//------------------------------//
// Awake 
// Story: Forgotten Soldier; Wrong War  
// by rocketlvr 
//------------------------------//

Through the darkness there was a soft noise, a quiet nearly inaudible blip. after a brief pause another one followed slightly louder. A third followed with less of a pause but now clearly audible. A soft murmur of sound happened along with the much louder blips. The blips became beeps of a foreign machine and the murmur became a set of distinct voices... oddly familiar... "He's coming around" came from a masculine voice which he did not recognize
"ooh I hope he's alright" said by a feminine voice which he recognized somehow.

A torrent of memories washed over him. Iraq, the portal, the horses, the pegasi, the beam of light. "urgh that fucking beam of light" he faintly grumbled as finally remembered all the pain he was in. Dammit his body still hurt like a motherfucker. Cracking open an eye he looked up into the faces of six familiar ponies of varying colors with anxious faces along with one wearing a lab coat, and an old school reflecting mirror. The marines mood quickly sunk from in depressed and in pain to royally pissed off

"get the fuck away from me" he muttered softly now fully conscious. Twilight looked at the doctor "what did he say?" The marine made eye contact with Twilight as he said "I said, get the FUCK AWAY FROM ME" shouting the end of his sentence. In a fury he heaved himself up off the side of his bed to the gasps of the seven ponies to his left, and onto the floor. Disregarding the pain he felt he looked up into a commonly seen face. Princess Celestia looked down onto the floor at the angered human before her "There is no need to shout we will not hurt you anymore" 
"BULL SHIT! you almost set me on fire a few minutes ago and now you wanna be friends?!"

An all too familiar voice spoke up "I don't quite understand what language you're using but I can tell its not a bunch of compliments, now get up off the floor and show some respect to royalty" The unicorn guard lifted you up onto the bed using his trademark yellow magic "Now I suggest you quite your moving unless you wanna die of internal bleeding as our skillful doctor here will explain" 
The timid brown earth pony with glasses and the mirror spoke with a voice wrought with timidity "Th-thank you Sir-uh-umm"
"Corporal Storm"
"Oh a-yes ah thank you sir Corporal Storm. Now, uh, given your unique physiology I wasn't to sure of all the-uh organ functions and such, however, I do believe your right lung has suffered some deep lacerations that left unchecked would have killed you as well as some sever bruising, some light burns, and quite a few broken bones. Now I may not be a doctor on your species, but you are one lucky uhh whatever you are"
"Human" Twilight replied helpfully.
"Shut it" the human spat out
The unicorn looked angry but as she looked back at him it changed to a face of sympathy and sorrow.
"get me a mirror" the marine shouted at the doctor
"Excuse me?"
"I said a mirror comprende amigo? no hablo ingles?, look if the unicorn who I THOUGHT WAS MY FRIEND" he yelled looking directly at her causing her to shy away "looks at me like that I can tell something's up"

"uh right away here" the doctor passed him the mirror. Looking into it the marine saw a face that was cut up and bruised and burned. "jesus, it looks I got face raped by a lightning bolt" he thought to himself as he reached up to feel out the damage. His face felt fairly tender, but not as bad as it probably should have considering how bad it looked. he gazed down at the rest of his body to see that his chest was wrapped in bandages and his left leg was in cast up to the mid of his thigh.
He moved his gaze up to his waist "oh god they better not have..." he thought to himself as he lifted the blanket covering his waist and looked at his pride and joy "phew well at least one thing isn't fucked up" The group didn't seem to care that he just checked if his genitalia were still attached properly, probably because they didn't understand his anatomy or at least if they did they didn't give a crap. "well even if they did I wouldn't give a shit" 

He looked up at the group trying to keep his voice under control "Thank you for not letting me get set on fire, and for not killing me out right, but if don't mind I would like to have a moment with your queen right here." The group exited in a single file, quietly, with their heads hung low.
Celestia addressed her guard "I think it would be best if you left too, Corporal Storm" 
"but princess what if he tries to-"
"I'll be fine Corporal, besides I don't think he's in much condition to attack me"

