Soldier's Fortune

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Prologue

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

~Winston Churchill

Prologue:

Private Hein stared into the distance at the rapidly approaching cloud of rolling dust. He widened his eyes at the sheer mass of it, stretching kilometers into the sky and endlessly to the sides. A monstrous wall of dirt and debris that threatened to swallow everything.

“Hein!” The platoon commander, Captain Smith screamed over the howling wind, trying to get the young privates attention. “Drop your fuckin’ cock and get your ass over here!”

“Sir!” The private returned, struggling to be heard over the distant thunder.

“Call in to higher and tell them that we’re going to ground! This is fucking ridiculous!” The Captain shouted back, before staggering to the platoon Warrant Officer to give him a new set of orders.

Grabbing the tab on his tacvest, the private called his orders into the mic for transmission, eyeing the rapidly approaching storm the whole time. “Zero, this is One-One-Alpha, SitRep, Over.” He bellowed into the microphone set under his helmet, eagerly awaiting a response. A brief eternity passed before he was rewarded with the garbled static of the main command tent.

“Un… own… allsign… br… en and Unrea… … lay thr… a… ther… …sign… ver.”

Pte Hein ducked his head against the wind and used a hand to push his head-set against his ear. "Zero, Say again SitRep, Over."

The crackling reply was only faintly better and even then he could only guess at the message. They wanted him to relay his comms through another. He mentally sighed, since Zero was the closest relay, and even then the signal was weak from the storm interference.

He tabbed his mic again.

“Any callsign in range, this is One-One-Alpha.” He glanced back at the storm, a knot of fear forming in his stomach at its rapid approach. The closer it got, the larger it appeared; even now beginning to block out the sun. “Message to be Relayed to Zero, Over.”

Almost immediately, the dead air of the radio turned into another voice, this one much clearer. “One-One-Alpha, this Three-Two-Alpha, I can Relay, over.”

Sighing in relief, he went to work delivering his Sitrep. “One-One-Alpha, Sitrep as follows; Para Alpha through Charlie, Nil.” He stopped and looked at his wrist mounted DAGR unit, seeing a ten digit grid number arrayed before him on the otherwise featureless screen. “Para Delta, We are at Grid Four-Two Sierra, Whiskey Papa, Two-Eight-Niner-Zero-Zero, by Seven-One-Two-Four-Zero. Going to ground to avoid the sandstorm, Over.”

The young private listened to his plea being relayed until he was messaged back. “One-One-Alpha, Three-Two-Alpha, Zero acknowledges your position and says to radio in when the storm passes, Over.”

He nervously glanced back at the storm again, the vanguard of dust already swirling around him. The private was so entranced by the vortex that he almost didn’t hear what Three-Two-Alpha said. “Roger, out.” He replied into the mic, hoping the recipient could hear it over the raging storm.

Radio duties done, he made a beeline towards the Captain, stumbling over the shifting sands while his feet made nary a sound against the feverish whine of sand surrounding him. The remaining troops were rallying around the Captain, trying to make a defensive shelter against the high winds with their groundsheets. The storm continued to roar at the Canadians as it made its infernal and unstoppable approach. It was so close at this point, that most of the infantry had given up on the idea of a shelter and just hid under their ground sheets, holding on for dear life. The Captain was waving to the young private to move faster, but by the time he reached the first of the soldiers the storm had engulfed him.

He could feel the sand snaking its way into the cracks of his flak vest, into every open crevice he had; getting caught in his helmet, up his sleeves, and even in his underwear. The irritation of that, however, was nothing compared to the sheer pain he felt as the sand whipped over his skin at speeds that would shear the paint off of metal. Luckily for him, it didn’t last very long.

When the storm dissipated an hour later, there was nothing left of the poor signaller. Gone was everything, flesh, bone, and equipment. The lack of the soldier’s kit severely puzzled most of the infanteers, but still brought sorrow to their hearts as another brother was lost to the deserts of Afghanistan.

Author's Note

Be sure to comment what you think!
Also note, 'Pte' is the acronym used for private in Canada. Don't ask me why, I thought it was stupid when I first joined too.

Chapter 1

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

~Charles Bukowski

Chapter 1: Alone

The first thought that came to me as I regained consciousness was along the lines of, it is far too cold to be mid-day in a desert. Followed shortly by: Jesus fuck, my head hurts.

Wary of this development, I slowly opened my eyes, gripping my C8 carbine all the tighter, confirming with my thumb that it was on safe and therefore readied. The first thing I saw was colour. Not yellow or grey, but green. Not only that, but multiple shades of it; from the veridian grass below me to the darker greens of the tree canopy overhead.

I wasn't in a forest by any stretch of the imagination, but I also wasn’t on the plains of Saskatchewan. Behind me lay a deciduous forest that traveled from horizon to horizon in an unnaturally straight line, while in front of me was scrubland for as far as the eye could see. For the first time since I was deployed, I was glad I was never issued my desert camo and was still wearing the trademark green CADPAT of the Canadian Forces.

Do your drills, I thought, in a vain attempt to keep myself from questioning reality too much. Subconsciously, I looked at both the ground near me as well as the ground in-depth using the C79 optical scope attached to my C8 assault carbine.

Scan right to left, check for differences in light and unnatural shadows, be wary of movement...

Only one thing seemed out of place; the fact that I was no longer in the middle of a never ending desert. Bird calls graced my ears while a gentle wind blew through the trees; crickets chirped in the gentle noon sunshine. These noises had become foreign to me during my tour. Oddly enough, it had the double effect of both calming me and setting my hairs on end.

Cover.

Glancing over my shoulder, I slowly backed into the tree line, carbine not quite parallel to the ground in the ready position. After I had moved about ten meters into the woodland, I found a conveniently placed log and placed my ass on it rather heavily. My very short day quickly ran through my mind, visions of a sandstorm at the forefront.

"What the fuck..." I muttered to myself in disbelief. "I clearly died in the sandstorm and went to hell." Chuckling wearily at the common misfortune of everyone who has ever been to CFB Wainwright, I let out a weary sigh.

Well now what... I thought. I'm in what looks to be a nice place, I only have two days worth of food, no clue if the territory is hostile or not, and a very sudden insatiable urge for someone to issue a command decision...

And then I glanced at the mouth piece on my helmet. Mentally facepalming, I grabbed for the activation tab on my tactical vest. "Zero, this is One-One-Alpha, message, over." After fifteen seconds of waiting for a response, I repeated the transmission. After another fifteen seconds of radio silence, I called in a radio check. Again, silence.

"All call-signs, this is One-One-Alpha, radio check, over." My heart rate had picked up at this point, and in a sudden slip of professionalism, the fear leaked through my mask, into the radio.

Fuck... I thought dejectedly, before another brilliant idea floated into my head; GPS. Looking down to my Defence Advanced GPS Receiver, or DAGR, I noticed a rather glaring lack of signal to any overhead satellites. Fucking piece of shit.

I could feel my self assurance fading by the second.

Deciding to partake in the infantry ritual of combat meditation, I controlled my breathing and observed my surroundings. I had stumbled into a small clearing during my panicked withdrawal. The branches of the trees were swaying in the breeze, shielding the clearing from the bulk of the sun while still letting small streams of light through. A green lichen painted the northern side of most of the trees in the clearing, giving me at least a small sense of direction. The only sound that could be heard was rustling leaves.

In a sudden bout of adrenaline induced clarity, I realized that the only time that there is no noise in a wooded area is when there are predators around.

Fuck. My eye twitched while I pulled off my helmet before rapidly removing the radio headset and placing my brain bucket back on my head. The quick release on my cumbersome CADPAT rucksack was the next thing to go. I adopted a crouched position from where I sat, scanning the treeline over my rifle.

A twig snapped, and my eyes were drawn immediately to the the area the noise originated from. I took an instinctive step back before my training kicked in and I took another two steps back, adopting a kneeling position behind my sitting log. Checking to make sure my weapon was still on safe, I slowly changed the tab from safe to repetition in an attempt to minimize the noise of the mechanism swapping positions.

Obviously since I was trying to be stealthy, my stealth skills were found lacking and a rather large lion jumped out of the foliage, scaring and confusing the hell out of me.

How did I not see a bright yellow lion in a green backdrop? Why in the fucking Fuck does it have Bat wings? Why is it just hovering in the air, not moving?

Taking advantage of a still confusing situation, to which the creature looked just as confused as I, I shot it three times in the forehead. The first two rounds burned a dark phosphorescent red and singed the fur of the creature as they entered, while the third round just tore into it’s skull. I would have shot it more, but a sudden, feminine scream to my right drew my attention. There, just standing in the trees, was an incredibly pink unicorn.

Screaming like a girl.

I looked between the miniature pink horse, the now deceased winged lion, and my dropped rucksack before rolling my eyes and thinking to myself, sure, why not. After several seconds, the screaming stopped and the pink horse galloped away into what I assumed were LSD infused dreams.

New theory; those fucking infantry fucks drugged my breakfast, and I just passed out in the middle of a fucking sandstorm, and awoke in the land of 'Fuck you', and... Ah Fuck it.

After grimacing to myself in confusion for several seconds, I walked over to my rucksack, put the straps back together, and shouldered the bag, clipping all the chest and waist supports over my tacvest. I then stuck the radio headset through the rightmost strap on my tacvest. Right. Need to find somewhere to unfuck myself.

Deciding on the only logical course of action, at least according to the logic the Army didn’t teach me, I went west, going to the left of the moss, in the hopes of finding either civilization or a cure for some illegal narcotics.

Night fell rapidly as I pushed through the woods, stepping over underbrush where I could, stepping through it when I couldn't. The urge to eat was strong, but I suppressed it by promising myself a nice tasty meal when I set up my camp.

After coming across a suitable looking cluster of trees, I detached the radio headset and dropped my rucksack before I did a quick area reconnaissance, making sure there was nothing dangerous in my immediate vicinity.

After I confirmed that I was as safe as I was going to get, I proceeded to build the ‘standard-issue’ one man tent of the CF. When I was done hooking my groundsheet up to the various trees and throwing sticks and other forest detritus on top of it, it looked far more like a hill that was dug out on one side than the olive drab slab of plastic it started as.

Lean-to complete, I thought with a grimace, time to try the radio again. I felt my decidedly neutral mood turning rapidly into fear and depression while my training and discipline was hard pressed to keep my face stolid.

"All call signs, this is One-One-Alpha. Radio check, over." Silence. I repeated the call again. Probably just the forest canopy... Why didn't I think of that before? Grabbing the metal antenna from the radio pack, I proceeded to replace the admittedly shitty floppy antenna. Once the 6 foot metal rod was in place I radioed in again, hope blossoming in my core.

That hope was dashed rather quickly when there was no answer over the means. Sighing, I decided to do a kit check before I went to bed, as well as re-bombing the magazine I used.

My C8FTHB carbine with Elcan C67 scope; ten magazines with 200 rounds of 5.56mm ball and 80 rounds of 5.56mm tracer; 419 rounds of 5.56mm ball in fourteen boxes; 118 rounds of 5.56mm tracer in four boxes; four grenades, two frags, one yellow smoke, and one white smoke; one bayonet; one multitool; and two SRAAW-L rocket launchers strapped to the side of the ruck.

One extra CADPAT shirt and pants, as well as a pair of black combat boots, three extra pairs of olive drab shirts, three extra pairs of socks, one CF issue CADPAT floppy hat, and one CADPAT fleece shirt.

My CADPAT tactical vest, one CADPAT Fragmentation Protection Vest with Bullet Resistant Plates, one pair of CADPAT combat gloves, one olive drab gas mask with two filters, and my helmet with CADPAT cover.

In the pockets of my tacvest, I had one pre-treated antibiotic field dressing in a hermetically sealed, sterile package; one bottle of military issue bug juice that you aren’t allowed to apply to your skin; a tube each of light green, dark green, and brown CamPaint; one green ballistic glasses carrier with clear lenses inside; one Advil bottle with 200mg caffeine pills, Ibuprofen 400, and a few super strength Advil; one aluminum canteen cup that I’ve never used; one miniature CADPAT maglight; and one pair of mortar gloves.

