Honor the Dead
by BinaryTroll aka Onyx Bluemoon
Chapter 3: "And Poison Joke..."
--------------
I woke up to an electronic buzz that didn't belong in Equestria. I slowly opened my eyes, the sunlight temporarily blinding me. It was around noon, judging by the sun's position in the sky. I stood up digging my hand into one of my many pockets, seeking out that annoying beeping. I pulled out everything in my upper pockets: two packets of gum, a pair of over-ear headphones, a set of brass knuckles, a half drunk bottle of lukewarm Mountain Dew, how did that even fit in my pocket? And a swiss-army knife. I checked my lower pockets: my wallet, that's fucking useless, a lighter, why do I have that? Wish I'd known about it last night. And finally, my fucking ipod. Took me long enough. I glanced at the screen, 'April Fools Day holiday' it read. Really? You wake me up from my peaceful slumber to tell me that? I shut off the alarm, noting that it was 12:47.
"Thank fuck for that." groaned a voice from behind me. I flopped back to the hard ground, rolling over to face Joel. I opened my bottle of Mountain Dew, caffeinated thank god, and sculled the rest of the bottle. I waited a few seconds for the sugar and caffeine to hit my brain. I felt a burst of energy fun through my body, causing my eyes to widen. I leapt to my feet, all trace of my original tiredness gone. The same could not be said of Joel, who just stared up at me from the ground. I offered him a hand. He took it and I pulled him to his feet, where he swayed for a second before shaking his head.
"What time is it?" Joel yawned, rubbing his eyes.
"Around quarter past twelve." I answered. "We should probably do something today, I'm getting hungry"
"Same" Joel crouched down and picked up his AWP, slinging it across his back. I absent-mindedly flipped my small knife around my fingers as I waited for Joel to finish collecting his gear. I threw it up in the air before catching and sheathing it. Joel spun his Glocks around his fingers before slamming them into their holsters.
“Lets get going” I said, striding off in the same direction that we headed in yesterday.
Three hours later.
It was amazing how quickly this forest could become boring. Trees, trees, trees, dirt, and more fucking trees. I still hadn't found anything to eat and hunger was gnawing away on my insides. Besides the crickets, I had neither heard nor seen any sign of life, meaning that my only food source would likely come from the plants... WHICH COULD BE FUCKING POISONOUS FOR ALL I KNEW! The constant chirping of the crickets ground away at the little sanity I had left, making me irritable. Not having drunk anything for a few hours didn't help. Must be horrible for Joel, he hadn't drunk anything since yesterday.
A new sound shook me out of my thoughts. The sound of flowing water.
“Water!” I called back to Joel, braking into a run towards the sound.
“Oh fuck yes.” Joel ran up alongside me and together we made our way towards the sound. After a few more seconds we reached the river that was the source of the sound. I pulled out my empty bottle of Mountain Dew and filled it up. I then handed it to Joel who downed all of it in a single breath. Rinse and repeat a few times and his thirst was quenched. I filled the bottle up again with more of that wonderful, cool water and drank some myself. I heard a splash to my left as Joel dived into the water. I didn't feel much like swimming so I just sat down on the bank, staring into the river. I studied my current appearance. My skin was smoother, the outlines of my features more defined. My hair was midnight blue with a small line of black running through the left hand side. It was longer than it had originally been, spiking out at the front and back whilst remaining fairly flat on top. It's style reminded me of Neku's hair from TWEWY. Finally, I studied my eyes, they were a dark purple-blue, with small pinpoints of light winking in them. They looked baddass.
I grabbed Joel's AWP and Glocks to dismantle and clean them. I found no problems besides some dirt in the ejection port of the AWP. That done, I handed them back to Joel, who had just finished getting dressed.
“Lets head upstream, we should be able to find some form of civilisation on the way.” I said, stretching a little.
“Sure, but can we stick to the forest? We might finally find something we can eat.” Joel replied, brushing his green hair off his face. God, seeing that is weird. This appearance change will take some getting use to.
“I'm hungry, so I'm not going to argue.” I strode off into the forest, heading upstream. Joel, as always, followed.
A few minutes later we came to a small cave.
“I'd say something lives in there, hopefully something edible.” I said, pointing to the cave.
“What's the worst that could happen?” Joel asked. A hiss came from the cave.
“You just had to fucking ask.” I sighed, pulling out my ballistic knife and Luna. Another hiss came from the cave and two red orbs began to glow in the gloom. “It's a cockatrice, don’t look it in the eye.”
“That’s one of those chicken-snake things right?”
“Yeah.”
“I hope it tastes like chicken.”
“So do I friend, so do I.” I shot a knife into the darkness, quickly loading a second. An angry hiss told me it hit. The enraged cockatrice leapt out of the darkness of the cave towards me, still hissing. I slashed Luna through the air in front of me, easily cutting the flesh of the cockatrice. Blood sprayed onto my skin as it landed on me, trying to bite my neck. I slammed both knives into the creature’s head, causing it to spray it's brain all over my face, accompanied by it's shattered skull and even more blood.
