A few days later saw Rainbow Dash, Duffy, and I chillin' under a tree in the park. Or rather, I was under the tree. Duffy was sitting on a branch a few feet away from Rainbow, who was snoozing the morning away and somehow not falling down because fuck physics.

"What's the objectives for today?" Duffy asked about an hour after we set up shop.

"Do whatever it is you do when I'm not around, Duffy. I'm still looking around for a second job, because there's only so much to do on the farm when the crops ain't in." I replied, shrugging. I caught him muttering something about 'getting lost sleep hours' before he lied down hesitantly on Dash's chest, being the closest thing to a pillow up there. Aside from the pillow that was up there.

"You're opening up to her, aren't you? Good going, Duffy." I muttered with a smirk, then saw a group of five familiar ponies and several critters come over a hill and straight towards us. As I was watching the girls come over to us with grins (Applejack nodded once to me, knowing that our... 'discussion' sunk in.), Pinkie was looking around with a hidden frown.

"What's wrong, Pinks?" I asked, before I felt a pressure on my arm. Looking down, I saw her pet gator, Gummy, gnawing on me. Some of the shit I've seen since coming here, this didn't even hit the top fifty list anymore. As I held up my Gummy arm, the rest of the critters crowded around me. Winona chased Opal, Rarity's cat, up the tree. Duffy grumbled at this, and tried getting the cat away from him while still lying on Dash.

'Think he hates cats, or he's allergic to them. One of the two.' I silently thought, when Dash woke up, startled, and sent Duffy crashing to the ground with a few choice swears. I rolled my eyes as Duffy grumbled and sat up, glaring daggers at the animals. Clearly, this sniper was not an animal person.

"Sleep good, Dash?" I called up, letting Gummy loose upon Duffy, who glared at me as best as he could with a toothless baby gator attached to his face.

"More or less. You girls bring Tank with ya?" She asked, looking at them. (Tank is a turtle, which is funny as hell.) As if responding, a bright ass light blinds the lot of us, sending Winona into a barking fit, Opal hissing, all eight of us probably recoiling, and a body smashed into me. Smelt of copper, low-tide, and was still breathing.

"H...Help..." A man groaned, and I instantly knew what that coppery smell was.

"Duffy! Get your ass in gear and get to the damn Humvee! Fluttershy, I need you over here as soon as possible!" I shouted, getting the body off of me and scrambling to find my backpack. We were all half blind at the moment, but right now I only expected positive results from the Marine. Duffy nodded, shoved Dash off of him, and bolted off, heading in the general direction of the vehicle.

"Wh-where am I?" My newest 'squadmate' (if he accepted, of course. Everyone else, with the exception of WIlliams has) coughed up. Now that I could mostly see again, I could tell that he was what I should've been expecting; a medic. From the smell of low-tide and the WWII uniform, he was probably killed during D-Day.

"Somewhere safe. Hell happened to you?" I asked, searching him for bullet wounds.

"MG42 fire on our landing craft, along with an AA shell hitting us. Was hit by the machine guns... Am I dead?" He coughed, looking around and seeing my companions.

"Yea, you're dead." I answered, before seeing his chest full of holes. I swore and ran my hands through my hair, frowning. "You're lucky you haven't died again, the way you've been shot up."

"Always full of surprises, sir..." He coughed some more. "Pardon my asking, but what's your name?" He asked as the Humvee screeched to a halt next to the tree.

'Need to get Dawn on silencing the brakes...' I thought, watching as Duffy ran around the back of the Humvee (opening the trunk in the process) and grasped Doc's legs while I gently looped my arms around his chest.

"I'm Mark, he's Duffy. Never got a first name from him, now that I think about it..." I said, hefting him into the trunk as carefully as possible.

"Nice to meet the both of you. And what about those ponies watching us carefully? They sapient or just pets?" Medic asked as I slid in after him and slammed the trunk shut. Duffy got Fluttershy into the front next to him, and sped off towards the hospital.

"Main inhabitants of this planet. Not the only species, though. How'ja know they were ponies? Hell, when I first saw them I thought they were horses." I asked.

"Grew up on a farm, had a few horses. They're only about four feet tall, easily distinguishable compared to an actual horse." Doc explained.

"So what's your name?" I asked, trying to keep him awake by talking.

"Name's Isaac Thompson, Mark." He replied, holding up a shaking hand. I grasped it and shook.

"Got a nickname already, Doc." I said, grinning. He weakly chuckled, before looking around.

"What's this vehicle, might I ask?" He asked. "It isn't a supply truck. Too quiet to be one."

"It's a future vehicle. About fifty years in the future, actually." I replied. "It's called a Humvee, and there's a civilian model too, but more comfortable than this one. Doesn't have a HMG turret, either." I explained, deciding to go into more detail until the brakes screeched again.

"Where are we now?" Doc asked, looking around as I helped Duffy drag him out. Fluttershy was looking on with mixed horror and concern.

"Ponyville General Hospital. Second time I've been here, but hell if I was shot to get in. Got ran over by the bloody Humvee a few days ago, actually." I answered, backing into the doors and looked around.

'I think my blood's still on the hood, actually.' A random thought popped into my head.

"How're you walking around now, then?" Doc asked.

"Magic is pretty helpful if they know what they're doing." I said without looking at him.

'Nobody here except for a receptionist, good.' I thought, before taking a deep breath.

