"What did you say this was called, again?"
"Game of Thrones."
She snickered at the title.
"Is that like musical chairs for princesses?"
I glanced at the other side of the couch. Bathed in the flickering glow of my television sat something that should not exist. She sensed me looking at her and met my eyes.
"Not exactly."
The intro began to play, and I caught her bobbing along to it.
"This music is pretty cool."
It'd taken her a while to get used to T.V. Trying to explain it to someone who's never even heard of the concept of broadcasting, let alone the complexities of satellite reception, was a bit like trying to describe astrophysics to an elementary school student. As the intro continued, I thought back to how I'd come to be sitting on the couch next to a cartoon character from a children's show. My first thought was that I'd been slipped LSD by the barista at my local Starbucks for pissing him off somehow. But LSD doesn't last for weeks. My next rational thought, was insanity. I hadn't been sleeping very well, and I'd even wrangled an ambien prescription from my flight surgeon.
That drug's been known to produce some unusual side effects, but if one of them was pony hallucination, it was not clearly marked on the bottle.
I remember the first day she showed up pretty vividly, just in case I later need to describe it to my psychiatrist when I finally decide to tell her I've been living with a flying multicolored cartoon horse. That also talks. Can't forget that part.
I'd gotten off work at the usual time, headed to the gym for what none would call a 'heavy lifting session', and then headed home. I've never been much of a gym rat. Most of what I do is just to keep myself from getting fat. I can't fly if I can't fit into my harness. During peacetime, there isn't much for apache pilots to do. We run routine missions to stay fresh, but with budget cuts, everyone is taking a cut in flight time. That's what made her showing up so unusual. I wasn't particularly stressed or anxious, and I hadn't experienced a personal tragedy in years.
I came home to a darkened townhouse and headed into the living room. I took my duffle bag inside and dropped it near the couch as I plopped down. I flipped on the T.V., and right as I was about to take my boots off, I noticed something off in the corner of my eye. On the opposite side of my couch was something I vaguely remembered. As I looked more closely, I recognized it.
That's a fucking pony.
I rubbed my eyes. I have no idea why people do that when they see things they don't believe, but by God I did it. She was still there, asleep on my couch. I got up slowly, like moving too quickly would make her disappear. Once I was off the couch, I hovered there in a weird, half-squat, not sure what to do. I mean, I hadn't seen anything MLP related since the show went off the air five years ago! I dabbled in the fandom a bit in college, but I never made, drew, or wrote anything. Hell, I never even bought any stuff! As a matter of fact, I didn't want anyone, not even my closest friends to know I thought a show for little girls was actually pretty good. That may sound stupid, but I had a reputation to maintain around campus. I couldn't go shaming my fraternity brothers by being 'that guy who's into ponies'.
By this point in my life, ponies were the farthest thing from my mind. I looked around my living room, waiting for someone to reveal this as some kind of bizarre prank, but no one was home but me. And her.
So, I did what any normal human does when confronted with something strange. I grabbed a golf club from my bag and held it like a sword.
"H-hey."
My voice made her shift a little, but she didn't wake up.
"Hey," I said a little louder with more force.
She shifted a bit more and rolled to face me. "I don't work today... It's Thunderlane's shift this morning..." she mumbled, not bothering to open her eyes.
At this point, I was thinking I had to be tripping, or dreaming, or both, somehow. After all, ponies don't just show up on your couch, and they don't talk. Or have wings. Or giant cartoony eyes.
I decided to be bold and jab her in the ribs lightly with my four iron. The cold metal seemed to startle her as she snapped up and looked around. She said nothing before she turned to me. Her eyes went wide.
"H-h," she squeaked, her voice barely audible even in the silence.
I was still guarded behind my golf club. "Hey."
We stared at each other for a bit, each too tense to move.
"Where in Equestria is this?" she asked. Some of my show-related knowledge came back to me. Equestria was where she was from.
"Nowhere," I answered. "You're in my living room."
"Huh."
