New Land Old Enemies

by Silent Scout

Chapter 4: Meeting New People... Ponies

Name: Adam Smith
Date: July 24, 2000
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Time: 1715

“All recruits off the bus, now!”

Slowly all the fresh recruits worked their way off the bus to the sound of screaming drill sergeants. Some of the guys around him he could hear grown at what they expected to be six weeks of hell on earth. Unlike the rest of the group, he didn’t come here alone and standing behind him was Steve. He had convinced Steve to enlist with him since neither one of them had any idea what they were going to do with themselves outside of highschool and college was not something they wanted to deal with.

“Recruits form a line in front of me for your instructions!”

Once everyone had formed a line shoulder to shoulder with each other, the drill sergeant gave them all a quick look over to see what he would be having to work with before giving a slight nod.

“Welcome to basic training, my name is Drill Sergeant Paick and this here,” he pointed over to his left, “is Drill Sergeant Reynolds. Now the only thing we want to hear from you all is only two things. They are either ‘Yes sir’ or ‘No sir,’ is that understood?”

The mumbled ‘yes sirs’ that he received were obviously to his irritation as he then screamed again, “Is that understood!”

The second reply was more uniform and much louder than it was previously and seemed to calm the drill sergeant down a tad but not much.

“Now everyone here to each side of you is going to be your squad while you are here. Now I want everyone to look to the man on his left then his right.”

Following the man’s orders Adam looked to his left, seeing all the new recruits still dressed in their civilian clothing then looked to his right expecting to see the same. What he didn’t expect was for everyone to glaring at him in pure rage and beginning to surround him. Another thing that stood out about these recruits was the fact that they were not recruits but other soldiers wearing tattered and bloodstained ACUs, some even missing limbs. Steve was standing in the front glaring at him too with his one eye, the other a black hole flowing with blood. Adam began to panic at the sight of the dead around him and tried to run but couldn’t force his limbs to move an inch leaving him rooted to the spot. He could feel nothing but horror and the need to vomit from what he was seeing.

Steve slowly approached him before speaking in a hollow flat voice, “Look at what you have down. You’ve killed me and are responsible for the deaths of others. Your time has come to pay for these sins and joins us.”

Adam could only weakly say the two words he had been wanting to say to Steve, “I’m sorry.” He could feel the warm tears flow down his cheeks and cold hands grab his own tattered ACU.

Steve’s eye brows only lowered and met as his glare intensified, “Sorry does not bring us back, it does not undo your wrongs and sins.”

He felt the hands spin him around forcibly so that he faced a new person, but unlike the others, this person was not injured in any way but was well dressed with a look of glee on his face. Upon closer inspection though he could see the fury that the eyes were holding back. It only took him a second to realize who it was that he was looking at. The man before him was none other than Abbud Adar, right hand man to Jabaar Jared.

“Hello again my little American friend, I see you are doing well. It has been awhile since we last saw each other. I see that the cuts I gave you have scarred nicely but that is not why you are here before me again. Like your dear friend over there said, your time has come and you will pay for your crimes.”

Abbud Adar pulled out a pistol from his coat and pointed it at his forehead and smiled.

“You will not be going to your ‘heaven’ but to your ‘hell’ while I will live on and kill many more of your friends.”

As he finished his speech he pulled the trigger and ended it.

-------------

Adam’s eyes snapped open as he gasped for air looking around at his new environment in confusion. He was in a cold sweet with warm tears on his cheeks but he was lying in a warm bed, which was not where he last remembered being. Looking over the side of the bed he saw a frightened Twilight standing there talking to him trying to calm him back down.

He inspected his surroundings again noticing that he was in someones, probably Twilight’s since she was right there, bedroom. His gear was in a corner away from everything else along with his Army Combat Uniform jacket and the shirt he had been wearing. Looking at his own body he noticed that he wasn’t wearing the shirt but still had his pants on at least. His bandaged leg looked like someone had changed it recently with fresh ones. He could see the circular scar on his left shoulder as well as the scar that went across his chest bringing back unwanted memories. He took a moment to shake his head to change his train of thought before looking back at his bandaged leg and went ahead to checked the time. Upon looking at his watch he saw that it was only 0458 and that he had apparently slept through most of the previous day.