Storm left the room, angrily muttering something about "that stupid beast tried to insult the princess"
Once he had left the room, the door shut with a highly audible click. The princess walked up to Victor's bedside looking at him with a face of pure sympathy and sorrow "I apologize for Storm he is still wary of you because of our previous incident, but I myself would like to apologize for all the trouble we've put you through, we fear the rise of a great tyrant by the name of Discord. He brought an epoch of despair, sorrow, and chaos upon my subjects until my sister and I overthrew him. He has returned and we fear that he may have new found allies that can bring chaos back to this land."
Victor contemplated this with the best poker face he could muster "so what do you mean by chaos?"
"Things not as they should be, creatures acting as they shouldn't, and things warping horribly"
"could you give me some specific examples?"
"well for instance many residents of Ponyville unlike themselves, some behaved as animals and others thought they were other ponies, and some were capable of walking upside down. Several creatures had changed into horrid beasts, but all was restored with the elements of harmony which you had experienced first hand"
"Was there famine? sickness? death? war?"
"Well... no, but his reign was awful for my subjects"
"Do you know what its like where I am from?"
"No, I am sorry but I do not"
"All those things that I said, those happen everyday."
"Most people on my planet are starving, we have whole countries where people, on average, are lucky to live to 40. We have diseases beyond comprehension, one called Ebola causes your eyes to bleed as you slowly fall apart, people there are dying by the thousands and despite this we're still greatly over populated, 7 billion people live on my planet and each takes up resources, my planet is slowly dying, rotting away. And don't let me get started about war. We have been fighting each other for the most trivial reasons ever since we as a species existed, Christ, 70 years ago there was a war that killed 54 MILLION PEOPLE, and why may you ask? Well, its because some ass-hat with a mustache thought he didn't have enough power. People can kill each other with just the twitch of a finger and we don't even fight clean half the time or even care. If the people I was fighting had captured me, would slowly cut me up probably hacking my fingers, nose, and ears off and still they would expect me to tell them where my friends were so they could kill them too, and if I didn't they'd have tied me up and attached me to a car battery, not like you know what that is but it's pretty bad."

Panting heavily, partly from anger he looked at the princess. She stood mouth agape at the man before her, too shocked to say anything. Victor felt a surge of superiority over this creature he just humbled until he saw something from the corner of his eye. Shifting his gaze to the area, he saw it was the window, or more specifically something outside the window. It was those three small ponies that he had spoke with earlier. The orange one that shot him was out there and they were playing tennis. Only the orange one was any good at it, and that was because she was using her wings to help her jump higher to hit the ball. The yellow and white ones which had just given up threw their rackets on the ground and stared downwards sullenly. Shortly after they gave a brief look of despair at their flanks. Something about that touched the marine's heart and caused him to think about the situation. Here were three ponies blissfully avoiding all hate evil and greed. Some of these ponies were so innocent they seemed as naive as six year olds, or maybe not even that as he remembered a couple kindergarteners having their action figures in rude positions. These ponies didn't even have swear words. He slowly started to realize what he said and either because of his epiphany or all the strong emotions he felt, he began to well up involuntarily. Suddenly he snapped back mentally "These horses still tried to kill me" the thought was quickly put down remembering what consequences they would have faced otherwise. Sure it may not have been bad by his standards but would someone as innocent as they were really have been able to cope with those changes? Well, maybe innocent wasn't the right word, nor was naive. They clearly understood what death and destruction were as they had clearly shown earlier. Perhaps these ponies had reached a moral standard never thought possible in his world. Maybe these ponies had something worth fighting for regardless of the cost. These little ponies would stay true and loyal to their cause no matter what, and by damn he was trained to protect the good and righteous and preserve their freedoms and rights, he would do that and help these little ponies if it was the last thing he'd do. He looked up at the still speechless princess as sorrow stole across him. He made eye contact with her and muttered out two words.

"I'm sorry"