From a limitless void of colorless silhouette, a soundless existence in nothingness, to awareness of a familiar unknown. Light bled through Ray's eyelids as he gradually peeled them open. Pain expanded throughout his body as he lay sprawled under a mass of mechanical parts.

He remembered where he was, even recognized the dreadful remains of the Shilka's interior. The original driver's hatchway that previously remained unusable due to a well-sealed weld now laid collapsed at his legs with various other twisted metal holding it down. He escaped from the entrapment, but not without cutting his skin on the sharpened edges.

He remembered that his shoulder had been shot, but it was no longer painful. In fact, it felt numb. Brushing against his left arm with the rest of his body made it feel as if it was from another person. But as soon as he attempted to utilize the muscle in said arm, pain shot through it as if it were being severed from his body, forcing him to cry from the brief yet torturous misery.

The front of his head throbbed and stung, and he could feel a warm fluid creeping down his cheeks to his mouth, which tasted of salted copper. He investigated with his right hand and felt a gash at his forehead, just above his eyebrows, bleeding profusely. The shape of the wound according to his touch matched the corner of the vision slot behind the driver hatch.

After wiping away a good amount of blood from his face, he still yet tasted it in his mouth. With investigation of his tongue, he felt that one of his upper teeth were loose. Ugh... I'm broken... He felt like laying waste in the wreckage, to just wither away from the torment.

Voices could be heard from outside of the vehicle in low murmurs. The ponies! The Raiders! The battle! Who made it through? He feared for the worst as he crawled towards the opening above the vehicle where the turret had once been. He feared that his plan had failed, and that Tolwin had survived the downing of his aircraft. That perhaps the Raiders had surpassed the attack and overwhelmed the defensive with crushing firepower.

He climbed from the opening with his only capable arm, onto the battered outer hull of the vehicle and took a deep breath of air as he staggered to his feet. It smelled like a smoky barbecue that had gone horribly wrong, laced with gasoline and diesel.

He looked around the battlefield where fiery debris lay scattered amongst the land, and through the smoke and heated distortions he could spot hundreds of eyes peering his direction. The sight made his heart sink in surprise, for they were Royal Guardsmen and Changeling soldiers gathered all around the area to witness his rise from the carnage.

It was silent despite the settling of wreckage and the crackling fires, and occasionally there was a distant scream or yell. The moment seemed to last much longer than it actually did. Something also felt lacking from the situation, like there was some kind of cue he was missing. Do I say something? He instead made his move and climbed down from the Shilka, making his way towards the crowd with a limp.

He could only imagine how he appeared to them all as he awkwardly approached. Like some kind of bloodthirsty, undead monster.

"Ray!" a familiar voice shouted from the crowd. Twilight Sparkle galloped towards him, then stopped abruptly in his path. "Is it really you?!"

"Well I sure as hell ain't a zombie, that's for sure."

Her eyes lit up like lights as she formed the biggest smile on her face, followed by her running up to his left leg with a tight hug. She finally let go and stepped backwards towards the rest of her friends, with the smile still on her face.

"You're a lot uglier than I imagined you'd be." came another familiar voice off to his right. Queen Chrysalis had emerged from the crowd walking elegantly towards him with a sly smile.

Despite the excruciating pain, Ray laughed at the irony of her expression, regretting ever saying such a thing to her now that he looked upon her sultry eyes again.

Her smile faded and the crowd gasped as if they had all seen something terrifying.

An arm locked his head in an embrace as the muzzle of a gun pressed against the side of his head.

"Nobody move or I blow his head off!" Marchetti had him hostage and he could not escape in his condition.

Twilight lifted a hoof, eager to help, but failed to figure out how.

"We can make a deal!" Marchetti continued, when suddenly a gunshot erupted from behind, and a bloody hole popped open from his forehead. The gun fell from his hand and his grip slackened, followed by his lifeless body collapsing to the ground with his eyes wide open.

Ray turned to find Faust awkwardly leaning against the remains of an HMMWV, with a Beretta M92F trained in his direction.

"Goddamn marauder..." he mumbled as he lowered the weapon and collapsed to the ground in front of the vehicle, struggling to sit upright.

Ray staggered towards him and knelt next to him, putting his right hand on his shoulder.

Faust turned to face him, then briefly looked around, momentarily returning to Ray's gaze. "What do we do now?"

