The war we wage.

I looked out over Lake Ontario on one of the rare days that it was completely calm. My grandfather and I had taken the boat out to go fishing. I hadn't been on his bout in about two years, and I felt pretty refreshing. I had cast my line about 20 meters out, and began lazily reeling it in. I wasn't concerned about getting a fish, I was just enjoying spending time with grandpa. I hadn't seen my him in far too long, and this was a wonderful day to just enjoy nothing to do. It was a bit nippy out since it was just starting to become spring, which is probably why we were the only ones out on the lake, as far as I could see.

Suddenly my pole lurches forward and almost out of my hands, snapping me out of my casual observations and causing my adrenaline to start flooding my veins.

"Jesus!" whatever it was, it was big, and it was angry! I was reeling and holding on for all I was worth. I didn't have a very high test line, so loosing it was almost a certainty, and I was more worried about loosing my grandfathers lure that actually loosing the fish.

After about 10 minutes of playing the white knuckle "give and take" game, the thing finally started cooperating. I slowly started reeling it up to starboard side until I finally saw its dorsal fin break the surface. With my heart in my throat, I turned around to ask my grandfather to get the net, however, when I turned around, I saw the entire shore was engulfed in flames. The sky was black with smoke, the sun barely shinning through in its noon position.

My blood ran cold at the sight of the decimated landscape, but once I looked around and didn't see my grandfather, my heart and time stopped.

My attention was pulled back to my pole for a moment after it got another hard tug. No doubt the fish getting agitated again now that it had had an opportunity to rest. As I turned my attention back to my side of the boat, I could see the lake had turned to blood, with millions of floating bodies littering the surface who, themselves on fire.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I opened my eyes to a blurry starry sky and full moon. After a minute of rapid blinking and rubbing my eyes, everything started coming into focus. I sat up slowly and looked around and saw that I had somehow, I had ended up on the roof of the building, but it didn't appear to be the same mud house we had been in..weird.

"..ow....mother..fucker..." I took my Kevlar off and threw it next to me in the anger you get from a massive headache. I started rubbing my forehead and temples when the unmistakable sensation of nausea over took me. I leaned over and vomited everything I had in me, which also served to increase my head pounding.

As I went to take a drink from my camelback, I was disheartened to find out that I was out of water. Whether I had drank it all, or it had been burst by the explosion remained to be seen. But either way..I was now completely out of water.

I looked around again, this time in search of my weapon and day pack, which I quickly realized was still on my back. My weapon had been tossed a few feet further away, gleaming in the moonlight and teetering on the edge of the roof. Relieved that I still had a means to defend myself, at least I was hoping I did. I had no clue whether or not is was still functional.

As I slowly crawled towards it, I could feel the roof beginning to buckle under my weight. "Not good, not good, not good." I whispered to myself, praying in my head for the roof to stay intact long enough for me to grab my the SAW.

As I reached the spot where it was at, and curled my hand around the pistol grip, my fears were justified as the roof finally gave way and sent me plummeting 10 feet down. When I hit the floor, the bolt was knocked loose and allowed a 4 round burst to fire off.

"We'll, at least it works.." I just laid there recovering from the shock of falling, as well as the renewed pounding in my head, and unease in my stomach. I was now worried about how many fighters that little burst alerted to at least, my survival. I decided not to waste anytime and took off my daypack. I needed to find my sidewinder flashlight to start searching for Pedro and Wil.

"Where the fuck is it?!" Frustrated at having ripped everything out of my bag and being unable to locate it, I started feeling around all my stuff before I hit it with my hand and heard it skitter across the room. "God dammit.." I just couldn't win.

I crawled the path I was sure it took, sweeping my hand in a fairly large arc across the floor.

I did find it a few moments later, just, not with my hands..

"NNNGGGHHHH!!!!! Found it! with my knee..." I rolled on to my side and held my knee like Peter Griffin. It hurt so bad, I was biting my lip and my eye teared up slightly.

After taking a second to swallow the pain, I picked it up and switched it to "white" and turned it on. What I saw when the light flooded the room, dumbfounded me. We were not in the same house that we cleared, yet, all the damage that would have happen in that building was here. The hole in the corner of the building, the walls of the second room being blown out..Everything. But instead of a mud house, this was wood and stone with straw roofing.

