Equestria War Radioby CanterlotGuardianChaptersCasualtiesPiecesHow to Save A Life, Part One: Emergency SurgeryHow to Save A Life, Part Two: I Left You in BonesCasualtiesMy name is Derpy Hooves, and I am a long way from home. Right now, I am in hiding. I’m very scared. There are so many things going on around me, so much noise… It’s like the world is exploding. I don’t want to be here… but it looks like I don’t have a choice. It’s very muddy where I’m at right now; my coat is getting stained and dirty. I really don’t want to be here… If you asked me what was going on, I would tell you the truth: I really have no idea. This world is not mine; it has never been mine. My world is Equestria, that beautiful land. This is not Equestria, I can promise you that. As I look out from where I’m hiding, all I can see around me is death. I had wished I would never see such horrors again, after my parents had died; here, it’s everywhere. But this is a different kind of death. With my parents, their deaths were natural, due to increased age. This death… Lives cut short in their prime. These are only children; what are they doing in a situation like this? No one should ever have to endure this, whether young or old. This is horrible… I flinch as a loud booming noise echoes throughout my sanctuary. I instinctively reach my hooves up to try to cover my ears; I don’t want to go deaf from this. To never be able to hear anything again… that would be a sentence I wouldn’t visit upon anybody. As I reach up to cover my ears, my hooves brush the underside of the giant contraption that I’m hiding underneath. From the touch, it appears to be metallic in nature, but it’s absolutely huge. There are two giant rollers flanking me; I guess that’s how it moves. This one hasn’t moved since I dove underneath it for cover, though not for lack of trying. I think it’s bogged down in the sand; for whatever reason, it isn’t moving. I can hear shouts up above me… Cursing, too. They’re trying to get the thing to work. They call it a “tank.” I guess that’s the official name for it. A tank. It seems oddly appropriate, and this is my first time ever hearing the word. I look out from underneath the… tank. All around me, these creatures are falling down. Some of them have holes in parts of their bodies; I don’t think they’re natural holes, either, not with all of the tiny pieces of lead flying around. I think those might be called “bullets.” I heard that word used once to describe something kinda similar to these things; I guess it’s as good of a name as any. From what I can see, there are more of these creatures out here than I can count. Some are wearing different clothing; all of them are entirely too drab-colored, though. I suppose that just makes them harder to see, though, and I guess if you don’t want to die, not being seen is a good thing. At least one thing about them is similar to us ponies: very many of these creatures are different in tone from each other. Their faces don’t all look alike, either. It’s really an astounding variety. It would be easier to appreciate if there wasn’t all this fighting going on around me… A body falls down by the wheels of the tank, and I chance a glance at it. That was not the right thing to do. Both of its eyes are missing; I can see all the way to the other side. Victims of bullets? Probably, considering there’s another hole almost dead-center in his head. I let out a tiny shriek and recoil, trying to get as far away from the dead body as I can. I’m trying at the same time not to get underneath the treads, though; if this thing starts moving suddenly and I can’t react in time… I don’t want to become another casualty. There are enough of those already. I hear something very loud above me. I wriggle my way to the front end of the tank and look up. What I see amazes me. There are these contraptions flying through the air; they have wings, but they don’t flap like birds’ wings. They’re stationary, in other words. There’s some kind of propeller at the front of the thing; is that what powers it? It must be; the rest of it is much too small to hold any kind of advanced propulsion system. I hear a shout from close to me: “Oh shit! Bombers!” Those who are out in the open, start to scramble for safety. I see the underside of one of the “bombers,” whatever that means, open up and I see more of these creatures inside. For some reason, I’m reminded of my good friend Lyra Heartstrings; she’s always going on about the existence of some species called “humans”; maybe these are humans? They certainly have many of the same features that Lyra’s described them having. If only she could be here to see this- Wait. No. I wouldn’t force this upon anybody. No one should have to go through such fighting. It doesn’t matter what kind of bad thing you did; no one should have to go through this. Anyways, as I’m looking up at the people in the airplane, I see they’re pushing something out. It’s really big and black. I think I have somewhat of an idea what it is, even though like many other things in this world I’ve never seen it before. So, I back up as quickly as I can and once again cover my ears. Sure enough, the loud “booms” return, and I can vaguely hear more screaming. It sounds absolutely agonizing… Someone must have gotten hit, and not died. I feel so sorry for them; if only they were at home, instead of here, having to go through this hell… I feel tears slipping through my clenched-shut eyes. I normally don’t like crying in front of people, but technically I’m not in front of anyone right now, and besides I’m pretty sure that the circumstances warrant a bit of leeway. So, I just let myself cry. I mourn those who have passed, and those who will do so in mere moments. I hear more firing; more bullets scar the air as they rip through it. More loud booms, more crying in pain. It’s almost too much to bear. Suddenly, an idea comes to me, and I start scooping sand closer to my body. I’m trying to bury myself in the sand; maybe that will help me block out some of this terrible noise. In a few moments, I start to realize that it just isn’t going to happen. I can’t get enough sand around to completely cover my body, and in any case it looks like the sand doesn’t make a very good noise blocker anyways. I dare not go outside my rag-tag fortress, either; I don’t want to end up like one of them out there. So, in here I stay. As I look around in absolute fear, I find myself unwillingly thinking about those that are laying dead around me. What kind of families did they have? Did they have lovers? Some of them probably didn’t; they look like they’re barely out of their formative years… Some of them probably still think girls are weird, or that they’re going to be alone for the rest of their lives. I don’t want to think about these things; I’m crying enough already. So I try to force my mind onto other things. Somehow my mind settles on the last thing that I remember in Equestria. I don’t think my memory’s damaged in any way, but it is a rather odd memory… Twilight Sparkle knocked on the mailmare’s door. It took a moment for Derpy to answer, but when she did, she smiled widely when she saw who was at her door. “Twilight…” she said warmly. “What can I do for you?” “Hi, Derpy,” Twilight responded with an equal smile. “Is the Doctor at home?” Derpy looked a bit crestfallen that Twilight wasn’t actually there to see her. She had so few visitors, mostly just people wanting to tell her what good of a job she was doing as mailmare, or maybe the occasional person wanting to complain that a letter that they were supposed to be receiving hadn’t come in yet… On the contrary, everyone wanted to be with the Doctor. He was the town’s resident oddball and genius, and in spite of his wants to the contrary, people just would not leave him alone. “Sure, he’s here,” Derpy said, stepping aside. “Come on in; I’ll go tell him that you’re here to see him.” Twilight stepped in, seemingly oblivious to the re-shading of Derpy’s face that had occurred. “Thank you,” she said with a nod, as Derpy walked up the stairs to the Doctor’s room. She was almost to the door and was getting ready to knock, when she remembered where he was. She came back downstairs with her regular derpy grin on her face. “Heh…” she said, “sorry, but I just remembered. The Doctor is over at Mayor Mare’s house, helping her to fix some things up around the house.” “Oh darn, so he’s busy…” Twilight looked a bit sad herself. “I wanted to know if he’d want to participate in a little experiment that Princess Celestia wants me to conduct-“ Derpy’s ears perked up. She’d always wanted to know what kind of things the Princess was wanting Twilight to do as part of her research. “Is it anything that I can help out with?” Twilight looked at her oddly. “Really, Derpy? You want to be a part of the test?” Derpy nodded, her eyes going askew as they normally did. “I’ve always been curious about what it takes to be a lab rat.” Twilight laughed at what she thought was a joke, but what in actuality had been a fairly serious statement. “Okay,” Twilight responded, still chuckling, “I suppose it would be alright if I tested you first. Come on.” Derpy went into the kitchen and wrote a note for the Doctor, telling him where they would be. With that, she set off with Twilight to do this all-important test. Another explosion, and I’m brought out of my reverie. I don’t know how long I’ve been lost in thought, so I take a quick look around to try to take stock of my surroundings. Thank the powers, the tank hasn’t moved yet. I’m starting to think that it won’t be moving anymore; if it still had the power to move, it would have moved by now. I’m just about to take my first deep breath in awhile, when a pair of boots hits the ground beside the tank. I hear someone shout, “Well? What’s wrong with the damn thing? Why isn’t it working?” The human who’s just jumped down off the tank yells out, “How am I supposed to know? I just got down here!” He drops to his knees and begins to lower himself down. Oh no… What if he sees me? I’ve got to hide- but where? My eyes search frantically, but they’re not finding anyplace for me to escape. He’s almost totally knelt down, but I can’t move at all; I’m frozen in fear. Finally, a face pops down from the underside of the tank. This kid can’t be far out of his parents’ home, and here is staring at me. His bespectacled face is looking at me like he can’t believe what he’s saying. Finally, he speaks, his