Chapter 3: Interview with a Unicorn

"What is your name?"

"James Blackburn."

"Military rank and division?"

"Sergeant. U.S. Army. Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment."

"Birthplace?"

It went back and forth like that for a few minutes. The captain - who introduced himself as Shining Armor once the doctor left - was sitting in a metal folding chair across the room, writing my answers down on a clipboard. From my forced prone position on the hospital bed, I couldn't see him very clearly, so I was simply staring at the blank concrete ceiling as I answered. Once he got all of the personal information he needed, he got up from the chair and crossed the room to stand just at the foot of the bed. He eyed me for a moment, and I forfeited my staring contest with the ceiling to return his gaze.

"Now that we have become as acquainted as we need to be," he began pacing the floor in front of my bed, "Tell me..."

"If you're going to ask about my mission, don't bother," I interrupted, "I'm not telling you a damn thing."

"I figured as much," the captain shrugged and continued his pacing, "To be honest, I didn't expect you to. I know better than to think a highly trained soldier like yourself would give away such sensitive information to your enemy."

"Then, what exactly do you intend to ask, captain?" I pondered out loud.

"What I want to know..." he paused his words as well as his pacing, stopping just in front of my bed, "Is what you think about all of this."

I raised an eyebrow at the captain, "About all of.. what, exactly?"

"The war, sergeant," he resumed his pacing, "What are your thoughts on the war? What is the point of it? Where do you see it going?"

I stayed silent for a moment as I ran his questions through my head. What I thought of it? I had never really considered it. I was too busy fighting the war to bother with that kind of thinking. After a moment of debating with myself, I looked up at the captain and said, "Do you want my opinion or what I'm told to believe?"

"I asked for your thoughts, Sergeant Blackburn," Captain Armor raised his clipboard and looked at me.

"I wasn't trained to think, captain," I said, eyeing him without a hint of emotion, "I was trained to kill. I don't question my orders or my mission. So long as it doesn't disrupt my moral code or violate the Geneva Convention, I just do what I am told. End of discussion."

"Oh come on," the captain gave me a discerning look, "You're telling me you've never wondered why you were here? While you watched your fellow soldiers kill and die, you never stopped to ask what they were sacrificing their lives for; what they were killing for?"

I stayed silent for a few seconds before replying, "I learned a long time ago that those kinds of questions are useless while you're fighting. All they are good for is freezing you up. They are the ones you ask after, not during."

"Humor me, then. Consider this interview your 'after,'" he looked at me expectantly. Humor him, huh?

"What do you want to know?"

He gave a slight smile, "Alright, let's start from the beginning. What do you think caused this mess in the first place?"

I thought for a moment. The only thing I could think of was what I saw on the news; all of the events that led up to the war, "Well, officially, that NATO Covert Unit getting caught operating in Canterlot was what got it all to boil over... but I'd have to say the tensions from your open alliance with Russia and China is what started the fire."

"Your country doesn't like them much, I assume?"

"China's mostly okay, apart from their strict communism. Russia is pretty much America's overly-attached ex, doing everything they can to get our attention."

"That's... an interesting way to word it," the captain said, raising an eyebrow.

"If you knew the history, you'd understand."

"Alright then, moving on..." the captain again resumed his pacing. Seems like he had trouble standing still; that, or he was just trying to distract me, "What do you think of the war's progression so far? Who's winning?"

I silently recalled the war's major battles, and who could be considered the victor in each. Appleloosa and Dodge City, being closest to the portal and unprepared for attack, fell to NATO easily early on in the war. Then there was an ill-fated attack on Ponyville where French and British troops got their asses handed to them by a Royal Guard battalion. At the same time, American troops pushed for Baltimare and took the city after a long, hard fight. While the European soldiers regrouped and pushed for Las Pegasus, us Rangers deployed from Baltimare to the farmland between Fillydelphia and Manehattan, and set up a few outposts. From there, artillery was moved in and we began a drawn-out battle for Manehattan. From what I knew, neither Manehattan or Las Pegasus had fallen yet. They were both active war-zones.

I tallied the points in my head. Two for NATO - I counted Appleloosa and Dodge City as one, given how easily they were taken - one for the natives, and two still pending. I didn't know how Las Pegasus was going, but Manehattan was nowhere close to being considered "secured." In fact, the militia had been kicking our ass in multiple neighborhoods. They used Viet-Cong-like guerrilla tactics, except with rubble instead of jungle. The Rangers could handle it well enough most of the time, but other divisions weren't having the same luck, and it showed. The neighborhood my squad had been tasked with securing was actually our last-ditch effort to break the city. Guess we failed on that one, then.

"I would have to say... neither at the moment," I responded after a lot of thought. I gave a very brief explanation, omitting the part about Manehattan not being close to falling.

