Reaching for the Sky

A week had passed since I first came to in Equestria, leaving a whole other life behind. You don't cut ties with an entire world just like that. Especially not when you'd been as well-connected with it as I had. You probably wonder about my background, if you can believe even half of the crap I've told you.

Truth is, I left behind an Earth on the brink of a nuclear holocaust unlike any previously seen before. Even if I'd succeeded in taking down the world's first and last ever true teleportation device capabale of delivering nuclear strikes anywhere on the globe (or even other worlds as the machine had proven in the end), even if that thing was gone forever, it had still been activated successfully once, bringing the world to an uproar that swept across entire nations.

So even in the best case scenario, the stage was set for global warfare. Mankind would continue to develop terrifying technology and the Artificial Intelligence I'd spawned might not have been the last. You can understand my concerns then, perhaps. I'd lain awake many nights, worrying until SAM and the reality filter forcibly diverted my attention, turning to other avenues. Hunting in the Everfree, building a cabin by the woods, everything I did was a silent cry for home. A home that might not be there anymore. I don't even know to whom I'm writing this. I had lost all connection with Earth on that first day. I couldn't even hook up to the internet, which had consumed most of my free time.

With these feelings roiling just under the surface, I suspect Twilight kept her distance from me because she saw too much. At this point, I was trusting SAM's lore from the show unerringly. Too many times had he hit the nail on the head, successfully predicting the actions and moods of the Mane 6 for it to be coincidence. For whatever reason, MLP - FiM had delivered an almost completely accurate portrayal of these ponies. But only almost. The show is rated for children so it never showed the grim silver lining of these otherwise glorious, peaceful lives. I had seen the signs all over, how feral the ponies can behave. Nothing ever manifested fully, but more than once has an earth pony squared up with me, muscles tensed, ready to crush me, should I do something foolish enough to warrant such agressive behaviour. They may not have been agressive, but they were protective of their kin.

So if ever it did come to violence, I'm convinced Twilight Sparkle would be the most dangerous with her absolutely terrifying magical prowess. I'd never seen her do anything extreme around town, she never showed off. That's a credit to her unwavering ethics and she may easily be the most saintly of all the ponies. Compared against that, I have already sinned most egregiously on several occasions. Twilight was also desperately lonely before coming to Ponyville, so if anyone noticed the triggers early, it would be her.

I'd never suspected that such peaceful surroundings could prove more challenging to my self-control than the horrid battlefields I'd seen on Earth, but the truth is, I was getting restless. I yearned for the thrill of the fight, for that carnal desire to eat meat, and finally there were the sexual urges as well. At least on Earth I'd been able to attract a woman, sometimes just for the sake of it. Nothing cuts away your inhibitions like the prospect of your imminent death, a fate I'd seemed to face many times over. Yet I'd always lived.

Truth is, the Everfree didn't hold enough of a challenge for me. I'd never ventured very far until my HUD had flashed, indicating unharvested treasure nearby. The Manticore was the most deadly thing I'd faced in there, but I knew if I went deeper, the woods would yield and give me... something more.

That thought is perhaps what best defines humanity from my point of view, and I've lived by that creed myself for many years. More, you always need more. It wasn't enough to be clad in bulletproof armor. I had to have an exosuit. It wasn't enough to pilot an exosuit with clumpsy joypads and finite fuel reserves. It wasn't enough to use my natural strength to crush bricks with my fists or shatter bones with deadly kicks. No, I had to have the DNI. I had to have SAM. I had to have my rifle. I had to have it all, and always it was for the sake of something even more than all that.

World peace. How is that not the ultimate hubris? To force humanity to unite under a common banner of peace? A banner that I would hold?

I grew distant, not to the point of seclusion. I was just that much less boistrous, that less inclined to keep a string of insults and snide jokes bouncing back and forth with my favorite verbal sparring partner, RD. Incidently, RD knows a lot of dirty jokes. It took me a while but eventually I acclimatized to those jokes as well.

