Owen's eyes began to open once again, and much to his surprise, the sun was already starting to come up. He could actually see the daylight starting to shine through the woods. He then took a quick look at the watch on his wrist, thankfully, it had survived the jump and was still working. Unfortunately, it was already 0500 (5 AM) and the landings at the Normandy beaches were about to begin at any moment. Realizing how much time he's lost, Owen tried to quickly pull himself up to get ready to go, but then felt a massive shooting pain from his lower back. He tried to get up, but then found himself just falling back down to the ground.

"Damn it," he said to himself rubbing the lower portion of his back. He began to feel for anything broken or any penetration wounds, but there was nothing there. He breathed a slight sigh of relief and started to pick himself off of the ground. Using a nearby tree to help him up, Owen picked himself off despite the bad back and was now on his feet once again. As he was looking down on the ground, he noticed the combat knife he dropped still in the place where it last was. That's when he began to recollect the events of what happened before, and now he had questions. What hit him on the back to free him from his parachute? As he stared at the still dangling parachute 20 feet up in the air, Owen heard the last thing he was expecting to hear, a woman's voice.

"Oh, good! You're finally awake," said the voice. Owen's heart froze up for a second. The voice sounds exactly like his sister. But, how could she be here? She's supposed to be back home, getting ready for high school. Owen didn't dare turn around to confront the voice. A few tense seconds passed, then the voice spoke once again.

"Are, you okay?" she asked. Taking a deep breathe, as if he was accepting his fate, Owen turned around to confront the voice. But, to his surprise, when he looked to where the voice was, he couldn't see anything. Now, things were getting strange. He then began to look in every possible direction around him, wondering where the source of the voice came from.

"What the hell..." he muttered to himself, still scanning his surroundings for a person that might be hiding, but there was nothing he could see. That was until the voice spoke again.

"Down here," said the voice. Owen looked down to see the source of the voice. In an utter shock of disbelief, Owen fell backwards, tripping on a nearby log and landing in a pile of leaves on the other side. At the base of his feet was some sort of purple creature that had the voice of his sister. As he tried to quickly collect himself, the creature at the base of his feet jumped up on the log to see what happened.

"Oh my gosh, sir, are you okay?" asked the creature.

Owen, not knowing what the creature was or why it could talk, quickly pulled out his 1911* handgun, racks the slide to chamber a round, and points it at mysterious creature.

"Stay back! Stay the fuck back or I shoot!" he said, the handgun aimed directly at the creature's forehead.

"Oh, I'm sorry sir. I didn't mean to scare you," said the creature, "I just wanted to introduce myself."

It was at this moment when Owen finally got a good look at the creature. Up on the log was a bright purple pony with a unicorn horn on her head and wings on her body. She had a purple mane with a pink stripe going down it, big purple eyes that were about the size of the handgun in Owen's hands, and a bright, welcoming smile on her face. Owen finally began to lower the handgun in utter disbelief at the sight in front of his eyes. Unable to comprehend what exactly he was seeing, Owen just simply started stammering, not knowing what next to say to the purple pony on the log that was somehow able to talk to him. The purple pony giggled a little bit, jumped off the log, and began to walk towards Owen.

"Here, let me help you up," she said politely, extending her hoof out to help him up. Owen, at first not knowing if he should even touch the pony, decided to take up her offer and extended his hand outwards too. The purple pony helped pull up the bruised, but still alive paratrooper off of the ground.

"Uh...thanks," he said, putting the handgun back in it's holster as he stood up.

"No problem, now let me introduce myself," said the purple pony. "My name is Twilight Sparkle, I come from the land of Equestria and the Princess of Friendship."

"Huh. Well...I'm Private Marsh, Easy Company, 506th"* he said.

"Oohhh, you're a soldier."

"Yeah, a paratrooper specifically."

"This is so fascinating. Give me a second to write all of this down." She picked up the notepad and quill from her bag using her magic, which took Owen by surprise.

"Woah, how the hell are you doing that?"

"With my unicorn magic, of course. I don't mean to brag, but I've been studying magic for almost all my life and-" before Twilight could finish, her scroll and quill fell down to the ground. The magical glow around her horn had suddenly cut out. She tried to pick it up again, but the same thing happened. For some reason, her unicorn magic wasn't working as well as it normally did. She started to blush and awkwardly laughed in front of the still puzzled paratrooper. As she kept trying to lift up the quill and notepad, Owen's mind began to think about other things, specifically, the invasion. He took a quick look at his watch again, time was 0505 (5:05 AM), infantry was to land ashore at 0630 (6:30 AM), he needed to get moving.

"Hey, uh...Twilight is it?" he asked. Twilight stopped what she was doing and put her attention to Owen.

"Oh, yes! That's my name."

"Listen, it's been good trying to get to know you, but I got to get going-"

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Silly me, I'll figure out what's wrong with magic later.' Twilight picked up the scroll and quill with her mouth and put them both back in her bag. "Obviously, a soldier like you has an important job to do. But, Mr. Marsh, if you can do me one more favor and point me to the direction of Canterlot High School, that would be greatly appreciated."

"Umm...is Canterlot some sort of small French village that doesn't appear on a map? Because I never heard of it." This caught Twilight off guard.

"What do you mean? Am I not in Canterlot? And what is this 'French' village you speak of?"

"Uh. French is an adjective describing something from the nation of France. You know what France is, right?"

