Clark stirred, dreams flickering into vision of his minds eye. Consisting of memories, regrets, nightmares, and mistakes, dreams held none of that pleasant detachment that they held when he was younger. Gone for him were the dreams that being in the military meant you led a life of adventure and glamour. In their stead, his military career flashed through his mind. To an outsider, he was a successful soldier, becoming a captain just after 15 years of service, receiving numerous medals for heroism, and being well recognized and respected throughout the Terran forces.
However, there were things the public didn’t see. Choking up on his first mission, causing half of his squad to be wiped out. Ordering men to their deaths to capture territory they thought was important, but was scoured by the retreating Dracos. Being the loan survivor of mission after mission. These passed as flickering nightmares, thankfully. However, one was always present in his mind.
Flame flickered around the crumpled wreckage as Lieutenant Clark scrambled to his feet. He turned and helped his men out of the burning husk. The passenger section was well protected from the blast, the gunnery and operation sections taking the brunt of it. Clark pulled the last man from the wreckage.
“Move out,” he said, the order echoing seemingly forever in the cavern of his subconcious.
“Sir,” one soldier stated, “Lyons is wounded.”
“How bad?” Clarks question was edged with mixed anger and frustration. He cared for his men, but he knew he had to move.
“Yes sir,” the soldier, Jacobson replied. “His arm is wounded. Deep laceration, though not fatal, he could lose the arm if he doesn’t get treated soon.”
“Put a dressing on it and let’s move. If we don’t find better cover we’ll have more to worry about that that.” As his medic applied first aid to Lyons, Clark turned and crouched, surveying the horizon. It was sundown, and the red and orange of the fading light mixed with the fire and smoke, turning the sky a sickly red. No one expected an attack this far in, not this soon. Just one month ago the Draco Tribal Union declared war after the incident on EP-33, and now they were 4 light-years inside the Terran Sphere of Influence.
The planet hit was a human colony world, barren rock with large patches of green. The entire planet was used for experimenting with terraforming, and after deemed successful, colonists flocked to it. With a population of 6.2 million at the time of attack, Sable was fairly well populated, but only had an active garrison of 550,000. More than enough to fend off pirates and separatists, but not enough to repel a surprise attack. Clark and his platoon was ambushed after moving to take a defensive position on the outskirts of the capital city.
“Sir?” The medic, Jacobson, snapped Clark out of his trance and faced his men, what was left of his platoon. Only 13 men. “Orders?” The medic continued.
“Keep low and move for that storage warehouse,” he pointed to a low, silver building that was relatively unscathed, offering a good defensive position.
As he and his men crossed the open plane, sounds leaked into his memories, sounds that he knew didn’t belong there. Tapping, talking, beeping, scratching, beeping. He stirred, panicked, and lost his breath. The burnt world, his men, the draco hunting party that was waiting for them spun out beneath him, leaving him floating in darkness.
The nurse pony on duty, Nurse Redheart, was going over the patients vitals. His blood pressure, heart-rate, and respiratory rate had leveled out, despite being as low when he came in. After a week, when taking a second look and deciding that they had to remove his armor, he flat-lined, and then spiked back up. After investigating, needles were found spaced in the suit that were injecting him full of medicine. It was probably the only reason he survived, seeing as the only medicine that was administered on the ponies part was an IV nutrient solution.
Redheart shook her head. An unidentified creature, wearing armor with what looked like weapons attached, that came in a metal box from the stars. Nurse Redheart was smart enough to know an alien, considering that there have been sightings of strange lights and abductions for fifty years or so. But to actually see one, in her hospital, it was almost unreal.
As she marked down her last notes on the patient and re-attached the clipboard to the hook at the end of the bed. As she turned and headed for the door, the beeping from the heart rate monitor sped up. Turning quickly, she saw him twisting and thrashing rather violently in his bed, his heart rate almost off the charts and his breathing quick and shallow.
“Hey!” She called out the door while trying to still him under her hooves. “I need some help here. The coma patient is waking up and he’s not doing it nicely!” Within seconds, two more nursing ponies where there to help, one helping Redheart hold him down while the other grabbed a syringe full of a sedative.
“Hurry up with that!” The second nurse pony yelled back, Clark’s thrashing becoming more violent.