Two breakfast, three lunch, and two supper Individual Meal Packages.

One waterproof CADPAT bivy bag, one olive drab ‘self inflating’ air-mattress, one olive drab sleeping bag inner, one CADPAT ranger blanket, and one CADPAT compression sac.

One 3L CADPAT camelback, one olive drab 2L soft water canteen, and one olive drab 1L hard canteen.

One AN/PRC-522 radio, one nonfunctioning DAGR, one mapping kit which included a C9 protractor, Suunto Compass, and a map of the Kandahar region.

About a kilometer of olive drab ‘seven string’ paracord, one roll of green guntape, one olive drab field sewing kit, one weapon cleaning kit with an extra large bottle of CLP, one roll of toilet paper sealed in a ziplock bag, ten metal tent pegs, five of which were being used on the groundsheet lean-to, and one CADPAT daybag which was buckled to the rucksack.

Packing all of my belongings back into their respective spots on my heavy ass rucksack, I unfurled my air mattress and placed my ranger blanket on top of it. It was gonna be an early morning, followed by another long and arduous forced march. Hopefully I would get at least a little closer to my unknown destination.

Reaching back into my rucksack, I pulled out one of my IMPs and sighed as I read the label. Mushroom omelette; breakfast. Might as well get it out of the way now... At the very least the omelette was too bland to taste. Definitely not the worst meal to have before bed, but not the best either.

After digging a hole with my hands and burying the now empty plastic casing for the omelette, I placed the remains of the breakfast IMP in my ruck where it would remain ready for further consumption. I then made-safe my C8, removed my boots, and crawled under my ranger blanket before the night got cold.

What the fuck even happened...I could feel a tear starting to work its way to my eye as I looked back on the day, finally allowing it to catch up with me.

I was separated from my unit.

I was lost.

I was alone.

I held my C8 close to my body the way only a soldier can and clutched my dog tags over my heart. Alone. That one word repeated in my head, reminding me just how alone I really was. Dark thoughts of the future haunted me until the cold embrace of sleep claimed me.

Alone.

Author's Note

Spoiler alert: There will be ponies soon.

Chapter 2

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Chapter 2: 9 Liner

“It’s right over here.” a feminine voice whispered, waking me from my dreamless sleep. I blinked in recollection of the day before, starting to question why I was still in a forest before another voice spurred me into action.

“Are you sure miss?” A gruff male voice replied, exuding confidence and calm. I forced my eyes open, seeing a gentle haze of light through the trees. It was about 0700 by the position of the sun.

Rolling over so I could have a better firing position, I scanned the outside of my hoochie.

“I swear this is where it was!” the female voice was getting closer, approaching from behind and to my left. I slowly removed the blanket, before I placed my C8 on the ground and silently put on my tacvest using just the velcro to avoid alerting the potential hostiles of my position.

“Look Ma’am, we’ve been looking for hours,” the masculine voice responded, “and you’ve just been walking in a straight line all night. I think you may be suffering from lack of slee—”

“I am not suffering!” she hissed violently in return as I quietly slipped my boots on, not bothering with the laces at the moment. “It’s probably just beyond that hill. I’m positive!”

“You said that three hills ago, Ma’am.” he said before sighing. I heard the clopping of hooves as they got closer, and with no way to tell how many mounted troops there were I would have to fight my way out if they found me. Definitely not a situation I ever wanted to find myself in outside a field exercise.

I quickly tied my laces and shoved them in my boots along with the sand traps on my pants and grabbed my rifle, adopting a really low crouch.

“Wait, this clearing looks used.” the female voice said, “Like somepony had laid down and rolled over a lot of the grass...” Hesitantly, a pink hoof crossed into my field of vision as the pink unicorn from before slowly trotted into the middle of my ‘campsite’, her eyes glued to where I had laid out my equipment the night before.

“Maybe someone was just camping here?” The male voice replied with a subtle metal clinking accompanying his approach. I gradually swiveled my C8 towards the direction the pink one approached from.

“No...” the pink one replied. “Can’t you feel the residue? Can’t any of you?” she said, looking back towards the metal clad leg that had just entered my vision. She was looking in my general direction, which caused me to freeze on the spot as my heart rate shot so high I was amazed the earth wasn’t moving under me.

“None of us can feel anything, Ma’am. Now please, not even the best archers from Canterlot could kill a manticore in less than a second.” The metal clad horse sounded exasperated, but maintained a level of patience that I only used when dealing with civilians. He must have been in the military, the national guard, or some similar service. “Do you even know what a manticore looks like?” he asked, before continuing his rant. So much for composure, I thought. “You know… big ugly lion looking thing with bat wings?”

Another pair of metal legs entered my field of view as the first attached itself to a torso and eventually a head with a horn atop it, fully clad in metal armour. He walked right in front of me, eyes fixed on the pink one while the pink one’s eyes followed him, only to stop when she noticed the pink of my face. Fuck.

Her eyes widened as she raised a hoof to point to indicate my location, apparently too stunned to talk. Thinking quickly, I realised the wall at my back was rather soft and squishy which would make very poor cover. I leapt from my crouched position behind the first guard, rolling to my feet slightly behind the unicorn.

There were three of the armoured ponies; two in silver armour, one in gold, all shocked at my sudden appearance. The shock faded rapidly however, as the group drew swords and held them aloft in identical golden glows. I blinked, ignoring the physical impossibility behind this and took aim at the armoured ponies. “Drop your fucking weapons!” I shouted, using all the negotiating skills I didn’t learn during my Soldier Qualification. “Put them on the fucking ground or I will shoot you!”

The two silver armoured ponies looked at each other before laughing. One looked at me and asked “What with, hmm?” while the other took up a defensive posture with his sword.

“Drop your swords!” I yelled again, “I will not warn you a third time.” In all honesty, I wasn’t planning on engaging these creatures. They may have seemed ridiculously impossible to my mind, but for all I knew I was an intruder and they were defending themselves.

“How about this,” the golden armoured one said with a voice oozing a calm authority. “You put your... weapon down, and we won’t detain you for harassing us.”

Police then. I thought, trying to fill another of the massive gaps of knowledge being in this realm of unfathomability presented. “Negative.” I responded, keeping my weapon level. Thinking on my lack of anything besides paracord to detain the four equines in front of me, I brought another solution to the table. “How about you four just back the fuck off, and let’s all just be happy, eh?”

“Put down your weapon, and we can be more than just happy,” he said, tone level, not revealing his intentions in the slightest.

“I am not putting down my rifle. Now back off, or put down your swords, or... or do something!” My mind was slowly starting to break. I was never meant to be doing this stuff, that was the job of my section commander. During all of our practice detentions we always had ideal numbers: two of us for every one of them. Now it was just one of me and four of them.

The silver clad unicorns started moving left and right in a two man pincer maneuver while the gold one slowly started to advance. I felt for the safety of my weapon, finding it was already on repetition. I aimed through the Elcan sight at the golden target in front of me, pulled the trigger, and blinked as nothing happened.

Stoppage... I never cocked the weapon... If I had an available hand, it would have migrated to my face very rapidly. Instead it was pulling back the cocking handle. Releasing the action, I heard the satisfying click of a bullet slamming into the breach. By this time, the police had completely encircled me. Fuck. As the two silver ones started moving towards me, I took aim at the golden one again.

Double tap.

Dash.

Down.

Crawl.

Observe.

When I regained control of my body, I found myself on the other side of a small rise offering some cover against return fire. The broken body of the golden armoured horse was laying on the ground in a limp pile, while his three companions stared wide eyed at the aftermath of my charge against their commander.

“Drop your swords!” I yelled shakily while my heart pounded in my chest. Battle drills had always made my heart pump, but actually taking a life... that was a new one for me.

The police glanced at each other before they adopted a look of pure rage and charged my trench. The one on my right was the first to go down, two bullets entered his breast plate followed by a third to his head. I barely registered the sound of the gunshots, hearing only the voice of a master corporal admonishing me for my sloppy technique. I took aim on the last target, and in an attempt to impress the voice in my head I payed closer attention to the principles of marksmanship. Time slowed to a crawl as the target approached, just begging me to plant him in the dirt.

I gently pulled on the trigger, feeling the first layer of tension slip away before the barrel of my weapon inexplicably moved further left. The bullet bounced off the pauldron protecting his shoulder rather than going through his chest, saving his life but causing him to trip. Again I took aim, again my weapon was thrown off balance. This shot went clear past his head. I readjusted my aim a third time, not bothering to look through the scope. As I pulled the trigger, I saw the expected golden glow surrounding the weapon. The red tracer flew from the barrel of the weapon, glanced off of the guard’s damaged pauldron, and tumbled right into the petrified pink pony.

Her eyes went wide as she let out a small whimper before slowly falling to her knees, and then her side. Seemingly undeterred, the lone guard continued his charge of bravado. My mind was blank, my limbs were numb, and the voice in the back of my head was asking me ‘just what in the fuck I was thinking’. The guard was only five feet from me at this point and I knew that if I didn’t act, I would end up a casualty too. I took aim once more, and pulled the trigger. Two in the chest, one in the head. The guard fell forward, the momentum carrying his body the last few feet to the barrel of my rifle as his sword clattered to the ground somewhere behind me. I subconsciously placed my C8 on safe.

I could see the gore inside the helmet that the 5.56 projectile tore through. I could see the bloody hole as it oozed a mixture of dark red and grey. I could see the face of one of my brothers-in-arms, suffering a similar fate. A light, raspy cough brought my attention from the grisly scene in front of me. Like a tiger to prey, I jumped from my prone position and ran to the injured, but still breathing creature. Her eyes were wide and pleading, but lacked focus as they darted back and forth. I took one last quick look around the clearing, making sure there were no other guards nearby before removing my field dressing from my tacvest.

Her breathing was raspy, short, and shallow. That meant she had a punctured lung. There was no exit wound. A dressing would only hurt her more at this point. I had to find a way to make an airtight seal on three of the four sides of the wound. Glancing around the clearing for materials, the only thing I could see that was even remotely close to something I could use was my groundsheet. Grabbing my bayonet, I cut off a small piece of the groundsheet and retrieved the gun tape from the top of my rucksack before I ran back to the injured pony. Placing the groundsheet piece waterproof side away from the wound, I proceeded to tape the top and sides to the pony’s chest.

Her breathing became slightly more stable despite the poor seal. The flap stopped excess air from entering through the hole in her chest while letting the same excess out with a wet spluttering noise. “Can you hear me, miss?” I asked, slapping her lightly on the cheek. “I need you to stay with me so you don’t go into shock.”

A slight whimper and subtle shaking were the only responses I got. Fuck. I moved quickly back to my rucksack, grabbing the radio headset. “Zero, this is One-One-Alpha. Priority radio check, over.” Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Command decision... I need a command decision! My nerves hadn’t even started settling since the firefight, and the knowledge of what I had unintentionally done to a civilian was doing nothing to calm me. Opening the rucksack again, I reached for the knob on the manpack radio that controlled the cryptography, and after a momentary pause I switched it to PT from CT.

When I was sure that I turned off my crypto and placed the radio in ‘plain text’ mode, I sent out another plea for assistance, hoping beyond hope to make radio contact with anyone who could reach a hospital. I knew my chances were slim, but I had to try.

“This is One-One-Alpha of the Canadian Forces. I have a wounded civilian and need immediate medical assistance. Respond, over.” I hoped beyond hope that someone would hear my transmission, come to my position, and call me crazy for shooting horses. In the last five minutes I had experienced more stress than I had in most of my time in the CF.

When no one responded, I switched the radio to channel two and repeated the message.

After another five seconds of waiting, I let out a small sigh of exasperation just before the radio beeped quietly. I blinked at the radio in confusion. Then more static graced my ear, followed by a beep from the radio, then silence. Then something else happened entirely: a voice responded with perfect clarity. “Okay, I don’t know who you are, nor what a ‘Canadian Forces’ is, but I’ll be there to help in fifteen minutes.”

