Equestria War Radio

As 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.

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