He made an attempt to get up, but felt a pair of hooves grab him and force him back down into the bed.

Twilight, in a more worried voice now, said, “You need to stay in bed a little longer. You can’t being running around after what you have been through. We heard you screaming in your sleep a while ago and came in to see if you were alright. Would you like to talk about it, it might help make you feel better?”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he responded after a few moments, “No, no I do not want to talk about it, in fact I want to forget about it.”

This time he did not let her hold him down and pushed past her. The alarm on his watch went off at this point and he shut it off, already knowing what time it was. He went straight to his things pulling on his shirt and jacket, then secured his pistol to his right leg again. When he had those on he grabbed the vest, with the knives still attached, for good measure and put it on too before heading to the door.

Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

Behind him he heard Twilight call out, “Where are you going at this time in the morning?”

“Out.” Was the only reply he gave before departing for the outside.

She knew she couldn’t force him to talk about what he dreamt about, after reading all the books downstairs about the subject, she understood that she could cause more damage than good. He needed to go out and think over what it was he saw and when he was ready he would talk about it. Though she thought this was the best course of action she still was going to go see Fluttershy about it. She would probably be able to help when the time came and possibly speed up the process a little. The sooner he was able to talk about it the sooner she would be able to learn about him and where he came from. Twilight went downstairs and grabbed a bite to eat before heading in the direction of Fluttershy’s cottage, she should be up about now to take care of her animals anyways and would probably enjoy the early company.

Adam couldn’t believe it, he had been staying inside a giant tree and it was still alive too. He only let himself stare in awe of it for a moment before forcing himself to turn away. He needed to find an open field, like a park, so he could do some physical training. With this new body he would have to reteach himself everything from basic training and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He was even going to have to adapt his CQC for his hooves, since he no longer had hands.

God, how I miss my hands. Using my mouth for everything is so damn annoying and inconvenient and I can live without having to taste everything.

It took him about thirty minutes to find a park near the library, all the while getting strange looks from the few citizens of Ponyville for his odd choice in clothes. He didn’t dwell on the fact that he stood out so much, but only concentrated on what he had planned for that morning’s PT. He couldn’t go overboard with it, because of his leg, he really didn’t want to get stitches and he knew if he opened it again he would probably have to. The extra weight from the gear he had on him would hopefully compensate for the lighter training.

He stretched his limbs before going through a normal routine ending it with a jog around the park. When he was done he looked down at his watch again to see how much time this had taken out of his day. It had only taken up two hours of the morning leaving him time to do as he pleased. The workout and the good weather had put him back into better spirits and cleared his head a bit from earlier that morning.

Finding his way back to the main entrance to the park, the only thing though he could think of, to pass the time, was to do maintenance on his weapons. On the other hand he didn’t want to be indoors on such a good looking day as today. He decided he would walk around the town some more before heading back and maybe stop by a tailor or something to get his ACU repaired. Money was going to be a problem that he was going to need to find a way around and soon, he couldn’t let himself rely on others the entire time he is here.

While enjoy the outdoors he came across a mint-green pony playing what looked like a lyre, though this wouldn’t be all that strange from what he had seen so far but the pony was sitting differently. Instead of sitting like the other ponies, this one was sorta slouched over in a human-like fashion on a bench. He walked over to where the pony sat and watched, obviously being ignored by the other pony, but didn’t care.

After a few moments had passed by and he had listened to his fill of music he asked, “Is it comfortable to sit like that for a pony?”

The pony looked up and he saw that this one had golden-yellow eyes and as it looked at him with a similar look of interest it said, “You have no idea how comfy it is to sit like this compared to how everypony else sits.”

Oh, I have a better understanding than you think.