words coming out with a tinge of awe: “What the-?” Oh crap. He saw me... What am I going to do now...? Suddenly, I see the face disappear, though before it went away I could swear I could see a smile on his face. He stays knelt down, though, for another five minutes or so, before standing back up all the way. “It’s shot,” I hear him say. “There’s no way to fix it. We’ll have to continue on foot.” In a minute, there are soft whumps all around me as people start jumping from the tank to the sandy beaches below. I think as best as I can, in my shocked state, what could have caused him to do what he did. Suddenly it comes to me in a flash, and it almost makes my jaw drop. “He did this for me…” I mutter. “He wanted to make sure that I had a place to be protected…” I feel the tears welling up again, and once again I don’t even try to hold them in. I let them flow, and as the kids around me searched for cover, I allow my sobs and my tears be the last sensations I am conscious of, before I fade away. PiecesMy senses slowly start to come back to me as I awaken. I reach up with a stiff foreleg and try to rub the sleep out of my eyes. I don’t dare open my eyes until I’m done rubbing my eyes; the way that my eyes are naturally, combined with the lack of being able to see straight because of my eyes being closed for so long, makes it so that I wouldn’t be able to see anything anyways. It only takes me a few seconds to clear my eyes, and when that’s done and over with, I open up my eyes. I wait for them to adjust to my surroundings. Clearly, it’s night-time; the black skies prove that much to me. I’m about to stand up and stretch when I remember what’s above me. The bottom side of a tank… It’s deathly quiet outside, which compared to the noisiness of the area when I last was conscious, is rather creepy. I don’t like complete silence; I like there to be at least some white noise in the area. Regardless of whether or not I can actively identify it- which most times, I can’t- it puts my mind at ease and allows me to focus and concentrate better. I don’t know if other ponies’ minds are like this. I don’t much mind, either. I know that it’s the way that I am, and that’s really all that I need to care about. I shimmy my way out from underneath the tank. When I finally get out, I gleefully stretch my stiff limbs. The air is rather cool, and I shiver against a brief but potent gust of wind that buffets my now-standing body. I’m used to chilly weather, though, and this is hardly the coldest I’ve had to endure. Back when I was a filly, our parents often used to have to endure freezing cold winters without the luxury of being able to heat their house. Naturally, seeing as I lived there with them, I had to suffer alongside them. If I can say anything about those winters, it’s that they prepared me rather well for delivering mail in Ponyville’s rather cold winters. But I’m not in Ponyville anymore. That much is clear to me. We don’t have tanks in Ponyville; neither do we have kids fighting each other with weapons that seem to be designed specifically with Death in mind. It’s rather scary… I shiver again, though this time it has nothing to do with the temperature. I know it’s a rather futile effort, but I look around- now that there’s no fighting going on, and I can actually get my bearings without having to distract myself every half-second with worries of who’s going to try to kill me next- to see what I can identify. As I thought, there’s really nothing that I recognize. I see some smoldering wreckage, probably of a plane that got shot down. Oh yeah, and bodies. So many bodies… Their blood is staining the sand red. I wonder if it will ever go back to its natural color. Something tells me that’s nothing but a pipe dream. I try not to look directly at the bodies as I maneuver my way around them. The ones that are right in front of me as I step, I can avoid looking at those. The ones that are further up ahead and to my side, on the other hand… I don’t have as good of luck with those. I know it’s not really something I should be doing, but on the inside I’m slightly marveling at the number of different ways that these beings have come up with to kill each other. Some use bullets, some use fire, others just get blown up or crushed from falling debris… Regardless, I continue onward. I hear a bird cry out in the distance. It sounds… sad. Mournful, even. I know that I don’t feel like flat-out bawling my eyes out like I did not too long ago, but a tear still slides down my cheek. It’s so sad, hearing birds call like that… My walk is now becoming slower and slower in pace, because as I go on, there are more and more bodies laid out on the beach. They fell wherever they died. Occasionally, I pass someone who I think I can still see the spark of life in their eyes. I force myself to keep going, though; I know I can’t help them, not with what little I know about the medical practice. As I make my way onward, my mind drifts away from the aftermath and the carnage of battle around me, and I start to reminisce once again on the last memories I have of being in Equestria: As Derpy walked along, faithfully trailing at Twilight’s side, he started softly singing a song that he’d heard once or twice being sung at Dinky’s talent shows: “I’ve come undone… But you make sense of who I am… Like puzzle pieces in your hand…” Twilight looked back at her oddly. “Derpy, what on earth are you singing back there?” Derpy blushed a bit. “Oh, it’s nothing, really… I don’t even know the name of it. I’ve heard it once or twice and a few lines just stuck out to me…” Twilight shrugged and kept walking. “I don’t mind your singing,” she said, not looking back again. “I don’t want you to get me wrong. You’ve got a good voice. I’d just never heard that song before.” If she had been looking back, she would have seen Derpy flush a bright red in the face. No one had ever complimented her on her singing voice before… Something occurred to Derpy as they walked. “Hey, Twilight?” When she had acknowledged that she’d heard the mailmare, Derpy continued: “Don’t you normally have a dragon with you? A really small one…?” Twilight nodded. “That’s Spike. I’m not sure if you two have ever officially met before. He’s my assistant and one of my best friends. He’s back at my place, getting everything set up for our experiment.” Twilight laughed. “He overslept this morning, and ended up waking up about five minutes before I left. I just let him stay there, under the condition that he get everything set up.” “It’s nice to have friends like that,” Derpy remarked. “Though, if he’s lazy enough to oversleep when he knows he’s supposed to be going on a trip with you, are you sure you can trust him to get everything set up for your experiment while you’re not there?” Twilight nodded. “He knows how important my research is to me. And yes, he can be a bit lazy at times, but he won’t let that get in the way of the work that Princess Celestia has tasked me to do.” That reminded Derpy of something. “I’d almost forgotten, but thanks for the reminder. What exactly is it that the Princess wants you to do in this experiment?” Twilight looked back at Derpy, a smile on her face. “Something very big,” was all she said. “I’ll explain it all fully when we get to my place.” Derpy just smiled back and nodded, and they kept on their way. My attention is brought back to the world I find myself in now. I can’t stray too far from the tank. Right now, that’s my only means of shelter, and I don’t particularly want to be sleeping out in the open. Not in this environment. I tend to be a heavy sleeper, and who knows what could happen to me during the night? Speaking of the night, I really do need to figure out what time it is. It’s not really of all-consuming importance, more along the lines of something that I just really want to know. I kind of have a one-track mind, albeit one that goes in a million directions at once, and when my mind latches onto something random… well, it doesn’t really let up until it’s been satisfied. An idea hits me, and while I don’t particularly want to do this, it’s worth a shot to ease my mind. So I begin looking on the bodies of the- people, I guess?- lying around on the beach. It takes me awhile to find one that can help me out, but eventually I find one that has a rather ornate timepiece clipped to his side. I read it. It says that the time is 1:30 in the morning. So it is rather late… This makes me glad that I learned how to read the giant clock in Ponyville. I shiver again. This isn’t going to work out. I look down at the dead person at my feet, and swallow unsurely. I really don’t want to do this… As I take his thick outercoat off of him, I try to rationalize what I’m doing. “He doesn’t need it anymore,” I tell myself, “and you do. You’re not really stealing…” I’m shaking uncontrollably the entire time, though. I know that what I’m doing is wrong, and I don’t like it in the least bit. I feel my tears coming back, and I push them back. I don’t need to start my crying, not now. After I have the overcoat wormed out from around the person’s body, I somewhat clumsily drape it over my shoulders, then stick my forehooves in the sleeves to keep it from flopping around everywhere and potentially falling off. The sleeves are a bit long, so I roll them up to match the length of my forelegs. It’s rather comfortable, when all is said and done. I pick the timepiece up with my mouth and deposit it into the pocket that is on the outercoat. In the process, I realize something that may end up hindering me in the long run: the coat covers up my wings. If I need to make a quick get-away in the air, this is going to majorly hinder me. Then again, I can’t make a quick get-away if I’m dead from exposure… I’m not really shivering anymore, so I steel my resolve- chalking this up to nothing but a necessary evil in the process- and I turn, about to head back to the tank. I yawn. It’s getting rather late; I need to get back there before- Wait. What was that? I stop, and swivel my head around, trying to catch the noise again. There! There it is! It sounds like someone’s crying out in pain… One of the kids, maybe? They’re still alive? I shake my head. “Don’t go out there, Derpy,” I tell myself. Yeah, I’ve started calling myself Derpy now. It used to be something that just Rainbow Dash would call me, but I started soon thereafter to use that name for myself. Even after I found out what it actually meant, I