YHaY: The Human of the Guard

"What happened to you boy?"

Well, it's now or never. "Do you really want to know?" I knew that her family was out at a museum, so I was pretty confident they'd be out long after this was over.

Our eyes locked. I stared blankly at her, and she stared at me with shock, which slowly built into the most irritating thing I couldn't help but hate. Fear.

She screamed, grabbed the lamp on the corner table, and chucked at me. I caught it, sort of. Damn thing was made of that fragile ceramic shit that shatters when it hits something hard. When it shattered, the pieces sprayed in my face. Thank you doctors for sturdy metal eyes.

"Fucking hell! Calm down!" I yelled. She screamed again, and grabbed something else. A fricking coffee mug.

"What is this?" She rhetorically asked, after throwing it at me.

I ducked under it, holding my hands up, "Me trying to tell you the mother fucking truth! Now would you calm the hell down?" She threw a pillow at my face. After ripping it off my face, "And would you stop throwing shit at me please?"

She backed away into a corner, hyperventilating, "What did you do with Achilles?!"

"I AM Achilles. The same one you trained with, the same one you comforted when I had nightmares, the same one who chose you day one. Look, just calm down, alright? And let me explain."

She slowly regained her normal composure, and stopped making me think she was going to have a heart attack, "Fine, but you owe me answers."

I tossed my hands up dramatically, "That's what this is about. I think you deserve it. First though, let's clean up. If your family came back, they wouldn't be too happy to see crap all over the place."

She stiffened, her cheeks blushing as she realized her overreaction, "Y-yeah. That's a good idea."

*A few minutes later*

I sat down on the couch with a cup of coffee. The sweet, sweet caffeinated goodness that gives life to those who can apprieciate it. After three years without it, I found it to be a wonderful, simple pleasure I could enjoy.

I figured we could probably do with a drink to A: relax Raindrop a bit, and B: break the tension in the air. It had been quite amusing to see her reaction to me using all the kitchen appliances so quickly with such dexterity and smoothness, but she did calm down more.

I took a sip of my coffee, "You want answers, then ask away." I took another sip. The coffee tastes earthy, but not in a bad way. It reminded me of how I used to prepare my coffee back home.

"How are you able to talk?" She asked.

"Well you see, air travels through my throat, and-"

"Cut the crap! You know what I mean. How can you, a human, talk?"

I smiled. I found it kinda funny how I so easily got to her with my inner snark. Raindrop gawked at my smile. I knew why, but it was funny all the same.

"Well, I ain't exactly the same kind of human that you see everywhere else. Far as I know, I'm the only human from where I'm from. I'm intelligent, but just how intelligent is still up for debate. All the same, I can reason just as well as anyone can."

"Anyone? Don't you mean-?"

"No I don't mean 'anypony'", I put big old air quotes on that, "I meant anyone. For the life of me, I don't understand why you say anypony. There are other species besides ponies, and to use anypony for everything just seems..." I really didn't like using the word I was thinking, but it did fit, "racist."

I could literally see her becoming offended, "I'm not saying you yourself are a racist. But saying everypony and so on and so forth is excluding every other species, like they don't hold the same merit. Using 'one' instead of 'pony' recognizes that everybody is their own person, an individual. I recognize you as a person, a mintotaur as a person, myself as a person, and every other creature that can talk as a person. I know that saying pony instead of one is engrained into your culture and it isn't meant with malicious intent. It's just how it looks to anyone else."

"Oooh. I see your point. I never thought of it like that." She looked away with painful acknowledgment.

"Let's move on, next question." I drank some more coffee.

"Why did you decide to reveal yourself to me?"

I smiled at her accidental inuendo, but hid it by taking another sip of coffee, "A number of things really. We're going to fighting together, and soldiers like us are family. Secrets like that aren't healthy for the family. That, and I knew what those ponies said was going to start making some questions arise. To be honest, I was thinking about holding out for a while, see if I could trust you. But you stepped in on the fight, helped me out even though you just saw me inexplicably attack two ponies. You chose to trust me, so I'm extending that to you too. Besides, you'd probably figure it out eventually."

She smiled warmly, but she looked at me with a nervous expression, like she was afraid of what her question might bring, "What... how did... gerrr."

"I think I know what your trying to say. What happened to me?" She nodded, "Yeah. I didn't want to sound insensitive about it."

"It's fine. I've been asked that a lot, and I've gotten over it. Well, mostly. But with that comes a little bit of a backstory to it. The thing is, I'm not from this world. In the simplest of terms, I'm an alien." She scrunched up her face in an awkward smile, "No, I'm not BSing you here. From my world, the whole planet had been explored. And my world was in a bloody conflict. The Third World War."

