"...Si- i-r...w-w-wake u-u-u-u-up."
...
A groan escaped the bloody lips of the man in a smoking crater...
Trees were toppled and burning, the smell of charred wood and sounds of running little animals can be heard by only one being throughout the scarred forest.
In the center of a newly made crater, a very injured and burned Ark was struggling to get to grips with reality. He was fading in and out of consciousness and his once beautiful cyan wings that were a gift from his friend Rainbow Dash were in bad shape--- they were charred, mangled, bloody, bent, broken, plucked...
Basically they were utterly useless and will stay like that for a good while.
He struggled to stand up in the smoldering result of his previous actions...
He saved them, prevented their world ending just like his did...
But where was he now?
Ark managed to get to his feet. He struggled to talk, but managed to address the... he managed to address A.I.
"I'm glad to here your voice A.I. Can you run a body check, please?"
"Y-e-e-e-s sir, I will t-t-try my best..."
...
...
...
"Body check c-c-c-comple-e-e-ete:
Wings h-h-ave been s-s-severely brok-k-k-ken, seve-e-e-ere 3rd d-d-d-degree burns t-t-throughout body.
Legs have b-b-been fract-u-u-ured, d-o-o-o not rec-c-comend st-t-tanding on them.
Wings have taken the b-b-brunt of t-t-the initial i-i-impact about 13 w-w-weeks to heal without a-a-any medication.
S-s-setting the b-b-bones of t-t-the wi-i-ings wi-i-ill be a p-p-p-roblem t-t-these a-a-are ne-e-ew par-r-rts of the b-b-b-body.
'Bu-u-u-u-st-e-e-e-e-e-r A-a-a-arm-m-m-m c-o-o-o-mple-e-etl-l-ly d-e-e-est-t-troi-e-e-d
Recommended action: ... find...doctor...that...knows...of...wing...stru-u...structure "
Ark grew worried, not only of his own health, but mostly for the health of his friend.
Perfect amount of compassion, showing worry for another being even though body is critical, current chance of survival...100%. Subject is not aware of this information.
"A.I, are you all right? you're sounding kinda choppy there." Ark voiced his concern to his friend.
"...A.I program ex-x-xtremely damaged by ra-a-a-adioactive particles of s-s-sun...please don't worry, I will be alright."
Ark wasn't satisfied, but since when do computers lie?...
"But he isn't a computer..." He thought.
"Alright...any idea where we are, A.I?" Ark asked.
A.I had some good news this time.
"We are in equestria, the surrounding atmosphere is exactly the same before the cluster and differ-rent from earth's."
But the good news didn't last that long.
"Time u-uknown, location unk-known. Damage done to me has restricted my sensors, I can-n-not scan for any lifefor-r-ms."
Ark sighed, then responded.
"So let me get this straight--- we're blind, flightless, injured, helpless, lost, and my armor is vaporized, cause I noticed it's not here."
"Correct."
Ark face-palmed, he then winced in pain.
The fact that he is still alive and moving is proof of his perfect human structure...
"Great...let's get out of this crater."
Ark began to climb out of the crater, and after a few times (after a healthy dose of dirt Ala ground) he got out.
"Now...what direction?..."
Ark was struck with an idea.
He pointed to his left "Eenie."
He pointed to his right "Meenie."
He pointed in front of him "Minie."
He pointed to his right again "Mo!"
Perfect understanding of the situation around him...knowing comic relief when needed.
When he screamed 'mo' he started coughing up blood and hacking.
"Let's just get this over with..." He said as he wiped the blood from his mouth.
"S-ir, t-ha-t wa-s not a very lo-g-ic-al w-ay to fi-gu-re out wh-e-re to go..."
"Screw logic, I have wings and we're in equestria, I think that boat was burned by the sun a long time ago...maybe."
He started to limp to the path he chose.
"...Why are there so many pieces of stone everywhere? It doesn't look natural...A.I what are those?"
No answer...
