The first thing I noticed when I gained consciousness was the pounding in my head. I slowly opened my eyes and blinked slowly, wincing in pain as I registered the wound on my chest wrapped in bandages. What happened to me? Did Grey Fox defeat me? I wondered.
Trying to shut out the pain in my head and chest, I slowly pulled myself up into a sitting position. I was in some sort of primitive hut, with large, horse-like masks on the wall. There was a large cauldron of unknown liquid bubbling on a fireplace. I was completely alone.
Where was I? I remembered that I had blacked out, but I couldn’t remember how. I took a closer look at the masks hanging from the walls. Something about their physical appearance got me thinking that I was missing something important.
I hadn’t been physically restrained, and I took advantage of this whilst I could by eating a ration. That was another strange thing – I still had all of my equipment on my person. The ration helped me gain a lot of my strength back, and within minutes I was feeling much better than I had when I first woke up. With nothing else to do, I decided to wait for my captor – or as it could be, my rescuer – to return to the hut.
I didn’t have to wait for very long. The door of the hut opened, and a zebra stepped through, equipped with two saddlebags full of what looked to be a variety of exotic plants and herbs. I suddenly remembered everything at the sight of the zebra – being sent to Equestria, meeting Twilight Sparkle and her friends, training the –
“The Cutie Mark Crusaders!” I cried out loud, wondering how much time had passed since the manticore had knocked me unconscious. Anything could have happened to them whilst I was out!
I got off the bed, and started moving towards the door. The zebra was looking at me in bewilderment – understandable, since she likely wouldn’t have known about the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “Why do you leave, oh so soon? You act as if a foolish tycoon!” For some reason, she seemed to speak only in rhymes. It takes all kinds, I guess.
As I looked to the zebra, about to explain why I needed to leave immediately, I remembered something that Twilight Sparkle had told me on the first day that I had arrived in Ponyville. “…You’re Zecora, aren’t you?” I asked her. She nodded.
“I’ve lived in this forest, for quite a while. It is good that the ponies are no longer hostile.” I took that as a yes.
“Listen, do you know Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo? The three of them are lost somewhere in this forest, and I’ve got to rescue them! How long was I out for?” Zecora looked shocked at this news, realising the importance of what I was saying.
“I don’t think that it’s yet too late: The minutes you slept were less than eight.” I went over this in my head.
“Eight minutes, huh? Sounds like there’s still time!” As I stepped outside Zecora’s hut, I recognised the trees from where the manticore had sprung, and realised that I had been attacked just out of sight of Zecora’s hut. It certainly explained why she had found me so soon after the manticore had been chased off.
“Wait – you should not leave in a hurry! If you are not healed, I’ll start to worry!” I turned back to her.
“Don’t worry, Zecora. I’ve eaten some rations, you’ve patched me up with some bandages – I’ll be fine. In fact, you can come with me, if it’ll set your mind at ease.” Zecora considered for a moment.
“Then it is settled. I’ll come with you, and we’ll test our mettle!” I was glad to hear this – if Zecora lived in the Everfree Forest, then she probably knew it like the back of her hoof. I pointed in the direction I had been heading before the manticore had ambushed me.
“Good. Now, I was told that the Crusaders were over this way…”
===================
I pressed myself against a tree, and slowly drew my SOCOM pistol. At the next tree across from me, Zecora was likewise concealing herself. We both nodded silently to one another before leaning around our respective trees, and looking into the clearing to see what was there.
As overdramatic as the sea serpent had been, his information had been correct – the Cutie Mark Crusaders were here. At least, I assumed they were, as there was a cardboard box in the middle of the clearing, which was moving as though the occupants were shivering inside. Unfortunately for us, the clearing wasn’t empty – there were several creatures which looked similar to wolves, but seemed to be made of some sort of wood-like substance. Fortunately, they were all sleeping at the moment, but they would still be obstacles to us in saving the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
“Those timber wolves are not good news; they’ll soon see through the Crusaders’ ruse,” Zecora hissed across to me. I nodded in agreement, not sure how they had missed the Crusaders considering how close they were to them. Unless… maybe the cardboard box smelled like the timber wolves, so they weren’t attacking it? I shook my head. It didn’t matter why the Crusaders weren’t being attacked, what mattered right now was that they seemed safe.
