Greg slept through it.

Not that he would have noticed much if he was awake. The general got fed up with pony talk after Greg got into a discussion with Corporal Williams about the relative merits of Season Five versus Season Seven, and when they got into an argument about which pony was "best," he had Greg tossed back into his cell.

Greg was fed a fairly decent meal while a guard looked on. He’d eaten everything off of paper plates with nothing but a soft plastic spoon. The salad was a challenge.

After that… nothing. Greg used the time to think. After several hours he did a few sets of exercises to break up the monotony. Then he thought some more. At last he started yawning. He had no idea what time it was but, as he had little else to do, sleep seemed like a good idea. He curled up on the shelf and closed his eyes.

The next thing Greg knew was the sound of his cell door as it slammed open and two guards roughly hauled him up by his upper arms.

"What the hell?" he gasped, still half asleep.

The guards didn't answer. They dragged him out of the cell without even bothering to handcuff or blindfold him. He finally got a look at the bare corridors of the installation. There wasn't much but a few colored stripes, some incomprehensible signs and a few fire extinguishers. The guards frog-marched him up to a doorway marked "Prep Room A" and shoved him through it.

There were several people in the room and none of them were happy to see him. The general turned a gaze on him that could have blistered paint. "Is there anything you can do to stop this?" Greenwaldt demanded.

"If I can just get a look at the code, I might have a chance—"

"I'm not talking about the God-damned Internet!" The general bellowed. "I'm talking about this!" He stabbed a finger at a monitor on the far wall, and people moved back to allow Greg a view of the screen.

At first he thought it was a movie—a special-effects extravaganza. But it wasn't. The tanks that rolled down the streets lined with burning houses were real. The explosions, gunfire, and what appeared to be blasts of glittery lightning were real. He recognized the coffee shop where he always stopped in on his way to work.

The operators were scrubbing back and forth through the video recordings, pausing on frames that held something interesting, and then going on. Something light-colored flashed through the camera's view. It was so fast that it was just a blur but Greg thought he recognized its general shape. When the operators reversed the video and slowed it down, Rarity whirled into view, slamming a hoof into a surprised soldier and sending him sprawling. A spatter of bullets hit the pavement next to the pony and she dodged around the corner and out of view.

"What… what's…"

"The friendly purple one with wings and a horn, you said!" the general shouted. "We were ready for that… but there are thousands of them! And there are dragons and monsters as well!"

"They're real…" Greg whispered, taking several steps toward the monitor.

The general grabbed him by one shoulder and spun him around. "Can you stop it?" he shouted directly into Greg's face. "Can you do anything about this?"

Greg had no idea how it could be possible in the first place, so he settled for the most likely answer, "No. Not now."

Greenwaldt shoved him away with so much force that he nearly fell. "Get this piece of shit out of my sight," he hissed.

Surprisingly, it wasn't a soldier who led him away. It was Gwen, the woman who had pretended to be a prisoner in the cell next to his.

She took him out of the room but turned away from the cells. At the end of the hall was a door labeled "elevator".

"Two to go up," Gwen said, seemingly to the empty air. The doors slid open and she motioned Greg into the small space. The doors closed on them and the elevator began to rise. It went up for a long time.

Greg glanced over at Gwen. "So… what's it like being a spook?"

She didn't reply.

"NSA, FBI or CIA?" he asked.

She didn't reply.

"Hey… you're unarmed. Aren't you worried about being—"

"I’m a field agent. I think I can handle one computer-jockey." she said flatly, without even glancing in his direction.

"Oh," he said quietly turning his face downward. It wasn't from embarrassment. He just didn't want her to see anything in his expression that might give away his new-found hope.

After several more minutes, the elevator stopped, and the inner door opened. Gwen had to manually open the outer door, which swung out instead of sliding to one side. She motioned Greg through and he found himself in a dingy office that would have been unremarkable in any industrial area in the country. He turned back to see the woman closing the outer door. From the outside it looked like a pair of rusty equipment lockers.

The door clicked shut with a solid metallic sound and Gwen turned and pointed at a neatly folded set of clothes and a pair of shoes on the top of the desk. "Get changed. Shirts and pants first, then the flight suit."

"Flight suit?" Greg asked. "Where am I flying to?"

"These are the orders concerning you. They're sealed." She said it slowly, as if explaining to a small child. "All I know is that I'm supposed to bring you up here, get you dressed, and then hand you and this—" She waved the envelope at him, in case he hadn't gotten her point earlier. "—over to the Marines. I don't need to know anything else, and neither do you. So get on with it."

"Right," Greg said. "Uhm… could you…" He made a gesture with his index finger, indicating he wanted the woman to turn her back while he changed.

Gwen gave a short bark of a laugh. "Not a chance. You'll change while I watch and you'll do it facing me. If you want to argue, I can call some marines in here to pin you down while I strip you. Your choice."

"No thanks." He stepped over to the desk and shucked his blue paper shirt, thinking furiously. It might just work… what do I have to lose?

