Dane found out the hard way. Hay doesn't digest very well.
It has been a day since we left him. His stomach still hurt from the hunger. He would have asked Applebloom for an apple or something, but he refused to talk to her. He still had his dignity, right? Speaking of the little devil, she came trotting towards his cell. It wasn't time for food, though.
"Hey mister! We brought you a friend!" She practically shouted.
As she showed her face in front of the barred door, Dane sat up on his cot. He heard shuffling from down the hall.
"LET ME GO YOU DAMNED REDS!" The unmistakable voice of that eccentric General. "YOU GREEN PEACE HIPPIE HORSES WILL BE SHOT FOR THIS! THEY'LL MAKE YOU INTO GLUE!" There was a loud thud followed by a low groan. The good General shuffled his feet as he appeared in front of the bars. His hands and feet were tied up with ropes, and he had a burlap sack over his head. The door was then surrounded by a faint yellow aura and it opened. Dane's new roommate was nudged into the cell and the door closed behind him.
While the little filly would have been quite easy for Dane to overpower, theoretically, that unicorn wouldn't be. As if the magic wasn't enough of a deterrent, he was roughly the size of Big Macintosh. It was impossible to identify him however, because he was dressed in a black skin-tight suit that covered him head to tail. Similar to a Wonderbolts costume, except no cutout for the muzzle. Tinted goggles covered his eyes. He looked through those goggles at Dane for just a moment, giving him a soulless death stare before trotting back off.
Dane took the sack off the General's head. "Rough day, General?"
"Rodriguez?!" He replied, butchering Dane's last name as his always had.
"Yeah, they got me."
"How many others are there?"
"I have no idea, haven't seen anyone else."
"Untie me soldier," he said, holding his hands up.
While Dane got to work untying the military man, he asked a few questions of his own. "What happened while I was gone?"
"Not a goddamn thing! Well, there was some 'peace' treaty bein' signed by that princess horse, but that's about it. And here I thought you deserted us! But it looks like they got you before you could finish translatin' that book. I knew it was fishy! It had pinko commie written all over it!"
Dane gulped. Technically, he had deserted. He wasn't a soldier of course, but still, in a way, he had a duty to his country, which he abandoned. To be fair, Dane's name may have been bumped up a little bit on the waiting list for Equestria transfers… And it figured that none of his coworkers had told anyone about that book. 'Which might be a good thing,' Dane thought. "Haven't you heard anything from Amber?"
"Amber who?"
"My colleague, she updated you whenever we made any headway in translating the book."
"Oh, her. No haven't heard from her since before you went missing."
Amber was the only other person who could get in touch with the General, so if she hadn't told him by now… Maybe she was in here too. Maybe she high-tailed it out of Chicago. Dane prayed that's what happened.
"Well, actually, we did translate the book."
"Well, what was it?"
"It's a cookbook."
"A cookbook? That's it?! That 'Lyre' one said it told her how to open the portal!"
"General, it's a very special kind of cookbook that tells the cook how and where to get the ingredients…" Dane said, widening his eyes, giving him a if-ya-know-what-I-mean look. The General looked stumped, so Dane repeated his look, exaggerating it a bit.
He thought for a moment, and his eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in disgust. "That's disgusting! Horses don't even eat meat!"
Dane, being a long time brony, and avid reader of fanfiction begged to differ. While, indeed, the ponies should, by all rights, be complete herbivores according to the show's canon, there was plenty of fanfictions that involved some… rather disgusting things. And Dane himself had seen some interesting and entirely convincing evidence that real world equines could not only survive on a meat diet, but they also have been known to stomp small animals like chickens, and eat them, even if the occurrence of this was rare. Besides, the mere fact that ponies made a portal to his world was enough to prove that these ponies have deviated from what Dane knew as 'canon.'
"Ponies aren't supposed to eat meat," Dane said. He shuddered as he thought that his current situation was fit for the makings of a bad Cupcakes knockoff. "But there's a lot of fan-written stories that suggest certain ponies may be inclined to…" Cannibalism, he thought at first. "…Eat it."
