Let me just check something…

Yep, yep, definitely. I definitely need to shave. I’ve been here for about two days, so of course I’ve started to grow a beard. I’m becoming more and more like Gordon Freeman all the time!

Ugh, those defective nanites are so annoying. My muzzle his hurting more and more all the time.

Wow it’s dark in here. I wish I had some light globes. No matter; my eyes seem to be adjusting rather quickly. Plus there’s light up ahead, and it sounds like something’s moving outside the Citadel (either that or it’s part of the Citadel).

Anyway I’ll just go and…

WHOA.

Are you- are you seeing this?!

The Citadel itself is impressive enough – how could anypony not be intimidated by a tower of metal which stretches about two kilometres into the sky? – but the thing is it seems to go just as far down as it does up. Seriously, there’s this huge pit surrounding the entire building and I can’t even see the bottom of it!

I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to have come this way to die in such an anticlimactic way!

Okay, there’s a broken walkway leading up the inside of this pit, and a piston thing going up and down on the outside of the building. If I can get up high enough and time my jump while it’s at its lowest, there’s every chance I’ll make it with only a twisted ankle or something.

Or of course, I could just levitate across. But then again, that place is probably stacked to the gills with guards and soldiers, and I’ll need all the magic I can get if that’s the case.

Alright, I’ve given myself as much of a run-up as I can get when all I have to work with is a four-foot wide ledge. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this- I CAN’T DO THIS!

I… I made it?

I made it! I thought I wouldn’t make it while I was in mid-air, but I’m okay! Phew. I’m okay. Good. Okay is good.

Now to find my way into the inner workings of this nightmarish thing. It shouldn’t be too hard: I’ll just follow this really thin, can’t-be-OSHA-approved catwalk.

I hope Twilight’s not been hurt. If she has, then somepony is going to be torn to pieces and the pieces are going to be eliminated one by one. After that, whatever remains will be personally teleported to dimension 63, and exterminated by Daleks.

Wow, what’s that?

Those look like the carrier things from Nova Discord, only this time there’s two rails of them. One’s going to some kind of steriliser thing – it’s electric – and the other rail is heading into some kind of portal.

I think I’ll take my chances with the portal one. Let me just duck under this one so I can get in…

Alright, and I’m on my way!

Just trundling along, into a portal which leads to…

If you could see what I’m seeing right now, your mind would be all over the wall. When I look up, the ceiling just never ends, and the floor – it never ends that way too! The walls are just- the ceiling’s just- the floor is just- you have to see it to believe it.

And the convenient thing is that this transporter is moving really slowly, so I’ve got plenty of time to take things in, such as the three Striders passing right underneath. If I could reach my rocket launcher…

Wait.

What the smeg is that?

It looked like a pony- there’s another! I’ll see if I can get a closer look. Yeah, it looks like a pony, only…

Holy smeg.

It doesn’t have a single hair in its entire body – not even a mane or a tail. And it has completely lost its cutie mark, plus all evidence of its gender. Its skin, which under any other circumstances would be pinkish and tight, is now golden brown and sagging off it as if its body has shrunk, but its skin was burnt but remained the same size.

By the looks of things, its eyes have been removed and replaced with some sort of silvery camera thing, and its mouth has been sealed shut. The lower halves of its legs have been removed and replaced with metal bones with artificial hooves at the ends of them.

But to me, there’s only one feature which is truly horrifying.

And that’s the spike of bone protruding from the monstrosity’s forehead, metal wrapped around it from base to tip, which it’s using to conduct various tasks under the tight supervision of an armed guard.

That’s what happens to the captured unicorns.

They get turned into those… things. I can hardly even recognise them as ponies anymore. I- I can’t even- are they conscious? Do they actually know what’s going on; do they know what’s happened to them? Do they remember what they were before they became… that?!

I hope they don’t. For their sake, I hope they don’t remember who they were.

There’s a new emotion coming over me. I can feel it as it trickles into my mind, making its presence more glaringly obvious with every passing second. It’s warm – definitely warm – and growing warmer, and warmer, until it burned in my heart like a Bunsen burner. There’s blood rushing to my face, and my teeth are clenching as redness starts to cloud my vision. My heart is pumping so fast that it might jump right out of my mouth and tap-dance on my forehead for all I know.

My body’s starting to buzz as adrenaline is flooded into my system, in preparation for the expression of this emotion that I’m only just beginning to recognise.

It’s not anger. It’s what anger is when it drains every drop of power from a nuclear reactor in meltdown, sucked the sun of its heat and eaten a lightning bolt. It’s an emotion that I’ve only ever seen experienced before once in my whole life.

Pure, unstoppable rage.

I hear it’s selfish to think of things of your own – smeg, it’s the definition of the word – but right now, selfishness may be my greatest weapon.