The weird thing about her was how not-shocked she was to be here, or see me. I mean, there weren't ever any humans in the show, except for those movies they made, and to call those things humans was a bit of a stretch. I can safely say that if I woke up in horse-world, I'd lose my mind.
"You can put the stick down, I don't bite."
This didn't even fit the character I remember from the show. She should have been... I dunno, angry or something. Scared, even. But she was alarmingly cool about waking up in a strange place next to an alien species.
I lowered the club. "Are you... Rainbow Dash?"
She smiled at me. "How'd you know?"
I decided against telling her how I really knew. Besides, she probably was just a hallucination anyway.
"Lucky guess."
She stood up and did that cat-stretch while feeling the leather of my couch beneath her. "This is pretty comfy! What's it made of?"
"Leather."
If she was a figment, she wouldn't care that the couch was made out of her distant evolutionary cousin. Probably.
"What's leather?"
"What the couch is made of." Better play it safe. I don't know what happens if you upset a figment of your imagination, but I didn't really want to find out.
"So who are you?" she asked.
"Ares."
She raised an eyebrow at me. "Ares?" she repeated. "That's a weird name."
"No weirder than Rainbow Dash."
She snorted indignantly. "You kidding? There are tons of ponies who'd kill for my name."
I still wasn't completely at ease with this whole situation, but it didn't look like she was just going to disappear, and there was no way my dreams were this vivid. I lowered myself onto my couch. I still couldn't believe what I was looking at.
"So, you got anything to eat around here?"
That was how we started. From there, I asked her all kinds of questions, and she did the same for me. At this point, I'm still convinced she isn't real. Hell, I'm still not convinced she is. But, she knew her stuff. All the Equestrian lore established in the show was exactly as she described it. Although, if she was just my imagination, she wouldn't know anything I didn't. I stayed up pretty late that night, as you could probably guess. She asked me about stuff in my world. Mostly about the crap in my living room.
She knew what most of it was, except the television and the electronics. But that's to be expected, remembering where she came from. Allegedly.
When I first turned on the TV, it kinda freaked her out. I mean, it's a big, flat, thing with what would look like people trapped inside it. Which is exactly what she thought, by the way. It took a bit of creative wording to convince her that I wasn't some kind of sorcerer holding prisoners in my enchanted mirror to caper for my amusement. I'm still not sure she gets it, but she's at least stopped trying to 'free' the TV people.
Anyway, after that night, when I finally went to bed, I told her she was welcome to sleep on whatever she wanted. She found her spot on the couch to be pretty nice, so she just settled down there. I don't know what kind of real animal would be so calm about waking up in an alien world. That was part of the reason I was convinced she wasn't really there. But she sounded real. She even felt real. How couldn't she be? She ate some of my salad the first night we met! Unless I'm way crazier than I realize, she seemed real in some ways, and a figment in others.
But, by morning, team figment would score another convincing point. When I came downstairs the next morning to head to work, she was gone. No fibers on the couch, no evidence of her ever being here but an empty salad bowl. And that doesn't prove anything. I called her name, but I got no reply. I sat on the couch and tried hard to remember the night before. I couldn't have been a dreaming! I remember going to bed! And waking up!
But she wasn't anywhere in my house. I chalked up the whole experience to... well I don't know, but I just felt it was better to move on. Throughout that day, I couldn't help but remember the night before. What brought her on? Why was I seeing her, of all things? Yeah, I thought she was a pretty cool character, and after she became the Shogun of the Griffon Empire in season 7, I thought they couldn't develop her character any further. I mean, with the reconciliation with her long lost mother, to her realization that there was more to life than being awesome at flying... I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, I couldn't help but wonder. Once five rolled around, I headed home. Oddly enough, as I stepped in the door, I wasn't thinking about the pony that had mysteriously shown up. I was thinking about what I was going to make for dinner. I opened the door and heard a rustling coming from the kitchen. Now, a normal person's first instinct would be to call the cops, because someone clearly broke into your house. But instead, I called out her name.