Ray looked upon the crowd that gathered around them. At the guardsmen, his new pony friends, the Changelings, Junkers and Agusta, and surviving Raiders held captive at gunpoint by the other soldiers. At Twilight, then Chrysalis.

It's amazing what a little human influence will do. We seeded the existence of a race to succeed us, and in the end we helped them survive, by uniting them with a foe that too understands what it all means, even if it took the hard realization of their outcome if they had shunned it as they have before. Only together can we take a stand to liberate this dying world. Only together can we understand and embrace the magic of friendship.

He turned to Faust with the simplest answer that came to his mind. An answer that held the deepest meaning to every one of them, and he gave this answer with a casual shrug. "Coexist."

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...

Medical tents had been erected within the Celestial Ward, just outside of the battlegrounds that hundreds of Canterlot citizens and Royal Guardsmen helped clean up. Many volunteers helped pony doctors and nurses rush wounded to their stations for emergency care.

Changelings could be seen assisting them in their efforts, but not without bitter distrust amongst the majority of the pony folk.

The inside of the tents were busy with medical personnel attending to wounded that poured in by the dozens. Yelling of orders from the doctors and nurses combined with the painful screams from the patients made it feel as if it were a madhouse that would drive one to insanity. It was a nightmare that none of these seemingly peaceful creatures should ever have to endure.

Ray laid helplessly in one of the hospital beds, watching everyone scramble the tent in a whirlwind. Occasional nurse ponies would gallop by in a blur telling him they would attend to him as soon as they could, only before more serious casualties entered the establishment.

He watched as doctors performed CPR on a guardspony, with the only result being blood welling up from his mouth. They attempted to drain it out and pump air into his lungs with a long tube, but to no avail. He had drowned in his own blood thanks to an ugly shotgun wound in his back.

Next to them was a human man that had been burned to a charred mess in his lower abdomen, as of then under powerful anesthesia to knock him out, so that he would not die from the painful shock of his injuries.

Nurses rushed in another victim, a Changeling soldier, and threw him onto the bed to his left. Ray felt a sudden rush of nausea as he gazed upon the wounds he had suffered. Bone protruded through the flank above his right-hind leg, within a cavity filled with shredded veins and muscle tissue. Worse was that his belly had been sliced clean open, with intestines and other such organs poking through a flowing scarlet stream. Oddly enough, the fully-conscious soldier did not scream from agony, but instead looked upon himself with utter fear as tears crept down his face.

Ray shifted his gaze to the empty bed that lay to his right side, fighting the urge to throw up at the sight.

The same bed had quickly become filled with yet another Changeling soldier, this one clad in rather familiar improvised battle armor. The nurses and volunteers had left him and attended to work elsewhere, leaving him alone with Ray, since his wounds were less severe.

Recognition shifted his memory of the sickening sight he had witnessed to his left. He lifted his right arm and pointed to the soldier with a grin. "You."

The soldier turned his head to face him, in turn recognizing Ray as evident by the smile gradually forming on his face. He answered with a weary "Meee..."

"What you did with that Abrams tank... you sure showed a lot of guts out there, my friend. If it weren't for you I would've never thought of hijacking that Shilka."

Cattani snorted in disbelief and drifted to sleep almost immediately.

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Shining Armor stood near the back doorway, watching with dread as the wounded rushed in, while the dead rushed out in black bags. Many of them were his men, and he feared peering at faces for recognition, for they may have been ponies he knew well.

Princess Cadence emerged from the corner of the tent. Their eyes met and they ran into each other's hooves in a tight embrace.

"I'm so glad you're okay." She said. "I love you so much."

"I love you too."

They pulled away and gave the personnel room to move through the doorway.

"This is such a bizarre day."

She could not help but giggle at his expression for the situation, but quickly composed herself.

"Alright, perhaps that's the wrong choice of words."

"No, you're right. It certainly is."

"It's just..." He let out a sigh. "never have I thought of a day we'd be invaded by a bunch of highly-advanced bipedal beings, let alone assisted in our efforts against them by a race that was once our enemy."

"I know how you feel. After all, to this day I see them as a manipulative strain of monsters that nearly ruined our lives. I will never trust them, no matter what they do to make peace with us. As for the humans, as they're called, I'm not exactly sure."

"We should get to know them before passing such judgment. They say there's a few surviving humans that were actually responsible for the Changeling alliance to us."