“I’ll have to sneak past them and grab the Crusaders,” I replied back quietly. “There’s no sense in attacking them now whilst they’re all asleep.” Zecora nodded, and I slowly stepped out from behind the tree.
I had to be careful now. My plan was more or less to walk over to the Crusaders whilst making as little noise as possible, and then carry them out of the clearing without the timber wolves waking up. Unfortunately, I had no weapons with which I could take out the timber wolves silently… it was times like this that I wished that I had a tranquiliser gun of some sort.
I stepped over the paws of the timber wolf nearest to me, hoping that it wouldn’t hear or smell me in its sleep. If it did, then Zecora and I would have to fight them off for long enough for the Cutie Mark Crusaders to escape. I had no idea how vicious timber wolves were in comparison to regular wolves, but either way I wanted to avoid a fight.
Fortunately, the timber wolf showed no outward sign of detecting my presence. I breathed a sigh of relief, before stepping over the next wolf in my path. Again, it showed no sign of detecting me. Provided that I could keep this up, I should be able to rescue the Crusaders with no harm done.
After a few more tense minutes, I made it past the wolves, and to the cardboard box which Zecora and I were hoping contained the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I got down on my stomach, now that there was room to do so, and crawled closer to the box. “Girls. Are you in there?” I growled quietly.
The box was thrown up, revealing the three fillies. From what I could make out, they seemed to be okay physically. “Snake! You have no idea how glad we are ta’ see-”
Dun! All around us, the timber wolves woke up upon hearing Apple Bloom. I got up and drew my SOCOM. “Get under the box. Now!” I barked to the Crusaders. Although they were starting to panic upon realising that the timber wolves had woken up, they had enough sense to listen to me.
Zecora had come galloping into the clearing, and was now kicking the timber wolves viciously. I aimed my SOCOM at the nearest wolf to assist her, but upon squeezing the trigger, I got nothing more than a click. Crap! The gun had jammed!
Hearing a noise behind me, I spun around to see a wolf leaping at me. Instinctively, I punched it. Although the wood it seemed to be made of was hard enough to hurt my knuckles quite painfully, it still did the job, and sent the wolf to the ground whimpering. This was looking bad. I had forgotten to reload my FAMAS rifle after fighting off the manticore with it, and my SOCOM was jammed.
“Zecora!” I said to her. She was doing quite well for herself – several timber wolves had collapsed in pain around her, and she didn’t seem to have received any major damage from the wolves. “Can you hold them off for another moment? I need to reload my gun!” In the heat of the battle, it was the best solution I could think of.
Zecora either nodded, or hit a timber wolf with her chin – it was hard to tell which. Either way, I took it as a yes. A moment later I had reloaded, and I immediately fired at a timber wolf which was leaping at Zecora from behind.
The bullets slammed into the wolf, sending it falling to the ground. I noticed that some splinters fired off the wolf where the bullets hit it. As I continued firing, the wolves soon started howling, before running away faster than we could follow. Within moments we were alone. I looked to Zecora and shrugged. I had no idea why they had all run off like that, but I wasn’t going to complain about it.
Zecora and I walked over to the cardboard box a few metres away. I was pretty pleased to see that it was still intact. “The wolves are gone, girls,” I said. “It’s safe to come out now.” After a moment of hesitation, the box was lifted and the Cutie Mark Crusaders emerged.
“Snake!” Sweetie Belle cried out, before cantering over and hugging my leg with her forehooves. The other two followed suit a moment later. It hadn’t realised how scared they must have been until that moment.
“Hey, it’s alright now,” I muttered, trying to imply that they could stop hugging me now. Apple Bloom seemed to be the only one to get the hint, as she switched from hugging me to hugging Zecora. I sighed and simply let the three fillies stay where they were until they had calmed down.
“We’re so sorry!” Sweetie Belle cried, more into my leg than to me.
“We shouldn’t have gone so far into the Everfree Forest, but once we were in the box, we wanted to see how good it really was!” Scootaloo added.
“Can ya forgive us, Snake?” Apple Bloom added, looking over from Zecora.
