There Is Nothing New Under The Sun

by chasethebrony

Ch 2: A Rude Awakening

A Rude Awakening

Normally when I wake up, I sit in my bed and go through a whole routine of comparing the benefits of getting out of bed and trying to drift off into blissful sleep once more. When you are sleeping in the wilderness, you are more sensitive in your sleep as the danger of the wild awakens a primal instinct of self protection. As a result, if you are awakened by a stressor in the wild your body immediately dumps a load of adrenaline into your system and you wake up fast.

This situation was one of the latter. I was dreaming blissfully of returning home to my family, and playing video games, when a sudden crash woke me up. Instantly wide awake, I immediately look for what caused the ruckus (or was it more of a fracas?). It didn’t take long to figure out that something strange was going on.

‘Hmm, is it just me or is there a giant glowing scorpion attacking that log? let me check if i’m dreaming” *pinch* ‘nope. definitely not dreaming’

‘OHHOLYSHITTHEREISAGIANTGLOWINGSCORPIONOVERTHERE!’

scrambling to get to the pistol in my bag, I manage to fall out of the hammock and fall (so glad I decided to hang it close to the ground) to the dirt. face first. Scrambling up, i cut the cord holding my bag up and catch it as it drops to the ground. I look over and the scorpion skittering this way.

Now that I am truly freaking out, I cannot seem to get my hands to cooperate with the zipper pulls to get into the pocket with my pistol. “GGAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHH!!" I scream in absolute frustration at the plastic many toothed fiend that is preventing me from getting to my salvation.

Finally, I get the pocket open and pull the pistol out. Suddenly my training takes over.Chamber a round , bring pistol up, look down the sights, breath deeply to calm the nerves, squeeze trigger, fire round. repeat as necessary.

three shots ring out as the pistol fires into the glowing insect from hell. The giant insect crumpled with three new holes in its head.

Scanning the clearing for more hostiles, I decide to pack up my small camp and leave in case there are more of them around.

Packing up quickly, I left the camp once again heading west in hopes of finding civilization.

Like a Shot in the Dark

Night watch is arguably one of the most boring duties that can be assigned in the Royal Guard. Consisting of standing in one place or patrolling in a short area for hours on end, nothing is more mind-numbing than looking for a hostile force in a land that has had all of 5 conflicts in the last millennia while all your friends are in town partying or sleeping in their bedrolls. In such a case, night watch is given to the newest (and usually lowest ranking) guard available.

Private 2nd Class Storm Front had been sitting on the Southeast corner of the camp for four hours. The first hour was spent creatively inventing new nicknames for his “buddies” that had decided to give him the watch for the third night straight. The next two hours were spent thinking about how comfortable his bedroll was and warm it was compared to the almost frigid air out that night. The last hour was spent wallowing in self misery at having to be up when everyone else was happily asleep and he was stuck staring at absolutely nothing for the past four hours and he was barely even halfway done. Despite what he has heard on the rumour mill in camp, Storm Front highly doubted that there was a giant pony-eating, flame spewing monster teleported from hell itself to end all life in Equestria in the Everfree forest. He was just as curious as the next pony as to why they had been called away to the Everfree forest, but supernatural beings from another dimension were probably about as likely as having Princess Luna ride a tricycle to his post and ask him on a date.

Suddenly he heard three loud booms crash through the Everfree forest in quick succession. Instantly alert, he called for a messenger and wrote down a SITREP (Situation Report)

“SITREP:

To: Sgt. Metal Polish:

From: 2nd Pvt Storm Front

Time: 0435

Event: Three large thundering booms emanated from an unknown source the Everfree forest. Said booms occurred in quick sequence with a distinct lack of lightning and occurred in an area kept clear of inclement weather by the local weather team. Best personal estimate is that the booms were caused by an explosion of unknown origin.”

Giving the report to the messenger, Storm front stood at his post worriedly watching the forest. Suddenly, the rumors of monsters did not seem so far-fetched now.

A Rude Awakening

A series of thunder awoke Shining Armor from his sleep. “Damn pegasi weather schedules” he grumbled in bed. Trying to return to sleep once more, he was rudely awoken again by his secretary Lieutenant Lost.

“Excuse me sir, but I have a report for you”.

“Ugh. Lieutenant Lost. Couldn’t you have at least waited untill morning to start giving me paperwork?” asked a rather grumpy unicorn.

