Nec Temere Nec Timide

Chapter 3:
Trainride

Soft snoring entered my ears as I woke due to the morning rays falling on my eyes. Yawning widely, I opened my eyes to find my beak stuck into a particular colorful bundle of hair. Somewhere in the night Rainbow had rolled up against me in her sleeping bag, continuing her sleep blissfully unaware of that fact. Pulling out of her mane gave me a good view of her face.

Heh, she’s kinda pretty…

It took a couple of seconds for my mind to register what I’d just thought about Rainbow.

Holy shit, did you just think an animal was pretty?… Well… animal might be a bit rude, more like an alien since she’s actually intelligent… Does that make it right?… Damnit, stupid, stupid brain!

Looking past the pegasus pony in question I saw that Twilight had done the exact opposite of Rainbow and rolled to the side of the tent and nestled there. Dash yawned at that point, lazily opening her eyes to find me goofily grinning at her. “Good morning.”

Rainbow yelped in surprise, jumping out of her sleeping bag. This woke Twilight as well, who sleepily and confusedly looked between me and Rainbow. “Uhm, what happened?”

“N-Nothing!” Rainbow replied, blushing thoroughly. Twilight groaned, rolling her eyes and turned over to her other side as she couldn’t be bothered to deal with Dash right now. I chuckled, zipping open my sleeping bag and getting out of it to join Dash out of bed. “Hey what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make breakfast of course,” I told Dash in a way that made it sound as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“But it’s just after sunrise!” Rainbow exclaimed, baffled at the early hour.

“And? Perfect time to get up and about, isn’t it?” I said with a smirk as I dug through my backpack to get the little gas burner that was in there, pouring water into the metal cup that came with it to heat it to boiling. Rainbow just dumbfoundedly stared at me working on the couple of sandwiches, placing them to the side as I got a trio of cups from Twilight’s saddlebags and poured the boiling water into them before getting an unused tea bag from my depleted rations.

“Miss Sparkle, breakfast is ready!” I called out to Twilight who stirred in her sleeping bag and looked out in surprise to see me sipping from a cup while Rainbow was still staring at me.

“Oh, thank you! That’s very kind,” Twilight said carefully as she noticed the three sandwiches, one for each of us, and got out of her sleeping position to join in. Passing long the food and drinks I bit into my sandwich.

“Just a warning, the quality of tea in rations is very wide-ranging. It’s either drinkable or liquid poison, so be warned,” I told them, Twilight eyed the cup suspiciously, taking a little sip before spitting it out again. “If you want I guess I can make coffee too?” I offered sheepishly as an afterthought to which both ponies looked up with glistening eyes.

“Yes please,” Twilight said as I boiled some more water and used some instant coffee to get them their new drinks.

“At least that stuff is supposed to taste terrible,” I smirked, getting a few amused chuckles from the two ponies. “So, when is this train supposed to arrive?”

“Somewhere between now and noon. It depends on how long it’s held up in Griffinstone,” Twilight answered through bites of her sandwich. “We’ll have at least an hour left to get ready.”

“Sounds like a plan, I’ll get to breaking down the tent.” While the ponies finished up their breakfast I took down our sleeping accommodation and stashed them in the bags they were supposed to go.

Within forty-five minutes we were standing on the platform and waiting for the train to arrive, bags laid to the side as carrying them would only be tiring. It hadn’t taken long after for Rainbow to get bored so she eventually decided to just go practice moves in the air.

“I wonder how it feels being up there…”

“Huh, what?” Twilight asked questioningly as I continued to stare at the patterns Rainbow was flying in the air.

“You know, flying and such,” I elaborated, only receiving a blank stare from the unicorn.

“You have wings you know?” she deadpanned, poking at the appendage. I flinched at the feeling of her hoof brushing against them, making her pull back and shrink down again.

Does she expect me to eat her or something?

“Hey, just because I have them doesn’t mean I exactly know how to use them.”

“You don’t know how to fly?!” I jumped to see Rainbow hovering behind me, looking at me unbelievingly. “Dude, I’m so going to teach you how to use these babies! Come on, let’s start right now!”

“Wait, what?”

“You heard me, open those wings!” Dash instructed sternly, reminding me of a drill sarge. Smiling, I open the two appendages to their full span, looking them over and truly admiring them for the first time.

“Now most of the basics should come instinctively but true control is going to take some time for you to learn,” Rainbow continued, opening her own wings and making a flapping motion with them. “replicate what I'm doing, from the angle of my wings to the motions I'm making, exactly. Once you have it down increase the power and speed of your flaps gradually until you go into a hover. Understand?”

I nodded and started to duplicate the pegasus' motions, taking a bit to get the movements down with the new appendages but eventually getting to the point where I could start increasing the power. The moment I lifted off from the platform my heart jumped in my chest.

I'm flying! I'm really flying!

Not that it lasted long as keeping myself in balance in the air was actually really hard. I increased the power of my flaps to compensate but that only made my little flight more unstable as I tumbled back down.

“Harder then it looks, isn't it, tough guy?” Dash smirked as I bounced off of the ground while she flew around me with contemptuous ease.

“Careful there, colours, once I've got this down you'll have some real competition to contend with,” I shot back with a smirk of my own. “But honestly, Flying under my own power like that... It's beyond awesome. I've done free falls with a parachute but this is something way different.”

