Honor the Dead
by BinaryTroll aka Onyx Bluemoon
Chapter 2: "I Hate Flashbangs..."
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"-it" I finished as I was blown back into Joel.
I woke up after an unknown amount of time. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear. All I could do was feel the leaves crunch under my body as I moaned and moved around. Wait. Leaves? I picked one up in my hand. It was hard and papery (is that even a real word?) just like I expected. I sighed and realised that my hearing was coming back. Even if it did sound like I sighed from fifty metres away. I blinked my eyes and began to see after-images. Not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing. I rubbed them a bit and my vision slowly faded back. Sure, there was twelve of everything, but it was back.
I stood up slowly and checked my general surroundings. A moan came from behind me and I whirled around. Unfortunately, I didn't have my balance back yet and fell flat on my face.
"FUCK!" I yelled. Good, my voice was still working. Joel emitted another moan and began to move.
"Blegh, Wardo. Why are there twelve of you?" Joel murmed, blinking in the greenish light.
"You've been awake for two seconds and you are already annoying me." I replied.
Joel smiled. "I try, Wardo, I try."
"Ugh, you succeed at it too. "I flopped back onto the ground next to Joel and rolled over. "Is it just me, or are the colors here a lot brighter than I remember?"
"Yeah. I know what you mean." Joel replied, trying to sit up and failing. "It's probably just an after affect of the flashbang."
"We should get up."
"Yeah."
"You first."
"No no no, after you."
"I insist."
"Ugh, fuck it. Together. On three. One. Two. Three!" Neither of us moved.
"We're not going to get up any time soon, are we?" I said.
"Probably not." Joel replied.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
Three hours earlier and a few kilometers away.
Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia's most faithful student, was poring over a book. Again. This was a spell tome, describing some of the, if not the, most difficult spells in existence. Twilight was currently reading a section on inter-dimesional travel. According to the tome, it was mostly a theory, although there was one spell that could pull objects from other universes into this one. This was what Twilight was interested in.
Ever since the Nightmare had taken over her mentor, Twilight had looked for some way to allow them to win this war, and Honored Service, Equestria's only human and resident badass, was her best bet, even if he was the one who caused it. He already had in insane amount of firepower at his disposal: Two guns with magical rounds, one explosive, the other pure magical fire, a possibly legendary, magical golden sword, a less legendary, diamond dog sword, a large knife with an edge that could cut through anything, and a magical gauntlet that could make anything into a weapon. Despite this, Twilight couldn't help but think that it wasn't enough. The human had described much more powerful weapons, even ones that could level an entire city. She wasn't thinking on that scale, but she doubted that Honored would regect the opportunity to gain more weapons.
"Twilight can you do it?" Princess Luna had entered the tent.
"With your help princess I think I can. But why are we doing this?" Twilight finished the diagram on the ground of the command tent.
“Johnson needs all the help he can get; we need all the help we can get, and I believe that this could help. If it works.” Luna bowed her head and flipped through another page in the large tome in front of her. She was looking at a spell that could teleport a creature over long distances, distances spanning oceans. With enough power and concentration maybe the spell could reach out to other planets.
“But Princess, what if this spell doesn't work. He might not only be from another planet, but from another universe, like how Princess Celestia suggested.” Twilight said while glancing at the tome next to her.
“I know young Twilight. But this is a losing fight. We need all the help we can get. And if, and that’s a big if, this works we can at least claim a victory here, and then push to Canterlot and secure Day Terror and blast her with the Elements.” Luna had thought this plan through and through. Any attempt at a sneak attack would fail with that many shadows around Canterlot.
By forcing Day Terror to launch an all-out assault on Ponyville, her numbers at Canterlot would be significantly smaller.
“Alright Princess. Let’s just give it a try.”
Luna nodded and took a stance opposite of Twilight. Twilight mimicked the stance. They both nodded at each other before charging a spell and shooting it at each other, the magic meeting in the middle of the large intricate design drawn on the ground.
“KEEP THE POWER FLOWING!” Luna called out above the roar of raw magic being dumped into the spell. Luna reached out with her mind and began scouring the realms of the universe. She looked through all the planets her magical sense touched, trying to uncover this mysterious Earth populated by violent sentient creatures.
“PRINCESS MY MAGIC CHANNEL IS FAILING!” Twilight roared above the intense noise the spell was creating. Twilight’s purple glowing aurora was beginning to falter. With one last push, Luna grunted and reached out to the closest planet and pulled what she hoped was what they were looking for through the small portal in a flash of light so intense, it blotted out the sun for a second.
Both unicorn and alicorn lay panting on the ground, exhausted and spent from the monumental task they had just preformed.
In the center of the diagram, half buried in the ground from the sheer force of the impact was a large metal dark green container. It lacked any markings except a black star and two words stenciled on the side, smudged and dirty.
US ARMY
Present.
I had finally obtained the energy to get up. The sleep had wiped away the the effects of the flashbang. Well, besides that weird vibrancy. Fucking flashbangs.