He kicked off the paper pants and jumped into the pair of olive drab shorts as quickly as he could. "You're in damned good shape for a geek," Gwen said unexpectedly.

Greg would have appreciated the compliment if it wasn't for the note of suspicion in her voice. "Pilates," he improvised desperately, hoping to distract her as he pulled on a pair of pants. "The company pays for it. They have this wellness program that—"

"Shut up and get on with it," she snapped, all but rolling her eyes.

Good, Greg thought as he buttoned the shirt. Now if I can just get into the right position… He pulled the one-piece flight suit over the rest of his clothing, zipped it up, and then stood on one foot to put on a shoe. He did the same for the second shoe and as soon as it was on, purposely lost his balance and began to fall forward. He caught himself by taking one large step forward, closing the distance between himself and Gwen.

She wasn't stupid. Her eyes narrowed and her hands came up… just a fraction of a second too late to block Greg's upward palm-strike. He hit her under the chin so hard that her feet came off the floor. He caught her limp body as it collapsed, easing it down onto the hard concrete floor. She was heavier than she looked… and very well-muscled, he couldn't help noticing.

"I'm sorry I had to sucker-punch you," he whispered to her. "But 'finish it before they realize it's started', Funakoshi Sensei always used to say." He quickly searched her but found nothing else. He checked to make sure she was still breathing, then stood up and looked at the outer door of the office.

Marines, she said. Well, that means a different service with a different chain of command. Greg told himself. And if she's right about nobody being told more than absolutely necessary...

He shucked the flight suit, wedged the metal office chair under the handles of the phony lockers, and walked to the door. He squared his shoulders, opened the door, went through, and then shut it behind himself with quick, precise movements.

Outside the door was a big warehouse full of oily engine parts and rusty pieces of machinery. At one end, was a large open doorway. Sunlight spilled in, silhouetting the two figures that stood facing inward. Behind them was a large military helicopter with Marine insignia on it.

Greg began to walk briskly toward the figures. Now, he thought, how would old Greenwaldt do it? As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, Greg could make out two men in helmets and flight suits. "You can stand down," he snapped at them, imitating the general's clipped delivery. "The drill's over. You'll be getting new orders within the hour."

The pilots glanced at each other and then back at Greg. "The drill…" The pilot peered at Greg's clothes, looking for some sort of insignia and then settled for the safest option. "…sir?"

"Yes," Greg continued irritably. "The drill. This drill. Operation Nightmare."

The pilots looked at each other again in confusion. "We weren't—"

"Oh, good God man!" Greg snapped, "Invading monsters from the Internet? You didn't actually believe that nonsense, did you?"

"We weren't told anything, sir." One of them said. "We just heard things."

"Stupidest clusterfuck I've ever been involved in." Greg said with immense conviction. "Now, if you marines will excuse me, I've got to get back into uniform. The Corporal will be along with your orders as soon as possible." And, with that, Greg strode past them, out of the door and past the helicopter, praying that he would find some obvious way out of the complex.

One of the Marines behind him made an uncertain "Um…" noise but Greg kept going at the same steady pace until he came to a corner of another building and turning, disappeared from their view. Then he ran.

How long would it take the soldiers below to realize what had happened? He hadn't seen any cameras in the office, but they could have been too small to notice. The elevator took at least five minutes to travel from the facility to the surface. That meant ten minutes for a round-trip. It had been two or three since he'd knocked out Agent Gwen and that meant at least six or seven minutes at the earliest before all hell would break loose.

Greg rounded another corner and saw that the defenses of the disguised facility were entirely based on its false identity as a parts depot. There wasn't even a fence around the place. There was a crowd of people at the entrance, though. Locals who had seen the Marine helicopter come in for a landing, Greg guessed. There was a Sheriff's deputy keeping them from walking onto the property.

A small vacant lot separated the facility from the next group of buildings. Greg would be in full view of the crowd if he crossed it, but he was running out of time and would have to go back into the complex to find another way out. He started walking across the lot.

It took all his self-control not to run as he heard someone in the crowd shout, "Hey, there's a guy over there!"

"Yeah, Joe," came an authoritarian voice that Greg assumed was the deputy's, "and he probably belongs there. You don't. Just stay out of the way and let the military boys do their job."

"But what if it's terrorists like in California…" the man continued. Fortunately, Greg made it across the lot unhindered. The man's voice faded away as Greg wound his way between a feed store and another warehouse.

"Minnehaha County Sheriff's Department," Greg muttered to himself. It had been clearly written on the deputy's vehicle. "Seriously, Minnehaha? I still have no idea where I am." He hadn't been close enough to read the state's name on the license plate.

He headed toward a group of buildings that looked more like a business district. That's where the military would probably look for him first, but his alternative was to head out across open farmland. He'd stick out like a sore thumb if he did that.