"Rainbow?"
The rustling stopped. The unmistakable sound of hooves on tile floated towards me as she peeked her head around the corner.
"Oh! Hey."
At this point, I was beginning to worry. What if I was nuts?
"Where'd you go last night?"
She shot me a puzzled glance. "I didn't go anywhere."
"Yes you did. I came down this morning and you were nowhere to be found."
"Look, I haven't left this place. I'm not in Equestria anymore, and I don't know what's out there. I might be brave, but I'm not stupid."
I figured arguing wasn't going to get me anywhere. If she said she was here, then maybe she was... hiding in the vents or something.
"So about that food situation..."
I couldn't help but smile. I mean, come on. She looked kinda cute rooting around in my pantry like a stray dog.
Following her into the kitchen, I opened the fridge. Unfortunately, the only thing I had for her was more of the salad from last night.
"I don't have too much besides the salad... what else do you eat?"
She thought about it for a second. I'm surprised it took that long. "Hay, flowers, daffodils, weeds if I'm in a pinch..."
"Well, I'm fresh out of hay and flowers, but I could probably run to the flower shop." I closed the fridge and looked down at her. I should probably mention she's only about as tall as my navel, and I'm only 5' 10. She's about the size of an old dog I used to have, but I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate the comparison. "Any particular flower you like?"
Rainbow fluttered up to my counter-top. It was about as graceful as you'd imagine it would be, which is to say, not very. "I was thinking about daisies, and maybe some roses."
"Roses?" I folded my arms. "You know how expensive those are?"
She looked at me like I'd just told her she had to pay for air. "Just go outside and get some!"
"You go get some!"
A look of fear crossed her face, but only for a moment. "I don't want roses anymore."
Damn those cute scrunchy faces. "Alright, I'll get roses, but make them last, okay?" I grabbed my keys and headed back out to the store. The sky was overcast. It had been for the past few days, actually. Oddly enough, it's been overcast for so long I almost forgot what the blue sky looks like!
On top of the flowers, I got some vegetables I figured horses would like. I pulled into my garage and hoped she'd still be there when I walked in.
"Sweet Celestia, it's about time!" Yep, she was still here. She'd taken up a position on the couch, but she'd also gotten into my flight bag. "So, how about some of that food?"
I mixed her up a salad with some of those vegetables, and warmed up some chicken alfredo from a trip to olive garden a few days back. We sat on the couch as we ate, but the smell of my food drew her attention.
"What's that stuff?"
"Chicken alfredo." I answered, before I considered what I was saying.
"Chicken afraido?" She chuckled. "Did you scare it first?"
"No... there's chicken in it."
Her eyes widened. "Oh, you mean... like what griffons eat?"
"Yeah."
She looked at me, and then back to my plate, an uncomfortable silence sat it my living room before she piped up again.
"Can I try it?"
A bit unusual, but I supposed I could oblige. I mean, maybe cartoon horses could eat meat, and just chose not to?
I scooped some onto her salad and she took another tentative sniff before taking a few noodles in her mouth. I left her a small piece of chicken in case she felt particularly bold.
"S'not bad," she admitted, still chewing. "Oh! I wanted to ask you something." She fluttered off the couch and pulled my duffle bag out from beneath the couch. She unzipped it with her teeth and stuck her head in, rummaging around like a dog would if I'd hidden a treat inside it. I know the animal comparisons are tiring, but I really have no other way of describing her.
After a few moments, she reappears with my flight helmet on her head, her mane sticking out awkwardly from beneath it.
"What is this thing?"
I looked at her and smiled. C'mon, it was cute. If you had seen what I was seeing, you would too.
"You been digging through my shit when I'm not around?"
"Shit?"
Well, if she truly was a cartoon character, they probably don't swear.
"Stuff," I corrected.
"Maybe. I gotta do something while I'm waiting for you to get home!" I made a mental note to teach her how to work Netflix tomorrow.
"It's my flight helmet."