Equestria is my home. It’s the first place where I’ve ever felt well and truly happy. And the Combine think they can just march in and disrupt everything I’ve strived to achieve for myself?

I usually quell my anger. I save it for when I need to use the Voice – that little trick for causing immediate fear and unquestioning obedience which has come in handy quite a few times in my life.

But now it looks like I might need this rage for something else entirely.

Alright, it looks as if I’m almost at the end of my ride. But why am I over a pit?

Whoa! This thing just opened and dropped me! What the… I’m floating. I’m floating in mid-air. Must be some kind of gravitational distortion.

Hey, it just disarmed me! It literally just pulled all my weapons away from me and they’re floating around me. Even my horn clip’s been removed!

What the- What? Something’s destroying them! I’m hanging in mid-air watching my weapons being disintegrated one by one, right before my eyes. My shotgun, my Magnum, my crossbow, even my crowbar! And then it moved on to the horn clip-

-and it failed. I dropped out of the air and the small metal ring clattered to the floor at my hooves.

I knelt down and slipped the ring over my horn, then straightened up, and snapped it into place with a hoof.

Very slowly, I walked out of the room and into a corridor. A PA system similar to the one at Nova Discord announced my presence as some sort of malfunction in a weapon confiscation field, but I continued on undeterred.

It wasn’t long before the first of many soldiers launched an attack on me. They stopped at a corner and fired their machine guns, but thanks to the dark energy in the confiscation field which had zapped the horn clip, I was more powerful than any unicorn in Equestria. I wrenched one of them towards me; his life force was instantly sapped from his body by the dark energy, and I threw his smouldering body at his comrades, who crumbled into dust along with him.

In my state of mind, I barely even noticed. I kept my gaze fixed only on what was straight ahead of me. As far as I cared at the time, nothing mattered except that the Combine suffered as much as was possible. The crimes they have committed against ponykind are nothing short of unforgivable, and it’s about time they paid the price for them.

You know what they say: do the crime, do the time.

As I passed a monitor, it came on, and the face of a familiar and very obnoxious unicorn appeared.

“Well, well, well,” said Trixie, and I swear she was looking right into my eyes. Once again, I felt nauseous, especially since she seemed irritatingly calm. “Hello there, Hex. Under other circumstances I’d like to think that we may have been able to work together for a better Equestria, in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.”

Unable to listen to much more, I tore the monitor off the wall and used it to kill three oncoming guards, and then I continued on my way.

She knew. Trixie had known the whole time what the Combine had been doing to her fellow ponies, and she had just swept it under the rug as if it were absolutely nothing. Simply by being a complete and utter sell-out, she had approved the death of countless innocent ponies whom she had never even met.

She appeared on another monitor and had this to say:

“Certainly, judging from your brief tenure in Ponyville while I was touring Equestria, you may have showed every promise of becoming one of the most fantastically powerful and brilliant unicorns in all of Equestria.”

Again, I utterly destroyed the monitor, but she appeared on yet another and added:

“And yet... I'm not sure what spurred you to it... but there is really no place in modern day Equestria for a rogue scientist from another dimension.”

For the love of smeg, Trixie, shut the smeg up! You’re nothing but a showpony! The only thing you have to show for yourself is pissing off just about everypony in Ponyville by acting like a complete and utter bitch!

The thing is she’s kinda right. I am universes away from home, and if I hadn’t come to this place chances are the Combine would never have come here. They wouldn’t have been attracted by the trace amounts of the energy that Amber used on me to get me to Equestria without having to use her ship.

And then I was gone for seventeen whole years, and the entire world slid into complete and utter ruin…

What have I done? What have I done? How could I have been so blind?

All is lost. Where was I? Spoiled all, spoiled all, everything’s gone all wrong… what have I done? What have I done?

Find a deep cave to hide in. In a million years they’ll find me only dust… and a plaque that reads “Here Lies Poor Old Hex”.

But… I never intended this to happen. Never. And nopony really understood- well, how could they? That all I ever wanted was to bring them something great! Why does nothing ever turn out like it should?

Well, what the smeg? I went and did my best! And by smeg, I really tasted something cool. And for a moment, why, I even touched the sky! And at least I left some stories they could tell, I did!

And… for the first time since I don’t remember when, I felt just like my old brainy self again. And I’m Hex, the science guy…

That’s right.

I AM A SCIENCE GUY! HA!

And I just can’t wait until Equestria’s free, ‘coz I’ve got some new ideas that’ll really make them scream, and by smeg, I’ve really got to give it all my might!

But seriously, I hope there’s still time to set things right.

Before the Combine cause the Aponyclypse.

Did you see what I did there?

“Tell me, Mr Hex, if you can,” said Trixie again. “From what I have seen of you, you have destroyed so much. What is it, exactly, that you have created? Can you name even one thing? I thought not.”

