PonyCraft-Pegasi of Liberty

by Landmine

Dash Landing

The ship jumped straight back into space; seemingly no time had passed between entering and exiting. Matt, who had been thrown against the back wall, got up and surveyed the bridge. The red emergency lights were flickering on and off, the main power must be out. Raynor was holding onto the command chair trying not to fall over, Tychus gripping a railing, and the rest of the crew lay about on the floor or on monitors.
“What the hell just happened, Matt?” Jim spoke, trying to stand up straight.
“I… I don’t know.” He said as he stumbled over to a control panel, pressing a flashing button. The bridge window blast shields lifted and light shone through, but the results froze anyone who saw it… the Hyperion battlecruiser was in low orbit around a healthy green planet, quickly descending. The part that shocked the crew was that the entire port-side wing of their ship - including the engine - was in front of them surrounded by lots of debris.
The starboard-side door opened to a short, bulky man with a mechanical arm - obviously the chief engineer. He spoke with a New York accent full of rage. “What the hell is happening. One minute I’m told to hold on, the next everything in the ar-“His jaw literally dropped when he saw the floating piece outside. “How the hell am I to fix that, Hotshot?” He muttered, referring to Jim.
“Jimmy, please tell me this ain’t happening.” Tychus said in a voice full of fear, something very rare from the man.
“This is real al’right…” He paused, starring at the planet. In a sudden panic he realized exactly what was about to happen. He grabbed the intercom and said, “Everybody hold onto something! This’ll be a rough landing!”
With that, flames started to form around the windows, one of them started to crack from being weakened earlier.
“Matt, shut the shields again and everybody else just hold on tight, this’ll be one helluva ride.”
The ship started to shake, a whistle was starting to become audible, and the emergency lights didn’t flicker back on. A few thuds were heard towards the rear end of the ship, followed by a small explosion. Nobody spoke and nobody moved for they all knew this could only end one way.

