Strange Bedfellows

by BRBrony9


The Mare Who Fell To Earth

The flaming comet descended rapidly into the atmosphere. To the surprise of those watching from below, it began to slow, eventually coming to a halt. The fires of atmospheric passage dissipated, and the shroud of plasma which had covered the thing within faded away to nothing as it slowed.

There had been shouts of alarm and confusion in the headquarters in the palace. Observers on balconies and at windows had reported the sighting, confirming the alert sent by Fleet Command in orbit. They had not been able to tell the ground forces the exact nature of what was coming their way; they simply didn't know. It had appeared from nowhere on their Auspex screens, only when it had begun diving into the atmosphere and igniting a trail which had flashed up on thermal monitors. All kinds of alarms and klaxons had been sounded by the sudden event, and they had been able to give the ground forces some warning; less than a minute, but still. It had been long enough, just, for Cadence to raise the shield and protect the city, only to find out that whatever was coming at them, it wasn't an asteroid, and it wasn't a torpedo.

Princess Celestia looked on in surprise as the shield went up. She knew of no threat that would require it to be erected again, and so she was equally surprised when she spotted the incoming trail of fire in the sky. She didn't know what it was any more than anypony else did, at least at first. She watched as it slowed, but could not devote all of her time and effort to paying attention to it. She was still fighting with the Daemon, and she teleported well away from it to give herself a chance to see what exactly was coming their way. Some secret Chaos weapon?

No. Celestia could sense that was not the case. She could sense power, yes, but not like that which radiated from the Daemon. It could only be one thing, one being. It had to be her sister, coming back from wherever the Daemon had sent her. It had to be Luna.






His eyes opened, for the second time in an hour. His head throbbed; his legs throbbed- all of them, but especially his left hind leg. Something was in his eyes; though they were open, he could see nothing. He tried to move, but felt both shooting pains and something pressing down on him. He tried to turn his head, and this, he found that he could do. He still couldn't see anything, but he tried blinking a few times. His eyes felt irritated and red, but at least now he could see. What could he see?

Just debris. Broken concrete, twisted pipes. The remains of something, some building. Where was he? Where had he been? The hospital...yes, the hospital. The squad, the platoon, and more...they had all been there, at the hospital, fighting to keep it under friendly control. Had it worked? Had they won the battle?

Evidently, they hadn't kept the hospital intact. That must be where he was lying; in the rubble, the ruins of a building meant to be engaged in the saving of life, not in the taking of it. Again, the irony washed over him; he wasn't dead, not yet, but others were. He knew- he had killed some of them himself, with his bare hooves. They had deserved death, to be certain, but his ponies had not. They could not be said to be truly innocent in the traditional sense; after all, they were armed combatants, who took on the risk of death when they signed up to the Royal Guard. But they were not evil, they were not ruthless murderers and savages like the enemy were. To die defending the capital was a noble end, of course, but to not die at all was still the far superior outcome.

Corporal Breeze turned his head again. A cracked pipe somewhere was leaking, presumably water, though perhaps it could have been oil or some hydraulic fluid. He had no idea what utilities went into the construction of a modern hospital building, but he could hear whatever it was dripping down. He looked down at himself. There was some debris covering his hind legs, and his chest armour was dented. Broken fragments of concrete lay like snowflakes across his body, but he found that, with concentrated effort, he could move, pulling himself away from the debris. Something creaked nearby, an unstable wall or floor. What the hell had happened to this place?

That was right; he remembered now. Something outside. There had been some kind of light, filling the windows of the sky bridge and illuminating the corridor where they had been fighting. It must have been some kind of explosion, perhaps one of the human atomics which had destroyed Baltimare and required them to spend so long underground? Then again, from the colours he had seen, it had looked more like magic. The Princesses had been fighting overhead, hadn't they? The colours reminded him of Princess Luna...perhaps she had attacked the hospital, either deliberately or by accident.

That had to be it. It made sense. A stray blast of magic, or perhaps a purposeful strike because the enemy had overrun the hospital complex and threatened to break through. He knew Luna would not knowingly endanger other ponies, but perhaps she thought the enemy was in complete control of the building. At the very least, the fourth floor had gone, and maybe the entire building. Breeze couldn't tell. When he noticed blood on him, he panicked momentarily, before he remembered the brutal violence he had inflicted on the enemy in the struggle for life and survival. Now, now he felt the revulsion that he should have felt earlier; he had done these things, things that the enemy would do, not he. Being a soldier or a guardspony meant violence was a likely way of life, but they tended to use an economy of violence. A gunshot was enough to bring a foe down. There was no need to pound its head to a bloody pulp,to gut them and bathe in their gore, to act like some feral carnivore and rip their throat out with your teeth. That kind of thing was a mark of the foe they faced, and to imagine himself reduced to the same level was nauseating, now that he was no longer consumed by the anger which had filled him.