Yes, I think Twilight sensed it in me. Everytime a stallion would rudely cut me off in line at the market, she'd see the minute hesitation in me before backing down. Everytime a dirty joke sat a little too well with me, and my laughter became too loud and dark to be really soothing, she'd notice. She probably even noticed when my inhibitions lowered to the point where I'd overcome my xenophobia enough that I was watching Rarity's distinctive gait for just a little longer than I did at first.

Pinkie Pie and AJ remained oblivious. Yes, I'd met the bouncing pink ball of party incarnate. Yes, she did throw me a welcome party and yes, a house warming party, too. The only reason I've neglected to mention it is because more of these little triggers would manifest during said parties. The other reason I neglected to mention the parties is because some of the ponies do violate the child-friendly PG rating the show has.

You really didn't notice? Spike wearing a lamp shade on his head in the first episode is a classic reference to how that would indicate drunken behaviour in old movies. I wasn't there for that one and as far as I'm concerned, Spike is a righteous dude, almost to a fault, really. It is true he has a crush on a Unicorn and nopony seems to think this unnatural. Interspiecies relationships would've occured on Earth, too, if only we'd had any other sapient species to attempt it with. So yes, the ponies would occasionally party hard, under their own adult supervision and I'd mostly sit in the corner, drinking punch. Honestly, the alchohol references are numerous even in the child friendly show, thinly veiled, yes, but Applejack is the name of an alchoholic beverage and so is Appletini. Cider is also a well-known alchoholic beverage and that's the Apple family's most sought after product.

Did I ever do anything lewd at these parties? No, but I was often tempted. I held off on the cider and the spiked punch (which has nothing to do with Spike sleeping in the bowl). By the end of the week, during my housewarming party, I did get a little more drunk than I should have and honestly, it was pure luck that I didn't get in a brawl or end up abusing the trust of one of the mares. I just sat there in the corner, looking like a pimp if I have to be honest. Rarity had even designed clothes for me and I was decked out in black denims, a faux leather belt, a black tanktop and a faux leather trenchcoat that looked real enough to creep out a few ponies. I had a mare on each side, one asleep with her head in my lap, the other leaning heavily against me, and one of the stallions had watched me with growing anger, a possesive glint in his eyes everytime he looked at the sleeping mare. To tell you the truth, I was wondering how bloated the rumors of the Earth Pony's strength really were. Sure, just a few days before, I'd seen it in action and from Bic Mac no less, but I was too drunk to let such basic facts interfere with my logic. My pride told me I could crush the stallion's skull with one punch, and years of practice backed up this claim as far as solid brick walls were concerned. In the end, Twilight had looked completely oblivious to the horror about to consume the party as she'd just segued effortlessly into a Twiligt Dance (tm). Yes, the one where she stands on her backlegs and flails about. She'd parked herself like that right between the two of us as I was just working my hand under the sleeping mare's chin to gracefully get up without disturbing her rest, but that dance just made me sit back and guffaw loudly until poor Twilight had retreated in embaressment.

I was not popular that night, in spite of the party having been thrown in my honor, and I understand you completely if you want to strangle me after having blown off the Sparkle just like that. The following morning however, anytime the incident had been brought up and all the really obvious tells had been evident, like me clamming up when I was normally so verbose, or the other stallion tensing everytime anypony mentioned it, Twilight had not reacted with similar chagrin. No, she'd just fixed me with a quiet glare which finally let me review the evening with perfect clarity.

She had seen the violence about to erupt and chose to reenact her silly dance just then. I'm told she has improved it much since that garden party with Fancy Pants and Rarity. So on one of my walks back towards the Everfree, all suited up, my face hidden behind the equine mask of stoic expressions, I don't know why, but I stopped and adressed Twilight.

"I'll be gone for a few days. I've been eyeing this heat signature a few miles deeper in the forest..." I trailed off, leaving the rest unfinished. She simply regarded me with raised brows, a bit caught off-guard by the statement. Then she'd noticed my rifle strapped to my left thigh. I'd never worn the thing on my trips before and nopony suspected the true nature of the deadly firearm. Sure, it could be set to fire nonlethal gel rounds. Could.