I blinked again. And again. And one last time for posterity. Then, and only then, did I open the channel again. “Unknown callsign, One-One-Alpha. Thanks for the assist, but how are you going to find me? Over.”

The response was much faster than the previous one. “I’m gonna follow your mental focus, duh.” I blinked. Looking between the injured mare and my still unpacked camp, I decided that there really was nothing more I could do for her and proceeded to pack my kit back into my rucksack. The mysterious voice said I had fifteen minutes, so I only had ten minutes to be completely packed and cam’ed up.

My watch said I still had two minutes to cam up once all my kit was squared away. Grabbing the tubes of paint from my tac vest, I smeared small amounts of dark green over the parts of my face that stood out and smaller quantities of the light green on the parts that didn’t, creating an odd contrast that would inevitably make my face look less like a face. Then I smeared long streaks of brown across my face, completely unsure of why but remembering a sergeant say it worked amazingly well. Securing the tubes back in my tacvest, I hid my rucksack under the brush that was once my lean-too and concealed myself in a nearby bush with a good line of sight on the barely conscious unicorn.

My vigilance was soon rewarded with another pony, this one a light blue unicorn with a blue and white mane who approached the grisly scene nervously, eyes darting about with trepidation. “Hello?” she asked nervously, voice jittering slightly. “Anypony out there?” Upon seeing the dead guards her face blanched as some of the colour magically drained from her fur before she came across the barely conscious pink horse. “I know you’re still around here!” she shouted as she took in the extent of the wound. “Nopony would leave a wounded pony like this. Come out so you can help me.” I saw a small shiver go down her spine as she continued to survey the scene around her.

“I’m coming out.” I said, just loud enough to make sure she heard me. When her head turned in my direction, I slowly stood up, rifle at low ready. “You can help her?”

The unicorn’s eyes went wide as I materialized from a bush that must have seemed impossible to conceal a creature of my size. Her mouth hung open as her eyes traced my body, presumably attempting to discern where I ended and the forest began. “What are you?” she asked with a quiet inquisitiveness, which was odd considering she was shaking in fear.

“Can you help her?” I reiterated, ignoring her question. Priority was on the wounded unicorn, all other questions could wait.

She blinked before looking back to the injured mare whose breathing was coming in shorter and shorter gaps. “I... I can try.” she said with a confidence that didn’t reach her eyes. “What happened?”

“I...” my eyes scavenged the scene, searching for validation. “These authorities engaged me. I responded with force, and during the firefight she was hit by a ricochet.” The voice in my head kept calling ricochets don’t count as I persisted in my attempt to justify what happened. The resolve left my voice as I slung my weapon and whispered, “I’m sorry.” I knew my eyes were revealing a broiling storm of horror, but I didn’t care as I moved towards the unicorn I had unintentionally wounded.

“Wait,” the newcomer said, halting my advance. “I’m going to try and heal her.” Her eyes softened as she gazed upon my visage before turning towards the pink unicorn. My eyes studied her form as her horn was washed with a brilliant emerald glow which quickly spread to the improvised chest seal and ripped it off. Then the glow moved to the hole where the tracer entered. The sky blue unicorn scowled as her eyes closed, sweat starting to form on her brow while she worked. Amazingly, I could see the wound healing before my eyes. The hole was slowly closing while the blood seemed to be sucked back into the unicorn.

“That’s incredible,” I said, admiring her handiwork when she stopped. “How did you do that?” I asked, eyes alight with wonder.

She slowly looked from the pony on the ground, back to me. “Magic,” she mumbled with a tear in her downcast eyes.

I raised one of my eyebrows, trying to puzzle what was wrong. Then I looked back down at the pink unicorn. She looked better. Her coat had a healthy looking shine to it, the hole was patched up, she lay peacefully in the dirt, her breathing no longer hampered by...

She had stopped breathing.

I immediately put two fingers near what appeared to be a major artery in her neck. No pulse. How do you do CPR for a horse?

I rolled her onto her back, placing the palm of my right hand where I could see the bottom of her ribcage. After adjusting to approximately the center of her chest, I placed my second hand on top of the first and started the first of thirty chest compressions; step one to basic CPR. Check her mouth, make sure her airway is open. Fuck! I forgot to check it before I did compressions. My panic was slurring my drills. I stopped paying attention to the land around me, focusing only on trying to bring this unicorn back. I opened the unicorn’s mouth, put my lips to hers, exhaled twice, and waited to feel the breath on my ear.

Nothing.

I went back to chest compressions, my movements becoming more frantic as I lost control of the rhythm.

Breaths.

Compressions.

Breaths.

The cycle continued for what felt like an eternity, panic eating me inside before I was stopped by something unfamiliar touching my shoulder.

I threw a fist into the body of the perpetrator in an act of instinctive self defence. As I reflexively pulled my fist back, wincing in pain as if I had just struck a rock, I looked up to see a hurt and confused blue unicorn. “I’m sorry!” I quickly blurted, before looking back to the pony under my immediate care and resuming CPR.

“She’s dead.” the still living unicorn said simply, wheezing with effort. “I’m sorry, but she’s dead.”

“I... she died suffering...” I said lamely as I stopped supplying the not-so life giving compressions. She was gone, and there was nothing I could do for her. “I’m so sorry...” I whispered, a tear sliding unseen down my cam’ed up face.

Looking back to the still prone but clearly alive blue unicorn, I saw her now drawing slightly ragged breaths, pain etched across her face. “Oh no,” I said, a fresh panic invading my voice. “Please tell me I didn’t hurt you too?”

“No, I’m fine.” She said through clenched teeth, holding her eyes closed and a hoof to her breast. “I just need... time.”

“Bullshit you do,” I replied forcefully, making my way towards her. “Let me at least look at it.”

“No!” she cried as she crawled backwards, evidently ignoring the pain it must have caused her. “Please, don’t!”

I stopped, completely unsure what to do so I thought back to my drills. They had only failed me twice that day, so I hoped the third time would be the charm. “I’m a first aider,” I said in an even voice, “can I help you?”

“N—” she started before her face twisted in pain and a low groan escaped her parted lips. “Tell me what you are first. Where you came from.”

I started removing my combat gloves, but as I was removing the right one I felt an oddly cold ooze covering the knuckles. It felt familiar, in a strange way. Examining at the green ooze as it stuck to my fingers, I noticed it had the consistency of highly congealed blood. Thinking little of it, I rubbed the residue off of my glove and hand with some leaves on the ground as I began to explain myself.

“I’m a human.” I started, kind of unsure where to go from there. “I’m from a country called Canada.” My gaze fell upon the wound of the unicorn which she still held as if her life depended on it. “If you think you need that much pressure, let me put a dressing on it.” I said, pointing at where I had punched her. “At least then you’ll be able to stand.”

She looked between my hand, and where I had rubbed my glove; eyes wide in fright as she slowly removed her hoof from a slight indent on her otherwise perfect coat. Her hoof came back covered in that same sticky substance I had just removed from my hand.

She obviously saw my look of confusion, as she drew in a ragged breath, waved her horn around a little, and disappeared in a wreath of green fire.

“I’m a changeling.”

Chapter 3

None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.

~Paulo Coelho, Brida

Chapter 3: LocStat: Unknown

My eye twitched in uncontrolled annoyance at yet another unexpected twist this strange new world had thrown at me. Taking a step back and adopting the low ready position, I glared at her with the gaze of a marching NCO. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said evenly, before letting out a long exhale, asking “Got anything else up your sleeve?” I give up. Reason can go fuck itself.

“I’m not wearing sleeves.” she replied, a touch of befuddlement coursing through her voice before she winced as if struck. After bracing for an impact that never came, she slowly turned her head back towards me, the chitinous rise over her right eye raising as if questioning why I wasn’t hurting her.

“Right.” I said monotonously before looking at her wound. There was a crack in her exoskeleton which I had taken in stride due to the lack of reason and logic in the world I now inhabited. I could see a dark green liquid oozing from the crack in her sternum, trying to crawl free from the skin underneath. I furrowed my brow, trying to puzzle out how a cracked shell would cause internal bleeding.

The shell must have got lodged in her skin. I thought idly, ignoring most of my instincts as they screamed at me to run away from the deceiving creature. After I shrugged in the most noncommittal manner I could muster, I grabbed my gerber from my belt, expertly flicking the plier head out of its resting place. “Well, I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

The changeling’s eyes widened in panic at my honesty, and by the time I reached her position she had frozen in fear. Taking advantage of the opportunity, I examined the wound closely, looking for protrusions or fragments. Eventually, the changeling opened her eyes again, fear mixed with curiosity, as again I denied her the pain she was expecting. “So...” I began asking, causing her to flinch again. Ignoring her bodies natural reaction to seemingly everything I did, I continued to ask my question with the same tone of mild annoyance I usually saved for talking to shit-pumps. “Do you have any idea how to fix this?”

“I... I could just use my magic...” she mumbled, hiding behind her teal hair. How in the fuck does she have a full head of hair on a completely chitinous body?

“And you didn’t do this before... because?” I asked, extremely displeased at the turn the conversation had taken.

“I didn’t think of it, ok!?” She shouted frustratedly, scaring several birds that had settled in the aftermath.

“Not so loud!” I hissed as the green aura enveloped her wound. Slowly the shattered chitin began to reform itself, bubbling near the wound, and becoming smooth as glass. “Seriously though, are you okay?”

“Yah...” she looked to her hooves and seemed to shrink into herself. “Why are you here?” she asked shakily.

I replied with a silent blank stare, not really knowing how to answer. “I... uh...” I looked to the tree canopy, hoping I would find an answer somewhere within their depths. “Classified.” I said with sudden resolve. “You don’t have the security clearance to know that.”

“Riiiight...” she replied sarcastically, obviously having seen through my pitiful ruse. “What do you plan on doing then?”

“Finding civilization.” I stated. “Or at least an open field…” I scanned the area around me one last time before breathing a sigh of relief. Nothing else had come out to kill us while we had our guard down. The local wildlife had probably been scared off. Catching her looking apprehensive, I shook my head and headed towards my bivouac site.

“Seriously?” she asked, sounding more frustrated than curious. “That’s a horrible plan… If these guards wanted you dead, then why wouldn’t the others?”

I didn’t correct her. Instead I started the annoying task of taking down my lean-to and packing it into my rucksack. After a silence that was dragged well past the point of discomfort, I finally took a deep breath and turned to face the chitinous quadruped with a small grimace on my face. “It’s all I really can do.”

An even longer silence passed as I continued packing before I heard a feminine cough, as if she were clearing her throat. “It isn’t.” she said demurely.

At this, I stopped packing my ‘luggage’ and looked at her with a raised brow.

Catching my expression, she promptly started stammering. “Er, what I mean is, you could, I mean, you could come with me?”

My stony expression remained while I stared at the giant bug in front of me.

“If, you know… you wanted to that is?” she said shakily. If I looked hard enough, I could even make out a sheen of sweat forming around the crown of her head. Which should have been completely impossible for an arthropod. “I mean… My people are much friendlier to other species than the ponies!” she continued.

So, she gets kicks from asking people who have just killed four members of ‘The Fuzz’ to her house? I thought before replying, “Why would you,” I pointed to the changeling with an eyebrow raised, “want me,” this time I pointed to myself to add emphasis, “to come back to your people?”

“I, er…” her cheeks seemed to be flushing, which again should have been impossible due to her chitinous exoskeleton. “We’ve never seen one of you before…” she finally admitted, hanging her head in shame. “And it would bring my family a lot of honour to be able to study your magic.”

Study my magic? Quickly contemplating if I should tell this still pre gunpowder era how to make explosives, I made up a quick excuse. “Classified.” I said, mentally facepalming at using the same line twice. And this is why I didn’t join IntOps… Quickly realising I just ‘classified’ on impulse without answering the rest of her question, I coughed to cover up the hesitation. “Er, but sure.” I stammered, “I’ll follow you. But know that if you slight me at all, I’m gone.”

