//------------------------------// // Chapter I (Arc I-Intro) // Story: First Contact // by The Art of Lounging //------------------------------// ~Just outside the Gnattura System, 4:01 AM Terra time, Year 2398~ You sigh contently as you look out the cockpit window out into the dark void of deep space. Slouching back into the cushy leather seat of your one man express courier vessel, you put your legs on the dashboard of the ship’s controls, careful not of press any controls or obscure your sight of the faintly glowing holographic HUD set into the window. You flip on some music, completing the serene atmosphere This ship cost royalties, but one can’t deny how almost sickeningly luxurious the sleek vessel is. You crack a small grin at the thought of other couriers flying in the clunky standard ships. You would even go as far as to liken them to 21st century mail trucks. The poor bastards, the standards are a pain to fly in. But enough of that. Looking at the digital clock on the corner of the HUD you see that you have a full 6 terra hours before you need to report back for another delivery. Excellent. Leaning forward to the control panel, you punch in an autopilot command set for 6 hours from now on a number pad before pressing ‘enter’ ///AUTOPILOT SET FOR TERRA IN ‘6’ STANDARD HOURS/// says the synthetic female voice of the computer. The ship turns in a lazy arc, facing a nebula with twinkling stars scattered throughout the massive cloud of pastel colored dust before beginning the journey back to Terra at a leisurely pace. You sit back and gaze into the nebula you were about to go through, the awe inspiring sight making you stop for a moment and think. Without even realizing it your lips begin to move “What cosmic clouds swirl about; its lengthy arms astride? And recompense the void of death. The stars, the space, the signs.” “What astronomers drift in bits against the black and empty sky, or people left in misty ruts? The Earths, the wreck, their cries.” “What beauty shifts through the ink, and winks back into space, or drifts across the universe to reach us in our place?” You blink from the unexpected burst of inspiration brought on by the nebula before smiling and covering your face with a hand. Here you are, waxing poetic in your thoughts when you could be catching up on your sleep. The greatest reason you became a courier was to travel the stars like you always wanted as a child, to sate your yearning for adventure even as mild as courier work is, but the scheduling is always beyond atrocious. With a final glace at out in space, you settle yourself down in the leather seat and slowly drift off into a restful, dreamless sleep as the ship enters the space cloud. …Or you would have if alarm klaxons hadn’t started blaring in the cockpit Startled back awake you look over the control panels in a hurry, needing to know what is going on before disaster can strike. Frustration begins to set in as you find nothing wrong. The map radar, the Geiger counter, and the hyperspace wave detector all turn up with inconclusive results, making this all the more confusing. You stop the ship and think for a moment, what could be going…wrong..? Looking out the cockpit window, you see bits and pieces of debris and nebula dust all moving in one direction, condensing into a singular point. Wait, you’ve heard of this somewhere before. Then like lighting it hits you with shocking force. No…there’s no way… All the dust begins to move more franticly, dragging your vessel with it. Daring to turn your eyes onto the growing mass of shining stardust, your fears are confirmed. The nebula is collapsing, and you’re right in the thick of it! “I think not!” Grabbing the controls with enough force to make the plastic creak from the abuse, you turn away from the core of the soon-to-be star and mash the throttle with a vengeance. The engines whine as they cycle titanic amounts of fuel-grade plasma to fulfill the stressful order. Both thrusters on the end of the ship light up a blinding white, firing off vectored superheated gas and sending the ship flying forward like a bat out of hell. You keep the throttle pressed down, but to your horror you find that you are slowing, the immense gravity well of the unborn star beckoning you to a painful demise. The engines sputter and backfire, barely keeping themselves in one piece. Finally you come to a total stop before the ship begins to creep backwards… “No no no! Not like this!” Your heart pounding in your ears, you rake your eyes over the controls in a peril driven frenzy as the cosmic furnace behind you gains more strength by the second. Finally your attention lands on a small keyhole near the center of the console, the hyperdrive… Fumbling with your pocket, you procure the key needed and jam it in; your shaking hands making you miss and scratch up the console several times. Twisting the key so roughly it almost snaps, warning messages flair to life on the ship’s HUD, advising against jumping into hyperspace. One glance outside shows that the nebula has almost totally collapsed, all the floating hunks of rock and dust within what had to be a billion miles rushing to the point behind you. The warning messages are ignored as you hit the jump button, not even taking the time to choose a destination. The engines, the artificial gravity, and the lights all shutdown as the ship routes all its power to the physics bending hyperdrive. The ship lurches as time outside seems to slow, everything taking a curious blurry appearance as you leave the physical realm for