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// Chapter Two: Contact  
// Story: Intergalactic Intentions 
// by Starbright1996 
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Chapter two: Contact.

Soon the one week is over, the meteorite like spaceship is now close to landing. The later newspaper articles say the meteor will hit sometime between afternoon or one o’clock in the afternoon.Most ponies who are citizens that are close to the battlefield have been moved now closer to Ponyville to  limit the civilian deaths from this meteor. 

Around twelve thirty in the afternoon, with the sound of metal swords hitting other swords still rang out even though of the risk of the meteor hitting them, their honor only to keep battling even though the meteor will kill them all. Knowing if they even think of retreating they would be giving the changelings the opportunity which will lead them closer to the doors of canterlot. soon a loud crack is heard throughout the battlefield, it was close to the royal guards artillery field on the far west section on the battlefield. Some of the officers of the guards has then come to see what has landed. 

One of those officers was Shining Armour, who is the brother of the new princess Twilight and the husband of princess cadence. he had already ordered a cease fire of artillery for now, for him he stared at the now cooling, what he thought meteor. He looks to his old friend, who has been part of his unit for almost 4 years now. 

The now Sargent Flash sentry stares at the cooling meteor looking rocket. Shining looked to his friend with a frown, looking confused at the orange stallion, he says “Sargent Flash, get your flank back to the battlefield! We need all ranks fighting.” 

Flash only responds with a salute before saying “then sir why are you in the western fields?”  “Because I was ordered here by princess Celestia, now get your flank back to battle soldier!” “wait is that the meteor? Shouldn’t we all be dead sir?!” “Oh for the love of celestia soldier it could have slowed down and spared us so now just go back to your ranks sergeant!” 

The orange stallion froze before he reached into the saddlebag on his back and retrieved a letter with a sigh, the stamp on the letter seemed to be  from the other captain “the surviving captain of Celestial division  2 has requested heavy artillery near the bulge of the changeling swarm sir.” 

shining took the letter and read it quickly read it, he says softly under his voice “why did he not come and deliver this to me?” 
Flash only responded quickly “he gave it to me to give to high captain sir, he was hit by a changeling elite bow stallion sir, he died before he can reach you sir.” 

shining only sighs and closes the letter “artillery accepted, return to your battalion to pull back so we can start with light bombing pegasi before going to our artillery, understand soldier?” Flash only  responds with a nod and another salute before leaving to join his brothers in arms.

Inside the cooling spaceship, Helmholtz has been preparing to leave the space ship. A small counter on the left that says how long he has to wait until the vessel is cool enough to open the doors reads somewhere between 45 more minutes. During this time he began his ‘suit up’ stage, where he is wearing what seemed to be an advanced new lightweight space suit. 

On this new space suit is multiple readers for signs  of cosmic radiation and other known things out in space that are known to kill organisms. When one of these are triggered it instantaneously by emitting an invisible force field to block out whatever is causing the problem. 

With that he also held with him a flag of both the United States and the World Space Organization. In his new space suit he had the leading innovation in his pocket and that was a lightweight, gun sized (on scale with the Walther PPK) multi useable gun, with this gun he has 3 clips of different types of special ammunition plus another three which are full metal jacketed bullets. 

What makes the ammo special is that it has multiple effects on living organisms bodies, in case is that one can paralyze an enemy for a short  period of time, another type of bullet has a pressure sensitive type round in which it hits a wall it creates a big enough explosion to make a  hole to walk through, those were mostly given to him to defend from other possible threats in space.the last  clip of special ammo,  however are more useful that of which is one round which can eat through solid metal using a type plasma to instantly melt through the metal of almost anything. 

Once finished getting ready he had around 10 minutes when he heard the beginning shots of what seemed to be artillery “huh, weird”  he thought aloud to himself “if I am not mistaken that sounds like heavy guns.” He kept listening to the sound, before he began to chuckle at the idea, for he thought it was funny “oh what am I kidding life takes almost thousands of years to perfect weaponry, all I know is it could be just big gusts of wind blowing over whatever type of plants they have on this planet.”  

The sounds kept coming and going without end, until the door to his space ship opens up to show the dissonance of the battlefield where fresh soil has been picked up by the blasts of the large caliber cannons. When he heard the sound of the explosions approaching at a more rapid rate, he had little reaction time before he quickly jumped out of the small meteor like space ship and ran as fast as he can due south into the line of the royal guards. Once he met up with the front lines from his running the only sound behind him was the sound of metal meeting metal in which a huge explosion came from the once rocket ship. 

When he heard that he turned around with a few guards who had heard the ruckus from the  now flaming wreckage of the ship. Once the flames died down, shining Armour turned around to see the ape like shadow from far away and fading fast into the wooded area, with this surprise he looked at the entrance of where the mysterious entity entered the woods. 

When the guards saw him staring at the entrance of the woods, the guard on the left of shining said “sir, why are you staring at  the entrance of the Ever free?” In response to the question, shining without thinking of words said “must be my imagination, but I saw some type of shadow, not like a pony shadow but a shadow of what seemed to be a large ape, which should be impossible for the size.” He was having difficulty of what he saw until the guard on the right said “ what are your orders sir?”

Shining took a deep breath to collect his thoughts, when he did he said “get a small squad of 10 ponies and search for this thing, I want he, she, or it alive. Understand me guards?” With that the only response from the two guards was the typical “yes sir!” Before they rushed  to the the tented barracks to find willing guards to go into one of the most dangerous woods known to ponykind. In which if anypony did enter the forest alone without any knowledge of the surroundings would mostly be dead before night fall. With this bit of knowledge known to shining he sighs as he looks out towards the battlefield, trying to keep his mind off the fact he will be sending some of his stallions into the dreaded woods. Soon the silence was broken with shining saying out towards the war front “Whatever you are, whoever you are. I hope you can help.”

Soon fades towards the Ever Free where Helmholtz has started a small survival shelter and a small fire with the plasma rounds, was laying out the only food he took with him from the ship which was a canister of dried fruits and a small compressed foam soda, with that he packed a dessert of freeze dried ice cream. He looks to this meal as he softly sighed “damn, why did i choose to land in a literal war zone?! I knew I should've chosen what looked to be flat land somewhere else.” He silently thinks to himself before saying with a yawn “well on bright side I have enough plasma ammunition to make fires for 9 more days. Instead of going to shelter he saw the skies were clear so he decided to go to sleep, unbeknownst the 10 guard search team will soon find him.