The Chronicles of Swarm: The Equestrian Front

by kildeez

Chapter X: Hay Soup and Quantum Physics

Uris was absolutely focused. Nothing could possibly divert his attention from this: not the other ponies, not the large green spot in the sky, not even the fact that he was eating soup made from boiled hay. His spoon descended into his bowl and rose to his mouth, his chin falling just enough to allow the soup access before the spoon returned to the bowl and the whole process started all over again. He mechanically cycled through, all the while keeping his gaze frozen on the little pony across from him. Rainbow Dash returned the glare and the mechanical procedure: spoon, mouth, repeat. Their eyes remained locked on each other. Neither of them had blinked in the past five minutes.

The rest of the Elements of Harmony watched uncomfortably. “Um…” Fluttershy said, hoping to break the silence. “Wa-would anypony like a bit of hayseed to go with their soup?”

“Yes, thank you.” Uris and Dash barked. Wincing, the little yellow pegasus hovered over to them with her personal bag of seed, sprinkling a bit in each of their soups with shaking hooves before instantly retreating to her side of the table. At no point did Uris and Dash break eye contact.

“Jeez, this is like sittin’ at a dinner where Celestia and Queen Chrysalis are the guests of honor!” Applejack whispered to her friends.

“I say, why can’t those two just get along?” Rarity added.

“Well, it only makes sense,” Twilight said. “They’re both equally stubborn and equally hot-headed. And if opposites attract, I suppose like forces…”

“We are NOT like forces!” Dash and Uris screamed in unison at Twilight, then immediately turned back to each other. “Stop copying me!” They shouted, once again, in unison. “No, you’re the one copying me! Stop it! It’s annoying!” They both stood up from the table, “I’m warning you, you better stop it or I’ll…”

“SO! Mr. Uris,” Twilight shouted. “What’s say you finally tell us how a bipedal hominid wound up in Equestria, huh?”

“What?” Uris asked.

“In English, poindexter,” Rainbow added.

“Fer Celestia’s sake; howdja git here, boy!?” AJ said. “Ah mean, we know ya ain’t from around these parts, so where do ya call home?”

Uris leaned back in his chair, sipped from his soup, winced with the realization that he was basically eating hay in hot water, and shoved the bowl aside. “I already told Miss Sparkle that I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”

“Tch, the idiot probably doesn’t even know how it happened,” Dash snickered, sipping passively from her own bowl.

“That’s not true! I do so know!”

“Actually, I guess that wouldn’t surprise me,” Twilight said disappointedly. “I mean, you’re just a soldier, right? Why would they bother to go over all the details with…um…”

“Some nameless grunt?” AJ added helpfully.

“Oh, I wouldn’t put it that callously.”

“But I do know, okay!? I do!”

“Then prove it!” Dash barked, glaring at him. He returned the glare, sitting up in his seat.

“Fine, I will. Now, do any of you believe in alternate realities?”

“Oh for Celestia’s sake!” Rarity sighed. “Is he going to start talking like Twilight now!?”

“I’ll try my best not to,” Uris grinned.

“I have.” Twilight said, raising her hoof. “It was a concept thought up by Starswirl the Bearded in his later years.”

“Oh, but of course it was.”

Ignoring him, Twilight continued: “He thought it up after his experiments with time traveling spells. Once he determined it was possible to send somepony back in time, he started getting really abstract. It’s definitely one of his more ‘out there’ ideas.”

“And? What is this all-powerful, weirdo idear?” AJ asked.

“Basically, he figured his time travel spells weren’t actually sending ponies back in time. He thought the threat of a paradox was too great, and so he believed they were actually travelling to a different universe similar to that pony’s own.”

She was greeted with a blank stare from everyone around her. “Wow, they did not go over anything like that in the briefing,” Uris said.

“Gee, I wonder why?” Dash said sarcastically, and he shot her a look.

“Getting back on track,” Twilight said quickly. “Starswirl theorized that every possible outcome for something probable created a separate universe, including any changes that pony made to the past.”