I began sweeping the light from left to right, searching for any sign of my brothers. After searching the whole floor, it led me to the conclusion that they were under one of the piles of ruble.

"PEDRO!!...WIL!!" I shined the light through the beams that had fallen and formed one of the piles of ruble. While looking through the hole, I was able to make out the barrel of Wil's M16.

"WIL!" I called out once more but didn't bother for a response before I began my excavation.

It wasn't long into my recovery effort that pain started erupting from my shoulder. I instantly gripped my shoulder and leaned back against the wall. It was all I could do to keep from doubling over or throwing up again. I relinquished the grip on my shoulder to get my pain pills, but noticed the cold breeze on my hand, telling me my hand was wet.

The smell of copper was strong and I knew it was blood coating my hand, after I picked up the light, I saw my entire sleeve was soaked and droplets of blood were falling to the ground.

Well, shit I didn't know just how much blood I had lost, but I reached into my med bag and pulled out the bottle of ibuprofen, which wasn't really the smartest move since it also acted as a blood thinner. I took out three pills and chewed them up, but took my a second to get it all down since I was starting to get dehydrated. After wasting enough time trying to swallow all the bits and pieces that were now crowding and irritating my mouth, I refocused on getting Wil and Pedro out.

As i continued my excavation of my two brothers, I could swear I was hearing hoof falls of several horses in gallop. The only reason I would know what that sounds like is from movies such as Lord of the Rings and such. Every time I stopped to listen, they would disappear.

Finally, after 45 minutes of struggling, I was able to get Pedro's body clear of debris. I reached under him and dragged him into a corner of the room, by the door. This way, any incoming hostile personnel would be drawn to me, and be surprised by him..when he woke up that is.

"Pedro..Pedro!" I shook him gently and smacked his cheek a few times before I heard a groan.

"ooohh....Ugh! My damn head.."

"Welcome back to the land of the..."

"Bro! how much blood have you lost?!" He quickly got up and forced me to sit while reaching into his IFAK. He didn't even have to look to know what he was grabbing. countless days worth of training in JUST in Combat Life Saving exercises. In a flash, Pedro had torn off my sleeve and had begun disinfecting and dressing my wound.

"Alright bro, I'll take it from here." he handed me my weapon and nodded towards the door. The hoof falls had gotten closer and I think he noticed them too in the short time he was awake. I racked the bolt back and slid the safety on.

The minutes seemed to take forever to tick by as my nerves were, once again, on end in anticipation of the worst. I had all but tuned out Pedro's grunts of exertion when I heard him suddenly cry out in agony.

"FUCK NO!! GOD DAMNIT..NO!!!"

My heart stopped and my blood went cold. I didn't have to turn around to know what he was screaming about..but I did so hoping it wasn't true. I stood up and half sprinted the distance that separated me from them and stopped when I saw Wil...or at least...what was left of him. I couldn't stop myself from dropping to my knees from the sight. Lying before us, was Wil's body, that had been blown in half from about his ribs, down.

My hands went flying to my mouth as I tried to keep the vomit from spraying out and ran to the door and proceeded to empty my stomach once again.

"Over here!! I just saw something!" An unknown voice cried out. I looked towards the source and only saw what looked like very large dogs, larger than any I had seen before outside of internet pictures.

The words were in English with American accents. My heart jumped with elation, but, something didn't sit right with me at the moment. I didn't recognize the voice that I had heard first, nor the voices that followed. I assumed it was a search and rescue party so I began to get my gear on and picked up my weapon.

"Pedro, I think our search party is outside." He broke away from looking at Wil and turned to me with dead eyes. "I'm going to go out and bring them here. Hand me your GPS?" He simply nodded and took his GPS off his wrist, handing it to me, but before I had a grip on it, he dropped it.

It wasn't the time to tel him to get his head in the game. Our rescue party was right outside and we were going home soon. I put my kevlar back on and headed out the door, weapon locked and eager to get back to base. As I looked around, I saw a lot more green in the distance than I remember.Perhaps I'm turned around. I stayed silent, trying to listen for the voices to pick up again.

