Honor the Dead

by BinaryTroll

4: I also hate picking the wrong direction.

Honor the Dead
by BinaryTroll aka Onyx Bluemoon
Pre-read by Honored Service
Chapter 4: "I also hate picking the wrong direction."

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With my stress relief exercise complete, I continued my journey... umm, west maybe? I realized I had no idea where I was. Or where I was going. Or what I was doing. OR HOW I EVEN GOT HERE!

“You okay?” Joel asked from my left. “You're breathing pretty heavily and we've only been walking for a few minutes.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I'm fine. I just realized that I have no idea where we are besides inside the Everfree somewhere, which, by the way, is more than a hundred square kilometers.” I sighed again. I have been sighing an awful lot since I came to Equestria. I need to break that little habit. “So yeah, that’s fun.”

We walked in silence for a few more minutes.

“Soooo, nice weather we're having” Joel tried to break the silence.

“How the fuck would you know? The canopy is so thick here it could be raining chocolate milk.” I snapped back.

“Actually, the rain or milk would drip through the leaves, else this forest would have died a long time ago.”

“Fuck you. I didn't ask for a biology lesson. This is a land of magical, talking ponies, and you're telling me about science?”

“Even this world must obey it some degree.”

“Tell that to Pinkie.” I muttered.

“Deal with it Wards.”

“I will fucking murder you.” I said, pulling out my small combat knife in a reverse grip. Joel began laughing. I sheathed the knife and sighed. Again. Ugh. (Wards: another annoying nickname that Joel had given me. It is short for Wardo (which is short for Edwardo, etc). Because that wasn't short enough...)

As I breathed in I noticed something odd about the air. It tasted of... salt? Oh shit. Don't tell me.
The thick forest abruptly came to an end as we walked out onto a beach. Quite a nice beach actually. Although I had seen quite a few, being from Australia and all. Point is, we were at a beach. Which means that we are next to the sea. Last I checked neither Ponyville, nor Canterlot were anywhere near the sea. Shit. I had picked the complete wrong direction to walk, meaning that we were a good few days away from civilization. I groaned. At least it wasn't a sigh.

“Come on man, it's just water.” Joel said, not knowing what I was groaning about.

“That’s not the problem. The problem is that almost every city is hundreds of k's away from where we are now.” I replied, falling onto the ground in a sudden loss of energy.

“That’s not that bad. It's only a few days travel.”

“Yeah, a few days travel through a forest of stuff that wants to kill us. And also over mountains.”

“When you put it that way...” Joel didn't finish his sentence. He just flopped to the ground beside me.

“Worst thing is, there's nothing we can do about it.” I pulled out my small headset and put it in my ear, pressing the button down to speak. “I mean, It's not like we can call Dan and just say 'Come in, do you read me?' and expect him to answer.”
To my surprise, it wasn't Joel who replied. A disgustingly cheerful, electronic voice came out of my earpiece. “Loud and clear boss, whaddaya need?”

“What the fuck!?” I practically screamed into my earpiece. “Dan?”

“Maybe a bit too loud, if you catch my drift.”

“Yeah, sorry. I didn't think this would reach you.” I said carefully, making sure that I didn't say that I was in another world.

“Nea. So what do you need?”

“Six bottles of Mountain Dew and two AT-LRV's with GPS at my position.” I said without thinking. I then realized that he would never be able to get them here. I didn't revoke the order though, it would be fun to mess with him.

“Alrighty then. ETA thirty minutes. CYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

“How-” The radio cut out. “well that was fucking weird.”

“Why did you bother ordering something, it's never going to get here.” Joel said from the ground.

“Because I felt like messing with him.”

“Fair enough.”

I lay down next to Joel again, looking up at the stars.“Been awhile since we got to relax like this, huh?”

“Yeah. I haven't seen the stars so bright since that mission in the desert.”

“That was fun.”

“Quite.”

“Remember that scientist?”

“The crazy one?”

“Yeah. The guy who told us to fuck off and kill him later because he was busy.”
Joel laughed. “He gave us coffee. Like, who gives two assassins coffee when they're there to kill you?”
“I know. He did give us some pretty sweet gear though. Like my ballistic knife. This thing is badass.” I flipped the knife in question around my fingers.

“Well, he did give it to us so we could be guinea pigs using it.”

“Still, I can't help but wonder why he gave it to us.”

“Because we're the only ones insane enough to try it?”

“Probably.” we laughed together.

It had been so long since I had just sat down and talked with Joel. It's always 'go kill that person' or 'I need you to steal this'. I hardly ever get a moment to myself anymore.

“When was the last time we saw the sea?” I asked, staring out into the waves.

