Repossession #1

AIRSOFT IN EQUESTRIA #1

-In which mysterious but entirely expected dimension-hopping occurs-

 

 

>"Hit that boulder by the river's edge; you should have a clear line of fire covering that whole exit."

 

>"On my way!" You sprint towards the large rock deposited on the riverbank. Flashes of red catch your eye off to your right, but you don't turn to look. Only a few dozen feet and you're back behind cover, hopefully if they do see you in that time it's too late to react. Just as you launch into a dive you can hear a shout from their direction, but as your body grows cold anticipating the hits, you collapse on the ground. "Safe!" a little caricature of a baseball umpire cries in your mind, and you do a little fist-pump to yourself as you gather into a crouch.

 

>"Made it, where are they?"

 

>"Good run. You're exactly opposite the entrance, and they're slightly off to your right. They're coming around, get them before they get you"

 

>You poke your head up from behind the rock, and can see the red armbands more clearly. There's two of them, and one points to you and shoulders their rifle before you can duck your head down again. You raise your AK up over your head, over the top of the rock, and spray hundreds of plastic BBs in their general direction. Someone shouts a curse and yells "Hit!" You peek over the rock again and see one of the two, armbands now off and held over his head as he retreats back through the exit you need to be covering. But where's the other one?

 

>"Hit," reluctantly calls a voice from your left. You look over, and just ready to flank you, stands the second, pulling off his armbands with some measure of frustration.

 

>"I got your back!" your walkie-talkie cries in triumph.

 

>"And I got this passage," you reply. "Tell Squad 3 to advance. You can move up."

 

>"Understood. Message out, and I'm relocating. Keep 'em down."

 

>After doing a quick survey of the landscape, you feel pretty convinced there is not, in fact, anyone else to keep down. You relax beside the rock you claimed as your own, tuning out your surroundings for a bit. You're pretty sure over the weekend you have walked, ran, or sprinted many miles. All the training you and your friends did really paid off as you easily overtook groups not expecting such a large battlefield. Now you're at the head of this Blue team push, leading the charge. Well, you will be, soon. Right now you're chilling out because playing hero is tough work, and in this final push of the exhausting weekend your fatigue is starting to catch up with you. You let yourself drift off into a sort of half-sleep, trusting the obnoxious walkie-talkie clipped to your vest right near your ear to rouse you if something is up.

 

>The unfamiliar land, going against an army almost a hundred people with an equal number at your back, is so different than the feeling of the traditional squad-on-squad engagements that always went down on your old stomping grounds. You haven't quite gotten used to the sights and sounds yet, but you're only here for a few more hours, and you don't think it'll significantly impact your performance on this final push. You have enough eyes in the trees to keep you safe- as was just demonstrated- and you stand ready to not only snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but totally take credit for the whole thing too. At least, your squad can, and that one old geezer back at Command that sent you out. Squad 3 is keeping pace but they can't get to where they're going without you telling them they can.

 

>Wait a minute. You haven't gotten the sounds down yet but you're pretty sure 'dead silence' isn't one of them.

 

>Your brain finally fully registers the fact that within the last second or so everything around you has changed. Not just the silence, but as you lean back on the rock behind you, it feels different too. Standing up, a quick look around reveals that while you're still in a forest, with a clearing on the other side of a boulder, the river you would have had to cross to get there has disappeared. Instead of being at a river bank, the rock you're next to is instead wedged in some sort of hole in the ground. Written on an odd angle on one of its surfaces is the name 'Tom'. Who the fuck is Tom, and what has he done to put you here?

 

>Clearly Red Team snipers are the least of your worries now. You need to figure out what happened to you, or to the ground around you, and get back to known territory.

 

>The walkie-talkie is just as quiet as your new surroundings. No talk from your partner, who would have checked in when she arrived at her new post. You flip to Squad 3's channel, and are greeted with just as little. You put the speaker to your ear and turn the gain up until the static is unbearable. You can't even make out the slightest voice.

 

>You look back to the small hole in the edge of the woodlands. It still leads to some hilly fields beyond, and with little else to go by, you decide to follow the path out. The first thing your mind drags itself out of its stupor to note is that you seem to be following sets of hoofprints. That's a good sign; there's something worth riding a horse to, or from, up ahead. Once you break into the clearing, you note there is no forest on the opposite side of the field. That means you're not even on the battlefield anymore; the central field was wooded on all sides. You've somehow managed to end up somewhere completely different than where you just were, in an amount of time your brain insists was near-instant.