"I know. One of them is called Ray. I was speaking with Princess Celestia in another tent. She would very much like you two to meet.

Shining turned towards the chaotic tent. "I'll be sure to find him."

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...

It had been a little over three weeks since the human invasion of Canterlot, and many locations caught in the conflict still laid in ruin. However, efforts were still underway to repair and refurbish by volunteer ponies and Changelings, the latter of which had gained a tentative trust with their efforts.

It was the queen's attempt at paying for the damage she has done to them in the past, in hopes to bring her species into a brighter light. To start over, with relations that could potentially benefit them both in the future.

Princess Celestia remained rather reluctant at the resolution, but accepted it on the condition that an additional sum of her empire's currency would be paid to the Canterlot commonwealth. Enough to pay for repair and restoration from the first repercussion. However, none of them had discussed official political relations at the time. It would call for further conditioning that Chrysalis was still yet unprepared to fulfill. This and there was still a major trust issue between them, which was unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

The surviving Phantom Raiders whom assaulted the empire served their sentence within the subterranean dungeons. This would mark its first use since its very construction in the beginning of the kingdom, since offences had ordinarily been rather minor in comparison, in which the conventional short-sentence prisons were used.

Among the prisoners was Tempest, chief director of strategic operations of the Changeling empire, serving his punishment for disobeying his queen's orders, resulting in the death of one of their best agents. Out of fear of what his punishment would be under Chrysalis' rule, he demanded imprisonment in the Canterlot jurisdiction. He knew at least he would be given better treatment with whatever dignity he had left, and despite the lack of political relations, the two superiors accepted the transfer.

Furthermore, many of the surviving war machines and weapons were transported to the Equestrian Mechanical Design & Engineering Technical Institute for research. Potential use of the designs were sought by the ponies for both civilian and military applications, and plans were already underway to reproduce the designs for such uses.

Unfortunately, fuel had become an issue given that the only source of it was already in the old war machines and a surviving armored fuel truck. The matter was still under discussion, but a strong proposal was made to scout the outside wastelands for more abundant sources. A second proposal was to convert the designs for steam-power, an already well-proven external combustion method. However, this proposal was dismissed on account of weaker horsepower in comparison to the newer internal combustion designs.

Equestria was in the early stages of a technological revolution, thanks to an outside species previously unrecorded to their knowledge. Their world would never be the same again.

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Ray awoke from a long, natural slumber, much like he had at Fluttershy's cottage about three weeks ago. This time he was in a hospital bed in a small room, presumably within a hospital building.

He moved to stretch, but decided against it when he realized he was still wearing a solid cast over his left arm, and an uncomfortable IV in the right. There was a soft clip of some kind over his right index finder, with a wire that hooked up to a machine next to him that repeatedly beeped. Ray had always been curious as to what this particular machine did, but he assumed it measured his pulse because of the consistency of the beeping sound.

The morning light shined brightly through the nearby window, almost overpowering the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Birds chirped sweet tunes to start off a presumably glorious day.

The door across the room suddenly creaked open with a nurse pony entering the room.

"Morning, Ray." she greeted. She wore an ancient style of nurse uniform similar to what humans did long ago, including the signature hat with a bright red cross on the front. "Sleep well?"

"Like a broken rock."

She giggled and walked up to the beeping machine to turn it off. "For what it's worth, you've made quite a recovery." She proceeded to remove the clip from his finger, then moved on to the IV in his arm. "That's saying a lot given that you're one of our first human patients. Normally under these circumstances, you'd be under the care of the local vet. The complexity of your condition and physiology called for our expertise."

"Congrats on the milestone." He flinched as the needle was removed from his arm.

"Milestone?"

"You know, your first human patient... and it survived under your care. It's a joke."

"Oh." She did not appear to be amused at his humor this time.

"Alright, I really mean to say thanks. I appreciate the efforts to get me well enough to freely walk the earth again. And I'm happy it could be under your care."

She smiled at him. "It was a pleasure, Ray. Now let's get to that cast."

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Ponyville was still in a state of repair and restoration, but the more gruesome remnants of the invasion were cleaned away from the streets, but were near impossible to clean from their memories. The time of mourning and sorrow had came and went under the past week, and it was now a time to celebrate their victory.

The lingering hell of war was now at the back of everyone's mind as a terrible nightmare presupposed to never return again, and peace flowed through them as they partied the daylight away in Town Square.

