Like a hammer from god, or a strike from Thor, Thomas felt the impact of the bullet on his Kevlar and ceramic body armor. Letting out a pained grunt, he stumbles into the doorway, turning around to make sure his squad mates were following, as well as to pick off the sniper on a rooftop about two hundred and fifty yards out. The bullet flew true, strike the jihadi in the forehead and exiting the back of his head.
"Pink mist," he calmly muttered, finishing the turn and sprinting into the doorway.
o.O.o
The building was far from what one would've expected, given it was in the center of radical Muslim-held territory. As it would turn out, it was a research and development facility, not unlike one of those he had frequented before… coming here. Thomas turned into what was obviously a control room, breath catching as he saw beyond the glass partition.
It could only be described as hell. There were bodies everywhere- enough bodies to infuriate the American super soldier, yelling at his squad mates to come here. Bad tactics, he knew, to bunch them up, but he let his buck sergeant in the room. They all stood agape, for they had not endured what he had. He was different: a spook, a spy, a hacker. A lover, not a fighter, though he was fighting for what he loved. The rest of his team was, appearance-wise, a lot like him: under the age of eighteen, varying with ethnicities and skin colors, as well as different shades of hair and eye color. They were different though, in that none of them had the enhancements he did- ceramic bones, electronic mind, reflexes at nearly the speed of light. Not that he used them much- still have to look human.
They were still staring at the carnage when there was a squeak from a corner and a terrified man, in a headscarf and holding his hands up, looked at them. "Do you work here?," asked Thomas, not unkindly. "Y-Yes, I do w-w-work here," the man stuttered out. Thomas crouched behind the man, asking as he did so, "What happened here? Why are there so many bodies? And we aren't going to kill you, at least if you tell us what I'm asking." The Iraqi fellow visibly relaxed, having been told he would live to see another sandy sunrise. "I work the- the controls for this, um, device. It is a, ah, um, a, dimensional transporter. And those bodies are he people that we were trying to transport. I didn't force them to do anything, I just worked he controls!," he rapidly spilled out, clearly not willing to martyr himself. Thomas blinked in surprise, as did he rest of special ops team. "Who were you trying to transport to… another dimension, and why?," the scarred teen asked the engineer. The guy responded by saying," those are the bodies of prisoners, and in the walls of the containment facility are guards who volunteered after a few tests went right."
"Where were you transporting these people?" Thomas asked. "Paradise," simply spoke the man.
It was at his point that Thomas simply broke. Many might say that the human mind doesn't just "snap" but snap his mind did. He had seen too many deaths, too much misery, too much abuse, not enough love, and was aching for release. I don't fear death, because I'm already dead inside, he thought grimly to himself. He ordered the rest of his team outside the room, outside the building. He was going to blow this place up. However, he held the shoulder of the technician. "Send me there. Send me to paradise," he requested. The fellow backed up, a questioning look in his eyes. "Do it! NOW!," he bellowed at him. When he still didn't touch the control board, Thomas calmly said, in a tone that was somehow both calm and as awful as a pitch black run to the bathroom in the middle of the night, " I shouldn't scare you because I'm faster than you, or because I'm smarter than you. I should scare you because I'm better than you. Now, please, when I go into that testing facility, I want you to open that portal. I don't care if it kills me, and you shouldn't either. When I'm gone, you will gather all the data you can from here and get back to my team. Tell them that Thomas Sanders sent you. That'll convince them." He turned and strode out of the room, into the much larger testing facility.
He stepped into the center of the gore- and blood-covered room. It wasn't the worst he had ever seen, far from it, but it wasn't a place he'd want the honor of cleaning, seeing as much of it was dark brown already and probably soaked into the walls.
The broken young man looked up and saw the Iraqi's scared face staring down at him, then he disappeared as he sat down to work the control board. He felt a strange sensation, almost like tear gas, but not irritating. He looked around and saw a flashing coming from around him. It was the last thing he saw before a glowing blue portal opened on he wall in front of him. The surface of it was watery, but it was upright. He heard the technicians thickly accented voice telling him, "All you need do is step through the portal and you will be taken to… paradise." He nodded, and jumped in. There was an odd noise, like nails on a blackboard, and he passed what looked like a set of glowing blue circles.
o.O.o
He glanced around, wondering why he wasn't wearing anything. He looked sharply at his torso, then gasped: his skin, no, fur, was a dark blue, almost black. He shook his head, and felt a thick clump of fur around the back of his whacked himself on the forehead, and to his utter surprise, felt a horn of odd, organic material.
Ignoring the apparent horn for the moment, he looked around, noting as he did so that he lacked all the cybernetics of his previous body. A good thing, I think; they likely led me to try to kill myself. Just as he was getting to his feet, er, hooves, he felt a rather distinct pain in his, well, everywhere. "I think I fell from somewhere. Ouch," the now pony muttered.
"Hey Fluttershy, I think I found it," a uniquely feminine voice called out, just as a rather purple pony walked out, with darker purple…mane? … and tail. Like me, this one had a horn, and some sort of mark on its flank. I just stared in shock. It then smiled as a noise came from behind me.
Whirling around, I saw another pony had stepped out of the brush. This one was yellow-furred, with a light pink mane and another, but different mark on its flank, as well as what looked like wings folded along her flanks.
"Oh. Hello. How are you folks today? Haha, I'm sorry to, ah, drop in like this…" I said, glancing around at the depression I had made in the ground from dropping down from fifteen feet in the air into the moderately soft soil.
"Whoa, that's cool! You found a pony in the forest? And you were just looking for an explosion! Awesome," came from somewhere above me.
Ruling the two on the ground as not a threat, I craned my head up to see a blue Pegasus floating above me. It was at this point that I decided to take a nap, not wanting to wake up from this dream I had fallen into. Because this is a weird paradise.
o.O.o