She looked on in disbelief for several long seconds before her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Her smile started to stretch to other-worldly proportions, causing me to flinch and reflexively reach for my rifle. Her smile faltered a little at my action, but it didn’t deter her. “Do you need help packing?” she asked moving towards my rucksack.

“No.” I said swiftly, before returning to the process of shoving my sleeping bag into a compression sack.

“Why not?” she whined, “If I helped, we could be out of here so much faster!”

“One soldier, one kit.” I said, speaking with the monotonous drone of a non-commissioned officer. Jesus… when did I get promoted to sergeant? I thought with a dry chuckle at my monotonous one liners. I could almost hear her smile deflating as I continued to work alone.

After shoving the compression sack into the bottom of my rucksack and sealing it, I opened the top compartment and pulled out one of my IMP’s.

“What’s that?” the insect asked innocuously.

“Breakfast.” I said, holding up the fruit pouch contained within the omelette IMP. After ripping it open and quickly slurping down the contents, I buried the aluminum packaging with the casing of yesterdays omelette and started to move.

“That was the fastest I’ve ever seen anyone eat…” She said, tension leaving her body as she realised I wasn’t going to cook my meal. Eventually her looked changed to awe at the fact I ate the contents of the package in under twenty seconds. “Like… ever.”

As the creature continued to blather on, a thought occurred to me; I had no idea what this creature's name was. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, right… introductions. My name is Kania.” She extended a hoof towards me with a smile.

“Private Hein.” I replied, grabbing her hoof and giving it a shake. She twitched in what I presume was fear, so I released her hoof far earlier than a handshake had any right to. “Lead on.” I said, as I threw my rucksack over my shoulders and did up the auxiliary straps.

I readjusted my rucksack while she lead me on a short jaunt through the forest to what looked to be a well traversed path. I mentally face palmed again at the irony of how there is always a road somewhere near you if are lost and decide to camp. Eventually, the sound of us crushing the underbrush was replaced with Kania’s voice, asking even more innocently annoying questions.

“Where are you from?” she asked, eyes alight with curiosity and wonderment.

“Canada.”

“How far away is that?”

“Don’t know.”

“What do you mean by—”

“I don’t fucking know!” I yelled, interrupting her question. I could feel a small crack form in the emotional wall I had built. “I don’t fucking know where I am.” I said with exasperation.

Her ears had fallen to her head in a rather cute display of what I presumed to be apology. “Sorry, I didn’t know…” she mumbled demurely. “Do you not know how you got here?” she asked again, head low and eyes hopeful.

Five seconds of silence passed, then ten, then fifteen before I finally deflated with a massive sigh. “No. Last thing I saw before I ended up here was a desert.”

“A desert?” she asked, a little happiness returning to her voice. “There’s a desert not too far south from here… In fact, that’s actually where we’re going!” She had, for all intents and purposes, returned to her usual cheerful self.

“Oh. Good.” I stated in as dull a tone as humanly possible. “And here’s me, thinking I just got out of the sandbox.”

“Well, there’s nowhere called ‘Sandbox’, but The Badlands are only about seven thousand paces south from here.”

I looked at her like she just grew an extra head. “You measure things in paces? Seriously?”

“Well…” she said, starting to lose her freshly gained confidence, “I just thought… that you might not use hooves, or miles…”

“Erm… How do you get miles out of hooves?”

“Well, ‘mille’ is Ancient Equestrian for one thousand, so… one thousand paces is one mile.” She smiled as she gave me a small lecture in etymology.

“Huh.” I was left with a complete lack of anything intelligent to say. “I can work with miles…”

The next hour was passed with a rather undirected stream of chatter, with her doing most of the talking.. She would ask an incredibly asinine question and I would give a very brief answer. Through the nigh endless ordeal, I learnt that her favourite colour was crimson, she enjoyed spicy food, and she really wanted to go to Las Pegasus.

By that point however, I could feel my feet protesting the march over the uneven terrain and decided it was time to call a halt. We moved a short distance into the bush to avoid detection. When I found a suitable stump-chair, I promptly took off my rucksack and pulled out my two litre canteen along with the drink crystal mix from the Omelette IMP.

“What’s that?” she asked, still overflowing with curiosity as I pulled out a constant stream of items she’d never seen before.

“Juice.” I said, opening the soft canteen and holding it between my legs.

“What flavour?”

I checked the light blue inscription on the package before I shook it several times and tore it open. “It’s Ice flavoured.” I said, nonchalantly, just wanting to down the sport drink.

“Isn’t ice… flavourless?” her expression was rather dumbfounded by this point. It reminded me of the first time I saw the light blue package myself. I poured some of powder into my mouth, then drank some water, swishing the mixture in my mouth for taste. I called this the ‘combat coffee’ method based on the stories my father told me.

“Fuck if I know,” I responded after swallowing. “Tastes pretty good to me.” She offered no response as she watched me drink the crystals directly from the package. I was unsure if she was amazed, amused, or just anxious to get going.

After I finished the pouch, I drank about a quarter of the canteen before placing it back in my pack. “You still haven’t said where we’re going.”

“Oh, umm… no I didn’t,” she said, evading the statement made question.

“And…” I said, drawing it out a wee bit more than necessary and waving my hand in a circular motion, to prompt her to continue.

“We're going home,” she said, a nervous smile adorning her face.

Thoughts of my family pushed through the wall in my head.

My mother's smiling face.

My father’s approving nod.

My brothers in arms, and the bonds we shared.

“I’m not going home anytime soon.” I said with finality, far harsher than I intended. Oddly enough, I felt bad for the poor little creature whose ears were now stapled to her skull.

“Fuck.” A simple word. A word of many applications to the military. In this context, I used it to convey an apology. Short, and with a sigh at the end. Based on the fact she was cowering slightly, whimpering in fear, my word had been taken grossly out of context.

“Look, I didn’t mean to yell at you like that.” I said after a lengthy silence. “It was unprofessional of me, as I let emotion control me.” She let out a small sigh as I droned robotically. Noticing this tactic not working in the slightest, I decided to engage her in conversation.

“Tell me about your home.” I said simply, a small crack of a smile coming onto my face as hers lit up at the prospect of up-talking her people. Rule one of interacting with others: Let them talk about themselves.

“It’s a wonderful place.” She began timidly, her voice barely above a whisper, but with faint hope that I was actually interested. “It’s a little dry, but Changelings don’t really need moisture to live, so we don’t mind it.”

“Well, you can tell me all about it while we walk more.” With that, I grabbed the straps of my rucksack and brought it back to my body, silently enduring the pain of the last hour of marching. My shins were still ablaze with pain while the small of my back felt like snapping at any second, but I persevered.

As we continued our journey she began speaking again, apparently far less reluctant than before. “Our home is on the inside of a mountain.” As the first thing she told me, it was not very promising. I had yet to take my mountain ops course and had no idea how to fight in mountainous terrain.

“The Home Range is in the middle of the desert I mentioned earlier.” I let out an involuntary shudder as she offhandedly mentioned that I would be going back to a desert.

“Of course it is…” I mumbled, causing her to quirk a non-existent eyebrow at me. Truth be told, this really freaked me out. Insects shouldn’t be able to move solid chitin like that.

After several seconds of not getting an answer, she continued with the internal geography. “The corridors are huge, large enough for twelve ‘lings to trot abreast, and just as high. There are vertical tunnels for winged creatures such as us to speed up travel times, but all of the levels are interconnected for our ground faring guests.”

That one took a moment to process as I looked over the changeling’s wings, before just assuming her race was like the Zerg from Starcraft and had different mutations for genetic versatility or something along those lines. I honestly didn’t care at the moment.

It was at this point in the conversation when the ruck march took over, and I could feel my mind slowly turning off. She kept talking which was fine, but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. It was quite common practice for lower ranking soldiers to just shut down on endurance runs like the one I was on now and it was a hard habit to break.

We walked for another half hour. I could feel the toll it was taking on my body and knew I was going to be stopping soon. Maybe I’d get another hour out of my body, but I didn’t plan on making any unnecessary risks.

A branch broke in the woods to my right, interrupting my train of thought. Instinctively, my gun swept over the area while I took a knee. Seeing the very confused looking civilian in my line of fire, I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her behind me.

While she screamed at the way I manhandled her, I pushed all thoughts of her out of my mind as I felt the sudden rush of adrenaline fill my body. Focusing all of my attention on my surroundings, I scanned the bush, right to left, trying to discern where the perpetrator was. After seeing no movement for ten seconds, I lowered the stabilizing hand on my Carbine and undid my rucksack straps, letting the massive contraption fall and hit the ground with a dull thud.

Taking cover behind the oversized clothing packed sandbag, I yelled “Come out with your hands up!”

“There’s nothing over there,” the Changeling stated plainly. “What’s wrong with you?”

Out of my peripheral vision, I could see her glancing at me with a puzzled expression. I could also see a winged lion jumping for her fully exposed form. Acting fast, I swung the muzzle of my rifle to meet the attacker and fired several shots into the creature’s side, forcing it a few millimeters off its course. Just enough to save its target. The Changeling ducked with a scream as the creature of myth stumbled into a prone position. It stood up and stared at me with a look of pure unbridled rage.

Taking aim for the creatures head, I fired several more times, slamming into its shoulders and the side of it’s jaw. As the lion was almost eating the barrel of my gun, I felt and heard the most alarming sound any soldier can hear: Nothing.

The weight of the massive creature came down on me, throwing me backwards and my carbine in the opposite direction. I attempted to roll with it, but the weight was too much. Rather than ending up in a position of control, it used my own momentum against me, continued the roll I tried to start, and landed us over a small clearance ditch, the creature on top.

My mind was clouded with fear. My gun was gone. My platoon couldn’t help me. The only thing I could think of at the time was my bayonet. Drawing my bayonet, I plunged it into the creature's neck. The first time it looked surprised. The second it time scared. The third time, it looked dead.

As I lay under the now unmoving body of the lion-bat-thing, I took some time to blink. Finding I quite enjoyed the feeling of blinking, I did it several times to fully experience this ‘new’ sensation. It was as if I was a newborn, taking my first steps into the world again. The world around me seemed to just light up with wonder at the fact that I was still alive. I could feel my heartbeat. The rhythm was off, though.

Taking a moment to count the beats, it just didn’t add up. It was almost as if I had two hearts. Both of which were slowing down at an equal rate. The weight atop me moved. My heart rate skyrocket again as I suddenly made sense of the situation. It was still alive. My eyes popped open, a sensation I did not enjoy nearly as much as blinking and grabbed for the knife again, only to find it missing from the neck of the creature. Again I felt the harsh rocking of its movement until it ended up rolling off of me.

Rushing to scramble away from my pursuer, I scrambled up the ditch and looked over my shoulder, knowing my ass would be delicious prime beef any second. What I saw shocked me into inaction.

I saw a scared black bug on top of the beast, my bloodied bayonet wedged in the creatures spine, held in her hooves and tears streaking down her face.

At this point, my brain received a little too much blood and my vision faded to red.

Chapter 4

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston Churchill

Chapter 4: A Whole New World

My head was pounding when my eyes opened. The desert sun was casting down it’s brilliant glow as I rolled onto my front. My ears were ringing loudly. I could hear voices in the distance, although they sounded distorted, as if they were underwater.

I tried standing, but a case of vertigo left me nauseous so I sat on my knees for a moment. I looked around as my vision started to clear. There was a repetitive knocking sound coming from all around me in staccato bursts. I felt like I should be doing something important right now.

Looking to my left, I saw an unoccupied trench site with a C6 general purpose machine gun laying unmanned. That shouldn’t be… I thought groggily as I made my way to the support weapon to keep sentry until its owner got back. Looking to my right, I could see two soldiers in a similarly entrenched site, only their guns were flashing and creating the familiar noise I was hearing.

