Reaching for the Sky

So, when I left off, I - a scientist/soldier too paranoid to reveal my name - had just done one last impossible deed in a whole chain of impossible deeds, the least of which being the piloting of a winged exosuit straight into a heavily fortified military structure. So I awoke in Equestria with a talking pony staring down at me, leaning over my head, asking me questions.

I was not trained to withstand this level of interrogation. First of all, I was as mentioned, rediscovering the very concept of pain. I went straight from oh-shit-I-can't-feel-my-anything to I-feel-my-everything-and-it's-on-fire-stuffed-full-of-broken-glass. It didn't help that I couldn't understand a word the pony was saying (myth debunked: Equestrian ≠ English).

Getting back to the pony, I'm sure you're expecting a vivid description... It was female and had a buttercream coat and strawberry pink hair, which I'm sure you want me to call a mane, but really, it hung like a curtain on each side of her face, like real, long, feminine hair. The eyes were teal and they seemed to be staring into the depths of my soul. Now I'm sure I didn't think anything of it then (I had other things on my mind - pain, pain and more pain), but real equestrian ponies do not look like flash animations. The texture and shape of the creature is too real, too richly detailed that this could have been a fabrication of my mind. Trust me, with quantum computer graphics feeding images, sights, scents and sounds directly into the brain, I had vast experience distinguishing a computer generated reality from the real thing, or telling when I was hallucinating. We had to run into problems that necessitated the creation of a reality filter before we could think to make such a thing. So yes, I've been tested and proven capable of knowing exactly when I've gone insane, and how severely. Even before SAM and the reality filter, we had enough access to psychological councelling that I was diagnosed as completely sane two weeks into the rehabilitation following the first mental breakdown.

So there I lay, so extremely certain of my own sanity and my capacity to experience pain. The latter kept me mostly paralyzed, unable to respond to Fluttershy's inqueries. Yes, I later learned the names of all the Mane 6. I might not be a brony, but I had wireless internet hardwired into my brain. Obviously I googled it after that paint job. Oh yeah... Fluttershy was not just looking at a human, but likely a truly surreal hybridization between her fellow pegasus and a human, and she's never seen the latter. So yes, reminding myself that the alien was probably just as scared of me, I resolved to soothe the terrified pegasus, but pain... yeah, it just wasn't going to happen.

Then something truly astonishing happened. I know, I've lost my right to use such words at least a page ago, but I'm using it anyway. Yes, astonishing, because I had not heard anything from SAM and the reality filter must not have been engaged, otherwise the pain would be very managable no matter how severe. Then the HUD comes online, feeding me data like voice pitch, facial recognicion (apparantly already adapted to reading Equestrian faces, though I knew SAM had memory banks on human expressions, but not pony faces, I checked), and Fluttershy's archaic babble of words starts to distort until I am possitive I picked up the word 'okay' replacing whatever word her real voice was saying. Before I can even respond, SAM's digital voice (he sounds like my voice speaking through radio static) breathes out the word:

"E-e-eeequestrian..."

That's why he'd been so silent. The quantom processor that housed his inhuman mind could as mentioned be tested up to a certain, albeit astronomical limit of computing power. Apparantly he'd been stressing over the communication issue. Even as I lay there helplessly watching Fluttershy recoil in a mixture of horror and fascination (and the HUD showed spikes in heartbeat, breathing and stress in general, thank you head-computer) SAM was piecing it together, the language that is. He was teaching us both Equestrian almost as quickly as Fluttershy had spoken it, but I'm assuming he did a lot of guesswork with absolutely zero knowledge to go on apart from what he was reading with his self-modified facial expression recognition software (say that five times in a row). It had to be that or the voice stress analyzer. He had nothing else to go on, except maybe the show. Actually, yeah, I'm pretty sure he'd made some snide remark about the My Little Pony show after he'd discovered the dye job on what he perceives to be his body. Was he really just imagining Fluttershy's reaction to a wounded animal? At any rate, it worked. In a matter of seconds, he was live-streaming a word-by-word translation directly into my language center (the part that allows you to think with an inner voice). I was understaning her as clearly as if I'd been watching an episode on the TV.

"Oh goodness! You look hurt, c-can you talk?" she hesitantly moved back into my field of vision, looking down at me from my head end.

