//------------------------------// // Contact // Story: My Little Engineer // by Soren Mercer //------------------------------// “Personal Scientific log, Princess Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer residing. Date, Seventh of Summer, 2016 of their majesties reign.” Twilight began, reclining in her favourite spinning chair back at her castle. Sunset was sat on her own favourite chair, looking over the details that they’d acquired from the few science experiments they’d managed to accomplish before the test subject was return to the ship. “Initial scans suggest that the makeup of the capsule was constructed from a variety of resources, all normal earth-metals easily found on the periodic table. Construction of the capsule remain lost to me, something I’m… not happy about.” Twilight added the last part as professionally as she could. Following a sigh from Sunset who looked up from her papers, “Twilight, you know as well as I do that the creature inside that thing could’ve been dangerous, or in danger himself.” “That reminds me,” Twilight returned to her recording. “Creature inside the capsule looked vaguely simian in nature. Talks with the Simian nation post trials reveals no knowledge of any successful space programs from them. After examining some of their more… unique looking species, I have determined that the creature in the capsule was not Simian in nature, but may have evolved from it’s own simian-like species on whatever planet it originated from.” “That’s kind of rude, don’t you think?” Sunset remarked with a second sigh but a slight smirk on her face as she rested on her desk. “What if that creature, by it’s definition, is simian?” “I don’t dispute that idea, Sunset, I’m just making notes based on what we know and are used to.” Twilight remarked as she hit pause on the recording and set the receiver down on her desk. “At the moment, we have nothing to go off of, so we use what we know. What I know is that the Simian’s don’t know anything about any space-programs which means that the creature we saw wasn’t a simian and the ship didn’t originate from this planet. Like I said,” Twilight was quickly interrupted by the bursting in of her door as her and Sunset’s friends all rushed in looking frantic. “Twilight! I can’t believe it!” Applejack was the first to say, breathing as heavily as Dash and Pinkie. “You met a real live alien!” “Yes, yes we did.” Sunset remarked with a bright grin and gave a hug to Fluttershy and Rarity before returning to her seat. “It was quite remarkable to say the least.” “What did it look like? Did it say anything? Was it friendly?” Pinkie demanded, bouncing on her hooves with each syllable she spoke. She was held down by Dash who literally draped herself over her back. “Easy there, Pinkie, let the girls speak!” “Thanks Dash, no it didn’t speak. Luna took a look at it’s mind magically and found barely any signs of brainwave activity or even a heartbeat. It’s entirely possible that whatever we did to open the casket may have endangered it’s life. As for what it looks like, well I was just talking with Sunset about that.” Twilight explained eagerly as the chance to talk about something so exciting was… well… so exciting! “Twilight thinks it’s an evolved form of Simians, I’m more convinced it’s human in nature.” Sunset announced, turning the last portion of her words to Twilight whose eyes expanded at the thought. “The biggest difference is the skin colour isn’t like those back where I came from.” “But, your world didn’t have any kind of technology like that, did it?” Rarity inquired as she sat down on a cushion she’d magic’d in. Sunset shook her head in reply. “No, but it’s entirely possible that my human world exists in a different plane of reality, and that the human in that casket is this world’s human. It’s also entirely possible that my humanity isn’t the only humanity in the galaxy.” Sunset remarked as she slid off her chair to retreat to the break table filled with all sorts of snacks that Spike kept filled. “I had completely forgotten about the humans of your world!” Twilight thunked her head with her hoof before pulling out a scroll of blank parchment and a quill. “I gotta tell Celestia about this!” “Well, why don’t we go and hoof-deliver it to her? I think she’s still at the crash site in anticipation for a first-contact scenario. Heck, we could even bring her something to eat while we’re out!” Dash suggested eagerly. In all honesty, she just wanted to go look at the massive newcomer and see it for herself. “That actually might be a good idea. If a first contact situation does arise, then the princesses should all be there to welcome the human.” Twilight nodded back and scrapped her writing to stand and join her friends and family on their trip out of the castle and back into Whitetail. Speaking of Whitetail, it seemed that the natives there were no where near the crash site and so no fatalities were counted. The locals, however, were not too fond of the “large metal beast”, their words, that had crushed their favourite star-gazing spot and were demanding that it be removed immediately. Celestia and Luna both were still in negotiations with the deer when Twilight and Sunset had teleported home. The trip made it’s detour to a nearby hayburger joint, allowing the ponies seven to pick up sustenance on the way to the crash site. Upon arriving at the scene and after allowing herself and her friends into the area by being a princess herself, Twilight lead her friends directly towards the command tent she figured her ex-mentor would currently be in. “Hello, Twilight Sparkle and friends. What brings you all here?” Luna welcomed the newcomers from a board that was set up to review the information the ponies had already gathered. A white bag with a folded over top was casually tossed at the alicorn, with a second