All he could see was blinding light. In that brief second of white vision, he remembered everything.

He remembered trying to race to the apartment to save his family, but his car was deliberately wrecked by a bigger truck.

He remembered the men in the other vehicles dragging him violently out of his car.

He remembered being in that chair for however many days, strapped in and never allowed to leave.

He remembered them laughing about how they killed them. How they left them in a low ditch. How hilarious ironic that the town did a memorial for her even though they didn’t know what sins she had done in her life.

He remembered the fresh hell the “soldiers” put him through.

Then finally, he remembered the screams, the gunshots, the gasoline, the soldier holding a gun at the door, and grazing his far right cheek, apparently trying to stop another prisoner from attacking him. The prisoner was subdued and then shot in the back of the head, before the encroaching fire came in and scared the soldier off. With his face burning as much as his legs were being licked by the flames, he accepted his death with gratefulness that the worst was over.

Is this heaven? Or just where I am to be judged and sent down to hell again?

The blinding light finally grew dimmer, and he could see the room. It was walled and had a ceiling, all white as snow, and he could smell the faintest hint of rubber.

In front of him, to his great surprise, stood a being beautifully white and radiant, their hair a mixture of colors flowing in a non-existent wind, and wings suddenly stretched out. The creature gasped right as he did.

“¿Eres un ángel?” he asked.

“An-hell?… Oh! You must mean if I am an angel!” the being said. It was a feminine voice, but one he could understand as being wise with many years.

“Eh? You use English? And why are you not an angel?” he asked in confusion.

“If you allow me to explain, and if you know Equiis, or rather… English, as you call it, than you may understand. You do know English, yes?”

“Yes, I lived in a country where English was used. But, where am I then, if not in Heaven or Hell?” Everything out of him always ended with a question, he noted.

“Heaven? Oh yes, like Sujer said… The first thing I must tell you is that you are not dead.”

His mind reeled back everything he could say in surprise. Two conflicting emotions passed through his heart. On one hand, he was still alive, a fact nearly all living creatures could rejoice about whenever they get that close to death as he had. On the other… he wouldn’t be getting to see them again so soon.

“I… but I thought that…”

“It was a, er, ‘man’ who saved you and brought you here. Actually, two ‘mans’ saved you. I shall ask for them to come in.”

The man marveled at the next scene before him. The being rose its head, and he realized it was also a unicorn, her horn glowing in a strange yellow aura. Soon, it dispersed, leaving the winged unicorn being to look at him with a smile he wouldn’t forget.

“…and even you saw it. If he ain’t dead, he’s still dead out there. We can just keep him…” Two creatures that he likened to really small horses trotted in, stopping their conversation as they turned with surprise to see him awake.

“Mierda, you’re alive!” one of the creatures said. “We had thought you had died when we found you in that fire, and almost burned ourselves while we tried to save you.”

“You saved me? But then…” he hesitated, “where am I?”

Angel, Sujer, Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna all stood by a distance away as a nurse performed a check-up on the burned stallion in front of them.

“You are real lucky it wasn’t burned all the way through your skin, sir. Otherwise the magic treatments wouldn’t have been much help.”

“Magic treatments?” the stallion asked.

The nurse looked confused just as the stallion was before turning back to the group of ponies. “Angel, is he…?”

“Yes, we saved him from our world. Only magic could have helped him survive his injuries, so we had to bring him here instead of one of our hospitals.”

“My… injuries? I thought I was just burnt,” the stallion said.

“It isn’t just burns you have, mister…uh, what’s his name?”

Angel and Sujer shrugged as they sat down. “No idea. Oye. ¿Cuál es su nombre?”

“Fernando Kaznudo, but people call me Kaz,” the stallion answered.

“Kaz? Never heard a name like that,” Sujer remarked.

“Well Mr. Kaz, your injuries are summed up as another question. What isn’t broken?”

“What do you mean?”

