//------------------------------//
// Adversary (3) 
// Story: The Mickey Dilemma 
// by iDashingRainbow 
//------------------------------//

Chaos ensued. Helpless ponies running around the place, just as confused as the crew were. Many started to jog away as it reached further and further down into the ground. Boom! Slowly but surely, the remains of the doomed Starship hit the ground one by one, burning up into flames into the day's sky and what followed was a shock to everyone. The ground shook once again, this time much stronger than ever before, and the walls, the houses blew off into oblivion by the crash and force it caused to move towards the helpless ponies, who were, along with the crew, flung into the air and smashed into breaking houses. They were hopeless and nothing compared to the power its destruction.

After an seemingly eternal time of darkness and confusion. The crew and ponies started to wake up again, clumsy in their footsteps, but regaining consciousness neverthless. It took a while, but they regained their senses in the end, whilst the crew re-assembled together around an unmoving corpse on the floor. It was John. He was dead, killed by the monstruosity that was an already doomed Starship. Poor him. They all felt sorry, in silence, as they lay around him, the ponies too dazzled too even feel anything by that point.

'He was a good man.' started one of the remaining crew members. 'And for that, we shall never forget him.' he said, as they stood around and gave their last respects to the doomed man. He lived a honourable life, and now, he lived to have a honourable death amongst his crew. This was what he'd wanted. This is what he'd always have wanted.

'We're very sorry about your friend.' Twilight jumped them from behind. 'He.. Seemed like a very good person.' she continued with a few notable tears in her eyes, trying to keep them in. 'I'd have loved to know more about.. him.'

It was at this moment that, for the first time, the crew and the ponies finally felt together as one, and at peace. They never felt different anymore; they were the same. They needed to work together to solve this conflict. It was no longer just a temporary pass-along, they were real beings with real feelings. And for that, respect was required by everyone. They looked at their comrade for one last time before giving each other looks of honour and patriachy, and started to walk away from him as multiple ponies grabbed his corpse for his honourable end.

Looking over the distance was nothing but fire and dark, grey smoke. In fact, they could actually smell it from here very well. A thick, muddy smell of asphixation. It was not something you'd like to have, ever. Some of them coughed at the disturbance in the air. Such a wonderful, yet shocking sight. It was rather hard to bare, even for such noble men. Not even a quarter of their Starship was this small, so imagining such a huge Starship, in fact, bewildered their initial expectations. Never did they actually grasp the concept of their Starship's actual size from here. It was all they really saw in their lives.

'Ladies and Gents!' proclaimed the grand Princess Celestia, standing over the confused and dazzled audience. 'Please go back to a safe place. Shelters, anything. Don't stay out too long. We don't know what could be left in that.. thing. Help anyone you can. The hospital is working 24/7 at maximum efficiency. Meanwhile..' she continued, looking back at us from the running, busy ponies. 'I need a team to explore those hazards down at the crash site. You will have breathing aids given to you to protect against the potential hazards in the air.' she says, as some ponies gave them breathing masks, looking like they were made for both ponies and humans perfectly.

'Then we shall go too.' proclaimed a familiar voice with a rainbow mane along with her 5 other friends, standing over, confident.
'I.. I don't think that's a good idea, Rainbow..' the Officer started in a dazed tone.
'Then we won't let you go.' Applejack continued, as confident as her peers, looking at Celestia who, with a sigh, nods in the end silently.
'Very well.' the Officer continued, looking back from Celestia. 'Come on then.' he says, as the ponies start walking with him after being given breathing aids to aid their survival.

Looking back at the half-destroyed town, they could see inexistant houses, blown up bits everywhere, and ponies running around, setting up tents and camps to aid the survivors. It seemed like such a mess. The atmosphere seemed rather unfamiliar, especially in the areas they came from. The ponies looked confident, but deep down it was felt that they were quite touched too. You could feel that something like this did not happen everyday. However, they took great efforts to hold it in emotionally. They seemed like strong and robust creatures.