Once more, I ripped away the monitor and cast it aside.

The energy I was drawing from my built up rage was still burning nice and strong. I was cutting through the Combine troops like a hot knife through butter – an old saying, I know, but a good one nonetheless.

There’s every chance you can’t tell, but I can’t stop speculating about this Blue Demon character. From what Braeburn told me, he’s like a sort of Robin Hood type pony, only a lot more destructive and violent. Plus, rather than taking money from rich people and giving it to the poor, he takes their lives and gives the innocent an opportunity to live.

Mind you, I’m not sure what I’d do if I actually did meet him. Or her. ‘Coz, you know, it could just as easily be a mare rather than a stallion. I mean, it’s not completely and totally out of the question, is it?

Holy smeg, the conspiracy theories I could come up with. It could be Rainbow Dash, doing all that she can to uphold the spirit of her element and, in that respect, stay loyal to her country and those within it (who didn’t come here through a portal). It could be Soarin’, trying all that he can to protect his family from the destruction and death that always comes with the Combine, no matter where – or indeed, when – they go.

But then again, what if it isn’t either of them? It could be somepony I’ve never even heard of before.

I’d heard of bronies when I lived in dimension 1. I wasn’t one, but I knew about them and I respected their courage when being so open about loving a program intended for those one quarter their age and the opposite gender. And I bore no respect for those who hated them for no reason. At all.

I had heard they knew the names of every pony in Equestria. Which means that chances are they’d have a good idea who the Blue Demon is.

Like I said, I’m not a brony, nor was I ever. I passed through the dimension a couple of times, and I was spellbound by how peaceful and friendly it was compared to many other dimensions I’d been to. I vowed, even after seeing how they manually controlled absolutely everything down to rain falling from the sky, that no matter what it took, I would find a way to live in this place and make it my home.

So when Amber decided to quit the adventuring game, she lent me her ship and I used the dimension hopping equipment within to teleport myself to Equestria, using a meteor shower as cover.

I never really took any opportunities to explore Equestria, but I did do a little research before I got there – you know, learned all the place names and stuff, memorised the map as best I could – and it was supposed to be a whole new start. Away from all the adventuring. I wanted a quiet life!

But instead, it followed me. The adventure life followed me, and so did the Combine. It can’t be a coincidence that they entered this dimension at exactly the same point I did.

Maybe they thought I looked like Gordon Freeman. Because I do. Uncannily so.

I continued my roaring rampage of revenge through the Citadel. Up ahead, soldiers were swarming around a Strider, and all of them were shooting at me. I dragged the troops towards me and threw them at the Strider, but it kept… uh, striding towards me shooting all the time. I pulled energy balls out of a transport channel nearby and fired them at the walking metal monster, which exploded after only two shots. Those things must be more powerful than I thought.

Trixie’s face once again appeared, this time on a large screen behind where the Strider had been. This time, she was getting desperate.

“Your mentors are partly to blame, of course,” she insisted. “My disappointment in Twilight Sparkle and the Doctor is far greater than my sorrow over your unfortunate choice of career path. In a way, I suppose you could not have done otherwise. Who knows what seeds of iconoclasm they planted since you are, of course, young and gullible. But while they certainly share a great part of the responsibility for the recent troubles, it is you alone who have chosen to act with such wilful disregard for ponykind's future.”

I’m not even listening to her any more, or at least, I’m trying not to. It’s amazing how fury can distract you sometimes. When I find her, I am going to kick her ass like no tomorrow. So what if she’s a mare and I’m a stallion?

As I said before, the crimes she has committed against Equestria are such that if Princess Celestia could see what has happened to her subjects, that blue-coated bitch wouldn’t be banished to the moon, she’d be banished to the sun.

Mind you, it shouldn’t be too hot. I think it’s almost night-time outside, but I can’t really tell, of course, since I’m surrounded on all sides by towering walls of solid steel.

Good, there’s more of those transport things. If I get in, I’ll move to another part of the Citadel and continue my attack.

This one seems to run a lot more smoothly than the other one. But… wait a minute, some of these are occupied. By those ex-unicorns. And it’s headed towards something that appears to be scanning them.

I think anger may have clouded my judgement a little.

Ah! Smeg! Another blinding camera flash! And… I appear to have moved onto a separate track from all the rest of the carrier things. I’m going up.

Oh well, at least I have a nice view. Even better than last time. I can see all the tracks with carriers running along underneath, and those pod things from Nova Discord hanging all over the walls.

I wonder if there’re ponies inside them. I hope not. Poor smeggers.

Wow, such a view. I just saw a gunship leave through a huge window, and outside that window is (what’s left of) City 17, spread underneath a darkening sky. It’s definitely getting close to night-time.

Such a view… a nice… soothing… view…