Instead he felt both pain and relief. He was alive, but he was hurt, and what of his squad? Where were the rest of them? Lying among the rubble, Breeze could see no sign of anypony else. That wasn't quite true; there, lodged between two large slabs of concrete, was what seemed to be a body. Limbs were protruding out at crazed angles. It was a pony, to be sure, but from the colour of its coat it was not a member of his squad. Nevertheless, it was clearly dead, crushed by the debris. How many more ponies lay dead around him? How many were lucky and had fallen into voids or lay in relatively open spaces like he did?

Being on the fourth floor might have been a blessing. There was only one more floor above him, plus the roof, which could have fallen on top of him, and it was far more likely that anybody on an upper floor might find themselves escaping being crushed than anybody who was fighting on the lower floors. Breeze managed to sit up, slowly and painfully. He couldn't feel any serious injuries, but he had clearly taken a battering in the collapse. His left hip was discoloured by an almost prismatic bruise, which ranged from dark blue to a sickly yellow in hue. Some of the blood on him was clearly his own, oozing from a dozen cuts and grazes, though his coat was also matted with drying human viscera. His head still hurt, and feeling his helmet showed that it was dented as well as his body armour. Clearly he had struck something, or something had struck him, as the building fell around him.

Breeze was able to pull himself out from under the pieces of concrete, which were mercifully light and relatively small compared to some of the large blocks and slabs that he could see all around. A kind of tunnel had formed among the debris, leading away from the void in which he found himself. Perhaps it was a way out to salvation after all. The sky bridge was clearly gone, but he just might be able to get out of this mess.

With some pain, especially from his left hind leg, Breeze was able to roll over and start to crawl in a kind of half-crouch, dragging his injured leg and keeping low. There were protruding pipes and jagged edges that threatened to catch his head if he didn't duck down. It was dark, but there was light coming in from somewhere, filtering through the gaps and cracks in the rubble, enough for him to have been able to see his injuries, and now enough for him to be able to navigate through the debris. The ruined hospital creaked and groaned like a living creature as he passed through its innards. Perhaps a secondary collapse was imminent. There were more groans. But these were not the groans of shifting masonry.

Breeze froze. Something, besides himself, was alive down here. He stopped and listened; there they were again, faint cries nearby. Human or pony? It was only now that he realised he didn't have his rifle. Should he crawl back and look for it? He hadn't seen it, but if he escaped the building, he would probably need it. After all, there was a war going on out there. Slowly and painfully, he reversed his course, this time having to lead with his hind legs, which was awkward as the left one was starting to seize up somewhat, badly bruised and mangled as it had been. The void was just as he had left it, with no further collapse having occurred in the short intervening period. In the dim half-light, Breeze searched for his weapon, scrabbling through the dust and rubble. There it was; perhaps not even his, but certainly an Equestrian rifle. Would it even be functional? He gave it a quick check over, carried out the immediate action drill to check for any stoppage or blockage that might affect its ability to work. He extracted a fresh magazine from his webbing, tapped it on his helmet, swapped out the one in the rifle for the new one, made sure it was in place, worked the lever action. It seemed to be alright, though he wouldn't know for sure until he fired it in anger, by which time it would be too late to find out if there was some internal problem. He dare not fire it inside the rubble, though; even something as simple as a bullet being fired might affect the stability of the ruin.

He returned to the tunnel and began to crawl out again, staying under the protruding pipes. Again, he heard the groaning of some unfortunate soul, trapped among the concrete. He continued on, running into what he thought at first was a cobweb, but which he soon realised was a bunch of wires and cables hanging down slackly in his path. He pushed through them, forced from a crouch into a complete crawl as the roof of the tunnel was getting steadily lower and lower, while the groans got louder and louder. He gripped his rifle, pushing it along ahead of him in the best approximation of a ready position that he could achieve in such a confined space.