///*\\\
It was a sunny morning in Ponyville. The pegasi had just finished clearing away the last bits of clouds. Stallions and mares wandered throughout the streets of the village when it was spotted and chaos broke loose.
Twilight Sparkle was spending her morning studying up on meteors and meteorites again when she heard the noise. Intrigued, she up and walked to the window. When she looked out, everypony was pointing up to the sky and gasping, and the Pegasus ponies were flying away from the area of interest. “Away from what?” she thought, but she found out right then and there.
A huge black and grey… thing was flying towards Ponyville, though obviously not low enough to actually hit the village. The object was surrounded by flames that were only growing longer, but behind that object was an even bigger object consumed by flame in a similar fashion.
“What’s with all the commotion, Twilight?” A purple baby dragon questioned, startling her.
“Don’t sneak up on me, Spike!” Twilight said in an annoyed tone. “Something big is about to fly right over Ponyville.”
“Really? Like a dragon or meteor? “Spike asked, confused.
“No, Spike. Something much, much, much bigger! THAT! “She pushed Spike into a position where he could see the objects in flames.
“WHOA! So, what’s your plan, Twilight!?” When there was no response, the dragon turned to face Twilight who wasn’t there. “Twilight?”
“Telescope, now!” Her voice came from up the stairs.
Spike rushed up the staircase to where Twilight kept her telescope. Sure enough, she was there trying to focus the lens on the flaming objects that were growing in size rather quickly.
“What could it be? No meteor could be so large, nor would it survive the descent from orbit into our atmosphere. AHA!” She jumped up and down, keeping her eye to the lens that was now perfectly focused on the objects. ”They look to be metallic; the material is bouncing the flames off it. It’s almost like the things were designed to deal with the heat that they are experiencing. But no pony has ever built something close to that scale, let alone made it into space. This is s- WHAAA!” She jumped for a rose-colored eye was looking right back at her.
The cyan pegasus fell back into the air laughing.
“Not funny, Rainbow.” She growled upon realizing the prank.
“Are you kidding? That was hilarious. You were being all sciency and stuff, then I looked right back at you and you freaked! Priceless!” Spike began to giggle as well.
“I’m trying to observe the objects flying towards us, the ones that are causing the chaos outside. They look like they are metallic and they seem as though they fit together somehow.” She directed her attention back to the telescope.
“Ha, I’ve already seen it up close. That thing is huuuge, almost as fast as me, too. I was kinda hoping you would know what it is, though.”
Twilight looked aggravated. “If you were listening, that is exactly what I’m trying to do.”
“Oh. Yeah… well…” Rainbow searched for some form of come back.
The front door suddenly slammed open downstairs, the sounds of hooves made it clear that it was a couple ponies.
Applejack appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ya’ll see that… thing up there? What in the hay is it?” the pony asked, hoping for an answer.
“Hello Applejack. That question is exactly what we are trying to figure out” Twilight greeted the pony. “It looks hoof-made, but nopony has made something close to the size of this thing?”
“But then somepony had to have made it.” Applejack said quizzically.
“Well, yes but… well… um…” Twilight tried to figure out how to explain it, but quickly noticed another pony ascending the staircase. “Hello, Fluttershy!” She said trying to distract the others.
“Oh, hi Twilight. Did you see the object in the sky?” She quietly responded not expecting the greeting.
“Yes and its 2 objects, actually. The good news is that whatever it is, it will fly right over Ponyville and probably land in the Everfree Forest”
At the mention of the forest, Fluttershy perked up. “Oh no! All those animals! I have to save them!” She exclaimed in her alerted, but quiet, voice as she attempted to fly off only to be stopped by Applejack holding her back by her tail.
“Whoa-there, Fluttershy. If what Twilight says is true, then all them animals will pro’bly be runnin’ too.”
Fluttershy landed and balled up, not buying the excuse. Meanwhile, Ponyville was covered in black as the monstrosity passed by above them. It seemed forever, but was really 12 seconds. The moment following, a strong gust of wind tore through the town: ponies were thrown around, houses shook and windows broke. The bell on the town hall started to ring viciously. The ship slammed into the ground, right through the Everfree Forest creating what felt like an earthquake. Fluttershy whimpered.
Spike burped up a letter from the Princess. Twilight grabbed it before anypony else took notice, she silently read over the letter.
“The Princess wants us to go investigate the objects, girls! She says that she’s busy with Luna with some other sudden event. What do you think?”
Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked at each other to see what they were going to say. Their faces went serious and they responded at the same time: “Let’s do it!”
Fluttershy did not want to go, she was still shaking from the impact, but she didn’t want to leave her friends either. She sheepishly nodded in agreement.
“Great! Let’s go find the others.”
After gathering the other ponies – an easy task seeing as there was nothing in particular going on - they trotted off in the direction the things crashed. Pinkie Pie started to sing a song while the others began to moan.