"Didn't you say you saw them over here?"

"Yea..well..I thought I did. I know I saw a large shadow from the moonlight."

"ALRIGHT! We're going to search this whole block. Fliers up and everyone, fan out."

Fliers? must be drones. That told me that these voices came from Soldiers, not Marines. This should be interesting.

I narrowed down where the voices were coming from, while still trying to remember every turn I took in order to lead them back to Pedro and Wil. As I rounded the corner, I saw the pack of dogs again, except now there were a LOT more of them. Oh boy! I flicked my weapon off safe and bought it to my shoulder as I began to walk cautiously around them. Just as I got behind them, one of them speaks!

"THERE!" I looked towards the one that spoke, completely dumbfounded. I then saw two of the dogs take to the air and start coming towards me while the other started running at me. I was freaking out. I brought my gun up and flicked the light on full, which stopped them for a split second.

"HALT!! IN THE NAME OF CELESTIA!" It was one of the flying ones yelling this time. I squeezed the trigger and let off short burst and saw one of them drop. I aimed at the other flyer who shot off towards the sky. Turning my attention to the ones on the ground, I saw that they had closed the distance and were now less than 10 feet away. What I saw at that point really confused me. They weren't dogs, I didn't know exactly what they were, but I knew that they weren't dogs.

"DON'T COME ANY CLOSER..WHATEVER YOU ARE!!" I was starting to breath heavy with my heart about to explode. That was it, I had officially lost my mind. In the back of my head, I chalked this whole night up to being in a very deep sleep. That was it. We had been Medivaced and I was In a coma or something.

"..ski!." I could hear Pedro's voice barely over my own heart beat. I aimed my SAW in the air and fired another burst to let him know where I was.

*WHACK* I felt a sharp blow to the back of my head and everything faded out to black.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When I awoke, I saw that I was indeed, in a hospital. I looked down and saw your standard hospital bed, with me in those stupid gowns. I was hooked up to a saline drip it looked like and the standard heart monitoring equipment. What wasn't standard however, was the fact that I was SHACKLED to the bed. That's right, not cuffed, but shackled.

I looked around again and found my nurse call button thingy. As soon as I pressed it, the curtain opened and what I saw completely blew my mind. Standing before me was a white...I don't know what..But, it was wearing the upper part of a pair of scrubs. It had a heart and syringe tattooed on its flank. I watched as it looked around at all the equipment and then pulled my curtain closed before leaving me..

"I must be on one hell of a drug.." saying out loud before the door opened up again and shut again. The curtain slide open once again and this time there were four of those things. One had a longer snout that went up at a shallow angle, while the other three had much smaller muzzles that that reminded me of an Apple Head Chihuahua.

The one with the longer snout looked at me and smiled. "How are you feeling today?"

My eyes grew wide and mouth dropped. after a second I shook my head quickly and tried to words properly.

"I...I...My shoulder is still sore?.." He simply nodded and tapped the IV bag before commenting.

"My name is Dr. Good-Heart. You came in about four days ago heavily sedated and bleeding. can you tell me a little about what happened?"

I proceeded to tell him the long winded and also very emotional tale of the days events that led to my being here. He never broke eye contact the whole time I talked, and only pipped up with the occasional "Hmmm.." and "I see". When I finished my story, he began asking for the explanation of most the things I had mentioned.

"So Doc..I have a few questions as well if you don't mind." I had a feeling that he would pull the In due time spiel.

"of course, I'll be happy to answer any questions you have." He gave another, seemingly genuine smile before I proceeded.

"What are you? I mean, all of you. I've never seen anything like you or those three." I pointed over at the nurses still fusing with the equipment and refilling IVs and Sedative pumps. He simply chuckled and waived them away once they had completed their respective tasks.

"We are ponies. I am a stallion, and they are mares..Male and female respectively." He responded a matter of factly.

"I'm sorry..ponies?"

"Yes sir, Ponies. And before you ask, you are in the city of Canterlot of the country of Equestria." It had been obvious what my next question was going to be.

I laid there struggling to process the information I just received. The doctor laughed at what must have been a very amusing look on my face which broke me out of my train of thought.

"There was another guy with me, Do you know where he is?"

