//------------------------------//
// Movement 
// Story: Haylo: Sky Torn Asunder 
// by Avalanche56 
//------------------------------//

Chapter-3 Movement
August 4th 2552
Froggy Bottom Bog, Equestria
Rainbow Dash sat at the edge of the bog staring intently at where she was sure the object had sunken. She had seen the surface of the bog ripple and then let out a large air bubble, and now she felt as though something was going to happen, she felt her neck skin crawl in nervousness and anticipation of the unknown.
“Ohhhhhh, the anticipation is killing me.” She said to no one in particular.
And just as Rainbow Dash turned and prepared to fly off and go get Twilight to help lift that strangely symmetrical ‘thing’ out of the bog she heard what sounded like faint splashing in the mud.
All the hair on her back was standing at attention when she slowly turned back around to see… nothing it looked like the mud was a little bit pushed around but there were no distinguishable prints or marks that would show something was there.
And then there, not 10 feet from her she saw something, ‘movement’ she thought. Now determined that there was indeed something there deep in the mud she decided to stand her ground and confront it.
- - - - - - -
Lukas was, understandably, getting somewhat claustrophobic. ‘This is a little more difficult than I anticipated, I can barely fucking move in this stuff.’ He thought to himself that maybe he was nearing the edge of the bog.
“Oh yeah, definitely getting closer, I can feel the slope now.”
After about two more minutes of intense pushing forward, Lukas could feel the load of mud on his body get noticeably lighter. ‘Feels like I’m close, good thing too, only got four more minutes of life support in here.’
As he worked his way through the mud he could have sworn that he saw a small white blip on his motion sensors appear if only for a second, but he brushed it off as ‘this recycled air is messing with my brain.’
Lukas felt the weight of the mud leaving his shoulders as he slowly pulled himself, belly side down, onto the shore. ‘I’ll just rest here a sec, getting really tired.’ After a moment of respite he redoubled his efforts and managed to drag himself to solid ground.
Whether Lukas knew it or not there was a stunned Rainbow Dash standing not four feet from where he lay.
Slowly rolling on his back, Lukas noticed that he was blind, ‘no, not blind, I just can’t see a damned thing through all this mud on my visor.’ He thought to himself that maybe he should wipe it off and see what alien landscape lay before him.
Bringing his right hand up to his face he began to wipe and scrape as much of the mud off of his face as possible, still blissfully ignorant of the rainbow colored Pegasus a few feet away.
‘This is the best its gonna get huh, well I’ll have to find a clean stream and wash my armor later on then.’ Now with a goal and the sudden realization that he wasn’t dying due to a poisonous atmosphere he began to get up. Not halfway through his ascent to standing up he noticed something colorful, really colorful.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?” he yelled in surprise as he spotted the stunned Rainbow Dash looking at him in utter fear as he fell back down to a sitting position.
“Oh shit, you fucking scared me you little colorful horse, shouldn’t you be on some greener pastures instead of a swamp?” Lukas inquired more to himself than the horse as he bent towards it to pet its strangely colorful mane.
Of course he was even more surprised when Rainbow Dash took to the air maintaining an altitude of well out of his reach.
“Well no shit…” he whistled to himself, “it can fucking fly, next I’m gonna get into a political debate with a potato.” And with that he started to cautiously move away in order to find a nice big river or at least a large puddle to clean up in.
“What the buck is that?” Rainbow Dash asked herself in a hushed tone after jumping into the air to avoid the creature’s touch. Of course since she had practically whispered that to herself she nearly died of a heart attack when the creature spun around and glared at her with its one big blue eye.
“You can talk…?” it inquired with a hesitant tone and a subtle preparation to bolt in the opposite direction depending on the Pegasus’ next move.
“Y-yeah.” Was all Rainbow could stutter as she slowly began to come back down to the ground a considerable distance from the creature.
“Well then that changes thi- HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING!?” It yelled once again in fear as it threw an arm up and pointed at something behind Rainbow Dash.
“Huh?” Was the only response she could come up with before she felt it, and it hurt.
Behind Rainbow Dash stood a manticore, a manticore that was retracting its stinger from Rainbow’s back. ‘Everything is going all weird, and… and I’m passing out aren’t I?’ Rainbow’s thought question was soon answered by the feeling of the ground coming up to meet her face.
“Don’t worry I’ll save you horsey!” Lukas declared as he whipped out his M7S submachine gun and unloaded all of five shoots into the beast’s face before it jammed up from all the mud.
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed as he dropped his M7S and pulled out his trusty .44 magnum revolver. With one clean, and loud as hell, shoot he collapsed the manticore’s face into delicious brain pudding.
“Hell yeah… oh wait the horse.” He said to himself as he bent over to pickup his jammed M7S and afterwards walking over to the wounded horse, its collapsed and shivering form lying in the mud.
