terror as I stood over him, head cocked to the side, rifle held against my shoulder with the bayonet pointing at his throat. "I'll shoot--"

"Then fucking do it!" I snapped, blood starting to trickle from my mouth, "You think I'm afraid!?" I charged up to him, kicking his hand, stomping it into the all too perfect wood floor below. "Look at you, you're a fucking coward!" I screamed, pressing the tip of my bayonet against his throat, just short of stabbing it through his wind pipe.

The creature below me wasn't a man, not even a human being. Some red eye'd freak, some addict, some HELO junkie, some jumper flying high as a kite but too afraid to take that final step into madness. I pulled my rifle aside, leaving a small gash along his throat. His free hand shooting to it as he was left crying. "Please...I didn't--"

I removed my boot from the man's hand, raising it up and stomping the man's head. A sickening crunch followed as I snapped the man's nose, and a burning pain stemming from my ankle. My body was burning up, my eyes starting to blur from the pain. "Animals...animals have no place among the common." I muttered, tearing the bayonet from my rifle and throwing the busted machine aside.

The bound duo started screaming into their gags, watching in horror as I sauntered over to them, swinging myself left and right as my motor controls faded away. The bayonet in my bandaged hands slowly slathering in blood as my wound reopened. My body was falling apart, mere moments after getting home, everything was falling away into dust.

I crouched down before the man tied up in the corner of the well furnished room. Holding his head up and looking him in the eyes. "...Pitiful...isn't it?" I asked, reaching back around and cutting his hands free. "Truly god damn pitiful." I muttered, stabbing the bayonet into the floor between his legs. "Cowards." I hissed, standing up and turning to a door by a window, a bright orange light waiting outside.

The man's voice cried out over my steps, "Wait! Wait, please, call the police!"

I slowly turned around to face the man. "...What the fuck are the police?" I asked, wrapping my hands around the doorknob. I swung it open.

What laid in wait was horrifying. Bright orange lights hanging from poles up and down a street. Red and white blurs rushing past from a nearby road. The smell of gasoline, the smell of smog, the sight of life all around me. I wasn't home, this wasn't my home. The lights, the sound of something zooming past overhead, the sounds of tires rolling endlessly by.

"No...." I mumbled, rubbing my face at a horrid sight. I was back in St. John's, I was back on earth, I was where I should be, but nothing was the same. "No!" I shouted, stepping out into the cold night, the burning in my arms growing more and more painful. "No god damn it, no!" I screamed, looking out over the bright lights that illuminated the city.

The home, it was something out of magazines, something that had been at one point, something we were supposed to strive to become. Soon, cars began to come to stops before me, an overhead light illuminating me and the dull grass below me. Something that wasn't meant to be, fresh grass, a lawn, things I'd heard about in stories.

But as I stood there, reveling in the splendor and majesty of a land free of the violence I'd lived through, I realized something. Nothing was as it should be. I should be running back to my army, I should be marching to the edge of the land, following the wake of war, if this was my home where were the fires, where were the guns, what was this thing flying overhead, shining blinding light down upon me.

Where was my family, where was my life, where was what was promised!? He'd said he'd send me home, but this wasn't it, this couldn't be it!

"Discord!" I screamed, wheeling back towards the house, my body burning up. "Why!? Why god damn you, why!?"

I charged to back towards the house, hearing something, feeling something sending me to the ground. I'd just been shot, once again, even when all that was broken in my life, the lanterns along the streets working, the world filled with cars and lights, the horrid nights made bright and safe I'd been shot.

"Take me home!" I screamed, clawing my way up the steps, my fingers bleeding as I pulled my dead weight over the concrete steps. I pulled myself inside, crawling towards the basement, the people I'd cut free staring at me as I bled over their floor.

The pain was mind numbing, reducing my intellect, bringing me back to what I was. A snarling animal with a single purpose.  Only now I had a just cause, a righteous agenda. I had to go home, to my real home. "You fucker!" I screamed, reaching the hall and grabbing onto the basement door. "Come on...come on! Let me see her face again!" I screamed, trying against everything else to pull myself towards the way back. He could try again, he could send me home to the right place, to the right time, he could fix this. He had to try and fix this.

I needed my life back, not this, not whatever this alternative was. Home, bring me home. "Bring me home, let me go home!" I snarled at the gods, clawing my way down the steps and tumbling to the concrete below. My body was dying, this world was killing me, had shot me, was dissolving my person and leaving me to die. The pony land hadn't, my home could try but never succeeded, but this, this fake reality, this falsehood was tearing me apart.

I found myself crawling over boxes in the basment, trying desperately to get to the glowing doorway back to Equestria, to a better home at least. "Hands let me--" An angry voice cut itself short as footsteps echoed behind me. "C-call someone, go, go go!"

I ignored it all, dragging myself to the edge of the portal and throwing my hand through. "Momma...please!" I screamed, feeling the pain cease as my fingers pulled past the threshold. "Celestia, please, someone please! Let me see them again! I've earned it!"

I felt myself start to be pulled through the portal, something grabbing my tattered coat and dragging me forwards. "Please...I've earned it...let me hope...give them back to me."

Within seconds I felt the pain in my upper body cease, aside for a dull ache near my kidney. "Please...I just wanna go home, momma please just let me rest." I pleaded, spotting a horrified white face staring down at me. I could help but smile as Celestia hovered over me, "Please...I just wanna go home."

I started laughing, giving way to tearless sobs, "You know...you really would look good in orange."