kept on calling myself that. I thought it appropriate. I continue my conversation with myself: “There’s nothing you can do for him, not now. You know nothing about bandaging up wounds, or taking care of someone who’s hurt as badly as he seems to be…” As I’m telling myself this, I realize my hooves are taking me towards the noise. It’s almost as though I’m being compelled to do it by some force beyond my control, like the one that drove Rarity to that giant rock with all the gems in it. Yes, I know about that. Scootaloo told me during one of our flying practice sessions, and she’d heard it from Rainbow Dash herself. Apparently, Dashie had been bragging a bit about how her Sonic Rainboom had inadvertently caused the events that led to all of her best friends receiving their cutie marks. My cutie mark story had nothing to do with Dashie, but maybe I’ll tell that later. I realize where this is going, and I resign myself to do it. Whatever higher power is in control right now, they want me to go towards the source of that noise, and I’m not going to resist. I soon crest a hill, and look out on another sea of bodies. It takes me a minute to pinpoint the general direction of where the noise is coming from. When I do so, I continue on in that direction. As I get closer to the source, I realize that I recognize the tempo of the voice. But from where? As I continue on, suddenly I realize it, in a stunning flash of remembrance. “Dear Celestia,” I say out loud. “It’s the kid who saved my life…!” Now I’m running in a full-on gallop. Soon, I come to where he lays. Oh man, he is not in good shape. He’s got a pretty big piece of something sticking out of his stomach. I notice it’s not bleeding much, though; maybe the giant shard of metal is preventing the blood from coming out. That’s good, at least. He looks over at me, agony etched in every line on his face. When he sees me, recognition dawns. “Hey…” he croaks. “You’re the… the thing I saved a few hours ago… Under the tank.” I nod. “Thank you for that, by the way.” His eyes grow wide as saucers. “Wait…” He coughs as his body is racked with another wave of pain. When he’s finally back in control of his senses after a minute, he continues with his thought: “You… you can talk? And I can understand you…?” I nod. “Um… is there anything I can do to help.” He laughs softly. “Not if you can’t patch this up.” He motions to the big metal shard. “You have any experience as a combat medic?” “No…” He sighs. “That’s okay; I wasn’t really expecting a positive answer-“ I don’t know what compels me to say this suddenly, but the words come out nonetheless: “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t help you. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do my best…” He looks at me a bit funny, like he can’t tell if I’m serious or not. When he sees the determination in my eyes, though, he smiles. “I guess it can’t hurt, really. If I die, then… well, I die. I won’t blame it on you in the afterlife.” He points in the direction of the tank. “If you can get back over to the tank… There should be a medic’s kit in the tank. Get it and bring it back to me, and we’ll go from there.” I nod and take off at full speed. I make it back to the tank in about a minute or so, and that was with me galloping at top speed. When I reach it, I unsteadily climb my way up. The top part of it is open, and I slip in. After a brief fall, I land on the floor. Luckily, the moon is out, and in its current position it’s streaming directly in through the hole in the top of the tank. So, I have light to see. I rummage around for a few minutes, not really finding anything important. At one point, I pull out a box-shaped contraption. I recognize it as a portable radio. Huh. I’ll have to check it out more later, and see if it works. After a few more minutes of fruitless searching, I finally find what I’m pretty sure is the medic’s kit. I climb out and start making my way back to my injured friend. As I’m going on, I subconsciously start singing the song that I’d been singing back in Ponyville; this was a different part of the song, though. Its lyrics were simple, yet powerful. “I’m here again… A thousand miles away from you… A broken mess, just scattered pieces of who I am…” Author’s Note: I had a rather fertile source of inspiration for this chapter, in the form of the song “Pieces,” by Red. The lines that Derpy is singing in this chapter are lyrics from that song. In addition, the chapter title is (obviously) the title of the song. Future chapters may have additional Red references and lyrics in them, as well. I’m not 100 percent sure yet, but it’s a definite possibility. How to Save A Life, Part One: Emergency SurgeryAs I’m walking back to where my friend lays, bleeding and dying, I notice something interesting. Over near where he’s at, there is a pretty big-sized cloud of butterflies flitting about. Monarchs, I think they’re called. The orange and black-colored ones. I can’t help but have my attention focused on them as I walk. They’re so beautiful and elegant… I’ve only seen them once or twice in all my years living in Ponyville. Then again, I’m normally doing my own thing as the town’s mailmare, or helping the Doctor do whatever he needs. I never get much time to myself, so I probably miss a lot of things that other ponies have no problems seeing. Maybe that’s why everyone calls me “slow” all the time… I shake myself back to the world. I can’t afford to spend too much time out here amongst these majestic creatures. My friend is in danger… I shift the first aid backpack, getting it more comfortably settled. With that done, I set back out again. As my walk becomes more of a trot, my mind flashes back to that big box that I found in the tank. I wonder what kinds of things I can listen to, in this world? Or do radios even work the same way here that they do back home? That will have to wait, though. For now… I’ve got a life to save. I don’t know how in the world I’m going to do that, though… I hope I don’t accidentally make it worse, instead of better. I can’t bear to think of how I’ll feel if I end up hurting him even more… My hooves fly across the landscape now; I’m running as fast as I possibly can go. Because of this, I reach him in quicker time than I could have ever thought possible. I pant a little bit as I try to catch my breath. “Whoa…” he whispers. “You’re pretty fast. I wasn’t expecting you back this quickly…” I smile my usual lopsided smile. “You were counting on me… Not too many ponies do that, you know. When someone comes around who does, I try my best to deliver.” He looks up at the sky. “There isn’t much time left… If we’re going to do something, we need to do it soon.” I nod resolutely, dumping the pack onto the ground. “So tell me what to do.” He reaches up with feeble arms and unbuttons his overcoat, letting it fall at his sides around him. I wince a bit when I see the extent of the damage that was done to him. There’s one large piece of metal that’s sticking just about all the way into him; I suppose it missed all his vital organs, otherwise I think he’d be dead by now. There are a few other pieces of metal in his flesh, but those are much smaller and thus will be quite a bit easier to get out. “Yeah,” he says, “I know it looks pretty bad. I already cut away my shirt and undershirt, so you could get at my wounds easier. I don’t think you could manipulate a knife with your hooves, can you?” I shake my head. “No fingers makes things like that kind of hard.” He laughs a bit before coughing violently. When he’s done with his hacking, he’s still smiling a bit. “I can imagine. Kinda like my not having wings makes it a bit hard for me to fly.” I open up the top part of the knapsack and start rummaging through it. While I’m doing so, I try to keep up the conversation so as to keep him from slipping away. “Have you ever wanted to fly?” “Oh, yeah. What little kid doesn’t dream of that? Sadly, though, I’m stuck here on good old terra firma.” “Well, when things look up for you… I’d love to take you flying. Let you experience what I can.” He looks at me oddly. “You can fly? But you’re a pony… Ponies can’t fly, can they?” I nod. “Where I come from, they can- well, some of them, anyways.” I take a minute to undo the jacket that I have bundled around me. When I finally get it free, I let it fall to the ground and stretch my wings out all the way. Man, it feels good to stretch them, especially when they’ve been cooped up in that jacket for awhile. His eyes grow wide. “Oh, wow…” “Yeah, I know, I’m different,” I say as I turn my attention back to the backpack. “So what do I need to get out first?” “Probably the roll of gauze,” he replies. “That, and the antiseptic. There shouldn’t be much in there, but we’ll have to make do with what we have.” It takes me a minute to find everything. While I’m doing so, he keeps talking: “So you said that not all of your kind have wings? What other kinds of ponies are there in your world? Can they all talk?” “Yeah, we can all talk, as far as I know. Some of us choose not to, but like I said that’s just personal choice. Flying ponies like myself are referred to as pegasi. We also have Earth ponies, who are the ones who stay on the ground all the time. There are also unicorns, who are the magic-users of our kind-“ “Wait,” he interrupts. “Magic? What kind of magic?” “Magic that can do anything you want it to. You can move things around without touching them, teleport yourself to anyplace you want to go… It’s pretty powerful stuff.” It doesn’t even occur to me that maybe I shouldn’t be telling him about this. I mean, this isn’t even my world, and as far as I know he’ll never be coming to Equestria, so I really don’t see a problem with it. “Wow…” he says quietly. “So obviously things are completely different in your world, than they are here.” I find what I’m looking for and take them out, bringing them to him. “Most definitely,” I say as I drop them from my mouth into his lap. He smiles. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. The wounds haven’t been bleeding for awhile, which is either really good or really bad. I want to try to get the smaller pieces out first, kind of as a test. If that goes well, we’ll move on to the gigantic honker that’s pinning me to the ground.” I nod silently and dip my head down, gripping the smaller of the two small pieces in my mouth. I feel the sharp edge press up against my tongue, and it reminds me to take it easy enough. I don’t want to hurt myself in the process of helping him. With one fluid motion, I pull it out. He doesn’t wince or anything, and when I look down I see that the open wound isn’t bleeding at all. He sighs in relief. “Okay, so far so good. Now let’s go for the other piece.” Soon, that one is out as well. No blood comes from that wound, either. “Okay,” he says. “Now for the hard part.” I nod as I look at the giant piece of metal in him. I have to choke back some tears as I look at him. Like I said before, no one should have to go through this, not ever… I steel myself though, as I think about the best way to go about this. He’s silent now, which for a second really scares me now. When I look over at him, though, he’s still breathing, though slowly. He seems to be in thought, maybe about the same thing that I am. I don’t want to mess this up, like I do most everything else… As though being guided by some other force outside my control, I feel myself rise up onto my back legs and, using my front hooves, grip that piece of metal as tenderly as I can. As I hold onto it the best I can, I notice something odd about it. “There’s too much play,” I tell him. He looks at me funny, so I continue: “What I mean is, I don’t think it’s in as far as you think. It might be easier than expected to get it out.” “I trust you,” is all he says. The tears come back to my eyes and I pull with everything I have in me. The metal slides out, and this time he does shiver a bit in pain. Soon, though, it’s all the way out of his body; there’s only a slight trickle of blood coming out from the wound, which looking at it with the large piece of metal not in it anymore, is not nearly as wide as I thought it would be. He looks down at it. “Shit,” he says quietly. “Thank you…” I nod. “I couldn’t just leave you here.” This brings something to my mind. “Speaking of, why did your friends just leave you here? Couldn’t they have saved you easier?” He smiles a bit grimly. “They’re not my friends, per se. Yeah, we’ve been through battle together, but before we joined the army, we didn’t know each other from Adam.” As he’s talking, he motions for me to apply the gauze to his wounds. I do so, then somewhat clumsily tape them up. He smooths it out with his hands, then looks up at me and smiles. “You saved my life,” he says. “I don’t think I could’ve done that myself. Thank you…” I sit beside him, looking out at the moon. I can’t help but be reminded of the tales of Princess Luna being banished to the moon, just because of what her Nightmare Moon form did so long ago… I shiver at the memory. “It’s no problem,” I say absentmindedly. “You would have done the same for me, if you could have.” He sighs and looks up at the sky again. “So tell me about your world. I want to know about it.” I smile and begin my tale, and deep into the night we talk, just the two of us alive in the world of the dead. Author's Note: Though I didn't reference it at all in this chapter, I had another Red song playing on loop in the background as I wrote. This time, it was "Not Alone," from their album Until We Have Faces. It seemed appropriate to the theme of this chapter and for the next one, as the next chapter is part two of this one. Hope you'll come back to read again! How to Save A Life, Part Two: I Left You in BonesIt’s about two o’clock in the morning, by the time we’re finished (I think) talking about our lives in our respective walks. I find his life fascinating, and I’m pretty sure he feels the same for me. I’m now more interested than ever in finding out more about this world. It’s called “Earth,” he tells me. It’s one of nine planets that their “scientists” have discovered in their solar system. I’m curious as to what sort of person a scientist was, so he explains that a scientist is a person who does experiments to test various theories out and to acquire knowledge. “Ah!” I say. “So in our world, Twilight Sparkle would be a scientist!” He looks at me with a blank expression on his face. Oops. I forgot that he wasn’t from our world. I explain to him who Twilight Sparkle is, and what she does. “Yep,” he replies, “that sounds like a scientist, alright. She seems like a pretty interesting individual.” “Oh yeah, she is!” I reply, grinning. “In fact, she’s kinda… the reason why I’m here.” He looks at me with an intrigued expression on his face. “She’s the reason, eh? What did she do? Make a machine that could transport people- or ponies, in your case- to other universes?” “Well, that’s not really how it started out,” I admit. “She was really just trying to test out a theory.” “And something went wrong?” I shrug. “Not sure. All that technical stuff she deals with, kinda confuses me. That’s why I was so surprised when Twilight wanted me to participate in her experiment.” “Meaning… what?” I sigh. This is going to take some delicate explaining. I catch him up to the point where conveniently, I’m at in my own memories, then I continue: Twilight was positively skipping with joy as they came up on the library. “I’m so happy!” she was saying. “I didn’t think anyone would volunteer to be my test subject. This is some ground-breaking stuff!” As she came up on the door, it opened automatically to reveal a short purple-and-green dragon. “Hey, Spike!” Derpy said, smiling widely. This was, as she’d said, her first interaction with Twilight’s number-one assistant, and she wanted to make a good first impression. Spike looked at her oddly. “Um… Hi there, Ditzy Doo.” He looked at Twilight. “What’s she doing here? I thought you were going to ask the Doctor to be your test subject.” “I was,” Twilight explained, “but when I went to the Doctor’s house to ask him, he wasn’t there. Ditzy said that he was out doing something for Mayor Mare or something like that. Anyways, Ditzy volunteered to do the experiment!” Spike shot a deadpan look at his best friend. “You didn’t actually tell her what the experiment was, did you?” “Well, no, but I didn’t really get a chance to… She agreed to do it before I could even get word one out, about what it was going to entail. So, I just told her that I’d explain it to her when we got back to the lab.” “Speaking of,” Derpy cut in, “where is your lab? I really want to see what it looks like.” “Oh…” Twilight said, looking a bit abashed. “Well… you’re kinda looking at it.” Derpy looked at her funny. “This isn’t a lab, though. It’s a library.” Realization dawned on the wall-eyed pony’s face. “Oh! I get it! You’ve got some kind of image-alteration magic cast on it, so anyone who walks in will just see a regular library, but you and Spike can see it as the actual laboratory that it is. It makes perfect sense!” “Wow,” Twilight responded. “I’m surprised you figured it out. Maybe it was a better choice to have you do this, than the Doctor.” “But that’s not what it is at all!” Spike retorted. “This is an honest-to-Celestia library. We just use this as our experiment space because right now, we can’t afford a high-tech facility.” Twilight and Ditzy looked at each other and burst into laughter. “What?” Spike asked, nonplussed. “What on earth is so funny?” “I know that,” Derpy replied. “Twilight explained that much to me on the way over. I was just kidding with you.” “Oh.” Spike was mentally kicking himself. He was normally a bit more astute than that- well, except when it came to a particularly creepy owl, but he never talked about that with anyone. Not even Twilight brought it up anymore. “It’s fine,” Twilight said, still giggling a bit. “We just felt like giving you a hard time…” She looked at Derpy. “So, now it’s time for me to actually tell you what’s going to be going on here.” Derpy looked at her attentively. “Got it.” “Well,” Twilight began, “lately I’ve been working on something new. Something that I don’t think any pony has ever even tried to develop. It’s been really hard-coming, but I think I may have actually perfected it.” “What?” Derpy asked. “What is it?” Twilight smiled. “It’s a magical spell that allows massive quantities of items to be transported across huge tracts of land using just- like I said- magic. It’ll revolutionize the way that items are shipped.” Derpy looked at her oddly. “Um, but… Don’t they already have something for that? You know… trains?” “Well, yes, but trains take too long. Plus, you have to have all those ponies on board just to make sure that the cargo gets there without incident. With this, you free them up to do other things. It wouldn’t make the train completely useless, now; I mean, my magic can’t be used to transport living things- other than myself, anyways. Just inanimate objects.” She looked at Derpy now, smiling. “Or can it?” This was what Derpy was waiting for. “So you’re saying it can be used to transport living things?” “I don’t know yet. I’ve never tried it. That’s where you come in.” True realization was now coming upon the mailmare. “So… you want me to be the first experiment?” “Well, the Doctor, technically. I mean, I’ve used him in a few other of my more… reality-altering experiments, and he’s pretty much always come back unharmed.” “Pretty much?” “Well, yeah… I mean there was that one time we sent him to this universe, and he landed on some planet called Skaro. Well, somehow on the return trip, he got himself an extra heart. They both work just fine, mind you; he’s just got one more than everyone else does.” Derpy thought it was kind of odd that the Doctor had never mentioned this to her, but she shrugged it off. She’d simply make a mental note to ask the Doctor about that later. “That’s fine,” Derpy replied. “I’d be fine with an extra heart, especially if it worked okay. I’ll still be part of your experiment.” Twilight sighed in relief; she’d been thinking that maybe her words would have scared Derpy a little bit. But, she seemed as stubbornly fearless as always. This was a good thing. “Okay, Spike,” Twilight said. “Get the starting block.” She smiled widely. “It’s a race to the finish!” I slowly become aware of the fact that my new friend seems to no longer be awake. I don’t know what to think… Was my story that boring? I don’t want him to think I’m boring… Out of curiosity, I check the pocket watch I got earlier. Oh. So apparently it’s almost four in the morning. That would explain why he fell asleep… I’m tired, too, now that I come to think about it. So, I scoot over to him and flop down onto my side, laying my head on his chest. I feel his soft breathing and it oddly comforts me. I stare up at the sky for a few minutes, before my eyes grow heavy, and I finally slip away into sleep.