hyperspace. Another thing worthy of praise, the ever enigmatic plane known as hyperspace you idly muse. It was right then you notice that you had neglected to strap yourself to your seat as per hyperdrive operations demanded. With stomach churning burst of speed, your courier ship blasts forward into the unknown and sends you into the blissful void of unconscious. ~Ponyville, 10:13 PM, Year 1002~ It’s a calm summer night as per usual in the quaint hamlet of Ponyville, Luna’s stars and namesake shining brightly, young colts and fillies out playing in the cool shade of nightfall, and even some nightlife gathering at local bars and clubs. But none of this was a concern to one Twilight Sparkle, who is happily trotting her way to her favorite stargazing hill out on the edge of town, her brass telescope and several books held in an aura the same hue as her violet coat. She smiles as the chilled night breeze wafts through her mane, it’s nights like these that the young magus unicorn lives for. Coming to her hill, Twilight sees other ponies with their own telescopes scattered about, a medley of clicking and chattering sounding as they adjusted their astronomy tools. Twilight looks at them, her smile growing at the thought of her neighbors taking such an interest in the night sky. Turning her attention back to her own telescope, Twilight assembles it in a whirl of metal and an expert display of magic. Satisfied with her work, the unicorn turns the telescope to face the east and levitates an open astronomy book that she flips through. ”Let’s see, let’s see…Aha!” She exclaims, stopping on a page depicting a large snake. ”Basilisk Major should be righhhhttt here!” The unicorn states, giving her telescope a number of minute adjustments. Twilight barely contains a giddy ‘squee’ as the constellation comes into focus, showcasing the artistic arrangement of the stars courtesy of Princess Luna. ”Wait a moment…” Twilight pulls herself from her telescope to squint at the stars with her own eyes, seeing something not quite right. Looking back through the brass interment she sees… ”A red star in the middle of the constellation?” But…that’s not right…there was never any mention of any red stars in her astronomy books. Plain as day however is a bright red node of light that seems to be growing in intensity. With remarkable speed Twilight opens all of her books with a flair of her horn, metaphorically tearing through each one with such swiftness that all but the most devout of scholars would be put to shame. Nothing…not one shred of information about red stars… ”No there has to be some mistake…” Twilight mumbles to herself as she opens all of the books again, scanning the text with more scrutiny. By now the other star gazers had taken notice as well, pointing at the anomaly with exclamations of surprise, awe, and in a few cases, fear. ”What could it be?” ”I’ve never seen one like that before!” ”Wow a new star!” ”Momma what is it?” ”That…that can’t be good…” ”It’s growing!” Twilight looks back up from her books at the last remark to see that the point of light had doubled in size, and is growing rapidly. Struck dumb by the anomaly, Twilight can only stare until a low ‘boom’ shakes the air around her, forcing the unicorn to take notice of her surroundings again. Worried murmurs breakout among the others as the speed of the light’s growth increases before terrified screams break out as they all realize… ”That’s not a star, that’s a METEOR!” Twilight exclaims “Everypony run!” In a scramble of hooves the hillside is clear in hardly 10 seconds as Twilight simply teleports out of harm’s way. Blinking back into existence near Golden Oaks Library, Twilight watches the ball of fire descend from the atmosphere, leaving a thick black smoke trail? She blinks her purple eyes; meteors don’t leave smoke trails… Before she can ponder further the meteor comes in low, making an ear splitting screech and forcing her to cover her sensitive ears least she go deaf. It’s so close now that she can feel the displaced air it’s producing buffet her even from the considerable distance away from the hillside Finally… BOOM! In an explosion of dirt the object impacts the hill with terrible force, rocking the whole town and sending its residents into a frightened uproar. Twilight holds herself low to the ground, eyes clinched shut as she waits for the tremors of the calamitous landing to subside. ”Twilight!” a young male voice calls Said unicorn jumps up and turns just as a scaled body barrels into her, sending them both sprawling to the ground ”Twi! Are you ok? What happened? What’s with the smoke? Wha-Omf!” The diminutive speaker is cut of mid sentence as Twilight shoves a hoof in his mouth. ”I’m fine Spike.” Twilight tells the infant dragon “As for what happened…I’m not too sure…it could be anything really…” she trails off, thoughts of the meteor bouncing around her head. The unicorn gets to her feet and looks down at her surrogate brother “Spike, head back inside and let the princess’ know that an unknown object crashed just outside town, I’m going to gather up the girls and take a closer look.” ”Gotcha Twi!” ~Canterlot Castle, 10:31 PM, Year 1002~ Celestia settles on her red dais in front of the fireplace with a content sigh, a glass of wine and a romance novel held in her golden telekinetic grip. It wasn’t often she could take time to herself, the trappings of rule and politics tending to be the leading consumers of her time, but when she did relax it was with some fine drink and a good book. Taking a dainty sip