As they walked along in the beautiful and sunny fields, the atmosphere and the air darkened as they approached the nearing crash site. It looked bigger and bigger, in fact, it looked almost unreal. Big chunks of steel huddled together, crashing perflectly into the middle of the fields. Smoke came out, and the power was now non-existent, another hazard gone. The generators were totally buzzed, and occasional explosions were seen on the sight, many being too small to even do anything by that point.

As they walked closer and closer to their inevitable objective, their vision started to diminish, almost being stuck in spotlights in a dark box, which made them suprisingly alert to any threats that could be around, and inevitable. Then it came to them, what bad or good could even come from here? Apart from the fact that this was a good portion of the ship, and caused significant damage to the area, it didn't spawn any other threats, even after careful inspection. Whilst Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle looked around with their magical powers, enabling them to examine the place more carefully, the crew looked around, with slight nostalgia of their older selves. They had come a long way since then. This was not something to forget. They were never going to forget such a rudesome experience.

After careful inspection over an hour or so, they found nothing much but scrap, some theorising they could use it as ressources to build new housing for the people in Ponyville, or perhaps build new machines and such, as they were apparently in need for some. Perhaps this would finallly make them evolve signficantly in terms of technology and such, even if magic was already a concept in their world. It would certainly come to their advantage in a rather good way. It is very important to do such things.

'Alright, well, I don't think we're getting down anywhere.' Rainbow concludes. 'Perhaps we should go back and report. I mean we could use it for ressources, sure, but..'
'Well it is very unlikely anything, or.. anyone could survive this. Pity. Perhaps we could have found more of your kind.' Twilight continued, looking a bit sorry at the crew.
'Or perhaps there is..' an engineer of the crew says, looking, frozen, shocked at what stood not far from him, and as the crew started to join him as well as the ponies, looking as confused as ever.

What stood in front of them was impossibly familiar. A rather tall figure, intimidating in every way, with two arms and two legs, standing tall and upwards was staring down to them with a look of hatred, but also of rather mad senses. A good portion of his skull was filled with no hair, but of steel which was flat on his skull, and the other three quarters being of dark, brown hair. He also possesed unique facial features and lighter, brown eyes. He looked like a man in his 30's or 40's at most. Even for that, he looked rather young for his age, and in perfect health. His body was slim, but not too slim. His body was the ultimate man's dream, and his remaining uniform that ressembled the crew's old clothes was shockingly too familiar.

'Well well well.. What have we got here? You survived.. this. But I did too. Huh, not a suprise, huh?' the figure started, very confident of itself, with a sarcastically evil, quiet tone.
'Mickey! You survived..' the Officer replied in utter shock, as Mickey started to walk around, in a passive stance.
'Well, my old friend, it is inevitable that I would survive. Thinking that you, my friend, could stop me, was.. foolish, and arrogant of yourself. Why did you think that would stop me? You just led to unnecessary complications, as well as leading to so many deaths, Officer.' he continued, with a confusing smile.

'So you're the one they been talkin' abou' 'hen.' Applejack continues, in utter digust. 'How could you do this?!'
'Me? Oh, I'm not the baddy here. Sure, I may have.. Attempted to take over the crew.. Well, no point in that now, is there?' he laughs mechanically, looking back at the crew, mocking them for every cent they had.

'That's enough!' the Officer yelled in anger as he mindlessly got his glock gun out and started shooting aimlessly into his adversary in pure anger, who took each bullet precisely to show his power.
When he ran out of bullets, he dropped his gun in desperation. It was truly Mickey; he was not dreaming. This was neither a dream nor a nightmare. This was reality.

'Suprise!' Mickey shouted in suprise as he jabbed an automatic pistol, strange-looking for our time but normal in their future selves, as he shot bullets around the place, many catching one, including Rainbow Dash in her right wing. The shock was inevitable; two crew members were already down to the ground, not breathing. They were now down to only 5 members. Horrible thinking.

'WHY?!' the Officer yelled in total anger, as Mickey ricanned more and more, feeding off of their anger. He threw his gun at Mickey who just picked it back up and threw it in the ruins.
'I need'nt kill you just yet, fortunately for you.' he says, jabbing his gun right back into his pocket. 'Sorry, it was just so fun that I could not stop myself!' he laughs, but regains his serious tone soon enough as the intimidated ponies and crew look up at him again.

