One year later
"Thank you come back and see us!" Jason called out to the customer as they walked out the door.
"Hopefully not anytime soon though. I know that I'm supposed to be the Princess of Friendship, but what a bitch!" Came the mental reply.
Choking on some spit, Jason laughed. "You said it not me. But I have to agree, she was a total bitch." He said before heading towards the break room to clock out for the day.
"I will be so happy if we can find another job. Retail is really starting to rub me the wrong way." Twilight replied.
Jason sighed at that before replying. "You and me both Twi. Mostly for the fact of the policies make no bloody sense. Do they not realize just how much money they let walk out of here by not locking some of this stuff up?"
Twilight snorted. "They probably do, but they want the customer feel welcome or something like that. I know they budget for losses, but they could at least try harder to reduce it. But what do we know, we're just the peons."
"Man, I'm a bad influence. Celestia is gonna be pissed at how jaded you are now." Jason responded with a shake of his head. Moving towards their locker, he carefully spun the combination in with his prosthetic left hand.
When it clicked open without incident Twilight piped up. "Well, looks like we got the sensitivity down this time. Only took what, three destroyed locks to do it?"
Jason chuckled at the snark of the alicorn princess. "Yeah, at least management didn't bitch to much when it happened."
"True. But I think that Celestia will be more upset with my new skill sets. Not like Equestria has much call for snipers or sappers. Luna, on the other hand, will probably be impressed with the amount of destruction we can cause without magic." Twilight replied.
"Probably right, you did say that she was the one who handled most of the wet work of keeping the peace back before her fall right?" Jason inquired.
"Yeah, probably part of the reason that the ponies of the time feared her. She was a bit of a boogieman, as were her Night Guard. They were pretty much an assassin's guild now that I think about it. They just didn't work for the highest bidder. I think that Luna was at least attempting to rebuild her information network before Discord pulled his stunt." Twilight explained.
"Hopefully she was able to. Be nice to have at least some kind of intel after we link up with friendlies depending upon the situation when we get back to Terra." Jason mused as he clocked out for the day. "See ya'll later!" He said out loud to some of his co-workers.
Stepping outside, Jason slipped on his sunglasses as he looked for where he had parked. Smiling slightly as he spotted his car, he headed over to it, unlocking the doors when he got close enough.
Settling into the well worn seat of the import hatchback he had bought after he finished sniper school, he buckled in and started the motor.
Unlike some of his friends who had imports, Jason had stuck with a quiet exhaust when the warranty ran out and he started to make modifications to the car.
Outside looked like a stock hatchback that one would see taking kids to a football match, but under the hood was where the difference lay.
Like when he was in the field, Jason prefered his car to blend in until it beat the pants of you in a race.
"You know I think that this is one of the things that I will miss when we leave." Twilight said after a period of silence.
"The car?" Jason asked.
"Yeah, even though I'm not the one in control of our body I enjoy the rush that we get when we go to the track, or even just when we cruise around the back roads." She explained as Jason pulled onto the main road, shifting to top gear smoothly.
Jason laughed good naturedly as he negotiated the curving road that led to the house that he had bought after his discharge. "That I can agree with Twi. I am gonna miss the girl when we have to leave."
The past year had been rough for the pair. First was the physical therapy after the doctor cleared them to walk around more than just to head to the latrine.
Then came the problems that came with designing and building their prosthetic left arm.
First was finding a material that would be able to handle the arcane energy that would power it and help to connect it to the nerves that were still sending signals. After much deliberation, titanium was chosen due to its tensile strength and how well it could handle heat.
Second was finding a way to etch the large number of complicated Equestrian runes into all the pieces of the arm, including the pins and nuts that held it together.
The easiest part of the building process was the socket that the arm would attach to. Convincing the doctors to attach it was a process in and of itself.
At first the military doctors refused to even consider attaching something that was untested and unapproved. Finally, the pair had enough of getting stonewall and did something that, in hindsight, was incredibly stupid.
~Eight months ago
"Sir, I'm telling you that this will work. You just have to believe me." Jason said to the Colonel that had taken over his case when it came time to be fitted for a prosthetic.
"I'm telling you Sergeant that there is no way that I will attach an untested piece of hardware, no matter how well engineered it is. Especially when you refuse to tell me why you are so insistent about it." The Colonel replied in a tone that left little room for argument.
Jason, fed up with the stubbornness of the doctors, tapped into the steadily recharging mana pool that he and Twilight and gotten access to a couple of weeks after they awoke from their coma.
"Jason, what are you doing?!" Twilight asked in a panic as the energy began to be channeled.
"What I need to. I'm sick of this. We know that this will work." He replied as he focused on the exam table he sat on.
The Colonel watched in astonishment as the exam table was surrounded by a lavender glow, before it began to rise a few inches into the air.
"But that, that's impossible!" He exclaimed as his logical mind tried to make sense of what was happening in front of him.
Jason's eyes opened to reveal that they were glowing white. "Not everything is impossible Colonel. Something just require a bit of faith and the ability to think outside of the box. That and a bit of magic never hurts." He said, voice trying to be both male and female at the same time. Letting the table settle back to the floor, he continued. "I was hoping to keep these abilities a secret, mostly because I know how easy it is to make someone disappear. I would rather not wind up in some lab where someone thinks that they can control me." He said as his eyes stopped glowing and his voice returned to normal.
