Brothers

BOOOOOOOOM! The twenty three year old October Iron grit his teeth together as another bomb shook the trench that he and his brothers had taken shelter in. October looked over at Matthew, his oldest brother, who was thirty, with a look of question.
"We'll be fine October! They're on the verge of retreat!" Matthew shouted over the noise of the war.

World War Three had begun about one hundred years ago. It was the Russians that struck first, with the aftershock of ISIS that soon followed after in their wake. The two forces had dealt a heavy blow as they held their fists high against America. The war had brought in many nation that once tried to keep away from all the bloodshed, but found that there was no way around the destruction that rained about them. Unfortunately, America had very little allies in this war and to further their hardships, there was hardly an America left anymore. The country had long since fallen apart, though many stuck to their guns and refused to give up the land which their forefathers fought and died for.
It was never customary - and actually it was strictly avoided - for any family members to be in the same unit, nor was trench warfare much used anymore. This was the way of the war however; so hectic that they had to scrounge for any last man old enough to fight. Even then, there numbers were pitifully small against the enemy masses.

BOOOOOOOOM! Another bomb landed closer to the trench, destroying vehicles, turrets and allies all alike. Jason, October's second oldest brother, who was twenty-five, hurled a grenade out toward the enemy trenches with all his might. They all gave a small smile when they heard the Russian men cry out in pain and surprise. Jason looked up to watch for more bombers and for his thoughtfulness, his entire body went slack at the dreadful sight of an ISIS aircraft flying overhead as it dropped a single a bomb that was heading straight for the trench. His two other brothers looked up seeing, to their dismay as well, their fate befall them.

The bomb struck the ground around the corner of the trench, but without a sound. October noticed that there was no explosion, but he only had half a second to think about that as he felt himself being pulled from where he was standing. Matthew grabbed onto Jason, who grabbed onto October, who grabbed onto the corner of the trench once he realized what had happened. The bomb that the enemy dropped on them was not meant for explosion. It was an implosion bomb.

Fear put its tight hold over October's heart as he clawed at the corner of the trench with all his might. Even though he was the youngest of the three, he surpassed even Jason physically and now put that strength to its fullest for their lives. October's death grip was wrenched from his hand hold and they were pulled into the black vortex. October screamed out in pain as well as did his brothers without so much as an utterance of sound to be heard. It was much more painful than anything he had ever endured before in his life, as if someone was taking as long as possible to skin him alive. Then his vision went completely black.

October woke up with a groan. Why wasn't he dead? Hadn't he just been sucked into a swirling vortex of doom? Rather queer that he would still be alive and well. He stood up and looked to his right. "Gah!" he immediately took up a defensive mode only then to realize that his weapon was lying on the ground next to him with the bipod detached and not in his hands. But what he saw before him on the ground baffled the living daylights out from his mind entirely.

He saw two humanoid creatures with coats of a cool, grey fur, legs of a horse with coal colored hooves, the body of a man (except the head, which looked rather equine-like as well), and wings. To finalize it all, the hair atop their heads was as black as tar and hung low and long - going unruly compared to their usual, Army buzz cuts.

Speaking of Army indeed, as he also noticed that they were wearing tattered, camouflage Army uniforms accompanied with dog tags around each of their necks, though any sign of boots were long lost within the piles of dirt and bullet shells that surrounded them. The only remaining piece of any armor was a cracked helmet that lay on top of the largest creature's chest.

They both, started to groggily wake up and look at each other with confused and blurry eyes.

"HOLY CRAP!" one of them shouted.

"SACRED FECES!" yelled the other.

October looked down at himself, and noticed that he was too whatever the other two were. He had grey fur, horse like legs, black hooves, wings that felt misplace and alien to him, and he could only assume the rest. The man stood there in somewhat of a shocked state, completely unsure what was going on or what to do. With closer examination, he noticed that the nearest of the odd beings had a badge sewn into his camouflage shirt with the inscription M. IRON, and the other one's badge read J. IRON.

"Matthew, Jason? Is that...is that you?" they both looked down at themselves, then at each other, and then back at October.

"October?" they both asked at the same time as they shakily got to their hooves. The body form being as foreign as it was, Matthew seemed to trip a little before standing straight.

They all seemed about the same height as they should have been before, though perhaps they were just slightly taller, and their more horse like facial features still looked somewhat disturbingly like them. But it was just so strange, how could this have happened?

Without warning, Jason whipped around and gave Matthew a good, hard smack on the cheek, making a nice slapping sound. Matthew's headed whipped to the side, then quickly back to Jason as he carefully asked, "What...was that for exactly?"

Jason simply looked at his hand as it shook and mumbled, "Just making sure I'm not hallucinating. But, with that out of the way...where in the cotton pickin' world are we?"