He shook his head but suddenly perked his ears up. "Oh! that reminds me! There were three of you, correct?"

My eyes become downcast as I thought about Wil. Nodding my head I spoke up to correct him. "There WERE three of us.."

"The one of y'all that was severely injured? Um..missing his lower half?.." He was somber in his response. I only nodded before he continued.

"Princess Celestia was able to sustain his life force, with the help of Princess Luna and Princess Twilight Sparkle." I looked at him with a smile and tears running down my face. A part of me not wanting to accept this news that was, to me, too good to be true. Pinching myself for good measure and laughing once I was satisfied that I was indeed awake, I turned to look at Dr. Good-Heart.

"Can I see him?" The fact that I had these shackles on my wrists pretty much already told me the answer.

"I'm afraid that will not be possible." The voice sounded female, and had a lot of authority behind it. I looked towards the voice and saw a very large, white Unicorn, Pegasus mix looking...mare. Her mane and tail were a combination of pink, green, and blues. It also appeared to be blowing in a constant wind, even though there was none. She was the size of a regular horse, which honestly intimidated me a little bit since I was immobilized in this bed, having to look up at her.

I had been too busy sizing her up to notice Dr. Good-Heart bow down before her. This is obviously someone important.

"Princess Celestia, an honor to see you again." It sounded almost like he was kissing up to her, but then again, I think its kinda expected for you to do that.

"Please, rise Dr. Good-Heart. Tell me what you have learned from this creature." I'm right here!

He began to tell her everything that I had told him, verbatim. All the while she never took her eyes off me, or lost her scowling look. It made me pretty nervous. All I knew about royalty, was the one thing you should never do, was piss them off, and I had most certainly done that..somehow.

Turning her attention back to me, she walked right up to the side of my bed and acted like she were analyzing me. I saw a dark figure move behind her and craned my neck to look at the new visitor. She was a very dark blue with a dark blue mane and tail, She was the same mix of Pegasus and Unicorn and about a head shorter than Celestia coming to stand on her left. Behind her was yet another, lavender with a deep purple mane and tail with a single streak that was the same color as her coat. She looked to be the same kind of pony, but was about half the size of the dark blue one.

"I am Princess Celestia, Ruler of the Day. On my left is Princess Luna, Ruler of the Night. Beside her is Princess Twilight-Sparkle, she rules from Ponyville."

It was Princess Luna's turn to speak.

"Thou hast committed grave crimes in Ponyville. Thou hast trespassed on private land, and destroyed a private residence. Thou hast also gravely injured a guard of MYRoyal Court. Dost thou have anything to say in thy own defense?"

There was nothing I could say, I was in complete panic mode. I wanted to argue my case in front of all three of them, but my throat had a catch in it.

"Well? Dost thou truly have naught to say?" She looked at me from over top her nose, a bit of irritation in her voice.

Lowering my head I finally spoke up in what was barely more than a whisper.

"I'm sorry about your guard. I truly hope that he makes it through. I just.." I paused for a moment before looking at all three of them. "This isn't my world..if that makes any sense to you.."

They were now looking at me intently, but were still visibly upset.

"Your guards startled me when they suddenly advanced on me. I didn't know what they were, or where I was." I took another deep breath before continuing.

"I...WE...also did not destroy that house." I knew they were not going to believe me, and I scoffed a little at how ridiculous this all probably sounded to them.

"We were in a battle when the house we were in had been booby-trapped. A very large bomb had been placed inside the house, and we accidentally set it off. When we woke up, we were here. I went outside to get help, and that's when I ran into your guards."

I covered my face with my hands a prepared myself to be hauled off to prison, or maybe a dungeon in this case. Suddenly it dawned on me to ask them about Pedro.

"There was another with me, do any of you know what happened to him?" My eyes darted from one princess to another, trying to get an answer before they spoke.

"He has been arrested as well. As for the third, he is currently on life support. He will be placed under arrest and given a trial as soon as he is well enough to stand one. However.." Celestia paused for a few moments, almost as if she were choosing her words extremely carefully.

"Though we are doing our best, there's no guarantee that your friend will survive. And even if he does make a full recovery, it will not be as he is now." She saw that I didn't understand and quickly clarified.