"A.I, you there?" Ark asked, getting a little worried.
Error.
"A.I?" Ark asked again.
ERROR.
"C'mon, stop joking." He pulled out the chip that housed the A.I unit.
ERROR.
It was burnt,broken, and chipped...
It was dead...
A.I was dead...
He...died.
"A...I?" Ark started tearing up, his eyes became more erratic in their changing of colors.
"No, please don't die on me, I won't be able to get your data if the chip is dead! PLEASE! Don't..."
Tears started to escape his eyes, his face started to contort into one of pain,loss, abandonment,fear, and grief. The pain of losing A.I was too great for his perfect mind to bare.
He threw the chip on the ground and stomped on it furiously.
"YOU TOLD ME NOT TO WORRY YOU FILTHY LIAR!" He screamed while stomping on the remains of A.I.
MIND IN CRITICAL CONDITION!
A.I was literally the only thing keeping him sane, he blocked the extreme surge of emotions that came with him losing his entire race and the stress of all of them depending on him.
RED ALERT! SUBJECT WAS NOT SUPPOSE TO BARE THE ENTIRE EMOTIONAL STRAIN OF THE CURRENT SITUATION AT ONCE!
That group hug with those ponies didn't do ANYTHING!
ERROR!
He was as bland as he could ever imagine! The mental block made him a complete SCHMUCK!
ERROR!
AND HE ONLY HAD ONE ARM! THE DAMN SUN RUINED HIS BUSTER ARM!
WARNING!
A arm that he made with his father...
FALTER IN PROGRAMMING!
Who was dead...
MIND BREAKING!
He was dirty,injured,lost,and now...
NANOBOTS IN CRITICAL MELTDOWN MODE!
He was alone...
ETERNITY CHEST DRIVE GOING INTO CRITICAL!
With no one to be with him...
ERROR!
To help him...
ERROR!
To laugh with him...
ERROR!
To talk with him...
ERROR!
He was alone...in a dark forest.
MIND ENTERING POINT OF NO POSSIBLE PARAMETERS FOR REPAIR!
And all because of the Sun...
ERROR!
That BLASTED sun...
ERROR!
It took everything from him! His home,his people,his friends, and now A.I.
A.I was literally a part of him, with him since 'birth', before he knew it was a program he thought he was his very own 'real imaginary friend'...
And he stomped on the remains...how COULD he...?
ERROR!
The grief stricken,sad,hopeless face started to contort into something...
Something...angry.
Something...hateful.
In his extreme state of emotion, he didn't hear the faint sound of clopping in the distance...
It was coming closer...
Ark couldn't take it anymore.
MIND BEYOND ALL REPAIR! NO POSSIBLE WAY TO SALVAGE!
WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY MAKE A SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD THE LAST HOPE FOR HUMANITY!?
WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY CHOOSE HIM TO DO ALL THIS CRAP!?
OH WAIT HE REMEMBERS NOW! THEY MADE HIM IN A GODDAMN TUBE FOR THIS!
PONIES!? WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY BRING HIM INTO EQUESTRIA!? THEIR GODDAMN 'OH THIS WORLD PERFECT! THE INHABITANTS WILL COMFORT YOU WITH THE POWER OF SUNSHINE AND FARTS!' CRAP!? HELL NO!
AND ONLY ONE!? THEIR DUMB COLLECTIVE ASSES COULDN'T MAKE TWO PEOPLE TO COME INTO THIS WORLD!?
Ark looked up at the sun. His eyes starting to change color again.
"...This is your fault..." He seethed.
But he knew it wasn't this sun's fault, but he didn't care at this moment.
His bloody wings sending pain signals to his brain. Constantly reminding him of the evil the sun did to him.
All of a sudden constant imagines of the beautiful planet earth being coated by the orange haze of the sun's energy flashed in his already cracked mind.
His father's face and body evaporated into nothing...
Buildings blew away like dust in the wind.
