Rescuing Twilight

by Simon Joe

Return to the Celestial Space Station

3

It was around noon. The train was on its way from Canterlot to the training facility. On board were a total of eight ponies; Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Sweetie Belle, Applebloom and Scootaloo. For the past month they trained for something they thought they would never have to deal with again. Now was the time the training would count.

Applebloom was sitting next to her sister, staring out the window. As the train got closer and closer to the training facility, it made her more and more nervous. She did not want to go with them. She had already been through all of the training, but it did not help one bit.

“Applejack, do I really HAVE to go with you?” she asked.

“We went over this, Applebloom. You had all the training already! Besides, you know about the Celestial Space Station; it would be good for you to see it for yourself,” Applejack responded.

“But I don’t want to see it for myself! Why can’t I just stay home with Big Macintosh? H-He can’t watch the farm by himself.”

Applejack looked down at her sister with a weird look. “We won’t be gone for that long. He can handle it.”

“Well, how long are we going to be up there?” Applebloom went on.

“I don’t know, however long the princesses want us up there.”

Applebloom thought about arguing more, but she knew that it would not get her anywhere. No matter what she said, she would have to go into space with the rest of them.

“Why do YOU think the ships are up there, Flutterhsy?” Pinkie asked.

“Um… I don’t know,” Fluttershy replied.

Pinkie tried to be cheerful about it, but inside it was just as hard for her to remember that tragic day as it was for anypony else. She sat in her chair next to Fluttershy, and could only hope that they would not get attacked again. Although the first attack was so long ago, the painful memories remained as if it happened yesterday.

Next to her, Fluttershy was probably more nervous then all of them. She did not want to go back up into space, but for different reasons. She did not want to encounter any aliens. When she was younger she heard stories about them, just like anypony would. However, now that she knew they were real and that she would have to deal with them, she was scared out of her mind.

“Rarity, are you okay?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Rarity hadn’t said a word since they got on the train. She had her head down the whole time just staring at the ground. “I will be okay, Sweetie,” she lied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I am sure.”

“Um… okay,” Sweetie said, not completely convinced. “If you say so.”

After a few more minutes, the train finally reached its destination, as it slowly stopped. The doors opened and they saw both of the princesses standing outside with two guards. The eight of them exited the train to meet up with them. Behind them was a shuttle that towered above everything else.

“Is everypony ready?” Princess Luna asked.

“As ready as we’ll ever be, I guess,” Rainbow answered.

“We should get going now. We need to get into the shuttle as soon as possible,” Celestia instructed.

“Follow me,” Luna added. “Your suits are this way.”

By now all of the unicorns including Princess Celestia knew the spells for the gear and everypony knew how to use it. It was now only a matter of knowing when to use them now.

Luna and Celestia led them into a metal shed that went underground. Below it was the training center. By now they had all been there so many times they already knew the way. They walked down the stairs, through a door, and down a hall. At the end, they got to a closet that was locked. Luna used her magic, the locks spun around, and the door released open. Inside were ten suits and helmets. All of them got their own, which matched the colors of their coats, and put them on.

“Okay,” Celestia began. “This is it. This is the day we go back to the Celestial Space Station.”

“Let’s do this!” Pinkie blurted.

Everypony gave pinkie a weird look before continuing.

“So, here’s the plan. We are going to go up there and investigate why those ships are still there. If it is possible, we want to avoid any unnecessary fighting,” Luna explained.

“If they attack us again, we now have gear to protect ourselves, thanks to Luna,” Celestia said.

“Are there any questions?” Luna and Celestia stood there for a second to see if anypony would speak up, but nopony did. “Alright, let us go to the shuttle.”

They were now leading them to a place where they had never been before. The path included several turns and locked doors. On the way they passed several of the crew workers. They seemed to be congratulating them, as they began to cheer them on. They could not tell if it was because they were finally going back into space, or because they were going to save Equestria from whatever might happen.

Soon enough, they came to a staircase with a door on the ceiling. Celestia went up the stairs, opened the door, and let everypony else up. They were now outside and under the tower that would lead them into the shuttle. It looked a lot bigger from up close. It was almost intimidating.

“This way,” Celestia signaled them to come to an elevator.

They all piled in, and then Luna closed the door and pressed a button. The elevator began to ascend high into the air. For an earth pony or unicorn, the height that they were at would be very nerve reeking, but for a pegasus like Rainbow Dash, it was nothing. She had been that high many times. After all, she did live in Cloudsdale.