"In order for us to fully help him, he will have to be transformed into a pony."

Twilight had been so quiet that I had completely forgotten about her until she spoke up.

"Um, excuse me? I have a few questions for you sir, If I may Princess"

"Twilight, I have told you many times. You are a princess now. There is no need for you to address us formally. But yes, you may ask him whatever you wish."

Twilight had a semi embarrassed look and her cheeks turned red in a mild blush.

"OK..Sir? My first question is; What species are you and your friends?"

I saw her horn glow purple before a notepad and an old feather quill appeared out of nowhere. I went to speak about the notepad, but stopped myself to answer he question first.

"Myself, Pedro; who you have in custody, and Wil; the one on life support, are a species called "humans."

I could see her quill all by itself with every word I said.

"Next question. Where do you come from?"

"Planet; Earth. Country; United States of America. Our country is split up into "States" there are 50 of these "States" each with their own laws and governments, but they all answer to our leader and the federal government. I am from the city of Orlando in the state of Florida. Wil is from the city of Birmingham in the State of Alabama. Where Pedro is from, is a city that is so large, that it is further broken down into boroughs. So he is from the borough of Queens, of New York City in New York state."

I saw she was about to ask me another question, but I stopped her by asking a question of my own.

"Princess Celestia. I ask that whatever awaits me and my brothers be carried out with quickly. The one thing I don't wan to do, is wait."

She looked at me, then over at Luna and Twilight. They were in turn, looking back at her. Luna's expression seemed to be a mix of quiet anger and slight compassion.

"We will convene with each other on what to do with you and and the others. For now, you will remain here, under guard." After she got nods from the other two princesses, she turned back to look at me.

"It is most unfortunate that your arrival here has been met with such a situation. But your crimes, at least the crime of you assaulting a royal guard, is a grievous one. There is nothing that even I can do without major back-lash from my subjects. You will need to stand a public trial at the very least, to plead your case. As for your friends; Wil, shall be exonerated of any involvement of these incidents. But Pedro..He also assaulted a guard, so he will stand his own trial."

I collapsed back down on the bed and starred at the ceiling.

"Twilight. You may stay with..." Celestia once again was looking at me "What is your name sir?"

"You can call me Ski..."

She nodded and continued her thought to Twilight.

"You may stay here with "Ski" as long as wish. I will send for you when we are ready to hold our meeting."

"Thank you Prin..." She caught her self just in time which got a smile from Celestia and Luna. With that, they both turned and left a grinning Twilight Sparkle holding the notepad and quill once again.

"I just have a few more questions for you Sir."

"Ok, shoot.."

She gave me a puzzled look when I said that, but continued on.

"Where you're from, what is your occupation?"

She looked at me with the enthusiasm of a grade schooler meeting her hero.

"I'm a Marine." This got me a blank look from her.

I rolled my eyes before thinking of something she would understand.

"Our nation has a military that is broken down into specialized branches. You have the smallest branch, Marines, that are the first ones, besides our special forces, to land in an enemies country. We are generally taken where we need to go by either our Navy, or more recently we use commercial airliners. Then you ha..." I was cut off as she quickly wanted clarification on "Airliners".

"Airliners a companies who own fleets of airplanes which humans use to fly all over the world."

Satisfied, she gave a little "Squee" and I continued my previous explanation.

"Then you have the Army which secures what we take over and start setting up semi-permanent bases of operations. They term we use for them is "Follow on forces"."

Her little quill was scribbling furiously.

"This is all so fascinating." she was engrossed in her notebook, making sure she had gotten every word. She looked back at me once she was satisfied with her very thorough notes.

I simply raised an eyebrow.

"What about your military?"

"Well." She began after a long thought. "My brother was in the equestrian military for a while, but he never really talked a lot about it. I honestly don't know much about military operations and stuff like that. But, please continue..If you wouldn't mind that is." *squee*

I was starting to mind, and my mind couldn't help itself go back to thinking about mine and Pedro's trials. I let out an exasperated sigh and continued where I left off.

"Then you have the Air Force which we use for bombing missions and other stuff like that. They are mainly what we use to evacuate our wounded ground troops from the battlefield. Then finally, You have our navy. Nothing much to say about them, except that they are technically the big brother to the Marines."