Realizing from the pitch and tone of the voice that this pony was a mare and decided to try sitting like her as well. As he sat down next to her in a similar fashion, he thought he heard her giggle a little at his awkward movements before he was able to finally match her posture.

While he was settling onto the bench she gave him a quick look over, seeing all the different things he was wearing. This pony seemed friendly enough to her, especially since most just get onto her about all the ‘weird’ things she does. None ever even tried to sit like her before, but would merely scoff at her.

After finishing her inspection of him she asked, “I have never seen you around Ponyville before, are you new in town.”

He nodded his head saying, “Yeah, I’m new to the area and was just doing some training over in the park since it was wide open.”

She gave a quiet “Ah,” of understanding before saying, “So thats what you were doing earlier. It’s nice to meet you my name is Lyra, what is yours? If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you to Ponyville?”

He thought for a moment whether or not to tell her and decided it didn’t really matter to the ponies here, “Its nice to meet you too Lyra, my name is Adam. As for what brought me to Ponyville, nothing really my work forces me to travel a lot and I somehow found myself here. Ya’ll could say I’m lost and I’m tryin’ to get home. Whether or not I can, is yet to be seen.”

His statement both intrigued her and confused her at what he was implying.

“What is it that you do for a living and why do you think you won’t be able to go back home?”

“Well, I’m a soldier in my country’s army and the reason I don’t know if I can go back is because I don’t know exactly how I got here in the first place. If I knew how I got here I would just try it again to get back.”

“Wait, are you saying you are not from Equestria?”

“Eyup, I’m from a country called the United States of America.”

“Is that why you’re wearing all those clothes?”

“What I am wearing is my military combat uniform. By the way, speaking of clothes, do you know where I could go to see about getting the sleeve repaired?”

“I sure do, she is really good at her work and I think she would be interested in seeing your uniform. What exactly did you do to it, it looks like somepony sliced it up?”

“Oh, I was in an accident in the woods over there,” point off into the direction of the Everfree Forest, he made it a point not to go into details as to what happened. “Could ya’ll show me to the place? I don’t exactly know my way around town yet.”

“I would be happy to show you around. Follow me and you won’t get lost.”

He followed behind her as they left the bench behind, her lyre floating next to her as they walked. Now that it was later into the morning, he saw that there were a lot more ponies out doing various things. He saw some working at different types of stands while others were busy building new structures in town, while even more were in groups talking about different things. The ponies in town though seemed to be giving Lyra and himself a wide berth though and giving even more weird looks.

Lyra didn’t seem to be paying them any mind as she showed him the town. She showed him the town hall, which he made a mental note to visit sometime soon, as well as the market where he saw a familiar orange pony wearing a stetson hat selling apples. Everything was peaceful until the faint sound of yelling could be heard. Catching his interest he started going off into that direction followed shortly behind by Lyra. What he saw only infuriated him, bringing all his anger back to the surface and boiling over. A red unicorn and two normal looking, as normal as one being blue the other green, ponies were standing around a grey pegasus pony. The pegasus seemed to be holding her head down and cowering from them, the other ponies yelling at her and from this distance he could make out bits of what was being said.

“You mixed up my mail again, you idiot. You are the worst mailmare I have ever seen. By Celestia, I am surprised you even know how to fly, you are so stupid.”

The yelling and the insults were minor, or at least they seemed that way to him, it was the fact that all the ponies around were not even giving it a second glance and just continued to wherever it is they were going. No one was even trying to help her, even if she was at fault, the yelling was over the top. It was as if the floodgates in his mind were breached and his anger flew through him. He couldn’t have stopped himself even if he wanted too, but he didn’t.

“Hey assholes, leave her alone or else!”

“Or else wh-,” the unicorn in the center of the group, who was doing most of the yelling, never had the chance to finish his reply as Adam slammed a hoof in his face sending him into one of the others.

“Or else I’m goin’ to beat the living shit out of ya’ll, that’s what!”

Getting back up onto his hooves, the unicorn wiped his muzzle not holding back the look of rage that was clear on his face, while his two companions looked shocked and confused as to what had just transpired.

