It was the tenth time Applejack released a sigh that day, this day is without the doubt the most hectic day in the past few months for her.

Not because of the Summer Sun Celebration is right around the corner, no less than two days from now, she already developed an efficient way to prepare. What troubled her mind is the young masked colt, she can't help but worried about his safety.

Given the fact she is the one who kicked and hospitalized him, even if it was an accident, she felt it was her responsibility to nurse him back to health and should apologize for the injury she inflicted.

A cold yet soft breeze snaps her back to reality, making her shiver despite being covered by a fairly thick blanket, a glance to the other side of the room confirms where it was coming from, with all thought of the masked colt clouded her mind she forgot to close her window.

After she walks towards it, Applejack took a moment to stare past her orchard of apple trees and to the border of the Everfree Forest. It still boggles her mind how a colt can outrun the fastest flyer in the Equestria, still, her friend wouldn't give up that easily and chased him into the forest, at last, it was for naught and he disappeared deeper into the woods.

Pinkie had rallied a small group of the townponies to search for the colt after giving them a brief explanation, others would eagerly help if not for the Celebration is just in two days, Applejack also volunteered but both of her friends insisted her to help Mac back at the orchard and leave it to them.

Even after the sun goes down, she hasn't seen a single fur or mane of them.

Ting

What is that up in the sky? Something shiny with white trails behind it? Oh my, a shooting star, what a fortunate event to happen! Applejack closes her eyes and wished for the masked colt to be away from any harm he might come across in that forest.

She opens her eyes and the shooting star is already gone, she released a sigh once more this time with a bit of weight off from her chest and once the window closed shut she hopped toward the bed and rewarded with a night of beauty sleep.

Little did she know, if she just makes a wish with her eyes open she would know that the 'shooting star' landed right in the deeper part of the Everfree Forest.

'God fucking damn it,'

That was the first thing that came to mind, other than the constant 'pain, pain, pain' and 'oh god when does it end?', once I touch the ground. Thankfully I found a place to land, read crashed, without leaving an obvious 'something landed here' crater, If it wasn't for the autopilot function I would be smack dabbed in the middle of a burning forest.

During the reentry, I forgot there's only a limited amount of metal inside me and used most of it to form the thrusters and the engines. When things started to heat up I used the rest of it to reinforce the more vital upper parts of my body, mainly my chest where the power core resides and head, completely ignoring the bottom parts.

It was a mistake that bites me in the ass.

In a split second, my senses and thoughts are filled nothing but pain, pain, and more pain, without thinking I did something very very stupid by reinforcing the fleshy parts with wood, a fucking flammable material, coating the bones and adding a second layer of skin.

It gave me a breathing room to focus on and made me realize what I just did. Before I can undo it the pain comes back tenfolds as my legs got cooked from both inside and outside, it was enough to knock me unconscious if I had not disabled my nervous connections, well some parts of it.

I should've figured it does more damage than preventing it. I made a little, but an incredibly useful, program during the usual skirmish with the neighboring countries. Using the cybernetic half of my brain, it can temporarily disable my perception of pain by disabling certain parts of the other half which produces the chemical causing the feeling of pain via a small dose of electricity. I got the idea when I saw an infantry soldier took hits on the shoulder, he didn't realize the bleeding wounds before another soldier point it out.

It took a great effort programming this procedure, making something that can turn off the sense of pain with a push of a button is not an easy thing to do. Hell, fiddling with a human brain without causing too much damage is already hard enough, not to mention the only brain I can legally test it with is my own brain which is only a half and way more fragile than others.

With how much recourse and time I invested in this project, and almost got a dishonorable discharge by conducting illegal experimentation, I eventually perfected a program that can suppress most of my senses, I creatively name it AntiSense.exe.

Even with all the help I can get it took way longer than it was intended to but the fruit of the labor is definitely worth it, not only it can numb my sense of pain, but it can also suppress other senses such as hunger, fatigue, moral, and much more. But there's one thing that made this program can only be used on me.

It was specifically made for the right half of the human brain.

It was no wonder why was my brain felt like being stabbed. I should've realized it sooner, even if my organic part of my brain function the same as always, the thought of it being replaced by an equine's never crossed my mind, the fact that I still think and act like a human, aside of walking on all four, cemented it.

The pain from that alone was enough to knock me out for a sec but long enough to activate autopilot, yet another program I made to make me function without me being 'awake'. By the time I came back to my senses, I was greeted by a moss-covered wall which it aggressively introduced itself to my face, then it proceeds to bury me under the rubbles. Thankfully my already reinforced skull is tough enough to withstand the impact, the same couldn't be said for my mask.

"This just kept getting better and better..." I groaned to myself as the damage report pop up in my display, which tells jack shit with how much it is glitching and the glass-like cracks in the middle of my sight don't help at all.