“Multiple lacerations, multiple fractures along the spine, all of your legs were broken, you had a deep slice leaking blood from your cheek which we quickly sealed up, and multiple fractures on any bones that aren’t broken or bruised. On top of that, you have second-degree burns.”

The room was deathly silent as Kaz tried to look at his body, only to find that all of his being was covered in braces and bandages, leaving everything that had happened to him up to his imagination.

“Just…one more quick question. How am I not feeling any pain right now?”

“Oh, that’s just because of the magic!”

“…Oh.” It wasn’t the response he would accept as anything at all tangible, but he figured that whatever painkillers this place used, they had to be strong enough to be called ‘magic’.

Unfortunately for Kaz, they meant actual magic.

When they finally took off the braces for his arms a couple hours later, he gasped in shock in seeing that he had no more hands. The surprise put him in a fit, and they called for a unicorn to subdue him. Since Celestia was technically the closest magic user, she lowered her horn to cast a sleep spell, right in front of Kaz.

The next day, he was told what he needed to know about magic in this world by Sujer, as he found the long haired colt was named, and anything else that Kaz asked about the area. He still had trouble processing the whole idea of living, and with more new information piling on him, he was sure his mind would snap at some point. He asked for a mirror, apparently frightened by a nightmare the night before, and he saw that he had completely changed. He wasn’t human anymore, but a creature like the others were, a pony as the princess called him.

Princess. And here he thought he was done with royals.

“Why didn’t you tell me I was one of you guys?!” he asked Sujer.

“Thought you would figure it out yourself. We saved you from that fire, so we must have been human before we came here. A smart man would have realized that he himself should be changed too. Tch, honestly, where’s your head been?”

“In another world, apparently…” Kaz laid back in his bed, staring at the ceiling as the full force of everything that had been exposed to him crashed down. Seeing as he wasn’t talking, Sujer, to emphasize the change, trotted out of Kaz’s room.

He didn’t see it, but Sujer had shivered and briefly looked back in anger at Kaz. He had to be taken prisoner for some reason, and he was sure he wouldn’t like the answer.

A few days after the revelation of his new pony form, Kaz was deemed able to walk. Hobbling on fours was hard enough for him, since he was only used to walking upright, but it was nearly impossible once the painkilling spells were weaned off him, and he swore he could still feel the cracks in his bones. On top of that, they still insisted the bandages were kept on him, so he still didn’t walk well. After a week, however, he finally managed to feel somewhat right on walking on all fours, and his injuries were rapidly healing faster than he thought possible.

Seeing as how it was the beginning of summer (Kaz never thought he would know a hot July ever again), he wanted to walk outside more and more, but both the nurses and the two humans turned ponies told him he shouldn’t. When asked why, the humans told him he wasn’t ready for the outside world yet, and the nurses only told him it was orders from above.

He wondered if the humans had more authority here than they showed. They looked innocuous enough, the one colt with a dog-chain like collar named Angel and the un-naturally colored lotus tattoo on his flanks with the other long-haired colt named Sujer, his flanks having a familiar star with a random face on it, always following behind him.

Another thing he noticed about these ponies: they all had what Angel called “cutie marks”. Apparently they signified what that pony’s talent or fate was to the world (Sujer just explained that they were magical butt tattoos). The idea that fate was more dictated than back home made him uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he took to asking any new pony he met in the castle medical wing what their cutie marks meant, which led to some interesting conversations that taught him even more about the world that he suddenly found himself in.

One day, the princesses, whom he now knew as rare beings known as alicorns, requested he would dine with them. Walking almost as normally as a pony with a limp on their left hind leg would, he strode in the main dining hall of the castle, escorted by the guard that had given him the invitation. He was still bandaged on some of the more major injuries, but he hoped he could act regal enough to make a good impression.

At the table sat the two princesses and the two humans, along with three more guests that he had never seen before. There was a white stallion with a two-toned blue mane wearing what Kaz assumed to be an officer’s uniform sitting next to a pink mare with a vibrant and curled mane. Another mare, a sort of pale pink color, with brunette hair, sat next to the two humans, seeming to be uneasy about being in the present company. The table seats were all filled except for the seat opposite Celestia, on the opposite end of the long table.