She started to crack up at the very idea. "You use this to fly? You must look hilarious wearing this around. How does this thing make you fly?" she asked. "Is it magic?"
"That doesn't make me fly, the helicopter does."
She looked at me as though I had suddenly begun speaking Chinese.
"A helo-what?"
I set my plate on the coffee table and produced my laptop from beneath the couch. Some things were just better left to google. I pulled up a few pictures of my airframe and showed her. She looked at it, then at me.
"There's no way that thing can fly," she said matter-of-factly. "It doesn't even have wings!"
"It's wings are on the top." I pointed them out on the picture. "They spin around and create lift."
She still looked skeptical. "And it's made of metal! Metal is way too heavy to fly!"
I decided to show her, rather than argue. A quick video of a helicopter taking off seemed to do the trick.
"See the people sitting in the glass parts?" I asked. "That's where I sit."
"And..." she pondered her thoughts for a minute. "You humans had to build that contraption just to fly?"
"Yeah." I nodded. "No wings, remember?" I said, pointing to my back.
The rest of the evening went by without incident, as I actually began to grow accustomed to my new roommate. In fact, after I was relatively certain she was real, I decided I couldn't have her living on my couch like my stoner roommate in college. She needed her own room. Luckily for her, I lived in a two bedroom townhouse, with one furnished in a manner to which only a single Captain with horrid amounts of student loan debt was privy.
"This is it?" she asked as I opened the door to the empty room, save for a window and a deflated air mattress. Luckily for her, it was one of those self-inflating models. I decided to have a little fun with her.
"Yeah, this is it."
"Don't you have anything a little softer than... whatever this is?" she asked, pawing at her deflated bed. "Like a blanket or something?"
I pretended to think on it for a moment. "You know what, I think I know just the thing to make this bed a little better."
She raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"A magic spell."
She gasped. "Humans are magic too?"
"Of course!" I replied. I remember thinking this must be what madness felt like. But, if I was loosing my mind, might as well have some fun along the way, right? "Stand aside!" I said, walking over to the knob on the far end of the bed. A flip of the switch and this thing would be ready to go in about one minute. I touched my finger to the top of the mattress and said my 'magic words'.
"Inflate!" The whirring of the air pump grew louder until it reached its peak volume, about the loudness of a vacuum cleaner. I heard a shout, and looked up. Dash was gone! I turned off the pump and called her name. Timidly, she peaked from around the corner as she stood in the hallway. Just then, I noticed her ears folded flat against her head.
"What's the matter?"
"Your magic is too loud!"
Looks like ponies weren't so different from the small animals of my world. I once had a dog that would flee into my bedroom anytime the air mattress was brought out. I had to smile at the irony of her statement. A mare that broke the sound barrier for a living thought an air mattress inflating was too loud.
I thought for a moment, then went digging into the spare closet. After a while, I found some earmuffs. I had no idea whether they'd even fit her, since her ears weren't like ours, but hey, it was worth a shot. With a bit of ingenuity, we managed to get them to stay, if she kept her ears folded down. I managed to coax her back into the room where her partially inflated bedding waited. I beckoned her over and sat on half of the bed. The awesome thing about these self-inflating deals is they can do it even with someone laying on it. She sat next to me, looking around at the corners of the bed as though they were going to fold over and eat us both at any moment. I turned the pump on again and I felt her jump. I put a hand over her fore hoof to try and calm her. She looked at it, then back at me, and swallowed, the nerves still plain on her face.
"It's nothing to be afraid of," I said over the noise. She nodded, feeling the air inflate beneath her hooves and lift her off the ground. She gasped as she looked down, picking up her hooves and setting them back down like a cat choosing its bedding. Then I saw her smile. Finally, she'd conquered her fear of air beds. Short-lived though it may have been. She casually hopped on it after I turned off the pump.
"Its kinda like a cloud!" I suppose an air bed is as close as you could get to one of those around here. I fished a blanket from the closet and gave it to her, along with a spare pillow. I recalled from the show that only Twilight seemed to sleep in a bed the traditional way, but whatever.