'Note to self, replace one eye with cybernetics, consequences be damned...'

I could still see the 3D silhouette despite it flickering, from where my hips suppose to be and down is all black, signing it is no longer there, both arms and wings-turned-engines are in the red, and lastly, the head and torso parts are yellow.

This could be a pain in the ass to fix, I could regrow my bottom parts with the material I got from the manticore carcass but without microbots it would take an entire week making sure it doesn't end up as a useless slab of meat with shapes.

Oh well, for now, focus on what can be fixed. I absorb back the engines seeing it no longer serve its purpose and closing the hole on the jacket, said jacket can barely be called a piece of cloth with how tattered and burnt it is, hopefully, the mending enchantment can fix it.

Now for the HUD, thankfully the glitches can be fixed by rebooting the system and none of its circuits or components inside the visor part of my mask are damaged. Most of the damage is absorbed by the outer shell of the visor, a layer of bulletproof acrylic, which is cracked. It was easy to fix, by absorbing and making it into a more moldable state, I can restore it like a lump of clay.

With the HUD fixed, I can start focusing on what needs to...yeah, no. Both my arms are beyond fixing, wires and components are fried, joints malfunctioned and the metal casing melted, the whole thing looks like a badly shaped pole. It'd be easier just to absorb the damn thing and reform it so I just did that.

My head suffered minor damage, the reinforced skull itself has no damage but my neck bone suffered some fractures on both axis and atlas while the middle vertebrae got dislocated, I can feel my skin being pushed from inside. This could be a little bothersome, fixing the fractures is easy but setting back the single bone without microbots is a bit harder.

I have several anatomy data of almost every sentient being that have been documented, sadly there's none belong to pony or horses, the closes thing I have is that of a centaur's. With the lack of information, I don't have a single clue on how to fix my neck.

So I just turn the entire thing into metal, carefully avoiding the nervous system before jamming it back to its place, and revert it back. It's not practical but hey it works, the 3D silhouette's head just turned green.

Finally my chest, with how the thing is almost entirely made out of metal there's not much that needs to be fixed, just around where my shoulder should be, a couple of burnt wires and melted circuit boards is not hard to restore.

With all system back to working condition, I pulled my self out from the rubles and scan the surrounding area for any hostile or living creature. After a quick sweep, the biggest living creature nearby is a spider the size of a golf ball in the corner of the room.

Speaking of the room, the place I crashed appears to be a throne room of a castle, or what left of it anyway. Time had taken its toll, evidently shown by how weathered down the floor and wall are. There's a pile of rusty armor and weaponry scattered around, most of it is damaged beyond recovery but I still got a bit of material out of it.

Though it makes me wonder, how can ponies hold sword and spear with hooves? The armor is definitely designed to fit their bodies but why make something that requires opposable thumbs to use? Gah, forget about it, I don't have time to think about it.

For now, lay down what I know and plan from there, so far I got :
1. I am trapped in a virtual reality
2. My body is physically altered to that of an equine
3. I have limited material
4. The only way out I know is somewhere up there

Alright, I can get out from here, just gather enough material to build a very tall skyscraper or the necessary material to build a spacecraft. Its a matter of quantity or quality. I need a boatload of metals to build a skyscraper, sure there's an ocean of trees around here and the ground is practically unlimited but I can't make it entirely out of those two materials alone. Building a spacecraft requires less material but it needs to be heat resistant, titanium and aluminum would be an ideal material but where do I get it? I can fabricate the hulls but I still need the raw material.

It would take years, if not decades, just to get out from this hell hole, and probably the war against Zalichs would come to an end before I knew it. The only thing I can do right now is to pray so that we won like always.

I shook my head, there is no time to waste, the sooner I began the sooner I would escape from here. First thing first, establish a base. I could use this castle as a home base, it's a good deal of distance from the village but still deep enough to discourage any curious soul.

For the material to construct additional equipment and limbs, I remember Scooter said there's a junkyard near the village so I would have to make trips to get some, an iron ore deposit would be more fitting but it would have to do for now.

All in all, I think it could be done, its just a matter of time before I get out from here.

Author's Note

I think I should establish what Alex/Xandrich can and can't do, I made it clear so that he can't turn into another being composed of flesh so there's no pulling a Blacklight from Prototype.

I was thinking of limiting how big he can be and how much control he would have by giving him half of a brain, therefore he could not handle the strain of controlling such big mass, unlike his shapeshifting brothers and sisters.

I have some rough sketches on how his ability works and the limit but I'd like to hear you guys suggestion.

Anyway, keep an eye out for any typo and grammar errors and let me know what you think about this chapter so I can improvise my writing skills!

Stay safe and stay inside everyone!