Wolfenstein: Worlds Collide

Something was deeply wrong. As someone who’d just fallen from a height so great it should have killed him, B.J. considered himself more than capable of thinking as much, given that he was thinking anything at this exact moment.

He’d been awake for quite some time now, staring at the pure, unrelenting darkness before him for what felt like an eternity. He could hear water dripping in the distance, the sound echoing around him as if he were in some kind of cavern. But he couldn’t feel anything, and all he could see was pitch blackness.

Is this what death feels like? The captain wondered to himself. He had just fallen to his presumed death; maybe this was the afterlife. Many mythological afterlifes were somewhere underground, after all.

Honestly, though, he kinda expected death to greet him like an old friend, instead of just leaving him suspended in blackness for all eternity.

His unchanging, unwitting vigil was ended by something that would have been wholly unremarkable in any other situation. He blinked. It was too dark for his eyes to register any change, but he definitely felt his eyelids close and then open back up for a second. There was no way he could’ve blinked—his body had to be little more than a big red stain after a fall from such a great height. And yet he had no other explanation for what had just happened.

He thought to try and blink, and to his surprise, he could. One eye and then the other, separately, together, slow, quick… he could blink.

Slowly, gradually, feeling began to return to his body… but not in the way he expected. His whole body was buzzing like when the blood came back to a leg he had been sitting on, but more than just his leg was buzzing; everything was, and then some… literally. Much of what he could feel didn't feel right , the incessant tingling spreading beyond where it should. But right or not, he was feeling something , and the dead didn't feel.

And that could only mean that he wasn’t dead.

None of what was happening made sense to the increasingly bewildered captain. There was no way he could have survived such a long fall, even with his body encased in Da’at Yitude power armor. Yet here he was, breathing and watching and feeling like he was (mostly) completely fine.

B.J. tried to sit up and get his feet under him… but his body wasn’t responding in the ways he was expecting, and all he managed to do was make his limbs flail uselessly for a few seconds, totally failing to do what he intended.

With standing up proving to be unexpectedly difficult, B.J. decided to try a different approach. Rolling proved to be significantly easier than standing, and it wasn’t long before he was on his stomach, his legs and arms lifting him up and off the cold, hard ground. Oddly enough, his back was straight as if he were on his hands and knees, yet his legs were fully extended and his knees weren’t even touching the ground.

He pushed aside the sheer weirdness of his predicament for a moment; he could figure out how he got here after he figured out where “here” even was. “Hello?” He called out, half-hoping someone sympathetic to his plight was in earshot. For a few seconds, the only thing that answered him was his own voice echoing back at him.

But then… there was a soft, sleepy moan. “Wh…whuh?”

“Who’s there?” B.J. called out once again.

“…Oh!” The voice exclaimed, speaking in plain English, all the exhaustion vanishing from it in an instant. “You’re awake!” The voice sounded feminine, young, almost childlike, and completely unfamiliar; it definitely wasn’t Anya, let alone anyone he knew.

“Um… who are you?”

“My name’s Twilight Sparkle.” The mystery voice responded. The ruffling of sheets reached B.J.’s ears, as if the voice’s owner was climbing out of bed. “What’s yours?”

Twilight Sparkle… odd name. Definitely not a name a Nazi would have. “…Blazkowicz. Captain William J. Blazkowicz.”

“Captain?” Twilight asked curiously. “Are you a member of the Wonderbolts or something?”

Doesn’t she mean the Thunderbolts? “…something like that, yeah.” He said, turning toward the sound of shoes clicking softly on the stone. “Anyway, where are we?”

“My hideout.” Twilight responded quickly. “Sorry it’s so dark at the moment. I’ll have the lights on in a second.”

Lights? But this is a cave? How the heck did this kid manage to set up…

Sparks flared to life, the darkness giving way to amber light for a fraction of a second. An instant later, and the amber light returned, persistent and steady. Glancing toward the source of the light, he noticed the top of a streetlamp, propped up against a nearby wall, the light bulb within shining brightly. A short cable linked the improvised indoor light to a generator, softly humming just a few feet away.

… Lights. Now that he could actually see, it kinda felt like an insult to call this place a cave. Sure, it was technically accurate, but this stony chamber felt a lot more like a bedroom than a cavern. Sure, a spartan-yet-cluttered bedroom with a ragged, worn bed, a beaten-up dresser, and a pile of assorted metal scrap in one corner, but still, it was liveable… which was really saying something, considering that it was in an underground cave.

“Yeah, I know. It’s not much to look at.” B.J. looked back at Twilight, a response rising up from his throat… but the words died on his tongue.

Standing next to the generator was a small horse, its head just a foot or two lower to the ground than B.J.’s own. Its coat was a bright, vibrant shade of mulberry, its mane was a deep, dark sapphire blue with purple and violet streaks, and its eyes were a deep purple. A horn the same color as the rest of its coat jutted from its forehead, and feathery wings of a similar color were tucked in against its sides.

“What?” The oddly-shaped, unnaturally colorful horse asked, speaking in Twilight Sparkle’s voice, and it took B.J. almost a full minute to realize that Twilight Sparkle and the horse were one and the same.