The tunnel took something of a turn, forcing him to roll onto his side to fit through the gap between a large slab of concrete and the crumpled remains of a hospital bed. By some miracle the passage through the rubble remained wide and high enough for him to get through. Whatever was holding up the ceiling was doing a fine job of supporting the weight of whatever lay above; another benefit of being only one floor down from the roof, as there was only one floor's worth of debris that could land on top. Breeze continued to crawl, and then he found the source of the groaning.

There was a body, or rather part of one, protruding halfway from the side of the tunnel, sticking out of the debris. Breeze reflexively tried to take aim, but that was difficult. He soon realised he didn't need to. It was a pony, not a Chaos trooper. She lay crushed beneath a big slab of concrete, all but her head and upper torso pinned under the rubble. Her legs were all trapped, and a large gash across her face did not hide the look of pain upon it. Blood was running into both of her eyes, making it hard to determine if she had suffered any injuries to them or not.

'I-is somebody there...?' she called out weakly, in a raspy voice. Breeze hesitated for a moment. This was not the kind of scenario he expected himself to be in when he saddled up for battle.

'Easy, easy...it's ok...friendly...!' he called out. 'Corporal Breeze with Apple Platoon...you?'

'Pr...private...ahh...' She coughed and grimaced. 'Private Mercury...C-castle Platoon...' Breeze crawled right up to her, putting his rifle aside. She looked in a bad way, but perhaps the severity of her injuries was being overstated by the conditions they found themselves in. The large slab of concrete that was pinning her in place might have been proving beneficial; crush syndrome in a trapped victim could result in disaster once they were freed, as toxins from the deoxygenated tissue in the trapped body parts could rush out once the pressure was released, causing kidney failure and a sudden and surprising death. Breeze knew nothing of that, however. He was not a doctor or a firepony, but a guardspony. He knew how to fight and he knew how to stop and deter crime. He didn't know how to save a trapped victim, or even, really, how to comfort them.

'How are you doing?' Breeze asked. 'It looks like we're stuck down here for now, but...'

'But what...?' Mercury asked. Her face wavered from side to side. It was clear that she couldn't see anything.

'There's a way out...at least, I think there is,' Breeze explained. 'There's a tunnel or something, a way through the rubble. I've been following it...I guess all this crap fell in a particular way, and...'

'I can't move...' Mercury whispered. 'C-can you get me out?'

Breeze eyed over the rubble. The slab of concrete probably weight a ton or more, and even if he had super strength, he could not have safely moved it without threatening to bring more debris tumbling down on top of them. He had to be honest with her.

'No...you're wedged in there pretty good,' he informed her. 'But I can crawl out and get help, and come back, and...'

'No you can't!' Mercury coughed, sobbing a little. 'I can't see, but I can feel. The whole building must be on top of me.'

'It's not that bad...' Breeze replied, trying to reassure her. 'They can get you out, the engineers or the fireponies or whoever. I can go get help.'

She shook her head. 'Don't...don't waste your time. If there's a way out, then you need to get to safety. You can't help me.'

'No! I can't just leave you down here!' Breeze blurted out. 'I can get help.'

'Everypony has better things to do than try to rescue somepony who's just gonna die anyway,' Mercury pointed out forlornly. 'There's still a war going on out there, Corporal. If you're not hurt, then you need to get back out there.'

Breeze was hurt, though not to the extent that he imagined Mercury might be beneath the rubble. Yet now he felt this was his duty; to stay with her and find a resolution, one way or the other, to her plight. He couldn't simply leave her trapped in the rubble. He told her as much.

'You can't stay down here,' she replied. 'What if there's another collapse? You'll die for no reason. You can get out. But...but before you go, can you...can you please...'

'Can I what?' Breeze questioned. 'Can I get you out too?'

'No, no...just, can you...' she swallowed. 'Can you...not leave me here like this?'

Breeze frowned. 'What do you mean? You just said...'

'I know what I said,' Mercury replied. 'You can't get me out, so don't even bother trying. But...don't leave me trapped here alone and...and...alive.'

Breeze closed his eyes. Was she really asking him to kill her? It would be a mercy kill, yes, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. He was no murderer...or would it count as assisted suicide? It didn't matter what the legal definition was. He couldn't do it, and he shook his head, even though she couldn't see him.

'No...you don't mean that. I'm not gonna do that,' he told her pointedly, but she managed to turn her head in his direction, and even though her eyes were covered with blood, he could almost see the desperation in them anyway. He could definitely hear it in her voice.