///*\\\
“Everybody ok?” Matt coughed as he got to his ‘feet’. There were a few moans in response.
The Hyperion’s emergency lights were back on lighting its battered bridge in a red glow. It wasn’t a good scene: there were a few small fires below some consoles; one of the window shields was blast inward with no sign of a window left, while the other shields looked dented and cracked; the door the chief engineer entered through earlier was ajar; and the sounds of moving and scratching metal could be heard throughout the ship as it settled into its new position.
He looked around at the crew, all of them on the ground. Matt nearly fell back down when he saw them, they were different. The crew on the bridge looked like small horses! He looked at Tychus, the blue marine armor fitting his new shape just as well as it had the old one. He had a picture of a collection of bullets on his rear.
“Jimmy… ya’ sure know how to give the Zerg the slip. But next time I’d take my chances with fightin’ them.” Tychus said, trying to roll over but not get up. He looked like he was on the verge of vomiting.
Matt was dumbfounded. He figured the crew hadn’t realized what they were yet, but he couldn’t get the courage to say anything.
“I’ll hold you to that next time, Tychus. What’s the situation, Matt?” Raynor said. He got up with the help of his front hooves, but he quickly realized everything seemed higher up then he remembered. He looked down to his legs only to see the short legs of a pony. ”AAHHH!” He yelled in panic, trying to brush them off as if they were gloves.
Everypony turned to face him, but were shocked to be looking at a beige pony with black hair wearing a black vest that was definitely Jim Raynor’s. It even carried the bullets for his rifle. They also noticed the Raynor’s Raiders symbol in the same place where Tychus had his icon.
Shock and horror ran throughout the bridge as everypony found out what they actually were.
“Ok… ok... Matt, what’s the situation…” Jim Raynor repeated, still confused by his new body.
“What do you want to hear, sir? The fact that the Hyperion crashed on an unknown planet and probably lies in more than 2 pieces, or the fact that everypony is now… well… a small horse.”
“Ok, I see where you’re going. Crew!” He said while he turned to face them, “I know how horrified we all may be that we are… to quote the captain, ‘small horses’, but we have to get out of this mess. We survived a Zerg onslaught and an unstable jump through hell and back before surviving a seemingly lethal crash onto this here planet. If we weren’t supposed to be here, we wouldn’t. Now if you want to get hung over this horse business go ahead, but rest assured this ship won’t be flying anytime soon.”
The crew started to talk amongst themselves. One by one, they all accepted their fate and turned to face their commander, but he was headed towards the rear door. The door opened letting through bright sunlight, giving Raynor a holy glow. He turned around to report the huge hole in the hallway but was distracted when everypony gasped.
“Umm, sir… There’s a horn on your head.” Matt said with a hint of shock in his voice.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” Raynor went over to the starmap to see his reflection seeing as it was flickering on and off. He expected some form of debris to be jutting out of his forehead, but he was shocked. “The good news is that I have an actual horn on my head…” There was debate throughout the crew on the bad news if that was good news. “The bad news is that even the ship doesn’t know where we are.”
Matt glided towards the starmap to see a blank planet information screen. Complete silence ensued as Matt realized exactly what just happened- he used wings to glide! He turned his head back to see 2 wings neatly folded at his navy blue colored side along with a silhouette of a cardinal on a branch in gold for an ‘icon’. His hair was a slick gold color. He was horrified.
The chief engineer was about to take the opportunity to make a joke, but when he got up he heard a metallic clank. His front-left hoof was in a metal cast with a claw at the end, and he quickly found out that he, too, had a horn.
This happened for the next few minutes; people finding out exactly what they were.
“Enough with the chit-chat. Ya’ll got stuff to do. Swann,” Raynor looked at the chief engineer, “Check the armory for damage, then I want details on the ships state. Matt, see to it that our crew restores full power. Tychus, you and I got some exploration to do.” Jim walked over to the buff blue-armored pony lying on the ground and picked him up easily.
“Awe, Jimmy. No time for a drink or two?” Tychus said sarcastically, looking less nauseous.
“And here I was thinkin’ you wanted to do somethin’ exciting around here.” With that, Jim hit the back of Tychus’ helmet before walking out into the rear hallway.

***

Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay wandered the area off the port-side. The ship’s wing had been cut clean off and thrown farther ahead. Jim had put on his black marine armor and grabbed his commando rifle for neither knew what would lie outside.
The field was bustling. Pony-marines patrolled the area while the crew trotted about doing this and that. The 2, however, took interest in the ships missing wing.

“My guess is that the jump caused this, sir.” A repair pony said upon finding them examining the damage. “When we jumped, drive 2 – one of the port-side drives - must have caused a detached warp jump.”