“They actually explained it pretty well in my briefing,” Uris chimed in as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. “Let’s say I flip this coin. No reason for it, I just do.” With that, he flicked it into the air with his thumb. The quarter tumbled over and over again before landing heads-up on the table, where everypony could see it. “Now, there were two possibilities here: the coin could’ve landed tails-I mean, with the other side up, which I call tails, or with this side up, which we can call heads.”

“Perfect!” Twilight clapped her hooves together. “He’s illustrated it perfectly!”

“So,” Dash said. “What you’re sayin’ is we just created another universe? This one, where the coin landed heads-up…”

“…And another where it landed tails-up,” Uris finished.

“Cute, but a coupla coin flips don’t really tell us where you came from.”

“But they do, Rainbow!” Twilight gasped in realization. “Because this sort of thing doesn’t just happen for stupid little events like coin-flips! They also happen for massive, earth-shattering events, like historical occurrences, or…”

“…Or evolutionary events,” Uris finished. “Like a buncha monkeys rising to become the dominant species on their planet, rather than some horses.”

The entire table fell silent as everypony tried to absorb what had just been described to them. “A whole planet of people like Uris,” Fluttershy breathed.

“Dang, if they’re all like him, we’re screwed,” Rainbow Dash snickered.

Ignoring her, Pinkie immediately vaulted over the table and landed in Uris’ lap. “So there’s a whole other planet out there with people like you!? What’s it like!? Do they all dress like you!? Do they know about the galactic overlords responsible for…”

Uris covered her mouth with his hand, watching in astonishment as she kept right on talking. He removed his hand, “…and do you like to eat hay and do your horses ever tell you how annoying Mr. Ed is because everypony knows what a racist little fu…” he covered her mouth again, and she kept right on going.

“Does this have an off-switch anywhere?” He asked.

“We wish,” AJ grumbled. “Just let ‘er say her peace, she’ll get tired of talkin’ sooner or later.”

“Bu-but if you have your own world, what are you doing here?” Fluttershy asked, “I-I mean, not that you’re intruding or that we wish for you to leave very soon...”

“Speak for yourself,” Dash mumbled.

Uris ignored her and sighed. “There was an attack. One of the other worlds, a real nasty one where a very important event in our history played out differently, hit us. We lost a lot of people, military and civilian. My…uh…my brother was actually killed. That’s…that’s why I agreed to go on this assignment.”

The whole table fell silent again. “Oh my gosh,” Fluttershy gasped. “Mr. Uris, I’m so sorry.”

“It was a year ago, hon, I’ve had time to get over it.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Dash stood up and raised her hooves. “Why are you dragging Equestria into all this? It sounds like something you guys should be handling by yourselves.”

Uris breathed in, and breathed out. How could he tell them? How could he make these ponies understand the scope of the war? The terrors he’d seen? The way his world had allied itself with a god in order to fight other gods? Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to, as Pinkie suddenly stuck her tongue out and licked his hand.

“Ew!” He screamed. “Dammit, you crazy little…”

Suddenly, she rocketed out of his lap and slammed on his chest, knocking him to the ground just as a sniper’s bullet punched through the chair he’d been sitting in. Instantly, his adrenaline and training kicking in, Uris folded himself over Pinkie, tucking and rolling with her to land against the wall right beneath the kitchen window, which shattered beneath the a sudden onslaught of gunfire. “GIRLS! PINKIE SENSE! PINKIE SENSE!” She screamed, and everypony in the room ducked beneath the table, shrieking. The sound of gunfire made Uris’s blood run cold, but the adrenaline kept him going. He knew it was the only thing that was going to allow him to survive.

Setting Pinkie aside, Uris drew his pistol and leapt to his feet, firing blindly out the window and ducking down again before the next burst of automatic fire could cut him down. “IDIOT!” He screamed at himself. “I let myself get distracted while the enemy was dropping right on top of us!”