I walked back to Joel, holding the dead cockatrice by it's tail. I tossed it towards him, smiled and said “Dinner.”
Much playing with fire later.
The cockatrice did taste exactly like chicken, even the tail.
“Good thing it's not Kentucky fried. Ugh, the memories.” I said, remembering the first (and last) time I had KFC. God, that was the worst thing I have tasted in a while. I prefer the taste of blood to that god-awful dish. I swear, black guys don’t have taste buds. God damn I'm racist. God damn my mind wanders quickly.
“Heh, KFC: Kentucky Fried Cockatrice. Worst dish in Equestria.” laughed Joel, taking a bite out of the tail. “I swear, that was the worst shit I have tasted.”
“Can you read my mind?” I asked.
“Yeah sure, why not? While I'm at it I'd like to be able to fly. Really Wardo, we've been over this. I know what you're thinking because we think in the same way.” Joel replied, throwing the chicken/cockatrice bone over his shoulder. “We've know each other since we were born, I would have thought you'd remember.”
“That was a bit over the top for a single comment. Especially a joking one.” I observed, finishing my half of the cockatrice. “Anyway, I'm not tired, so do you want to keep going? The sooner we find civilisation, the sooner we find some real food. Not to mention coffee.”
“Sure, why not? The stars and moon are bright enough to light our path and if that fails, we still have night vision goggles.” Joel stood up and kicked some dirt over the coals of our fire, extinguishing it. I stood up a second later, brushing off the dirt and leaves that had gathered on my pants.
I stared up at the night sky. “Luna really outdid herself tonight.” I said, observing the differences between our sky and Equestria's. “Ponies must have seriously taken it for granted to ignore this. Either that, or the Nightmare took her over and created Nightmare Moon. Unfortunately that's not canon, even if it does make more sense to me. Then again, this world makes almost no sense anyway, Pinkie defies the laws of physics all the time, magic exists, ponies are sentient and all the colours of the rainbow, there are pegasi, unicorns, and alicorns as well as the normal earth ponies, clouds moving on their own is weird and a forest is one of the scariest things in the world. So fuck logic, this is Equestria.”
Joel ignored me, not that this was a surprise; it wasn't the first time I went off on a Brony rant, and it almost certainly wouldn't be the last. Especially considering I was now in Equestria. Probably. I still didn't have any proof besides the cockatrice in my stomach.
As we walked, I began to remember some of the jobs I took on. There was that recon mission for finding some form of weakness in a terrorist organisation's base so that the military could come in and seize it. I, with the help of Joel, ended up killing off the entire organisation over the duration of the mission. We never did find any real intelligence. I remember when we came back and were given a verbal lashing by the guy who hired us before we told him we accidentally killed everyone in the organisation. The moment when we realised that the entire terrorist group was dead because we were bad at recon was priceless.
You probably think that I'm fucked up in the head for finding that funny, you'd almost certainly be right. But I had a reason. I do not find death to be a horrifying thing, unlike many other people. Yes, I still mourned when someone close to me died, but I did not have a problem with killing others. I saw it as a form of new life. I'm an atheist, but I do believe in reincarnation.
Why? Because there are people who are so similar to those who died years earlier for it to be a coincidence. Call me childish, but I still believe in magic, maybe this influenced my decision to become a Brony. I also believe in multiple universes and more dimensions than the four we know. That's probably why I wasn't driven insane by arriving in Equestria. That, and I am probably insane already.
Dark thoughts aside, I felt great. The night was refreshing to me, It always had been. My sleeping patterns became almost nocturnal in the holidays when I was at school. Probably why I am addicted to caffeine nowadays. Jesus, my mind leaps around fast. Some people called me the thirteenth doctor because of this, and because I hate pears with a burning passion.
I snapped out of my random thoughts as I tripped over a root. Being the incredible badass that I was, I turned it into a handstand flip over a small patch of blue flowers. I should have thanked the root, if it wasn't for it I would have walked right through a patch of poison joke. But now the joke is on the 'joke'. I had a lighter in my pocket and I wasn't afraid to use it.
I knelt down next to the patch of evil blue flowers (which Joel had avoided, thank god. He wasn't a Brony but he knew some things about Equestria) and pulled out my lighter, laughing like the maniac I was. I set one of the small plants on fire, watching as it wilted and burned, the fire spreading to its siblings. It was so satisfying to watch my least favourite plant, from any universe, burn in a fire I created.
“What the fuck dude?” Joel exclaimed, watching as I set more of the flowers alight. “You could burn the entire forest down!”
“It would be worth it. These fucking flowers aren't going to mess with anyone.” I said without taking my eyes away from the burning poison joke.
Fortunately for the forest, the fire didn't spread and died with the last flower.
Moral of the story: don't try to play a practical joke on me. You'll get yourself killed.