CasualtiesMy name is Derpy Hooves, and I am a long way from home. Right now, I am in hiding. I’m very scared. There are so many things going on around me, so much noise… It’s like the world is exploding. I don’t want to be here… but it looks like I don’t have a choice. It’s very muddy where I’m at right now; my coat is getting stained and dirty. I really don’t want to be here… If you asked me what was going on, I would tell you the truth: I really have no idea. This world is not mine; it has never been mine. My world is Equestria, that beautiful land. This is not Equestria, I can promise you that. As I look out from where I’m hiding, all I can see around me is death. I had wished I would never see such horrors again, after my parents had died; here, it’s everywhere. But this is a different kind of death. With my parents, their deaths were natural, due to increased age. This death… Lives cut short in their prime. These are only children; what are they doing in a situation like this? No one should ever have to endure this, whether young or old. This is horrible… I flinch as a loud booming noise echoes throughout my sanctuary. I instinctively reach my hooves up to try to cover my ears; I don’t want to go deaf from this. To never be able to hear anything again… that would be a sentence I wouldn’t visit upon anybody. As I reach up to cover my ears, my hooves brush the underside of the giant contraption that I’m hiding underneath. From the touch, it appears to be metallic in nature, but it’s absolutely huge. There are two giant rollers flanking me; I guess that’s how it moves. This one hasn’t moved since I dove underneath it for cover, though not for lack of trying. I think it’s bogged down in the sand; for whatever reason, it isn’t moving. I can hear shouts up above me… Cursing, too. They’re trying to get the thing to work. They call it a “tank.” I guess that’s the official name for it. A tank. It seems oddly appropriate, and this is my first time ever hearing the word. I look out from underneath the… tank. All around me, these creatures are falling down. Some of them have holes in parts of their bodies; I don’t think they’re natural holes, either, not with all of the tiny pieces of lead flying around. I think those might be called “bullets.” I heard that word used once to describe something kinda similar to these things; I guess it’s as good of a name as any. From what I can see, there are more of these creatures out here than I can count. Some are wearing different clothing; all of them are entirely too drab-colored, though. I suppose that just makes them harder to see, though, and I guess if you don’t want to die, not being seen is a good thing. At least one thing about them is similar to us ponies: very many of these creatures are different in tone from each other. Their faces don’t all look alike, either. It’s really an astounding variety. It would be easier to appreciate if there wasn’t all this fighting going on around me… A body falls down by the wheels of the tank, and I chance a glance at it. That was not the right thing to do. Both of its eyes are missing; I can see all the way to the other side. Victims of bullets? Probably, considering there’s another hole almost dead-center in his head. I let out a tiny shriek and recoil, trying to get as far away from the dead body as I can. I’m trying at the same time not to get underneath the treads, though; if this thing starts moving suddenly and I can’t react in time… I don’t want to become another casualty. There are enough of those already. I hear something very loud above me. I wriggle my way to the front end of the tank and look up. What I see amazes me. There are these contraptions flying through the air; they have wings, but they don’t flap like birds’ wings. They’re stationary, in other words. There’s some kind of propeller at the front of the thing; is that what powers it? It must be; the rest of it is much too small to hold any kind of advanced propulsion system. I hear a shout from close to me: “Oh shit! Bombers!” Those who are out in the open, start to scramble for safety. I see the underside of one of the “bombers,” whatever that means, open up and I see more of these creatures inside. For some reason, I’m reminded of my good friend Lyra Heartstrings; she’s always going on about the existence of some species called “humans”; maybe these are humans? They certainly have many of the same features that Lyra’s described them having. If only she could be here to see this- Wait. No. I wouldn’t force this upon anybody. No one should have to go through such fighting. It doesn’t matter what kind of bad thing you did; no one should have to go through this. Anyways, as I’m looking up at the people in the airplane, I see they’re pushing something out. It’s really big and black. I think I have somewhat of an idea what it is, even though like many other things in this world I’ve never seen it before. So, I back up as quickly as I can and once again cover my ears. Sure enough, the loud “booms” return, and I can vaguely hear more screaming. It sounds absolutely agonizing… Someone must have gotten hit, and not died. I feel so sorry for them; if only they were at home, instead of here, having to go through this hell… I feel tears slipping through my clenched-shut eyes. I normally don’t like crying in front of people, but technically I’m not in front of anyone right now, and besides I’m pretty sure that the circumstances warrant a bit of leeway. So, I just let myself cry. I mourn those who have passed, and those who will do so in mere moments. I hear more firing; more bullets scar the air as they rip through it. More loud booms, more crying in pain. It’s almost too much to bear. Suddenly, an idea comes to me, and I start scooping sand closer to my body. I’m trying to bury myself in the sand; maybe that will help me block out some of this terrible noise. In a few moments, I start to realize that it just isn’t going to happen. I can’t get enough sand around to completely cover my body, and in any case it looks like the sand doesn’t make a very good noise blocker anyways. I dare not go outside my rag-tag fortress, either; I don’t want to end up like one of them out there. So, in here I stay. As I look around in absolute fear, I find myself unwillingly thinking about those that are laying dead around me. What kind of families did they have? Did they have lovers? Some of them probably didn’t; they look like they’re barely out of their formative years… Some of them probably still think girls are weird, or that they’re going to be alone for the rest of their lives. I don’t want to think about these things; I’m crying enough already. So I try to force my mind onto other things. Somehow my mind settles on the last thing that I remember in Equestria. I don’t think my memory’s damaged in any way, but it is a rather odd memory… Twilight Sparkle knocked on the mailmare’s door. It took a moment for Derpy to answer, but when she did, she smiled widely when she saw who was at her door. “Twilight…” she said warmly. “What can I do for you?” “Hi, Derpy,” Twilight responded with an equal smile. “Is the Doctor at home?” Derpy looked a bit crestfallen that Twilight wasn’t actually there to see her. She had so few visitors, mostly just people wanting to tell her what good of a job she was doing as mailmare, or maybe the occasional person wanting to complain that a letter that they were supposed to be receiving hadn’t come in yet… On the contrary, everyone wanted to be with the Doctor. He was the town’s resident oddball and genius, and in spite of his wants to the contrary, people just would not leave him alone. “Sure, he’s here,” Derpy said, stepping aside. “Come on in; I’ll go tell him that you’re here to see him.” Twilight stepped in, seemingly oblivious to the re-shading of Derpy’s face that had occurred. “Thank you,” she said with a nod, as Derpy walked up the stairs to the Doctor’s room. She was almost to the door and was getting ready to knock, when she remembered where he was. She came back downstairs with her regular derpy grin on her face. “Heh…” she said, “sorry, but I just remembered. The Doctor is over at Mayor Mare’s house, helping her to fix some things up around the house.” “Oh darn, so he’s busy…” Twilight looked a bit sad herself. “I wanted to know if he’d want to participate in a little experiment that Princess Celestia wants me to conduct-“ Derpy’s ears perked up. She’d always wanted to know what kind of things the Princess was wanting Twilight to do as part of her research. “Is it anything that I can help out with?” Twilight looked at her oddly. “Really, Derpy? You want to be a part of the test?” Derpy nodded, her eyes going askew as they normally did. “I’ve always been curious about what it takes to be a lab rat.” Twilight laughed at what she thought was a joke, but what in actuality had been a fairly serious statement. “Okay,” Twilight responded, still chuckling, “I suppose it would be alright if I tested you first. Come on.” Derpy went into the kitchen and wrote a note for the Doctor, telling him where they would be. With that, she set off with Twilight to do this all-important test. Another explosion, and I’m brought out of my reverie. I don’t know how long I’ve been lost in thought, so I take a quick look around to try to take stock of my surroundings. Thank the powers, the tank hasn’t moved yet. I’m starting to think that it won’t be moving anymore; if it still had the power to move, it would have moved by now. I’m just about to take my first deep breath in awhile, when a pair of boots hits the ground beside the tank. I hear someone shout, “Well? What’s wrong with the damn thing? Why isn’t it working?” The human who’s just jumped down off the tank yells out, “How am I supposed to know? I just got down here!” He drops to his knees and begins to lower himself down. Oh no… What if he sees me? I’ve got to hide- but where? My eyes search frantically, but they’re not finding anyplace for me to escape. He’s almost totally knelt down, but I can’t move at all; I’m frozen in fear. Finally, a face pops down from the underside of the tank. This kid can’t be far out of his parents’ home, and here is staring at me. His bespectacled face is looking at me like he can’t believe what he’s saying. Finally, he speaks, his words coming out with a tinge of awe: “What the-?” Oh crap. He saw me... What am I going to do now...? Suddenly, I see the face disappear, though before it went away I could swear I could see a smile on his face. He stays knelt down, though, for another five minutes or so, before standing back up all the way. “It’s shot,” I hear him say. “There’s no way to fix it. We’ll have to continue on foot.” In a minute, there are soft whumps all around me as people start jumping from the tank to the sandy beaches below. I think as best as I can, in my shocked state, what could have caused him to do what he did. Suddenly it comes to me in a flash, and it almost makes my jaw drop. “He did this for me…” I mutter. “He wanted to make sure that I had a place to be protected…” I feel the tears welling up again, and once again I don’t even try to hold them in. I let them flow, and as the kids around me searched for cover, I allow my sobs and my tears be the last sensations I am conscious of, before I fade away.