Without a second thought Lukas scooped up the colorful horse and started walking, determined to find some clean water to both wash his armor and to clean the horse’s wound before bandaging it.
- - - - - - -
After about five minutes of walking Lukas began to hear the sound of a small stream flowing just past a few trees, without a moment of hesitation he set his course to get to the stream as fast as possible.
Upon getting to the stream, Lukas gently set down the restless pony, having determined it was too small to be a simple horse, and took about 2 minutes washing any mud from his armor before turning his attention to the small curled up form of the Pegasus.
‘Might as well get started on you.’ He thought to himself as he picked up the pony and carried he over to the stream where he gently began to wash the mud from its body, but more importantly its wound. “Oh its not that bad, some medical tape should keep you nice and alive.” Lukas said to himself as he began to bandage up the area afflicted by the attack. ‘If that was poisonous then I’ll just have to keep her here with me until she recovers, its all up to you know little pony.’ He thought to himself. Since he lacked medical expertise in the field of pony anatomy and giant lion scorpion bat poison he could only hope for the best.
After securing the Pegasus to a nearby tree to prevent it from fleeing upon waking up, he dedicated the location of his soon to be camp to memory and walked into the forest to gather wood and maybe a small dinner.
Not before long, Lukas had gathered whatever materials he needed to make a fire and even managed to catch a squirrel for dinner. He returned to the little base camp he had set up next to the stream and began to light the fire, after about five minutes of failure trying to light the fire he decided to use a more… unorthodox method.
He quickly unstrapped his jet pack, aimed it at the fire and let of the lowest amount of thrust possible, along with the success of lighting the fire, this also caused Lukas to fall on his back with a ‘thump.’
Shrugging off the fall, he began to slowly gut and skin the squirrel, it wasn’t much but it was dinner.
As the sun was going down, Lukas decided the squirrel was cooked well enough. He set to retrieving it from the little stick it had been attached to which was keeping it above the fire. Not too long afterwards he noticed that squirrels really didn’t have much meat on them as he finished before he was even mildly satisfied.
“Guess I’m gonna have to deal with my rations – oh you’re waking up?” he asked the half conscious Rainbow Dash that was slowly regaining her senses.
“Huh - wha - where – why – why am I tied up?” She asked, not having noticed the ODST medic sitting by the fire watching her.
“Well I restrained you so you wouldn’t hurt yourself… or me, not that you could but I take whatever precautions I can.” Lukas simply stated with a smile and a small wave.
And that’s when Rainbow Dash noticed the white and red monster sitting before her with the remains of an eaten squirrel casually lying by its feet. Strange new creature and carnivorous was all Rainbow Dash could gather in that quick glance, so naturally, she was a little afraid of the big hungry creature. And she reacted as such.
“AHHHH!!! DON’T EAT ME!!! PLEASE, I – I – I Don’t want to DIEEEEEE!” Rainbow Dash pleaded for her life for she truly believed she was doomed.
“What?” was Lukas’ surprised response, “Why would I eat you? That’s crazy talk, and stop squirming, you’re just gonna open the wound and hurt yourself and that’s the last thing we want.”
“S-so you aren’t going to eat me?” Rainbow inquired, “And what do you mean ‘open the wound’?”
“No, I’m not going to eat you.” Lukas stated with a straight face, “And you got stabbed by some giant weird lion scorpion bat and then passed out in the mud. I think I did a good enough job of patching you up all things considered.” He said with a sincere smile.
It was then that she noticed the pain in her flank right above the cutie mark which was, luckily, unscathed. Just as Rainbow Dash examined her bandages she thought of something.
“Hey, if a manticore did this then where did it go? What happened?” she asked with an expression of innocence on her face.
“Oh that’s what those are called?” Lukas asked before continuing, “Well its simply really, I killed it after you passed out, and I must say, you were rather adorable while I carried you here.”
“Y-you killed it? But h-how?” Rainbow Dash asked suddenly more and more afraid of this strange being even if it said it wouldn’t eat her and even after it did patch her up.
“Oh it was easy, really. Its face imploded after one .44 magnum round to the forehead, wouldn’t be the first time my little friend here saved my life.” As he said this he patted the revolver holstered on the right of his hip.
“What is that thing?” Rainbow Dash asked with an audible gulp at just how powerful something had to be in order to put down a manticore.
“It’s a gun, Smith&Wesson .44 Magnum revolver with a six inch barrel to be exact.” Lukas stated matter of factly.
“What’s a gun?” the colorful Pegasus asked now clearly confused.
“Uhhhh, well does you species have cannons?” Lukas asked now certain that these ponies were not very advanced in technology if at all.
