Warning, this may get depressing. Actually, it's supposed to.
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Tick... tock... tick... tock...
There was very little time to myself after we got Twilight's coronation ceremony in order, what with all the tasks to be handled. Chorion, Exonia. Arachni, and Namata would play the part of flag-bearers at the crowning ceremony, wearing a disguise that looked eerily reminiscent of Fluttershy ad Rarity's mutant offspring. Discord steered clear of me, though that was more a scheduling miracle than any malice. From the final recordings the Deceiver left to me, in perfect English, mind you, I could gather he and the Deceiver shared some bad blood over the eons. It was midnight before I had a moment to relax, and I did so in the one place I was sure to find peace.
“Well, dear friend, we've come a long way.” I patted the massive war machine that was Leviathan, feeling the spirit thrum happily at my touch. Poor thing had driven to Canterlot to find me, and Celestia bunked it in my old workshop. The tank and I had been through a lot, if you count an invasion and a desert skirmish as such. “Hard to believe we almost killed Chrissy once, isn't it?”
“I must sound like a maniac to an outsider, talking to myself like this.” I chuckled as I cleaned the dust off the mighty beast's chassis. There was an odd air about this room, a sense of deep finality and completion. As oddly as it sounds, it felt like I was dreaming or having some surreal experience. Was peace finally a reality for me and the rest of Equus? Was this journey really over? My helmet was actually a little stifling as I blinked back a brewing emotional outburst. If I was going to cry, it would be within a weapon of mass destruction.
Tick... tock... tick... tock...
I hunkered down in the pilot's seat, locking my hands at the arms' edges and wriggling to find a comfortable position. Did the Deceiver ever sit like this while interred upon his golden throne? I wouldn't have the chance to know now, not anymore. I pressed my thumb against the release hatch, hearing the familiar hiss of equalizing air pressure. This was the easiest bit of armor to remove, and the only one that didn't require instructions. Everything else was hooked into the plugs in my spine, and needed a careful hand to undo. My vision blurred a bit as the HUD faded away, leaving my eyes naked. Even the near-darkness of Leviathan's interior burned my ocular orbs.
I shook my head and prepared for the next bit this sure to be painful process; the first link was at the base of my skull. Following the instructions left to me, I relaxed my neck and thumbed the two hidden buttons. There was no rush of trapped gasses as this seal broke, and no pain as the artificial nerves were disconnected from my natural ones. Still, my right arm and both legs tingled for a moment, almost like they were going numb. While odd, it wasn't worth my concern.
I actually kind of regretted taking the mask off first, given that the instructions were no longer available. Pressing ever-onward, I relaxed the muscles in my lower body as best I could. The lumbar uplink couldn't be undone by outside means, and required a delicate touch and carefully-ordered muscle contractions. All the same, it was unlocked in twelve seconds, nearly deadening my legs again. The same numbness rushed through my right arm, and the vision in my right eye swam in tune with the staticy ripples. Wearing the suit would grant me near-immortality, but it wasn't worth what I would have to give up to meet that bonus.
Tick... tock... tick... tock...
Call it what you will, but I still moved the thoracic-lumbar node, tensing and relaxing my abdominal and thoracic muscles in the odd rhythm required to break the bond even as I slipped out of my greaves. For a moment, I considered lying down and forgetting about this, but the pain I felt must have indicated something was wrong somewhere within the armor shell. Right? The centermost link came undone, and much of my torso's armor fell to the floor. I tumbled back into the pilot's seat as my legs caved beneath me. My right arm faded form my sense almost as quickly as my lower extremities ceased to be.
The final section of armor covered my shoulders, and linked to my body at the junction of my cervical and thoracic vertebrae. Thankfully, it was on a time-release, and would automatically remove itself shortly after the other portions were disconnected. However, if this particular section was the malfunctioning one, my heart could very easily stop. With one arm hanging limp at my side, and my left suddenly too weak to do anything but mimic its counterpart, I could do nothing but sit and listen for my personal Doomsday Clock ticked away.
Tick... tock... tick... tock...
With the slightest of sounds, the link severed itself. In that same instant, my world turned as white as the explosion that forced Jay and I into Equestria. Even as the blinding, white void encompassed all that I could comprehend, darkness infiltrated the very edges. Slowly, but steadily increasing in speed, the black tendrils snaked and intertwined until it looked as though I saw a pure nothingness. A single spec of light penetrated the dark, a bright flicker of hope. It grew much faster than the blackness could hope to stall, until it permeated the void with its simple image.