As I found myself lying by the C6, a sudden flash of clarity hit me. My headache cleared and I grabbed the weapon, hoping it was loaded, and took aim on several insurgent soldiers laying down fire on my brothers-in-arms. I looked at the ammo feed, and saw that I had about half a belt left, and with no extra belts, I’d have to make this count.

I found the largest cluster of enemy combatants and fired on them. When they all had their heads down, I heard the telltale poping noise of someone firing an M203 grenade launcher. The explosion hit the enemy position dead on, knocking out the low mud wall they were hiding behind. Surveying the battlefield, I saw several large clusters of dead hostiles. Looking back to friendly ranks, I saw a few wounded friendlies, and a few who were not so lucky. One of those unlucky few was the C6 gunner whom I was lying upon. I felt my eyes water as the headache returned full force.

<(-------------------------)>

I awoke, almost disoriented to the point of puking. I made a grab for my rifle, but it was in none of the usual spots I would put it while I slept. Panicking, I ripped my eyes open to try and see where I was.

The light burned as I forced my eyes to stay open and drove myself to my feet. The distinct lack of my weapons brought the fight with the chimera back to the fore of my mind. Seeing the body nowhere to be found, along with neither my knife nor my rifle, I assumed the worst. It had taken me off to its lair and was going to eat me. Again the adrenaline tore through my still exhausted body while I crept through the forested area I was in until I found a suitably tall hill to perch myself on.

Just on the other side of the hill, however, was the black carapace of a small changeling trying to drag my rucksack towards me. With her mouth. Still confused, I dropped my guard as the overwhelming headache returned. Gunfire echoed in my mind, a nightmare of my past clinging to the waking world. I got up and stumbled towards the changeling.

I think she gasped when she saw me coming towards her, but I didn’t care. As the minute she stepped away from my ruck, I unzipped the top most pouch and pulled out a small white bottle. Opening it up, I pulled out the toilet paper I used as a sound buffer and grabbed two large green gel capsules, and a small red pill. The only adornment on the three pills was the number ‘400’.

Throwing the pills into my mouth, I took my hard canteen out of my tacvest and drank greedily from it, swallowing the pills in the process. Whether through a form of placebo effect or the drugs being damn good, I immediately started to feel slight relief. The red caffeine pill was giving me a boost of energy while the two capsules of ibuprofen were soothing my aching head.

“Where’s my rifle?” I asked now that I had a slightly clearer view of the world around me.

“Uh, what’s a rifle?” she asked innocently.

“The thing that kills things and makes loud noises.” I said sighing, not caring about how she interpreted that.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in realisation, pointing with a hoof in the direction she came from. “It’s still over there.”

After grunting in affirmation, I grabbed my rucksack, prepared myself for how much it was going to suck, and threw it over my shoulders. As I walked in the direction she indicated, I did up the chest and waist belts on the ruck to ease my sore body.

“How do you carry that thing?” She asked as she panted lightly.

“With my arms,” I replied, not really giving a shit about anything but my rifle.

“No, I mean, it’s just so heavy!” she said, exasperation evident in her voice.

“Practice.” She groaned at my answer, and continued to lead me to my rifle in silence.

We weren’t far from where I was pounced on by the giant cat. When we got closer, she picked the weapon up with her levitation and floated it to me. Pointing the weapon in a safe direction, I rotated it to the left and looked into the extractor to see just what went wrong. Just as I had expected, there was one bullet partially in the chamber and another sticking halfway out of the ejection port. Rolling my eyes, I released the magazine and put it into my empty mag pouch on my tacvest. Crouching, I rotated the rifle ‘till the ejection port was facing down. I pulled the cocking handle back and watched as both the rounds fell to the ground. Releasing the cocking handle, I pulled it back again, this time rotating the weapon back to the left so I could inspect the chamber. Seeing no round, I released the handle, drove my palm into the forward assist on the right side of the rifle, took an aimed shot at a tree, and let the rifle tell me it was empty. After closing the ejection port cover, I laid down my weapon, and slotted a fresh magazine into the housing.

The changeling watched as I performed a rather basic ‘bolt partially forward’ stoppage drill, eyes wide as I went through the series of extremely practiced movements. Finding a nice tree, I took off my rucksack and leaned heavily against it, holding a hand to my head in pain.

My shoulders had started to go numb from the rucksack by this point, and I was glad to have taken it off. “Fuck me. Over,” I droned as I felt my eyes glaze over. The changeling giggled at my plight, causing me to scowl. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead.” I said, not bothering to look up but entirely willing to bring her mood down to my level.

“Oh,” she said, blushing slightly, “I know, and I was going to thank you for it, but I was too busy fixing all of your broken ribs.”

I threw my hands up in plight. “Yup, it’s official. I don’t give a fuck about anything anymore.” I took off my helmet, placed it on the top of my rucksack, and continued to be a useless sack of shit against the tree.

After several long seconds of silence, the changeling looked at me with a slightly worried frown. “You should drink more water,” she said quietly.

“I have to conserve water,” I rebutted. “Speaking of, if you live in a desert, shouldn’t you be packing a dozen litres of water just to get back home?”

“I… uhh…” She looked at her hooves as she sat down next me. “The ponies robbed me.”

“Riiight.” I drawled sarcastically as I reached back to my rucksack, pulling out another IMP. I held back a look of disgust and almost puked in my mouth as I read the title. It was the dreaded ‘Salmon Fillet w/ Tuscany Sauce’. “Want some food?” I asked, quickly hatching a plan on how to pawn it off.

She looked at me with her large azure eyes, almost seeming to be on the brink of tears. So I opened the IMP, pulled out the aluminum wrap with black lettering that might as well have been the ‘toxic’ symbol, and threw it in her general direction. Luckily, the Salmon IMP was the only one in existence with black lettering which made it easy to tell apart from every other still slightly edible IMP Canada could offer.

I grabbed the dessert that came with it and ripped open the pouch of wet packed peaches, slurping it down greedily before looking at the confused changeling. She had the aluminum wrap in her magical grip, trying to figure out what to do with it. Grabbing the giant spoon from inside the IMP, I handed it to her as well, just adding to her confusion.

“Rip the top open, and eat the contents with the spoon.” I said, trying to hold back laughter. “Also, do you know where my bayonet is?”

After easily tearing through the aluminum, she pointed a hoof to a nearby tree where I clearly saw the knife, buried up to the hilt in wood. I blinked several times, before the overwhelming smell of the horrible IMP beside me took hold of my nose and forced me into action. I stood up and walked nonchalantly towards the tree in an attempt to flee the alchemical horrors being unleashed upon the new world and placed my hands on the knife.

I looked back before I pulled to see how the changeling-turned-test-subject was doing. She was gagging on her first spoonful of fish, and when she saw me looking she quickly put an extremely forced smile on her face, likely in an attempt to not look a gift horse in the mouth. I almost felt bad for her. Almost.

I gave the knife a tug and it practically flew out of the tree, catching me off guard and sending me stumbling backwards. How in the… Observing the hole in the tree, I noticed a sheen of red smeared across the wood. Wood and blood on metal don’t make for a good lubricating mix, but for whatever reason, it worked, and I had my knife. I wasn’t about to begin arguing logic at this point. Instead of trying to figure this out, I just shrugged my shoulders, moved back to our temporary picnic area, and grabbed my bottle of CLP oil from my ruck.

The first thing I noticed was that the changeling was no longer eating the ‘Salmon’, nor was the package anywhere near us. She had either finished eating and buried it, or would rather have starved than eat it and buried it anyway. I assumed it was the second one.

The second thing I noticed was that her shell was slightly greener than usual. Again, that could have been a product of the light, or it could have been a product of the IMP. The latter seemed far more likely to me.

Allowing myself to laugh slightly at her plight, I lubed up my knife with CLP, and then cleaned it off with a rag I had in my cleaning kit.

“What are you doing?” She asked woozily.

“Cleaning my weapons.” I stated as I slid my bayonet back into its sheath on the side of my tacvest. “And preparing my rifle for forest warfare. How far out are we from the desert?” I asked as I removed the magazine from my weapon.

“About an hour,” she responded, watching silently as I removed the bolt from my rifle and gave it a good lubing. After a solid fifteen minutes of just cleaning my rifle up, I put the bolt back in and went through the modified function test to make sure everything still worked. The changeling tilted her head at the myriad of clicks and clacks that came from the rifle as I cocked it and dry fired it several times in succession while flicking the saftey switch to different positions. “What are you doing now?” she finally asked.

“Adjusting my weapon for fighting in a forest.” I said, sliding a full magazine into the housing. “In the desert, you don’t want any excess oil in your weapon, ‘cause sand will stick to it.” I grabbed the partially empty mag and started re-bombing it with ammo. “In a forest environment where it’s just generally… wetter, you want more oil, to keep moisture out.” She had been nodding silently as I explained, most likely not comprehending the subject at all.

When I had finally packed everything away, I looked at the changeling with a soft smile and shrugged. “Thanks. For saving me.”

It took a moment for her to register what I said before she smiled back, shrugged, and said “No problem.” Her entire being seemed to be brighter.

Shaking my head at the ridiculous notion, I stood up, grabbed my rucksack, and set out again, only looking back once to see if Kania was following.

“You know,” she said, catching up to me at a trot, “you really shouldn’t be walking around with a bag that heavy, right?”

“Why not?” I asked. “I’m practically infantry…”

“Because I just finished healing half a dozen of your bone fractures a half hour ago.” She stated bluntly.

“Meh,” I responded. “I’ve definitely been through worse.” After a moment of mental searching, I came up with a quote that my dad had on one of his military shirts that I saw once a decade ago. “Pain is temporary, glory is eternal.” I mimed, taking strength in the phrase I had used to get me through basic training.

“As poetic as that is, I seriously think we should stop and rest.”

“I only have a week of food left for the two of us at the rate I’m rationing, maybe less. If I feel like suffering dehydration, then I can stretch my water out for two days.” I took a quick swig from my camelback. “Speaking of, I haven’t offered you any yet. Want some?”

Her ears splayed as I lectured her on why we couldn’t stop and rest, before she demurely shook her head. “I don’t need to eat or drink for the trip.” she stated almost too quietly for me to hear.

“If I let you starve, I’d be doing my uniform a disservice. That is literally one of three things I will not do.” I said harshly, remembering how hard those three things were beaten into new recruits. I had adopted them as a self motto before I joined the army, but I never had the words to vocalize what I felt.

Never disgrace yourself;

Never disgrace your family, and above all;

Never disgrace your uniform, or the soldiers who wore it before you.

Again she looked to her hooves. “Honestly,” she started, looking back up to me. “I’ve gone for longer with less…” The creepy smile that accompanied her next sentence unnerved me, “Besides, your love is delicious.”

As we continued walking, my left eye twitching, her smile slowly turned into a frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I responded quickly, throwing up a fake smile. “I just don’t get your culture’s jokes, is all.”

“Jokes?” she responded, sounding genuinely confused. I could feel my heartbeat increasing as I felt that familiar tingling in my spine that always meant something was about to either go horribly wrong, or just be plain stupid.

“You know…” I said with trepidation, choosing my words as carefully as I could with adrenaline starting to pump into my body. “You eating my non-existent love.” I accidently let out a choked laugh, letting my nervousness show.

The sudden look of fear that was etched across her face was more than enough to confirm that she did indeed, somehow eat my feelings. She opened and closed her mouth several times in indecision. I cut her off before she could voice an argument with a sigh, and a very simple statement: “Zulu Foxtrot.”

She seemed confused at my burst of military lingo because she stopped gasping like a fish and asked “What?”

“It’s a saying from where I’m from.” I said simply, explaining it as I would to any civilian. “It replaces ‘Zero Fucks’ with their equivalent in the NATO standard phonetic alphabet.” I could feel my breathing becoming laboured as the march wore on my body. “All that it basically means, is that I literally have zero fucks to give. I don’t care.” I shook my head to emphasize my last point.