She looked up after her quill stopped and smiled once again.

"Thank you so much for letting me talk with you. I hope I get to talk more with you in the future, but for now, I'll let you get some rest."

And with the *poof* of her notebook and quill disappearing into thin air, she turned and made her way to the door. She stopped and talked to the guards outside, but I was unable to hear what was said. They both bowed before her and she turned to walk out of my sight.

Now that I was alone again, my thoughts started going a million miles a second. It was driving me mad. I couldn't get up and pace like I had the urge to do since I was still shackled to the bed. Nothing to do but continuously pick my head up and let it fall back on the pillow. I caught the guards looking in through the window a couple of times with concerned expressions on their faces. I laughed inside at the thought that I must look like a mad man.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It had been a month since the princesses had come in to tell me just how much shit I was in. I had become so bored and nervous that I often scared the nurses when they caught me off guard and talking to myself. There was nothing for me to do! I had already read every book they had in the entire hospital. I knew every doctor, nurse, and intern by heart and what each ones specialties were.

On the bright side, I had managed to convince the guards to undo my shackles which at least allowed me to move about the room. I think the only reason they did it was because I was actually getting bed sores, and the doctor said that I would start losing functionality in my legs. My shoulder still hurt from time to time, but I forced myself to exercise through the pain.

Twilight had stopped in yesterday, just so she could ask me some more questions and study my physiology. She also told me that Wil was still unconscious and stable. She also said that we would have to decide whether or not to turn him into one of them in order to better save his life. I really don't think he would e too happy to have been; A: Blown in half and let live. And; B: turned into a miniature horse.

I was in the middle of knocking out my third set of fifty push-ups when Celestia and Luna walked into the room with Twilight in tow. All three of them partially surrounded me in a semi-circle with guards just inside the doorway. I stood up and brushed my self off to see that I was about a head taller than Celestia's, but her horn was about a foot and a half taller than me. Luna came halfway up my chest, and Twilight was about mid stomach high. She would probably be the same height as me if she were to stand on her hind legs.

"Ski, your trial will begin next week. Pedro will be in the same hearing, and we three shall be in attendance as well. Would you like legal counsel, or will you represent yourself?"

The sudden crippling fear of my life being potentially over next week, completely shut off my ability to anything but babble like an idiot.

"Do I have to decide right now?" I wondered if Pedro had already had this conversation with them. I wanted to hear what he thought before I said anything.

"I'd feel better being able to discuss things with Pedro first. Is that possible?" Celestia nodded and made a motion to the guards.

The unicorn guard placed shackles on me once again and went back to the door before Celestia, Luna, and Twilight's eyes all suddenly glowed white, and a overwhelming white light engulfed the whole room and all four of us. When I opened my eyes again, I was in an enormous throne room. The ceiling had to be at least 70 feet high and 150 feet wall to wall. The 40 pillars supporting the roof had to at least 10 feet in diameter.

A sudden pull on my wrists caused me to snap out of my admiration of the room. I turned back to look at who was pulling me, and only saw a glowing yellow cloud around my shackles. I was confused for a second, then I realized that I had seen Twilight do the same thing with the pad and quill, only, hers was purple at the time.

I followed obediently behind the three princesses towards the two thrones, looking at all the stained glass windows that had to be 20 feet tall a piece. When I didn't feel the tugging anymore, I looked to see Celestia and Luna talking amongst them selves, and Twilight walking over to me.

"Hey ski. How are you doing?" The look in her eyes was that of concern for me.

"You know, I never went to law school.. too busy saving the world and learning magic to do that. But if you DO decide to get a lawyer, you could pick me!" The smile on her face was adorable, but I had to shatter that smile. She may have known what books taught about law, but she was forgetting one large point.

"Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?" Cocking an eyebrow as I said it.

She looked down for a second before looking back at me with an embarrassed smile.

"Oh..right. Sorry."

"There's no need to be sorry. I'm actually surprised you even offered to help us. It seems everyone else is predisposed to hating me, including Luna and Celestia." I hung my head once more, letting out a long winded sigh, my mind now back on my looming trial. I didn't hold out much hope for a favorable outcome. Here we were; aliens in an alien world, and we had not only assaulted not only what amounted to Feds here, but I almost killed one.