A couple of minutes later he turned down Main Street and found out where he was. The town's name was on a large block of granite along with the date it was founded. That really wouldn't have told him much, except there was also a map. Not too far from Sioux Falls, Greg pondered. If I can get there, I can probably disappear… but I've got no money and no car. And I'm running out of time!

He kept walking, mentally noting the various businesses he passed. Aside from the vacant, boarded-up ones that comprised almost a third of their number, there was a junk store, a bar, a Radio Shack and, at the end of the block, a diner named Hog Heaven. The large front window had a painting of a big pink pig with white wings, holding a plate with a gigantic mound of food on it. But it was something else on the window that caught Greg's attention, and it all fell into place… he now had a plan.

He briefly pretended to look at the newspaper in the machine outside of the diner and then retraced his steps to the Radio Shack. The young boy who was behind the cash register looked up as Greg entered. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Yeah," Greg smiled at him. "Do you have any laptops I can check out?"

The clerk pointed out the display models and Greg asked, "Do you mind if I poke around on them for a couple of minutes? I'm trying to make up my mind which one I want."

"No problem," the clerk told him and returned to the counter where he had evidently been reading a comic book.

Greg opened the little netbook's WiFi panel. Surprisingly there were three networks in range but one clearly had the strongest signal. Although it didn't have a customized name, it had to be from the diner next door that had the "Free WiFi" sticker in the window.

Greg clicked the connect button and a password box popped up. He recognized the brand of wireless router they were using and knew it came out of the box with "admin" as the username and "pword" as the password. He tried that combination and it worked.

"Bless you, lazy people of the world," he breathed as he typed in meta commands designed to contact his home machine.

"Whatcha up to?" came a voice from just behind him. Greg only just managed not to jump in surprise. The clerk had gotten curious about what he was doing and had come to peer over his shoulder.

"I'm…" Greg groped for a plausible reason for the lines of code streaming up the window on the machine, "I'm trying to… uh… see if this machine will run that new online game."

"Which one's that?" The boy asked.

Dammit! Greg mentally swore at himself. Now I've made him more interested!

"Uhm… it's called Equestria Online. It's still in beta but it looks like it'll be pretty good."

"You’re a brony, huh?” The clerk said with a bit of a sneer in his voice. “I never liked that show, myself. Besides, you won't be able to get online from…" he trailed off as a square of bare ground appeared on the screen and plants began to rapidly grow on it.

"Whoa! That's pretty cool." The clerk said. "What happens next?"

I wish I knew, Greg thought sourly to himself. But within seconds, Pinkie Pie had appeared on the screen.

"Greg!" the little pink pony cried happily. "Where are you?"

"I'm in a little town in South Dakota called Humboldt—"

"That's kinda cool," the clerk said. "It's voice activated?"

"Yeah," Greg said, "and I'm sort of in the middle of a game… watch this." He addressed the pony on the screen. "Pinkie, I've just escaped from a secret underground military facility and there will be soldiers coming after me soon, if they aren't already. I don't have much time. Can you get Nightmare Moon for me?"

"I'm sorry Greg, but she's already gone through the portal to the real world with the others. She had me stay behind in case you tried to contact us again, but I'm all alone here. I can send her a message, though."

"That is so awesome!" the clerk whispered behind Greg.

"Tell her that I'm stuck here and all the rest of it. If there's any way she can get all the ponies to go back to Equestria…"

"Uh… I don't think… well… she's been a bit odd lately. "Odd and, like, super scary." Pinkie Pie finished lamely.

The "scary" part, Greg could understand. "What do you mean, 'odd'?" he demanded.

"Well…" Pinkie began, but at that moment two humvees full of soldiers roared past the store and the clerk looked up in surprise.

Shit, Greg thought, here we go. How long is it going to take him?

The clerk looked from the street to Greg and back again. He leaned past Greg and directly addressed Pinkie Pie. "Are you real?" he demanded.

"Yupperoonie, I sure am!" Pinkie Pie said. "Are you?"

The clerk turned to Greg, wide-eyed. "Then you really did escape from—"

Greg's fist caught the boy squarely in the solar plexus. The clerk folded up with a grunt and Greg eased him down onto the floor. "Sorry dude. National emergency and all that." He grabbed a package of zip ties off of a shelf and trussed up the clerk, then scoped out the back of the store. There was a rear door that let out onto an alley.

Greg returned to the computer. "Pinkie, I may have to run at any minute so can you give me an idea what's going on with Nightmare Moon and the rest of the ponies as quickly as you can?"

"Well… um… I'm glad you're alive because… because…"

"C'mon Pinkie! Spit it out!"

"Nightmare Moon said if they killed you, she'd burn the whole planet to a cinder."

Greg gaped at the little pony. "Can she do that?"

Pinkie shook her head. "I don't know… but I think she might try."

Author's Notes:

Thanks again to my wonderful prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and the Fabulous Fana Farouche. Also, new this week, Physics Technical Adviser Cander! (Turns out that mixing Coke and pop-rocks won't kill you unless you do it just right.)