Again, Sparkle suspected the weapon for what it was, even when I'd told nopony about the deadly tools of warfare from my home world. She regarded me pensively, but simply nodded. If she was going to alert the rest of the Mane 6, then let her. I was already sprinting headlong into the woods in search of... well, in search of bigger prey if I'm being honest. The near-brawl with the Earth Pony stallion had triggered my lust for violence. Better something big, ugly and scaly to take it out on than a pony...

So I sprinted through the darkened woods, bypassing several viable mineral signatures which SAM calmly pointed out to me, making a casual joking remark, are we finally getting something for the autopsy table? It's a shame you didn't include a secret lab for that kind of thing, like Twi-

I forcibly severed the mental connection to SAM and the reality filter. Didn't know I could do that? Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I acted the way I did at the party. SAM is great, but being around a brain voice 24/7? Yeah, even his volumes of psychology can't find an excuse to merit that kind of relationship, so he's always been adamant that I sever the connection anytime I feel his counselling is doing more harm than good. The only problem with that is that my brain would then have to handle the full mental strain of the Pegasus Frame, lest I delegate that task to SAM and let him puppeteer me. So on one hand, I need SAM and the reality filter to preserve my sense of self, lest I become unhealthily attached to the Pegasus Frame which grants me such incredible power, but on the other hand, I can't run in Co-op Mode with SAM all the time, lest he starts interfering with my sense of self. In the end, the only solution is to forego the suit entirely, just leave it in the closet for a few days, or let SAM pilot it in pony form.

Clearly, that wasn't happening tonight. I dashed towards the energy signature, now also handling the computer with nothing but my DNI. I'm quite good at that, as I've hinted at. It was my brain that wrote the code that created SAM, after all. As it turns out, the heat signature did betray the presence of an ancient underground facility that was likely part of the ruins of the "Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters" [Verified canon name]. As I approached a massive gorge cutting through a sheer, moss-overgrown cliffside, I saw the cobblestone archway of the old fortification, and it had suffered some recent damage from a creature big enough to stretch the archway with its bulk. An archway that easily allowed me entry even with the wings unfolded to the first two joints. In this configuration they're only good for gliding, but the wingspan is reduced to something like 20 feet and they're much more maneuverable, allowing me to thread the needle through gaps no bigger than 10 feet across.

So I was hunting something big. Good.

As I crept through the darkened, overgrown hallways, I saw the clear trail of destruction only a few years old from that same creature, knocking down walls and widening archways to slink deeper into the natural caverns that allowed for the creation of this fortress to begin with. Everywhere I saw traces of dust and ashes. I even saw a few husks of mostly decomposed bone. I assumed equine origins, but there wasn't much to tell, or maybe I was too driven to stop long enough to think. Yeah, probably the latter. So I ventured deeper, overcome with childish explorer's excitement and the likely prospect of facing something big.

On the way down into the bowels of the complex, I noticed a fresher kill and this one did hold my attention. It was clearly an equine form, still clad in rusty barding not unlike the royal guards of the show. Reduced to a ghastly skeleton, the pony had collapsed here in this tunnel, clutching a curiously intact halberd in his foreleg. Don't ask me how they do that, they just do. But apparantly it's all magic and this specimen was dead or dying when he clutched the weapon to his chest, using the crook of his foreleg instead of his hoof to hold the dear possesion to the end. Edged into the wall next to him was a single word, written in Equestrian. I hadn't brushed up on the literature much, but I knew enough to recognize this word:

VENGEANCE

Well, if that wasn't permission, then I don't know what was. Besides, I've pilfered bodies before. It's easier when you tell yourself that it's going to a good cause and you didn't make this particular corpse, but maybe, just maybe, you'll be the one to catch his killer. If I could do this to a dead soldier on the battlefield without any evidence of a written will, then I would do it gladly to a stallion whose last act on this Equestrian Earth was to carve the word 'vengeance' into the solid rock that was to be his undignified tombstone.

