It's not in my nature, as a human being, or as a soldier, or as a cold-hearted killer, or as whatever I am, to cry. But this was an exception. This was the utter and complete feeling of loneliness, the knowledge that I was, or am, the last living human on earth. I was over four billion years old, meaning that whatever was left of our planet was now probably gone. I had just spent the same time it took for the earth to cool inside a cryo tube as my own species bombed itself to oblivion.

And the last thing I expected from the creature I had slugged was a hug. I vaguely felt the creature wrap it's forelegs around my neck, and rest its head on my shoulder. I was too busy grieving for my kind. Deep in my mind, I knew that I needed to act, do something, but the feeling of overwhelming despair had begun to desensitize me.

I simply leaned into the hug and wept.

People don't understand what depression is. They think it's just some sort of temporary thing, that one can just go and have fun to get rid of. That's not true, at all. Depression is much, much worse. I felt like there was nothing I could do, the hopelessness, the despair, the grief. This depression was my mind's inability to feel anything but those three feelings.

The next part, for me, was a blur.

The creatures led me out of some cave, and they took me somewhere. I vaguely remember the words "pony", "princess", "Canterlot", and "dungeon", but nothing clicked in my head. The feeling, however, was slipping away, my soldier mentality overcoming my human nature. My line of work had no place for this... but I wasn't needed anymore... was I?

They had confiscated my sidearm, I knew that because if I had it, I'd have a hole in the side of my head. My place was not with these creatures. It was with my kind, dead.

They put me in some sort of carriage, and I was mildly surprised to see that it flew. It didn't really matter to me, I was still contemplating my existence. Had I been in a more analytical mindset, I would have noticed that some of the horses had wings; they were pegasi, and could actually fly. The unicorns could levitate objects, and do some other physics-defying things, like teleport and create fire. In the back of my mind, I could only wonder what we did to our earth.

I began to feel tired, the depression weighing heavily on my shoulders. It didn't help that I hadn't eaten or drunk anything in over four billion years. In addition, considering cryo-sleep was not actually sleep, rather one's body being frozen in whatever state it was, I hadn't had any more than four hours of sleep in the past week, assuming cryo-sleep didn't count.

I fell asleep, and for the first time in my life, my dreams were of home, of earth, and of the people who had passed on.

v^V^v

I woke up on a bed. Well, it was probably the most comfortable thing I had ever slept on in my military career, but it was really just a flat piece of stone with a thick blanket on top of it. Eh... a bed.

I could still feel the last traces of depression, and I knew that I was alone, but a good rest, for God knows how long, did wonders for me. I felt rested, better, but still hungry and thirsty. My sidearm was gone, but my rifle was lying in the corner of the room, alongside my helmet and a bowl of some sort of clear liquid.

I sat up, and lifted my legs over the side of the bed. Examining my cell, if that's what it was, I stepped over to my gear. I lifted my rifle, feeling it's familiar weight, and cycled the chamber once. A cone of ceramic popped out, and I caught it out of the air. Lifting it, I inspected the slug for damage. The four-inch long cone of metal was a bullet, but it was very simple. It was a core of hyper-magnetic iron covered with a shell of ceramic. At the tip, was a blunted point of depleted uranium. The shell would keep the shape of the slug when fired, and the iron would allow the solenoid in the barrel to fire it. The depleted uranium would give penetration capabilities, and on impact, the ceramic shell would shatter, dealing shrapnel damage to the target also.

Rechambering the slug, I set my rifle back on the ground. I picked my helmet off the ground, and I inspected it for damage. Satisfied, I put it over my head, and I tapped the left side of it, activating the AR. My HUD pulsed once, and the AR went to work, scanning the room. Three walls were made of an unknown type of stone, and the lack of magnetic resonance in them showed me that they were not reinforced. The fourth, however, was made of reinforced metal bars. In the middle of this wall, there was a door, or really, a door frame with metal bars across it, and a lock on one side and hinges on the other.

Returning my attention to the bowl of liquid, which I highly suspected was water, I put two fingers on my right hand together, the hand signal for my AR's substance analysis, and placed my fingertips in the liquid. I waited for the result, examining the information being projected on my HUD. Momentarily, a small label appeared on it, detailing the substance as just that, water. I pulled up the base of my adaptive helmet and lifted the bowl to my lips.

As I did, the sound of hooves clopping on a hard surface reached my ears. Taking a quick, refreshing, swig, I placed the bowl back on the ground, pulled my helmet all the way off, deactivating the AR, and grabbed my rifle. I then moved to the wall opposite the door and pulled a rag out from somewhere, in one of my armor's pockets, and sat down, resting my rifle in my lap. Just as the first flash of a pony became visible, I began to disassemble my rifle, cleaning and lubricating each part as I began my calming ritual.

Four ponies stood at the door to the cell, two bright-white, gold plated pegasi, whom I suspected were some sort of military, as the armor seemed to resemble that of Earth's old Roman legions. One was the mint-green unicorn from earlier, the one I slugged in the face, and the fourth was one of the camera-ponies from the cave. They watched silently as I cleaned my rifle, my beautiful reaper of souls, and as I lovingly handled each part. As I finished lubricating the last moving part, I picked up the scope on the top. It was a 3x zoom standard issue marksman scope, meant for middle range targets. My most recent had been just that, but I did have a spare 6x zoom sniper scope somewhere in my armor.