 

>By now the whole situation has gone beyond confusing to seriously pissing you off. 'How did this happen' has stopped being a concern, and 'Where do I go' is slowly sliding off the list. 'What fucker gets hurt when I return' is slowly taking a lead within your racing mind, and all bets are on it dominating your attention, even if it isn't necessarily a winning contender. 'Where do I go' is about to drop from the race anyway, because in the distance you're pretty sure you see something that isn't a natural part of the landscape. You shoulder your rifle and look through your scope at the strange outcroppings.

 

>Sure enough, they're buildings, though they definitely seem off to you. Unless the distance is messing with your sense of scale, they seem awfully small. They're built out of materials you didn't think you'd see outside of some 'living museum'. And from there to where you're standing now you can't see anything in the way of development. Just a bunch of buildings sitting there, in the middle of nowhere. Maybe if you kick in a door and shout loud enough someone will give you answers. You'd better head out now while you're still upset, it'd be a damn shame if your yelling didn't communicate maximum rage.

 

>As you travel, the second detail about your surroundings that manages to take root in your mind is the further towards this building you move, the more animals you encounter. You'd be able to understand that if this was, say, a city. But this is some random wooden box- upon closer observation it appears to be a chicken coop- fenced in with what looks to be an oversized bush festooned with birdhouses. The bush is inexplicably covered with windows, or perhaps is trying to conceal them in the worst camouflage job you've ever seen.

 

>Finally arriving, you walk around the side of this bush- actually a cottage of some sort. You make your way to the front and are confronted with a door barely tall enough to let you in. Staring at it, trying to force it open with your sheer anger, you eventually make good on your prior mental promise and kick the thing inwards. It gives, swinging open quickly, and ends its arc against the wall with a loud bang. You brandish your weapon menacingly around the interior of the small house, completely ignoring the fact that the bright orange tip would tell anyone it's non-lethal. "WHERE THE FUCK AM I?" you rage at nobody in particular. Nobody seems to be home. You certainly startled what looked to be a pastel yellow pony in the corner though and-

 

>Wait, holy shit is that a winged pony? Your eyes are telling your brain that about fifteen feet in front of you was some sort of Greek myth. Your brain is telling your eyes to fuck off because it really couldn't deal with that shit right now. It was too busy trying to make out what the thing was saying. It was making this job really difficult because it was muttering under its breath in a frequency range that was on the edge of exceeding human hearing, and sobbing at the same time. You can play Bellerophon some other time, right now you want answers. Between all this mental chaos the only thing that makes it out of your mouth is "Son of a bitch".

 

>Between the creature's pitiful sobs you manage to piece together "I... I can get you one... I think..."

 

>"What"

 

>"A... bitch. Applejack has one... but... wh-what would you d-d-d-do with Wuh-Win-nona??"

 

>Your anger fizzles and pops until it's reduced to a few bright flashes at the back of your mind. You're talking to a pegasus as rendered by a kindergartener with a new crayon set, and it's asking you what you would do with a she-dog if you were able to get ahold of one.

 

>"I think I would... like to sit down." you finally say after some time. The pony recoils as you start groping around for a seat, your mind not really paying that much attention. It tosses its head in the general direction of a diminutive couch. You collapse into the seat, and begin the careful process of really trying to comprehend what's going on, the earlier confusion and the anger that followed now ebbing away. You're definitely not where you were, you're not even anywhere near the battlefield you were participating in, which was already in a state you were unfamiliar with. The fact that you actually had a short conversation with that pony catches up to you, eliminating a host of other scenarios. You're either not on Earth anymore, or you're mentally incapacitated in some way. Unfortunately, those are the options that provide no real clear method of return. Seems like you're going to be stuck here for a long while, until you can figure out what exactly brought you here in the first place.

