Earning Wings of a Different Nature

by Strayan Phoenix

Chapter One

[May 8th, 2020]
[Around fifty miles off the coast of Iran, in the mouth of the Persian Gulf]

It seemed as if Mother Nature would be kind to them this evening. The sun was lazily dropping into the horizon, creating a piercing glare which reflected off the water, and at the same time still possessed plenty ample strength to keep them warm. A refreshing breeze lazily swirled about, balancing out the heat and keeping their heads cool. The ocean was relatively calm this evening, and it was a fantastic opportunity to go fishing.

The relaxed weather was kind of handy really, since it all made clinging for dear life to a floating plank of wood that much easier.

That was all that was left of a small fishing skiff which had succumbed to a leak in the hull, which had gone unnoticed until it was too late, leaving four Iranian men stranded in the middle of the ocean and clinging to floating debris for buoyancy. One of the planks had a lit flare precariously balanced on top of it to prevent it from tipping over into the water, as the bright red smokescreen it cast drifted into the wind.

“I warned you that if you buy cheap, you get cheap!” a voice shouted angrily, “But would you listen? Noooo!”

“How could I know it was going to suddenly rupture like that? Look, I said I was sorry, alright? I sent out a distress signal, before the radio went under, so it’s highly likely that someone is going to pick it up. What, with all these NATO warships running around and all...”

“I hope they don’t take too long,” the third voice complained, “I’d rather die of old age than hypothermia.”

“Really? You’re freezing already?” the owner of first voice turned about with an irritated tone, “We’ve only been in the drink for fifteen minutes!”

“Yeah well, fifteen minutes tends to feel like thirty when you’re gradually turning into an icicle!”

“And you think you’re the only one suffering here? We’re all in the same boat, dude. You’re not special!”

“Aww, mom always told me that I’m special...” the forth voice cracked in a mocking tone, drawing several stifled chuckles from the others.

“Of course she did,” came the sarcastic reply.

“Hey look! A helicopter! Someone’s found us!”

Their attention was drawn to the distinct thwok-thwok of rotor blades as the lone MH-60R Seahawk approached, lowering its altitude to around only forty feet about the waves. The breeze rapidly turned into a small gale as the chopper slowed to a snail-paced hover directly above them. Although their English wasn’t very good, they had quickly learned to recognise the word ‘NAVY’ that was emblazoned on the tail shaft, indicating that this aircraft was probably operating from a nearby warship.

For several moments, the chopper held its position as the side door slid open, revealing two airmen standing in the doorway, one of which was strapped to a rescue winch via a safety harness. He stepped out of the aircraft and was slowly rappelled down towards the water.

In just a few short moments, the airman was strapping a survivor into the second harness, before glancing up at the chopper and giving a wave with his free hand, signalling the second airman to winch him back up. When they reached the top, the fisherman was unstrapped, handed a towel, and ushered into a seat as the airman was rappelled back down to rescue someone else. The roar of the turboshaft engines made it very difficult to communicate without a radio head-set, on top of the potential language barrier to boot.

This steady, methodical process continued unabated for around ten minutes, as the aircrew worked frantically to pluck the others from the drink. Before long, there were four shivering Iranians strapped in and dripping water everywhere as the pilot banked the Seahawk around to return to its home ship. Fortunately, there appeared to be no serious injuries amongst them.

The four men glanced warily between the four crew members on board; all were clad in olive-green flight suits and white aviation helmets. Unit Identification Patches adorned their upper sleeves like Scout Badges.

While the two pilots up front were mostly obscured from view, the two cabin crew members were easily identifiable as Australian, as indicated by the flag patches on their left shoulders. The top halves of their faces were obscured by the tinted sun visors on their helmets.

“Can you speak English?” one of them crouched down in front of them and shifted his mic piece away from his mouth as he shouted over the engine.

The first Iranian nodded in response and shouted back, “A little bit!”

“What happened to your boat?”

“Eh, we sprung a leak and sank!” the man replied simply.

“And what’s your name, sir?”

“Sorry?”

“What’s your name?”

“Yousef!”

“Alright Yousef, what we’re going to do is take you back to our ship, get you and your mates cleaned up while we refuel the helicopter, and then we’ll fly you all the rest of the way home, okay?” the airman explained, “Which city are you from?”

