"The best science is open to romance. The idea that anything is possible."- Ray Bradbury.

Reality is the beautiful concept that distinguishes what is true and what is not. Simply put, humanity, documented organics and the laws of physics and nature are what constitutes as reality. Concepts such as cartoon ponies that speak English are so absurd that they could only exist within the imagination of a spirited child.

To the reality based reader, the following events would be so illogical and improbable to the point where they could only be interpreted as a dream.

That night, the VTOL touched down on the planet Epona. The members of Shadow squad stepped down from their aircraft and braced themselves for a trip of discovery and adventure.

What they did not expect to find however, was the planet being animated. Everything looked like it had come off a children's cartoon. Rather than being consisted of multiple hues, all objects generally had one distinct color. Yet, everything was 3 dimensional and had a texture as if it was an object from the real world.

It was a new definition for creepy and contradicted everything they knew. Too bad the 4 humans had no one to show it to. Deciding to put the anomaly aside, the commandos continued to explore the forest and search for possible settlements.

Unfortunately, the situation had been complicated further, as the members of Shadow found that every single piece of flora that surrounded them was native to Earth as well. The plants were the same thing in every way, except animated.

Now Shadow was beginning to loose patience and started to reduce to a nervous wreck. And just when it couldn't get more absurd, the members of Shadow saw a Bat. A fucking animated fruit bat from Earth. A Raccoon quickly followed.

"What's next! Dragons?" cried a bitter Scorch.

The counter terrorist spoke too soon. Unknown to the squad, they had been surveyed by a Griffin scout the entire time.
The scout paid close attention to the humans, or whatever one could call attention as looking at a realistic human hurt the animated Griffin's eyes and mind.

At first, the scout was prepared to confront the aliens, until he noticed something rather peculiar about them. Other than the fact that they were animated of course.

The Griffin decided to retreat to Fort Everfree and relay the news to his allies. In a mere moment, the half eagle/half lion reached the outpost the empire had installed.

Making quite a fuss along the way, the Griffin finally found his superior and called for an emergency meeting.

The entire company gathered in the commons hall while the scout spoke on the platform. Normally, the Griffins would laugh off alien presence as some form of foolish belief, but the scout was not known for lying.

The scout explained his findings to his allies. He described the aliens as 'non colorful', bi-pedal, up right, masked, speaking Equestrian and fingered.

The Griffins debated the scout's findings for a few solid minutes. Suddenly a Griffin remembered something important;

Bi-pedal? Non Colorful? Fingered? And Bi-pedal?

It sounded awfully lot like the description used for humanity. The half eagles debated the subject amongst themselves, but came to the conclusion that humans had returned to Epona.

And they would no doubt finish what they started.

Without waisting time or attempting to contact the rest of the Empire, the Griffins took up arms and prepared to assault the humans and make them face retribution. They did not leave without a secret weapon however. Fort Everfree was a secret facility dedicated to the training of dragons for military use.

With their arsenal ready, the Griffins took off.

The commandos all the while had been analyzing soil contents, until they heard the cry of an eagle. Curious, the members of Shadow squad cloaked and prepared to investigate what was going on.

A minute passed and Shadow could not believe their eyes. They were staring at Griffins. GRIFFINS like the ones they read about in fantasy stories. And much to the squad's chagrin, the hybrids brought dragons with them too.

At this point, the last remaining trace of empathy from Shadow's minds vanished. It didn't help that the Griffins were speaking ancient Persian either.

Just with they were about to give up from the sheer amount ridiculousness that was occurring before them, Scarecrow theorized that they could enact a first contact with the Griffins and possibly figure out what was going on.

The commandoes worked out a plan for interacting with the Griffins as well as taking precautions in the even they were hostile.

Scarecrow readied himself and stood in front of the approaching army. The commando uncloaked and revealed himself. Before he could speak however, Scarecrow noticed the Griffins suffering from some sort of migraine. As if it hurt to look at the commando.

Scarecrow spoke in Persian and assured he was not a threat and represented the United Terran Federation.

After a moment of silence, the Griffins yelled war cries and unloaded their spears at the commando. Unfortunately, the Griffins were shocked to find the spears bounce off Scarecrow's kinetic barrier and leave nothing but a trace of transparent purple hexagons to indicate where he was hit.

Scarecrow again attempted to talk the Griffins down, but all the soldiers did was fire spears and arrows at the counter terrorist ineffectively.

Upon realizing that the Griffins declared him a threat, Scarecrow remembered the first contact rule that all threats to mankind were to be wiped out by force. Shadow's leader unslung his gauss LMG and rained hell on the attacking Griffins.

X-ray, Scorch and Overwatch uncloaked and joined the fight as well.

The Griffins attempted to stand their ground, but their spears and arrows were no match for Shadow's railguns and kinetic barriers. One by one, the Griffin army fell to gauss fire while their spears failed to penetrate Shadow's barriers.

After a few minutes of fighting, half of the Griffins laid dead. All their bodies haven been ripped open with bullets. Heads, wings and all sorts of body parts had been cut off.

The squad decided to return to the VTOL to evade the attacking creatures. Unfortunately, the dragons that belonged to the Griffins landed on top of the ship and crushed it with it's claws.

Just when the Griffins thought they won, Scorch sighed and unslung his rocket launcher. The dragon attempted to burn down the humans with its fire breath, but Shadow's recon armor was fire proof.

Scorch fired his missile at one of the dragons and ripped its mid section open with blood and organs falling out like a piniata.

The stunned Griffins were to caught up in shock, and fell easy prey to the human's railguns.

Another dragon arrived on the scene to save what remained of the contingent. For a moment, it seemed that the tide was turning in favor of the Griffins. The dragon used its brute strength to knock out Scorch, X-ray and Scarecrow before they could fire.

Unfortunately, a shot rang from Overwatch's sniper and the final dragon's eye exploded, leaking a massive pool of blood.

The other 3 members of Shadow recovered and finished off the job by either blowing off limbs with gauss rifles, cutting off heads and claws with knifes or exploding bodies in a gory mess.

Finally, all that remained was the Griffin's commander himself. Distraught by the loos of his comrades and the murder of the dragons, he charged straight at Shadow without even thinking.

X-ray simply sighed at the commander's pathetic attempt. The commando grabbed the final Griffin, fisted him to the ground and smashed his skull open with his armored foot.

Shadow had been victorious. And what did they do in response?

Laugh. For a solid minute the members of Shadow squad laughed.

An animated world? Dragons? Griffins? Their VTOL getting destroyed? It had to be some sort of dream. The events that occurred were just too illogical.

After a few moments of walking, the members of Shadow squad stopped in their tracks and fell asleep. When they woke up, they hoped to find themselves inside their VTOL, still approaching the planet. Back in the confines of reality where alien planets hosted alien life, where myths were myths and worlds weren't cartoons.

None of it could have been real.

Right?