“I had zero fucks to give before I got here.” I wanted to get rid of my body’s weariness despite the fact that I knew we had only been walking for a half hour tops. So I started talking. “When I got here, I was ambushed by another of those winged lions, and a fucking pink unicorn. These aren’t things you find in my reality, you know?”

She nodded along with a small smile on her face as I spoke, probably having no clue what I was talking about but not really caring either. “The stupid thing just pauses in mid air like some fucking cartoon, so I do what anyone sensible would do and shoot the fucking thing. The next morning, I’m ambushed by talking armoured horses. Later in the day, a changeling comes up and helps me.” I could feel a tear welling in my left eye, something that’s always happened to me when I’m at the limits of my frustration. It’s an oddity of mine that I’ve never been able to explain, even to myself.. “And all the while, I have zero radio signal. Fuck sake…”

“And you’ve never seen anything like this before?” she asked, concern whittled into her voice. She continued after I shook my head, “Must have been quite the culture shock… If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never seen anything like your clothing or your armour.”

It took me a few seconds to realise she was referring to my frag vest, before I started chuckling lightly. “This piece of shit?” I asked, incredulous, “This frag vest can’t do shit. At most, it’ll stop low velocity shrapnel from a grenade or an RPG, but it’s absolute shite against bullets.” She just nodded her head with a smile before I sighed again. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Nope.” she said cheerfully. “But if it makes you feel any better, the forest should be ending soon.”

I looked ahead of us and could see no end to the green nightmare. All I could see for miles in any direction was trees and underbrush. “I don’t see a desert anywhere in our near future.”

“It’s only another five or so minutes.” She said idly. My eye twitched again, and we continued in silence.

Five minutes later, I tripped on a root and found myself blinded by a suddenly very overbearing sun. When I found the strength to open my eyes, my body was literally half in and half out of a wall of trees. In a straight line to my left and right was forest. In front of me, was a desert. I slowly lifted myself from the ground and dusted myself off.

“Well. That just happened,” I said to no one in particular. I could make out a lone peak in the distance, probably belonging to the mountain that was the home of the changeling whose name I had forgotten an hour ago. I estimated that we had another four hours of hard rucking away.

I did an about turn and marched back into the forest. “Hey, what are you doing?” the changeling asked, clearly confused by my antics.

“Setting up camp. You couldn’t pay enough to walk all that today.” I found a suitable site for my bivouac and dropped my rucksack. “What was your name again?” I asked as the changeling as she sat down near my bag.

“Kania,” she said evenly, probably masking her disappointment.

“Tell me about that whole ‘love’ thing again.” I began a sweep of the perimeter as I waited for what I presumed to be the sparknotes version of how changelings feed.

“We gain a sort of… metaphysical sustenance out of it,” she started. “It fuels our magic, which we can use to fuel ourselves. We can use these emotions to bypass physical nourishment. We can also form sort of… bonds with other species using emotional links.”

“What kind of bonds?” I asked, starting on the camp itself.

“All kinds. It can be anywhere from a simple bond of friendship, to a symbiotic bond of love, platonic or otherwise. If a changeling falls in love with another species, she instinctually shares her powers, and likewise takes them from the other party. If a ‘ling were to reveal themselves to their significant other, then it can be willingly on both sides. If not, then their lover would just feel… different around the ‘ling.”

“That’s… actually kind of fascinating.” I said, throwing the finishing touches of scrim onto my lean-to. “So, you refuse food and water, because you literally don’t need them…” I trailed off as I thought deeper on the subject. “So long as I give you my love. That’s really awkward.”

“Er, but…” She stammered. “I thought you were giving me your love?” she asked awkwardly.

Putting on a stony face, I thought back over my feelings during the day. “Nope,” I said without the flicker of a smile. “I don’t think I’ve felt anything but confusion and exhaustion since I got here…”

“Then you must have a miraculous connection with a loved one where you’re from,” she said, face brightening as she put a few pieces together in her mind.

“Nope.” I again replied, flipping her smile upside down. “I didn’t have a girlfriend or anything like that back home…”

“Parents?”

“Maybe… Haven’t really talked to them in a couple months though…”

“Friends?”

“Most of them are dead.”

At that, she let out a mortified squeak; clearly sorry she’d asked. “I’m so so—”

“Don't you fucking apologise to me!” I yelled, interrupting her. Her mortification quickly changed to fear. “Each and every single fucking one of them gave their lives for their fucking country! We trained for it, and each of us would gladly do the same!”

“I... I honestly didn’t know…” She said, splaying her ears.

“I don’t give a fuck!” I screamed. “I’m a soldier. They were all fucking soldiers. It’s what we fucking do.” Realising I was yelling, I cut myself off, looked away, and took three deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Think about happy thoughts… like kittens… and Aqua.

By the time I had put a forced smile on my face and turned around, she had already started trotting to the other side of the clearing and was piling up some leaves into what I assumed was a makeshift bed.

She gave me one last glance before she looked away again and lay down in her bed of leaves. I could have sworn I saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes.

I sighed. Something I had noticed was becoming a habit. “We’ll rest here for a few hours, then break camp and boot ‘er.” I said, hoping she heard me. Deciding I didn’t need my sleeping bag because it was still the middle of the day, I pulled my ranger blanket from my rucksack and lay down on top of it. After taking off my tacvest and placing it near me, I curled into a human ball.

Lazily reaching into my left tunic breast pocket, I grabbed my phone and hit the power switch. After it goes through its boot up sequence, I take a glance at the remaining power and see it sitting at 77%. I flick through the options menu until I find the power saving app and place the phone in sleep mode. I then set a silent alarm to go off four hours from now.

I had no idea if my phone’s time was correct, but assuming it really was 1255 we would be on the road again by 1800 and the desert would be starting to cool off. Hopefully enough for us to complete the several hour slog to the mountain without dying of heat stroke.

I grabbed my floppy hat from my pants, placed it over my head to block the sun from my eyes, placed my phone between my legs, and hoped that I didn’t get stabbed in my sleep. Soon a fog covered my mind, and I drifted into an uneasy rest, letting my body naturally fill in the curves of the ground beneath me.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Journey, Part One

I awoke to the soothing ministrations of my phone vibrating between my calves. “Fuck off…” I mumbled as I grabbed the offending device, stopping the alarm. The first thing I checked was the battery life. 77%. I held the power button until my phone shut itself off.

I was groggy. On an intellectual level, this bothered me. On a physical level, I didn’t give two fucks about anything. Grabbing my rifle, I stood from my meager cover and lazily scanned the surrounding area. “Fuck,” I muttered, realising I still wasn’t dreaming. Every time I blinked my eyes felt heavy, almost as if I would fall asleep while standing. The forest canopy blocked most of the sunlight which I was thankful for because cursing the sun would have cost me more energy than I felt like spending at that moment.

Looking over at the sleeping changeling, I noticed her twitch a few times. Sighing, I made my way over to the oddly adorable creature. “Kiera,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Get up.”

Her eyes opened in a panic when my hand touched her, then she looked confused. Looking back towards me, she donned a rather hurt looking expression. “My name is Kania…”

“Jesus fuck,” I said, mentally facepalming at my horrible memory for names. “Sorry.”

She sighed. “It’s alright, I guess. Is it time to get going?”

She looked far more awake than I felt. “After breakfast.” I reached into my bag and grabbed for the leftovers from my previous two meals. I ‘drank’ a strawberry sport drink package and slowly ate some stale Ritz crackers.

When that was out of the way, I sluggishly packed away my blanket and my groundsheet, yawning several times as I worked. “I hate waking up…” I grumbled, remembering how I used to love waking up, so long as I wasn’t in CFB Wainwright. “I don’t want to ruck march…” I whined. As we passed into the blindingly bright desert, the sun was well into its downward arc. It would still be another two hours before it was on the horizon. “I hate sunlight…”

“You sure complain a lot…” Kania observed dryly, obviously not at all moved by my hundred pounds of plight.

“Embrace the suck,” I replied cryptically.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It’s something I heard from the Americans. Means something like ‘Life sucks when you’re infantry. Get over it.’”

“What’s an American?”

“Someone from America.”

“Like how you’re from Canadia?”

“Yes, like tha—” I stopped mid sentence, thinking over her words. “No, I’m from Canada.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No problem.”

My legs already felt tired from rucking for the ten or so minutes we had been in the desert. I really did not want to go for another 20km to the base of the giant conical mountain. “So, you said something about there being… ‘guest species’ in your hive?”

“Umm… We don’t live in a hive.” she replied, obviously offended. “We aren’t insects you know.”

I didn’t, so I shrugged in response.

“Whatever,” she said icily. “Yah, theres all kinds of other species who live in Mount Éros. From visiting minotaur noblemen, to dragon diplomats, to griffon peasants. The only living creatures who don’t visit us, or even acknowledge our existence, are those agápasen ponies.” Her anger let me know that whatever she just said, was some kind of curse.

“Say again, over?” I said, not quite understanding exactly what she said.

“Oh, it means something equivalent to ‘bucking’.” she replied neutrally.

“Uh huh.” Taking her not so helpful explanation in stride, I let her continue her explanation.

“We actually have a fairly well established trading hub.” Pride was evident in her voice as she continued to describe more of her home, even though she probably said most of this to me earlier when I was in my rucking trance. “But since the ponies control about eighty percent of trade because of the…” she paused to spit on the ground before grimacing and continuing. “... Sun Goddess, we only make a fraction of what we should. Not only that, but with the recent return of the Moon Goddess, everyone has been scrambling to try and gain their favour with Equestria.”

Right. Goddesses. Of course. Why the fuck not. I smiled and nodded, drinking a bit of water from my Camelbak as I waited for her to continue.

“Every mention of changelings in Equestria vilifies us. When the traders come back, they no longer want to trade. They don’t shower us with affection, or even sympathy. They just hate… So much hate.” She shivered.

I honestly felt bad for the little creature. It sounded like she had suffered a lot over her presumably short life. “Wait,” I said, mostly in thought. “Why were you in Equestria if they hate you there?”

“Er…” Shame was the predominant emotion on her face. Exactly how I was able to read that, I don’t think I’ll ever know. “Well… you see…” She was stalling. I wonder if I can convey through emotions how few fucks I give. “Iwaskindofinfiltratingthemtostealtheirlovetosurvive!”

I stared in shock after her run-on ‘sentence’. “Wow. It almost sounded like you just said that you were stealing peoples emotions…”

“I kind of sort of was,” she mumbled, shame-faced.

“Oh. Can’t you just get love from other changelings?”

By unspoken mutual agreement, we desperately latched onto the new conversation topic to avoid discussing her emotional thievery. “No. We can transfer gained love, but we can’t create our own.”

The more she explained her species’ biology, the less sense it made to me. A creature like her simply couldn’t exist. This entire world couldn’t exist. I was trapped far from home in a land of magical fantasy with my entire purpose d'être dashed upon the rocks of the earth I once knew. The realisation made me feel as if a part of my very soul had been taken from me.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly. I felt a wetness on my cheeks and realised she had caught me crying.

I inhaled sharply, then let out a slow exhale. My eyes darted around the bleak terrain to help me find a way out of answering truthfully, but the dreary landscape held no escape. “No.” I replied sadly, continuing in a whisper, “Just another disposable hero, abandoned to the annals of time.”

“What do you mean by ‘disposable hero?’ No one is disposable!” I could see the glistening of tears in her eyes before I had to look away.

“I’m a soldier. It’s the life I’ve chosen.” She opened her mouth to cut me off, but I spoke anyway, “My purpose has been taken from me.”

“Soldiers defend the innocent. You defended me, didn’t you?” she asked, a tear sliding down her confused face.

“My purpose is to serve Canada, and her people. Nothing more, nothing less.” I blinked hard, trying to stop the flow of tears by concentrating on the massive weight on my back.