'Please! I-i'm...going to die anyway, if nobody is coming for me. Just...don't leave me here to wither away for days. Please...'

'I can get help!' Breeze told her again. 'I can find somepony...'

'No...just get yourself out. Just...shoot me,' Mercury whispered. 'Do you have a weapon?'

'I...y-yes, I do, but I can't fire it,' he pointed out. 'Not in here. It might...the vibrations and the sound and...and whatever...it might cause another collapse.'

'Then...please, find some other way,' Mercury begged. 'Stab me o-or suffocate me...do something! Please don't leave me like this...'

Breeze hesitated, frowning. He couldn't possibly do that. He wanted to help her, but not like this. Not like this. He was no murderer, he told himself again, and only a murderer could kill in such an overt way. But, then again, he had a sudden flashback to his earlier actions. Some of those human soldiers...he hadn't just killed them, he had brutalised them, slaughtered them. He had murdered them, because he had not merely done enough to defend himself. Even once his foes were down, he had continued attacking merely to satisfy his own sudden and inexplicable bloodlust. He had been so consumed by it at the time as to not think objectively about it, but now, with hindsight, it terrified him. If he could snap like that, what was to stop it happening again? If this war were to end and he and the rest of the Royal Guard were to return to policing duties, what was to stop it happening during some routine arrest, when a suspect tried to resist him? What if, instead of waiting for a unicorn with stun magic or grappling the suspect to the ground, he instead put bullets into some pony who, while perhaps not innocent, had not done anything worthy of death?

So far as he knew, Private Mercury had not done anything worthy of death, and yet she was begging for it. Breeze was not equipped to help her; he was not a survival expert or a doctor, and he didn't know if she could survive long enough for him to fetch help and for help to actually be available to deal with such things rather than fighting the invasion. If he couldn't find anypony, then she would suffer in agony for...hours? Days? He had no idea. After earthquakes in some of the more unstable western regions of Equestria, ponies had been pulled alive from the rubble of collapsed buildings up to two weeks after the incident occurred. He couldn't leave her like that, abandon her to such a terrible fate. Even if he went in search of aid, he might be killed on the way, and nopony would even know she was down here at all. He couldn't leave her to die alone in such a horrific way, either slowly suffocating from the eventual lack of air, dying of thirst, or perhaps lingering on for day after day in agony until finally succumbing to her wounds.

'A-alright...' Breeze muttered. 'I'll...I'll think of something, ok? You just...just, uh...' His first instinct to complete the sentence had been to tell her to hang on, but that kind of defeated the purpose. His second thought was to tell her to relax- equally inappropriate and impossible under the circumstances. 'You just rest,' he finally settled on, and Mercury nodded.

Now he had to find something to carry out his promise with. He couldn't use his gun in case of collapse, so how was he going to kill her? That wasn't something he ever imagined himself thinking, yet here he was. He tried to think of something. What had she suggested? Stab her...he did have his combat knife, but it would be hard to get enough leverage to inflict a fatal blow in such a confined space, and the last thing he wanted to do was to simply cause her more pain and fail to actually finish her off. Suffocation, she had also mentioned, but what could he use for that? He mentally went through his equipment.

Yes- his first aid kit might hold the answer. Every pony was outfitted with a small pack which contained a variety of items- disinfectant wipes, needle and thread, painkillers, and, importantly, a few bandages. Apart from his armour and helmet, Breeze wore no clothes with which he might be able to suffocate her. The bandages were the only things in his possession that were impermeable enough to hold over her mouth and prevent her breathing through them. He would probably have to use all of the trio of bandages provided in each pack, and while soldiers and guardsponies were not supposed to use their own first aid kit to help others- the idea was to use the kit of the casualty, so that another pony might be able to use yours to help you if you were wounded- Breeze decided this was worthy of an exception. He had no other ideas, and he didn't even know if it would work at all, but he had promised her. He reached down, fumbling to extract the kit and tear it open, shaking the contents out and gathering the bandages.

'Ok...I'm ready to, uh...' he trailed off. 'I can...hold something over your face,' he offered. Mercury quickly nodded.

'Yes...o-ok...please...'

'Are you sure? I mean, are you completely sure?' Breeze asked quietly, trying not to let his voice waver. 'There's no coming back from it.'

'I-i know...' Mercury sighed. 'But there's no coming back from this, either. I'm stuck here, and even if somepony got me out, I'd probably die anyway, so...so yes, I'm ready...I think...' She swallowed and nodded. 'I'm ready.'