“A detached warp jump? The whole port-side of the ship was in its own jump?” Raynor questioned.
“Yes-sir. Could have taken some the surroundin’ debris with it. As for repairin’ it, we‘ll just need a few cranes to prop it right back inta-place and seal it.” The pony started to write something down on a clipboard.
“Jimmy, you’re not thinkin’ some Zerg followed us, are ya?” Tychus whispered, seeing the face of fear appear on his friend.
“I sure as hell hope not. We’ll all be in for a tough fight if they did.” Raynor muttered, recalling the situation they had escaped earlier that day. “We’re lucky Swann had the Bunker schematics loaded up, otherwise this place would be defense-less.”
“Hey now, partner. Remember you got me here now.” Tychus lifted his rifle and slung it on his shoulder.
“He, I sense a challenge, partner.” Jim laughed.
Suddenly the ground started to shake. The pony-marines looked to the forest and prepared for combat.
“Count your kills. Then, we’ll just see who’s the better gunslinger.”
6 ponies burst out of the forest. They were different colors; purple, orange, cyan, off-white, yellow and pink. Nopony took a shot; they knew that 6 ponies couldn’t cause a rumble this size. Without notice the orange one tripped and started to tumble uncontrollably. The purple one tried to turn around to help but suffered a similar fate. Just then dozens of mutant ponies burst through the forest’s scorched edge. The marines fired, everypony recognized the original version of what they used to be – Zerglings.

*To clarify: Zerglings have also been turned into ponies... mutant ponies

Comments

How does Tychus carry his weapon if he has hooves? Everyone seems to do that in their stories.

Why does everyone turn into ponies when thrown through there by mistake? Happens in Pony Space and here too. That's 2 universes where'd I'd gladly stay human just to keep my hands. Also yeah, some explanation as to why and how the marines can use their human weapons just fine would be much appreciated as that kinda stretches willing suspension of disbelief a wee bit too much. Actually they took way too quickly to being an entirely different species way too well. I mean Jim asking Swann to fix a freaking battlecruiser with no hands! Aside from looking themselves over, they just accept it? That just doesn't happen. At least in the Dead pace crossover isaac still thikns he's going insane.

[Doctor Valor]

Ah, just lost interest, sorry :(

[Always Breakfast]

This is really, really sloppy on all counts. Like, even technical nitpicks over punctuation and failing to delineate paragraphs out of the wall of text aside, it's sloppy.

The sense of urgency seems to be very, very confused. The ponies are responding to an enormous alien spacecraft crashing and raining flaming hell down over Equestria with this detached but incredibly tame interest, casually greeting and pranking each other during a potential doomsday event with no real sense of, you know, panic. (By the way, if it's going down fast enough to still be on fire going through the atmosphere, not only would getting up close and keeping pace probably be out of Dash's league, but even if she could she'd incinerate herself just by going that fast. It happens because the atmosphere doesn't cooperate with the unbelievable amounts of speed you pick up easily in vacuum, not just because flaming things look cool.)

Then we cut to the marines, who have just been twisted into strange, foreign shapes, but dwell on it for all of five seconds then just kinda ponyshrug and go "whatevs, LOL". I mean, forget the existential crisis; how are they even recognizing each other? If you woke up in a bridge shot to hell and looked around and saw a bunch of pastel ponies that you've never seen before running around, would your first thought really be "yep, that's Tychus, Matt, Flynn -- gang's all here!" When dudes-turned-ponies stories work, they work because they show that transition happening believably, and typically in a way only those characters could have done.

But no, the sense of urgency ends up coming from "man, we should leave the busted-up ship with a half-dead skeleton crew and go exploring a strange and potentially hostile world on foot right now."

[nightelf37]

Now this is just unbelieveable. Not only is the entire Hyperion crew pony-fied, but they're still capable of doing stuff. Worse, even the Zerg are ponified! WTH!

[Stoneificaunt]

ZERGLING RUSH

[NLRPony]

ZERG-FUCKING-RUSH! EVERYONE FIRE THEIR GUNS AND DUCK FOR COVER!

[USAF]

RUN LIKE HELL.
GD I HAVE TO GO AND LAND ON MY DEATHBED?!!!! REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!! That would be my reaction.