“You can still serve her from here…”

Ignoring her, I picked up the pace and grabbed the radio headpiece from its dangling position on my tacvest. “This is One-On—”

My radio call was cut short by an abrupt scream from behind me. Turning, I saw Kania doubled over and clutching her head in her hooves. “By Éros!” she screamed, “What did you do?” Her eyes were still clamped shut as I approached her twitching form.

“Er…” I replied dumbly. “I tried to contact literally anyone?”

“But it hurt so badly!” she all but wailed.

“I… That makes no sense… It’s a bloody radio… And besides, didn’t you respond to my radio procedures earlier?” I said with a raised brow.

“I responded to a voice in my head and followed the magical trace.” She replied, rubbing her temples.

“Right. And that makes you sound crazy,” I said with an eyeroll, completely ignoring the fact that I had indeed seen magic performed in the world I now inhabited. “Actually, we should experiment!”

“Wait, what?” she mumbled, a look of horror on her face as I turned the cryptography knob back to PT.

“Ready?” I asked, a manic grin on my face.

“No!” She yelled, back pedalling from me with her eyes wide in terror.

I pushed the PTT switch and waited for a response from Kania. When none came, I put down the receiver and looked up to the changeling who was huddled in a trembling ball of tears. “Aww shit… Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay to you!” She yelled, not really asking a question at all.

“Well,” I said sarcastically, “You aren’t doubled over in pain.”

She blinked.

I blinked.

She blinked again.

“Huh. I guess you’re right.” she mumbled, giving herself a once over. “That was still really reckless though.”

“You can’t gain ground without an offencive.”

“Still… You really scared me…”

“Sorry,” I said, glancing back to the radio. “But seriously, it was the only way to really test just how in the fuck you responded to a radio message without a radio set of your own…”

“But I heard it clear as day.” she seemed just as confused as me by this point and stared at the radio.

Looking over the radio, I saw that it was still on channel 2 as I hadn’t touched it since I called for help, and that the frequency was set to 49900. This wouldn’t have stood out nearly as much to me if this was what I had set it before I left the FOB. Channel 2 was supposed to be on frequency 35500, which means that somehow the frequency changed when I hopped worlds.

Wanting to appear as in control of the situation as possible, I did what any sane soldier would do and started turning knobs. The first thing to change was the channel. I set the channel knob to 3, noting it was on channel 36500 which was what it was supposed to be on and grabbed the receiver again.

Holding down the push-to-talk switch on the headset, I looked straight at Kania. “Can you hear this?”

When she shook her head no, I switched the radio back to channel 2, and spoke again. “How about now?” Both of her ears twitched when I spoke this time, giving me the answer even before she confirmed my suspicions that she had indeed heard it. Changing the plain text back to its original encryption settings, I tapped the PTT switch again, immediately letting it go when I heard the static of an in-use line. Kania’s reaction to the low decibel static was to scrunch up her eyes and wince in pain with a low hiss.

“Okay, that’s enough of that.” she stated with finality.

“Yah… You want some headache drugs?” I switched the crypto knob back to plain text to avoid accidentally injuring my companion further.

“Drugs? You mean like Cannabis?” Kania’s head tilted much the same way a dogs would when it was expecting something.

“No. Not fucking weed…” It was hard resisting the urge to facepalm at her question. To assist me, I grabbed the pill bottle I had stored in one of my utility pouches, opened it up, and grabbed a small green liquid gel capsule. “Ibuprofen.”

“Gesundheit,” she responded with a straight face.

“It’s the chemical in the pill. Just swallow it, and the pain will go away.” Even though I knew I was probably just giving her a placebo, it was better than nothing.

“Is it safe?” she asked with trepidation, levitating the pill from my grip.

“Would I do something to deliberately hurt you?” I asked innocently.

“Yes,” she said, giving me a minor guilt trip before she brought the pill to her muzzle and stopped short. “Do you have any water?”

“So now you want water from me,” I said as I pulled out my canteen from my tacvest, “even though you think I would hurt you? How do you know it’s not poisoned?”

She grabbed the hard plastic bottle in her magic with the pill, before taking a swig of water and swallowing the pill. “A little trust goes a long way, right?”

“Touché,” I responded with a simple head nod, as I took back the canteen.

When I looked to objective, the mountain looked no closer, but the sun was steadily gliding towards the horizon. “We should make camp before it gets too cold.” I commented to the changeling.

“Right… You said you’ve been in a desert before, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how cold it gets at night, right?”

“Yes.”

“I… uhh… Have no way to retain body heat in the desert night…” Her sheepish look probably would have melted the heart of a lesser man, but I couldn’t help but think of what she was implying.

“Right. You can share my sleeping bag.” I said with a roll of my eyes. I had shared my sleeping bag plenty of times on the colder nights with both men and women. If it was necessary to survive, most soldiers wouldn’t think twice about getting comfy with each other.

“You’re just going to… sleep with me?” she asked, incredulous.

“Well, what do you want me to do? I only have one sleeping bag.”

“Right…” she mumbled, blushing. “Can I help you with anything, at least?”

Considering her request, I looked over the current problem of making shelter in a flat desert. “Yes, actually, you can. When I get the lean to set up, put some sand over the edge. I really don’t want to dig right now...”

<(-------------------------)>

Construction of the camp went by fairly quickly as it always did when there was more than one person doing the work. When Kania went to light a fire however, I stopped her. “We can’t afford to be seen. No fires.”

“But, how will we cook our food?” she asked innocently.

“Well, my rations come pre cooked, so I’m going to eat them cold.” A lightbulb lit in my head as I remembered our previous conversation about changeling eating habits. “And besides, didn’t you say you ate emotions?”

At this remark, her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, her face became cherry red, and she started stuttering. “I… But… You…”

After I chuckled her stammering stopped, but her blush continued. “Relax, Kania. I’m joking.”

Her only response was to stick out her tongue and pout in my direction.

After a second wave of the sillies took me, I shook my head in dismissal. “Seriously though, I would love to learn how that works.”

The sun had set by the time she finished explaining to me how changelings ‘ate’ love using a lot of words I’m pretty sure she made up on the spot. It wasn’t exactly a necessity for them as they could survive off of real food, but love was vastly more nourishing for them. I started getting very sleepy however, when she got into the thaumaturgical reasoning for this.

“Right,” I said, stifling a yawn. “I think it’s time to hit the fart sack, before it starts getting too cold.”

“The what?” she exclaimed in horror.

“The fart sack. My sleeping bag.” I explained. “It’s a common term in the army, due to military rations giving everyone severe gas.”

“That’s… Kinda gross.” she said, looking to the sleeping bag where it lay, most likely contemplating whether to go through with her plan to stay warm.

Moving over to the sleeping bag, I unzipped it and started crawling in, my fighting and dying gear settled neatly to the right of the bag, so I could get to it in a pinch.

After an exaggerated sigh, Kania started making her way towards the bag as well, but I stopped her before she could get in. “One sec, I need to dress down.”

“What?” she asked again as I sighed at the complete lack of common terms between us. Rather than answering her, I pulled down my pants, letting them rest around my ankles, then pulled my shirts up until they both hung off my neck.

“Alright, get in.” I said, holding up the flap on the sleeping bag. “It might be a bit uncomfortable at first.”

“Right…” her still body brought me to the conclusion that she was staring at my mostly naked form.

“See anything you like?” I asked sarcastically, chuckling as she blushed again.

“No!” she stated far too quickly, before scrambling into the bag with her back to me. I had already positioned my two litre canteen below the head area on the sleeping bag so it only took me a few seconds to find my comfy spot. Kania on the other hand seemed to be trying to avoid physical contact with me in the tight confines of the sleeping bag, almost as if she was scared of getting close to me.

To remedy this, I grabbed her by the midsection and pulled her close. The feeling of hard chitin was what I had expected, but as it turned out, her exoskeleton seemed to be far more malleable than I would have guessed. It still had the hard edge you would find in bones, but it also had a measure of softness that you would find in cartilage. I filed that thought away for later. “You’re the one that wanted this…” I said as I felt her abdomen rise and fall in tandem with her ragged breathing. Oddly enough, I could also feel her heart beating far faster than my own.

“Sorry…” she mumbled, heart rate still racing.

“Holy fuck, Kania… calm down or you’ll have an aneurysm.” I stated flatly, hoping that changeling hearts didn’t normally beat that quickly.

Her only response was to whimper faintly and take long breaths to try to calm herself. “Don’t worry Kania, I’m not gonna hurt you,” I said in an attempt to stop her from panicking and making my rest uncomfortable. But I will use you for warmth and kick you out in the morning.

Chuckling lightly at the comparison between myself and a college student, I closed my eyes and waited to feel how the changeling reacted. She was mostly frozen in what I thought was fear, but eventually the subtle shaking stopped, and she seemed to have finally calmed down.

After an agonizingly long wait, her breathing reached a steady pace so I assumed she had fallen asleep. Taking this as my cue, I grabbed my floppy hat from the top of my kit and placed it over my face.

As we lay in our respective spots under the lean-to which was held up by my rucksack, I mentally deemed the area safe enough to decompress my built up thoughts of the last days ordeal.

The first thing I noticed was shivering. Not Kania’s as she was curled up in a peaceful ball as the little spoon, but my own. I wasn't cold, I knew that much. Then the tears started to race down my face and I knew what was wrong.

In the past two days I had seen more things that I was not mentally prepared for than I had during my incomplete combat tour. Horses were talking, myths were real, and I was an unknown species in an impossible alien world.

I was the minority in a world that had never heard of humans, or Canada, or by the sound of things, most modern technology. I would never see my comrades again, I would never see the beautiful country of my homeland, and I would never feel the touch of a real woman.

No one would be waiting for me when I stepped off the plane because I would never get on the plane to begin with.

The shivering was me sobbing silently.

I tried to get control of my emotions before I woke the sleeping changeling, but when she turned around and hugged me, I realised it was too late.

“It’s okay.” she cooed, “We’ll figure out how to get you home.”

I knew she was lying, but I took comfort in her words regardless before gently returning the hug and falling into an uneasy sleep.

Chapter 6

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
― Winston Churchill

Chapter 6: Friends and Foes

I blearily blinked my eyes as I was awakened by the buzzing of mosquitoes. Taking my floppy hat off my face, I saw the sun making an exquisite impression of a slit throat as it crested the horizon. Still angry that some flies had awoken me, I grabbed my two litre pillow and took a hearty swig from it.

The buzzing had stopped, but I couldn’t get back to bed. My bladder had finally decided it wanted to empty itself after two days of not having anything reach it. I grabbed my rifle, crawled over the sleeping form beside me, put my clothes on, and reveled in the still rapidly cooling desert.

Kania had obviously moved in her sleep, but the fact that I didn’t wake up when she disentangled herself from me was worrisome. Usually even the lightest of vibrations would rouse me from my slumber which meant that something was very wrong with my body and mind.

Slinging my rifle around my back, I unzipped my pants and glanced around the never ending desert. “Coulda swore there were some trees there somewhere…” I mumbled drearily. When I finished, I zipped up my pants, turned around, and promptly tripped over the crouching form of a horned pony.

“Jesus fuck, Kania, be careful!” I said, finding myself even more disoriented as my view of the world suddenly shifted to that of a six year old. A low grunting and the dull sensation of heat in my lower ribs was my answer. I gasped as I felt cold metal meeting the warmth of my body.

Glancing to my not-so camouflaged body, I saw that my abdomen had been pierced by a sword which was hanging in a luminous aura. I looked up, and there, beyond the sword, was a very pissed looking guard pony. It had stabbed me. I’ve never been stabbed before. This was not the greatest time to find out how odd it felt.

More ponies were approaching from the mountain to reinforce their comrades. Between the distance and the fogging of my vision, I could barely make out their forms as they flew in. My eyes were heavy, and I wanted so badly to sleep. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes.

<(-------------------------)>

I looked down to my stomach. Blood was spurting freely from the bullet wound I had suffered. The area was going numb while two of my comrades were performing combat first aid. The sniper was probably aiming to incapacitate me. He succeeded.