Soon the elevator came to a halt. Luna opened the door, and in front of them was a single path leading to an open door on the shuttle. Celestia was the first to exit as she led them across to the shuttle.

“Okay everypony, we leave in five minutes,” she noted.

“Five of us will sit here. I will be one of them. The rest of you will go up one more time with Celestia up there,” Luna pointed up to what must have been another path above them.

“I’ll go,” Rainbow volunteered.

“Me too!” Scootaloo shouted almost immediately after.

“Well, I will have to sooner or later,” Rarity observed.

“Um… I’ll go with Rarity.” Sweetie Belle came in.

“Okay. Let’s go then.”

Luna was the first to enter the shuttle. Following her was Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. After them was Rarity and Sweetie Belle. There were five seats right next to each other, with five more in front of them. Getting into them was easier said than done, but they managed to do it.

“Make sure to have your seatbelts strapped in securely. But more importantly your helmets. Make sure they are on the right way,” Luna advised.

Sweetie Belle, lying back in her seat, looked at the seatbelt. She slipped her arms through the shoulder straps and connected them. Then there was another part between her legs. She strapped that to the rest of it. Putting the seatbelts on the right way was part of the training, so that was nothing new to her.

“Scootaloo,” she whispered to the left of her.

“Yeah?” Scootaloo replied.

“Are you ready for this?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been ready since… forever!”

Just then, Celestia entered the shuttle in the seats in front of them. Following her was Applejack, Applebloom, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. Once they were all in, both of the doors closed.

“Lift off in two minutes,” came a stallion’s voice from the speakers.

“Well, there is no getting out of it now,” Sweetie said to herself.

As time passed, the feeling of thrill filled up inside all of them, as well as the feeling of complete terror. Luna and Celestia had been through this many times before back when the space station was still active, but that was so long ago, this might as well be their first time ever.

For a while, nothing happened. They were just sitting there, waiting as the thrill and terror grew. Suddenly, the whole shuttle began to vibrate as the engines started up.

“Lift off in fifteen seconds,” came the voice again.

The shuttle began to shake more violently as more time passed by.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

Applebloom was now breathing heavily. She was more scared then exited to get into space. She always was.

“Five, four, three, two, one, liftoff.”

The shaking grew more intense as the shuttle began to lift off the ground in a stream of fire and smoke. Applebloom had her arms tightly pressed against the seat, as did some other ponies, like Fluttershy. Rainbow Dash, however, could handle it. She had gone to speeds like the shuttle soon would before. The only thing was, she preferred to be flying while doing it.

After a few minutes, condensation started to build up on the shuttle. They were not far away from traveling at sonic speed. Applebloom looked up through the windshield. As they got higher and higher, the sky began to darken. Soon, the whole sky was black, and everything became light. They no longer felt gravity pulling on them.

The rocket boosters were released soon afterwards as the shuttle slowed down. They waited there for a few minutes, and then they got the OK to start moving freely throughout the shuttle. Celestia and Luna quickly took their seatbelts off and floated over to the controls.

They spent some time over there while everypony else stayed in their seats. The shuttle started moving to the right, and then forwards. Celestia looked back at everypony, surprised to see that they were all still buckled in.

“Come on,” she said. “You might want to see this.”

They waited there for a while, and then finally Rainbow Dash unbuckled her seatbelt. Soon after, everypony else did too. Scootaloo floated over in between Celestia and Luna. Right in front of them was what she figured was the space station.

“Is that where we are going?” she questioned.

“Yes,” Luna answered. “That is the Celestial Space station.”

The middle of it was a sphere with three long tubes extending out. At the end of each tube was a big cube. She figured those must be the three wings that she heard about.

The shuttle started to get closer and closer to the center of the space station. There was a wide and long ledge extending out from it. The shuttle began to go near it. Slowly, when it was right above it, it descended down. When it was not too far away, it quickly slammed on the ground, as if something was pulling on it.

“We’re here!” Celestia announced.

A door on the right side of the shuttle opened as a set of stairs lowered. Celestia exited the shuttle, followed by Luna. Their hooves were metal except their front right one so they could stay on the ground. Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Applebloom figured that must be the reason the shuttle was not floating away.

Luna walked to the right side of the ledge. What she saw was earth. She looked down at Equestria. It looked so much smaller from up there. She turned her head to the left. She saw nothing. There was not anything in her way. It was only complete and total darkness.

“Luna,” she heard her sister call. “Come take a look at this.”

Luna turned around to see a huge ship about the size of the space station.

“Do you think they saw us coming up?” Celestia asked.

