Do you ever get hit by a truck and roll down a hill full of sharp stones then run over by a stampede of horses? No? Then you cant believe the pain I’m in. Sure maybe once a while I got sore from my mission but holy crap I’ve never felt pain like this much.

The last thing I remember is I was in the middle of a war zone with the rest of my squad, practically mowing down the enemy. Me, as a shield, shredding the bastards with a pair of minigun on each of my hand, suddenly I heard someone shouted ‘ION CANNON!’ and got blown off my feet or rather blowing my feet.

Now I’m lying down face planted, my limbs are messed up I can’t feel my toes nor fingers. My backbones feel odd like it was reshaped somehow. It’s not a strange feeling but to think back I only use the War Machine form, it has nothing to do with my bones except strengthen it.

A sunlight hit my eyelids making me hiss in pain, I did something stupid which is open both of my eyes and the pain doubled. I tried to cover my eyes but instead, I feel yet another pain but this time it feels like something hit my eyes with a blunt object.

‘AAAUGGGHH WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME!??!’

For the record I have a very high pain tolerance, even if I got shot by a sniper I wouldn’t even flinch. But this time is way off the chart, my body feels like I’ve been swimming in a lake of lava, something is planted near the end of my tailbone, two more limbs behind my back, my eyes feel like has been forcefully widened and that’s a bad thing since the eyes are my only weakness, that’s why I always wear my mask

‘Wait...my mask!’

Realizing that my mask isn’t on my face, I immediately searched for said item leading me to snap my eyes open and letting the sunlight reached my eyes once again

Hello pain, it is nice to meet you again

“AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

After a minute or so I finally get to see without hurting myself. The first thing I see is that I’m surrounded by trees indicating that I’m in a forest of some kind. There 3 feet in front of me is my mask, my signature. A mask that based on Wrench’s mask from the game Watch Dog 2, I’ve made it so the mask can be separated into two pieces, the LED visor and the bottom part, so I can drink or eat without revealing my eyes. Unlike the original one that uses a limited amount of emotes mine can mimic almost all of my expression

Instead of two X’s like on the original mask, mine has a pair of blue pixilated eyes that can follow my eyes, eyelids and eyebrows movement. I also add some of the original ones like the ‘? ?’, ‘! !’, ‘^ ^’ and ' '> <'

I reach out to grab my mask, expecting to see a fingerless hand I was greeted by something else. A hoof. A small hoof covered by a dark colored fur, a lighter colored fur showing where my scars should be. By the size of it, the only thing I could think of is a child, or should it be called foal, sized hoof or even smaller.

‘wut?’

Looking at the rest of my body I could tell that I’m some sort of Equine judging by the shape of it if you didn’t count the extra pair of dark feathery wings on my back. I’m still wearing my clothes that somehow fit my current body, black leather hoodie with a baggy red undershirt, blue jeans covering my flank down to my hind legs.

Now the weird thing about it is I don’t remember morphing into this form, let alone having it. For those who don’t know, I am a shapeshifter but I can’t just change my body all nilly-willy and just transform my limbs into a different appendage like claw, wings or even grew another one. The reason to that is I am an abnormal shapeshift, my body can’t accept another being DNA thus making me unable to morph into another living being but that doesn’t mean I’m useless

Being an abnormal shapeshifter has its ups and downs, for example, me. I can’t copy other’s DNA thus absorbing mass from another creature is pointless to me, in return I can absorb other resources (metal, rock, wood, etc) as many as I want without getting bothered by the weight of it and make something out of it like weapons, vehicles, furniture and other things.

Normal shapeshifter can only absorb a certain amount of mass to morph into another creature or other things bigger than themselves. Since I cant copy other living being’s DNA, thus making me unable to do much with other’s flesh. I usually stick with technology, being able to turn myself into a fighter jet is pretty awesome

Heck, I can even turn myself into a fully armed walking impregnable fortress with the size of a 2 stories building

Sighing in defeat and making a mental note to solve all of this later I returned to the task at hand, or hoof in this case. Walking with four different limbs is something I got used to it since most of my transformation is quadrupled due to the sheer size of it. Grabbing the mask with both of my forehooves I bring it to my face.

Feeling the locking mechanism activates, which are four screws on each side of the mask that dig below the skin penetrate the skull, I activate the HUD of the mask. The satisfying sound of Windows XP starting up reach my ear making me smile under the mask, that smile was immediately gone after a warning popped up

No Signal, Unable to Connect With HQ

I frowned, why in the seven layers of hell can’t I connect to base? I’m literally a god damn signal transmitter that can reach cell tower in the radius of 50 miles away. Maybe the trees are blocking the signal if that is the case then I’ll have to find my way out of here

Mentally command my mask to open the map, a square screen popped up on the right top of my HUD that has a blinking icon of my mask surrounded by a green colored circle that surrounded by a blank screen. Well at least I’ll know where the hell I am going without going in a circle

***

I’ve been trudging this forest for what feels like hours but in reality, it’s only been 30 minutes and starting to question what kind of forest did I ended up. I came across a lot of weird flora and fauna. There’s this patch of blue flowers that dimly glowed, I decided to avoid it cuz I don’t know what it’ll do. Fought and killed a juvenile manticore, or at least what I think a manticore, normal manticore doesn't have a red-ish mane and those horns are way too big. And a shit-ton of wooden wolves

I’m not kidding, wolves that made out of woods literally jump out from a bush and try to bite me with their wooden jaws, the result a lot of their teeth got shattered. The reason for that is I have a layer of metal underneath my skin that acted like armor.

