Farachan

by QTXAdsy

The Unknown Red Hoof

Darkness. The only thing that Blue Arrow could see or even feel in the moment he was in. Everything seemed confusing; he couldn't remember anything from what had happened, it was like he was awake during a coma. Gradually, he felt a terrible pain explode in his wings that become worse every second. He then began to feel voices, very muffled they were, but slowly they became more audible like that of the sound of waves crashing against the rocks.

"Look!"

"He's…he's coming round!"

"He's not dead!"

The darkness slowly began to go away and a bright white light became the only thing that he could see in front of him. Then his body felt itself lurching forward into the light.

With his eyes firmly shut, Blue Arrow let out an agonizing groan with his teeth gritting in pain. The pain in his wings was excruciating as he tried heavy pants to calm himself down.

"Freighted the life out of us!" Said a female voice nearby him. Slowly opening his eyes, he looked around and found himself in a bed with his bottom torso wrapped in some bandages with some IV cables attached to him. Looking around him, there were many beds with many other Red Hooves all receiving medical attention from medics either stallion or mare.

He looked around and sighed when he saw where he was. The medical room. An area that he had hoped he'd never come across during his time during this war.

He then cast his eyes over to see a pale blue earth pony nurse beside his bed looking at him with great concern. "Thank heavens your still alive," expressed the mare with great relive.

"Wh…what happened?" Blue Arrow voiced faintly, groaning slightly from his broken wings.

"You and the others were...routed in that battle," the nurse explained sadly. "I'm sorry…but you lost the battle."

Blue Arrow stared at the mare stunned at what he had been told, then he sighed forlornly; he remembered the call for retreat from the commanders and him getting struck from one of the deadly magic blasts. But then it came to his attention that he had ended up mangled on the marsh back there and he somehow must've gotten out of there alive without being captured by the Alaccan forces.

"How'd I get out of there then?" Blue Arrow asked propping himself up on the bed.

"I…I don't know," the blue mare confessed, her eyes glancing away from him. "All I know is that you were brought in here quite late from one of the Red Hooves, a black stallion, and that your wings were badly injured."

A black stallion? The blue Pegasus knew that it had to be Shadow that must've saved him back there. But why? He didn't know and instead gazed around the room seeing all the wounded Red Hooves being treated by medical staff, some more badly than others with either wings or hooves missing. "Celestia above…how long have I been out for?"

The pale blue earth pony remained silent for what seemed like a minute. "…You've…been out unconscious for two days."

"What?!" Blue Arrow spluttered as his eyes went wide as dinner plates.

"I know sir," the nurse replied sadly. "When you came in, I feared that you were not able to be saved from the wounds you picked up." She looked down over his scarred body, it felt like some person had given him these wounds by slashing a knife over him. "It's nothing sort of a miracle that you survived. Had it not been for your wings, you could've been out of here and back with the others."

A sense of guilt seemed washed over the Red Hoof solider, out for two days? He dreaded to think what the public back on the mainland was feeling for them losing that battle. Still, they weren't the invincible force that the media had hyped them up to be, they were bound to lose a battle someday, only that Blue Arrow didn't think that he would be one of the unlucky ones for that particular battle and that it would be so soon.

"I do have some good news though, sir," the mare spoke up to gain the stallion's attention. "We're letting in visitors at this hour, I'll leave you with your friends to catch up on things."

"Alright then lass," Blue Arrow nodded in reply as she trotted over to the other side of the room to check up on another patient across from him with a badly scared face.

The blue Pegasus fell back on his bed and stared upwards towards the grey ceiling. He could only think that his friends must've thought he had been killed out there, but what of Flying Sunstar? That made his blood turn to ice; he had lost him during the mad final moments of the battle before the retreat. He prayed to Celestia that he was all right, but as he looked around the room of the many injured stallions on their beds, Blue Arrow could see none of them that looked like his older comrade and friend.

Maybe he was one of the lucky ones? He didn't know, all he did know was that he was in a medic room, along with what seemed like the survivors all in this room. Blue Arrow sighed dejectedly as he fell back on the bed, cringing a little as he fell back on the bed due to his badly injured wings. "Well Celestia," he muttered to himself. "Isn't this a fine mess? We lose a battle and I don't want to know how things are over there."