“Probably, which means if they are going to attack again, it will be soon. We should get inside.”

They all walked inside through a rectangular doorway as wide as the ledge. Inside was a mess. There were pieces of scrap metal everywhere with a few loose pencils and paper floating around. Right in front of them was a circular doorway with a picture of wings above it. To their right was a similar door, only with a horn above it, and to the left was one with a picture of a hoof.

“Well… What do we do now?” Applejack asked.

“We can start by turning the power on,” answered Celestia. “They should already know we’re here. We won’t be risking anything.”

“If there even is power still here,” Luna butted in.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, this place has been up here for so long without anypony using it, and as far as I know, we left the power on when we left. Plus, those ships need some kind of power source. They might have used what was left here.”

“It’s worth it to try, isn’t it?” Celestia went on.

Luna pondered upon the subject for a moment before making any decisions. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”

She walked over to her left where there was a wall of controls. It had been a while since she last worked with them and she did not remember what to do. There were buttons, switches and levers everywhere. One of the levers had the label “Pegasus Wing” on it. She put her hoof on it and pulled down. Looking over at the pegasus door, nothing happened. She pushed it back up, and then down again, and again, nothing.

She looked over to another lever. There were four altogether. She ignored the ones to the three wings, and instead went to one that said “Emergency Power”. She pushed the lever down. Some lights flickered, and then stayed on as everything that was floating fell to the ground.

“See, Luna. I told you it was worth a try,” Celestia teased.

“Yeah, whatever. The important thing is, if they didn’t know we were here before, they will now. We should get out of here. Go to the Unicorn Wing or something.”

“You’re right. Okay everypony, we’re moving on to the Unicorn Wing,” she ordered.

Everypony gathered up towards the door with a unicorn horn over it. Celestia pressed a button, and the door slid up. As they all started to move through, Luna caught up with her sister. “I will stay here in case anything happens. That way I can alert you guys.”

Celestia simply nodded her head and continued through the door. At the other side was a long hallway. The walls were nothing more than windows, most of them broken. At the end she could see a small purple sign above another circular door.

They all started down the long hall. Out the right side of the windows they could see more of the ships. The very sight made them uneasy. The whole way down the hall they felt like they were being watched, or that they might soon be attacked again.

Eventually, though, they all got to the other side without a problem. Celestia opened the door, and they all went through. Inside the room was another hallway, but this time the walls had doors.

“What do we do now?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“Feel free to explore for right now,” Celestia responded. “Just don’t go upstairs.”

Sweetie Belle walked over to the first door she saw on her left and went through it. Everything was a mess. There were papers everywhere along with pencils and clipboards. She walked up to a table. It was hard to see what was going on in there since nothing was in its original place.

She looked at a strange model on the ground. It was pretty much a wooden body with wings. She picked it up to look closer at it, but still had no idea what it was supposed to be. She thought about looking through the papers to try to find something about it, but then decided it would take too long.

Scootaloo walked into the room directly across from the one that Sweetie Belle walked into. The sight was not much different. She picked up one of the papers that was on the ground. On it was a drawing of a unicorn using its magic to power some kind of machine. As she was looking closer at it, Applebloom came in.

“Oh, hi Applebloom,” she said, sounding a little surprised to see her.

“Hey. What are you looking at?”

Scootaloo examined the paper further. “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense to me.”

“So what do you think about this?” Applebloom asked.

“About what?”

“Well, all of this. The whole idea of this space station. Or the fact that we only found out about this place a month ago.”

Scootaloo thought for a few seconds, and then opened her mouth to answer. However, right when she was about to, there was a crash that shook everything, knocking them over.

“What was that?” Scootaloo got herself up and looked around.

“Everypony come back to the center, now!” they heard a voice that sounded like Luna through a radio built into the suits.

Applebloom and Scootaloo looked at each other, as if they were not sure what to do. Scootaloo finally rushed out of the room to see everypony else gathered at the door. Not too long after, Applebloom followed. Once they were all regrouped, they went through the door. Out the windows it looked like they were spinning. They passed earth, and not too long after, the ships.

When they were about half way through, there was another crash. This one felt more violent, and almost threw some of them out the windows. They all took a minute to recover, and then noticed that the spinning had stopped. Finally, they reached the end of the hall and went through the door.

“What’s going on?” Rainbow directed towards Luna.