“Well, it involves the noises heard earlier in the forest sir.”

“So that wasn’t thunder then?”

“No sir, Our night watch reported a series of supposed explosions coming from the Everfree forest about an hour ago. I went ahead an dispatched a trio of pegasus scouts to reconnoiter the area to try to determine the cause. Near the western edge of the forest they found some interesting materials.”

Suddenly awake at the thought that something was happening, Shining Armor got out of bed and moved over to his map table. “Come over here and tell me what happened and where it was”

“Sir, I have one of the pegasi outside to give you the same report i received. He may be better able to describe what happened.”

“Send him in Lieutenant”

Lt Lost moved to the door and motioned in a deep purple pegasus with several stars on her flank.

“Corporal Starlight reporting as ordered sir!”

“So you are the leader of the reconnaissance team that flew into the everfree forest earlier?”

“Yes sir, it was me, and Privates Shadow Chaser and Jet Stream”

“What did you see Corporal?”

“Well we were flying a search grid over the western part of the forest when Jet Stream called over that he had found something in a clearing about a mile and a half into the western border of the forest.” Starlight pointed at point on the map ”We formed up and flew to his position, and descended into the clearing where we found what was most likely some sort of battle or something. There was an extraordinarily large glow scorpion near the middle of the clearing with several punctures in its forward carapace between the claws. About ten hoofs away we found these.”

Starlight proceeded to reach into her saddlebags and pull out three tiny brass cylinders. they were open on one end, closed on the other with an interesting ridge around the bottom. “Using his magic to levitate them for closer inspection Shining Armor noticed that The closed off end had a smaller circle with a miniscule indention in the center and indecipherable script surrounding it. The whole thing smelled faintly of brimstone and fire.

“Is that all Corporal?”

“No sir, there were also some bizarre hoof prints leading away from the scene and a length of cord was found in a nearby tree.” She then proceeded to pull out the length of cord.

The cord was about about a eighth hoof wide as long as a foreleg and was knotted around as if to be secured to a branch. The long end was sliced clean through as if by a razor. It had an outer woven sheath with seven small cords inside of it. The materials resembled nothing that Shining had ever seen, much less handled in his life.

“Which way did the tracks head?”

“They were heading west sir. Without knowing the creature’s pace, it is possible that it will be exiting the forest in the next hour or so”

“Thank you for your report Corporal. I want you to go and scramble another flight of pegasi as well as two teams of earth pony trackers and a team of Unicorns. Lead them to the site and have the trackers follow the creature. Use the pegasi to scan the forest around the trackers to warn of hostiles and keep the unicorns nearby in case the trackers need additional protection or evac. Any questions?”

“No sir”

“The you are dismissed”

“Yes Sir!” Starlight saluted and trotted out of the room. Shining could hear her calling outside for messengers to assemble her team.

A momentarily forgotten Lieutenant coughed nervously “Is there anything you need me to do sir?”

“Go ahead and get some more pegasi flying the border of the forest. Focus on the western border, but I want to make sure that whatever is inside won’t slip out. Also contact the Army Engineers and tell them that i want a second base on the east end of the forest. That way we can relay our pegasi and patrol teams to reduce fatigue. I would also like you go to the town and call the Elements of Harmony to my room. They should be on standby in the Ponyville Library.”

“Yes Sir!” Lieutenant Lost saluted and left the room.

Now alone, Shining Armor hoped that this would end soon. Conflicts had a way of bringing out the worst in ponies, and he wanted to avoid any... unpleasantness with this mobilization.

The Hunted

After hiking for a while, I began to notice that the trees were thinning out a bit. That was good news, it meant that I was nearing the edge of the jungle. Close as I may be, I was feeling absolutely exhausted. I didn’t manage to get much sleep because of that... thing I found, and coming down off of the resulting adrenaline dump caused my energy levels to crash hard. After the encounter with whatever the hell kind of scorpion that was, I now kept my pistol handy at all times just in case of more freakish animals stalking the forest. Briefly stopping under a tree, I pulled my olive green poncho over myself and using my bag as a pillow fell asleep for the second time in the last 24 hours.

I awoke to some sort of noise. It sounded like some sort of talking, but i could not for the life of me recall what kind of language it was. It sounded like a rather breathy form of russian, chinese, esperanto and klingon all blended together with a sprinkle of random whinnies and neighs. Pulling my poncho off, I froze at what I saw. There were four horse looking things walking down the same path i was before i walked off to sleep. They were horses only in the vaguest sense of the word. They were pastel colored, came to about shoulder height at the tallest and had these weird pictograms on their flank (tattoos?). And the strange taking sound seemed to be coming from them.