“What’s happening!?” Rainbow Dash screamed.

“Just stay down, I promise you won’t get hurt! Just stay close to the ground!” He knew it would almost be impossible for his equine friends to hear him over the constant chatter of the assault rifles on full auto being blasted at the small house, but somehow they understood the fundamental fact of combat that three instructors had forced down his throat from the moment he had landed in boot camp: stay down, stay alive.

The loud, short bursts were soon punctuated by the all-to-familiar pop of grenade launchers. Immediately, he grabbed Pinkie under his arm and dove under the table with the rest of the ponies just as the first explosions smashed Fluttershy’s front door to splinters.

“This is insane!” Twilight screamed, “What kind of magic do these guys even have!?”

“Something like this!” Uris held up the pistol. “Except bigger and way more powerful!”

“So you’re useless, then.” Dash smirked.

Uris just glared. “Not now,” he said as the front hallway was torn apart by another handful of grenades and a hail of bullets peppered Fluttershy’s produce drawer. Before she could reply, he pressed his back against the bottom of the table and pushed, managing to get it a few inches off the ground.

“What are you doing!?” Twilight screamed.

“We need this cover to get moving,” he screamed. “Without it, we’ll be torn to shreds!”

“That’s good enough fer me!” AJ screamed, pressing her hooves next to his and lifting the table with ease.

“Now, how didja…”

“Apple buckin’! You gonna keep yackin’, or you gonna save our lives!?”

“Right, sorry!” He screamed and, with her help, started in making their way to the back door.

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A few minutes of near-constant automatic fire passed, periodically interrupted by a cluster of grenade impacts. And suddenly, it was all over. Silence overtook the house, nearly deafening after the bombardment. The only sounds thereafter came from the small squad of grim-faced men which rushed the building’s façade. Nodding to one another, one man was selected to head in. He walked right through the shattered remnants of the door, weapon at the ready, scanning from side to side. As they were trained to be, his squad mates were right behind him. Their commander brought up the rear, his pistol at the ready. The men with the assault rifles fanned out, scanning every single corner they could find, silently searching for their targets.

The commander broke off from the rest, storming the kitchen and dining area where they had seen the targets. They had to be here, he’d just seen them! He could NOT fail here! If he returned to his commanders without the heads of the Elements of Harmony…

Something was off here. The kitchen was missing something. Pistol drawn, he started rummaging through drawers, then tearing through the cabinets, becoming so frustrated that by the time he’d searched the last, he was tearing doors off their hinges. “{What is it!? What am I missing!?}” He grumbled, struggling to keep his voice down against his mounting fury.

Then, it hit him: the table. This was the dining area, and there was no table. Pistol raised, he strode across the room to the rear hallway, and there it was. One table, covered in bullet holes, on its side by the rear door, hanging open in the breeze. “{But of course,}” he sighed, vaulting it and bursting out the rear door just in time to watch the six ponies and their enemy swine of a companion bolt for the woods.

“{HERE!}” He screamed, blasting wildly in their general direction with the pistol. “{HERE, DAMMIT! THE ENEMY IS ESCAPING!}” At the sound of the gunshots, he watched the American suddenly twist and fire a few times with the pistol. He heard two shots smack into the wood behind him, and then something threw him onto his ass.

“{COMMANDER!}” One of his men screamed, rushing to his side.

“{No, you fool! Go after the enemy! He has our targets!}”

“{But sir, you’re…}”

The commander grabbed the soldier by the front of his uniform in one hand and, with his other, rifled in his own coat. “{Look!}” He said, producing a small bullet, “{The armor protected me! Now, move! You know what our superiors will do to us if the Elements of Harmony escape!}”

Nodding, the soldier immediately gave chase, followed by his comrades. Once the last soldier passed, the commander leapt to his feet to join in, making sure to keep at least one of his men between himself and the enemy. After all, what was the use of meat shields if one did not use them properly?

Author's Note:

Remember, dialogue in these: { } is spoken in non-English.