“Bandar Beheshti!” Yousef answered.

The airman readjusted his mic back in place and turned about slightly towards the pilots, “Bandar Beheshti, they say they’re from”.

The pilot sitting in the left gave a thumbs-up, “Copy that.”

Yousef glanced out of the glazed window, staring apprehensively at the warship beneath them as they passed around to land on the helipad, located at the stern of the ship. He was amazed at how smooth the approach was, considering that they were trying to land on a moving vessel in a shifting ocean.

As the helicopter touched down, the cabin crew gestured for them to step out, calling out after them, “Welcome aboard HMAS Brisbane.”

Lieutenant Mark Sheffield gave a sigh of relief as he flicked through the engine shut-down procedure and glanced across at his co-pilot and observer, Lieutenant Laura Donaldson.

“Another textbook search-and-rescue op and another happy customer,” He grinned, removing his helmet, “You know, I think I’m getting good at this.”

“Well, we’ve been out here for two months,” replied Laura with a sly smirk, “It seemed all those hours we thought were wasted on you are finally paying off.”

“And a rather nice way to spend my twenty-fifth birthday if I say so myself,” he remarked as he hauled himself out of the cockpit and stepped aside to let the deck crew do their usual post-flight maintenance.

“Not quite the damsels in distress I had in mind, but they’ll have to do,” He murmured off-handedly as he briefly glanced across at the Iranians, who were huddling around a sailor offering them a round of hot beverages.

“Imagine that: a quarter of your life gone already!” Laura followed him as they walked into the hangar bay, “Time really does fly, doesn’t it?”

So it would seem. It felt like it was only yesterday he signed up for the Royal Australian Navy, fresh-faced and straight out of school. And now, five years later, he was serving as a pilot in the Australian Defence Force, flying forty million dollar helicopters from one and a half billion dollar warships for a living. To say he felt he was living the dream was an understatement.

The HMAS Brisbane, a state-of-the-art Hobart-class Destroyer, had been commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy a little over two years ago. She had completed her training and exercise drills with flying colours, and was now on her second operational deployment, travelling to the Arabian Sea on anti-pirate patrol. The crew of two hundred and four men and women were ready and eager to prove themselves as part of a large multi-national task force, dedicated to keeping the ocean free of criminals and terrorists alike.

Mark, Laura, and their radar operator, Lieutenant Martin Craig, were assigned as part of Brisbane’s flight crew, and they took turns on a rotational basis with two other teams to keep the Seahawk available for use. The dedicated technicians and mechanics worked tirelessly around the clock to keep the chopper in top condition, and there was always a fresh aircrew team on standby, ready to take off at a moment’s notice if need be.

Today was no different, with the chopper scrambling a total of six times over the course of the day for one reason or another, whether it be to get a closer look at a suspicious-looking skiff, or to even rescue people from sinking vessels, as the most recent venture turned out.

“Brisbane to Lieutenant Sheffield!” Laura’s voice snapped his train of thought.

“Huh? Oh, sorry. Just lost myself in thought for a few moments there,” he smiled apologetically, “What’s happening?”

“A few moments?” She raised an eyebrow, “You were zoned out for like a whole minute there. For a second, I thought you’d entered some sort of strange, prophetic trance. Anyway, we’ve been ordered to report to the Ops Room for a debriefing. Let’s go.”

“Right,” he quickened his walk to a brisk march as their replacement flight crew readied their gear for their late-evening flight across the other side of the hanger. He gave them a quick wave, and followed Laura into a bulkhead door, closing it behind him.

Once they had been debriefed for the evening, Mark dashed back to the hanger to relieve himself of any unnecessary flight gear, before stopping past the Officer’s Wardroom for something to eat.

The Wardroom was rather busy at this time of the evening, with at least a dozen other officers sitting around at the tables eating their dinner and conversing with each other.

Several crewmembers turned about to face him, giving up a small cheer. “Hey hey, it’s the birthday boy!”

“Fellas,” he gave a curt nod towards them as he picked out his meal from the canteen.