“Exactly what we were waiting for,” Luna pointed to the door where they came in. The ledge was broken off and the shuttle was gone. More importantly, they were now facing towards one of the ships. There was a big door that looked like a hanger opened. Coming from the back of the room they were facing was an extended arm that had a grip on the space station. They could see themselves inching closer and closer. It was only a matter of time until they crashed.

“Guys, those spells I taught you, use them now!” Luna instructed to the unicorns.

The four unicorns used the spell for the gun on themselves, and then the one for the sword. When Celestia was done, she used the spells on Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. Luna helped out Applebloom, Applejack and Rainbow Dash, while Rarity did Scootaloo.

By the time they were done, the station crashed into the side of the ship. For a while, nothing happened. Everypony kept quiet. There was no visible alien on the ship at the moment only a large empty room. Celestia did not like that fact.

“What do we do?” Applebloom asked.

Nopony answered. They were all too focused on the ship. Then, out of nowhere another arm shot out, grabbed Luna, and retracted. For a split second, nopony knew what to do. Making a quick decision, Celestia jumped from the station to the ship. There was a moment of antigravity in between that threw her off, so when she entered the ship, she tumbled to the ground.
She ran over to Luna who was trapped in three claws while everypony else followed her. She tried all she could to open them, but they would not budge. All of a sudden, they found themselves surrounded by several aliens pointing guns at them. Ignoring the fact that they were all in black suits with helmets, they surprisingly looked just like ponies.
“Stay where you are!” one of them said. To their surprise, he was speaking English, although he did have a strange accent that they had not heard from anywhere before.
Celestia took her hooves off the claw and put them on the ground. She did not want to start a fight. One of the aliens walked over to Luna and put his hooves on the claws. He pressed down on it and it sprung open, releasing Luna.
“Come with us. And don’t try to do anything!” he warned.
Celestia and Luna looked at each other. They tried to think of any possible way to get out of this, but going with them was the only thing they could do at the moment.
“Fine,” Luna grunted.
The aliens closed in around everypony and escorted them through a door on their left, which was probably where they all bcame from. The hallway on the other side looked very similar to the one in the Celestial Space Station. All of the doors were opened, and they could see various things happening inside the rooms. The words above them were weird. Nothing like they saw on earth.
When they got to the end of the hall, one of the aliens walked over to the wall and pressed a code into a dial pad. Two doors opened up and they were shoved in. It was fairly big, so everypony could easily fit in. Once they were all in, the same alien put another code in. The doors closed, and they soon felt themselves going up. They figured they must have been inside an elevator. They were inside it for a few minutes, doing nothing except standing and looking at each other. Finally, the elevator stopped.
A row of aliens were the first to get out. After them, a second row shoved everypony else out. They turned left and continued walking. The thought of where they were going kept running through all of their heads. Were they going to be killed? Questioned? Tortured? Nopony knew, and nopony dared to ask.
While they were walking, Celestia could not help but look through the doors. She thought maybe she could learn something about their nature if they saw what they were doing. So far, she saw nothing that looked too bad. Maybe they aren’t as bad as they look, she thought. That all changed when something caught her eye. Through one of the doors to her right she saw something that stunned her. She did not see much, but enough to know there was a purple unicorn.
“Wait, what is in that room?” she asked them.
“Be quiet! Keep walking.”
“Show me what was in that room!”
“I said be quiet!”
Celestia finally used her magic and grabbed all of the aliens surrounding them. She slammed them against the walls, knocking them out cold.
“What did you see?” Pinkie inquired.
“I don’t know.”
Celestia walked through everypony else, stepping over the aliens. When she got to the door, instead of going in, she hesitated. She tried not to get her hopes up, but could not. The same thought just kept running through her head. Could this be Twilight? Could she be alive after all these years?
Slowly, she peeked through the door. She was surprised at what she saw. No, not surprised, horrified. It was the very unicorn she thought had died so many years ago. It was indeed Twilight Sparkle. She was standing on a platform with a metal box around her legs forcing her to stay standing. There were three wires drilled into her horn that were connected to a strange machine.

Celestia walked up to her in awe. She could not believe what she was seeing. She looked up into her eyes, which were crying tears of blood. “T-Twilight?”

Soon, everypony else came in as well. Their reactions were exactly the same.

Suddenly, a flood of more aliens came in. They held their guns to their heads, ready to fire at any moment.

“Release them!” a voice called.

From a window above them at the other side of the room, a silhouette of an alien with strange metallic wings was seen.

“So you are the ponies I heard about?” he said. He too had an accent that was indefinable, but he seemed to be speaking English perfectly.

“And just who are you?” Luna spat.