And so the Pegasus lay there lazily looking up at the grey ceiling and started wondering when he was going to get out of here. Wondering…

Time went by at a snail's pace with the only thing that the young troop could do was look at all the other wounded Red Hooves…wounded Red Hooves, an image that perhaps the Equestrian public did not want to see as they had hyped them up as gods.

Blue Arrow rubbed the side of his face in boredom, it didn't help either that the two Red Hooves in beds either left or right of him were both fast asleep, and Blue Arrow being the somewhat gentlecolt he could act at times decided not to bother them.

As he was thinking about what to do, an purple earth pony nurse with a deep blue mane and tail entered the room. "Attention all!" She ordered (her voice sounding quite raspy), gaining the attention of the Red Hooves straight away. "You'll be please to know that now it is visitor hour and that many of your fellow comrades are out there waiting to see you, so make yourselves comfortable."

She headed over the door from the other end of the room and opened it to reveal a mass of Red Hooves to enter the room and find their chosen friend that would be somewhere in this room. "Amazing," Blue Arrow chuckled to himself. "Nothin' 'appens in here, then suddenly, everythin' happens at once." He chuckled at his own joke, only to stop when he heard a familiar voice.

"There he is!" said the voice, and as Blue Arrow looked in the direction of where the voice was coming from, there was his close friends, Dynamo, Sunstar and Macca.

"Lads!" Blue Arrow greeted happily as his three friends trotted over to him.

"You won't believe how lucky you are!" Dynamo said in incredulity.

"Hey, ye cannae put a lad like myself doon that easily!" Blue Arrow replied with a smile. However his smile soon vanished when he looked over at Sunstar's face, red rims around his eyes with some scars over his face.

"Bloody hell, what happened to ye?" Blue Arrow asked in alarm.

"Those damn unicorns of there's!" Sunstar replied through gritted teeth. "I had a close one too, nearly blinded me as we were retreating." He paused briefly as he blinked his eyes a couple of times. "Mind you, my vision has been getting blurry, think I'm needing some glasses."

"Would suit you," Macca offered dryly, which led to the older yellow stallion to glare at him.

"…So…what happened after that battle?" Blue Arrow questioned the three, all of them looking back at him with sorrow on their faces.

"Terrible," Dynamo sighed with him closing his eyes as he remembered. "When we found out here that you guys had been defeated…oh Celestia, we all thought it was a cruel joke until the first bodies of our boys turned up here."

A chill went up Blue Arrow's spine as the image of bodies of Red Hoof soldiers arriving back to Coltfast. "Oh no…take it the public didn't take too well?"

"Awful," Sunstar replied sadly shaking his head. "You could say that while they were suppose to be celebrating Hearth's Warming, the news of our defeat made the celebrations horrific. A night of national trauma for Equestria."

"I don't even want to think what must've been going on," Blue Arrow said dejectedly.

"That's not the end of it," Macca added. "The militant generals over there have gotten cold hooves on us and that they are planning to build bases for the Equestrian army in every major town and city on the mainland in case of the Alaccans decide to invade by sea."

The blue stallion was speechless as he heard this. All of this in the time that he was unconscious that back home they had started planning for military bases to be built back home for fear of a defeat. "I…I can't believe this," he uttered in a dumbfounded manner.

"Neither can we," Sunstar replied grimly.

An uncomfortable silence fell among the four friends. Blue Arrow still couldn't understand that after their first victory at the borders that the Red Hooves had to end up like this, but then he narrowed his eyes at the other three troops.

"Lads…" He began clearing his throat. "We lost that battle aye, but we haven't lost the war now haven't we?"

The three Hooves looked at one another with some uncertain looking nods. "I might no' have power to lead nor have a rat's arse idea of how to lead an army, but I do believe that we need to rally up and take them on again."

The reaction from Sunstar, Dynamo and Macca remained unchanged from before, but then a small smile appeared on Dynamo's face as he looked at the rest of them. "Yes…yes your quite right dear chap. We can't think about our past like that, that's in the past. We have to keep going forward in our hope of winning the war."

Blue Arrow shifted a bit in his bed. "Hey Dynamo, who's suppose to be given the motivational speech here? You or me?"

A few chuckles followed from them at Blue Arrow's joke. "But seriously," Blue Arrow added. "Dynamo's right, we have to look forward, and if we can win a battle then sure to hell we can win a war." He grunted in slight pain from his wings.

"Damn your wings look like hell!" Macca exclaimed as he peered to the left to see the blue stallion's smashed wings.

