//------------------------------//
// Welcome to Equestria. Mind the table. 
// Story: Living with ponies? Defeating villains? I could get used to this. 
// by The Batmane of equestria 
//------------------------------//

War.

War never changes.

I was deployed with the best tech money could buy: advanced SMG's with holographic displays, heat-seeking grenades, next-gen HUD, you name it, we probably had it. Bit that doesn't change war. War is just a bunch of angry rich people sending normal citizens to go kill or capture other angry rich people over something as petty as an oil field or revenge, with false words, like "God is on our side.", and with newer tech so we felt powerful and in control. I never bought into that crap. What kind of God would side with people who kill people for other people's potential money? 

But that never stopped me from joining.

I was an average soldier. I had no medals or commendations, and the only thing that made me stand out was the most degrading thing that they could possibly have given us. Dog tags. You know why they call them dog tags? Because owners put them on dogs to identify them and contact the owner if found. They treated us like pets, feeding us, training us. And that's what we were. We were the governments lapdogs. We were talked to like common animals, like we were stupid. 

In a sense, I suppose we were dogs. Like pit bulls. Like dogs in an underground dog fighting match, where owners pitch their dogs against each other for a small reward. 

My parents never approved either. They thought it pointless and that I didn't get paid enough to put my head on the block over a petty land claim or whatever it was they were squabbling over this time. But it gave me purpose, like I could be part of a major change, or like I could actually make a difference. I knew I couldn't, but there's no harm in trying, right?

I hated war as a concept, but I did what I had to do. I was basically told from day one that if a superior tells me to point and shoot, then I had to do so without hesitation, even if it was to kill a puppy. I remained emotionless as I was told to do these horrific things. I felt no emotion for the enemy, no matter how gruesome their death was. It was just another death in war.

On my first tour, I had been on the front lines I the conflict. Cannon fodder, they called us. I paid them no mind. On that tour, I had eighteen confirmed kills, which was nothing compared to the enormity of this war. Some were by bullet, some were by blade, one was even by hand, me hitting him in the chest, causing his heart to stop. I'm not sure if you know, but when a heart beats, there is a fraction of a millisecond calle the T-zone. This is the point in a heartbeat where the heart is stationary, before it expands again. It happens at least once or twice a second. When the heart rate increases, like his did in the fight, the chances of hitting that T-zone multiply by three. I'm not proud of that kill, but nor am I regretful.

There were eight people in my squad, including me. I won't bother giving you their names or backgrounds. That's all useless now. I was that one guy that on the HMG on top of a humvee that everyone outside the army wanted to be but everyone inside it feared to be. It was the most exposed part of the vehicle, an the hardest to get out of.

That day, the day life decided to change it's mind about where I should live, I was on patrol with my squad when we were ambushed by a near unseeable opponent. They killed two of us before we could react. We took cover in a stone building with hollowed out windows and doors. We knew the specs of their weapons. We knew how many shots they had to take before reloading. We knew how long it took on average to reload. We used this to our advantage. Whenever we knew one of them had to reload, one of us would pop up and put a round through their chest or skull, all the while hoping that we wouldn't be sprayed with bullets. 

We fought for hours, eventually thinking we had cleared them out. Thus, we turned to go towards base, two dead soldiers in our midst and a further three injured, one of which wouldn't be finishing his tour. Or going on any more. His arm had been shot clean off by a high-powered rifle. 

It was as we passed the bodies of the dead insurgents that I realised one was still alive, and he lay in a puddle of his own blood, sidearm drawn and pointed at my head. Then he fired, and everything went purple.

More specifically, I was falling through a purple wormhole, leading to a white light at the bottom. I reached the bottom and passed through the light, barely registering that there was a library on the other side before I hit something. Hard. That was going to hurt in the morning.

"Spike? Was that you?" I heard a female voice shout. Wait... I thought. I recognise that voice.

I heard footsteps from what I assumed was a... Kitchen? That confirms it. Well, that and the voice. I am now in Equestria.

"Spike? What wa- Holy Celestia, a human!" Came the voice that I could safely assume was Twilight. At least, I assumed so since my face had become one with the table.

Being the perfectly normal person I was, I responded, "Really? I thought I was a Centaur."

"Hilarious." Deadpanned Twilight. "Firstly, I would like to be the first to say 'welcome to Equestria. Mind the table on your way in." She giggled. "Secondly, stay here. I need to go get my friends for this. Well, I doubt you'll be going there due to you deciding to adapt the ancient art of becoming one with my table."

"Okay." I said. "I am going to use those when I write this as a story."

"You do that." And with that, the door closed, leaving me in the library with a younh drake staring at me from the stairs and an owl now perched on top of my head, which was still buried in the table, bleeding because I had most likely broken my nose. Of course, I was still in sensory shock, so I couldn't feel it to it's full extent.

"This is going to be one of those days, isn't it?" I said.