“Hold his head still,” the one with the syringe replied. Redheart tried, pushing his head to one side with her hoof so the other could inject the sedative right into his neck. But she didn’t have a firm hold, and his head slipped around. He leaned up and bit into her leg, just above her hoof. Redheart recoiled, leaving his top half un-subdued. In a split second, he had his lower half freed from the second pony, and leapt out of bed, tearing out his IV needle and vital monitors.
He stood, the low bed between him and the three medical staff. His feet were shaking but his fists were up, and his eyes were wide, and his ragged shaking breathe was the only noise other than the screech on the flat line.
“What are you?”
Twilight sat out on her balcony, a stack of books to either side of her and one open in front of her. The purple pony read quickly, absorbing the words on the page before using magic to turn the page. She sipped a cup of tea Spike had prepared for her. As she magicked the last page, she sighed as she didn’t find any helpful information. Again.
She levitated the book onto the stack to her right, and pulled one off the top of the stack to her left.
“Observation of Astral Bodies, part 4,” she said wearily. “Hopefully this will mention something about life in outer space.” Twilight buried herself in research ever since they checked the creature, which by the insistence of Fluttershy had to be called by his name otherwise they would probably hurt his feelings. She reasoned it could live on another planet, seeing as Princess Luna did survive on the moon for 1000 years.
She opened the book up. As much as she enjoyed studying, going four weeks without finding anything relevant to the situation was pretty frustrating. Although her mind was beginning to understand the possibilities of space travel. Though it seemed a little far fetched to her at the moment.
She poured out the last of her tea and re-adjusted her position for the next couple hours of studying. Again, she became absorbed in the pages, her concentration only broken by having to turn the page, or stopping every so often to process something. Or when Rainbow Dash crashed into her balcony. However, the latter had become so commonplace Twilight just looked up at the cyan pegasus, not surprised in the least.
“Failed trick attempt?” Twilght asked.
“Not really.”
“Applejack not sleeping again?”
“Nope.”
“Get pranked by Pinkie Pie?”
“Worse.”
“Then what?” Twilight was out of guesses.
“Down at the hospital, our visitor woke up.”
Twilight smiled and closed her book. “Good, now we can find out more about him.” Rainbow Dash bit her lip and glanced around. Twilight frowned. “He didn’t take to waking up to well did he?”
“Yeaaahhh,” Dash said, “nopony is hurt, but he’s asked to speak with whoever brought him here. So they sent me to get you. You might want to hurry before he draws too much of a crowd.”
“Right,” Twilight said, putting her books away and standing up. “And again, could you get Fluttershy?” Dash nodded, and soon picked herself up to find Fluttershy. Twilight went to fetch spike, because she wanted her assistant there to mark down notes for her while she talked to him. She went over the checklist in her head.
“Paper. Check. Quill. Check. Spike. Check.” With everything in order in her saddlebags, she began trotting out the door and down the street to the hospital.
Coming up the path from the Everfree, Zecora and her companion entered town, going unnoticed for now.
Several hours earlier...
Vra’sta stood and stretched his lower back. He had recovered from his surgery earlier in the week, two weeks after he had crash landed. He was skeptical before, but Zecora was rather skilled. He was still alive, and all Zecora had to work with was guesswork and her past experience. When he asked her about it, he found out Zecora was a doctor in her home country, Zebrabwe, which had a past of petty tribal disputes and war. Much like the Draco homeworld.
Vra’sta had taken a liking to her. It took some getting used to the way she spoke, but she was a fascinating individual. She carved all the decorations in her home herself, and he found the symbols beautiful. The ornate wooden faces were different then the carved rune posts of his home, but the principal was the same.
But, after having his life saved, he wasn’t going to sit around and just take in the sights. Three days after he could move he had insisted that he repay her kindness in some way. So, after some persistence, he was helping her with minor tasks. Herb gathering, brewing, a bit of repair work on her house. Menial labor he would delegate to his subordinates, but it didn’t bother him to do it.
At the end of the week, also the end of the month, Zecora was headed into town to pick up supplies that she couldn’t get out in the forest. Vra’sta asked to go with her so he could help her, and so he could make his presence known. He was re-tying the blue stones into his red hair on his back when Zecora came to fetch him.
“What is that, if I may inquire, and any help do you desire?” Vra’sta turned to her, tying the last stone, a blue crescent, into his hair that started on his nek.