of the aged wine, Celestia opens her book back to the page she marked since her last reading and begins. Or she would have if a letter hadn't materialized before her. With a raised eyebrow, the sun deity unrolls the parchment and reads its contents, taking note of the hasty scrawl and urgency of the tone. Her eyes however are drawn to particular phrases within the note, such as ‘unknown object’, ‘fell from the sky’, and most importantly ‘close to Ponyville’. If any of the scrolls contents alarmed her, then it did not show on her face. Standing in one fluid motion, Celestia levitates her regalia onto her person and makes for the doors of her chambers. Both the double doors open soundlessly and Celestia walks out, but not before turning to the pair of gold clad guards standing sentry by her doors. ”Guards, if you would find Shining Armor and tell him to mobilize a containment team I would be grateful.” She says in her usual light, motherly voice, not letting any of her internal worry show. Both snap to smart salutes “Yes princess!” Before they rush off however the one on the right asks “Your highness? Any destination in mind?” Celestia nods gently “Ponyville.” ~Crash Site, Time unknown~ With a pained groan, you open your eyes, the crumpled ceiling of your ship steadily coming into focus. Wait, crumpled? You shoot up into a sitting position, only to fall back from a sudden case of headrush. “Ohhhh…” Sitting up more slowly this time, you survey your surroundings with dismay. You survived the random jump, but the same can’t be said for your ludicrously expensive courier ship. The cockpit is a mess, bits of detached metal and such thrown about along with more than a few broken screens and other things. It looks like the cockpit window is buried halfway up in dirt and you think you hear the engines sputtering in a mockery of their previous splendor. Wait… Looking out of the still view-able half of the window you see the night sky along with the moon. Did you land on Terra? What a lucky break! Seeing as how something went right you can’t help but jump up with a grin …Only for you to go much higher than you expected and crack your head on the ceiling with a hollow sounding ‘bong!’ You hold your smarting head as you fall back to the floor far slower than you should, as if gravity had been reduced. “Something’s not right here…” you say as you land. Walking up to the still flickering control panel, you hold down the voice command button, praying to whatever higher power there is that there is enough energy in the vessel for a few last things. “Computer…scan current atmosphere…” The machine gives a few weak ‘whur’s before the computer speaks up. ///S-SCAN complete, planet unknown… current air composition: 38% Oxygen, 59% Nitrogen, 3% various other elements…/// You feel your jaw drop, almost double Terra’s record oxygen levels? But before you can comment on it the computer continues with its skipping synthetic voice. ///Current g-g-gravity level, X 0.4 of Terra…/// “This…this is not Terra…” ///Warning! Unknown radiation detected outside of vessel, use caution wheeee…./// Without warning, the computer dies, the control lights flickering out, leaving you to your lonesome. All at once, the gravity of your situation comes crashing down upon you. You’re stranded on an alien planet, unarmed, almost totally unprepared and helpless. You take a shaky breath and look back out the unburied part of the window to see verdant plant life to the sides of what looks like a hill you crashed into. Where there’s flora, there’s often fauna… and with the huge amount of oxygen and low gravity…You gulp as cold prickles of fear tear into your stomach, all the oxygen and low gravity means the local wildlife here must be titanic in size… No! Don’t make baseless assumptions, for all you know the animals here could be the size of dogs and not have a mean bone in their body. Heh, you can wish... But first things first, you can’t stay here forever; of the few supplies you have rations are not one of them. You would come back eventually, but for now you need to get a feel for the geography and scout out potential threats. Walking to the back of the ship, you open up the small personal storage closet and pull out your hazard suit. A crackpot friend had made it and convinced you to take it in case of an emergency such as this; looking back you can’t help but feel like scum for laughing at him behind his back. It’s not really protective in the physical sense, but it fits comfortably over your clothes and sports a magnetic barrier that blocks bacteria and radiation. Once donned in the jury-rigged suit, you see the different components come to life and a corona of crackling light surrounds you before fading, the barrier you guess. You set the re-breather on the mask to emulate the air composition of Terra, not knowing what sort of adverse effects the extra oxygen could have on you. You turn to the emergency escape hatch near the back, but before you even take a step, you feel your lips move once more. “Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be For my unconquerable soul.” “In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloodied but unbowed.” “Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade. And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.” “It matters not how straight the gate, Nor how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” Your confidence found once more, you start the march to the hatch, not even aware of how your first step outside would shake the whole world.