“You’re going to pay for that, you freak,” screamed the unicorn which pulled his friends out of their stupor beginning to separate to each side of Adam now.

In mock hurt, holding a hoof to his chest, he replied, “Ah, ya’lls insults wound me so. However shall I live this down.”

With his reply he got just the response he was hoping for, an even more infuriated pony. The passing ponies had now stopped to see what was going on, now that there was something different and possibly exciting about to happen.

“I have just the thing for you freak.”

The unicorn’s horn began to glow a faint red as he pulled out a knife hidden in his mane, that he then tried to intimidate Adam with.

Wow, this escalated quickly. Didn’t think he would pull out a knife. Oh well, makes things more interesting that way.

Adam could still see the other two ponies out of the corners of his eyes as they all got into a charging stance, waiting.

Now which one of ya’ll is goin’ to be the dumb one to charge first?

His thoughts were soon answered as the unicorn was the first to attack. Adam quickly flared his wings in preparation of the assault thinking to himself:

Ok, just like in the hole yesterday, but with less force so as not to go too high up this time. That hurt enough the first time ‘round.

At the last second Adam gave a mighty flap of his wings to suspend him just over the unicorn’s head before slamming his hooves into the back of its head and forcing the unicorn into the ground, face first. He saw the reaction of his friends, as they charged him at the exact same time, in the attempt to pin him between them. Adam only gave another quick flap of his wings again but this time in an attempt to send him back away from the group. His efforts were met with the sight as the two earth ponies slammed into each other with a loud crack, which instantly knocked them both out.

Though he was successful at avoiding the charges he neglected the fact that the knife was being held not by a hand, but by magic and could move freely. While still in the air he was caught off guard and unable to react in time as the knife went straight into his chest. His initial reaction to the knife in his chest was to stare in shock and stumble backwards as he landed, but soon realized that he felt no pain. It only took another second for him to notice that the knife had, in fact, been caught by the kevlar weave and had not even made it to the plate underneath.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have taken that into consideration and now I have a knife sticking out of my vest. Great.

He pulled out the knife and gave it a quick look over, it was about half the size of his combat knife with nothing special about it. He tossed it to the side without a second thought as the unicorn got back to his hooves again. If he wasn’t mad earlier he sure was now. Back in a charging stance again, he grew the most evilest of grins.

“You think you’re so tough? Well lets see you dodge me this time.”

This guy is a fucking moron if he thinks I can’t even evade his attacks.

The unicorn’s horn glowed again as he picked up the knife, this time however his horn glowed much brighter than it did the first time. Adam began to get into his own stance but found he couldn’t move his hooves. Looking down he saw that his hooves were encased in a similar red glow as the horn.

Sonovabitch! This is going to complicate things a little. Well if he wants to use a weapon I might as well too, at least to defend myself with. The pistol is out of the question seeing as how, without hands, I had a good chance of missing and hitting someone else. I need to try firing the pistol and test my skills with it some time soon. That only leaves me my two knives on my vest, which will have to do.

Adam bit down on his right knife and pulled it out making sure that the blade faced the unicorn and waited. It was a short wait as the unicorn began his charge again, knife pointed right at Adam. Before the unicorn could get within ten feet of Adam, however a purple glow quickly spread across his body and knife, forcing him to stop. Adam was met by a sudden impact on the left side of his body eliciting a fiery pain from his injured leg as he slammed into the ground himself. His knife left his grip and sailed through the air and landed in the dirt several feet away.

“What the hay do you think you were doing!”

Looking at his aggressor, he saw it was none other than Rainbow Dash, who was now standing over him. Using his left foreleg he shoved her off of him, which elicited another spike of pain causing him to growl in irritation.

“What am I doing?! What are you doing?! Do you know how dangerous it is to tackle someone who has a weapon? I could have stabbed you by accident and not only that but since I lost my grip on it, it could have hit someone else too!”