"I have no clue whatsoever - except that we're in the middle of a forest for some reason," replied Matthew, he too not liking anything about the current situation, or being slapped in the face.

"So...what are we anyway?" asked October with mild interest at his new features, though not lacking in concern.

"Well, it seems to me,” replied Jason, keeping his worry down, "although it should entirely be against the laws of physics, that we are...anthro pegasi?"

"That's...weird. Beyond weird really," said October, looking back at his wings that were simply flopped down lazily. He focused his thoughts while trying to flap them, the other two trying to do the same.

October stretched out his wings to find that he had about a twelve foot wing span. It was odd, for even though these wings were not anything his brain had ever been hooked up to, he felt that he could use them with eerie ease. He tried flapping again and he went a few inches into the air before fell back down on his face for the lack of balance that he never expected he would need. The other two did the same with somewhat of similar results, though Jason had the better reflexes to prevent any tripping.

They began to laugh at the silliness and absurdity of the situation they found themselves in until a thought hit October square in the forehead. The war...the Army...mother.... October looked down at the ground with a look of depression about his face as this thought cut through him like a razor. This didn't go unnoticed by his brothers as the same thought came to them as well.

"They might think we're dead. What about mother? What is she supposed to think of it when we're reported missing?" Jason asked with a sad look.

"First let's find a place of rest, and then we can worry about that," said Matthew with somber face.

Matthew was a natural leader so he took the matter in his own hands from there. It wasn't really the first time they had to find a place to go in a forest before, and Matthew always knew what he was doing when it came right down to it. They picked up their weapons, backpacks, and October's ammunition bucket and began their attempt at walking.

Trying to walk on hooves was quite the trial for them, being built differently and all without those wide-surfaced feet or nimble toes, but they were simply going to have to get used to that until something changed.

They found a cave that opened up right next to a stream, which was so convenient that October had a hard time grasping how they stumbled upon such luck. They set up camp in the cave and in the driest place there was where they made three makeshift hammocks out of vines and twigs and set their belongings aside.

October went back outside as he took his tattered shirt off, exposing himself to the cooling air that lapped at his rippling body. He stood there for a moment thinking on how exactly he was to go about his ridiculous situation. He had wings now, so he figured he should learn how to use them.

"What're you doing?" asked Jason as he came out into the breeze beside October.

"Well, I figured that if we have wings, I might as well practice flying," replied October with a little bit of a smirk dancing across his face.

With that in mind, Jason called back to his older brother. "Hey, Matthew, come here. We're going to try to figure out our wings here real quick. Care to join?" but before any response by Matthew could really thought through, Jason abruptly interrupted, saying, "I know you do. Don't deny it."

Matthew laughed as he got up from his place to walk over to his brothers and said, "Alright, but we need to find food fast," as he too removed his shirt.

"Yeah, yeah, we'll get to it. Come on." said Jason, taking his shirt off last. There probably wasn't much point in keeping those torn up things anymore anyway as they couldn't even keep the mosquitoes off.

Matthew decided that he would be the first to test his new body features and so his brothers gave him some room as he pumped his wings. He propelled himself half a foot off the ground and planted his hooves back on the ground with a solid thump with is arms put out at strange angles to keep his balance. He tried it again with two, light pumps of his wings and reached a foot and a half from the ground and landed back on his hooves. For whatever curious reasons, the wings on his and his brothers' backs felt seemingly weightless, and hardly made it as difficult to fly as many might think it would be.

"This is kind of fun," Matthew said with a goofy smile spreading across his face.

"Okay, my turn," said Jason as he warmed up his wings. He hopped, then pumped his wings, throwing himself two feet of the ground and almost landed on his face, but he managed to land upright with some last second balancing time.
October backed up, and began to warm up his wings as well; giving that odd sense of foreign familiarity with muscles that should not have been there. October leapt into the air with a heave and a huff, and then flapped as hard as he could, resulting in him reaching ten feet off the ground. He landed on his hooves with his own dirt solid thump. His brothers looked at him with wide eyes as he rose from his crouched position.

"Showoff," Jason snarked with a quirky smile at his little brother.

October did it again, but kept flapping. It felt rather odd to him as if he might get a charlie horse from any movement he made with his wings, but be stayed there at ten feet off the ground for a few moments until he slowly let himself down to the ground. His brothers tried the same method as October; they jumped, then flapped their wings and stayed in the air for a few seconds, then slowly let themselves to the ground just as their little 'showoff' demonstrated for them.