As I picked up the halberd, it felt curiously light in my hand and it was in pristine condition. It wasn't hard to imagine why that might be, and in Equestria, when in doubt, just say it: Magic.

I slung the newly acquired polearm over my shoulder where my partly unfurled wing held it in a small clamp near the joint. Yeah, with the reality filter offline it was my wing.

I could feel the heat now as the last stonework receded behind me in my journey into the bowels of the mountain. Whatever was down there had lots of energy. As I descended further, traversing chasms and other impossible obstacles with my wings and hooves, I found myself in a massive cave system with piles of ancient debris strewn about in various states of decomposal and some of the debris glittered, hinting at precious metals, but I also felt the temperature rise to sweltering degrees and I heard a voice in my mind.

No, not SAM.

No, not an hallucination, either.

Damn, you know your head is fucked up when you have to run through a list of plausible reasons for hearing a brain voice. I'd never known telepathy before, but it didn't surprise me that I'd experience it here as the rumbling, ancient voice hissed in my mind's ear.

"Curious... Very curious... Another peace lover here to inflict justice upon me? Do you know what evil you face, mortal?"

Okay, that was just as horribly cliché as befits Equestria. I wonder if Nightmare Moon would've kept up the banter if she'd been talking to me. Well, this brain voice would have to make a compelling side study.

"Evil?" I piped up, standing straight and letting out a laugh. "Oh yeah, you're so evil, leaving that adorable little pony to what, quietly bleed to death?" I mock-shuddered and then laughed again.

"What know you of evil, then?" the baritone voice rumbled in my mind.

"Well, you sure as fuck don't kill 'em off that quick. Leaves no time for misery," I chuckled. I have a dark sense of humor, I try to keep it in check, but seriously? This ridiculous overgrown thing was trying to taunt me with 90's villain monologues? Forget it. I was on a roll, striding deeper into the cave, facing the imagined location of the invisible foe.

"Rip off a Pegasus' wings, break a Unicorn's horn, destroy their spirit and leave them unable to kill themselves!" I cried, cupping my hands in front of my face to project my voice towards the imagined locale of my newly acquired target. I laughed, a dark throaty laughter and just as the cliché villain seemed shocked into silence, further convincing me that nothing really had the capacity for evil the same as humans do, it revealed the centre piece of the once-decorated dwelling.

With the shimmer of a mirrage, the illusion was shattered and in the middle of the room, not ten feet from me, I saw her. Standing on a raised stone dias, coccooned in a clear wall of magical energy was the most tragically beautiful mare I'd ever seen. A coat so white and pristine it was almost luminescant, even in the eternal twilight of the cave, and a long, golden mane carefully styled to the side so it concealed none of her face, which even drawn in a mask of silent and eternal sorrow, was heartbreakingly beautiful. Styled so that her mane revealed her broken horn pertruding from her forehead. She was naked, as most ponies and gracing her flank, there was once a beautiful silver note, but it was marred horrifically by a rending gash from a claw and her throat bore a similar scar, silencing her pathetic cries as she could only stand there, caged in a wall of force.

I staggered towards her, feeling the bile rise to my throat as I gazed upon a tragedy that so closely mirrored my earlier empty boast. My blood ran cold as I felt rather than heard the voice of the beast, this lovely Unicorn's timeless tormentor, roaring laughter and soon the physical counterpart to that voice joined in, betraying the location of the great, hulking beast as he, too appeared with a shimmer.

He was a huge, hulking dragon with slick, black scales glistening in the dimly lit cave. Sitting upon a hoard of mostly decomposed treasure with only the gleam of the unperishable gold and silver beneath his bloated body, the creature stank of rot and decay. He was still laughing when I felt the presence of SAM trying to override the reality filter. In reality, I suspect it was I who called him, because he's never broken through my control and initiated Optimized Combat Performance that quickly before. It was almost like I was denying the reality filter in favor of being reduced to the berserker.