PiecesMy senses slowly start to come back to me as I awaken. I reach up with a stiff foreleg and try to rub the sleep out of my eyes. I don’t dare open my eyes until I’m done rubbing my eyes; the way that my eyes are naturally, combined with the lack of being able to see straight because of my eyes being closed for so long, makes it so that I wouldn’t be able to see anything anyways. It only takes me a few seconds to clear my eyes, and when that’s done and over with, I open up my eyes. I wait for them to adjust to my surroundings. Clearly, it’s night-time; the black skies prove that much to me. I’m about to stand up and stretch when I remember what’s above me. The bottom side of a tank… It’s deathly quiet outside, which compared to the noisiness of the area when I last was conscious, is rather creepy. I don’t like complete silence; I like there to be at least some white noise in the area. Regardless of whether or not I can actively identify it- which most times, I can’t- it puts my mind at ease and allows me to focus and concentrate better. I don’t know if other ponies’ minds are like this. I don’t much mind, either. I know that it’s the way that I am, and that’s really all that I need to care about. I shimmy my way out from underneath the tank. When I finally get out, I gleefully stretch my stiff limbs. The air is rather cool, and I shiver against a brief but potent gust of wind that buffets my now-standing body. I’m used to chilly weather, though, and this is hardly the coldest I’ve had to endure. Back when I was a filly, our parents often used to have to endure freezing cold winters without the luxury of being able to heat their house. Naturally, seeing as I lived there with them, I had to suffer alongside them. If I can say anything about those winters, it’s that they prepared me rather well for delivering mail in Ponyville’s rather cold winters. But I’m not in Ponyville anymore. That much is clear to me. We don’t have tanks in Ponyville; neither do we have kids fighting each other with weapons that seem to be designed specifically with Death in mind. It’s rather scary… I shiver again, though this time it has nothing to do with the temperature. I know it’s a rather futile effort, but I look around- now that there’s no fighting going on, and I can actually get my bearings without having to distract myself every half-second with worries of who’s going to try to kill me next- to see what I can identify. As I thought, there’s really nothing that I recognize. I see some smoldering wreckage, probably of a plane that got shot down. Oh yeah, and bodies. So many bodies… Their blood is staining the sand red. I wonder if it will ever go back to its natural color. Something tells me that’s nothing but a pipe dream. I try not to look directly at the bodies as I maneuver my way around them. The ones that are right in front of me as I step, I can avoid looking at those. The ones that are further up ahead and to my side, on the other hand… I don’t have as good of luck with those. I know it’s not really something I should be doing, but on the inside I’m slightly marveling at the number of different ways that these beings have come up with to kill each other. Some use bullets, some use fire, others just get blown up or crushed from falling debris… Regardless, I continue onward. I hear a bird cry out in the distance. It sounds… sad. Mournful, even. I know that I don’t feel like flat-out bawling my eyes out like I did not too long ago, but a tear still slides down my cheek. It’s so sad, hearing birds call like that… My walk is now becoming slower and slower in pace, because as I go on, there are more and more bodies laid out on the beach. They fell wherever they died. Occasionally, I pass someone who I think I can still see the spark of life in their eyes. I force myself to keep going, though; I know I can’t help them, not with what little I know about the medical practice. As I make my way onward, my mind drifts away from the aftermath and the carnage of battle around me, and I start to reminisce once again on the last memories I have of being in Equestria: As Derpy walked along, faithfully trailing at Twilight’s side, he started softly singing a song that he’d heard once or twice being sung at Dinky’s talent shows: “I’ve come undone… But you make sense of who I am… Like puzzle pieces in your hand…” Twilight looked back at her oddly. “Derpy, what on earth are you singing back there?” Derpy blushed a bit. “Oh, it’s nothing, really… I don’t even know the name of it. I’ve heard it once or twice and a few lines just stuck out to me…” Twilight shrugged and kept walking. “I don’t mind your singing,” she said, not looking back again. “I don’t want you to get me wrong. You’ve got a good voice. I’d just never heard that song before.” If she had been looking back, she would have seen Derpy flush a bright red in the face. No one had ever complimented her on her singing voice before… Something occurred to Derpy as they walked. “Hey, Twilight?” When she had acknowledged that she’d heard the mailmare, Derpy continued: “Don’t you normally have a dragon with you? A really small one…?” Twilight nodded. “That’s Spike. I’m not sure if you two have ever officially met before. He’s my assistant and one of my best friends. He’s back at my place, getting everything set up for our experiment.” Twilight laughed. “He overslept this morning, and ended up waking up about five minutes before I left. I just let him stay there, under the condition that he get everything set up.” “It’s nice to have friends like that,” Derpy remarked. “Though, if he’s lazy enough to oversleep when he knows he’s supposed to be going on a trip with you, are you sure you can trust him to get everything set up for your experiment while you’re not there?” Twilight nodded. “He knows how important my research is to me. And yes, he can be a bit lazy at times, but he won’t let that get in the way of the work that Princess Celestia has tasked me to do.” That reminded Derpy of something. “I’d almost forgotten, but thanks for the reminder. What exactly is it that the Princess wants you to do in this experiment?” Twilight looked back at Derpy, a smile on her face. “Something very big,” was all she said. “I’ll explain it all fully when we get to my place.” Derpy just smiled back and nodded, and they kept on their way. My attention is brought back to the world I find myself in now. I can’t stray too far from the tank. Right now, that’s my only means of shelter, and I don’t particularly want to be sleeping out in the open. Not in this environment. I tend to be a heavy sleeper, and who knows what could happen to me during the night? Speaking of the night, I really do need to figure out what time it is. It’s not really of all-consuming importance, more along the lines of something that I just really want to know. I kind of have a one-track mind, albeit one that goes in a million directions at once, and when my mind latches onto something random… well, it doesn’t really let up until it’s been satisfied. An idea hits me, and while I don’t particularly want to do this, it’s worth a shot to ease my mind. So I begin looking on the bodies of the- people, I guess?- lying around on the beach. It takes me awhile to find one that can help me out, but eventually I find one that has a rather ornate timepiece clipped to his side. I read it. It says that the time is 1:30 in the morning. So it is rather late… This makes me glad that I learned how to read the giant clock in Ponyville. I shiver again. This isn’t going to work out. I look down at the dead person at my feet, and swallow unsurely. I really don’t want to do this… As I take his thick outercoat off of him, I try to rationalize what I’m doing. “He doesn’t need it anymore,” I tell myself, “and you do. You’re not really stealing…” I’m shaking uncontrollably the entire time, though. I know that what I’m doing is wrong, and I don’t like it in the least bit. I feel my tears coming back, and I push them back. I don’t need to start my crying, not now. After I have the overcoat wormed out from around the person’s body, I somewhat clumsily drape it over my shoulders, then stick my forehooves in the sleeves to keep it from flopping around everywhere and potentially falling off. The sleeves are a bit long, so I roll them up to match the length of my forelegs. It’s rather comfortable, when all is said and done. I pick the timepiece up with my mouth and deposit it into the pocket that is on the outercoat. In the process, I realize something that may end up hindering me in the long run: the coat covers up my wings. If I need to make a quick get-away in the air, this is going to majorly hinder me. Then again, I can’t make a quick get-away if I’m dead from exposure… I’m not really shivering anymore, so I steel my resolve- chalking this up to nothing but a necessary evil in the process- and I turn, about to head back to the tank. I yawn. It’s getting rather late; I need to get back there before- Wait. What was that? I stop, and swivel my head around, trying to catch the noise again. There! There it is! It sounds like someone’s crying out in pain… One of the kids, maybe? They’re still alive? I shake my head. “Don’t go out there, Derpy,” I tell myself. Yeah, I’ve started calling myself Derpy now. It used to be something that just Rainbow Dash would call me, but I started soon thereafter to use that name for myself. Even after I found out what it actually meant, I kept on calling myself that. I thought it appropriate. I continue my conversation