“Forgive you, huh?” I asked. “Sure I can… if you can tell me what you’ve learned from this.” I was hoping that the Cutie Mark Crusaders would realise that the Everfree Forest was dangerous, and that you should never go into a mission without proper preparation.
“That cardboard box really is awesome!” Scootaloo said after a moment of thinking. I sighed. It was close enough.
===================
Zecora had agreed to lead us out of the Everfree Forest, since none of us knew the precise way to get to Ponyville. Although the sun had set, the moon was full tonight, so it was still fairly bright. I had already called Twilight on the codec, and she was going to meet us just outside the Everfree Forest along with Applejack and Rarity, both of whom had been worried about their sisters. I found it a bit odd that Twilight hadn’t mentioned any of Scootaloo’s family, but I supposed that that wasn’t really my business as to why they weren’t there.
“…and so then we got lost, and when we tried finding our way back, we just got lost even further in the forest!” The Crusaders were explaining their adventure to me – in hindsight, they found it more exciting than scary.
“Do you think that we could get our cutie marks in getting lost?” Scootaloo suddenly interrupted.
“What would that even look like?” Sweetie Belle asked, confused.
“…Okay, it was just a question,” Scootaloo grumbled after realising how silly her question had been.
Sweetie Belle continued telling the story. “So we decided to stay in that clearing and wait for somepony to find us, but then those timber wolves came and fell asleep there!”
“Fell asleep there, huh? Any reason why they didn’t notice you?” I asked. It was something I had been wondering about.
“They didn’t notice us because we’d been in the box!”
“Yeah! That box is awesome!” I sighed. It looked as though I had taught them that much, at least.
“Something I do not understand, is why the timber wolves suddenly ran,” Zecora pointed out, after having been silent for a while.
“Yeah… that was kind of weird,” I admitted. “The second I started firing, they all got away as fast as they could.” Apple Bloom turned to me excitedly.
“Ah think ah know why! Th’ timber wolves have always been afraid a’ loud noises, f’r as long as the Apple family’s been in Ponyville!”
“Afraid of loud noises, huh?” That would make sense – the sound of the handgun had scared them off. It was a pity it had jammed at first – we could have avoided all of the fighting.
Zecora had been leading us on a path which she claimed was usually free of creatures of the forest, and by now I had let my guard down. Even though I knew that soldiers should never let their guards down whilst on a mission, I still had. If only I had been paying more attention, I could have avoided the next thing that happened to me.
Not looking where I was going, I tripped over a tree root, and face-planted into the ground.
“Ooof!!” I winced in pain. Raising my head, I saw that I had fallen face-first into a patch of blue flowers. Behind me, I could hear the Cutie Mark Crusaders snickering. As I picked myself up, I noticed a tingling sensation in my mouth.
“Oh no, you unfortunate human bloke!” Zecora said as she saw that I had fallen over. She quickly trotted over to me. “You’ve landed in some poison joke!”
“Poison… joke?” Apple Bloom stopped snickering and came over to me as well.
“Did ya, Snake? Did ya land in those flowers over there?” She seemed genuinely worried, although I couldn’t guess why. Aside from the tingling sensation in my mouth, I felt fine.
“Did I land in those flowers?” Huh? I hadn’t meant to say that!
“Yeah, that’s what ah was askin’ ya-”
“Asking?!” This was getting weird. I had meant to say “yeah,” but instead I just repeated what she had said, only with a question mark on the end.
Zecora shook her head. “It seems the flower’s affecting you – ”
“Affecting?!” She glared at me before continuing.
“ – and now your speech patterns are all askew!”
“As-”
“What she’s talkin’ about,” interrupted Apple Bloom, “is that the flower’s makin’ ya repeat what everypony’s sayin’!” I was about to ask how that would work, but after opening my mouth, I slowly closed it. Nothing came out of my mouth involuntarily.
“It seems to happen when you talk,” Zecora said, examining me, “so please stay silent as we walk.” Huh. It sounded weird, but it seemed as though what they were saying made sense. I assumed that the problem wasn’t too serious, otherwise Zecora and Apple Bloom probably would have been a bit more worried about it.
