The Natural Elements

by Dark_Night

Chapter Two: A Soft Landing

"Wake up." I hear a voice say. "Wake up!"

"Huh? Dad?" I drowsily ask.

"I'm not your dad. We've almost arrived at the destination. I woke you up now so we may tell you what you need to know."

"Okay." I open my eyes and see the never ending depth of space. I look beside me to see Ian, Andrew, and Jordan all in separate bubbles.

"I will allow you to talk to your friends." I hear something click, almost like a switch being flipped.

"Hey! Wakey Wakey Josh!" I hear the familiar voice of Jordan say in my mind.

"What? How am I hearing you in my head?" I ask, completely confused about how it is apparently possible.

"Never mind that, We're here to tell you a story, one that you may find interesting. Your friends also informed us that your people have been spying on us!"

"Spying? no. Is it an apparent coincidence? Most likely. Now I'm interested in hearing this story."

"Alright, we do not know everything about your task, but we will tell you what we do know."

"Okay Twilight, cut to the chase!" Jordan shouts.

'Twilight' Grunts. "Ugh, fine. As you may be aware, The Lord of Chaos and Disharmony has escaped his stone imprisonment. He overpowered us by using our own elements of harmony against us."

A different voice speaks up, much more tomboyish. "Yeah! he was fast, he jumped behind us to avoid the power of the elements, which made the rainbow hit us instead. It's power turned us into stone instead of him. I'd bet he's drooling in cotton candy clouds right now, terrorizing Equestria."

A cheery voice speaks up. It can only be pinkie pie. "Yeah! That meanie Discord! He tricked the elements."

"We know Pinkie. Dash and Twi have already gone past that." A southern accented voice speaks up. I gasp... 'Its best pony! EEEP!' "Ah read somewhere about an old legend. It states that 'The Four will return.' Now, Ah ain't the best when it comes to the whole prophecy business, but I'd have to say its referring to you four."

"Ah yes. And Once this whole Discord business is wrapped up, you four will come to my boutique and I'll make the best outfits you've ever seen! After all its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to design clothes for a completely new species." A voice I can only assume to be Rarity says. "Fluttershy do you have anything to add?"

I hear a shy 'EEP!' before a low response. "No."

"I have one thing to add." Twilight starts. "We need you to help us get our bodies back. We don't know how things look down in equestria but I can't say it will be good."

I see a small speck appear in the distance. As we get closer, I realize that the sun and the moon are acting very strangely. The two opposing Stellar orbs are barreling across the sky at an alarming rate. It seems like every minute, it switches from nighttime to daytime. As we get even closer I notice the texture of the planet. Discord turned the entire planet into a giant golf ball.

I couldn't help but facepalm.

"Woohoo! Lets go to the golf planet!" I hear Andrew yell. We hit a bit of turbulence as we enter the upper atmosphere of the planet.

"MOVE!" I hear Fluttershy scream. I look around to see the Sun barreling towards us. Instantly all ten of us scream as we fly forward. I see a flash of light in my peripheral vision. Jordan's ring lights up and we suddenly lurch forward, faster than before.

A small cone of pressurized air appears in front of us and the sun barrels by barely dodging us. I can feel the millions of degrees of heat blazing my back. I suddenly smell bacon... Oh wait that must be me.

I see Ian's ring flash with a bright blue light from which a tentacle of water appears. It stretches out and encases our bubbles, protecting us from the raw power of the sun.

"I don't think I can hold this bubble much longer!" I hear Twilight's voice straining against the power of the sun.

"Wait!" I hear Jordan yell. "I have an idea. we can use our rings." We all stare at him in shock.

"There's no way that will work." Ian yells.

"Yes It will. I have a good feeling about this. Ian, use you water to encase us in a bubble, I'll use my air so we can breathe, Andrew and josh, work together so we make a soft landing."

"How can fire and earth work together? They are practically opposites!"

Jordan smirks. "Opposites attract."

"Okay." I look over and see Andrew spraying lava into his hand. Wait he can make LAVA?! oh that is SO-O unfair. "How come you get to use Lava?!" Andrew smirks but doesn't say anything.

We pass through the upper cloud layer and I see the ground through the bubble of water. Andrew uses his lava to create a hardened casing around the outer side of the water bubble. I suddenly feel tuned into the earth. I can feel the way the plants grow. I don't know how I could feel these things this far up but I decided to question it later. "ANY TIME NOW!" The bubble of magic the 6 mares gave us vanished as we free fell with more power.

I could feel a particular plant. It was a small sapling but with so much potential. I called out to it and I could feel it starting to grow.

"COME ON JOSH! I REALLY DON'T WANT TO DIE!" Ignoring him, I place all that I can into rapidly growing plant.

Okay this is definitely familiar. I could see a spiraling plant extend towards the sky. It immediately grew giant leaves to slow our fall.

We went straight through the first three before we started to notice a decline in speed. I called out to the plant to grow more leaves for us and it bent to my will, sprouting a massive leaf that was at least a foot thick. We slammed into it, drastically slowing our fall. Thankfully the plant did what I asked and stopped the rapid decent of our sphere made of hardened molten lava and water.