"I've never heard of that nation...Oh no...I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS NATION!" Owen then put his mouth over the purple pony's mouth.

"SSShhhh...you need to stay quiet. You're in a fucking warzone."

"I'M IN A WARZONE?!" screamed the muffled Twilight.

"Yeah, you're in Nazi-occupied France. And let me tell you something, these Nazis...they aren't the good guys. So, if you want to stay alive, you will listen to me right now. Okay?"

Twilight was unresponsive. She kept on hyper ventilating, to the point where she was about to pass out.

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey! Calm down. Calm down. Look at me. Look at me. Deep breathe...deep breathe..." The paratrooper and the pony began to do deep-breathing exercises together. He looked deep into the panicked eyes of Twilight, her pupils significantly smaller than when she was calm. After a few seconds of deep breathing, Twilight started to calm down.

"Good. Now, listen to me. The Allies are coming. You shouldn't have to worry about the Nazis for long. However, I don't think there's a lot I can help you out with, and I have a job to do, so I can't stay. You need to find a place to hide and figure out how to get out of this world, okay?" said the paratrooper. However, Twilight was unsatisfied with his plan. In her mind, the more logical thing to do would to go directly to these "allies" and then focus on a way of getting out of the world.

"Um...wouldn't it be safer if I were come to with you to see these 'allies' you speak of?" This question surprised Owen a bit. The road ahead was not an easy path, and the job he was required to do was not an easy one. The main objective's for his company were to land around the Sainte-Marie du Mont region, with the 2nd battalion to seize one of the crucial exits for armor to get off of Utah Beach and move in land. From there, the next objective would be the town of Carentan, which would link the Utah and Omaha Beach sectors together to help push further into France and trap German forces still defending the coastal region. This was not going to be an easy battle up ahead, and watching over a talking purple unicorn was going to make that job significantly harder.

"What? No! Out of the question. It's too unsafe and you're more likely to die than stay alive if you come with me." Twilight was not convinced. The fight she had with Lord Tirek was still fresh in her mind, not to mention all of the other times her and her friends got into life and death scrapes; from the dragon that was tamed by Fluttershy to her being turned into stone by a cockatrice, Twilight had faced elimination more times than once. In her mind, she knew she could handle herself when faced with dangerous circumstances.

"Um. I'm not sure if you know this, but I've been able to handle myself in some pretty scary situations and besides, going with you will get me quicker to your allies and thus, quicker to safety." In her mind, it made sense. But, to Owen, it was still too risky. There was still no certainty that the invasion would even succeed; it was still very possible for the Germans to push the Allies off the beaches and overrun the Airborne landing zones and completely ruin this operation.

"I'm sorry, Twilight. But, you can't come with me. It's just...too dangerous." said Owen.

"Please, I promise to stay out of the way and do everything that you say."

"No!"

"Please, I-"

"The answer is no, Twilight. I'm sorry, but the answer is no." At this point, Twilight began to slowly cry. The rejection from this paratrooper she was nothing but kind to hurt her very much. Silently crying to herself, she began to walk away from Owen, who was starting to feel a little bit bad himself. He didn't mean to hurt her, he was only looking out for both of their safety. As the two began to part ways, something in Owen's heart told him to watch over this purple pony. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was telling him to help her try and navigate this world. However, the training drilled into him by the military was telling him that bringing her along is going to cause more harm than good. Even if they did survive, what would Owen's platoon commander say? Hell, something like this would send the entire Army into a frenzy and possibly even cause an unwanted spectacle that could lead Twilight down more dangerous paths. But, even with these possibilities realized in his head, Owen went with his heart and decided to bring Twilight along with him. He turned around to see Twilight still skulking away.

He took a deep breathe and said "Fine, you can tag along." Twilight stop in her tracks and immediately beamed with a bright smile.

"Really?" she asked. Owen simply nodded. Twilight ran right up next to Owen and gave him a hug.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you..." Twilight kept saying, squeezing the paratrooper harder every second.

"No problem...now please...let me go...so I can breathe..." he struggled to get out. Twilight immediately let up on the hug, apologizing quickly afterwards. After catching his breathe for a few seconds, Owen was back on his feet, ready to move.

"Now, if you're gonna come with me, you need to listen and do everything exactly as I say. No questions, okay?"

"Got it." Twilight had a confident look on her face, ready to go.

"Good, now, our drop was scattered all to hell, so I have no idea where we are. On top of that, I lost the majority of my gear in the drop. All I have is my pistol and my knife. But, I do know the coastline is North East from our position, so that's the direction we'll head in. Maybe we'll find some more guys on the way there. However, we might encounter some Germans along the way. In that case, stay hidden and quiet. It's probably best to avoid them since we don't have strength in numbers, yet. Our goal is to link up with other men and figure out where the hell to head to next. You ready?' The confident look on Twilight's face had faded away, and was now replaced with a worried one. "You good?" asked Owen. Twilight snapped out of her catatonic panicked state and addressed him.

"Me? Oh yeah. Totally fine...not panicking in the slightest bit," she said sarcastically.

"Well, bottle it up right now. If this invasion is going to be successful, we gotta get moving. Let's go." Owen got up and began walking towards the North East, hoping to find some sort of link up area and possibly, even his unit.

Author's Note

*The 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Organization of Army from smallest to largest units (Individuals, squads, platoons, company, battalion, regiment, division, Army corps).

*M1911(A1) handgun was the standard US military handgun from 1911-1985. Named after the year of introduction.