"THIRD!! As in, there were two other world wars?"

"Yep. The First World War was where traditional warfare didn't advance with the technology thanks to the generals and advisors, and everything was Hell for the soldiers fighting. They spent months at a time fighting over the same territory, stuck in a stalemate. The end of the war brought upon an economic depression for many countries. Trade stagnated since many of the industrial leaders before the war were now crippled and geared for war instead of a civilian market. Germany, the strongest nation involved in the losing side, got hit the worst. The French and the British, who were the victors, forced the German nation to pay reparations that devastated the German economy, and still required more than they could pay.

"That gave one of the most evil men in history just what he needed to gain power. Adolf fucking Hitler." I spat a lugey into a potted plant. "He was a radical, which is what people flock to when they're desperate enough. He was a racist, fucking madman who took over most of Europe, a densely populated continent, and nearly wiped out the two closest power players in the world."

"What stopped him?"

"Everything. Resource and manpower shortages, resistance fighters, poor planning, overextension, too many enemies, everything. Eventually, they just didn't have what it took to win, and thank God for that. My world would be a literal Hellhole if he won. In the end, because of him and his allies, around 60 million people died."

"60 MILLION! That's more than the ponies that are alive right now! How many creatures live on your planet right now?"

"About 10 billion people, and it used to be a lot higher. In the war I fought in, about two billion people died. It was an absolute slaughterfest, especially for our enemy. Anyhow, I volunteered into my military, and fought for years against our enemy. It's a bloody miracle I fought for so long, and this," I gestured to my artificial limbs and eyes, "was all I physically lost." The very suggestion of what I'd lost brought back all the friends that died. People who had so much to live for after the war, all gone.

"I was in a special group of soldiers. We fought in all climates, every situation, no matter the cost. We never lost a battle, even if it cost us our lives. I'm the longest survivor of that group. Every original member I'd known in that group was either killed or wounded so badly they were crippled for life. Everyone was scarred. If not physically, we sure as hell were mentally.

"My last mission was in the invasion of the enemy homeland. There, a Bouncy Betty or S-Mine, exploded in front of me."

In my pause, Raindrop asked a question, "What's that?"

"An explosive device that waits until someone gets close enough, then launches a few feet into the air, and detonates, sending shrapnel and explosive energy through the air, killing or maiming anything in its' path. Luckily, or unlucky for me, I was wearing some armor that protected my vital organs, but not so much my eyes... or throat." I lifted up my chin to show her the scar, "One piece of shrapnel made me a mute. The doctors back home had the technology to make artificial tissues to repair small scale damage, and continuously repair itself over time if it was damaged. When I first came here, I was mute for a long time. I think it was a year before I could talk again, but no one was really telling me how long it had been.

"Anyhow, when my unit dragged me into a field hospital, I was already developing disease in my wounds, so they had to amputate. The explosion also fucked up my ears. So I was left blind, mute, deaf, and unable to move."

"Sweet Celestia." She whispered, horror dominating her face as she looked down at her hooves.

"Yeah, I was left like that for too long. I was totally devoid of sensation, only able to hear the loudest of sounds, not knowing where I was or who was caring for me. Eventually, some doctors had pity on me, and performed surgery. So now I have mechanical ears, enhanced vocal cords, metal limbs, fake eyes, and as a bonus, metal infused into my bones so they don't break as easy. Plus a little extra here and there."

"So you're just as machine as you are human?" She asked sensitively.

"Basically, yeah. I'll admit, it's got it's perks, but it doesn't compare to my natural body." I stared at my hand, imagining it as my real arm, clenching and unchlenching it. I took another sip of coffee, and smirked as I had an idea.

Using her voice, "But I can sound like anyone I want to."

She leapt out of her seat in surprise, falling over the back of her chair. I instantly burst out into laughing, even when a pillow met my face again. Slowly, she joined me.

"Th-that's not funny! I'm *snicker* laughing because you are!" She said between laughs.

"Yes it is!" We laughed for a little bit longer before we settled down.

"So, anything else?"

She wiped a tear away, "Yeah, what was war like on your world? I can only imagine how different it must be."

I looked down at my feet, "It was Hell. Describing it doesn't come close to how it really is. But, I've learned a neat little trick that can help out with that."

"Huh?" She tilted her head ever so slightly.

"Since I've gotten here, there's a trick I developed to help me in hand to hand fights that stuns my opponent long enough for me to get the upper hand. I show them my memories. Would you like to see one?"

Her eyes lit up with a literal sparkle in her eyes, "Of course! I'd love to see what another world looks like."