“…You’re a horse.” B.J. murmured, almost to himself, his mind struggling to wrap his head around what he was seeing. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he survived the fall (somehow) but received a severe concussion or some other head injury. This was just a very strained mind's way of coping with the damage.

Never mind the fact that he had not the faintest clue why his subconscious decided to throw this particular fever dream at him. Or the fact that everything about this felt far, far too real to be a hallucination.

“Of course I’m a horse,” Twilight said nonchalantly, as if being a horse and being able to speak any language—let alone perfect English—weren’t two mutually exclusive things. “Well, I’m technically a pony, but that’s beside the point.”

“But… but ponies can’t talk.”

That just prompted a bewildered look from the technicolor pony. “You’re a pony too, and you’re talking right now. So… not true?”

“Wait… I’m not a pony, I’m human.” B.J. snapped back.

Twilight didn’t answer; all the talking pony did was give him a look as if he’d just declared the sky was a neon shade of pink.

“...Why are you looking at me like that?”

In response, the pony whipped a silver hand mirror seemingly out of nowhere, and held it in front of B.J.

And in the mirror, a pony stared back, a pony with light goldish gray fur, a light brown mane and tail, and frighteningly familiar piercing blue eyes.

The Da’at Yitude armor he wore began to slowly recede, his hesitation bleeding into the mental command to make the suit come off. He stepped forward, out of the boots, tearing his eyes away from that twisted reflection to look back at himself, at his unmistakably equine form. Once, being able to walk around without the armor would’ve been the best thing that ever happened to him, but now it was just another reminder that his current body wasn’t his own.

“…are you okay?” Hearing Twilight’s voice, under any other circumstances, probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal, other than the whole pony-that-could-talk factor. But now, with his mind still reeling from the realization that he was a talking pony, the reminder that there was another talking pony standing right next to him was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A scream began to rise up from his throat, and for the first time in his life, B.J. did nothing to hold it back.

“Woah woah woah, calm down!” Twilight exclaimed, stowing the mirror and stepping forward, trying to calm Blazkowicz down. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t-!”

A hoof flew up, trying to bat her away; Twilight just barely managed to dodge it. By the time her attention returned to the stallion who’d thrown that punch, said stallion had bolted for the wall and had begun smashing his head against the wall, the force increasing with each successive blow, his voice cracking each time. “Wake up, goddammit! Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP-!!!”

“STOP! You’ll hurt yourself!” Twilight cried out, leaping forward and tackling Blazkowicz to the ground. He immediately began struggling against her hold, still shouting at the top of his walls. Dear Celestia, this stallion was strong; Twilight’s only saving grace was that he was too panicked to really fight back against her, and even then it took every last ounce of strength she had to hold him down.

Twilight’s brain went into overdrive, scouring itself for some way to snap this pony out of whatever panic attack he was going through before he got out from under her and started hurting himself again. It ended up coming across something Spike had shared with her, of all things. “Try counting to ten, okay?”

To her surprise, that actually worked. The stallion’s struggles subsided, the tension fleeing his limbs as he inhaled, paused for a handful of seconds, exhaled, paused again, repeating the breathing exercise a few times.

And then… all the fight in the stallion seemed to leave him too. He went limp beneath Twilight, eyes closing as if he’d just lost consciousness. And… were those tears glistening at the corners of his eyes?

“…you aren’t going to go slamming your head against the wall again, right?” Twilight asked slowly.

“…no.” Blazkowicz’s voice was a soft, weak moan, so quiet Twilight could barely hear it.

Slowly, carefully, Twilight stepped off of Blazkowicz, ready to leap forward and hold him down again if he started doing anything that might lead to him hurting himself again. For a long, long minute, the stallion just sat there, not moving an inch.

Twilight was about to ask whether he needed anything when he finally decided to move. Slowly, sluggishly, he climbed to his feet, staggering toward the pile of sheets that she’d laid out for him as if he’d just stirred from a deep, deep slumber. The minute he reached the sheets, he just collapsed onto them in an undignified heap, not even bothering to get underneath the blanket on top. A long, awkward silence fell over the two of them.

“…need anything?” Twilight finally asked.

“Not anything you can give…” Blazkowicz said in response.

Twilight didn’t know what to say about that. Up until now, she’d kinda been entertaining a fantasy of this stallion she rescued turning out to be some sort of dashing warrior who’d help her reunite with her friends, break out the elements of harmony, and send the humans who were stomping around Equestria like they owned the place packing, but this depressed, mopey wreck of a pony was a far cry from that.

“…I’m gonna turn off the lights, okay?” Twilight said, trotting over to the generator. Blazkowicz didn’t even bother responding to that.

B.J. only barely registered the veil of darkness that enveloped the room, buried as he was beneath a mountain of misery. This wasn’t a dream, or an injury-induced hallucination. Somehow, he ended up stranded in this strange new world, this world where ponies could talk and he wasn’t human.