"I NEED A DOCTOR, STAT! WE GOT A MORTALLY WOUNDED BEING HERE!" I hollered at the top of my lungs, and the result was instantaneous, as three nurses were startled out of side rooms, and they rushed over to our side.

"What happened?" Redheart asked, as Thompson coughed up some blood, getting a little of it on her. I'm sure there's a theme, here...

"Something happened to him before he came here. I'll need to go with you, along with Fluttershy here. Can't heal him just yet, as he has metal embedded in him to where he'll die anyway if we don't remove it first." I explained as we carried Doc down the hallway. Fluttershy nodded once and I saw something other than a normally timid pegasus; a determined soul wanting to take care of a tortured one.

"How many bullet wounds did you count, anyway? Too busy keeping from going into shock here." Doc asked as we got him up on an operating table.

"Seven to ten. I need two pairs of sterilized tweezers, Redheart." I answered, stripping off Thompson's waterlogged equipment and clothes.

"Why do you need two pairs?" Fluttershy quietly asked as we undressed Thompson's upper body.

"I'm not digging out these bullets on my own, Fluttershy. You're the veterinarian here, and as of right now you're the only pony in this room that knows the most about his biology." I answered, shoving one into her hoof because fuck logic. Using my pair, I started to dig out the ones farthest away from vital organs. "Dig out the ones I point out, first. You pull one too close to his heart too early, we've lost one of the most important humans on this rock."

"I'm the most important, now?" Thompson asked, raising an eyebrow and holding in a scream of pain as I dragged a bullet from him.

"You know more about human biology than I do, Doc. I'm a Marine that deals with explosives, not wounds." I replied, dropping a bullet into a pan. Not wanting to go into detail about the procedure (I know you read this, Applebloom.), all I'm going to write is that we nearly lost him four times, and at the end, Fluttershy had her hooves heavily coated in his life essence.

"Now that my serious wounds are out of the way..." Thompson groaned, sitting up and wiping a towel across his newly healed chest. "Why in the fuck am I here and not floating in the middle of a European channel with bullets and shrapnel in my chest?"

"I asked the guy who brought you here for a medic/corpsman, and he selected you. I don't know shit about how it happened, so go ask him for more info." I said, shrugging.

"What's done is done, I suppose. You got a place for me to stay?" He said, before looking around.

"Um, you can stay with me... If you want, that is..." Fluttershy stuttered, going back into her 'shy as fuck' mode.

"Where do you live?" He asked. I decided to answer for her, as she was starting to blush.

"On the edge of town, the closest place is the farm, where I'm staying. Nice, peaceful, and full of placid critters." I answered, before leaning in so Fluttershy wouldn't hear. "Watch out for her pet, Angel. Bloody rabbit takes a while to get used to."

"That's probably for the best, since I need to get used to this new place, I guess." He finally said, sliding off of the table. I left the room to let them have some time to get to know each other, and almost tripped over the mares standing outside the door.

"How's he doing?" Twilight asked as Dash and Applejack kept me from falling.

"He'll live, just give him some time to slide into this new life of his. Three of the bullets went through and through, so Fluttershy and I had less to dig out." I said, saying the second half to Duffy, noticing that Duran popped up in my absence.

"WWII, right? From what Duffy told me, he's very lucky, as if the bullets would've been a larger calibur, you'd be covered in more than what you are now." He said, nodding to my hands and chest, causing me to look down. As Duran said, my torso was pretty much coated in Isaac's blood, and every pony except the Nurses who went around our group looked queasy at the sight of blood.

"Eh. Going to go get washed off. Nurse, are there any showers in the hospital?" I asked one of the random Nurses that were patrolling the hallways.

"There's one in the room next to you, sir." She replied without missing a beat.

"Many thanks, lass." I said, walking in and seeing an empty patient's jail cell, as I've taken to calling the rooms where someone spends after/before surgery. I'll skip over taking a bleedin' shower, because it's my fucking journal.

Half an hour later, I stepped out without a shirt on, because the shirt I was wearing is soaking wet and stuffed into an empty pocket in my backpack.

"Your death's showing, Mark." Duran said, from behind me.

"What?" I asked, trying to see my back and turned around. Amost immediately, the five mares that're still in the group gasped in disgust and shock.

"Heavy burn scars on your back. Possibly on your legs, but I'm not taking your pants off to confirm it. Hell, I have a circular scar from where the bullet entered and left my throat, myself." He said. We both turned to Duffy, raising an eyebrow.

"Mortar round while lying down." Was all that he said, shifting a little and narrowing his eyes. I nodded and shrugged.

"I'ma take a walk back to the farm. Maybe get something to eat." I said, before starting to walk off. I got a item of cloth to the back of the head a moment later.

"Put that on, keep from making the locals freak out." Duran said. I quickly put on his shirt and left the hospital. The Humvee was gone, and I'm pretty sure it carried Doc and Fluttershy when it left. None of these ponies are tall enough when standing on their hind legs to be able to successfully operate it, anyway.

"Alright... Need to find a place for a job..." I muttered, rubbing my chin, before looking at the Spa.

'Well, my wife did say I preformed excellent massages... Just need to remember what the fuck they called those people and I'll attempt an application tomorrow...' I thought, shrugging and decided to go get lunch.

To everyone wanting OCs in the story; don't expect them to be in anytime soon. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, this wasn't the first site I uploaded on. As of right now I'm working on chapter 71, so ya'll be waiting a while.