one aimed at Celestia nearby. “What is this?” “We thought you’d both be hungry, so we stopped by and picked up some lunch.” Dash remarked in lieu of Twilight or Sunset who’d both taken up positions near to Luna’s board to go over things. “Sunset and Twilight actually got an idea for what the creature is.” “Oh? What makes you so sure?” Celestia inquired as she telekinetically pulled out a pair of foil-wrapped packages and set them down next to a box of hay-fries. Luna was already in the process of working down her own burger, using the bottom half of the wrapping to keep herself clean. “Well, it helps that I spent a few years among people like him,” Sunset replied, hopefully cluing in her old mentor. “I figured he’s some kind of human.” “But didn’t the humans in your world have much more colourful skin tones?” Luna asked through a mouthful and quickly received scorn from not only Twilight and her sister, but also from Rarity as she and the others all roamed over everything they could find. “They did, yes.” Twilight announced and assumed her teacher’s persona. “Which is why we’ve formulated two hypotheses. One is that the human realm Sunset and I went to is a different realm altogether, one that was artificially created and connected to our world. This would explain how there were alternate, human versions of everypony here. This would mean, then, that the human we found was this world’s human from our reality.” “What’s the second theory?” Luna inquired, now with an empty mouth to save face. “My humanity is not the only humanity.” Sunset announced, earning curious glances from Celestia and Luna. “It is entirely possible that, through whatever evolutionary processes exist, that other humans may exist in the galaxy, if at least somewhere else in the universe.” “I suppose it would be entirely possible. With our limited sphere of understanding of the universe, it could be logical that somewhere out in the galaxy, or even in the universe, could be another established race of ponies like us.” Celestia conceded the point with a nod while her gaze turned to the -recently realized- limited view of their galaxy. “And, since there is no guarantee that those other races of ponies also have magic, they may have turned to science and evolved as a race that way!” Twilight announced with an eager giggle. “Oh, what if we could get up into space and find one of them? Imagine what we could learn from them and adapt to our own technology!” “Twilight, don’t get ahead of yourself! These are all theories, remember?” Sunset remarked, shaking a bit of sense back into the mare. Twilight quickly returned to the real world with a few shakes of her head before giving Sunset a smile. “I know, I know! But just thinking about the possibilities, it’s making my brain quiver in anticipation!” Twilight exclaimed. The merriment was halted, however, when the sound of increased motion outside the tent drew everypony’s attention. “What’s going on out there?” As if replying to her question, a guard poked his head in past the tent flaps. “Your highnesses! There’s something going on with the crashed vessel! Something appears to be coming out!” “Come on, we should be prepared for this! I want everyone who’s not crowned hidden safely in the trees. Should it prove hostile, we want everypony to be able to escape unseen!” Luna shouted loud enough to be heard by the entire camp. Turning to her friends, “You six should stay here,” she requested, turning the comment to Sunset and the other five. “We will handle this.” Luna, Celestia and Twilight all trotted out from the confines of the tent, the flap waving back and forth each time an alicorn passed its threshold. The flaps didn’t get a chance to remain closed since the six remaining ponies all piled on top of each other to view the going’s on. The three ponies all took up firm stances, all standing at attention, just a few meters away from the camp but all three could instantly feel the emptiness of having no guards nearby. Of the three, Celestia was the only one confident that should anything happen, she could summon the armours she’d set away for herself, her sister and the new set she’d had forged for Twilight. The other two were internally very nervous and Twilight was visibly twitching in place, eager to get moving along with whatever proceedings would occur. Motion from the back of the ship, taking the form of klaxon alarms and flashing yellow lights, turned everypony’s eyes to the rear of the craft, all eagerly waiting for the biggest event in pony history; possibly the biggest historic moment ever in recorded history. Soon, the alarms and flashing ceased, the tension in the air thick enough to cut through with a rusty spork until a single, upright figure descended from the back of the craft. Despite a rather ambiguous drop from the back of the vessel to the ground, the creature leapt off the edge to the audible gasps of exclamation from the ponies and fired a few of those blue flames from its back and chest to come to a steady landing. The creature didn’t look like the human they’d found before, it’s skin was completely black and it’s head was no longer the flat, flabby feature it had before. Instead, a black plate with unnerving yellow glowing slits for eyes sat over an equally glossy black orb. The rest of it’s body looked clad in the same black suit, head to hoof and carrying a remarkably large pack on it’s back with those same propulsion units strapped to it’s chest and pack. On either side of the pack were a pair of large bottles with the same strange writing on their sides, neither of them legible by anypony. The absolutely most strangest part of the thing were the metal protrusions coming from it’s body, tracing its limbs but originating from that pack; Twilight briefly wondered if that pack was constructed through magical properties to be able