I’m never going to see the rest of the resistance again, am I? Seth, the resistance’s cranky resident Da’at Yitude tech expert. Wyatt, that depressed, loveable little wreck of a kid. Max Haus. Bombate. Grace. Super Spesh. Anya…

His mind recoiled from that line of thought, refusing to follow it any further. He couldn’t imagine life without Anya. He just couldn’t.

Time passed. B.J. just couldn’t be bothered to keep track of how much. Everything felt numb, like he was alive but not truly living. And he kinda was; how could he go on like this, stranded in an alien world and an alien body, the resistance left to fend for themselves…

“Are you sure we shouldn’t split up to cover more ground?” A voice called out, speaking in German, the harsh-sounding language snapping B.J. out of his despair-induced stupor. “We’d probably have found the source of the scream you’d heard earlier by now if we’d done that earlier.”

“Have you never seen a horror movie before?!” Another voice snapped back, also in German, in the language B.J. had come to associate with Nazism.

“…oh shit .” Twilight’s voice reached the captain’s ears, barely higher than a whisper yet somehow conveying her panic just as well as a full-throated scream.

B.J. thought back to when he’d first awakened, to the way all the furniture had looked like it had been transplanted from somewhere else, to how Twilight had called it her “hideout”. He’d been too disoriented and confused to realize it earlier, but now, in hindsight, it was obvious that she was hiding from something. And given her reaction to hearing German, that something was likely a bunch of Nazis.

B.J. pushed himself to his feet, pushing aside his misery. Killing the Nazi bastards who’d set up shop here probably wouldn’t get him home, and wouldn’t do much to help the resistance, but it certainly beat just sitting in a cave and waiting to die.

“Where’s my gear?”

“Broken,” Twilight responded hastily, her voice barely higher than a whisper, her tone of voice rising in pitch alongside the increasing volume of the Nazi’s voices. “Your armor was fine, but everything else you were carrying was smashed. I don’t have any weapons. And when they get here-“

“Just breathe, okay?” B.J. reached out on instinct, his hoof somehow managing to settle on Twilight’s shoulder. “Inhale, count to four, exhale.” He whispered to her, sharing a little breathing exercise he did whenever things got too bad even for his trauma-inured psyche. The last thing he wanted was for his only ally to panic and do something stupid.

Twilight leaned into B.J.’s hoof, sucking in a breath, pausing for four seconds, and letting it out. She took several more deep breaths, the tremors running through her body subsiding more and more with each one.

“Okay.” The curtain of pitch blackness that engulfed them both suddenly lifted, driven back by a small mote of violet light that had inexplicably popped into existence atop Twilight’s horn. A part of B.J. couldn't help but wonder where the hell that light source had come from, but he could ask Twilight that after the Nazis on their doorstep were dealt with.

“I put everything you were carrying in a sack over there.” Twilight lifted one hoof, gesturing toward a mound of something enveloped in a cocoon of coarse, tough fabric. “Not sure how useful any of it will be, though.”

B.J. nodded, trotting over to the sack in question. His hooves—despite being… well, hooves —were somehow almost as nimble as regular hands, and thus it was remarkably easy to lift up the sack and dump out its contents. Just as Twilight had promised, said “contents” turned out to be his almost-comically large collection of rifles, shotguns, pistols, grenades, and other assorted ordinance, all of it crushed and mangled almost beyond recognition. Not even the DieselKraftWerk was spared.

“So, all my guns have been reduced to impractically huge paperweights.” B.J. glanced back at Twilight. “What else do we have?”

“There’s the generator, and the streetlight it’s hooked up to,” Twilight responded almost instantly, as if she’d already been running through a list of everything she had on hand that might be useful. “There’s a half-dozen canisters of fuel, that pair of boots your armor turned into, a pile of assorted scrap in the corner…” She continued, B.J. following her gaze as it darted around the chamber, landing on each item she listed off…

Something caught his eye. Something in the pile of scrap that Twilight had just pointed out.

B.J.’s tail reached out, the hairs curling around the rifle-like device’s handle, lifting it up and bringing it closer to him.

“That’s just something I found lying in the forest,” Twilight explained, noticing B.J. studying the device. “I think it’s broken.”

“Yes, it’s broken. But I happen to know how to fix it.” Reaching over with one hoof, he grabbed the ruined DieselKraftWerk. The thing mostly ran on diesel fuel—hence the name—but some of its functions required electrical power. Thus, it had a portable reactor inside of it to provide that power. And by the looks of it, the drum-like device that contained that reactor was still intact.

“You’ve worked with that kind of weapon before?”

“Not this exact model, no,” B.J. admitted as he extracted the reactor from the DieselKraftWerk. The thing currently grasped in his tail was far more compact and streamlined than the original LaserKraftWerk he had back in 1960, its frame far less unwieldy and a little more riflelike, and there was a gleaming nozzle-like attachment on its business end he didn’t recognize. But the chassis of it was still recognizable.

B.J. slotted the portable reactor into place like it was a drum magazine, the LaserKraftWerk’s business end producing a soft, fiery orange glow as the Da’at Yitude-derived reactor brought the long-dormant weapon back to life. “...but it’s close enough.”