"Aye that…" Blue Arrow muttered. "They say the bones in them were completed scunnered when I hit the ground like that, mind you, with some magic medical skills they have here, they say my wings will be ok within two days hopefully, then I'll be out of here."

"Celestia almighty," Sunstar uttered as he eyed the broken wings. "No disrespect though, but I'd hate to be you right now."

"Don't ye all?" Blue Arrow remarked with a cocky smirk.

Just then a mare's voice was heard on the other side of the room. "Visiting time's over now! Everyone leave now!"

Blue Arrow extended his forehoof forward to give his three comrades each a pat on their shoulders. "Well lads, guess that's that then, dinnae ye worry now, I'll be out before ye know it."

"Get better soon," Dynamo replied with a smile before he and the others joined the crowd as they headed out of the hospital room.

As he watched Dynamo, Sunstar and Macca leave the room, the stallion still had doubts on his mind. Though he had said to them that they'd win the war, he was to fair still doubting his own claim. Another thing was the whereabouts of a certain black stallion that so happened to have saved his life from that hell of a marshland.

"Oh Shadow," the blue Pegasus uttered to himself. "You are quite an enigma around here."

From then on, the day went by fairly quick, mainly at the fact that the injured Red Hoof solders had either the newspaper or various magazines they could read to keep them occupied. That was quite a great relive for them as for goodness knows how long each of them had been cooked up in this room.

First Blue Arrow would read one of the newspapers to read about what was happening back in Equestria while at the same time musing of various subjects to the other bedside troops. After that he would later read the sports news from his homeland of Alba, mostly though the Hoofball section (or soccer as those in Equestria would call it, much to Blue Arrow's chagrin.) There he cursed that his colthood home team, Maredinburgh City, were sitting third in the league table and had lost a crucial game in which they could've gone into second place.

"That stupid striker…" Blue Arrow thought angrily shaking his head.

It was just in that moment that Blue Arrow's looked up and saw an orange unicorn nurse mare walking with a large thick book that was being held up by her telekinesis magic. The injured Red Hoof stared at the book while wondering what this book was.

"Uhm, excuse me?" Blue Arrow called over the unicorn mare, who stopped walking and looked towards him.

"Yes? Something wrong?" The mare asked

"No," Blue Arrow replied. "Just wondering what that book ye have there?"

The mare smiled. "Oh this? That's just the name sheet for all the Red Hooves that are here in Coltfast."

"Ah," Blue Arrow nodded. "Alright lass sorr—"

He stopped mid sentence as he suddenly had an idea. "Wait, for all the Red Hooves here ye say?"

The orange unicorn nodded with a curious expressing on her face.

"Well, if ye dinnae mind, can I borrow it for a wee while?" Blue Arrow requested.

The nurse looked at the book, then back towards the stallion with a smile. "Alright then, sir. Here you go." And with that, she floated the book over towards Blue Arrow who grabbed it. After given the nurse a quick thanks, he began reading this book.

The entire book was covered in names, which seemed to feel like he was reading something like a war memorial. The names all had had either red, orange or green scribbled over the many names in the book. Reading at what the colours meant, Blue Arrow discovered that the green stood for still active, orange for injured or out of action and the red stood for deceased.

All the names were laid out in alphabetical order so finding his name wasn't much of a problem (his own named covered in orange meaning that he was wounded.) But that wasn't what he was looking for, he was looking for Shadow's name as by now Blue Arrow had been suspicious about how that stallion fitted in with the rest here.

First he started looking through the 'P' section to see if he using his real name, Peppercorn Tornado, within that book. However as he scanned that section over and over again, he couldn't find that name anywhere.

"The twat must've signed up using that stupid nickname," Blue Arrow snorted as he flipped through the pages till he found the 'S' section.

It did amuse him at first to see so many Red Hooves had a name which began with 'S', but quickly dived in to reading through the section. However no matter how hard he tried looking he couldn't find the name 'Shadow' in it. There were many names with Shadow such as 'Shadow Strike' or 'Shadow Heart', but no plain Shadow.

By now Blue Arrow's eyes widened to those of dinner plates. Shadow wasn't even on this list, not even in the 'Red' section. Crazy ideas began firing off in his head as began pondering who Shadow really was. A spy from the south? A rebel? Or even a hallucination after all this time?

He didn't know, he just didn't know what to do in this moment in time, all he could do was wait until he'd be out of this room and track down this infamous Peppercorn Tornado…