"Hey, Ares?" she said as I stopped in the hallway headed to my room.
"Yeah?"
"Can you not tell anypony about earlier?" I had to assume she meant the whole air bed thing.
I smiled. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. Boris won't find out." Boris is a cactus in my living room my mother got me as a souvenir from her and my father's trip to Arizona. I never asked for it, and have no idea what to do with it, but, Boris is and has been my stalwart partner throughout most of my military career. He particularly enjoyed the pictures of Afghanistan I brought back for him.
I remember one night asking her something that had been on my mind for a while. "So, how did you get here?"
Rainbow looked away from the television. "Well... I had some help."
"Help?" I asked, before realizing how much of a cliche the answer would be. "Twilight, right?"
Rainbow nodded.
"An accident, or a misfired spell?"
"Actually... no." That answer surprised me. "I left Equestria on purpose."
That was even more surprising. I mean, Equestria was supposed to be a perfect place where everyone was friends and when something bad happens, there are a stable of magical deities to fix everything that had gone wrong. There weren't any wars, no conflicts, no outrageous bills or homeless people or drug addicts or nuclear waste or any of those awful things. What on earth would posses her to come to a place that has those things and more in spades?
"Why?"
Dash looked away. "It's... nothing. Don't worry about it."
I couldn't just let that ride.
"It had to be something pretty intense to get you to leave your whole universe."
"I don't want to talk about it, okay?" she snapped. Looks I upset her.
"Alright, we don't have to."
Awkward silence followed. I knew of one thing and one thing only to diffuse the horrifying awkwardness of an uncomfortable silence: Television. If it works on ex-girlfriends, it should work on talking ponies.
I grabbed the remote and flipped it on. I don't have cable, only Netflix, so I hoped they'd actually have a movie worth watching on there for a change. I mean, how the hell are you going to have the Starship Troopers sequel but not the original?
"How about we watch a movie?" By now, Rainbow had become familiar with the concept of movies and T.V. shows. So far, her favorites were Adventure Time, Regular Show, a couple other random cartoons that were past my time, and any movie involving flight. Weirdly enough, she particularly disliked any movie with horses in it. She found them unsettling. Kinda funny, really. So far, her favorite movie was that oh so 80's classic, Top Gun.
I too, enjoy that movie. Well, all until the part where Tom Cruise and that lady with the massive 80's hair banged.
"What's going on here? Why are they in the dark? Oh Celestia, why is he using that much tongue!?"
Thankfully I didn't have to explain the finer points of what was going on. She was a grown mare, after all. And before the obvious question comes up, I'll just put it this way. In regards to her anatomy, she used the bathroom. Once she figured it out.
Anyway, I ended up suggesting a scary movie. Why? Because I'm clinically retarded. Introducing a pony from a place where the scariest thing is still laughably cartoonish to even the corniest of horror flicks was a terrible idea from the start. A fact I tried to warn her of, but she wouldn't listen.
"I'm not scared of some dumb movie! It's all fake, remember?" I had indeed reminded her that just about everything she saw on the television was fake. "Besides, if a wimp like you likes it, how scary can it be?" She would live to regret those words. By now the two of us had a bit of a rapport going. She calls me out as much as possible, only to have me prove her wrong on almost every occasion. I say almost because every now and then she'll be right about something, and I'll never hear the end of it.
So, I select Steven King's horror classic The Shining. Not particularly gruesome except for those few scenes, but, might as well put the best foot forward if I was gonna introduce her to the fine art of horror movies.
"Okay, so what's this movie called, and what's it about?"
I popped open the cap on my beer and flopped down next to her on the couch. This may be inherit in their nature, but ponies do tend to prefer to sit against someone than away from them. Rainbow usually had the habit of laying her forelegs and head on a pillow I would lay across my lap. That was during regular television time. However, as if to prove her bravery, she sat on her own couch cushion, in front of the popcorn. I made it extra salty, the way she preferred it. Ponies here on earth love salt lick, why wouldn't cartoon ones like salty popcorn? I didn't partake, as one handful of that salty mess and I was like to die of dehydration.