In the debriefing room, Colonel Campbell made a note on a piece of paper below the desk, so that Snake couldn’t see it. Remember to go over Snake’s medical records for S.M. mission – check for head traumas, it read. Snake paused in his story for a moment to light up another cigarette.
“So you’re saying that this flower – this poison joke – it made you repeat what people said?” Campbell asked, trying to follow along. Snake nodded.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what it did. If I tried to speak, I’d repeat whatever the last person said, regardless of how much time had passed between them and me talking.”
So… what’s the difference? Campbell wondered. “I’d never heard of this poison joke before, not even from Miller.” Snake took a puff of his cigarette before continuing. “Had he ever warned you about it?”
Campbell sighed. “Snake, Miller can’t have warned you about it – it’s not real.”
“Then how do you explain what happened to me?” Campbell opened his mouth to reply, before deciding not to bother. I’ll get the medical records, and let them speak for themselves, he thought. Campbell gestured for Snake to continue the debriefing.
“… how about sailing?!” The Cutie Mark Crusaders were discussing ways to get their cutie marks now, and throwing around different ideas. At Zecora’s request, I was staying silent – not that I would have had much to add anyway.
“No, we should definitely try making music. Just like Vinyl Scratch!”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “Ah dunno. Ah still wouldn’t mind tryin’ mah hoof at mechanics. All we need is some tools, metal, gears –”
“Metal Gear?!?!”
“Quiet, Snake. Now, as ah was sayin’ –”
“Your journey is now at an end,” Zecora interrupted as we left the forest. I hadn’t even noticed until she brought it up. “Come some other time, my young friends.” She smiled as we saw Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Applejack up ahead.
The three fillies trotted ahead, waving goodbye to Zecora as they headed to the mares up ahead. As helpful as Zecora had been, I couldn’t blame them for wanting to get to their friends and relatives immediately after being lost in the Everfree Forest for hours. I gave Zecora a small nod before joining the other ponies.
“Hello, Snake!” Twilight greeted me as I approached. “Good job on finding the fillies – I’m guessing that there were no troubles?” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were hugging their respective sisters, whilst Scootaloo was jumping around happily.
“Troubles?” I needed one of the Crusaders to explain what had happened with the poison joke, but they were all in the middle of reuniting at the moment.
Twilight frowned. “Yes, troubles. There weren’t any, were there?”
“’Course there weren’t!” Applejack replied whilst still hugging Apple Bloom. “Ah gotta hand it to ya, Snake, ya said that you’d save these little fillies, and ya delivered on your promise! You’re a real hero!” I turned away, feeling both guilty and embarrassed. These ponies didn’t know the extent of my activities as a covert operative. I sighed before replying.
“Real…hero?”
“Yeah, that’s what ah said!” Applejack answered, confused.
“Snake, is anything the matter?” Rarity asked, starting to catch on.
“Matter?!” Now that I actually needed to explain what had happened to me, I was finding the repetitive effects of the poison joke incredibly frustrating.
“He accciden’ally fell in some poison joke,” Apple Bloom explained. “An’ now he can’t help but repeat what you’re all sayin’.” The three mares looked at each other for a moment before bursting out laughing.
“Repeat what you’re all saying?!” I exclaimed. This wasn’t funny!
“Oh, Snake, don’t you worry,” Twilight said, still chuckling. “We’ve got the ingredients for the poison joke antidote back at the library, and we’ll have you fixed up soon.”
“What is the antidote, anyway?” Scootaloo asked, confused.
“It’s pretty much just a bubble bath, Scoots,” Apple Bloom explained. Wait, what?
“Bubble bath?!” This time I actually did want to say what I did. Unfortunately, every pony seemed to realise that, so this just sent them into more fits of laughter. After they calmed down, we started heading back into town now that the crisis with the Cutie Mark Crusaders was over.
Just as we reached Carousel Boutique, where Sweetie Belle would be spending the night with Rarity, Rarity leaned over to me. “Oh, and Snake?” I nodded to confirm that I had heard her.
“If my sister ever goes missing thanks to you again, I will destroy you!” After a moment of consideration, I nodded. Yeah, that seemed fair enough.
The joke was on Rarity, anyway: I had gotten my cardboard box back, and nothing was going to part me from it ever again.