I stood up, shaking my head and cracking my knuckles. Joel mirrored my movements a few second later. Unlike many people my age, this was the first time I've ever woken up somewhere that I didn't expect. I didn't drink and neither did Joel. We both preferred caffeine and sugar to alcohol. So this was my first time dealing with this sort of thing. I didn't like it. I prefer to know what I'm doing thank you very much.
My small waking up ritual over, I automatically looked around for the kettle and and coffee. I can't wake up before 12:00 without coffee. Fortunately, it was well past twelve. Still, sleeping on rough ground makes it difficult to move properly. I decided to do some light badassery before actually doing anything.
I pulled my hood back, opening my face to the sunlight. I looked at Joel. He looked back. And then he fell into a fit of laughter.
"The hell is wrong with you?" I asked. Joel continued to laugh. This continued for a few more seconds before I got bored. I dropped to the ground and swung my legs around, taking Joel's out from under him. He hit the ground, grunted, and then began to roll around on the floor (or leafy ground) and laugh his head off. I patiently waited for him to finish laughing.
"Jesus man, what the fuck did you do to your hair?" Joel said, gasping for breath.
"What? What did I do?"
"You hair is blue. FUCKING BLUE! Not even mentioning that it looks like something straight out of Dragonball." He collapsed into another fit of laughter.
I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. Using my small black knife, I cut through one of my locks of hair. Sure enough, it was a midnight blue.
"Heh, guess you're right." I said. "Well, I can't do anything about that, so let us move on."
"That seriously looks hilarious." Joel replied, grinning. I grunted.
"Can we find out where we are, or are you just going to sit there and laugh all day?"
"I'm going, I'm going. Jeez." Joel muttered, his grin fading a little. He threw his own hood back and I saw why he found my hair so funny. His was a leafy green, with darker green strikes through it.
Unlike him, I had some form of self control and stopped laughing after he decked me.
"I have it too, don't I?" He asked, already knowing the answer. I gave him it anyway.
"Eeyup. Except yours is green."
"Well that sucks."
"I personally think it looks quite badass."
Joel sighed before replying.
"Can we find out where we are? Preferably before I kill something."
"My thoughts exactly." I looked around. Gloomy forest. Weird outlines to everything. Managed to be dark but vibrant at the same time. "If I didn't know better, I'd say we're in the Everfree Forest, Equestria. Good thing I know better. And not being high on shrooms helps."
"If we are, fuck this place. I'm not a brony, but I know that this place doesn't exactly preach 'friendship is magic'. Also, how do you know we aren't?"
"At least we have guns." I ignored his question. That kind of thing always messes with my brain. Also, there are those hippies who say 'What if life isn't the real thing, and shrooms are our way of seeing reality?'. He died an hour later of drug overdose.
"You sound like an American"
"We have lived in America for the past three years. Maybe it's rubbing off on me."
"I sure hope not."
"That's racist."
"Sue me."
I sighed. Again. "We are the masters of procrastination."
Joel snorted. "We aren't masters, we take procrastinating to a whole new level."
I laughed with him. "Still, if this is the Everfree, we need to find some form of civilization before we get eaten by something."
"But we have guns." Joel said.
"Hypocrite" I muttered, walking off in a random direction. Joel followed.
A few kilometers away, Same place as last time.
The two ponies ran out of the tent, crashing into something and bowling it over. They began coughing heavily, fanning away the leftover smoke.
"You didn't tell me it would create so much smoke!" Twilight said, before entering another coughing fit.
"I haven't exactly done that spell before, and I was never considering that the tome would be destroyed in the process." Luna shot back, breathing heavily.
"What spell?" asked a curious voice from behind them.
"Oh Honored, you're back so soon." Luna coughed again before smiling. "I'll take it that the plan went flawlessly and the army was crushed."
"No." the human frowned and hung his head.
Present, etc
"I have no idea what I am doing."
I was banging rocks together over a pile of kindling. Joel was sitting nearby, listening to music. We always brought headphones and an ipod on missions. It was just a thing we did. After a few more minutes of waiting, he got bored, loaded his incindinary ammo, and shot the pile of kindling. He also nearly shot me. Dick.
I let it go. I didn't need to start an argument over something so trivial. Besides, it was a night where we could see the stars well. The sight of the stars always calmed me for some reason, I've never found out why. We were away from the city, away from all the pollution, both light and gas. It was wonderful. I saw the moon and noticed the familiar head of a unicorn or alicorn on it. This confirmed my suspicions that we were in equestria. But that wasn't a bad thing. Not by a long shot.
An absence of rich idiots, people who wanted someone dead for the most trivial of reasons. I killed my contractor once. He was a fat fool who paid me thousands of dollars to kill off all the hobos down on his street. I took the money and gave it to them, before heading back and killed the rich idiot. His body cut quite nicely. It was people like that who made me hate what I did, hate taking money for killing others.
I didn't believe in a god. Or a devil. I just believe that spirituality is something that prevents us from going insane. That explains my sanity. Or lack thereof.
"Look at the moon." I said, remembering Joel didn't watch the show.
"Yeah, I noticed" Joel replied, lying down next to the fire. After a few more minutes, I did the same.
The world darkened around me as sleep claimed my thoughts.