"Okay, so, taking that into consideration, where do you see it going?" the captain asked after writing something on his clipboard.

"Thinking logically..." I thought hard about my answer, "This seems like it will go the same way the last few of our conflicts have. Stalemates and withdrawals. Once the civilian population gets tired of the fighting, our politicians will negotiate something to make both sides look like winners, and we move on until we piss somebody else off. Or, they just pull us out, leaving our local allies to finish where we left off, and we move on until we piss somebody else off."

"Local allies?"

"Guess that one doesn't apply to us here, does it?"

"Guess not," the captain stopped in front of my bed yet again, and placed his hands on the mattress, leaning forward, "Lastly, what do you think the point of it is? What's the end-game for your side?"

"I've no fucking clue, come to think of it," I admitted, "I guess it's an honor thing? That task force in Canterlot made us look bad, so we gotta prove to both worlds that we're top dog."

"How heroic of you," he said sarcastically, a smirk crossing his muzzle.

"Not every war is the classic good versus evil, captain," I smirked back at him.

Captain Armor stood up straight and wrote down something on his clipboard, then began walking towards the door, "The doctor will be back in a moment. A guard will be posted by the door until he gets back. Try not to piss him off, he doesn't like humans too much."

The captain reached and opened the door and, as he left, a dark grey pegasus in Royal Guard armor entered in his place. The guard closed the door after his commanding officer, and then stood at attention next to it. I took a moment to survey his features. His jaw was a bit broader than average, and he was heavily built. He actually reminded me of one of my squad-mates, Hudson. Hudson had been in the convoy, in the rear Humvee. Once the image of the vehicle being engulfed in fire flashed through my mind, I found myself staring up at the ceiling again. In my solitude, the events of that afternoon had finally sunk in, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Scratch that, a mountain of bricks. My breathing became a bit irregular as I listed off every fallen comrade in my head. At the end, I remembered Pharaoh, and his loss is what finally broke me. I felt a small tear fall down my face as I began recalling some of our antics in high school. He was my best friend, and now he was gone.

What the fuck were we doing here?

Shining Armor walked down the hospital's well-lit hallway, clipboard in hand and a smile on his face. He walked by a group of three nurse mares, and nodded to them as he passed. He was in a good mood. The interview with the human was successful, as he'd hoped it would be. He may not have gained any real intel, but he found out one thing. A very important bit of knowledge he couldn't wait to share with the doctor.

Shining eventually found the stallion he was looking for, inside a patient's room conversing with a militastallion who had to have his leg amputated after an explosion rendered it completely dead. Shining knocked on the open door to get the doctor's attention. Once the doctor looked back, he gave Shining a nod and excused himself from the patient. Shining led him to a nearby empty room and shut the door behind them. Once they were alone, the doctor wasted no time.

"Well, how did it go?" he asked curiously, with a hint of nervousness.

"Went well, doc," Shining said smugly, "The medicine you gave him worked fine. Once I slipped past his mental wall, he answered every question I threw at him."

"Did he tell you about Manehattan?" the doctor asked.

"No. I tried to steer away from those questions for this session. Instead, I asked his opinion on the war. He was surprisingly... neutral about it."

The doctor still looked nervous, and maybe a little... upset, "I hope it will prove to be worth the effort, captain. I'm not sure I fully agree with drugging him for answers. Are you sure the princess authorized this?"

"As far as I know, doctor," Captain Armor shrugged, "She never talked to me directly, but the general assured me it was approved. I'm just following orders at this point."

"I'm still uneasy about all of this. Are you not?"

"A bit. But the way I see it, the sooner we end this war, the better. And if coaxing information out of a human soldier can help make that happen, I'm all for it."

"I'm still unsure..." the doctor brought one of his jet-black hands to his chin and began stroking it absentmindedly.

"Well, don't dwell on it, doc," the captain walked over and handed over the clipboard, "You just focus on keeping him alive and recovering. I'll handle the interviews."

The doctor nodded, "Very well. I should go tend to him, then."

As the doctor moved to exit the empty room, the captain added, "Oh, and doc? I must advise you not to get too attached to the human. Once he's healed enough, he's on his way to the prison camp. Understand?"

"All too well, captain..." the doctor didn't even glance back before exiting the room. As he walked down the hall towards Sergeant Blackburn's room, he looked over the interview results on the clipboard. The captain was right, his answers were very neutral. As if it were an outsider looking in. With the "enhanced" pain medication, he seemed to have a very logical mind when directed. Still, the doctor couldn't shoo away the feeling of uneasiness, of guilt.

The captain's words echoed in the doctor's mind as he reached Blackburn's room, "I must advise you not to get too attached..."

It might be too late for that, captain, the doctor thought as he opened the door and entered his patient's room.