“That mission with the horrifyingly stereotypical German villain and the sub.”

“Oh god, I would have killed that guy even if we didn't have a contract. That was the most annoying accent I've ever heard.”

“And we've lived in America.”

I laughed. “True dat.”

“He sort of reminded me of Richtofen. You know, evil genius, German, annoying as hell, likes nukes, lacks foresight, that sort of thing.”

I compared the two in my mind. Joel was right, he was like Richtofen. We even shared a first name. We were all called Edward. I can't believe it took me almost a year to realize that. I can't believe it's been almost a year since we last saw the sea. Damn, time flies.

“You know, being here taught me a very valuable lesson. I need to slow down sometimes.”

We looked at each other and said in unison “You know, deleting Caroline just now taught me a valuable lesson. The best solution to a problem is usually the easiest one. And I'll be honest, killing you is hard. You know what my days used to be like? I just tested. Nobody murdered me, or put me in a potato, or fed me to birds. I had a pretty good life. And then you showed up. You dangerous, mute lunatic. So you know what? You win. Just go. Ha ha ha. It's been fun. Don't come back.”

I smiled at the memories. “How did we remember all that?”

“Beats me.” Joel replied, putting his hands behind his head.

I pulled out my ipod and headphones and linked them. As I ran through the usual connection protocol I noticed a small bar in the top left-hand corner.
“Um, Joel? We have internet connection. How the fuck does that work?”

“So much for false advertising. Looks like it really does connect anywhere. Damn that’s awesome.”

“Just think about it for a second, there are no satellites here in Equestria, so it has nothing to connect to. This shouldn't work.”

“To quote you; FUCK LOGIC, THIS IS EQUESTRIA!”

I laughed and put on my headphones. I scrolled through my long list of music and finally settled on 'Lost on the moon'. With a light tap the music began to play.

“Saying goes that when you're stuck on a mountain
You try to go up, you try to go down, you turn around
To face a wall so you can face yourself
realizing you've made a mistake
And you are being stuck on the moon
like the rest of us, trying to make sense of it
crying cause we don't have any reason
we're alone together, cause we all
share the very same crime
Some will say that this is not going to last long
Some will say that if we try we can't go wrong
As time goes on we are not leaving this place
Cause when we'll come back we lose our track of time and space
So together we are all lost on the moon
We all share our home on the moon, we
forever we are lost on the moon, together
we pay your crime on the moon”

I realized that I just sung the entire song out loud. And Joel had sung along. Well that was unexpected. I guess constantly listening to music with your friend rubs off on them after a while.

The waves were getting louder. Much louder. Too much louder. What I heard was not the waves, but a jet engine.
With the smell of burning fuel, a large jet flew over us, dropping two large crates onto the sand next to us.
“How the fuck?” I said, marveling at Dan's ability to have anything delivered anywhere, in under an hour. I walked over to the two crates and opened one. I looked inside and smiled. “Fuck logic this is Equestria indeed.”
Inside the crate was a large motorbike. But it wasn't a normal bike. It was much larger and thicker, in place of it's wheels it had a tank tread and it had two blades that could flip out of the sides that doubled as footrests. It was painted midnight blue and had two holsters for pistols on the sides. A darker blue splash of paint adorned the back with a crescent moon on it. I was going to be riding Luna.

“Bow chicka wow wow” I said quietly with a smile.

See if you can guess who my favorite pony is. Anyone who does gets a free slap for being a smart-ass.

I opened up the second crate which contained a bike similar to the first, although it lacked the cutie mark. It also contained, “Six bottles of Mountain Dew, fuck yeah”. I grabbed two of the bottles and tossed one to Joel, who instantly unscrewed the cap and took a long pull from it.

“Oh man, I've missed this stuff.” He said, burping at the end.

“Yeah, it's just not the same when it's been in your pocket for a few days.”

“Indeed.”

We finished off our bottles before turning our attention to the bikes.
“I just thought of something.”

“Yeah?”

“I didn't ask for fuel.” I said, a hint of worry creeping into my voice.

“Dan's not that stupid.”

“I fucking hope not.”

Author's Note:

Shorter than usual chapter today. Because reasons.

Comments

[tyzan]

I see you're using Mercenaries 2 logic here. Anywhere there isn't someone with an AA gun or RPG it will be delivered in no time at all.

[BinaryTroll]

3385525
There's actually a reason for that. I do realize that it's stupid to think that vehicles, heavy weaponry, etc will be delivered within ten minutes. I mean like, it's hard enough getting a freaking game delivered in Australia, let alone a pair of bikes in an entirely different universe. But all will be revealed in time.

[Death2205]

Dan earths pinkie pie