"This movie is called The Shining. It's about a writer and his wife and son that stay as the only visitors..." It turns out I hadn't seen the movie in a while, so I grabbed the blu-ray cover and just read her the description on the back of the box. "Frustrated writer Jack Torrance takes a job as the winter caretaker at the ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he can write in peace. When he arrives there with his wife and son, they learn that the previous caretaker had gone mad. Slowly Jack becomes possessed by the evil, demonic presence in the hotel."
I set the box down and looked over at her. She was ever confident, despite the description. "D-demonic presence?" she asked, minting her composure.
"Demonic. Presence." I repeated in the creepiest voice I could muster, earning me a throw pillow to the face.
"Shut up and play the stupid movie," she huffed.
As the movie began, she was fine. Sitting on her cushion, idly munching popcorn while the intro music began. Trust me when I tell you that this 'tough-gal' exterior wouldn't last.
"That little foal is fucking creepy," she remarked, referencing the... well, creepy little kid. I've tried to watch my swearing around her. I don't know when she's gonna head back to Equestria, but she probably doesn't need to take any of my vocabulary with her.
"Don't say fucking." I scolded her. She didn't appreciate it.
"You're not my mother. Fucker." Now she was doing it just to get a rise out of me.
"Celestia is gonna send you to the sun if you come back talking like that."
She smiled. "I don't see the fucking problem. She isn't fucking here right now, is she?" It was like I was living with one of the trailer park boys.
"Fine, I guess I'll just have to take those roses and vegetables back to the farmers market—"
"Okay okay, I'm sorry!" She loved roses. A lot.
Thank you. And yeah, the little fucker is creepy."
As the movie built its creepiness, I noticed her getting closer to me. Inch by inch, she may not have even noticed it herself. Eventually, the popcorn eating stopped completely. Her expression went from one of apathy to a wide eyed stare.
"Rainbow?" I said.
"Gah!" She nearly hit the roof. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" she growled.
"Take it easy!" I insisted. "I'm getting a drink. Do you want a soda or something?"
After she caught her breath and straightened her mane, she answered. "Yeah... soda would be good."
Her eyes creeped back to the television as I went to the kitchen. I came back to find her back in her original 'this movie isn't scary' position. I sat down and opened her soda. She was surprisingly adept at holding things like cups and cans between her hooves.
"This movie isn't scary it's all just—" No sooner had the words left her mouth did the ghostly twins appear in the hallway. "Ares!" If I had words to describe how not-Rainbow Dash my name sounded, I'd use them. She buried her head under my arm and flattened her ears against her head. This was certainly not the Rainbow Dash in the show. Still, it was pretty cute
I paused the movie. "Dash, it's not real, remember?"
Almost immediately, she caught herself. She pulled herself out from underneath my arm.
"I... I know! I wasn't scared, those creepy twins just startled me, that's all!" she insisted. She would have pulled it off, too, except for one glaring flaw in her poker face.
"Then why are your eyes still closed?"
"Are the twins gone?" she asked.
"Yes."
The rest of the movie went by without incident. Well, mostly. The blood elevator and the bathtub zombie were particularly hide-inducing. I didn't mind though. She reacted to horror movies the same way my ex-girlfriend did. That brought up some crappy memories, but overall, I enjoyed having to talk Dash through it. I didn't, however, enjoy the hoof prodding my shoulder at 12:30 in the morning.
"Ares," she whispered. I'm a notoriously light sleeper.
"What?" I mumbled, half asleep.
"Um... Would it be cool if I... Uh... hung out with you in your room tonight?"
I'll never let her watch another scary movie again. I thought. I had to lead the company run tomorrow, and I needed all the sleep I could get. "Fine..." I moaned, moving over. I only had a queen sized bed, but thankfully it was more than enough room for a 3'3" pony.