“Ah, Mister Kaznudo, you accepted the invitation,” Celestia said.

“Of course I did. Have you even tried the food they give in that hospital?” Kaz joked, making some of the ponies chuckle. Celestia inwardly relaxed, content that it seemed Kaz was healing both physically and mentally, if his joking manner was any sign of his recovery. The white officer stallion laughed the loudest.
“Hah! You should try the rations we give to recruits! That really hardens their stomach up if the physical training doesn’t!” the stallion laughed harder.

Kaz chuckled as well. “Training rations? I’d say field rations must be worse then, huh?”

“You’ve had field rations?” the stallion asked at the end of his chuckles.

“Well, not exactly. Our ‘field rations’ were ‘whatever we could get’,” Kaz said. He looked up in slight remembrance, before shaking his head at whatever memory popped up.

The stallion lifted his brow while still smiling. “Whatever you could get? You were in an army or something?”

The mention of an army made Kaz tense up before sighing. Celestia subtly lifted her brow in curiosity. “In a way, I guess I was in an army. I mean, now we are an official army, but when I was there, you could have called me a rebel.”

All of the native ponies and the pale pink mare next to the humans were visibly shocked. The humans themselves glared in intense suspicion.

“Why are we all eating together anyway? Is it something special?” Kaz asked, unperturbed at the moment by the sudden hostility.

“Yeah. My birthday. And as a present I want you to tell us everything about yourself,” Angel seethed through his glare. “How do you know English even though when we searched around back on Earth, we know you came from El Salvador with a now-dead woman and child?”

Kaz flinched before fighting back with his own glare. “They were my wife and daughter, and we’re from Nicaragua.”

“Wait,” the light pink mare next to the stallion officer piped up. “Your wife and daughter are… dead?”

“Yes, killed by those soldiers that captured me…” Kaz seethed.

“And that’s another thing,” Sujer said with his own glare. “Why were you captured? The Capitol usually doesn’t do much outside of its territory and leaves everything to respective police. Why were soldiers then torturing prisoners like you in a random warehouse?”

“Because they weren’t soldiers.” Kaz briefly noted the blue maned stallion cocked his head in confusion. “They were people that had stolen uniforms so no one would question them if they were ever discovered.”

“Then who were they?”

“Los Muertos Reyes. You ever hear of them?”

The room went deathly silent. Both princesses and the two ponies next to Angel all looked to the chained colt as he looked down at the table with a tired expression. After a few tense seconds, he looked back up with a pained expression, no longer expressing anger at Kaz. “Yes. I know of them. Why did they want you?”

“Ah, I was close to figuring out where exactly their leader was. I worked briefly in the police, as I showed I had army experience, and my first and only case was tracking down a petty thief. That thief made me start a search around the Dead Kings, along with some other officers. As soon as they knew about the search, however, they went after us. Most of us were either single or had the idea of hiding our families before we were captured, but I wasn’t as smart…” Kaz looked down in sadness. “Mireya and Maria… It’s my fault I wasn’t there in time to save them…”

Sujer still glared. “That doesn’t answer any of our questions. How were you captured?”

“I…” Kaz took a moment to compose himself, “I was driving back to the apartment when my car was, uh, wrecked by a big truck. They took me to that warehouse, where they tortured me for information about the local police chapter I was in. They kept me there until there was a fire, and one tried to kill me before he killed another prisoner and ran away. After that I… I think that’s when you saved me.”

Angel nodded. “Sujer saw the fire and ran back to us. We already knew something was wrong with that warehouse, so we ran and saw that it was burning, and some trucks were racing away. Alicia was sure that she heard screaming, so we busted through a thatched part of the wall to see a bunch of chairs and dead men, with one guy burning in his chair. His face was…” all the humans shivered, “melted, so there wasn’t a way to save him. However, Sujer saw you lying on the ground groaning in another room, so we busted through to try and get you out. Alicia told us you wouldn’t make it in a local hospital with your injuries, and I had the idea to bring you here. It was a bit of a mess at the castle as everypony around brought you quickly to the medical wing, where you stayed unconscious for a day.”