I held the sight up to my eye, and I looked through the scope. I began to calibrate it as best as I could without testing it, and I realigned the scope's lenses. The ponies had not moved yet, but the one with the camera was still filming.

I placed the now-calibrated scope next to my disassembled rifle, and I took a deep breath. I might as well give these ponies a show. My record assembly time for my rifle was six seconds. Let's see what I could do now. I shifted the pieces around for a moment, optimizing accessibility, and then I began.

My hands flew across the pieces, assembling the rifle. The jaws of two of the ponies dropped as each piece of the rifle clicked into placed with mechanical efficiency and, five seconds later, I loaded the single slug into the receiver of the rifle and cycled the bolt, chambering the round.

I set my rifle to the side, clasped my hands, and spoke. "Hello."

The mint-green unicorn seemed to break out of her stupor. "H-hello". She stuttered, with that same girlish voice, seemingly very excited.

"What do you want?" I was never one for formalities.

She seemed slightly taken aback by my lack of politeness. "Um... I was wondering if you could maybe... answer a few quick little basic questions?" She spoke the last part pretty quickly, and she seemed really excited.

"Sure. Ask away." I replied. "But could I possibly get something to eat first?"

She seemed confused. "Oh... I guess?" She whispered something to one of the white ponies, and he nodded and walked back the way they came.

"He's going to go and grab you some fruits. Is that okay?" She questioned, seemingly concerned about my hunger.

"Sure. Now, what were you going to ask me?"

"Oh, oh yeah. Let's start, first question. What is your name?" Oh, that's a really hard one. I've had my identity changed so many times, I really don't have one. My first one was dropped after my first kill. I should probably tell her my callsign.

"I've had too many, but I've always gone by one. Call me Virus."

"Virus... what type of name is that?" She really was confused.

"My callsign. The only name I have always gone by." I explained. She still didn't seem to understand.

"Um... okay... second question. What were you sleeping in, and for how long?"

I grimaced, the feeling of depression pushing on the borders of my mental wall. "I was frozen inside a cryo-pod for over four billion years... half of the age of the earth we are living on. It was pod that froze each and every cell in my body and kept them frozen... I am the last of my kind." A tear pooled at the corner of my eye, and I wiped it away.

"Oh... Third question. What was that thing you attacked us with?" Easy.

"That was a nine-millimeter 'Metalstorm' side-arm, standard issue for our military forces." This was bordering on classified information... but there was no one to classify it from anymore. However, I have principles, and to disclose classified information to those without access was a breach in protocol. I am loyal to my country; it exists as long as I do. I almost laughed at the irony of it, we actually won the war... but we lost it too.

"Hmm... what was that?" I had missed the last question.

"Oh. I had asked what a side-arm was."

"It's a type of fire-arm, a handheld weapon that fires projectiles at high-velocities. Somewhat like a cannon, but handheld, smaller shots, and faster rate of fire." Her eyes widened at the description.

"H-how strong are they..?" It's almost as if she didn't want to ask the question...

"Do you really want to know?" I raised an eyebrow at her face.

She gulped. "Y-yes."

"With my pistol, I guarantee that I could have killed every single one of you within the span of four second from fifty meters away... you know what a meter is, right?"

She gulped again, and became far more nervous, finally aware that she was standing in front of a killer. "O-okay... What about the l-long stick you j-just put together?"

Hmm... That was technically classified... but not very much.

"That's classified information, only accessible to enlisted troops. I cannot disclose that to you." Standard response and level of classification.

"Okay... what happened to your people, and how many of you were there?"

This was edging on my ability to keep myself from crying. "We destroyed ourselves, alongside the earth." I whispered.

Her eyes widened, and she looked at me again in shock. It seemed like these creatures are very ignorant of war...

"We created weapons of mass destruction by harnessing the very power of creation and destruction. We could split the nuclei of atoms, and we did so. Our world broke into war, and we used this ability to release massive amounts of thermonuclear energy to devastate our enemies cities. The problem is, they did the same to us. The world was covered in the heat of a thousand suns, and people were vaporized alongside cities. We went from the pinnacle of our civilization to gone in seconds. There were literally billions of us, and only a single one survived..." I was tearing up. This was too hard to go on about. Witness the end and then tell a little, ignorant pony, of all things, about how your race was so arrogant they destroyed themselves? No. I couldn't do it.

"I'm not going to talk about this anymore. What next." I suddenly felt very tired.

"Um... that's all for now. Is it okay if I come back later?" She asked, somewhat shaken by our old world.

"It's not like I have a choice..." I leaned back against the wall, and I closed my eyes.

My life, as I knew it, was over. I no longer knew my purpose in my life. I needed to find it again.

Author's Note

Virus... why virus? Well, think about it. A virus goes into a body, quietly, invisible, and then multiplies, without notice. Then, it attacks, ripping the body apart from the inside, and is incurable, but preventable. Kind of like 'me'. Once 'I' get somewhere, you can't stop 'me', and I will tear the place apart if commanded to. But if you stop 'me' from getting in, you're safe... from 'me'.

Now... should I make this before the wedding, and throw in some changelings? I need conflict.