with myself: “There’s nothing you can do for him, not now. You know nothing about bandaging up wounds, or taking care of someone who’s hurt as badly as he seems to be…” As I’m telling myself this, I realize my hooves are taking me towards the noise. It’s almost as though I’m being compelled to do it by some force beyond my control, like the one that drove Rarity to that giant rock with all the gems in it. Yes, I know about that. Scootaloo told me during one of our flying practice sessions, and she’d heard it from Rainbow Dash herself. Apparently, Dashie had been bragging a bit about how her Sonic Rainboom had inadvertently caused the events that led to all of her best friends receiving their cutie marks. My cutie mark story had nothing to do with Dashie, but maybe I’ll tell that later. I realize where this is going, and I resign myself to do it. Whatever higher power is in control right now, they want me to go towards the source of that noise, and I’m not going to resist. I soon crest a hill, and look out on another sea of bodies. It takes me a minute to pinpoint the general direction of where the noise is coming from. When I do so, I continue on in that direction. As I get closer to the source, I realize that I recognize the tempo of the voice. But from where? As I continue on, suddenly I realize it, in a stunning flash of remembrance. “Dear Celestia,” I say out loud. “It’s the kid who saved my life…!” Now I’m running in a full-on gallop. Soon, I come to where he lays. Oh man, he is not in good shape. He’s got a pretty big piece of something sticking out of his stomach. I notice it’s not bleeding much, though; maybe the giant shard of metal is preventing the blood from coming out. That’s good, at least. He looks over at me, agony etched in every line on his face. When he sees me, recognition dawns. “Hey…” he croaks. “You’re the… the thing I saved a few hours ago… Under the tank.” I nod. “Thank you for that, by the way.” His eyes grow wide as saucers. “Wait…” He coughs as his body is racked with another wave of pain. When he’s finally back in control of his senses after a minute, he continues with his thought: “You… you can talk? And I can understand you…?” I nod. “Um… is there anything I can do to help.” He laughs softly. “Not if you can’t patch this up.” He motions to the big metal shard. “You have any experience as a combat medic?” “No…” He sighs. “That’s okay; I wasn’t really expecting a positive answer-“ I don’t know what compels me to say this suddenly, but the words come out nonetheless: “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t help you. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do my best…” He looks at me a bit funny, like he can’t tell if I’m serious or not. When he sees the determination in my eyes, though, he smiles. “I guess it can’t hurt, really. If I die, then… well, I die. I won’t blame it on you in the afterlife.” He points in the direction of the tank. “If you can get back over to the tank… There should be a medic’s kit in the tank. Get it and bring it back to me, and we’ll go from there.” I nod and take off at full speed. I make it back to the tank in about a minute or so, and that was with me galloping at top speed. When I reach it, I unsteadily climb my way up. The top part of it is open, and I slip in. After a brief fall, I land on the floor. Luckily, the moon is out, and in its current position it’s streaming directly in through the hole in the top of the tank. So, I have light to see. I rummage around for a few minutes, not really finding anything important. At one point, I pull out a box-shaped contraption. I recognize it as a portable radio. Huh. I’ll have to check it out more later, and see if it works. After a few more minutes of fruitless searching, I finally find what I’m pretty sure is the medic’s kit. I climb out and start making my way back to my injured friend. As I’m going on, I subconsciously start singing the song that I’d been singing back in Ponyville; this was a different part of the song, though. Its lyrics were simple, yet powerful. “I’m here again… A thousand miles away from you… A broken mess, just scattered pieces of who I am…” Author’s Note: I had a rather fertile source of inspiration for this chapter, in the form of the song “Pieces,” by Red. The lines that Derpy is singing in this chapter are lyrics from that song. In addition, the chapter title is (obviously) the title of the song. Future chapters may have additional Red references and lyrics in them, as well. I’m not 100 percent sure yet, but it’s a definite possibility.
How to Save A Life, Part One: Emergency SurgeryAs I’m walking back to where my friend lays, bleeding and dying, I notice something interesting. Over near where he’s at, there is a pretty big-sized cloud of butterflies flitting about. Monarchs, I think they’re called. The orange and black-colored ones. I can’t help but have my attention focused on them as I walk. They’re so beautiful and elegant… I’ve only seen them once or twice in all my years living in Ponyville. Then again, I’m normally doing my own thing as the town’s mailmare, or helping the Doctor do whatever he needs. I never get much time to myself, so I probably miss a lot of things that other ponies have no problems seeing. Maybe that’s why everyone calls me “slow” all the time… I shake myself back to the world. I can’t afford to spend too much time out here amongst these majestic creatures. My friend is in danger… I shift the first aid backpack, getting it more comfortably settled. With that done, I set back out again. As my walk becomes more of a trot, my mind flashes back to that big box that I found in the tank. I wonder what kinds of things I can listen to, in this world? Or do radios even work the same way here that they do back home? That will have to wait, though. For now… I’ve got a life to save. I don’t know how in the world I’m going to do that, though… I hope I don’t accidentally make it worse, instead of better. I can’t bear to think of how I’ll feel if I end up hurting him even more… My hooves fly across the landscape now; I’m running as fast as I possibly can go. Because of this, I reach him in quicker time than I could have ever thought possible. I pant a little bit as I try to catch my breath. “Whoa…” he whispers. “You’re pretty fast. I wasn’t expecting you back this quickly…” I smile my usual lopsided smile. “You were counting on me… Not too many ponies do that, you know. When someone comes around who does, I try my best to deliver.” He looks up at the sky. “There isn’t much time left… If we’re going to do something, we need to do it soon.” I nod resolutely, dumping the pack onto the ground. “So tell me what to do.” He reaches up with feeble arms and unbuttons his overcoat, letting it fall at his sides around him. I wince a bit when I see the extent of the damage that was done to him. There’s one large piece of metal that’s sticking just about all the way into him; I suppose it missed all his vital organs, otherwise I think he’d be dead by now. There are a few other pieces of metal in his flesh, but those are much smaller and thus will be quite a bit easier to get out. “Yeah,” he says, “I know it looks pretty bad. I already cut away my shirt and undershirt, so you could get at my wounds easier. I don’t think you could manipulate a knife with your hooves, can you?” I shake my head. “No fingers makes things like that kind of hard.” He laughs a bit before coughing violently. When he’s done with his hacking, he’s still smiling a bit. “I can imagine. Kinda like my not having wings makes it a bit hard for me to fly.” I open up the top part of the knapsack and start rummaging through it. While I’m doing so, I try to keep up the conversation so as to keep him from slipping away. “Have you ever wanted to fly?” “Oh, yeah. What little kid doesn’t dream of that? Sadly, though, I’m stuck here on good old terra firma.” “Well, when things look up for you… I’d love to take you flying. Let you experience what I can.” He looks at me oddly. “You can fly? But you’re a pony… Ponies can’t fly, can they?” I nod. “Where I come from, they can- well, some of them, anyways.” I take a minute to undo the jacket that I have bundled around me. When I finally get it free, I let it fall to the ground and stretch my wings out all the way. Man, it feels good to stretch them, especially when they’ve been cooped up in that jacket for awhile. His eyes grow wide. “Oh, wow…” “Yeah, I know, I’m different,” I say as I turn my attention back to the backpack. “So what do I need to get out first?” “Probably the roll of gauze,” he replies. “That, and the antiseptic. There shouldn’t be much in there, but we’ll have to make do with what we have.” It takes me a minute to find everything. While I’m doing so, he keeps talking: “So you said that not all of your kind have wings? What other kinds of ponies are there in your world? Can they all talk?” “Yeah, we can all talk, as far as I know. Some of us choose not to, but like I said that’s just personal choice. Flying ponies like myself are referred to as pegasi. We also have Earth ponies, who are the ones who stay on the ground all the time. There are also unicorns, who are the magic-users of our kind-“ “Wait,” he interrupts. “Magic? What kind of magic?” “Magic that can do anything you want it to. You can move things around without touching them, teleport yourself to anyplace you want to go… It’s pretty powerful stuff.” It doesn’t even occur to me that maybe I shouldn’t be telling him about this. I mean, this isn’t even my world, and as far as I know he’ll never be coming to Equestria, so I really don’t see a problem with it. “Wow…” he says quietly. “So obviously things are completely different in your world, than they are here.” I find what I’m looking for and take them out, bringing them to him. “Most definitely,” I say as I drop them from my mouth into his lap. He smiles. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. The wounds haven’t been bleeding for awhile, which is either really good or really bad. I want to try to get the smaller pieces out first, kind of as a test. If that goes well, we’ll move on to the gigantic honker that’s pinning me to the ground.” I nod silently and dip my head down, gripping the smaller of the two small pieces in my mouth. I feel the sharp edge press up against my tongue, and it reminds me to take it easy enough. I don’t want to hurt myself in the process of helping him. With one fluid motion, I pull it out. He doesn’t wince or anything, and when I look down I see that the open wound isn’t bleeding at all. He sighs in relief. “Okay, so far so good. Now let’s go for the other piece.” Soon, that one is out as well. No blood comes from that wound, either. “Okay,” he says. “Now for the hard part.” I nod as I look at the giant piece of metal in him. I have to choke back some tears as I look at him. Like I said before, no one should have to go through this, not ever… I steel myself though, as I think about the best way to go about this. He’s silent now, which for a second really scares me now. When I look over at him, though, he’s still breathing, though slowly. He seems to be in thought, maybe about the same thing that I am. I don’t want to mess this up, like I do most everything else… As though being guided by some other force outside my control, I feel myself rise up onto my back legs and, using my front hooves, grip that piece of metal as tenderly as I can. As I hold onto it the best I can, I notice something odd about it. “There’s too much play,” I tell him. He looks at me funny, so I continue: “What I mean is, I don’t think it’s in as far as you think. It might be easier than expected to get it out.” “I trust you,” is all he says. The tears come back to my eyes and I pull with everything I have in me. The metal slides out, and this time he does shiver a bit in pain. Soon, though, it’s all the way out of his body; there’s only a slight trickle of blood coming out from the wound, which looking at it with the large piece of metal not in it anymore, is not nearly as wide as I thought it would be. He looks down at it. “Shit,” he says quietly. “Thank you…” I nod. “I couldn’t just leave you here.” This brings something to my mind. “Speaking of, why did your friends just leave you here? Couldn’t they have saved you easier?” He smiles a bit grimly. “They’re not my friends, per se. Yeah, we’ve been through battle together, but before we joined the army, we didn’t know each other from Adam.” As he’s talking, he motions for me to apply the gauze to his wounds. I do so, then somewhat clumsily tape them up. He smooths it out with his hands, then looks up at me and smiles. “You saved my life,” he says. “I don’t think I could’ve done that myself. Thank you…” I sit beside him, looking out at the moon. I can’t help but be reminded of the tales of Princess Luna being banished to the moon, just because of what her Nightmare Moon form did so long ago… I shiver at the memory. “It’s no problem,” I say absentmindedly. “You would have done the same for me, if you could have.” He sighs and looks up at the sky again. “So tell me about your world. I want to know about it.” I smile and begin my tale, and deep into the night we talk, just the two of us alive in the world of the dead. Author's Note: Though I didn't reference it at all in this chapter, I had another Red song playing on loop in the background as I wrote. This time, it was "Not Alone," from their album Until We Have Faces. It seemed appropriate to the theme of this chapter and for the next one, as the next chapter is part two of this one. Hope you'll come back to read again!
How to Save A Life, Part Two: I Left You in BonesIt’s about two o’clock in the morning, by the time we’re finished (I think) talking about our lives in our respective walks. I find his life fascinating, and I’m pretty sure he feels the same for me. I’m now more interested than ever in finding out more about this world. It’s called “Earth,” he tells me. It’s one of nine planets that their “scientists” have discovered in their solar system. I’m curious as to what sort of person a scientist was, so he explains that a scientist is a person who does experiments to test various theories out and to acquire knowledge. “Ah!” I say. “So in our world, Twilight Sparkle would be a scientist!” He looks at me with a blank expression on his face. Oops. I forgot that he wasn’t from our world. I explain to him who Twilight Sparkle is, and what she does. “Yep,” he replies, “that sounds like a scientist, alright. She seems like a pretty interesting individual.” “Oh yeah, she is!” I reply, grinning. “In fact, she’s kinda… the reason why I’m here.” He looks at me with an intrigued expression on his face. “She’s the reason, eh? What did she do? Make a machine that could transport people- or ponies, in your case- to other universes?” “Well, that’s not really how it started out,” I admit. “She was really just trying to test out a theory.” “And something went wrong?” I shrug. “Not sure. All that technical stuff she deals with, kinda confuses me. That’s why I was so surprised when Twilight wanted me to participate in her experiment.” “Meaning… what?” I sigh. This is going to take some delicate explaining. I catch him up to the point where conveniently, I’m at in my own memories, then I continue: Twilight was positively skipping with joy as they came up on the library. “I’m so happy!” she was saying. “I didn’t think anyone would volunteer to be my test subject. This is some ground-breaking stuff!” As she came up on the door, it opened automatically to reveal a short purple-and-green dragon. “Hey, Spike!” Derpy said, smiling widely. This was, as she’d said, her first interaction with Twilight’s number-one assistant, and she wanted to make a good first impression. Spike looked at her oddly. “Um… Hi there, Ditzy Doo.” He looked at Twilight. “What’s she doing here? I thought you were going to ask the Doctor to be your test subject.” “I was,” Twilight explained, “but when I went to the Doctor’s house to ask him, he wasn’t there. Ditzy said that he was out doing something for Mayor Mare or something like that. Anyways, Ditzy volunteered to do the experiment!” Spike shot a deadpan look at his best friend. “You didn’t actually tell her what the experiment was, did you?” “Well, no, but I didn’t really get a chance to… She agreed to do it before I could even get word one out, about what it was going to entail. So, I just told her that I’d explain it to her when we got back to the lab.” “Speaking of,” Derpy cut in, “where is your lab? I really want to see what it looks like.” “Oh…” Twilight said, looking a bit abashed. “Well… you’re kinda looking at it.” Derpy looked at her funny. “This isn’t a lab, though. It’s a library.” Realization dawned on the wall-eyed pony’s face. “Oh! I get it! You’ve got some kind of image-alteration magic cast on it, so anyone who walks in will just see a regular library, but you and Spike can see it as the actual laboratory that it is. It makes perfect sense!” “Wow,” Twilight responded. “I’m surprised you figured it out. Maybe it was a better choice to have you do this, than the Doctor.” “But that’s not what it is at all!” Spike retorted. “This is an honest-to-Celestia library. We just use this as our experiment space because right now, we can’t afford a high-tech facility.” Twilight and Ditzy looked at each other and burst into laughter. “What?” Spike asked, nonplussed. “What on earth is so funny?” “I know that,” Derpy replied. “Twilight explained that much to me on the way over. I was just kidding with you.” “Oh.” Spike was mentally kicking himself. He was normally a bit more astute than that- well, except when it came to a particularly creepy owl, but he never talked about that with anyone. Not even Twilight brought it up anymore. “It’s fine,” Twilight said, still giggling a bit. “We just felt like giving you a hard time…” She looked at Derpy. “So, now it’s time for me to actually tell you what’s going to be going on here.” Derpy looked at her attentively. “Got it.” “Well,” Twilight began, “lately I’ve been working on something new. Something that I don’t think any pony has ever even tried to develop. It’s been really hard-coming, but I think I may have actually perfected it.” “What?” Derpy asked. “What is it?” Twilight smiled. “It’s a magical spell that allows massive quantities of items to be transported across huge tracts of land using just- like I said- magic. It’ll revolutionize the way that items are shipped.” Derpy looked at her oddly. “Um, but… Don’t they already have something for that? You know… trains?” “Well, yes, but trains take too long. Plus, you have to have all those ponies on board just to make sure that the cargo gets there without incident. With this, you free them up to do other things. It wouldn’t make the train completely useless, now; I mean, my magic can’t be used to transport living things- other than myself, anyways. Just inanimate objects.” She looked at Derpy now, smiling. “Or can it?” This was what Derpy was waiting for. “So you’re saying it can be used to transport living things?” “I don’t know yet. I’ve never tried it. That’s where you come in.” True realization was now coming upon the mailmare. “So… you want me to be the first experiment?” “Well, the Doctor, technically. I mean, I’ve used him in a few other of my more… reality-altering experiments, and he’s pretty much always come back unharmed.” “Pretty much?” “Well, yeah… I mean there was that one time we sent him to this universe, and he landed on some planet called Skaro. Well, somehow on the return trip, he got himself an extra heart. They both work just fine, mind you; he’s just got one more than everyone else does.” Derpy thought it was kind of odd that the Doctor had never mentioned this to her, but she shrugged it off. She’d simply make a mental note to ask the Doctor about that later. “That’s fine,” Derpy replied. “I’d be fine with an extra heart, especially if it worked okay. I’ll still be part of your experiment.” Twilight sighed in relief; she’d been thinking that maybe her words would have scared Derpy a little bit. But, she seemed as stubbornly fearless as always. This was a good thing. “Okay, Spike,” Twilight said. “Get the starting block.” She smiled widely. “It’s a race to the finish!” I slowly become aware of the fact that my new friend seems to no longer be awake. I don’t know what to think… Was my story that boring? I don’t want him to think I’m boring… Out of curiosity, I check the pocket watch I got earlier. Oh. So apparently it’s almost four in the morning. That would explain why he fell asleep… I’m tired, too, now that I come to think about it. So, I scoot over to him and flop down onto my side, laying my head on his chest. I feel his soft breathing and it oddly comforts me. I stare up at the sky for a few minutes, before my eyes grow heavy, and I finally slip away into sleep.