We slid off the leaf and fell the rest of the way to the ground with a dull thud.

Ian, Andrew, and Jordan dispersed their elemental shell before collapsing to the ground in exhaustion.

Seeing them fall, reminded me of how much that act took out of me. I fell to the ground, quickly summoning a leaf to lay on before falling asleep.

[-----]

"Hey! wake up!" I hear a feminine voice yell. I open my eyes to see a glowing blue mare standing before me.

"Rainbow dash I assume?" The mare nods proudly.

"The~ one and only." The egomaniac states.

I rub my eyes to clear out the remaining blur. "Hey Dash? How is it that I can see right through you?" The mare looks down at her glowing, transparent body.

"I'm not sure." She says, dumbstruck. A glowing purple form steps into view.

"I believe I may know what is going on, If I am correct, the energy from the Elements of Harmony took the souls from our bodies before we could be turned completely into stone, the Elements of Harmony should be able to provide these forms power. But I fear that these forms won't last long, even the Elements of Harmony have their limits."

"I suppose that makes sense. And i'll assume we'll need to start moving, For all we know, you could only have enough power for the journey from here to my world and back again. So we will need to be extra careful about how we go about this journey. Now lets get moving." I stand up but wince as I remember the burns the sun gave us. "That sun cooked my back, we will need a way to treat is and soon."

Rainbow flexes her transparent wings and gives them a flap. She lifts off the ground a few inches. "WOO! I can still fly! I'll fly above and try to get a good idea of where we are." She soars off, high into the sky.

Twilight grimaces. "I can't help but feel like something is going to go very wrong very soon. I've never liked the feeling of dread. Not like this."

"I would offer some soothing words but I don't think they'll be helpful." I frown.

"GUYS! GUYS!" Rainbow Dash returns from above. "We landed on the far end of the Everfree forest. We are REALLY far away from Ponyville." I see Andrew grin with excitement as he hears the name of the infamous town.

Twilight looks down and puts her hoof to her chin in thought. "So we can either take the long way around the Everfree forest, or go through it. Either way we need to find the Princesses and get them to help us. Discord has rules long enough already. He MUST be stopped." Twilight stomps her hoof in determination.

Without warning, the six mares flicker for a second. When they reappear they gasp. "What was that?" All six ask at the same time.

"I was right! The elements of harmony only had enough charge to retrieve you four and bring you here."

"Wait, would it be possible to go into our minds and inhabit our bodies?"

Twilight thinks for a moment. "While it should be possible, only one of us can inhabit your body each and that would leave two of us to fizzle out completely... We aren't going to do it. We are friends and we stay as friends. TOGETHER!" All six shout the last word at the same time.

"Wait!" Jordan calls. "Which way is Ponyville?"

"Northeast of here, shouldn't be hard to miss." Rainbow says, slowly fading.

"We'll see each other again Joshua, do not fret." Twilight says. "Find the princesses!!!" the last word echos as they vanish from existence, only to reappear as six flaming orbs which swirl around and shoot off into the sky and vanish.

The four of us continue staring at the sky for several minutes, before Ian breaks the trance with a cough. "Lets get going guys. We need to find shelter soon." A wave of magic rolls across the land. Behind it, is a checkerboard pattern ground, which alternate between hot-pink, and light-pink. A low rumble radiates across the ground. I see mutated creatures running behind the chaotic magic. There were rabbits with really long legs, buffalo in tu-tus, Several color-drained Pegasus ponies flying upside down and backward along with them.

"Dude this is just bizarre." I said, unable to keep my eyes away from the strange, mutated creatures.

"Lets go guys, every minute we stay here, the chaotic influence on this world gets stronger." Jordan says, pushing us all down, knocking us out of the trance. We get up and walk Into the Everfree forest.

"Guys, I truly think that traveling through here is much better than around, for one, it's faster, and two, we won't have to deal with those mutated chaotic creatures in here." Andrew reasoned.

"Are you saying that as a fact? or are you just reassuring yourself that we won't meet any of those... things out there." Jordan asks.

"If we go through the forest, we risk running into Cockatrices, changelings, manticores, timberwolves, the list goes on." I protest. "But then again, I can never unsee the rabbits with long legs... buffalos in tu-tus..." I shiver. "Lets get going. Keep quiet. We need to be stealthy if we are going to get out of here alive."

"That's true, lets go." Jordan says, taking the lead on a path through the trees, the rest of us follow silently, being careful to test where we step before placing our full weight on the spot.

Author's Note:

Leave a comment! tell me what you think! what needs to be changed? added?

I have a plan in mind for this story and I can't wait to tell the story I have in mind.

Comments

[Shadow Lord Malice]

So far your characterization of the mane six is good. You've gotten their personalities down well enough, but their reactions to certain situations seemed a little toned down, though that just might be from lack of expressions during those points. Here's hoping that our heroes make it through the forest at least relatively intact. I eagerly await more.

[Dark_Night]

4157981 yeah, i've been working on that. So far i've been doing really good, but I can definately do better. I was planning on having Pinkie break the fourth wall this chapter but I couldn't seem to fit it in.