'What do you want?!' Twilight steps up, also injured a little in the legs.
'Well uh.. Let me put it this way.. I do what I want, right?' he legitimately asks the audience, in which some of the braver ones nod slightly for him to stop his death stare. 'Well well well, since I'm in that.. ugh.. PONY world of yours, no pun intended. Hum.. I'll need.. How do I put this.. Yes, a host body. Does uh.. Anyone know what that is?'

Looking around his audience, he could see faces of familiarity, and many guessed what it is correctly in their minds. It was not that hard to grasp, even if not done before. Getting this as a sign to continue his speech, he continues a bit awkwardly after the unnecessary silence.

'So, yeah, basically I need to be.. inside someone. Sounds wrong, dunnit?' he giggles like a madman, as the crew give each other a few looks of confusion as to what he needs other than that, or how he plans to accomplish this.

'Yeah, and uh, who you gon' get for that? I'm not being your lil' punk.' says one of the surviving members of the crew, who stares confidently at him down the eye.
'Nah, not you, silly.' he says, giving him his death stare whilst still keeping his victorious smile. 'One of you lil' ponies.. things..' he continues, staring at his secondary audience, as they step up in front of the crew, looking back at them, unsure of what to do.

'Now uh.. Let me take my pick.. Huh.. Got loads of time.' he says, tapping his watch sarcastically. 'Soo.. Stupid question.. But any volunteers?' he asks seriously, looking around, knowing of course he won't get one.

As the ponies stand still, staring down into his soul, he resumes rather quickly. 'Very well. Uhm.. Pink blue orange purple white.. Uhh.. You know it's hard for me to choose!' he says, like a mad man inside. 'How about a lil' examinatio--'

'Ugh! Just choose someone! We didn't choose for this, in fact--'
'Rainbow, leave it.' Applejack replies to her pleads of annoyance, that shuts her up, still annoyed on the inside.

'Alright, uh, you the Pinkie one, come with me, yeah? No questions asked.' he orders on a strict tone, as she looks around her friends, a look of rather sadness on her face.
'Pinky, this is goodbye for now. Don't worry..' Twilight says, running up to her and hugging her one last time as Mickey watched, rather impatiently. Her other friends also hugged each other as a group one last time, as the crew watched from the side, looking equally upset about her leaving.

'Alright. Let's go.' Mickey says, looking back before starting to walk away, waiting for Pinkie to catch up. Pinkie looked back at her friends for a moment or so before walking down with her new adversary, helpless to do anything. This was until something happened, somethring hopeful.

'Now.' Twilight muttered, as Rainbow suddenly made everyone jump by going at super speed from the sky, making the whole audience look up on her, as she started to make her way to crash into Mickey and Pinkie. Before he knew it, he was nearly crashed into, but the audience's optimism was quickly snapped off as, with great and brute strenght, he managed to punch Rainbow right in the face and make her crash loudly a few meters from him, leaving everyone unharmed, and knocking her out for a while.

'No!' Twilight yelled in anger as she used her horn to throw some sort of curvy line of destructive, red magic that burned the air on its way straight into Mickey's heart, in which he, again, with great speeds and impossible confidence, he managed to deflect with his elbow, and throw it back at three times the speed back to his densely staged audience, who were blown off into the air by its rude explosion, knocking them on the side, leaving rashes on their skins and clothes. The Officer was the first to get back up, and look up into the distance, but the smoke covered everything up, leaving no trace of his adversary.

Meanwhile, the remaining ponies and crew got up and started studying tactics as they looked into the distance, helpless to do anything. Strong ennemies were not the first to be vanquished. They would not be the last, either. Confidence was key to all this.

'Shall we go get them?' Applejack asks to Twilight, listening attentively to her response.
'No. No point as of now.' she replied, looking down into the clearing distance. 'He's too strong for us alone. We'll have to charge up the elements of harmony.'
'What? We need them to..' Applejack interferes.
'It would have grown more power over time, I'm sure of it.' she concludes, looking over the landscape one last time, dominantly, as they stop in their tracks and turn back confidently, walking back from the ruins to Ponyville in loneliness.