His outburst caused the cyan pegasus to recoil and flatten her ears to her head while he huffed in frustration. He limped over to where his knife lay and resheathed it, then made his way over to the grey pegasus. He stopped in front of her offering a hoof to help her back up and noticed that her eyes didn’t look at him at the same time.

“Are ya’ll ok ma’am, they didn’t hurt ya’ll or anything?”

The grey pony just smiled and shook her head, taking his hoof in the process so she could stand up. Rainbow Dash was still yelling at him all this time, but he didn’t listen nor did he even cared what she had to say to him. He had done what he thought was right and there was nothing anyone could say that would make him think otherwise. He then walked over to Lyra and stopped in front of her giving her a small smile.

“Thank you for showing me around town. I think I can find my way from here.”

Turning away, he started limping off towards the direction he had been told that the tailor lived. The crowd parted for him and he was shocked to see that there was a rather large crowd formed around them.

Best. First. Impression. Ever. Of all time.

He finally found the building that was described to him as Carousel Boutique and that if anyone could help him with his clothes it was her. He just hoped that he could work out a way for him to pay this pony back since he didn’t have any money. At least not the money they would possibly accept, he did have some money from the U.S.

On the door was a small sign that read OPEN, in a cursive fashion, which made him think of the similarities they had in both speech and writing. He shook his head and pushed open the door causing the little bell hanging from it to chime and he was greeted with the smell of a rather strong perfume.

Barely holding back a sneeze he heard a female voice over to his right call out, “Welcome to Carousel Boutique. Where everything is - What in the name of Celestia are you wearing!? Its absolutely dreadful, and its very existence is crime that cannot be allowed. Its a good thing you came to me dear, so that I could do something about this atrocity.”

Walking towards him was a pearly white unicorn, who was floating a variety of sewing and cutting tools with a look of determination in her eyes that startled him.

“Woah, woah. No, I don’t need ya’ll to change my uniform ma’am. I need you to fix my sleeve though if you wouldn’t mind. I do have one small problem though. I don’t have any money to pay ya’ll with, but I will be happy to pay for it in another way such as manual labor or something.”

“I sure we can figure something out dear. By the way, what is your name, I have never seen a stallion such as yourself in ponyville before?”

“Oh, sorry ma’am. My name is Adam Smith, its a pleasure to meet you.”

“My name is Rarity and the pleasure is all mine. So you’re the stallion that Twilight was talking about yesterday. I wish to thank you for protecting them from those dreadful timberwolves while out in the forest. As thanks for helping them I’ll gladly repair you clothes, I will even throw in a new pair free of charge.”

“Well that is mighty generous of ya’ll ma’am.”

“Think nothing of it. Now as for the jacket, what exactly needs to be fixed?”

Adam gently began to undo the vest and slide it off, making sure not to cause any further pain in his leg. Once he had removed that he then began to remove the jacket, then proceeded to examine the injury on his leg. The wound was going to require stitches now that he didn’t let it heal before getting into another fight. The cloth for the bandage was turning red from the blood seeping through underneath it.

Looking over at Rarity, who was also looking at his leg with a look of concern on her face, he asked, “Is there a free clinic in town that I could go to? I believe my injury may require stitches because of my foolishness.”

“Why yes there is darling. Are you alright, that looks painful?”

“I’ll be fine once I get it checked out at the clinic. Do ya’ll by any chance have a few bandages that I could use in the meantime?”

“Just give me a moment and I will be right back.”

And with a flick of her styled tail she was rushing to the stairs to get the bandages for his leg. This gave him a moment to think about what he had just done in the past thirty minutes or so. Things weren’t going according to how he originally planned for the day but he was at least busy. While lost in thought, his awareness of his surroundings practically nonexistent, and was brought back as the front door burst open by a group of mares. The sound of the door opening sent unwanted memories to the front of his mind. Thinking he was back on his world he flung himself to a nearby table flipping it over, as he would for cover.

From the other side table he heard someone call out, “There you are! We have been looking for you, and so have the royal guards. They want to talk to you about the incident with those other ponies.”