“Nice save with those Arabs there, Shef,” an officer spoke up, addressing Him by his nickname. Mark recognised him as the squad leader of the Alpha Team, a section of Clearance Divers posted onboard Brisbane for the duration of her deployment. The man’s nametag read ‘Chappell’.

“Hey, you should’ve seen the news report just a moment ago,” another officer spoke up, pointing at the TV perched on the wall, which was currently set to some American news program, broadcasted via satellite. Mark recognised him as Brisbane’s Deputy Supply Officer, and his occasional morning-coffee buddy, Lieutenant Greg Marshal. “Your brother would’ve loved it.”

“Oh? Why’s that?” He sat down in an empty seat across from them and began eating his meal.

“They were saying that there have been heaps of reported sightings in America of -would you believe it- real-life versions of characters from the cartoon show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” Marshal grinned, “They reckon that people have been coming in saying, ‘Omigod! Rainbow Dash is real! I saw her with my own eyes!’ and heaps of other crazy shit like that. There hasn’t been anything official yet such as photos or video clips, but it’s all a full-on phenomenon over there at the moment regardless. I’ll give you a shout when it next comes on, it’s crazy stuff.”

Huh, that did sound like something that his brother would be interested in.

Mark’s younger brother Chris, who was serving as a Boatswain’s Mate on Brisbane’s sister ship HMAS Sydney, was a die-hard fan of that show, carrying around a small photo of the Mane Six in his pocket more often than not, and had a habit of dropping Rainbow Dash’s ‘Twenty Percent’ phrase into any conversation wherever appropriately possible. If he was watching this news report, he'd probably hand in his resignation and pack up for an 'early retirement' to America.

Mark had to grudgingly acknowledge that he himself was probably a bigger fan of the show than he would openly like to admit, and would sometimes browse YouTube during shore-leave in Australia for music videos made by the Brony Community whenever he thought no-one was looking. Living with a Brony for a brother during the latter half of your adolescence tended to rub off on you.

In fact, it was thanks to Chris that He probably knew the names and faces of at least half of the entire character roster just off the top of his head.

“So, do they just like... appear out of the blue, or what?” He asked through a mouthful of pasta, quirking an eyebrow in amusement.

“They don’t know,” Marshal shrugged, “No-one’s really confirmed anything yet, but it all just kind-of... exploded onto the scene, y'know? It’s all just eye-witness reports so far. Who knows, it’ll probably just turn out to be some big hoax”.

Mark's mind drifted to a news report he had seen just a few days prior, about how a mysterious explosion heavily damaged a book store in the American city of Seattle. Rumours were abound about who was responsible, and what their motive could've been, but so far, nothing solid had turned up.

"Do they know if there's any connection to that terrorist attack in Seattle?" He asked. Perhaps something had new had cropped up in the news report.

“You know, it wasn't even mentioned. Besides, ya can’t seriously believe everything you see on TV,” Chappell glanced across at them, “Remember that crazy bastard last year who tried to revive the whole ‘Bigfoot’ legend? Look how that turned out. I've seen the news-os come out with some pretty crazy stuff in my time, but this seriously takes the cake”.

“Well, I’ll only believe it when I see it, I assure you that,” Marshall took the last sip from his coffee, before standing up, “Well, I hate to love you and leave you, but my next shift is starting soon. Oh, and Happy Birthday as well, Shef. I would’ve gotten you presents, but next shore leave isn’t for a few weeks.”

“No worries,” Mark smiled as the Lieutenant briskly washed his cup in the sink and walked out.

“Real-life cartoon ponies,” Chappell scoffed, “What’ll they think of next?”

After finishing up dinner, Mark returned to his cabin, which he shared with his fellow flight team member, Lieutenant Craig.

The room wasn’t really all that large space-wise, with two bunks one on top of the other built into the wall, a small desk which they had to share, and a locker for each occupant. Martin was standing near his bunk, with a worried expression on his face. He turned about as he heard Mark’s footsteps enter the room.

“Hey Shef, you haven’t seen where I put my watch, have you?”

Mark frowned in concern. The watch in question was a very expensive Rolex that Martin’s fiancé bought for him before he left on deployment, and it was an item of great value for him, both sentimentally as well as financially. Martin often wore it whenever he wasn’t flying, ritually taking it off before each flight, leaving it in a box under his bunk in the cabin, and putting it back on when he returned. For him to just up and lose it like this was very troubling indeed.