I woke up to horse dander in my face, an unforeseen side effect of letting a small horse sleep in your bed. Needless to say, she was not happy about being woken up at five in the morning.
"Where are you going?" she yawned, still in bed. It was at this point that I wished I had a magical friend who could send me on vacation from my normal life. It must've been nice to not have a job, or pay bills, or any of that noise.
"To my job. I'm the commander of Delta company."
Although I didn't expect her to, she didn't really care.
"Have fun..." she yawned.
I didn't even remember the run as I pulled into the garage and shut the door. After all, I had whatever fresh hell Rainbow Dash had visited upon my house to come home to. As I opened the door from the garage, I found her watching television on the couch. Thankfully, Netflix must have lost the right's to My Little Pony. Either that, or she hand't thought to search for it. I've seen The Truman Show. I could imagine how discovering you life was a source of entertainment for millions would be traumatizing.
"Hey, so I wanted to ask you something," she said, as I came into the house and headed straight for the fridge. I needed a beer.
"Yeah? What?"
"What is your job? You leave every day, but I have now idea where you go."
This was a tough question to answer. I recalled that Equestria had a Royal Guard for protecting the Princesses, but beyond that, no military was ever acknowledged or hinted at.
"I'm in the military. It's like being in the Royal Guard, except... bigger."
She raised off the couch. "Bigger?"
"Yeah, it's like..." I had to pause and think of how to explain the American military to someone who's never known the concept of a standing fighting force. "Imagine if the Royal Guards left Equestria to fight in far away lands. That's what I do."
Dash raised an eyebrow. "You go to far away lands every day?"
"No, only when I'm told to."
She nodded, seeming to understand. "So what do you do once you get there?"
This was the tricky part. How do you tell someone largely innocent of the horror of war about what you do as an attack helicopter pilot? I decided the best course of action was to be blunt.
"There are people in these places that want nothing more than to kill me and my friends. I kill them before they get the chance." That was a pretty blunt way of putting it, but more or less, that was what I did. Back when I was a lieutenant, anyway. As a company commander, you don't get much stick time.
"So..." I could tell she was trying to wrap her head around what I had said. "You kill things that try to kill other humans? Like what?"
Here's where things get a little weird and philosophical. "Other humans."
She seemed floored by this revelation. "You mean, you kill your own kind?"
I sat down on the couch and took a long swig of beer. "Yes. But only those who are trying to hurt my friends." Sure, I could get into politics about any war or military action I'd been involved in, but why complicate things? I figure I'd just keep it in the most general and simplest terms.
I could tell she was thinking. She remembered the helicopter I showed her I operated, I knew it'd just be a matter of time before she asked her next question.
"How do you kill other humans in that thing you fly?"
I pulled out my trusty laptop. I figured it would be better to show her a gun-cam and talk her through it that it would be for me to try and get her to grasp an abstract concept. "My helicopter has a..." How to explain a gun to someone who's never seen one? "A weapon on it that fires these... you know what arrows are, right?"
She nodded.
"Well, this thing shoot arrows that explode when they hit the target." I mean, more or less, that's what a missile and 30 millimeter chain gun does.
Dash looked to the computer screen as I loaded up the video.
"And your target is other humans?"
"Other humans trying to kill my friends." I corrected. I mean, yeah, they are humans. And we can talk all day about the nature of human conflict, but that's for another conversation.
The video loaded and began to play. A line of people walking along a mountain slope glowing white in the black background of the infrared camera.
"These guys were going to set up an ambush to attack my friends on the ground. Our scouts caught them first, and they sent us out to deal with them."
"Engage, engage," said the voice on the video.
The gun-cam rattled as the rounds left the weapon. A standard ten round burst. Two seconds passed before the rounds impacted all around the line of men. Explosions engulfed two men, and sent shrapnel into the remaining fighters. After the impact, those who were able, scattered, fleeing in terror down the mountain. The reticle followed the escaping militants and released more fire. Once the line of men had been neutralized, a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted in the bed came speeding into view.