Occupied houses, filled with families and loved ones boiling and burning away...
"Stop it...." He said out-loud to himself.
A mother and her child hugging each other, so that the sun's death would hit the mother first...the child was crying...but that didn't last long.
"STOP IT!" He screamed louder this time.
The earth's crust being peeled and boiled away like an onion...
There was no screaming...it was all too quick, and even if there was any screaming...
"Please...stop..." He begged.
NO ONE WOULD BE AROUND TO HEAR IT.
Something in Ark's mind broke...
MIND IS COMPROMISED! MIND IS COMPROMISED! BEGINNING EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS!
And something else was activated.
His sanity...
His reason...
His compassion...
His emotion's...
His being...
Permanently scarred like the innocent planet he hailed from...
And soon to be destroyed.
EMERGENCY PROGRAMMING IN EFFECT!
His eye's became a solid white color...
________________________________________________________________________
About 10 minutes before Ark's 'arrival'. Everfree castle.
************************************************************************
The clattering sounds of hooves echoed across a decedent marble floor. A white coated equine with shining gold armor was galloping across the room towards the high throne. When he arrived the guard bowed his head in respect to the two figures posed on the thrones.
The immortal leader's of Equestria. A radiant white coated alicorn, and another cosmic dark blue coated one right next to the other one.
Together they represented the sun and the moon, they controlled the heavens themselves and no one matched the combined might of-
"Tia!, get off the poor lads back, he's not your personal transport." A deep masculine voice said, with a hint of mirth.
This voice sounded exactly like the voice of Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and it came from the white alicorn.
A sparkling pink puff appeared from the back of the royal guard. The little fillies face was one of cute defiance.
"Awww! But Spearchuck wants to carry me, see!" She used her tiny white hooves to point at the face of the 'poor lad' she was using as a personal transport.
He had the facial expression of a pony between a rock and a hard place, was there any right way to respond to this?
"Doesn't that face just scream 'voluntary'!" the little alicorn said.
The White alicorn started laughing. It was a deep, hearty laugh that seamed to shake the very ground with it's amplitude.
"Tia, I do believe you're making the lad uncomfortab-" The White monarch was cut off by a strange event...
The floor didn't stop shaking.
Suddenly many guards started to pour in, they were all coming in with reports, complaints, fears, but they all had something in common.
They all had to do with a strange object hurdling towards the ground...
One guard came out of the ruckus that was happening in front of the two monarchs of the land.
"King Sole! There is something coming towards the castle! it's-"
*CRAAAAAAAA!* *BOOOM!*
The shock was so powerful it made everypony in the castles throne room fall on their flanks. The sound of stone blocks raining down could be heard outside.
*BLOP* *BLOP* *BLOP*-*BLOP *BLOP*
"The thing just blew threw the castles tower!"
"Guards! Make haste and bring as many of my subjects into the castle. I will not have any lives taken by falling rocks! GO!" Sole ordered.
The guards did so and rounded up as many ponies from outside as they could. King Sole him-self also came to the aid of his subjects, crushing rocks with his brute strength, melting them with him magic, crushing giant stone blocks between his massive pectorals (I might be paraphrasing...do alicorns even have pectorals? Do they even lift?).
A broken leg or two was the only thing that transpired thanks to the quickness of the guards and King Sole. They were met with a blue magic barrier when they returned. They spared no time and entered the field...
Just in time to...
*BOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!* *WOASHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!*
Whatever that thing was, it landed down. The impact's shock-wave destroyed all the windows and sent a mighty gust of wind into the castle...
The barrier that Sole's wife so impressively put up protected them from harm.
When the dust settled. King Sole and his yet to be named wife were ordering around the guards to do this and that, as well as getting their royal hooves dirty in the process helping and healing their subjects.
But...there was something wrong...
Somepony was...missing...
The King searched the room, and so did his wife. Their faces became more and more worried by the second...
They checked the only room that she could be in otherwise, her room...
And she wasn't there.