to do so many things at once. The princesses, and everypony behind them, all watched in silence as the creature slowly took step after step around the craft, but didn’t aim for them. Was it unaware of their presence? Should they say or do something to get their attention? Instead, the black creature traced its hand along the ship, as though feeling out it’s imperfections and flaws as it crossed the distance to the head of the craft. Soon, it came to the nose of the ship and stepped onto the glass, surprising the ponies that the glass was strong enough to hold what looked like an immensely heavy form without even so much as a crack. A section of the metal frame seemed to rise up from the narrow space between the creature’s back and his pack before diving into the top of the pack itself for a few moments. It quickly reappeared with some kind of object in its hold and offered it to the pilot who took hold of it and knelt down to place the head of the device against the edges of the glass. As soon as it touched down, sparks were sent flying away from the creature, startling the quadrupedal creatures watching it. Soon enough, after the suit had traced the edges of the panel and the spark generator had been put back into the pack, the suit placed both hands on the surface of the glass and impossibly lifted the pane without gripping it. Now Twilight was certain there was some kind of magic involved if it could lift something with the tips of it’s fingers. Setting the pane aside, the creature stood and ventured into the ship, disappearing from view once more. “Uhm, what are we supposed to do?” Luna whispered to her sister in confused concern though remained stock still regardless. “I’m not certain, but I think we should wait and see if it comes back out.” Celestia replied softly, also unsure of the next appropriate course of action. The suited creature reappeared from the glass and traced back around the side of the ship that it had come from, only now carrying a large black box in it’s hands. “Hiya! I’m Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie suddenly appeared in front of the creature, making it give out some kind of sound that likely ended up as a sign of fearful expression. It dropped the box as the arm appeared in the pack again before drawing another tool and handed it to the suit. “Pinkie!” Twilight screamed as a loud explosion echoed throughout the landing site, a flash of light appearing at the end of the weapon -everyone was certain this was a weapon now- and Pinkie went down to her face all in one fluid motion. “No!” “Guards! Prepare for hostilities!” Celestia announced with the maximum potential of her Royal Voice and summoned up the armour of the Royalty while Luna erected the most powerful shield spell she had access to. “Twilight, bring Pinkie Pie over here to safety!” she commanded as armed Guards all leapt from the cover of the forest to take up positions near to their princesses. Twilight, full of tears in her eyes, obeyed and poured the fullest potential of magical power into her magic to bring the injured Pinkie Pie back behind magical cover. The creature seemed to have only now just realised it wasn’t alone and turned the weapon on the Princesses, yet remained still. “Pinkie? Pinkie!” Twilight screamed as she inspected her friend for signs of life. They were there, but they were fading. A quick check showed a perfectly circular wound in her right forearm and bleeding profusely. “Stay with me Pinkie!” “Twi?” Pinkie asked weakly, opening one eye to that of a slit as she stared up into the face of her friend. “Hey…” she whispered, placing her good hoof on Twilight’s face. “I’m f-” she paused to cough a few times, bloody spittle escaping and coating her lips. “I’m fine, I Pinkie promise!” she finished with a slight giggle. At that moment, a green magical aura surrounded her, surprising Twilight as Sunset briefly appeared to take Pinkie to safety and to medical attention waiting nearby. “I don’t care what it knows, I’ll kill it!” Twilight raged, turning on the black demon before her as her mane and tail threatened to ignite to flames. If there was one bad thing she’d gotten from Celestia during her tenure as her student, it was the insurmountable rage that she kept bottled up inside but would erupt whenever something happened to her friends or family. “Twilight! Calm down!” Celestia ordered without even giving her a glance since her eyes were still glued to the black form before them. “I think it was an accident, it reacted too quickly to Pinkie’s arrival to have been intentional!” “It just probably killed Pinkie, and you want to give it a chance to try again?” Twilight demanded furiously, completely forgetting her role as the Princess of Friendship. She didn’t care about friendship right now, she wanted revenge for the creature hurting her friend. That was a sign of friendship too, right? “If it wanted to, don’t you think it would have attacked us by now?” Luna added in support of her sister’s position. “I think it’s waiting for us to attack it.” she added as all eyes went back to the creature, watching it as it eerily watched through it’s non-eyes. Twilight did notice, however, that it’s yellow eyes had turned orange, as though warning her not to advance any further; advice she ended up taking. After a heated minute, the eyes returned to yellow and the weapon was lowered before being deposited into it’s backpack once more. The creature bent back down and retrieved the box before resuming it’s task and moved to the rear of the ship. Standing under where it had arrived, the sound of alarms and flashing lights returned just long enough for the creature to propel itself up and into the craft once again. With everything returning to silence and guards were lowered, Celestia turned to her family and friends. “Let’s go see how Pinkie’s doing.”