Breeze crawled back up to her. He couldn't hold her hoof, couldn't give it a gentle squeeze. Her limbs were all trapped under the rubble. He put a hoof on her cheek instead. 'A-alright...I'll do it. I won't leave you like this. Is there anything you want to tell anypony? Your family? Parents, kids? Husband, wife? If I can find them, I'll tell them what you said.'

'M-my brother is the only one still alive,' Mercury replied. 'At least, he was yesterday. I don't know now, but...his name is Shutter Plate. He's a photographer, for fashion and stuff. Just...if you can find him, tell him I love him, and I love mom and dad, a-and I'm sorry.'

'I'll find him, and I'll tell him,' Breeze assured her; anything to make her feel better in her last moments. 'You did good, Private. You fought like a guardspony should,' he told her, even though he hadn't seen her fighting, didn't know what she had or hadn't done; she might have cowered in a closet for the entirety of the battle for all he knew. 'And you fell like guardsponies do. But you won't fall in vain. We'll take back this city...we'll be victorious. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten. I'll make sure of that.'

'Thank you...' Mercury whimpered pathetically. It was the sound of somepony facing their death, and Breeze knew he was the one who had to inflict it upon her.

'Are you ready?' he asked again in a whisper.

'Yes...' she nodded. 'Yes...'

'Alright...' Breeze's hoof shook as he bundled up the bandages and held them a few inches above her face. Her breathing was weak and shallow, partly from fear, no doubt, but partly from her injuries, injuries that meant she would die soon enough anyway. 'I'll count down. Three...two...one...'

He reached zero, and his hoof hesitated for a second or two longer before he found the courage to press the bandages down firmly, making sure they covered both her mouth and snout. Mercury snorted and gasped, her head twitching from side to side as her brain reflexively fought against that which she had asked for. She wanted to die, but her body didn't, and her natural reaction was to try and breathe, try and suck in some air, any air, from whatever source she could find. She rasped and wheezed as Breeze closed his eyes, feeling tears start to fall as he held the bandages firmly in place with a strong, though trembling, hoof. He had no idea how long he had to keep them in place to achieve his aim, but he kept them there as Mercury's desperate breathing became weaker and weaker and weaker. When there was silence, he held the bandages over her face for another minute before removing them, letting them drop to the floor of the tunnel.

His eyes slick with tears, Breeze found his whole body shaking now, not just his hoof. He leaned in over her face to listen for any sound of breathing. Her lungs were still, her face a mask of distress, the markings of how her life had ended. He placed his hoof against her neck; no pulse. She was gone. Breeze managed to steady himself, taking deep breaths, sucking in the vital air that Mercury had struggled to find in her final seconds of consciousness. He felt like he should close her eyes, but he couldn't tell if they were open or not; they were covered with blood that had now dried into her coat and crusted over her eye sockets. He settled for resting his hoof on her forehead, closing his eyes, and uttering the simple prayer for the lost.

'Celestia watch over her, and grant unto her eternal rest.'

Now, it was time to care for himself. With some difficulty he was able to crawl past her, trying to treat her lifeless body with the respect and dignity it deserved, but finding that he still had to crawl right over her head in order to escape. The tunnel continued on; not so much a tunnel, but a passage through the collapsed walls and floors that fortuitously offered just enough space for him to squeeze through, as if divine intervention had created it so that he could escape.

And escape he did, for the tunnel led toward the light, and after another minute or crawling, Breeze emerged into the open air. He looked around, looked down. He found he was perched on the edge of the collapsed structure, and where he had been four stories above ground, he was now closer to a single story high. The hospital had gone down like a pack of cards, not quite a clean pancake collapse but enough to leave the building a mere shadow of its former self. Breeze took a deep breath of air, not stale like it had been below the rubble, bur fresh, clear. He looked up to the skies.

There was the Princess, still fighting, still swirling through the air. And there was something else, something most bizarre. It looked like a shooting star, perhaps a comet, though even as he watched, it faded away. He frowned, squinted against the bright light after being in the darkened tunnel. What was he looking at? At the centre of the phenomena appeared to be a creature of some kind. Yes, it was- it had four legs, wings, and a horn. It had to be Princess Luna, he thought to himself. It had to be Luna. He looked again, more closely. It had to be Luna.

But it wasn't.