Ow.

My head...

Actually scratch that; Ow. My whole body.

What happened? Why does everything ache like I've been ran over by a column of tanks? Why-

Gunshots. Screaming. Fire.

Bodies.

My eyes snapped open as I sat up, mostly as a reaction rather than a conscious effort.

"Gah!" I flailed my arms, as if trying to ward away anyone who might've been close.

But I was alone.

I reclosed my eyes, and breathed deeply, trying to calm my heart and catch my suddenly short breath. I put my still armored hooves to my face and rubbed, trying to wipe away the feeling of grime and drowsiness.

Klink.

What the-? I dragged my hooves down my face, allowing my eyes to open once again.

Bottles. Glass bottles of different makes and shades. I reached over and picked up the nearest one.

"Bacardi Spiced Rum." the label read. Nothing sloshed around inside.

I set the empty bottle back down and cast my gaze around.

Most of the bottles were empty, although a fair few still had at least a few inches of liquid inside. Beyond the pile of glassware, the room I was in was tidy and well kept, with the exception of a pair of pants that clearly had seen better days and a chair that was pressed up under the doorknob of a door on the opposite side of the room. Two blocky shapes were pressed against the left wall, two pillows lay atop each near the wall.

Beds.

Along the right wall a countertop with a gigantic black rectangle seeming to loom over the beds.

A hotel.

I was in a hotel room.

Why was I in a hotel? How did I get here? Did I break into a room alone? Or did someone bring me here?

Klink. Klink.

A bottle rolled into several of it's neighbors.

...

There was no way a captor would allow me to have so much expensive liquor.

I pushed a few of the bottles away, pushing myself up onto all four hooves.

Ow.

Ow.

Ow.

All the muscles in my body ached so deeply it felt like I had gone through an industrial pulverizer. Several times over. Already, simply trying to stand up made my brain feel like mush that sloshed roughly against the insides of my skull like a bucket of water in a tornado.

Now standing, I could see a window set into the wall behind me, letting daylight stream into the room like a majestic waterfall made of gold. Merely thinking about looking outside made my brain throb in dismay.

But I soldiered through and stuck my face into the sunshine anyway.

If I were forced to guess, I'd say it was mid to late morning. Certainly felt that way with how bright and fresh the light felt. I was in a city, if the amount of buildings and structures were anything to go by. But if I was still in the same city was an entire matter entirely.

Ow.

The light became too much and I retreated back into the room, closing the blinds as I fell back. A few bottles were displaced by the movement.

Fucking hell, how much did I drink? There were enough bottles here to kill a full grown man even if they were only half full. Did horses and ponies digest alcohol better? I vaguely recalled something of that nature... But I couldn't place where I had heard that factoid, or even if it was a true factoid.

Now that the adrenaline from a surprise awakening had begun to wear off, several bodily functions made themselves known.

Ow.

I pushed my way through the pile of bottles, both empty and partially full. If this was a hotel room, then there should be a... Aha! A bathroom.

I didn't even turn on the lights, I just reared up onto the counter and turned on the faucet. Once the water was fully running, I put my mouth under the stream of water, drinking and lapping up water like it was the last source of fresh water in the universe.

Ow! Too cold!

I pulled back, gasping for breath, slightly too late to avoid the sting of prolonged exposure to cold water. I leaned on the counter, letting the water run for a few moments. The sting of the cold sort of helped with the headache, but only in a "I'm distracting you" kind of way.

Eventually I reached back up and turned off the faucet.

The urge to use the toilet called next, but I didn't want to do it basically blind, so I turned on the lights, hopped back onto the floor, and kicked off the slabs of metal that covered my hooves.

With the lights on, my headache grew too strong to even think about using magic to clean up, so I was forced to use my hooves.

I guess that was one good thing about having magic and not hands... More sanitary to wipe with just a levitated toilet sheet than poke through the toilet paper and get shit all over your fingers. But I wasn't about to drag shit all over by walking around with filthy hooves.

I reared back onto the counter and turned on the hot water, scrubbing my hooves as best as I could.

I was shaking off the extra water when I happened to glance upward for just a moment, only for that moment to catch me off guard.

The pony I saw in the mirror had gone through hell. Her eyes were bloodshot and had fully formed half moon bags. The light blue mane under her helmet was unkempt and frizzy. Her navy coat was beginning to matt, laying wildly in different directions where ever I could see it around her barding. Who knew what state her wings or tail were in? They certainly wouldn't be 'pristine'.

This was not the pony is my... No, Luna's memories. Luna had at least a semblance of majesty and grace. The pony in the mirror before me? She would've disgusted the original Luna.

The original Luna would've called her a disgrace.

The original Luna would've been right.

I was a disgrace.

A disgrace to her memory, a disgrace to everything she had stood for, a disgrace to even myself.

I... I had to fix this. Somehow.

My eyes happened across a pair of "complentary" bottles of shampoo and body wash.

Oh what the hell.

I scooped up the two tiny plastic bottles and went over to the bathroom's tub, turning the hot water on as I sat down. The water didn't take long to heat up, so I turned on the shower head and pulled off the remaining pieces of armor, letting the water properly heat up, before finally jumping in, pulling the curtain shut behind me.

I don't know how long I stood in the shower, with the industrially sized water heater of a hotel I didn't need to worry either. Of course the tiny bottle of shampoo wasn't enough, designed only to be enough for a human head maybe one or twice. For a pony who was completely covered in fur? It never was going to be enough. But that didn't mean I couldn't try.

I quickly built up a lather in my blue mane, trying to reign in it's frizz. With a lack of shampoo I could use, I did my best to recycle the lather by pushing it down the locks of mane into my coat. From there I focused mainly on the places that were beginning to matt, trying to scrub out the bits of plastering dirt and grime as best I could. All of the lather was dark brown by the time I reached my tail. Thankfully only the ends of the hairs were discolored, so I didn't focus too much on the tail's base.

Now "clean", I sat under the stream of hot water. I would never know if I began to cry, but I dearly wished to.

Even though, deep down, I knew I couldn't.

Ok... Back to "normality"...