 

>Resigning yourself to your current predicament, you unburden yourself of all your gear. You unsling the airsoft rifle and put it on the chair next to you. Leaning forward to free yourself of the backpack's straps, you place that on the other side of you. The pack holds your gaze for a bit; it contains literally everything you can count on. Nothing else in this strange place can be taken for granted now, you're going have to make sure these last. Fortunately, it's quite a bit; before the final assault you had dismantled your camp and taken all your gear with you, the offensive was expected to last all day. With that in mind you open up a front pocket and take out a screwdriver. You pick up your rifle again and dismantle enough to access the battery, which you disconnect. You do the same with your walkie-talkie, which goes into the backpack. You remove a few carrying cases for other components- a collimated holographic sight, a flashlight, other battery-powered doodads, and one by one remove their power sources. Halfway through the process, you remove your goggles and skiing half-mask that was protecting your face; they just made your work more difficult and were no longer necessary. You put the assembled batteries in the front pocket of the backpack, and everything else returns to its proper place. The last thing you take out is your cell phone. No signal. You take the batteries out of it too and put it back.

 

>You take stock of your other equipment. With your rifle thus deactivated the only defense- deterrent really, airsoft weapons only cause permanent harm at close range- is your pistol, which is gas-operated. You have several spare CO2 canisters you can refill the pistol's magazine with, along with a couple thousand spare BBs in the main pocket of your backpack. If there was anything that wanted to harm you, you could only hope the pistol could pack enough of a sting to convince them to turn away.

 

>The pegasus in the corner watches you at first in terror, but this slowly gives way to curiosity. How you deftly handle the devices you carry, their strange and intricate shapes and alien functions, add into the mystery of its somehow sentient mind. Noticing its rapt attention you play out the charade a little longer, removing your pistol and making a great show of checking it over, ending by taking aim at a nearby carpet and firing a single shot into it. The sound of the pistol firing visibly startles the pastel pony, even though the sound wasn't particularly loud. In the current silence it may as well have been deafening.

 

>You finally look over to the nervous creature directly, and you could swear your gaze was leaving bruises on it. That's how the animal reacted at least, and you briefly considered that you may still seem exceptionally angry. You heave a great sigh and look at the carpet you shot instead. Being infuriated may not be the best way to get answers after all.

 

>"So... I already know you can speak. Do you have a name?"

 

>"...Ferttershurr" comes the response in that same high-pitched, under-the-breath squeal you first heard out of it. You hazard a look back at the pony.

 

>"Sorry, I didn't catch that...?"

 

>"F-F-Fluttershy... I'm sorry... if I d-d-did anything t-to upset you"

 

>Anger flashes back to the front of your head at the brief, indirect implication that this Fluttershy was the one to bring you here. You push it back, thoroughly convinced this pony probably couldn't even go outside without assistance, let alone drag people from other dimensions.

 

>"No, not anything you did. I don't know what happened. Where am I?"

 

>At the assurance the pony seemed to relax, though only slightly. She- you decided her gender based on her obnoxious coloration and the high pitch of her voice alone- stopped shaking, at least. "P-Ponyville. Well, just outside it... I mean."

 

>Ponyville? A pegasus named Fluttershy living outside a town named Ponyville. How quaint.

 

>"Is... is your name... Ell?"

 

>You look at her confused. You then learn that a look of confusion, as well as of rage, can cause this pony a bout of paralyzing fright. You try to avoid eye contact altogether instead. You look down at your Blue Team armband, a navy color with a white circle and an L inside it. Team players were identified by color, then shade, then letter. You were Player L, Squad 3, Dark platoon, Blue company, technically.

 

>"Eh... in a way. Sure, why not?"

 

>"But surely you have another one... a nickname or something... unless, that's not... how your kind does things..." Fluttershy started strong but her brief flash of will petered out before the sentence was over. Getting anything good out of her is going to be tough. You weren't about to tell them your real name, not while still was a chance of just getting out and washing your hands clean of all this. Why leave a trail? Besides with such quaint names as you've been presented with, you can choose something equally trite.

 

>"Well my real name is Anon. Anonymous. The L is just for a game I was playing until I was taken here."

 

>Fluttershy smiled weakly. It seems the lie was good enough. Mentioning your 'codename' brought something to the front of your mind though. What if more made it through? You might not be the only one who was transported here, meeting others was a definite possibility since you had no idea what happened in the first place.

 

>"Hey, if you see anyone else with these armbands, let them know I'm here? But use 'L', not my name, if you do, please. Hard to explain." You pause a moment. There was a missing piece to that equation. "If you find any more at all. I still don't know how I got here."

 

>The yellow pony looked back at the floor "I... know someone who might... be able to help. I could take you to her? I mean, if you want?"

 

>Amused that Fluttershy couldn't even finish the statement without turning it into a question, you finally crack a genuine smile. "That'd be great, thanks."