I had vivid dreams that night in my little cottage. Images of my home world, everything that was and could be. My childish hopes and fears. I saw my family, coworkers and friends all leading peaceful lives as the threat of war somehow, impossibly abated. I saw that same world reduced to cinders and among the mile-wide craters, a dragon roamed, partaking in the carnage. I was stuck in a glass cage, watching all the horrors and all the joys and they could not see me. They were so close, I could almost reach them. I screamed without a voice, rotting in my own hell and I honestly can't tell you which visions plagued me more, the world coming to an end, or the idea that it would keep turning without my intervention.

I cried and at some point, I awoke to find the silent mare sharing my tears. Her soft muzzle caressed my face and with infinate tenderness, she wiped away my tears with her clumsy hooves. I noticed a telltale presence that I had not felt since the dragon; SAM was back. That comforted me, but I had no control of my emotions. He wasn't forcing the reality filter on me, respecting my privacy. Any hope I had of reigning in my emotions was lost then - the machine intelligence was respecting my privacy, letting me have this moment with the mare I'd fought so hard to bring back. The mare who had in turn saved me.

We kissed and at some point, she began pawing needily at my pants. She was still wearing my shirt tied about her waist like a human would wear a hoodie when it was too warm for long sleeves. She wanted me and she tried to press my right hand to her body, wishing I would touch her. I shook my head and unspoken communication passed between us as our eyes met after having lingered on the black glove that covered everything up to my elbow, but even that much cloth couldn't conceal the web of scar tissue originating from the appendage. Somehow, she seemed to understand me perfectly, nodding as if to say, 'that's not your hand, is it?'

It was the truth. I had lost my right hand in one of the many bloody battles that predated the Pegasus Frame and my time with the company. Even a cybernetic replacement couldn't bring back everything I'd lost - I never felt the softness of her mane or her ears all those times I'd touched her. My left hand, my good hand, well that arm had been broken since before she was released from that horrible prison. A cybernetic replacement lacks nothing in strength or manual dexterity when it comes to fighting, but for the more sensitive tasks, it doesn't measure up. That's why I started firing my rifle left-handed.

We lingered like that for a while as she pressed a kiss to the crook of my elbow, expressing her sympathy for my loss. If it had been anyone else, I'd be insulted with the gesture, but she of all people (or ponies) would know what it felt like to lose a piece of your body. I'd never willingly parted with any part of my original flesh and blood body, a concession that some found made me weak. I'd fought soldiers who had brazenly undergone fullbody prothstetics, turning themselves into bigger, badder versions of the friggin' Robocop. They were hard to kill, but they all paid the price with their sanities, not that many of them had a shred of it left to surrender before the operation.

So we sat there, trying to contend ourselves with the new limitation. I might as well have had no hands for the things she had in mind. Someone else might pity me for that, but the silent mare knew how pity could hurt. Instead, she started laughing silently and exuberantly, throwing her head back, her whole frame unquestionably shaking with the laughter as she started poking me with her hooves. Now, I don't know if that fancy pony magic that normally saturates their bodies is the thing that made their hooves look soft enough to wrinkle, but the silent mare had none of that, so to give you a comparison, it felt like she was prodding me with little anvils. I struggled, trying to fend her off, and that only made her laugh harder. That sound, just her breath coming and going in rythm with her body which knew how to laugh just as well as anybody else's, it was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. In my weakened condition with just one hand (which wasn't even a real hand), I was at her mercy and she could make me twitch, giggle and cry out in discomfort depending on where she poked me.

Somehow, that brought the romantic vibes back and my loss was forgotten. You're probably picturing a flash animation like in the show, so I can understand if you don't see the appeal, but like I've already mentioned, these ponies were very real. Straddling my waist with the shirt resting on the swell of her hips, she looked very similar to a human woman, albeit covered in the brightest, luminescant white fur and with some anthropomorphic features, but honestly, with a body as unnatural as mine, I could look past those details and even appreciate them for what they were. She then turned her attention elsewhere, her head disappearing beneath my field of vision.

Euphoria.

She stared at me, blinking. Had I said that out loud? Before I could dwell on it further, her lips were on mine, kissing me heatedly and things took a sweaty, sensual turn as we came together passionately. Afterwards, we held each other and gradually, sleep took us.

Euphoria. That became the name I'd call her by, at least in private. It seemed to perfectly embody her being, saturating everything she did. No matter the sensation, from crippling agony to joyous glee or utter bafflement, she attacked all sensations with that same basic reaction; euphoria. No being I had ever met could treasure a moment like she could. Whenever I said that word, she seemed to understand its meaning intuitively, that it was meant only for her and it was more than just my calling out to her, it was a statement as well.

We didn't sleep long. The sun was just peeking over the horizon by the time we were both up and about, each feeling envigorated by the night's events and the long hours of exhausted sleep that had preceded that perfect moment. I felt like I'd slept for days, and sure enough, the nanites had been busy while I was gone. Most of my injuries had healed. The toughest breaks were the broken bones and the damage to my internal organs. But the bleeding had long since stopped and the contutions and bruises were fully healed so short of doing any hard labor, I felt just fine though I probably wasn't leaving the cottage for another few days.