They all began to laugh out of excitement of this brand new feeling. Nothing they had ever done felt quite like this, but it seemed to feel rather nostalgic somehow to October. Perhaps it was because of his adoration of the lakes and rivers and other outdoor places of the woods that Matthew would always show him when they were children. They used to go out into the woods while Jason had his face in a book as they ran around for new adventure all the time.

"This is absolutely amazing." said October with pure bliss in his words, forgetting anything of the war.

They spread out a little further and began to flap in unison, creating a gust of wind beneath them, making the grass, bushes, and tree branches reel back in respect of their presence. October was the first to take the next action by tilting himself sideways in the air. This flying thing was much easier than he thought. He began to fly in different directions as his older brothers followed his lead. They all began to laugh again as they flew in a circle around each other ten feet above the ground. They slowly landed back on the ground in unison, still laughing with merriment that flowed between them.

"Okay, we really need to get some food, but let's stay on the ground for the hunt until we learn how to actually fly," said Matthew with a content smile.

"Alright, but I'm definitely going to be doing this a lot," said Jason in reply.

October crouched low in the tall grass as he looked up at one of the most pleasing sights he had ever seen. Standing at a good four feet tall, from hoof to shoulder, was two hundred pound, mule doe, eating with her head hung low without a care in the world.

With narrowed eyes, October spied Matthew looking at him through the brush, slowly waving for him to take the first move. October made sure he saw Jason to his left and gave him the warning before he leapt out at the deer that was only about fifteen feet in front of him. The grey man raised the stone in his hand left and his combat knife in his right at the ready and pushed forward at the frightened deer, which spun around to try and run away from October. In response, Matthew leapt out from his hiding place with a stone in his own hand and a massive kukri in the other. The doe retaliated by rearing up to its hind hooves and struck Matthew atop his crown with fierce blows to the head that Matthew only returned in kind as he pounded to stone into the beasts neck, but unable to land a blow with his blade. Jason popped up from his position, only gaining the deer's attention as he hurled a stone square between the eyes of the creature, knocking its senses away. The doe stumbled a bit in pain and confusion before receiving a stone to the back of the head from Matthew, dropping it right where it stood.

"Well," said Matthew at he rubbed his head, "that was different. I kind of wish we had enough ammo for this though."

Jason kicked the dead doe in the shoulder and replied, "Eh, we'll make do with what we got," and then tossed his stone to the side.
Jason brought over a decent log for a cutting board and slipped in unto the dead doe's neck. Then Matthew wound back his left arm (he was left handed you see), and struck the deer, severing it's head from it's shoulders with his massive knife.

They got back to the cave and put the freshly skinned and gutted mule hanging on a spit over a fire. As they ate, they contemplated the idea to see if they could actually fly around tomorrow; see if they could scout the land.

"Well, being that this was the first time we actually flew with...natural wings, we're likely to be sore in the morning. Perhaps we should just scout the land on foot...or would it be hoof? It's going to take some time to get use to this," Jason said as he fiddled with his dog tags.

"True, but I definitely want to practice flight more often. It could seriously benefit us with...all this," said October as he looked back at his wings and ruffled his feathers, feeling the excitement rush back to him. He flapped his wings lightly and folded them behind him again.

"So, what specifically do we have planned for tomorrow, Matthew?" asked Jason with a mouth full of food, getting an amused chuckled from his brothers.

"Well, like I said, we should scout on the ground, and see what we can find. But be careful, because something might find us instead. Again, I have no idea where we are right now, so we don't know what's out there. If you come across a bear, at least we'll have a clue, but if you find a jaguar then...we're no where close to home."

"Right. Well, I'm, going to bed," said October as he tossed the thigh bone he had been munching on into the fire pit before climbed into one of the hammocks. Matthew and Jason, before turning in for the night, opted to put out the fire after finishing what they had left in their hands and proceeded to hang the deer as high as they could get it; Matthew using his wing to get up higher so that nothing could come steal it besides a few pesky birds, then they climbed into their respective hammocks, following suit with October.

Jason sighed as he turned over in his rough sleeping place and said, "Do you ever think about what would have happened if Ivanov signed the Pact?"

Matthew turned over as well as in thought. With a sigh, Matthew stretched his neck and replied, "Sometimes. But when I think about it, I think it actually would have turned out worse. You see, for the longest time now, Russia has pretty much just hated us. So, if Ivanov signed, perhaps Russia would have rebelled anyway and caused more havoc then what we already got. What do you think October?" Matthew asked as he craned his neck to look at his little brother.

October opened his eyes a bit before saying, "I don't. It never actually crossed my mind before. But maybe if he signed the Pact, dad would still be around." And with that, he clamped his eyes shut again and said, "Good night," with a tone that wouldn't be argued with.

Jason lay back in his hammock and bit the inside of his cheek before shutting his eyes to rest.