"Yes and yes..." I was baffled to hear my own voice croak out, not SAM's deadpan radio chatter. I'd thought the words in english, but somewhere from thought to execution, whatever translation program SAM was coding had intercepted the message and I spoke in some approximation of Equestrian. That must also be why I was feeling the pain. The reality filter was still being supressed, to allow this communication, and as luck would have it, SAM was just informing me on the small screen projected on the inside of my visor, that he was using too much processing power to do all that, and thus couldn't handle steering the suit with me. It was all basically deadweight on my broken body, but a quick diagnostics check had assured him that I needed to quit QQ'ing and get moving. Yes, even in the chat window, he had a sense of humor.

I sucked in a big lungful of air, but only after several tries. The breath would hitch in my throat, sounding almost on the verge of breaking into a sob, but I'd be damned if I was caught crying in front of a talking pony. It turned out SAM had the right of it, I just needed to rely on my own brain to override the pain and before long, I'd flipped onto my stomach, bracing against the grass covered ground with my knees and elbows, working my way towards an undignified crawl. Fluttershy was fretting over me every step of the way.

"Oh dear, oh dear! M-maybe you shouldn't try getting up just yet... Uhm, if that's okay with you..." she seemed to retreat behind that veil of hair, terrified that her suggestion might have been too strongly worded. If only she could've known the profanities SAM was spamming my screen with to motivate me. He even screamed at me in my mind, using my own voice. Get Up! On. Your. Feet. Maggot! Are you really this weak, Samuel?! Yeah, I think I'll use that as my name. I know he shared my reluctance in giving up our true identities to just about anyone, so he'd taken to calling me Samuel, an extension of his own nickname, on the few occasions where he was forced to speak to me out loud using his synthethized replica of my voice. Funny thing is, it worked. Before SAM was created, or whatever you wanna call it, I would berate myself during exercise training, using my inner voice exactly like SAM was doing right now, to motivate myself. I graduated from a crawl to actually getting up on my knees, straightening my upper body with a groan. At least my wings were folded in when I'd landed, or I wouldn't have been able to maneuvre like that on the ground.

Wait... how high up in the air was I when I appeared? Right, that explained the pain. So yeah, on my knees facing Fluttershy, I realised ponies were ironically slightly smaller than well, ponies. What I mean is, I'd seen earth ponies (ugh, not Earth Ponies! Ponies from planet Earth, thank you!) on ranches before and their backs were chest-high to the ranchers. Fluttershy was just barely taller than I was sitting on my knees. Her torso (I guess you want me to call it barrel?) was about the same mass as a human's torso and her legs were slender, not unlike our limbs in proportion, but she was a quadruped. Assuming I could get to my feet (my real feet, the Pegasus Frame's legs were also retracted, folded up at the small of my back), her back would just fail to clear my hip.

I was thankful for the visor covering my face. Not only did the display provide a plethora of data regarding atmospheric pressure (earth norm), oxygen levels (also earth norm if not slightly higher), the position of the sun in the sky (which meant I had a working clock, estimating the time to be 14:24), as well as continuing to accumulate data on Equestrian speech, but the mask also concealed my agonized expression as I braced my hands on one knee, forcing my body to unfold and stand up fully. I didn't even stagger.

"Oh goodness...!" Fluttershy's eyes widened as she gazed upon me in my full height. I must've looked huge, especially with the exosuit which ironically gave my chest a more familiar barrel shape, like that of a horse, or so I assumed. The helmet also had the respirator integrated, giving me a snout just below my eyes which were obscured by the eliptic shapes of my toned visor. It really did look like a set of big, grey almond-shaped eyes, shockingly similar to the shape of Fluttershy's eyes, only slanted the other way so they looked more angry than droopy. Also, let me debunk another myth here: Real Equestrian ponies' eyes do not take up 60% of their faces. In reality, their eyes are huge, yes, but the cartoon did exaggerate. They're about 50-100% bigger in diameter compared against a human's eyeballs. They are also front facing and like the show, the ponies are at least partly anthropomorphic in that they have faces with cute little snouts instead of noses. Yes, the fuzzy ears also move like in the show. Fluttershy's were folded back against her skull in fear or as a submissive gesture. I'm assuming the former.

It then occured to me that I'd only spoken a few words to her. I took a breath, still trying to regain full lung capacity. I likely had a few bruised ribs from the fall (diagnostics from SAM confirmed this). After pausing just half a beat too long for it to seem natural, I managed to speak in a level voice, and again, SAM live-translated my words into Equestrian by making my lips say what his program thought I should say, instead of what I was actually trying to say.