The pain should have been unbearable, but the combination of morphine and endorphins just made me feel numb. It was truly an odd sensation.

The sound of rifle fire caught my attention. My section was returning fire on the sniper position. I always found it curious how much the sounds of automatic fire and popping bubble wrap were so similar. I also realised that my ramblings meant I was slipping from the world. Fuck…

<(-------------------------)>

I awoke to a squelching sound and the fierce burning sensation of metal being torn from my side. My eyes shot open from the pain, and I instinctively looked for what was causing it. A barbed sword had just been ripped from my abdomen. I glanced around quickly to find the perpetrator and found myself in a very peculiar position.

I was surrounded by five ponies, some had wings and held spears slung under them, while others had horns and held swords in their magical grasp. A short ways off, there were ten ranks of guards in files of five, making fifty guards. I was massively outnumbered, and these creatures had already stabbed me. I was going to die.

Before panic could fully take root in my heart, one of the unicorns who I presumed was their leader spoke up. “Your knife has been removed.” he said. “You are unarmed.”

The world stopped. I felt the reassuring weight of my loaded rifle pressing against my prone form. I felt blood seeping freely from what had to be dozens of internal wounds. I was going to die, but I wouldn’t make it easy on them.

“Assisting a changeling is a capital offence,” he continued to drone on. “Surrender, and your death shall be painless.”

I forced my breathing to slow down. Panic would not serve me here. I slowly stood and reached for my rifle, grimacing in pain and fumbling for footing. I was going to die, but I would take a hell of lot of them with me.

“A soldier… is never… unarmed.” I mumbled, ignoring the profuse bleeding from my abdomen. I raised my rifle at the guard who had stabbed me and fired three rounds into his cranium.

Startled by the noise, every guard in attendance took a step back in fear. Utilising this advantage, I took a step towards my tent which just so happened to have all of my reserve ammo in it and fired another burst into a nearby pegasus. As he collapsed, his comrades seemed to regain their senses and began to close the gap between us while the remaining fifty stood in reserve.

The pegasus to my left had taken flight and was charging straight for me. I pointed my rifle at him and fired three rounds into his torso, letting his own momentum and gravity do the rest of my work for me. To my right, a unicorn was charging me with his head lowered. I gunned him down with lethal precision as well. I turned around and continued backwards towards the tent while sending three rounds into the last guard.

The reserve ranks still had not moved, probably waiting to see what my next move would be. Never taking my eyes off of them, I moved to the tent and grabbed my tacvest. My rifle never pointed away from the potential hostiles as I donned my load bearing equipment. Once my tac and flak was slung over my shoulders, I saw why they weren’t moving. A single member of their ranks was marching towards the front, where he assumed a command position. This is my chance.

Letting my rifle hang by its sling, I removed one of my fragmentation grenades from its pouch, careful not to let the poorly thought out design of the vest remove the safety mechanisms. Steeling my nerves, I assumed the standing-ready position. I stood with my left shoulder facing the formation, one hand on the grenade, the other on the safety clip.

“Ready,” I whispered to myself, occupying my attention with proper grenade procedures to distract myself from my imminent demise. I removed the safety clip and moved my hand to the safety pin. “Throw.” Quickly pulling the grenade from the pin, I checked to ensure everything was still as it should be. Raising my left hand to the heavens, I shouted “Frag out!” before using my raised arm for leverage to hurl the grenade at the cluster of armored ponies.

One of the guards stared like a deer caught in headlights as the slow moving projectile went straight for his face. Luckily for him, it was ensnared by a glowing green aura summoned by a bewildered looking unicorn guard. There was a standstill while they all looked at me in triumph. They had successfully stopped my attack.

Then the fuse ran out.

The concussion of the explosive rippled through their ranks, crushing bones and pulverising organs before the shrapnel hit them. In the split second of observation I had, I realised that I never ate the dirt. Then I was hit by the wave of shrapnel, and felt the burning ceramics digging long trenches across my exposed skin. The blast threw me to the ground, smacking the back of my head against an ill placed rock.

I couldn’t feel the pain I knew I should be experiencing. My ears were ringing, and my eyes were having trouble focusing. I could almost feel the neurons in my brain trying to make sense of the situation. I struggled to my feet again, feeling nauseous and dizzy.

Unslinging my rifle, I put the scope to my eye and pulled the trigger, fully intending to end as many of the survivors as possible. The light impact of recoil hit my shoulder several times in succession, yet the familiar sound of gunfire was not there. Neither was the smell of freshly detonated gunpowder. In their place was a horrible draining feeling as if the world around me was slowly being pulled apart bit by bit, like a rug unraveling. Out of curiosity I lifted a hand to my nose, then looked at the now red glove, realising that something inside my head was seriously fucked up. Only one thing left to do, Soldier. I brought the rifle to my shoulder again.

Round after round ripped into the dazed ponies. I felt my rifle click empty, but left the empty magazine in the housing. My vision was fading yet again. The world rotated sideways and I felt my head hit the sand again. There was still no pain. Just nothingness and a lime green light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. Then out of the silence, I heard a horrible, yet soothing sound. The cackling of a goddess.

<(-------------------------)>

When next I awoke, my mind was hazy and my eyes were blurry. The only thing I could really make out was the movement of black shapes above me, silhouetted by an ominous green glow. I also couldn’t feel my toes when I moved them.

Concern quickly grew to fear, and my eyes did their best to focus on the objects in front of me with the assistance of the sudden surge of adrenaline.

“He’s waking up!” one of the voices said.

“It’s a miracle!” cried another.

Changelings. I had been surrounded by changelings.

I tried to sit up, but was stopped by a soothing voice and a pressure on my chest. “Don’t move,” it said. “You’ve been severely injured.” The voice had become distinctly male.

“Mr. Heen, I’m afraid that you were ambushed by ponies last night. The report from Operative Kania says that they had followed you with the intent of killing the both of you. If we didn’t have soldiers drawn to the area by your weapons, you would have died.”

The voice belonged to a changeling wearing a white labcoat. I tried to speak, but all that escaped my mouth was a dull groan.

“Hush now, rest. The ponies were slain by a combination of changeling might, and your… weapons. You had taken quite the blow to the head, however, so I understand if you might feel like some facts have been mixed up.”

“We’ve done what we could to heal you, but the wounds you sustained were great. You truly fought mightily, taking a sword to the abdomen and still going on. It will take several days of magical healing for you to be back to full combat effectiveness.”

It felt like he was feeding me a line. The more he spoke, the more suspicious I became. The changelings would have to have been right there beside me if they indeed arrived in time to save me.

“You actually seriously wounded several of our soldiers who were coming to help you due to the darkness of the night. You called them out as pegasus ponies and engaged them at a great range before Kania stopped you.”

“We teleported you to the central hive chamber, which you took badly, and used more of your weapons projectiles to shoot at our Queen, who had luckily erected a shield the moment we entered the chamber.”

I didn’t remember doing any of that. Was I truly that far in the black that I wouldn’t remember being teleported? Did I really shoot at their monarch? What have I done?

“Teleportation is tricky business. That was your first time teleporting, correct?” I nodded my head to confirm his theory, still trying to comprehend the information. “Teleportation can be very distorting the first time. If you don’t remember too much after that, then it could be because your body is still adjusting to the rapid relocation. As for the matter of you intending to harm our Queen…”

“You are a new species, and as such we are forgiving your transgressions. You are also a formidable foe, and our Queen would like to make you an offer. After you have recovered of course. Please view this as a kindness not just from our state, but from all changelings. We so love meeting new people.”

I had committed a crime that should be a death sentence, but they forgave me and healed me. Truly their kindness could know no bounds if this were truly the case. I just hoped I hadn’t hurt any more civilians. I would never, could never forgive myself for civilian casualties.

I could feel myself slipping from consciousness. I both loved and loathed the feeling as it meant I could finally rest, but I would be unable to defend myself. “Please, rest. We will talk more when you are better.”

<(-------------------------)>

Noise. The soft clopping of hooves striking tile. How I knew what the sound was, I will never know. That was the noise I awoke to. The green lights in the white room made for a very eerie contrast, however, the smell of antiseptic clearly marked this as a hospital.

Something important had happened in the transition from where I was to where I currently found myself. Memories. Memories that didn’t quite feel my own. Reminds me of every course I’ve ever done... A doctor spoke, changelings were killed, I was forgiven.

There was more, and I knew it. The doctor mentioned ponies, and the thought of their needless offence made me shudder. A sharp pain lanced across my abdomen, and I realised why I felt this way towards the ponies. They had stabbed me!

The clopping had stopped. “Oh, you’re awake!” came a female voice. “It is truly a pleasure to meet the person who brought my Kania home to me.”

By the looks of the changeling, she had been pacing for hours, worried about… me. “It was no problem… Miss?”

“Circe.” she replied, offering a holed hoof before quickly retracting it and blushing. “Sorry, I forgot… injuries.”

“S’okay” I replied, body still groggy from what I hoped were medications. “How is she?” I asked, before adding “And where are the doctors?”

“My daughter is well. She is somewhat troubled by the fact that you fired on our own, but she knows that it was the heat of the battle. As for the doctors, they should be back any moment.”

The changelings had come to help me. And I shot them. Nothing she said at that point could have made me feel worse than hearing I had committed blue on blue. Luckily, I couldn’t stew in those thoughts for long, as a male changeling in a labcoat entered with a fair amount of dramatic flair.

“Ahh, our vonderman has finally avoken.” he said with a broad smile. “And vith plenty of love to boot.”

I ignored the bizarre statement and the German accent and looked around the room again, trying to find my rifle. Upon seeing nothing other than surgical equipment, I felt my heart rate jump and heard the heart rate monitor I failed to notice before increase its tempo as well. “Where is my rifle?” I asked with as much urgency as I could muster.

“The strange fire spewing veapon you arrived with?” At my nod, he continued. “Ve have stored it in our research und development department for ze time being. Just how did you make it vork, by ze vay?”

Ignoring his question, I started to swing my legs off the bed, much to the dismay of all the ‘lings around me. “Take me to it,” I said with as commanding a voice as I could muster.

“You have to rest, please!” The doctor pleaded. “I shall bring it to you, ja?”

Thankful that I didn’t actually have to walk anywhere to get my weapon, I gave him the most annoyed face I could feign at the time. “Fine. But make it fast. It is a very dangerous piece of equipment if you aren’t trained to use it.”

When the doctor had left, I lay myself back down on the bed, and let out a sigh of relief. A deliberate cough brought my attention to the female changeling still in the room. “Why did you send the doctor away?” she asked, obviously having seen through my fractured mask.

“I wasn’t lying about my weapon.” I said simply, drawing as much air as I could into my lungs. “I can’t have it just sitting around.” Her only response was to shrug non-committally.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, two armoured changelings entered the hospital room with the doctor and another changeling carrying my C8 close behind. The guards were incredibly tense, most likely due to the fact that I had grievously injured or killed some of their friends.

I couldn’t stop myself from audibly sighing in relief, while mumbling, “Thank God, it isn’t damaged.”

“You’re lying in a hospital bed with grievous wounds, and you are worried about the state of your…” Circe started saying, almost as if talking to a child, then moving one of her fore legs around as if prompting me to finish her sentence.

“My rifle,” I said bluntly, leaning forward with a grunt to swipe my weapon from the green magic of one of the changeling guards. After falling into my bed with a pained grimace, I took a deep breath and mumbled the first few lines of the Rifleman’s Creed. Everyone looked on in concern as I grimaced and chuckled at the same time, before coughing. The doctor was instantly by my side.

“I understand.” The doctor admitted. “Everyone out, let him sleep.”

As everyone slowly removed themselves from the room, I gripped my C8 like a lost lover, and fell into a restless sleep.

Author's Note

Unfortunately, this will be the last chapter for the next 3-4 weeks, as I am being attach posted to a different unit for some non-specific army stuff that I can't talk about. This involve being in an area with no internet, so yah...
I should be back by September 26. Cheers all.