Water. There was always something about it that Burnt Sun despised. No, it shook him, rattled him to his very core to think about it. It had some meaning to him at some point to render such a fearful reaction, but his mind seems to shun him away from it.

Waking up in water put this reaction on steroids. Not just any sort of steroids, but the get-out-you'll-die-no-matter-what steroids. Burnt Sun had ignored the (as much as he hated to say it, pun intended) burning pain in his foreleg, that stabbed and jabbed at him and then burned at a high rate of pure pain that he couldn't physically handle it. It was torture, whatever remained or even whatever was not broken in the arm was being flung about in a frenzy of rushing water, unlucky fish and pebbles.

Water pooled in his lungs, and no matter how much he coughed, it just kept coming and coming.

No pun intended, of course.

His body grew weaker by the second as the flurry of water, light and objects flew by him in a quick flash, and the incessant flailing of hooves proved to be nothing short of disappointment. If anything, the aching arm in question at the moment was will screaming it's tail off nerve-wise to alert Burnt that he was currently being utterly ravaged by the elements. No, it certainly wasn't harmonious.

His body flapped and rolled like a fish out of water as he was dragged upon some sort of sandy ground. He eventually came to a rest on his side, sprawled out onto the beach with no grace or expectation. Water pooled out of the improvised air holes of his helmet and out of his ear sockets and even his ears themselves, rolling down his moist and rusted body in a quick flash, his lungs screeching for air as he hacked and coughed water up like a waterfall. The mixture of saliva and dirty water pooled at the side of his helmet once it reached low enough levels to not spill out of the holes in his helmet.

His ragged lungs could take no more, the pesticides and infections having been residing within them inflamed and extremely irritable. He was forced to take a time-out where he was for a while - maybe a day or two. He was going to be stuck here.

All-in-all, not a bad day for Burnt Sun.

Four.
Fucking.
Days.

Burnt Sun would've typically expected no less, but here he was, being half-dead with no actual clue where he was. Damn bandits for ruining his planned construction, damn those bandits for ruining everything, Can never expect somepony to be as lucky as Burnt Sun.

Time to overlook the essentials.

Plopping his bag onto the ground after having a quick session of coughing half a lung out worth of worms that eventually dribbled out of his helmet via chin opening, he unzipped his ruined bag and took a gander inside. Settling on a small rock slab that overlooked the beach where he was previously almost-dead a couple days ago to keep a vantage point, he found nothing within the bag and opted to dump everything onto the rock slab.

Rusted cans met him, possibly impossible to open thanks to a new coat of water to add onto the rust, completely ruined maps that he was drawing along the way but his journal somehow managed to maintain a decent appearance of being somewhat moist but still salvageable. His pencil was cracked and was going to be useless after a couple seconds of writing probably, but he can manage it as he opened up a fresh page to write into.

Writing a single letter, he quickly scratched it away and threw the journal and pencil into one of his many pockets on his ruined attire, patting it for security measures (more or less just to pat it to make sure it stayed, but hey, why not?) and he continued sorting through whatever remained of his pack.

Ruined candy bar, he was going to enjoy that one but he guessed wrong, which is a quick jab of a hoof and a flinging of a ruined piece of candy into the sand. He sifted through the surface of the pile, not noticing a prized possession. "Th'damn- NAY!" He shrieked, voice cracking as he dug through the pile to pull out a broken picture frame with no picture in it.

Burnt shook the picture as if it was a person having a nervous breakdown. "NAY, NAY, NAY!" He cried, until he let out a roar of frustration and he threw the picture into the sand, shoulders shuddering, hooves quivering and eyes watering with natural lubrication rather than river water. Falling onto his haunches, he wept into his helmet, hooves clasp around the facial protection attachment, his head shaking in hysteria.

"Nay.. nay.."

Burnt Sun sat in the blackened crater, body caked with grime, soot and dirt. His helmet wasn't as rusted as modern day, neither was his body as healthy, which if you were to look, you'd take a guess that he would've been a burly stallion had he grew up correctly. The tendons bent as the joint of his hooves hooked around the rifle, holding it to his chest as he laid back into the dried dirt.