“No, if you can’t tie tribal markings yourself then it’s an insult to your tribe. It would be like changing your own stripes, or that mark on your flank.” Zecora walked around to his back to closer observe the adornments.
“These are awards, these stones of blue. Earning them yourself, your honor proved true.”
“Yes, the ones with pointed designs are for courage, and the ones with rounded designs are for societal achievements. The crescent on my neck is for becoming Jitium, or tribal leader.”
“And the ones that are cracked, splintered, cored. What is it that those stand for?”
Vra’sta’s eyes became downcast, staring at the ground between his clawed feet. He held his right side, where among numerous battle scars, one stood out from the others. A pale circle, the exact diameter of a draco horn. “Those are for instances of dishonor or cowardice.” His voice was somber. Zecora opened her mouth to speak, but decided against it. Most don’t want to speak of something like that.
“Well, let us get on our way. Best to start early to not take all day.” Her companion nodded, tying a red sash around his waist and up over his shoulder. In it he concealed his long knife. Zecora noted this but said nothing. If it maid him feel safe in unfamiliar territory, then he’d let him do it.
As they started on the path towards town, Zecora kept glancing back. Her predatory companion worried her somewhat. But if he planned to make a meal out of ponies, he would have done it already. But he still had that look, she had seen it before in the more dangerous forest creatures, and those with grudges in her home country: The look that he was still hunting something.
Clark stared wide-eyed out the window. “No way,” he said to himself. Everyone, if that would be the proper term, in this town were horses. That could talk. And do human things. He turned back to the three nurse ponies in the room. Granted, he had seen a unicorn when he first emerged from the wreckage of his ship. But he attributed that to the shock of impact and the drugs his suits medical system had flooded his body with. On top of there being normal horses (if they could be called normal, he remarked) there were creatures from human mythology. Pegasi, Unicorns, and he had even seen a tiny dragon on the back of a unicorn.
“Okay, I give up,” He exclaimed, “where am I? Limbo, purgatory, hell?” The nurse ponies looked at each other, confused.
“Uhhh, no,” Redheart replied. “You’re in Equestria. We’re sending the pony you asked for in here. Hopefully she’ll be able to answer some of your questions. Just relax, please. We’ll leave the room to you and her, let you sort things out.” Redheart and the other two ponies began slowly backing out of the room. Clark, realizing that his body wasn’t ready for anything as physical as his earlier activities, held himself steady before he lost his balance. As the ponies left, he lay back on the bed. He closed his eyes, sorting things out based on what he knew.
“Okay, aliens, that’s expected. But an exact same species that we have on Earth, and even creatures from mythology. There is no way this can be real.” He had heard something about inter-dimensional travel. That’s basically what happened when you go faster than the speed of light though, and since that was perfected, once you decelerate then you leave the subspace. Besides, falling into the gravity well from such a low velocity wouldn’t have been enough to send him faster than light. He shook his head, getting off topic. “Alright, doesn’t matter how I got here. How am I going to get back.” He twitched as he remembered something: the datapad Wilkerson handed him didn’t mention any signs of habitation....
A slight clopping caught his attention before he could dwell on that thought. He sat up slightly just in time to see a purple unicorn with a small dragon on it’s back. “Fuck,” he thought, “I’ll never get used to this.”
Rainbow Dash was flying back into town after retrieving Fluttershy. Since it was less of an emergency this time, she left after the yellow pegasus had insisted she didn’t need help with anything. Her responsibilities for the day put behind her, she spiralled through the sky towards the ground, pulling away at the last moment, then looping through the air in wide circles, growing tighter and faster until she pulled her wings in completely and tumbled through the air. She spread her wings, catching the air and gliding down to a low hanging cloud, just above the center of ponyville. She smiled to herself, proud of her awesome flying skills.
She took a look below her, down at the busy streets of Ponyville. A crowd was massing outside of the hospital due to the fast spreading news that the visitor would be awakening. The town had been buzzing about it ever since Twilight brought him back into town. But something on the other side of town caught her attention. It wasn’t a large crowd, but rather two ponies. Well, actually, one pony and something else. She dropped from the cloud, spreading her wings to glide towards ground.