“No, not since you were wearing it last. Where did you last put it?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention at the time, I can’t remember,” Martin shrugged sheepishly.

“Well, it couldn’t have gone far,” Mark started looking about the cabin, opening up desk drawers and scrimmaging through them, “Check to make sure you didn’t accidentally drop it down the side of the bed or anything like that.”

“No, I looked down there before, and the gap simply isn’t big enough for anything to fall through,” Martin scratched the back of his neck.

“You didn’t accidentally leave it in the gym during that exercise session we had before our last flight, did you?” Mark ran through a mental checklist of possibilities.

Martin paused briefly, before slightly shifting about, “... Possibly. I don’t know. We should check it out just in case”.

“You keep searching in here, and I’ll dash down to the hanger and see if anyone ever found it,” Mark pointed at his roommate and walked out the door.

As he maintained a brisk pace as he navigated his way through Brisbane’s maze of corridors, bulkheads and sailors, a strange, tugging sensation began developing at the back of his head, which seemed to grow slightly stronger with each passing step, dragging him in the right direction. Having been aboard the vessel for two months now, he had the ship's layout memorised like the back of his hand, but he was curious to see if this unconsciously-controlled urge somehow knew its way around as well. He was unsure of what this nagging feeling was, and came to the conclusion that he was finally experiencing that thing people talked about called a ‘hunch’.

As he approached the hanger, where the gym was located, the strange sensation only seemed to intensify. The entrance to the facility was located on the right side of the hanger,

The gym aboard Brisbane was a fairly simple one, with several weight racks, three cycling machines, three treadmills and a rowing bench. The ‘hunch’, as he officially decided to call it, persistently dragged him towards a rest-bench at the back of the room. Initially unsure of its importance, he nevertheless gave the bench a once-over search, and a glint of metal caught his eye from underneath it.

Reaching down, he felt around with his arm until his hand resting on something solid. He pulled it out from underneath, and indeed, he identified it as Martin’s missing Rolex. The moment he placed it in his pocket, the ‘hunch’ sensation completely disappeared.

He paused and glanced around warily, “... Huh. That was weird. I’ve never felt that before.”

After several seconds, he shrugged and thought little more of it, “Ah well. It turned out to be useful in the end anyway, so I can’t complain...”

“I found it,” He announced as he re-entered the cabin.

Martin’s face lit up with joy, “Oh thank God! I thought I’d lost it for a moment there! Where was it?”

“Under the bench in the gym,” Mark replied off-handedly as he handed the watch back to its rightful owner. “You must’ve accidentally dropped it or something”.

He decided it was a good chance for a quick shower to clean himself up before bed, unbuttoning and stepping his five-foot-nine frame out of his olive-green overalls, stripping down to the simple white t-shirt and blue shorts he had on underneath.

Grabbing a towel off the rack and a fresh change of clothes, he made his way for the officer’s shower. Fortunately, it was currently unoccupied.

Ah good. The plumber had fixed the leak in the hot water system, so it seemed. Now he could have a scrub and keep warm at the same time. A nice little convenience to have around if he said so himse-

Wait.

Hang on a minute...

He didn’t recall getting tattoos inked on his thighs, and they certainly weren’t there this morning.

What in the fuck...? Brisbane didn’t even have a tattooist on board! And here, as plain as the nose on his face, were two identical tramp-stamps on either side of his hips, both looking like some sort of directional compass that you’d expect to see on a pirate’s treasure map.

"What a strange conundrum..." He mused, and then shook his head.

'Let's go through a process of elimination here. Number One: Brisbane does not have a tatooist on board that I know of, so there is no way anyone could possibly handle a tattoo machine with that level of skill and precision. There aren't even any tell-tale signs of redness around them to indicate that they were inked recently, so that rules out any possibility for that idea'.

'Number Two: I am certain that I haven't touched any alcohol recently, nor have I taken my flightsuit off all day. So that rules out some dickhead drugging me and drawing explicitives all over me. Plus, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't draw something as tame as this anyway.'

'Number Three (and to sink this idea for good): No-one on board this vessel possesses textas of those exact colours.'