Slowly poking his head up from his defensive position, he scanned the five mares in the room as well as heard Rarity come back downstairs. He let out the pent up breath, he didn’t know he was holding, as he recognized the mares standing in the room with him now. He limped out from behind the table and began righting it again, the blood soaked bandage catching the attention of Fluttershy in an instant as she bolted over to him.

“Oh dear, are you ok, does it hurt at all? Let me take a look and see what I can do to make it better. You shouldn’t have been so active with such an injury and in such a short amount of time too.”

She was going on and on, while prodding and examining the wound being as gentle as she could. Rarity trotting over with the bandages, that he gladly took and began to rebandage his leg. He looked towards Twilight now, who had an expression on her face that was a mix of both worry and anger at his actions that day and his condition. Adam had no intention of getting a lecture from a pony over what was right and wrong.

To try and stop any sort of lecture from taking place he spoke first, “You said the royal guards are looking for me?”

“Yes, they wish to speak with you about what happened and lucky for you both Lyra and Derpy were both there to vouch for you.”

“Ok, I understand. Now would ya’ll please inform the guard that I will be going to the clinic and will be more than willing to answer any questions they may have for me. It would allow me to take care of two things at once.”

Twilight nodded and turned to go but not before adding, “And don’t think this will be the end of things. When I get the chance you are going to get one hay of a lecture.”

When she left, Applejack followed close behind her leaving him with Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity and Rainbow Dash, who was giving him curious looks. Now that he was not going to be yelled at from Twilight anymore he was able to continue what he was doing with Rarity.

“Ma’am, thank you again for offering to do this for free, I’ll return for it after I have been to the clinic and have spoken to the guards.”

Rarity stood there eyeing the bloodstained and shredded sleeve of his ACU jacket before remarking, “You might want to come back tomorrow to get it darling. It’s going to take me awhile to remove the dirt and blood that the fibers have absorbed. Now is there anything in particular you wanted as far as new clothes go?”

“Nothing really ma’am but if you could make me another ACU like this one, but instead of desert camo, could you make it with a forest camo. It would make me stand out less in wooded environments.”

His reply seemed to cause her to deflate a little and pout, as she was hoping to make something much more different and elaborate.

“Sure darling, but I will need to take your measurements as well as examine you clothes to make copies. We can do all of that tomorrow when you return for your jacket.”

“That sounds good to me ma’am. Ya’ll have a good day.”

Spinning around he made his way towards the door, hoping to finish what he had planned for the day, followed by the other three mares.

Comments

[DezzarTac]

hmmm...PT, tour, whip some bullies in the ass at their own game. Good chapter

[Silent Scout]

Once again a shout out to Wubwave and MasterBrony2012 for proofreading the chapter and making sure I don't screw up the characters.

[Fat Autistic Weeaboo2222]

rvb reference?

[Silent Scout]

1681429
Yes I did throw in a RVB reference in there. I thought it was appropriate.

[Lt Rainbow Slash]

Best. First. Impression. Ever. Of all time.

Red vs blue reference yay!

[Militarybronybear]

The last part of the action scene, was very confusing, at least for me. I had to read it a few times before pieceing together what happened. And I was also confused on when he just up and walked away while barely saying anything, especially to the unicorn bully guy. This story is good, I'll give a final statement (although it probably won't really matter from me) on my opinion in the end.

[CMD_thegunguy]

Ok, another thing, you said he was in the Army,1 in the Army we dont call it boot camp, its basic training, ,2 The drill Sargent is still a Sargent, you do NOT wanna cal and Army Drill Sargent Sir, you call them Drill Sargent. and we dont go straight to Basic, first you go to a reception Battalion where they instill that in you, thats also why you automaticaly come off the bus with a bag of gear, they don't mail that shit to you, you get it at Reception, and if you come of the bus at shark attack mumbling. You also dont show up to your BCT unit in civies, your in ACUs or PTs, I dont remember which, you forget what you wore on that bus early on trust me on that. (And no Im not trying to rant, I just like getting this information out there, cause its a pet peeve of mine when people always get it wrong)