Day one.
I passed through the warp gate last.
The last of nearly three million soldiers sent through it to Earth. I expected to come out on the other side to my comrades, to those I'm familiar with. What i got, was stranded in a forest in some area of the universe, lost and alone. being a partial android, much of my body is cybernetic and requires some sort of well, charge or form of power. I have a small fusion reactor attached to the armor that encases my body, providing a constant stream of power to the suit and the cybernetic implants.
It amplifies my strength tenfold, and allows for many other super human abilities while also giving me the options of using thermal imaging, hearing greater than average distances away and having a lot more awareness on the field. On top of that, I had survival training that lasted nearly five years, like most apostles. Hopefully, that training would come in handy.
I had set the timer based on the position of the sun. It has been around.. Two hours since then. And over that course of time i have walked possibly a kilometer, maybe a Kilometer and a half, trying to get my barrings. I had gone straight to the east, searching for signs of civilization or for somewhere to let my fusion reactor recharge and get my shit in order.
I kept walking, stopping along the way to take pictures of my surroundings or examine things. Every once in a while i would find piles of bones, and maybe a small rodent here or there. An hour passed before i came to a clearing of sorts. If anything it was merely a piece of land with less trees in it and more sunlight managing to make to the ground.
I stepped out from the thicker section of the woods, taking a quick look around the clearing. There was a small river running through the center of the clearing, surrounded by large amounts of grass and some reeds. Crossing the river was easy and afterwards, i stopped to figure out were i was and what to do next.
I was near a stream in a clearing.
The possibility of the stream leading out of the forest and to civilization kept swimming around in my head. The Idea, aside from wandering aimlessly in a forest forever, sounded like the next best thing. After an hour of resting and thinking, i got up and decided to head up the river, starting my march.
For hours on end, and through three days and three nights, i walked across the riverbed. I stopped every once in a while to hunt. killing, cooking, and eating a few small rodents like these odd bushy tailed creatures the database in my helmet called a squirrel. After each meal i went on my way, continuing my walk up the river. As night four rolled around, i was at the point of stopping and passing out, due to lack of sleep.
I stopped by a tree and set my alarm to wake me in four hours and the audio output in my suits audio system to max. if that wouldn't wake me, nothing would.
Four hours later.
I woke up with a startled jolt, confused and dazed as the alarm blared in my eye drums. I quickly scrambled to turn it off, rapidly pressing the down button for volume on my wrist pad. As the loud blaring alarm faded away and the alarm itself became nothing but a image on my heads up display, I stood up slowly.
The next hour was uneventful, as i walked along the river, periodically examining my weapon and my various pieces of equipment. Soon however, i discovered something very interesting. I found a bridge. Not a natural bridge, but a actual wooden bridge.
the bridge itself looked fairly old and the planks of wood seemed to be far weaker than the average human bridge. That and.. It was really small. Not small enough i couldn't walk across it, but small enough that its railings went up only to my lower thighs. It was some what more narrow and provided very little space for maneuvering. I also looked ahead, searching for any more artificial structures. At first i saw absolutely nothing, just more and more fauna. Wait.
I turned back a bit to a tree i saw. I saw a little box hanging from the tree, a wooden box.
I looked down at the bridge again, and tried to cross. After i put my foot down on it, i tried my second foot. The creak of the wood was rather loud, and i could kind of hear wood splintering under my feet. After a moment of balancing and hoping i would not fall through, i decided it would barely hold out. I was wrong.
Some of the wood must have just been to old and weak to hold my weight, but the other panels had been ok. Sadly, this only applied to the first few panels, because i actually fell through the wood and into the river, a hail of splinters and pieces of wood falling along with me.
After a minute of examining the wooden box, i deduced it was a bird house, because of its shape and the stick along with the whole able to fit a small bird.it must have been recently supplied with new bird seed, because there was a couple of birds that had landed on the perch and taken some mouth fulls of feed before flying off to god knows where to do there thing.
After allowing myself to dry off, i started heading down a dirt path the bridge had been connected to, following it until i hit some sign of civilization, or found somewhere to hold up for the night and sleep.
So after marching for maybe two kilometers, i began to see the fauna of the forest break up. It was becoming less dense, opening up a bit more as i went.
eventually i was out of the forest on the outskirts of a clearing. In this clearing, the path continued. I followed it forward with my eyes before i actually started walking, and, i saw what looked like some sort of town.
I turned around, and climbed the tallest tree i could find and activated my helmets optical systems, zooming in on the town and examining it. After a few minutes of observation i could tell there was inhabitants, but the optics on combat suits like mine could only see so far, so all i could tell was that it was inhabited. But the inhabitants, from a distance anyway, didn't look very Human.
After maybe ten or twenty minutes of casual observation, or as casual as spying on a town of aliens can be, i climbed out of the tree, and decided to walk in to the town. As a precaution, should the natives be hostile, i took my D-N02X infantry assault rifle, a supremacy rifle version usually used by disciples that fires from a clip of sixty rounds, and deactivated the safety mechanisms, and set it to a stun setting.
If i had no choice, i would set it to kill, or probably take out my other weapon, a D-N04C projectile rifle. The D-N04c fires a projectile that, upon touching a surface, explodes. There is no stun setting on that.
There is merely a safety mechanism and a lot of Recoil.
I set off in a jog towards the town, quietly humming the anthem of the United Colonies to myself as i jogged up the trail. As time passed i spotted something weird happening in the sky. There was creatures rearranging the clouds and moving them around. No matter, so long as they did not try harm to me, it would maybe be best to pay them no heed. After all, these creatures may be my saviors, but they may also be my enemy. Depends on how first contact goes.
Ten minutes down the road, i managed to make it to the outskirts of the town. I slowed down and stopped jogging, dropping down to a normal walking pace.
For a few minutes I maneuvered around via the alley ways and stuck to the shadows, observing on a few occasions these.. anthropomorphic.. Uh, candy colored, creatures. They seemed to be divided in to sub species, with obvious but not very massive differences. Some have wings, while others have horns. Some didn't have any sort of identifying feature at all, just these symbols on there.. asses, I think. As a matter of fact, they all have these symbols.
As I turned to try and slip away as quietly as possible, or as quiet as a man in a suit of titanium armor can be, I bumped in to something. I heard it fall to the ground and a loud “Oof!”. I jumped, Looking for the source of the sound. I looked up, left, right, and finally, down. I spotted what I had bumped in to to.
A light-very light- tan colored creature with gray hair and glasses was starring up at me with a look of utter bewilderment, eyes wide, mouth gaping open, and practically frozen in place. I didn't move. I merely looked down at the..- fuck it, ill just call them aliens – alien before I decided to speak to her.
I cleared my throat and said “Hello”. The alien didn't move, and looked a bit more bewildered. I decided I would try to express some good will by helping her back up, so I held out a hand. After a minute or so, the alien grabbed my hand and I helped her back to her feet. I noticed the height difference then. I was at least a good foot and a half taller than her, counting the suite.
“I am Chase” I said, holding out my hand in the gesture for a hand shake. “And you are?”
It took her a moment to grasp reality again, taking my hand and shaking it, before saying “ I am M-mayor Mare of P-Ponyville.” She said, slightly shaking. She seemed frightened – I would be to if I bumped in to a person wearing suite of armor in a alley way – and so I decided it was best to probably leave.
I bid her farewell in the most polite way possible – for humans anyway – and dashed out of that fucking alley way quicker than the road runner on steroids and immediately ran until I jumped in to a alley a good maybe kilometer away from the alley I encountered the “mayor” in.