"TWILIGHT SPARKLE!"

Celestia's sudden outburst about made me jump out of my skin. It seemed to have had the same effect on Twilight who had whipped around as fast as she could.

"Y..yes princess!" Her response was automatic.

Celestia didn't even try to correct her this time, but simply continued.

"The trial has been moved up. The case that was ahead of yours, ski, has ended with the defendant pleading out. Yours will begin tomorrow."

My face drained of blood and I suddenly felt the need to vomit all the contents of my body. I was about to ask a question when I was interrupted my Celestia calling out to her guards, ordering them to take me to the dungeon where Pedro was. I couldn't speak, even if I had wanted to.

After what had to be 20 minutes of walking through corridors and down many flights of stairs, we finally reached the cell that Pedro was in. He took one look at me at busted out laughing. All I could do was scowl at him.

"Yea yea, laugh it up asshole. I wasn't really given an opportunity to get dressed."

"Yo, if I still had my phone." He didn't even finish his statement before laughing hard once more.

The guards opened up the door and allowed me to walk in myself. As soon as it was closed and locked, they took my shackles off with their magic.

I took another look at Pedro who still had a shit eating grin on his stupid face.

"You know our trial is tomorrow?"

"Yea fucking right. The guards said it was in two weeks."

I shook my head and saw his smile vanish when I didn't.

"The trial that was in front of ours got out early." He got the same look that I had about an hour ago.

"..Wow.. So what do we do?"

"Well, I wanted to talk with you before now, but they weren't having it. I was going to ask you if we should get a lawyer, but now there is no time what so ever to get one and prepare."

He leaned his head back against the wall and nodded in agreement. I got up and went to the door to try and get the guards' attention. I was getting sick of not having any clothes.

"Hello?!" I kept rattling the door much to Pedro's amusement.

"Hey! Keep it down! Some us are trying to sleep in here!" An very familiar New York accented voice piped up from down the hall. So I put on my best impression of a New Yorker.

"Hey fuck you, guy!" That got Pedro rolling.

I had started to laugh too but tried to resume my mission of getting clothes.

"Guard!"

Soon, the unmistakable sound of hoof-steps echoed in the hall. After a minute, a pretty large Pegasus guard was at the door with an annoyed looked.

"Yea? What is it?"

"Sorry to bother you, but would it be possible for me to get my clothes?" This only got me a quizzical loom from him. In sighed and motioned for Pedro to come over and gestured to what he was wearing.

"Oh, Yes! We do have those but, why do you need them?"

I looked at him him in disbelief that he would ask such a dumb question.

"Beeeecause I don't want to be in this hospital gown any longer? And also because its a little drafty in here?"

"Alright, I'll retrieve them for you."

As he walked away, I went to rest my head in between the bars and found that I could slip it through the space. So I slowly pushed my head through so as not to get stuck. Lord knows how embarrassing that would be.

A moment later, I saw the guard coming back and straightened myself out before he stopped at the door, handing..or rather, hoofing.. my bloody clothes to me.

"Thank ya kindly" I stated in a southern twang.

As I was putting my clothes on, I had a sudden thought on how to better prepare our defense for tomorrow's trial.

"Guard!" I heard him sigh before walking back to us.

"Yes?"

"Could you put me in contact with Princess Twilight? Or ask someone who can?" This got me a very surprised look from him.

"Princess Twilight? Why would she associate herself with.." He suddenly stopped when he saw the look on my face.

"Can you do it, or not?"

"I'll make sure she knows that you are wanting an audience." He then trotted off leaving us alone once more.

A few hours later the guard came back and opened the door before standing aside to let Twilight through. She was smiling and nodded to the guard he quickly departed.

"Hello Ski. You wished to talk to me about something?" I was beginning to like twilight. She always had such a cheery attitude and was always glad to help others it seemed.

"Yes I did Princess." She had come all this way just for us, I figured I'd show the utmost respect, which she blushed at.

"I was wondering if you could make something that I think might help us in court."

Her face began to glow from her smile. Instantly her notepad and quill appeared and she listened intently as I began going over what I wanted her to do.