“In your language, I believe my name would be… Stargazer? Yes, that sounds right. And you, you would be Luna, Princess of the Night, are you not?”

“What? How do you know that?”

Stargazer chuckled, “How do I know that? Well is it not obvious? Out of everypony here, I think you would know!”

“Know what? What are you talking about?!”

“Ha! You don’t know, do you? We have been watching you guys! You know, just like you have been watching us.”

Luna gasped as her eyes widened. For all those years she was watching them, she had no idea they were doing exactly the same thing.

“What exactly do you mean by watching?” Rainbow called out.

“Learning your language, who you ponies are, what you do… everything. And interesting enough, as it turns out, we are exactly the same. Well, as far as being ponies goes.”

Celestia did not know what to say. The thought of Twilight being alive was still trapped inside her head. Then the thought finally came to her. Why would they do this?

“We are exactly the same? Then what do you call this?” she pointed behind her at Twilight.

“Ah, yes. That. You see, there is quite a story behind that,” Stargazer stopped for a while and laughed. “Long ago, our home planet began to become overpopulated. Or at least that is what they told us. So, we built this fleet of what used to be something around thirty-seven… oh, what do guys call them? Starships? Spaceships? I don’t know. Let’s just call them ships. Anyways, they told us our mission was to find new land, and if possible, other life.

“My father was the leader of all this. We were out there searching for… well, it must have been years. Finally though, death came for my father. That left me in charge. Quite a while later, the fleet began to run out of power. That is when I finally realized this was not a mission to find new land. It was merely a mission to get rid of us.

“That is when we came across your vessel. For a while now, we had to use our own unicorns for power. They had to offer up some of their magic. I thought, if we could get a hold on some of your unicorns, we could do so much more than just power my fleet. We could continue on to do… Agh! Your language is difficult! What do you guys call it? Sci… silence? No,” he paused for a while, “Science! We could continue on and do science. This is one of the unicorns that we found.

“We soon realized that simply tying some wires around a unicorn’s horn did not do much. The only magic we could get from that was magic already converted into a spell. So, we decided to drill into the horn. That way, we could get a more concentrated magic. We could then turn that into any spell we wanted. For example, do you see that?” Stargazer pointed his hoof to a circular window next to Twilight. But on the other side of it was not space, or even another room. It was a strange place filled with green grass and a grey, cloudy sky. The plants looked overgrown, and the whole place had a light green color to it. “That is one thing this unicorn is powering. It is one of our most impressive works to this day. On the other side of that portal is the Spirit World. We would put it in another, more convenient room, but we found out that the closer to the unicorn it is, the better.

“It takes a lot of magic to power it. I have to say, I am very impressed that this unicorn lasted this long. How long has it been again? Eight years?”

Celestia heard enough. Now that she knew what they were doing to Twilight, she could not stand to watch them do it anymore. I a second, she pointed her gun to the machine Twilight was powering and fired. As sparks flew everywhere, the aliens tackled her. In just a matter of seconds, everypony was brawling each other.

As the machine started to fail, the metal box around Twilight opened up. Luna rushed over to grab her as she fell out, but she was caught by the wires in her horn. As quick as she could, Luna grabbed her sword and cut the wires, setting Twilight gently on the ground. She looked down at Twilight. How could anypony do such a thing? She thought.
She pointed her loaded gun up towards the window Stargazer was standing in. Without taking aim, she fired. The blue beam shattered through the window, and hit Stargazer, sending him flying back. He quickly recovered and rushed over to a control panel near the broken window. He slammed his hoof down on a button, and electricity began to fly throughout the room below him. It was affecting everypony except the aliens. They did not know why, but it was hard to figure anything out in such pain.
“Vkiliz donzpk!” Stargazer shouted.
After he finished, two aliens grabbed Sweetie Belle. She struggled to get free, but they were too strong. Before she knew it, she found herself thrown through the portal to the Spirit World.
“S…Sweetie!” Rarity cried.
Two more aliens grabbed Fluttershy, and another two grabbed Rainbow Dash. No matter how hard any of them struggled and squirmed, they could not break free. Soon, they too were thrown through the portal.
Luna looked around. She did not know what to do between the aliens attacking Celesita, the electricity running through her body, and the ponies being thrown through the portal. She did not have much time to debate with her. If the aliens were not to soon claim her, the electricity would. It was a difficult decision, but Luna finally made her mind. She grabbed Twilight and looked at Celestia, fighting off the aliens. A second later, she leaped through the portal, as it closed up seconds later.