The silent white mare could only watch with apathy like she had probably watched the other stallion before he had been allowed to crawl away and bleed to death, like so many other would-be saviours before him. Even when my left hand moved like a whip crack to my holstered gun, firing off several shots from the hip, guided by my computer system and the smartgun's crosshair in my visor, she didn't look hopeful.

The dragon obviously hadn't expected such a swift attack and with the Pegasus Frame's freakishly fast wired muscles, I've been recorded drawing and firing that gun inbetween frames of a camera rolling at normal speed. The guidance system ensured that I scored two perfect hits; two bullets - two eyeballs.

The dragon reared back, howling with such deafening agony that my eardrums would've burst if not for my helmet shielding all of my senses. Its eyes gauged out by my bullets, bleeding profusedly down his serpentine face, he let loose a massive gout of flame hot enough to melt rock, but I was already gone, having leapt with explosive force, using my hydraulic equine legs, beating my wings once to generate enough lift to carry me unerringly towards my target, leaping over the glowing white-hot mass of flame that is really more adequatedly described as plasma. If not for the protective visor, my eyeballs would have been seared from my skull just to look at it. I roared, too, I am certain, but it was drowned out by the dragon's wrath as I brought down my newly acquired halberd, just about to sink it deep into his skull, but even blind the fucking reptile proved to have earned his long life, instinctively raising a front paw to be impaled instead of his skull. His paw was big enough that I could simply land with my hooves and take off in another explosive jump, shattering bones and ripping his big paw in half as I pulled the halberd from his flesh in a torrent of blood.

Let me tell you, that kind of creature does not live to old age unless he really knows how to fight. Blind and crippled, he still managed to bring up his enourmous tail in a great, swooping arc, plucking me from the air like an insect, just before I made my second attempt at piercing his skull.

The fleshy tail connected with the force of a fully-ladden 18-wheeler, easily shattering my chestguard as well as probably collapsing a few ribs. I felt the blood spewing from my throat from the force of the impact and I lost all sense of direction, knowing only that the sickening crunch I heard next must've been my body colliding with... something.

There I lay, but SAM and the reality filter is no joke. Even in this state, I was barely slowed down. He didn't just disable the reality filter, he corrupted it to flood my system with adrenals, blocked my pain receptors completely and fueled my boiling rage. My artificial spine had snapped, sparing my real spine and my wings were done for, so was my chest guard, but the helmet and more importantly, the legs, were still intact. My left arm refused to move and my right one barely had the strength to hold the halberd aloft, but it managed somehow. The gun previously clenched in my left hand was, according to my tracking software, somewhere 43 feet away. Too far, no point. I had the halberd and one working arm and I could jump.

The dragon must've overextended on his tail sweep, because his guard was down by the time I'd lept at him for the third time in as many seconds. Finally his roar and the gout of flame had died down and I screamed at the top of my lungs as I bore down on him, staring into his bleeding eyesockets as I plunged the halberd deep into his skull, ending his life.

By this time my vitals were spiking and SAM was trying frantically to undo what he'd helped me do. Already my bleeding heart had pumped too much blood, worsening the internal bleeding and the overdose of adrenals was now ebbing, allowing me to realise how much pain I was in as the reality filter this time failed to come back online. As the beast collapsed, I was flung from its broken skull, rolling across the floor like a bloodied rag doll, and one of the last things I saw was the beautiful Unicorn descending the dias, no longer bound by the dragon's invisible cage.

I watched her through my cracked visor as she approached me with growing horror as it dawned on her that I was dying before her eyes and she couldn't even speak to me, rendered forever mute by that gash across her throat. Who the fuck does that? Her fucking 'Mark was a silver note for f-

Oh, right, dying...

...

So humane. In the end I just acted like a fucking human... Well, never let it be said that we're not good at what we do.