But that doesn’t mean that they gave up. After countless encounter with them, I’ve grown tired of them and made a solution to avoid the wooden wolf by disguising as one of them. Wearing one of their comrade’s corpse as a coat to mask my scent and using the skull as a helmet, hiding my mask under it

“You can’t take away the pain we feel
created as monster that com-Ouch!”

It was dumb of me to walk with closed eyes. Rubbing the pain off my snout from walking straight up a fence that has a fuck ton of apple trees on the other side of it

‘Wait apples?’

Sure is, an orchard of apple trees with the biggest apple I’ve ever seen. My stomach growled reminded me that I haven’t eaten anything since the last time I ate, doing the most logical thing I jump to the other side and climb one of the trees

Even though I have a pair of wings I doubt that they can carry me, with how small they are I bet they’re just for shows.

Plucking one of the apples from the branch I checked if it has any harmful substance within because if you live in my world there’s no way for an apple can look like this except if you mixed chemical with it. After scanning the suspicious looking apple I found it save to eat, I lower the bottom part of my mask and take a bite of it…

….

…w..what is this?...

…w…why am I crying?...

…why did this APPLE IS SO GOD DAMN GOOD?!?!...

I kept munching on the apple, tears streaming down my face. I never taste something like this in my life, I can’t even describe how good these apples are. Serving in the military since I was 16 made me rarely eat something with good quality, the only thing I can compare to this is the dried banana chips that I stole on a mission, those chips probably the sweetest thing I've eaten in the past 8 years and it has nothing compared to these apples

I finished eating the whole apple on my hooves, without thinking I snatch another one and ate it like I haven’t eaten in a month

Meanwhile, not far away from our shapeshifter, a certain orange cowmare named Applejack is harvesting apples with a technique known as tree bucking, using her strong hind legs to kick the tree and knocking down the apples down to a basket she prepared.

Tomorrow is the Summer Sun Celebration and she got to play a part of it, taking charge of the food is one of the most important ones. Not to mention her relative are visiting for a gathering so she has to make a lot of food both for them and the celebration, meaning she had a lot of work to do, thankfully Applejack have her brother to help out her chores

Applejack was about to buck another tree before her sixth sense reacting up. Working in a farm for a long time tending the apple trees and dealing with Timberwolves has been leading her to develop another sense that allows her to sense somepony messing with one of her apple tree or Timberwolves entered her orchard. Right now she feels both of them at the same time

She frowned, looking toward the deeper part of the orchard. She fought a few Timberwolves before and come back without a scratch. bucking apple trees since she was a filly really strengthen her body, mainly her hind legs. A single buck from those can shatter a Timberwolf into pieces

Walking toward where her instinct telling to go, which is near a tree that has nothing wrong with it. Applejack confused, why did her feeling lead her to nothing? She swears that her ‘sixth sense’ was never wrong, and she can prove it. Sniffing the air around her, the sharp pony nose of her pick up a familiar smell, a Timberwolf scent above her

Applejack swiftly bucks the apple tree beside her causing a figure to fall down along with the apples. The first thing she saw is a Timberwolf’s head, it was enough to set her fight or flight off. With a quick-thinking Applejack turns her body around and buck the Timberwolf midair.

A satisfying CRACK reached Applejack’s ear made her smile but an THUD followed by a groan made her alarmed once more, thinking the wooden wolf survived her infamous buck. She turns toward where the Timberwolf was, ready to finish of the intruder.

She gasped in horror, what suppose to be a Timberwolf was, in fact, a young colt, two hooves mark imprinted on his chest explained how he ended up sticking on a tree. Applejack horrified at what she had done, she had accidentally buck, and possibly killed, a foal. Tears streamed down the young pony face showing a painful expression, although his eyes are covered by a Timberwolf mask.

Overwhelmed by guilt the cowmare can only watch the badly injured foal slump toward the grown, revealing a pair of crooked wings and this discovery increased Applejack’s guilt. Pegasis’ are well known to have hollow bones that makes them lighter and allowing them to fly, a kick from an Earth Pony can break or even shatter their bones but this is Applejack we’re talking about.

She was about to check he’s alright but stopped when something came out from the foal’s mouth. Blood came out from his open mouth and pooling beneath him, soaking the dark-colored fur in red. There’s no doubt, the least injury that she had inflicted is broken bones but after seeing the blood she knew it was worse than a that, there’s a possibility that she had caused an internal damage to an organ or two. Judging by where she bucked him there’s a chance that she hit the heart and lungs

Applejack took a step toward the unmoving colt, each step shaking her to the core. taking the last step, not bothered by the blood that soaking her hooves, she bends down and nudges the young colt, expecting some kind of reaction which he never gives, she checks if he is still breathing activity by putting her nuzzle on his.

nothing

Placing a hoof on the colt's neck to check if there's any pulse, despite using a hoof that ended with a hard nail, her Earth Pony magic allows her to detect any pulse with it.

and still nothing

Applejack fell on her haunches burying her face in her hooves, crying over what she had done.

Author's Note

Well that escalated quickly