As she got closer, she saw that it was Zecora and what looked to be a Dragon companion, although it was taller than Zecora. But something was off about it, something that made her nerves twitch as she drew closer to ground. Dash landed, flapping her wings once to set herself gently on the ground. Zecora was busy looking through the produce at the stand, the creature putting the ones she picked out into her saddle bags. The vendor, as nervous as Dash was, stared wide-eyed at every move it made, wary of it.
Dash approached from behind them carefully. A slight twitch ran through the creatures head, and it turned to face her. She stopped in her tracks as her gaze met its. It turned as Zecora said something and began walking further towards town, following the zebra on her chores.
“Uh, hey Zecora,” Rainbow Dash said, approaching nervously.
“Hello there Rainbow Dash,” Zecora replied cheerfully, “Down from the clouds to see me at last.” Zecora smiled at her, and over her shoulder, her companion eyed Dash.
“Yeah, well, I’m not trying to be rude, but, what is that,” Dash asked in her straightforward, blunt manner.
“My friend here is from quite far, found him in the forest, fallen from the stars.” Dash’s eyes flew open wider.
“Well that’s weird. Twilight found something outside of town that she said fell from the stars. It’s actually in the hospital right now.” Suddenly, the air grew tense, and Dash felt a twinge of regret for saying that. A low rumble reverberated from Zecora’s far side, drawing her and Dash’s attention. The creatures muscles bunched, and claws began to slowly emerge from its fingers.
“Vra’sta...” Zecora began, but trailed off as it dropped to the ground on all fours and took off, running towards the hospital faster than anypony they had seen run. Dash looked at Zecora, both clearly confused, until the wheels of thought clicked in Dash’s mind.
“Twilight’s with it at the hospital, and that thing is headed right towards them!” Instantly, she flew off, leaving a dusty rainbow in her wake.
Vra’sta’s eyes focused on the ground in front of him. His claws dug into the ground, propelling him forward as fast as his limbs could manage. It was clear now. He had noticed it when he first came to town, but that scent was muddled by every other scent around it, the scent he had smelt many times before. Blood, human blood. The scent grew stronger ahead, coming from the building outside of which was a massed group of ponies. He roared, clearing the way and jumped through the gap of frightened ponies. He ripped open the door, and stormed inside. Every part of him was focused on the hunt, and soon he would relish in his vengeance.
“Hey there,” The purple unicorn said, slowly walking into the room. She kept her eyes fixed on Clark, though a slight smile was on her face. Her voice was light and sweet, and she was clearly female.
“Hi,” Clark responded. “So, are you the one sent to answer my questions?”
“Well, yes and no.”
“What do you mean?” Clark was seriously getting annoyed by the round-about-ness of everyone he had met so far.
“Well you see, I have some questions of my own, if you don’t mind answering them for me.”
“As long as I get some answers I’m fine.”
“Alright. First of all, who are you?”
“Captain Joseph Clark.”
“Right.” She said, a levitating quill marking down something on a clipboard, also hovering in front of her.
“Who are you?”
“Just a second,” she said, focusing on her clipboard. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.” The only thing Clark could think was ‘Really?’
“O..kay...” Clark’s voice trailed off. “So where am I exactly?”
“Equestria. You pretty much crash landed here about four weeks ago. I happened to be out there to pull you out of the wreckage, then I brought you back to town where a friend of mine and the medical staff worked on you.”
“Well that explains why I’m still alive, even though by all my understanding of reality I should be dead. Then again, this place doesn’t exactly scream real.”
“What do you mean?”
“You shouldn’t be real. We have equestrian breeds where I’m from, but they can’t talk, and they surely don’t have horns or wings. Things like that are just myths.”
“Fascinating. So where you’re from you have ponies?”
“Well, yeah, but pegasi and unicorns aren’t real.”
“Do you have magic?”
“No, though it’s told of in myth.”
“Fascinating,” the Unicorn said. “Now, you can travel in space obviously. So, why were you above Equestria?”
“My race was....is at war.”
“War,” the other asked, a look of confusion on her face. “At war with what?”
Clark opened his mouth to respond, but as he did, a roar emanated from outside, drawing his attention to the window and causing his interviewer to jump. Ponies dodged out of the way of a four legged beast barreling down the road at a breakneck speed, its eyes locked on the hospital. Its claws, like wicked knives, tore through the ground as its muscular arms and legs hurtled it towards its target. Twilight looked from the beast back to Clark, no sign of surprise visible on his face.
“With that.” Clark said simply, as if it was something that happened every day.