Prepare to be disappointed. I thought.

I lightly touched my forehead against hers, and I opened up my mind to touch hers.

POV change: Raindrop

I felt odd. I no longer felt the cushion below me, the air in my lungs, or even my own body. Just this... nagging feeling that someone was watching me.

"Are you ready?" Achilles asked.

"S-sure. Wow this feels odd."

All of a sudden, I could see. I was in a metal boat, beating through the rough tides of the ocean, surrounded by humans dressed in strange clothing carrying even stranger objects in their hands. I could feel the sway of the boat underneath my hoo- no. Feet. I could feel the sway of the boat under my feet, the clothing against my skin, the freezing wetness of the water that sprayed over the side of the boat that chilled me to the bone, the heaviness of the helmet grinding down on my head.

All around, I could hear a droning sound that Achilles told me were engines, and the shrieks of planes and rockets overhead. Next to me, someone puked on themselves.

"Thirty seconds!" Yelled a voice from behind me. I tried to look behind me, to see who yelled, but instead, I looked down at the thing in my hands, and gripped it tighter.

I became extremely aware of my own heartbeat, and the echo of Achilles old thoughts as he prayed to his God that he would live through this. I became more and more terrified after each time he repeated this prayer as I realized how scared he was.

The boat suddenly stopped, and the ramp was lowered. As one, the humans and I yelled our lungs out as we charged forwards. We were met with the angry retort of thunder. Massive explosions erupted out of the earth, pelting Achilles' body with sand and dirt, while small puffs of sand were blown from the ground from unknown sources. I dove behind a small dune of sand to catch my breath, and charged forwards again. I saw a beach filled with metalworks that made no sense to me that humans were using as cover. I saw a human male get his head blown off into a mess of gore when he peaked his head out, humans being ripped in half. One soldier was missing an arm, and looking for it amongst the dead and wounded. Men were crying out for help, for their mothers and fathers. Humans choking to death on their own blood and vomit, finding death so quickly without a chance to save themselves. I wanted to cry, but found that I couldn't.

Some of the soldiers were firing back, though they usually didn't last long, and didn't seem to have any real effect. Achilles though, he kept running forwards as fast as he could, ducking into cover when he found it. Metalworks, sand, wrecked metal machines, whatever he could find.

He finally came up to a barbed wire blockade on a sand uprise, where some soldiers had found refuge. He turned to one of the men who landed next to him.

"You got a banger?" He yelled over the noise of thunder and explosions.

"In my bag!" He yelled back. Achilles proceeded to find several long tubes in the other humans' bag, attached them to each other, and shoved it into the sand just below the wire. He pulled a string, and jumped out of the way.

The explosion rocked the earth below me, rattling my teeth. He stood up again, and charged through the opening to enter a trench. He quickly fired off several rounds into another human, who wearing bad camouflage, with the object he held in his hand. It was blue and white block camo that had no business on a battlefield.

He raced through the trenches, shooting every soldier dressed like that he could find. One human got a lucky shot, which grazed the side of Achilles face from his eye to his ear, mangling it. He came to a concrete bunker, and charged in. He shot every soldier in there, and moved on.

He came to another bunker, heavily guarded. He dove for cover just as he was shot in the shoulder. He growled in pain, but he didn't give up. As he was reinforced, he chucked what he called a "grenade" at the enemy, killing some of them and destroying some of their defenses.

He charged out of cover, along with his comrades, firing their weapons. They were cut short when massive blasts shook the ground so violently that as they came within a breaths distance of one another, they fell to the ground.

The memory became fuzzy, muddled and strange. Colors fuzed and mixed, everything seemed to move at a snails pace. Achilles drew out a wicked blade, and stabbed an enemy soldier in the throat, twisting it in a show of brutality. He found his weapon, and started the fight all over again.

The battlefield vanished, and we were back in the living room once again, Achilles taking a seat on the couch, his head hung, as if a prisoner waiting to hear a death sentence.

"Well, now you know." He said solemnly.

I stared at him, mouth agape, tears streaming down my cheeks. Before me, was a human. An intelligent human that had been through an extremely violent event, who no doubt lost dear friends. Someone who had stared death in the face, and rejected it to keep fighting.

"H-... how many times did you have to go through things like that?" I choked out.

Achilles flinched. The idea of such a person flinching struck me as strange, until he answered, "So many I lost count. I spent several years doing shit like that, at least one a attack every month, usually more though."

He looked absolutely awful. Not in the sense that he was roughed up, but unimaginably distraught remembering things he must have buried. Something stirred in my heart. I went over and hugged him.

"Thank you." He said hollowly.