'What else is there...?'

'...'

'...'

'...'

'Nope. I've got nothing.'

He grimaced in discomfort.

'Come on brain, THINK! There must be SOMETHING which can explain this...'

Marshall's words from their conversation earlier drifted back to mind.

“They were saying that there have been heaps of reported sightings in America of -would you believe it- real-life versions of characters from the cartoon show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.”

"...reported sightings...real-life versions... Friendship is Magic."

"My God, it all makes sense," He whispered, "Magic. It has to be magic! Unless the good Lord is playing a trick on me..."

"But... I don't understand," He frowned, "Magic isn't real, right? It can't be real! It violates everything that is the laws of science and physics! Unless it's an optical illusion, which in this case it isn't... And I can't be on drugs either, because I haven't lost any cohesion or ability to think straight. None of the signs are there..."

"Have I gone mad, maybe? Am I just delusional? Hmm... maybe I'll ask Martin. If he can see the picture as well, then I'm definitely not imagining it."

"I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this somewhere... but I have a suspicion that the supposed sightings of ponies on the news might well indeed have something to do with it. It has to be connected somehow."

"Perhaps... this is a sign that another pony is about to appear...?"

His eyes widened. "Oh! Now that I think about it, it almost looks like one of those butt-pictures... oh, what did Chris call them?'

He scratched his head and stared at the faucet in thought. "'Cutie marks', or some shit like that?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"I need more solid evidence," He shook his head, "Simply guessing my way around is like a blind man without his dog."

"There could be worse ways to sour someone's birthday, I suppose," He sighed reluctantly, "If I end up turning into a friggin’ pony, I might as well do a bit of research on who lucked out on landing me as their host."

He figured that the next forty-eight hours were probably going to be the worst of his life, considering that he was trapped on a tight-knit boat in the middle of the Arabian Sea, where everybody knew everybody else on board, and trying to hide the fact that you're transforming into a character from a children’s show was going to be borderline impossible.

Not without wasting a large supply of chloroform, anyway.

He could at least attempt to hide away during the transformation process, depending on how long it took...

Eh, but then no-one would believe him when he finally reappeared as someone, or in this case somepony else.

Goodness, that didn’t roll off the tongue very well. How on earth were they able use ‘somepony’ so fluidly in a sentence? The muscle-memory just didn’t sit right with him.

There was a sudden rap on the door, snapping him back into reality.

"Don't take too long in there dude," a voice grunted, "You're not the only person who needs to use that, y'know."

"Oh, right. Sorry," He quickly turned off the faucets and stepped out of the shower. Drying himself off, he made one last glance at the strange new additions to his legs before slipping into a fresh set of clothing.

The first thing he did upon entering his cabin was open his laptop and open up a Google tab. While Brisbane had its own Wi-Fi set up, the reception out in the middle of the ocean was a little unsatisfactory at the best of times, and there wasn't generally much time available to bother with YouTube or anything like that until they were back in port. Martin wasn’t in the room anymore, probably having dinner of his own.

'Let’s see now... Who would have a cutie mark like this one...?'

“Here we go. ‘List of Cutie Marks’, on the MLP Wiki...” He quickly glanced through the list, trying to find one which matched the picture on his thighs.

“Ah, here we go. One compass butt-picture belonging to... ‘Daring Do’?”

What? That couldn’t be right.

He clicked on the link of her name anyway, just to be certain, and sure enough, the photo of her cutie mark was completely identical to the one he now sported, right down to the last detail.

“So I’m actually turning into the ponies’ answer to Indiana Jones?” He raised an eyebrow in disbelief, “Oh, this is going to be just brilliant when word of this gets around...”

He closed the browser and shut down the laptop with a huff, with a feeling of anxious uncertainty for what the future held in store.

The voice of the ship’s second-in-command, Commander Paul Cruze, briefly caught Mark’s attention as the former poked his head inside the cabin. “Just letting you know that I’ll be coming through for inspection rounds in about half an hour, so just be sure to have everything in order by then, okay?”

“Righto,” Mark gave a nod in his direction. The XO smiled cheerfully and retreated back into the hallway.

He sighed in reluctant acceptance. Tomorrow was going to be a long day indeed...