Mentally I went into complete “WTF?!” mode. Thinking carefully over the past 24 hours trying to remember if i ever ate any funny mushrooms or inadvertently ate some LSD. I came the the conclusion that I must be going insane.

Deciding to watch this acid trip of a dream, i saw that two more horse-things approached. They were burgundy and orange respectively. The big difference being that they had FREAKING HORNS ON THEIR HEAD! Knowing that unicorns aren't real I decided that they must be more rhinoceros than horse. And just as I thought things couldn't get any weirder, one of their horns started glowing and it said something to the normalish other horses and pointed in my direction with a hoof.

Shit.

Seeing that they outnumbered me six to one, my odds of winning any sort of fight against these beasts were slim to dead.

as quietly as i could, I tried to stuff my poncho in a cargo pocket and put on my backpack at the same time. Being as awesome as I am I managed to bake slightly less noise than an enraged bull in a china shop filled with cymbals.

Needless to say, they spotted me. We all froze for a second, before I tossed my backpack on, and hauled ass out of there. Sprinting with a backpack on is hard. Trying to stuff a poncho in your pocket while sprinting requires an awesome about of coordination. Trying to do both while screaming like a little girl being chased by zombie clowns from hell is fiendishly difficult.

I could hear some communication behind me and then they started the pursuit.

I figured that if they were anything like the horses back in Texas, they can run a man into the ground and not even break a sweat. So, I did what any man would do when being chased by technicolor horses: I dove into the thickest, nastiest jungle I could find, and practically buried myself in brambles, dirt, and forest detritus in the hope that I could hide from the monsters.

Some Questions are Just Better Not Asked

Six ponies stood outside the nastiest, thickest jungle of brambles, briars and thorns they had ever seen. Nopony wanted to go into that mess, it was just asking for multiple lacerations and a bunch of bleeding wounds.

One of them broke the silence “Uhh, what the hay was that?”

“I can honestly say that I have never seen any like of creature like that before.”

“Did you see the tail it had coming out of its leg? and the giant brown hump on its back? It made it look kinda like a turtle crossed with a monkey crossed with a two legged pony, cros-”

“Shut up Sparkler”

The burgundy unicorn looked sad, but quickly perked up. “Well I can’t wait until we tell the guys back at camp, they won’t believe that all the rumors are right!”

“Well we need to report to Starlight and let her know what we saw. Sparkler, you stay here with Trekker and Apple Snack. I will take Spring and Tomjoy out to rendezvous with Starlight and the pegasi.”

“Oh boy! I get to stand guard with the best earth pony trackers in the whole guard! This will be soo cool!” Sparkler gushed. The two earth ponies shot looks of not-quite-pure-hatred-but-pretty-close at the lead Unicorn.

As the tio trotted to the edge of the forest, they could hear Sparkler’s voice trailing off into the distance.

/ch 3

A/N: Please comment on the story and let me know what you think.

Comments

[Langly]

Why does the guy panic a the sight of a few ponies when he has a gun at hand ?
They're not exactly imposing animals, even if some of them have horns. If he thinks them to be horse/rhinoceros he could just climb a tree and pick them of with his gun. If he believes the sounds to be language he could try to communicate before attacking them.

I can understand if he doesn't thinks clearly at the moment and doesn't thinks of these options but going into full blown panic ?

Well, if it comes to a confrontation between them that end in a fight please don't have him going down like a total wussie besides having a gun like they do in all the other fics. And don't have him crying like a little girl if he actually manages to hurt some pony in self defense.
That are two things that annoy me to no end in fics like that

[chasethebrony]

1057258
It's more of a case that he has no idea what the hell he is seeing. I figured that he is just now realizing that nothing is really normal, so he is overreacting to everything. My logic is that he had a "Fight or Flight" kind of moment, and he decided that fleeing would be the better option (limited ammunition, unknown capabilities). He doesn't know what they are capable of, but if under enough pressure he will try to escape. Also, he has no idea what the ponies are or that he is even no longer on earth.

Next chapter will have some more confrontation, but I will try to avoid anything like that. Remorse for a wrongful killing is natural, but it shouldn't define the scene or his life.

Thanks for the comment!