He had been like this for two and a half days. Burnt Sun's squad had been ordered to advance forward and provide a small pocket of defense in anticipation of incoming Lunar forces. About fifteen hours before Burnt's realization of the hypocrisy of their own allegiance, but nonetheless he abruptly sat up as a long-coated stallion trudged into his crater.

He had a dull red coat, obscured by an extremely thick and long trenchcoat and a head completely covered by a helmet that was rusted out, with two dull lenses staring at him and ram-like spiked horns curving around from the dome of the helmet and towards the front. He also had a rifle, but slung across his torso like a guitar on a strap.

"S-3, 'ow goes th'position?" The stallion inquired, a giant S-1 emblazoned on the forehead protector of his helmet.

"Nay a thing t'speak of, S-1. Aye reckon S-5 spectated a scout of th'foe not too long ago." Burnt Sun replied, throwing his hoof towards the eastern-most point of his crater, obscured by the steep incline of his crater but would reveal the position of the so-called 'S-5' should he walk across the hump.

"Aye, thanks," S-1 nodded. Dried dirt crunched under his metallic hooves as he scaled the bomb-made wall with little struggle. They hadn't expected reports of a scout until tomorrow, meaning they were behind schedule on their daily runs and defensive positioning.

The Lunarists were coming.

Reaching the top, S-1 dipped his body lower than usual, swinging a hoof archaically at somepony that Burnt Sun could not see, but assumed to be the S-5 pony of the squadron. Sinking back into the dirt, he let out a drawn sigh and closed his eyes. Perhaps when they arrive back to base of operations, he could find himself a giant piece of cabbage to stuff down his throat with onions and possible anchovies if they have the fish in stock. Have it with some flavored water, maybe cherry-flavored?

There came a scream, and a crunch of metal and bone as a body fell nearby Burnt Sun's position, causing a yelp and a small jump from the latter-mentioned. Opening his eyes, they quickly fell upon a lifeless S-1, with a corner of his skull gone. The old and dirty lenses were shattered into small glittering diamonds all across the helmet and the dirt around, and the side of the crater he fell from had a distinct trail of brain matter and blood running down it, not to even mention the top of the crater which had a good portion of skull on it.

Burnt Sun immediately scrambled to his hooves, fumbling with the rifle as he climbed to the top of his side up to his eyes, overlooking the plains below.

There was small, two-stallion pockets of Lunarists advancing behind dead trees, rocks and ruins or even husks of war machines from days past. Fear filling his core, he lowered himself briefly to scream at the top of his lungs;

"INCOOOOMING! LUNARISTS!"

Hell was raised as rifles snapped their shots and screams of agony filled the air, along with the small occasion of an explosion here and there. Sinking low into his crater, Burnt Sun retrieved a framed photo from his pocket, a photo of a dark-coated mare holding him as a foal. A simple photoshoot for future use, that much he could tell, and it was all that he could tell of his days of nonviolence.

He sunk into the crater and hugged the photo, mumbling words of adoration towards it before he pocketed it, picked up his rifle and crawled into the hellfire of chaotic war.

Burnt Sun sat on the sand, staring out into the river. Nary a sound was made, nor did the birds chirp as happily as they once did. Here he was, completely knocked out of swing and utterly alone without a single clue or direction as to where to go. Somewhere along the line he had picked up his waterskin, swishing the meager amounts of water that were still contained within it.

Planting it into the sand, Burnt Sun lethargically brought up his hooves to push the helmet up and out around his head, only to realize about a second in that it was stuck. No, not any kind of being stuck, but legitimately stuck. The patch of cloth in his helmet that he can now no longer feel that was meant to separate the rusted metal from his ears was gone, clearly washed out by the river and he could come up with the deduction that it was going to be stuck around his head for a long, long time.

Inhaling stiffly, Burnt Sun felt his chest constrict and his throat suddenly become parched more so than it already was at the revelation.

He screamed.

Author's Note

tis be cold feelin all alone