“It was also Alicia’s first day too,” Sujer laughed. “She had no idea that Angel was right about there being an Equestria. She had so much trouble trying to walk on all fours!”

“Didn’t you also have trouble walking as well, Sujer?” Angel asked.

“Yeah, but it took me maybe a couple hours, while she took a whole day! We had to leave her in the room with some random doctor trying to teach her how to walk when we first went in to see Kaz.”

“Shut up Sujer…” the pale mare next to the humans glared at Sujer.

Kaz stared at the mare with a neutral expression. “I suppose you are Alicia then?”

“Alice, but I get called Alicia,” the mare replied. “Back home I live with these two assholes in Las Rosas, and before that I was from London.”

“Get her angry, that’s how you get the accent…”

“Shut. Up. Sujer,” Alicia glared at the long-haired colt

“Oh!” the white stallion stood up, if standing up on all fours can be a thing for Kaz, “I’m sorry sir, I forget my manners. My name is Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard, and this is my lovely marefriend, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.”

“I usually go by Cadence, if you don’t wish to say my mouthful of a name,” the pink alicorn chuckled.

“Mi Amore Cadenza? That doesn’t sound like a name in English or, uh, Equiis for that matter…” Kaz muttered in confusion.

“You are right. I don’t know much of my parents, actually, as my mother and father left me here at the castle. I was born an alicorn, and I suppose my parents didn’t think they could handle the responsibility of being caretakers of a potential ruler, so they gave me to the princesses. They were very much from a far-away land, or so Auntie says.”

Kaz didn’t pay mind to Luna’s utterance of “as if she’s an orphan, Celestia…” under her breath.

. “By the way, you still haven’t told us how you know English. Angel knows English because he was, well, taking his early education here apparently, while Sujer knows English from when he was a seminary,” Alicia said.

“A seminary? For the church you mean?”

“Yeah, back in my city of Buenos Aires. It didn’t work out…” Sujer scratched his head while looking away from the group. “I… uh… I made an enemy with someone and they ratted me out about something I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about…”

“And that thing was?...”

“Meh, not important now. So what about you, then?”

“I…” Kaz again hesitated, more so from Sujer’s quick subject change than being put on the spot for his story. “I was born in the United States. My mother and I lived in the state of Arizona, I took schooling there…” Kaz looked down at the table with his own tired expression. “I never want to go back. They never wanted me and my mother there. Practically drove us and others out of that town, and scattered us. My mother and I ended up in Nicaragua, where I left her to go join the local revolution.”

“Nicara-what?” asked Luna. While the lunar princess was still trying to re-integrate back into modern pony society, she had even more trouble trying to understand the humans and their world, which seemed both alien and fascinating to her.

“What year did you join?” Angel asked, tentatively ignoring Luna’s question. He mentally made a note to tell Celestia to start teaching her some of the basic information about Earth.

“This was 1977, three years ago. I was 27 at the time, and I thought I was at the end of my road. Didn’t want to go on living much more, and constantly I kept selfishly signing my squad up for suicide missions, just so I could go throw myself at a grenade and hope maybe I’ll be remembered as someone who sacrificed himself for some cause I didn’t even believe in much myself.”

“Your squad? You commanded soldiers?” Shining Armor asked.

“I was a captain, like you. But I don’t think I was a good one, like I said.”

“Did you ever care for your soldiers?”

“I…guess so? At least whenever I could, sure. I’d make sure all rations, whatever we got, were properly shared, so that even the two kids that we had in our unit still got food.”

“…You had kids in your unit?!” Shining was aghast.