Stars and a bright full moon illuminated a beautiful purple sky, combined with a magnificent multi-colored aurora waving like giant glowing ribbons above.

Ponies were gathered everywhere. They ate at the grand buffet tables, danced with glee on wooden dance floors, and gathered amongst themselves to converse and express their happiness.

Faust, Agusta, and Junkers could be seen at the far end of an outdoor bar area drinking cider with a few other ponies, watching amused as Pinkie Pie danced her crazy randomness away on the table as the music grew louder.

The song playing throughout the gathering had been from a CD found in one of the war machines' audio devices, transferred to a record so that it could be properly played on their native sound system. Appropriately, but certainly not coincidentally, it was an old rock-and-roll song called "Party" by a band called Boston.

Ray simply stood by the ruins of one of the nearby buildings, watching the celebration. He enjoyed the music and loved seeing everyone's' cheerfulness. It made him feel warm and appreciated for his efforts in fighting for them. It truly was worth every moment of it.

But something kept him from joining them. He couldn't understand what the restraint was, but his hesitation mounted weights on his shoes.

He jolted around as he heard the sound of a twig breaking behind him. A familiar silhouette approached him and gradually revealed itself as it walked closer to the light.

"Chrysalis?" Ray eased up.

She walked up next to him to observe the nearby celebration. "Am I interrupting anything important over here?"

"No."

She looked at him with puzzlement. "How come you're not with the others?"

"I don't know. I just-..." He trailed off without a logical answer, then turned to her. "What about you?"

She turned back towards the crowd. "They're not ready for me. I've been a menace to them long before you came into our land. They would look at me as they always have, and I would just ruin their good time. I'd rather not risk throwing a wrench into the sprocket."

"You did a noble thing, my queen. You could've struck when they were at their weakest, but you defended them and even made amends to them after it was over. I don't know what changed you, but I don't think you realize how much recognition you've received for what you've done."

"I don't care about recognition. I just want the paranoia to be over. I'm not an evil queen."

"Paranoia, unfortunately, burns relentless. And as a shapeshifting, emotion-consuming species, I'm sure you can understand that. But at least you can proceed with your efforts to win their hearts. Show that you mean them no harm, and that you embrace the magic of friendship as well."

"They will not be won easily, and I fear now is not the time. But perhaps after the award ceremony tomorrow, I can make an attempt."

"If you feel that's the right thing to do..."

She withheld a reply and continued watching the gathering with Ray, then finally spoke up.

"We found an abandoned hillside castle just outside of Canterlot. With Celestia's permission we've migrated the hive there and are currently working on developing a small capitol city. A nice and quiet little place to thrive."

"Good to hear. I hope your children enjoy it."

She gave him an odd look. "I don't have children. What are you implying?"

He met her gaze. "Your subjects. The Changelings."

She snorted amusingly. "No, dear Ray, you've got my species wrong. We may be an insectoid equine race, but the hive-mind is my method of governmental organization. I'm a queen of royalty, not biology."

"Really fooled me. Given you have drones and all."

She shrugged. "Biological selection of newborn without the ability to reproduce. We've never understood it, but that's just how it works with us."

"Fascinating."

"I brought up our new home because I'd like to offer you a place to reside should you not find anything here."

He hesitated and crossed his arms. "I'll definitely get back to you on that. Just give me a little time to think about it."

"Of course." After a moment she turned to him with a smile. "Thanks for everything, Ray. Without you we wouldn't be where we are now." With that she slowly retreated back into the darkness.

"Good night, Chrysalis."

"Same to you." She replied, then stopped abruptly. "Oh, Ray?"

"Yeah?"

"Stop standing around like an idiot and join them already. It's your night as much as theirs. Have a good time."

He uncrossed his arms and looked back and fourth from the gathering and back to her.

"Queen's orders." she finished and proceeded walking towards the dark of night.

He turned to the celebration and began slowly walking towards them. His heart beat like a drum and his hands quaked, but he walked on with pride. And upon being greeted by the cheerful ponies, he realized how distant his fears and suffering had become. He had friends in his life now. Individuals who cared for him, and actually loved him unconditionally. He had traveled the world upon the road of war, and has finally found its end. He was home.

Maybe Faust was right. After all these years of searching, I've finally found my street of dreams.

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THE END

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Ray's theme: watch?v=CuuMvua-SFo

Main theme: watch?v=Ddi2TBnzdPo