The Colonel gulped as he looked at the young soldier before him. He could report what he had just seen to the intelligence staff, as this was something that was beyond his level of clearance, but he was bound by oath to take care of his patients. He had no doubts that what Jason had postulated would happen if it were to get out.
Clearing his throat he responded. "Sergeant, you have a point. I will have to talk to my superiors about this. I will try to do what I can to keep you out of some hidden lab in the desert, but it won't be easy."
"When are things like this ever easy sir?" Jason asked before they began to lay out a plan to convince the higher ups.~
It had taken quite a bit of convincing, but levitating a five hundred pound table and turning an apple into an orange before causing the water in a pitcher on the table to become an animated anthro pegasus that marched around the table before sitting on the edge of the pitcher for the rest of the meeting have a way of showing that sometimes magic can be more than sleight of hand.
Two weeks later, the socket was attached and the prototype arm was attached.
After regaining consciousness, Jason commented that now he knew how Edward Elric felt when he got new automail.
The arm, nothing more than a few rods, plates and wires making up the main structure, worked perfectly, until the grip test. That was when it was discovered that the arm wasn't quite sensitive enough for anything other than a training implement.
Undaunted, the spiritually linked duo began to refined the designs.
The arm that they were using currently was the Mark XIII.
Twilight, surprisingly enough was the one who suggested a version that would be like Barrett's gun arm from Final Fantasy VII. The only problem was finding crystals of the proper quality and dimensions to act as focusing arrays for the arcane energy. The shell was complete aside from those so it was stored in a case like all of the other prosthesis and their assorted spare parts.
After a half hour drive, Jason pulled into the long drive that led to the house that he had purchased when he had gotten back to the States.
Rounding the bend they saw a familiar car.
"I thought she was going to be out of town for a while longer." Twilight said as Jason parked the car.
Chuckling quietly, Jason replied, "Probably wanted to surprise us."
"I think it's more of you that she is here to surprise as she knows nothing about me at the moment." Twilight replied as Jason moved towards the front door.
"Do you want me to tell her? Be kinda hard to explain that I have a female alien from another dimension in my head." He replied as he opened the door and walked in.
"Jes! I thought that you were going to be gone for a while longer." He called out as he shut the door behind him.
"If I hadn't come home early you probably wouldn't eat anything besides ramen and pizza everyday!" A female voice called out from the kitchen.
"Hey, I will have you know that ramen is a very versatile dish. Just gotta have some inventiveness when working with it. And pizza is pizza." Jason defended as he walked into the kitchen, pointedly ignoring the three empty pizza boxes on the coffee table.
"So what you're saying is that you don't want my hot wings then?" The woman, Jesamine, replied as she put a baking sheet into the oven.
"Now, I never said that." Jason said as he walked past, swatting her rear after she shut the oven door.
"Eeep! Damn it! Don't do that Jason!" She squeaked as he chuckled.
"Hey at least I waited till you finished closing the oven. And used my right hand." He replied, the last almost an after thought.
"If I wasn't cooking right now I'd have to punish you." Jes replied a light blush still present on her cheeks as she turned to finish preparing the sauce for the wings.
Jason walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist as he whispered in her ear, "Come on, you know that you can't use that as a threat. I'd enjoy it far too much."
Turning her head, Jes replied in a slightly breathy tone. "You can be a right bastard you know that?"
"If I was incapable of finishing what I started, then yes I would be. But you know that I would never leave you wanting." Jason replied, running the tips of the fingers of his left hand up Jes's arm, causing her to shiver from the sensation of the cold metal of his prosthetic.
Jason and Jesamine's relationship started out simply enough. They were two friends from high school who had kept in touch over the years. When Jason was wounded and having some difficulty readjusting to civilian life, she moved in to help him adjust.
Over the following months she had become a rock for him. There were many a night during the first few weeks after his discharge that he was having at least half a dozen nightmares every night. That was if he was even able to get to sleep. After the third night or so in a row, Jesamine moved into his room, using the logic, that since she would probably wind up coming in at some point to check on him anyways, why not cut out the trip.
That night was the first time that he had slept through the night without the aid of medication since before he was injured.
The following weeks led to Jason asking her out and the pair exploring their new relationship.
"So how was work today?" Jes asked as she finished preparing dinner.
"Not to bad, only had a couple dozen idiots to deal with." Jason replied as he set the table.
"I think that you're being nice with that assessment." Twilight replied with a snort.
"Be nice Twi." Jason thought back to the alicorn as he grabbed a couple of glasses.
"Sure it was only a couple dozen? Must have been a slow day then." Jes replied as she set a bowl of spicy chicken wings on the table.
"It seems that my cheekiness has rubbed off on you. That can't be goo-urk!" Jason began before being interrupted by a sharp pain in between his shoulder blades.
"Jason are you okay?" Jes asked as she watched him.
"Gah! I'm not sure. Just stay over there for a second." He replied before seeking out his mental companion. "Twilight! What the hell is going on?"
"I have no idea! I'm feeling it too." She replied in a very strained tone.
Jason could feel the muscles in his back rippling as things began to shift around.
Suddenly, with a sound not unlike something exploding in a microwave, a pair of feathered wings burst from his back coating the back wall of the dining room in blood and gore.
In what would later be described as a moment nonsensical clarity, Jason was able to get one clear sentence out before collapsing in shock.
"Necromorph soup anyone?"