"I'm alright, or I will be. Just give me a minute. Where's the nearest town from here? Oh, you can call me Samuel." It looked like SAM's nickname for me was going to become a thing here as well. Better that than using my real name.

Fluttershy stared pensively at me, perhaps sensing more than I was trying to show, but she nodded her head, probably reasoning with herself that she should get the alien to the hospital, if not for medical care then for quarantine and/or autopsy. Right, I am being unfair. I'd heard enough about the show to know how lovey-dovey these ponies were supposed to be.

"Ponyville is just up ahead," she gestured, using her front hoof to point. Wait, did my translater short out? Ponyville?

Fluttershy nodded her head demurely, once again averting her eyes, retreating behind the curtain of pink hair. Damn, had I said that out loud? Oh well. I managed a nod of my head and we both started walking through the lush, green woods, bypassing several forest critters, but not before Fluttershy had stopped and adressed each one.

"Shh, it's okay, he's just a big guy who needs a little Kindness..." she soothed one particularly skeptical looking squirrel. The freaky part is that the squirrel seemed to nod its head and then run along. Also, don't ask me how I heard the capitalized K in Kindness, I just did.

So we walked at a steady pace. My strides were longer than hers, but several times I would have to slow down to recover my breath, hauling the weight of the exoskeletal Pegasus Frame as well as my equipment, all of it extremely light-weigt, but still notably cumbersome in my weakened state. I had a feeling she was adjusting her pace to mine. Having four legs probably helped things moving along. Regardless, she guided my banged up body at a respectable shuffle along a well-trotten path and before long, I could see the bright splashes of color that made up Ponyville. The HUD even zoomed in on several buildings, comparing them against what SAM already knew. Somehow it did not shock me that he'd read up on MLP at some point. Unleash a newly created AI and allow it internet access (read-only, we weren't insane) and it would stock up on a staggering amount of information to the point of seizing upon any topic brought up, no matter how obscure. So now I had a plethora of information at my behest, such as floating name tags identifying this building as Carrousel Boutique and that one as Bon-bon's shop [source critic; Bon-bon is a fanon name], and that tree was apparantly Twilight Sparkle's library. I just couldn't help myself, I began to laugh. That hurt like hell and my laughter degraded into a coughing fit, once again making Fluttershy worry. Twilight Sparkle? Don't they mean Twilight vampires Sparkle? Ah, nevermind...

You probably wanna kill me badly enough as it is.

...

Fine! I'll stop making fun of the ponies...

So yeah, I was able to see the names of the residents of all the known buildings, but there was a surprising number of unlabeled buildings. As we got closer to the outskirts of town, my handy MLP software recognized and labeled several ponies, but none of them had the Mane 6 subheading that was hovering just below Fluttershy's name (yes, she'd gotten her own label at some point). I was assuming there were 6 main characters in the show, and I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I was finding the horse puns more and more hillarious by the minute. Everytime Fluttershy spoke, I would hear the words translated to english and the puns were included as she continued to worry.

"Oh my, I didn't know what I would find when I saw that bright flash in the sky, but I saw somepony fall and I just had to come make sure nopony was seriously hurt..." as she spoke the last half of the sentense, she turned her head to look back at me, (how does she even know where she's going?) an unspoken accusation clearly written across her adorable face; you're more hurt than you're letting on.

Thankfully we'd reached civilization and now commanded the attention of practically every passerby. They would stop and stare into my soul (but not manage to peer as deeply as Fluttershy did with a mere glance), and whisper among themselves, keeping a safe distance, wary of my biped nature and unhealthy shuffle. We arrived at what I can only assume was the hospital. SAM for whatever reason could not make a qualified guess as to the meaning of their written language. Immediately Doctor Whooves [fanon, citation needed] and Nurse Tenderheart [fanon] rushed out to see what the commotion was about, stopping when they saw what I can only assume looked like a massive, shuffling bright blue biped with a dead, expressionless, stoic face and unseeing, grey toned eyes. To their credit, they didn't run away screaming and Fluttershy took her time to explain the situation. Just as it seemed they were going to trust her opinion, nodding their heads, the world became blurry as some recess of my mind confirmed medical attention is assured, rest now. And I did. The crash must have been spectacular. I was later shown the dent my helmet had made in their doorjamb.

...

Wonderful.