“Their parents died in an attack from the government, they followed us around so we decided to just take care of them ourselves,” Kaz sighed sadly. “Unfortunately, one of them got killed when we were ambushed. He decided to hold a point, some random hill out of all the others, and just gave what he had in his backpack. We couldn’t hold them off, and had to retreat without him.”

Both Shining Armor and Cadence stared at him in horror, while the princesses looked at him with sadness, and the humans with understanding.

“Kaz, you should know this by now, but if you don’t I’ll tell you. Equestria, well, hasn’t seen a war since hundreds of years ago. The royal guard that Shining commands is more for show and peacekeeping than for battle,” Angel explained.

Kaz was aghast. He looked around the room, and the native ponies’ faces confirmed what Angel said. Peace for hundreds of years? That was only a pipe dream of some philosophers, and regular peace at all was a hopeful wish for a soldier like Kaz. The more and more he learned about Equestria, the more he wanted to live his life out here instead of the cruel and unforgiving world of Earth.

Living in Equestria… that brought up a point that he spent last night thinking about.

“So what’s going to happen, once I am completely recovered? Do I head back to Las Rosas to show my squad I’m still alive, and then try to end the Dead Kings?”

All the ponies, including the humans, avoided eye contact with Kaz, which made him suspicious. Finally, Angel coughed and dared to look at Kaz.

“Kaz, trust me when I say this… officially, you’re dead. The Dead Kings will have made sure they have you listed as dead, and if you come back to Las Rosas…”

“…They’ll just want to finish the job,” Kaz finished. Seated down, he put his arms up to his head, resting his ‘hooves’ over his eyes. If he wanted to live, he would have to stay here, and become a citizen of the land he now currently resided in.

Immediately, several ideas popped up in his mind on what to do in Equestria. He already let both the princesses and the apparent leader of the guards that he was a soldier, he could easily find himself working in the same business again. But… he only knew war, not peacekeeping. The FSLN always had enemies everywhere, and here there hasn’t been a major conflict since perhaps before even the Americas were discovered. Would it be that the work was more like the police work back in Las Rosas? Or maybe, since all he saw of the guards were as security to VIPs, it would be like his first job in the country, doing guard work in Puerto Estigroza?

Puerto Estigroza… no. There was still at least one thing he needed to do back on Earth before he could resign himself to living as a pony.

“I still have to visit my mother, at least for one last time. She lives at the port town, east of Las Rosas. I brought her with my family when we left Salvador. She’s too old now to work for herself, I always had to save up some of my money to send to her. I have a friend there that can take care of her if ever something happened to me.”

Angel looked down in concentration, trying to think about what Kaz asked as everypony else looked at him.

“Estigroza? That’s real close to the heart of the Dead Kings. If anyone from Las Rosas saw you, they would alert the others and then it’s all of us dead.”

“Is that the only loose end you have?” Sujer asked.

“…Yes, I suppose. Why?” Kaz took a moment to realize what Sujer meant by loose end. He hoped that there was maybe a way to get there and back safely with whatever magic the princesses had.

“Welp, I’m down for it. I think having a soldier in our little crew of human ponies might do us well. Course, he did say he was a rebel, so I’d watch your back Shining-”

“Shut up, Sujer,” Angel warned. “Kaz… look, I need you to understand this. If we go and see your mother, we have to be as quick as we can. I am the only one who can travel between the two worlds, unless if we manage to find one of the old portals that Celestia had sealed up years ago.”

“Wait, portals?...”

“I’ll explain later about our history with this world. Right now, I can say that I can take you, and I’ll stay with you until we find your mother. You don’t know the Dead Kings like I do.”

“What do you mean by-“

“Another time. Sujer can come with us to make sure where we need to avoid the Dead Kings if they’ve got anything secret that I don’t know. He may be a jackass, but he can see things that a lot of us can overlook…”

“…are you sure you want to risk your life a final time?” Alicia completed Angel’s warning. The rest of the table looked at Kaz as he weighed his options.