“Not to interrupt you two but the train's coming.” Twilight pointed to the track in the distance where the train was rapidly approaching. “We should get ready to board quickly, the griffins don't like to be held up for long on a small station like this one.”

I nodded and picked up my backpack, waiting for the train to stop. Watching in wonder as the large steam engine came to a grinding halt.

Holy… they don't make them like this on earth anymore… It's magnificent.

After pulling my eyes away from the locomotive I followed Twilight and Rainbow to a conductor where the unicorn got us the required tickets, raising her voice against the griffins about the price, before entering a cart and walking along the train until we reached the appropriate one.

“So, do you have any good way of passing the time where you come from?” Rainbow asked as the carts of the train were pulled from the small station by the engine in front, boredom already setting in for the pegasus.

“Nothing that I have with me, sadly,” I admitted, lord knows how much I would have liked to show them a mobile phone. Dash groaned and flopped on her back while Twilight had a parchment out.

“Since we'll be on this train for a couple of hours would you mind if I asked a couple more questions?” Twilight asked, giddy for more knowledge but clearly still careful not to step on my toes. I chuckled in response and gave her a nod.

“Go ahead, start your interrogation,” I jabbed at her, laying down on my seat, Twilight grumbling under her breath that she wasn't that bad.

“I actually wanted to ask you personally some questions this time. Your world is very interesting but I really want to get to know some more about the person who got stuck in our world.”

I sighed but realized that it would have been inevitable for the questions to be asked at some point and gave her a nod.

“Alright, so I know your name’s Jack Grey and that you’re a soldier, but other than that you haven’t told anything about yourself, like what is even your age?” Twilight asked, ready with the ballpoint pen.

“Well, I’m twenty-five but I don’t know if that transfers to this world’s time. I’m going to assume it’s the same for my sanity’s sake,” I stated. “To be honest I’m not that spectacular of a person, I’m good at what I do, have my hobbies, but other than that…”

“So you said you were a soldier. What do you exactly do since you’re not at war?” Twilight asked after scribbling some things down.

“Well, we might not have been at war but I think I mentioned counter-insurgency before. There are some regions on our world that have less… savoury groups running around them. It’s a very complicated situation,” I explained briefly, not really feeling like explaining the geopolitical situation on earth.

“What kind of groups exactly?” Twilight continued, oblivious to my feelings but looking concerned.

“What’s this world’s experience with terrorism?” I asked, getting a response from Dash, who had been laying back in boredom.

“What’s that?” The pegasus asked with a raised eyebrow

Wait, what?

“I got to go with Dash there, is terror widespread or something?” Twilight asked as well.

Shit, I can’t tell them about all this crap if they’re this oblivious…

“There are certain groups… I really don’t want to talk about it…” I nervously tapped my claw on the couch I was laying on while suppressing some of my memories of some suicide attacks, desperately trying to avoid the topic Twilight was broaching.

“Oh… okay, I guess we can move on to some other questions. I wanted to ask about your actual home, do you have any family?” Twilight shifted the subject.

I swallowed as tears welled up in my eyes. “Yeah, my dad, mom, and little bro.” my voice cracked as the thought of family came crashing down. “They’re going to think I’m dead, aren’t they?”

Dash, by this point, had sat up and opened a wing, draping it across my back. Twilight quietly nodded as she lowered her parchment. I dug into one of the pockets on my chest, pulling out a notebook opening it to find a picture of me giving my little brother a noogie. Tears fell down while I held the wrinkled picture against my chest.

“I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Twilight stammered guiltily.

“Don’t be, it was going to come up at some point regardless,” I told croacked, wiping away the tears in my eyes and holding out the picture for her to look at, a lumb still stuck in my throat. “That’s what male humans look like.”

Twilight carefully picked up the picture in her telekinesis and scribbled some things down on her parchment before passing it back for me to store up again. “I promise you that if I can figure out how you got here I will do everything I can to get you back.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate that.” I smiled as Twilight rolled up the parchment, stashing it away.

“Well, continue later,” Twilight said with a smile, allowing me to sit in silence and watch the trees go by and the snow slowly disappear. Light snoring came from beside me as Dash was napping while Twilight read a book. This remained the case for a good hour before I noticed a flock of something flying over the tracks ahead.

I wonder wha-

Screeeeee!~

The train shook violently as the emergency brakes engaged, flinging Dash and me out of our seats from the rapid deceleration. My heart rate immediately spiked as my mind went into overdrive trying to figure out what had happened.

“What the buck was that?!” Dash exclaimed as she picked herself off of the floor, having been rudely awakened.

“Rainbow, language!” Twilight berated her friend. I ignored the two of them for the moment, opening the window and looking out front towards the locomotive.

“Fuck!” Twilight stared at me wide-eyed as I pulled back inside, having seen enough to get hit by a wave of paranoia, and immediately jumping for my backpack and gear.

“Jack!” Twilight called out again, looking appalled.

“There’s a large group of griffins armed with blades and bows circling the front of the train,” I clarified, strapping my backpack tightly on my back while checking the ammo of my rifle and putting a round in the chamber. No-one was going to catch me dead on my feet.

“Don’t you think you’re slightly overreacting?” Twilight asked, fidgeting nervously as she looked at me. Before I could reply the cart’s door opened, a griffin with a brandished blade stepped in who looked through the cart, his eyes falling on Rainbow and Twilight.

“I found them!”

Crack!

Turning back to the pale-faced ponies I locked eyes with Twilight.

“No, I don’t.”