A wave of heat passed in front of the camera, followed by the truck exploding, the men in the back becoming engulfed in the white flames as the truck flipped over.
The video stopped sooner than I remembered. The cams usually stay on until the helicopter is shut down, but that one ended right as I was leaving the operation area. Anyway, I looked back to Dash, who'd simply been staring at the screen.
"That wasn't fake, was it?"
I shook my head. "No, it wasn't."
"So, those humans in that video are really dead?"
"Yeah."
Surprisingly, she wasn't too shocked. I mean, death wasn't an alien concept to her, and there had even been wars in their world. But still, it was pretty awkward.
"You do that every day?" she asked.
"No, I haven't done that in three years."
The rest of that night went by without incident. Thankfully, she managed to sleep in her own bed that night.
Eventually, Dash got a bit of cabin fever. I couldn't believe she lasted as long as she did. We decided that she would only go outside during the evening and early morning. I decided to head out with her. She loved the sky as much as I did. Dash stretched her wings and did tricks like it was her job. I had to admit, she was certainly growing on me.
One day, I came home from work the next day to an empty house. And after a few weeks of living with her, it worried me. Honestly, I'd grown a bit attached to her. I mean, I went out with my friends after work and stuff still, but I found myself looking forward to coming home and seeing what kind of trouble Rainbow Dash had gotten herself into while I was away.
Anyway, I got home and she wasn't anywhere in the house. For some wild reason, I decided to step out of my back door. I found her standing in my backyard. Thankfully, the other townhouses around me were empty, so I didn't have to worry about anyone seeing her.
"Dash, what are you doing out here?" I asked. She flicked her ear in my direction, but kept looking into the woods.
"I think Twilight is trying to open another portal," Dash replied softly. She turned to me. "I went for a flight today."
"Are you nuts? What if someone saw you?"
"So what?"
"I didn't think I had to remind you that you're a bit unusual around these parts."
She ignored that part.
"Look, while I was out there, I found something. I think it's a way back."
"A way back?" I repeated.
"To where I belong." She turned and beckoned me to follow.
"Where are you going?" I asked, absent-mindedly following her. She hovered through the brush and went about a hundred meters into the wood line. That's when I saw it. It was just a circle in the ground about the size of my fist. But it shone like the sun itself was behind it.
"This is it? This is your ticket home?" I asked.
"Yeah. It's not just mine. It's yours too."
I scoffed. "What are you talking about? I don't belong in Equestria."
The circle on the ground began to widen, and I took a step back.
"It doesn't go to Equestria," she replied softly. "It goes home."
She looked at me. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not real. I'm not here," she said. "And neither are you."
I looked around me. A savage wind whipped through the woods as the words left her lips. A storm seemed to come up from nowhere and blow like it'd been raging all night.
"What the hell are you talking about, of course I'm here!"
"No, you aren't. You've been here for too long! Do you remember why I told you I came here?"
I did. "You said you were running from something."
"I wasn't running from something. You were."
"What are you talking about?"
"You need to wake up."
No, I knew there was no way this was a dream. I've never dreamt for weeks!
"I'm not asleep!"
Dash stamped her hoof as the portal grew wider, the size of a small swimming pool now.
"Yes you are! You have to get out of here!"
For a second, I realized what that would entail. Leaving here, meant leaving her too. I'd lived with her for nearly a month, and... I was pretty attached to her. I'm not ashamed to admit it. She was one of my best friends, as odd as that may seem.
"You... you aren't real?" I don't know why that realization took so long to click.
She had tears in her eyes now. "No... I..." she took a deep breath. "You need to go home, Ares."
"What if I don't want to?" I asked. A reasonable reply, considering I don't ordinarily jump into strange portals my cartoon horse companion finds in the woods.
"You can't stay here!" she snarled. Her sadness had morphed into anger at a moments notice. "If you stay here, you'll die! Is that what you want?"
Before I could answer, she was hovering in front of me.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. With both forelegs on my chest, she shoved me backwards. I fell into the portal, and everything went white.