A tiled ceiling that reminded me of an office or government facility greeted my eyes. I should make that eye; the right half of my vision and my dominant eye remained dark, giving my line of sight a curved internal edge. Pain suffused through out my body, worse than the fires in Marehouse Thirteen, worse than the anxiety that filled my heart at facing the Deceiver, worse than the scorpion king's venom that nearly killed, and far worse than the toxins Catach pumped into my gut. It was as through every injury I had every received in my life was given to me at once, and I couldn't even scream for help.
Gone was the cozy interior of the Baneblade, instead replaced by a firm mattress and chilly air. I lay still, trying not to move and amplify my pain any more than it already soared. Through the mixed signals my brain interpreted, I could plainly feel my left hand clutch the linens, but nothing from my right. If I could move, I would have checked. There was movement, a blurry, human figure in black with a pale face. For a moment, I thought I saw the Deceiver again, though those fears faded as the shape came into focus. It was priest, carrying his bible and a rosary, looking at me as you might view a dying man you cannot help.
Tick... tock... tick... tock...
Another man, aged by stress and experience, stood next to the clergyman. He was one of the instructors at my high school, and perhaps the only teacher to hold my respect. He taught me a lot about life, how the world worked; he even helped me with personal issues. We had an agreement we both swore to uphold: one of us would be present for the other's death. This was more for him than me, given that I had been sixteen at the time. If I was in pain, lying in a bed in some godforsaken clinic, things must have been pretty bad.
The one vocalization I made was a wet gurgle, like my lungs were rattling in my chest. I probably didn't have long for this world, though this left more than a few questions about reality. Was this real? Had my adventures in Equestria been real? Did the blast from the FTL gun cripple me and very nearly kill me? In my pained state, I couldn't even form the most vacant of rational ideas. The two men I entrusted in a document that had slipped my mind somewhere between being chased by royal guards and meeting Princess Celestia could only look at me with sadness as my life began slipping away.
This was not what I wanted, to die some inglorious death in a hospital bed. I wanted Chrysalis, and Equus, and Celestia, and Trixie, and Lyra and Bon-Bon, and adveture; the life I'd created for myself with my own, two hands. If it wasn't real then why did my mind force me to see it? My eye's sight began to dim as I simmered in unreleasable anger. My own brain the control center of my body, had rebelled against my mind. Or had it in fact helped me? This pain I felt, if time in Equestria was comparable to time here, would have been much worse a year ago. I cursed silently, my body too damaged to even rage against its demise, my demise. My death would not come at the hands of a god, or to Romans and Turks like my ancestors, or even to the enemies of the United States; instead, they came from injuries I had sustained in an accident while chasing a childhood dream.
Even as the light faded from my eyes, one thought resounded in my mind, and it was one I had been pondering since I was eight. When Death wrapped my in his cold embrace, what would happen to what made me, well, me?
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In Washington, DC, a teenager sputtered his last breaths. Taylor, after his experiment with faster-than-light travel, had been horribly injured. His device worked, though youth and the joy of success had blinded him to its dangers. An explosion, which scattered bits of matter across North America but left no crater or collateral damage, had taken the boy's legs and right arm. The were never recovered, though the stumps were almost cleanly severed. The National Guard had been deployed to find the source of the disturbance, and the two teens involved were rushed to a nearby hospital. After only and hour, both were flown to the District of Columbia to be cared for in an experimental facility.
The FTL gun's blueprints were found upon searching Taylor's laptop, locked behind a sixty-seven-digit password and disguised as pornography. DARPA had a field day, as had the international scientific community as a whole, and many people around the globe became intrigued by the invention and its creator. Jay had been spared most of the blast, suffering only radiation poisoning and a mild concussion on top of a few broken bones. The flautist raised money and even pleaded with the American public to donate to save his friend's life.
On that same laptop, in a file next to the gun's blueprints, was a last will and testament. It was free to publicly view, but could not be edited without a password of roughly four-hundred characters. The document revealed much about Taylor and his personality, but the clause regarding the permanent vegetative state he found himself in was rather amusing in a macabre sense. The Alabamian, hating politics with a passion had left the right to unplug him in the hands of none other than the President of the United States. This was done purely for the public relations nightmare it would cause for his head of state. A year later, the decision was made by fate, and the boy began his death rattles three days ago.
An odd request for a priest and his instructor was written within his will, and they grimly obliged. As an atheist for much of his life, Taylor's decision to have a clergyman by his side in his final hours was a shock to those that knew his secret, though his close friends knew it was probably so he could say something worthy of record in response to his last rites. Still, a Christian scientist had flown in from California to fill this role.
A year and a day after the accident, Taylor awoke for roughly half a minute, before succumbing to his injuries. He died at noon on March nineteenth in the Year of Our Lord two-thousand-thirteen.