"Even if they did, aren't they all 'make love not war' and 'give peace a chance'?"
"Clearly not all of them." Dane said flatly.
The General sighed and rested his head in his palms, now untied. "Guess I'm a P.O.W. Again…"
Dane perked up at that comment. "You were? How'd you get out?"
He looked somber, not wanting to make eye contact with Dane. "I waited. 'Merican troops came and released us."
"Oh."
Dane's spirit dropped back down to its previous level.
About half an hour of awkward silence later…
Hooves on stone. Dane was familiar with that sound by now, it was Applebloom.
"Well aren't y'all lucky? We got another friend for ya! I'ma have ta clean up another room for her…"
Heavier hoofsteps followed, these were from that big unicorn bastard. But the steps were slower and more erratic than usual, and there was another sound. The sound of something being dragged on the floor. Soon enough, the door to the cell was magicked open, in that same piss-yellow aura. And a sack-headed and hog-tied pony was magically dragged into the cell, left lying on her side. Dane was disgusted by this. He knew that unicorn could have levitated her with ease, but he dragged her on the floor just out of sheer meanness. The door closed and locked with a loud clunk, and the guards trotted away.
Dane knelt down beside the beaten pony, taking pity upon her. The General just sat on the cot with his arms folded discontentedly. The pony was obviously conscious, sobbing quietly and twitching occasionally.
Dane gently put his hand on her side. "Lyra…"
She stopped crying at the touch of Dane's hand. Lyra was all kinds of messed up. Her coat was matted and stained, her tail frizzy and frayed. The ropes around her legs looked as though they had been there a while, having rubbed into her fur. The bruises could not be seen easily under the fur, but certain spots on her legs and sides were noticeably swollen. Dane wondered why they would do this to her, they hadn't beaten him or the General, other than a buck or two. He grabbed the sack on her head.
"NO! DON'T!" Lyra shouted and tried to hold the sack down, but she was still tied up.
Dane let go of the sack and gently stroked her side, being careful not to touch the swollen areas. "Why not?"
"They… They…" She began to quietly sob again.
Dane let her have a moment, while the General just rolled his eyes at the scene. Dane was petting a pony, and Lyra no less. But given the circumstances, he wasn't even thinking about it.
"Can I look?" Dane asked.
She remained still for a long time. But eventually nodded and he slowly removed the burlap sack. Her cheek was swollen and splotches of dried blood stained her matted green coat. Tear stains ran down her cheeks. That wasn't the worst of it, though.
Her horn was broken off.
"Oh Lyra, I'm so sorry." Dane did his best to comfort her. Which wasn't much, considering she was lying on a cold stone floor in a prison cell, probably waiting for death, just like Dane was.
He gently untied her binds.
"What're you doing? She's the enemy!" The General piped up, pointing an accusing finger at the broken mint mare.
"Obviously not." Dane responded.
"She had the book! That makes her the enemy!"
"The book?" Lyra questioned somberly.
"The old red one," Dane answered.
"I… I told you. I couldn't read most of it. Just the charts and spell diagrams." She said to the General.
"How about Pinkie and Rainbow? Could they read it?" Dane asked.
"I don't know… they found it."
Dane and the General looked at each other for a second. They were both thinking the same thing: 'Those two.'
"Why? What was it?" Lyra questioned, curiosity getting the better of her, as she wiped away her tears with a foreleg.
Neither man wanted to speak.
Lyra looked between the two of them for an answer. "What? What was it? Tell me! Tell me why they did this to me over some stupid book!"
Dane inhaled deeply, ready to spill the beans, when the General suddenly spoke. "It's a cookbook."
Lyra held a look of sad disbelief, "A cookbook for what?"
"The book's title translated to 'A Human for Ponies'…" Dane answered.
Lyra just teared up and looked like she wanted to vomit.