Oh no...
"WHERE'S TIA!?" The King bellowed, his flowing spiked mane (that could give SS3 goku a run for his money) erupted into flames. A father's love can excite even the wisest and controlled of ponies.
"TIA, WHERE ART THOU!? I AM NOT IN A JOKING MOOD RIGHT NOW!"He bellowed. His wife also frantically looking for his only daughter.
She wasn't in the castle, but then where was she?
...oh crap...
"THE METEOR! DAMN THAT FILLIES CURIOSITY! IT WILL BE THE DEATH OF HER! GUARDS, WERE GOING NOW!" The King ordered.
He then headed towards the nearest table and flipped it...with his massive pectorals (JK...or am I?).
Curiosity killed the cat...
Let's just hope it doesn't kill Celestia.
__________________________________________________________________________
Everfree.
**************************************************************************
'...why did I do this?...' Thought a tiny Celestia as she walked though the forest.
When the meteor was flying threw the sky, she felt this insatiable urge to go check what would crash down. The one smart thing she did was wait for the shock-wave to pass before actually going into the forest...
The dumb thing she did was ACTUALLY GOING INTO THE FOREST ITSELF.
The forest was creepy, even though she was advancing in her magic classes, she really didn't want to get bum rushed by a manticore.
'Daddy's going to be real mad at me...have to stay away from his chest when I go back...those things flare up when he's mad...it's really scary.'
Celestia felt a...very foreboding feeling as she came closer to the crash sight...that cold feeling that usually predicts...
Death.
...
"STOOOOOOP!"
Two white beams parallel to each other erupted into the sky, molesting the clouds high up in the air as they pierced the heavens.
A bright white light started to shine just ahead of her...
And her dumb-ass went towards it...
"WHAT!?" Animus screamed out as he was held back by two guards, good thing to, he would have throttled the man before him if he wasn't held back.
"I'm sorry Dr.Light, but this had to be done. Even though the chances of this happening are slim to none the chance is still there..." The unnamed man looked to his left to see...
Ark.
He was strapped to a table. He was still and motionless on a cold metal slab...
While a team of operators picked at his brain...trying to put some foreign object inside his most sacred of spaces...
"YOU SWINE! THIS VIOLATES THE MOST PRINCIPLE OF ALL HUMAN RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS!" Animus screamed.
The man Animus was verbally sodomizing with a verbal anchor stood his ground, not flinching or reacting in the slightest.
"I'm sorry Dr.Light but we must send out the perfect representation of the human race. That is why we asked you to artificially make the perfect human being" The man said, his 'apology' lacking even the slightest hint of actual sincerity.
He looked towards the 'human' Ark. His eyes were wide open, and the blankest white you can imagine. His face held no emotion.
He was like a blank slate...
"His reactions to situations will be as calculated and processed as possible, his personality will be tuned to absolute perfection, his physique, his mind, everything about him will be perfect..." The man looked at Ark in pride, the same disgusting sense of pride as a serial killer would look at his latest 'work of art'. His face then suddenly turned to a dark, foreboding frown, he looked towards the heartbroken doctor.
"But if he brakes, falters in his programming in anyway...Ark..."
The doctor almost had a heart attack. The combination of seeing his 'son' opened up and picked at by strangers, the years of love and catering he gave towards the boy, only for him to find out he will just become a drone, a 'perfect' being. The betrayal he felt when he finally saw the writing between the lines of why he was asked to make Ark...
But most of all...were the words this man, this stranger, adorned in a sharp suit and tie, with no sadness or remorse in his face, said to him.
"Would have to be erased...a fail-safe..."
But... a fail-safe to what?
Celestia ran up to the voice, not knowing why she didn't just turn and leave right then. Only to see...
Ark.
His eyes were still shooting that strange beams of light towards the sky...
Towards the sun...
This beams of energy were SO powerful, anything that would touch these beams would be instantly atomized...
But the beams would never reach the sun...
No...not even close...