I still had to wear the sling for my broken left arm, but with a body as unnatural as mine, it would take days rather than weeks before that had healed, too. We worked together, piecing together the Pegasus Frame and SAM even piped up now and then, speaking in that ghostly dublicate of my own voice, making a snarky remark about putting his body back together right. His Equestrian was better than mine and Euphoria would silently snicker and give me a sidelong glance everytime SAM corrected my pronunciation.

I'm not the only one with nanites and although the Pegasus Frame doesn't have a neat soup of bodily fluids for them to live in, they can be custom made to endure any environment, even the blazing heat of a blowtorch, or in this case, a deviously calculated chemical reaction between two highly reactive compounds that existed in limited quantities within the structure of the frame itself. Suffice it to say, with a neat cocktail of futuristic thermite and a suit that was designed to shield my body by breaking along intended faultlines to absorb energy, we managed to weld the pieces back together and while the carbon structure was heated to the point where it became glowing white-hot and soft like chocolate, the nanites within were driven into a hectic frenzy, absorbing the immense heat as they reforged the suit to look as if it had never really broken.

Incidently, Euphoria looks cute wearing blast goggles. She was quite dextrous with her mouth and worked with precision tools to help rewire the components that were too sensitive for the thermite treatment. As we worked, I once again felt that melancholy feeling welling up inside of me as I stared at the product of years of labor, of shared triumphs and failures between my coworkers and myself, the first human guinea pig to endure enough modifications to work with the suit.

"Just tell her already, Samuel," the robotic drone of SAM's voice cut through my quiet musings, managing to convey both encourement and exasperation, and he went on, "you need to tell somepony and I don't count, you know that. My files on psychology are extensive and even a first-year dropout can tell you it isn't healthy to keep it bottled up inside."

I'll skip right past the point where SAM chose to adress me in perfect Equestrian, right down to the ponyfication of certain words, and tell you that he'd hit the nail on the head. I sighed heavily and sat back, looking over the mostly complete Pegasus Frame to Euphoria who sat back on her haunches, still wearing my shirt as she pushed the blast goggles up to her forehead with her clumsy hooves (taking two tries to get it right) as she looked back at me.

So I told her everything. I told her of the world I had come from, of the horrors of war and the technology we had used to fuel it - no, the technology that took centurial leaps because of it. I told her of the splitting of the atom and how the doomsday device had sat dormant, launched only twice in more than fifty years (not counting the endless test firings), until one fateful day, a top-secret research fascility had been wiped from our maps in an instant. I told her of the worldwide panic that threatened to engulf the globe and of our frantic attempts to undo the teleportation device, a task for which I was sent alone, taking with me the only existing prototype of a new combat exosuit. I told her of my unlikely arrival in Equestria and I even told her of the MLP show. Somehow, being told her wolrd was a cartoon show in my world didn't faze her even slightly, she just gave me more of that divine, exuberant laughter.

I even told her of my family and friends, by which time I was fighting a losing battle against the tears that leaked from my tightly shut eyelids and she held me, soothing me. I told her my real name, the name of my company, in short, I told her everything.

I'd never felt so drained, emotionally. SAM was refusing me the reality filter, greeting my torrential flow of tears only with silence, though he did scroll pictures across his little screen to help Euphoria see what I was describing. He was right to do it, letting me just feel as I unburdened myself and I even confessed my guilty conscience. How I had killed, how I had turned myself into something inhuman, how I had sinned against god, against all gods, practically daring any divine entity to strike me down as I encroached upon their domain and created true, thinking sentience and warped my natural body into a weapon. I could pretend to be a peacekeeper all I wanted, but my battle with the dragon had shown my true colors; I was the warrior, the soldier, the insatiable conqueror.

Throughout my tearfilled confession, Euphoria did nothing but hold me and show her unending support while her mind struggled to keep up with the volumes of information she'd been fed over the course of just a few hours. Somehow, she didn't think any less of me, even after having it all laid bare to her. Sensing that the topic had come to a close, she simply nosed me in the side and shoved me back to my unfinished work, helping me with the finishing touches as the Pegasus Frame once more lay complete before me. The paint job had seen better days, having simply evaporated from around the areas where we'd used the thermite, leaving only the legs, right arm and helmet with any traces of the white/purple color scheme, and even in those places, the paintjob was chipped and scratched. But the suit looked otherwise like it had on the first day I'd worn it, dropping from the skies straight into Equestria.

It was well into the morning by then and we were in the middle of breakfast when a knocking caused me to turn in my seat, still chewing on my fried bread and omelet. Euphoria got up and made sure her mane concealed her broken horn, still wearing my shirt over her hips as she went to answer the door, biting down carefully on the doorknob, turning her head and pulling open the door, revealing a purple librarian.

Twilight regarded Euphoria with a brief look of uncertainty, which she responded to by backing away and hiding even faster than Fluttershy had done during their first encounter. Now that caused her momentary pause, but she squared her shoulders and walked into my livingroom with a determined look in her eyes. She had questions.

...

Crap.

Author's Note

Here is the clop-free chapter for those of you who'd prefer things that way.

Still not sure about the name, Euphoria. I kind of like it but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Is it a silly thing to call her?