“Um… Yeah, yeah I think there are some in Canterlot, though I haven’t ever seen them be used, why?”
“Ok, a gun is basically a smaller more advanced version of a cannon, that’s all you really need to know.” Lukas explained getting a little impatient with the Pegasus. “That’s enough about that, but what I really want to know is where the hell I am, and what are you exactly? You look like a Pegasus, but where I’m from those are fictional, so do explain.”
Sensing the slight irritation in the voice of… the whatever it is, Rainbow Dash decided to keep her answer short and save any bragging for later. “Ok, as to where we are, this is Equestria, more specifically, the Everfree forest. And I’m a pony, a Pegasus pony.”
After an awkward silence of about five minutes, Rainbow Dash had already become bored and decided to try to find out more about this creature that had her tied to a tree.
“So what are you? And what’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking?” She asked a bit sheepishly.
“Ah, where are my manners?” Lukas took a moment to compose himself before continuing, “I am a human, and I am Sergeant Lukas Wohlfkrieg. And may I ask what your name is my prismatic little friend?”
“I’m Rainbow Dash! Best flyer in all of Equestria!” Rainbow Dash claimed with a confident smirk. “Hey, where are you from anyways?”
“A very boastful claim Rainbow Dash.” After a short pause Lukas came up with an idea of sorts, “I have a proposition for you, let us exchange information and I’ll untie you, though I would like some company tonight, this forest seems rather boring… Oh, and I’m from a place called Bavaria, Germany on a planet called Earth.” Lukas spoke with a smile maintaining eye contact the entire time.
“So you are from a different planet after all…” Rainbow Dash said more to herself than Lukas. After a short internal debate on whether or not she should agree to his information exchange she shrugged and said, “What the hay, why not, ok I’ll trade information with you… but I get to ask first.”
“By all means, go right ahead.” Lukas made a gesture with his hand as if saying ‘ask away.’
“Ok, first off, where is this Earth? I’ve never heard of it, and answer honestly!” The Pegasus demanded.
“Classified.”
“Classified? What do you mean classified?” Rainbow asked with a hint of confusion in her voice.
“Its simple. I’m not allowed to tell anyone where my home planet is, and if I do, it is considered treason and then I get the death penalty.” After a quick laugh at the grumbling pegasus’ expense, Lukas began to ask a question of his own, “So you see, I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’m stranded here on this planet for god knows how long and I need a place to live, I doubt you live in these woods seeing as how you almost died today, so where do you live, or at least where is the nearest settlement where I can get some shelter?” Lukas voiced his concern for his living arrangement, or lack thereof.
“Well I live in a cloud house, which you smashed through on your way down in that thing, and Ponyville is the nearest town, its just to the west.” Rainbow Dash responded to Lukas’ question although she had no idea where he would stay, much less what the residents of Ponyville would think of an alien simply walking into town.
“Oh, sorry about your hou – WAIT YOU LIVE IN A CLOUD!? WHAT THE FUCK!?” Lukas asked rather surprised and confused at the house made of clouds idea.
“Um, yeah, I do.” She said a little taken aback by the humans outburst, after calming herself she thought of something, “I think that counts as your question, my turn now.” She said with a smug grin.
“Touché little pony, touché indeed.” Lukas admitted.
“So uh, when are you going to untie me?” Rainbow asked with a pleading look on her face.
“Oh right, well um, I’ll untie you once you promise not to leave, you’re hurt and I don’t want a patient of mine getting killed because I let them do something stupid like fly away in the middle of the night.” Lukas stated as his medic instincts began to take over.
“Fine, I’ll stay with you for the night… But only because you completely destroyed my bedroom.” Rainbow Dash conceded defeat with a yawn, “and only cuz I’m so tired already.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Lukas said with a smile as he began to untie the restless pony.
“Mmmmm… that feels much better.” Rainbow let out a sigh of relief as she arched her back like a cat and stretched her wings, giving them a few experimental flaps before settling back down on the grass, somewhat closer to the warmth of the fire.
“Heh-eh, that was kinda adorable.” Lukas said with a laugh.
“H – Hey, I’m NOT adorable!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed a bit flustered and a bit redder than normal.
“Whatever you say, Rainbow Dash, but I digress, I recommend we get some shut eye before morning makes its approach.” Lukas said before a yawn managed to manifest in the ODST’s throat.
“Fine... I’m not adorable…” Rainbow Dash mumbled to herself before dozing off to sleep a little closer to the human than she thought.
After a little contemplation on whether or not he should keep watch or not Lukas decided that the fire should be enough of a deterrent, but still slipped on his helmet as a safe measure throughout the night. “Sweet dreams you little gay pride horse.” Lukas mumbled into the confines of his helmet where no sound could escape from unless he decided otherwise, and with that he drifted off into sleep.