On one hand… er, hoof, he makes sure that his mother can spend her final years in relative peace, in both her life, and in the thought that her son is okay. On the other hoof, if he goes and the group gets caught, he can die and then finally be re-united with his family, if only just briefly if he is to be condemned.

Both were chances he was willing to take.

“Yes. I want to go back to Earth,” Kaz affirmed the group. At that moment, the ponies were reminded they were gathered together for a celebration, as the servants strode in with the food and the main pastry of a birthday, the cake.

“Oh right, I forgot it’s Angel’s birthday. Welp.” Sujer stood up from his seat. “If I can have your attention, please?”

“You’re the one talking, you already have our attention,” Alicia remarked.

“That I am. Well, as you all know, unless you forgot like I did because we were determining whether or not one of us should go back to kill himself for his old hag…”

“Sujer…” Celestia warned.

“…We’re here for our dear old pal Angel’s birthday. He turns 20 today, so that means our country is also 20 years old. Angel here was the first person born in Las Rosas, if you didn’t know, and it was a few hours after the Argentines said to our Capitol, ‘Fine, just take the land’. Took some blood and, well, actually it took a lot of blood for that little civil war really, but it also took heart, and thus our little town of Las Rosas is a bustling place full of people who just want to say ‘Fuck you, my country in someplace, you ain’t worth breaking my back over’. And so that’s how we have random Russians and Americans and Argentinians and Europeans and Asians and…” Angel breathed in heavily, “and thieves and workers and fighters of all ages. In a way, we’re like Equestria. We decided to put our differences aside and work together for our peace, except it was because we were tired of all the bullshit of world politics and nationalism. Maybe that dream didn’t grow up as well as we wanted to, if the Dead Kings are any indication, but, well, as my grandfather used to say before he beat me, ‘Guess what? We’re here now. Make of it what we thought of it, or make of it what we needed of it. Now shut up and eat what you have or I’ll hit you with this bottle’”.

Everypony stared at Sujer incredulously, even the servants stopping to understand what in the world the long haired colt just said. Angel stood up and began arguing with Sujer about trying to stop scaring others with his ramblings, but soon all the noise was tuned out as Kaz looked downwards at his food, focused on a different matter.

Trust him that he knows the Dead Kings? Portals that the Princess sealed up? Sujer having a secret that got him kicked out of the seminary? This world is a heaven with a slight twinge of the insanity of Hell. How could I trust someone like Angel when clearly the reason why he should know so much about the Kings is because he was a part of them? And how long has Angel and the rest of them been here with Celestia and the others? Angel getting his ‘early education’ here… So has he been here ever since he could move between the worlds? And what of the Princesses? Sure, I know that governments have to keep their secrets from their citizens, but from what I understand of Equestrian history, that white alicorn and her sister may be older than the Ancient Roman empire, if not even more. Who knows what secrets they may know of us humans, if apparently they had access to portals? And what is Sujer hiding? What got him kicked out of the seminary? I’d never even expect Sujer to try to be a priest, the way he acts. How did he even get to Las Rosas from Buenos Aires, with Argentina locking down the borders severely? And why did Alicia, or Alice apparently, leave Britain for Las Rosas? What secrets is she hiding? Whatever the cases may be, once we get back I’m going to find out what exactly they’re keeping from me.

Kaz glanced back over to the other side of the table, where Angel and Sujer, and somehow Shining and Alicia, were now in some sort of fighting that involved a lot of lettuce leaves and plates being smashed and swung against each other. Even with a magical horn, Shining still looked like he struggled with the London woman, whose ferocity as she leapt to and fro to pummel him surprised Kaz for a brief second.

He stared back down at his food, a simple salad that nonetheless looked delectable, even though Kaz was far from a vegetarian. With neutral interest he picked up his fork with his right hoof (a technique that still fascinates him even after he learned it from Angel a couple days ago, whereby items can just magically stick onto any hoof of a human-turned-pony), and ate his salad as he watched the birthday fight happen.

It shouldn’t be too hard to get answers.