Peridot had absolutely no idea what was going on as the sensation of her falling continued to pervade every single one of her senses. What made it even stranger was that it did not necessarily feel like she were falling in any particular direction. Whether she was falling down, up, sideways, or even inward was completely up for debate. This was most definitely not how the Galaxy Warp was supposed to work at all, and for what was likely not going to be the last time Peridot cursed the name of that grotesque fusion, whatever that happened to be. She could not do it for long however, which was a shame as she had just thought of a few more names to call it other than clod, as another wave of distorted feelings flooded through her body.
Now, Peridot knew that her body was no more and no less than a projection from the triangular gem on her forehead, a hard-light body necessary for completing tasks. In fact, as long as her gemstone was safe it would not matter in the slightest what happened to her physical form. Unfortunately that did not mean it was not an uncomfortable journey, and as such she had been reduced to screaming her head off as she continued to hurdle through the no doubt unstable warp stream towards some unknown destination. To be completely honest the chances that the semi-repaired Galaxy Warp would get her off of the planet were dubious at best. The fact that the mega clod had interfered in the process likely did absolutely nothing to improve those chances. As such, she would be stupidly, insanely lucky if she somehow did not disintegrate in the middle of her trip to wherever she was going.
Thankfully it seemed that she would not have to endure the trip for much longer, for just then suddenly everything seemed to abruptly slow down and stabilize enough for Peridot to tell that she was not being thrown in an unidentifiable direction anymore, but rather in a fixed one now.
The fact that this new direction just so happened to feel like down was not lost on her. The change in trajectory was also accompanied by an extremely loud booming sound, much like those instances when Peridot had to take cover under the branches of those overgrown weeds when dihydrogen monoxide began to plummet from the sky. That time proved to a mistake on her part when a current of electricity nearly fried her gem, but that was besides the point. Right now Peridot was more focused on other more urgent things, such as screaming for all she was worth as she suddenly gained speed again as gravity retook its greedy hold on her.
The blinding whites and blues of the warp stream gradually faded, letting Peridot see that she was no more than a few hundred above the ground of wherever she had been dumped at. She initially noticed that there was also a lot of blue here as well, with the occasional splotch of red, both of which were tinted green by her visor. She did not know what either one of those were just yet, but that would have to be addressed later.
"Yaaaaaaaaaagh!" Peridot screamed, flailing her limbs before she quickly remembered she had something to prevent her untimely demise. After all, she had just survived a trip through an unstable warp stream. It would not do to be done in by a simple face-plant on the ground.
Acting quickly, Peridot frantically brought her free floating fingers of her right arm above her head as they whirred into action. She tucked in her legs and clenched her eyes just in case this did not turn out to be enough. Her fall was slowing considerably, but it was still unknown if her landing would be any harder than was preferable.
For a few long moments Peridot kept her eyes closed and her arm around her legs, until she felt it was safe enough to open one eye. Glancing downward, she found that she had stopped just in time, her rear just inches above the flat surface of the pristine looking ground. Peridot glanced around before letting a nervous chuckle escape her lips, glad that there were no other gems present to see her strained laughter. Still chuckling, Peridot let the bottoms of her boots touch the the surface, thankful to be on steady ground once more.
And not only that, but that abomination of a fusion was also nowhere in sight, at least for the moment, and Peridot breathed a great sigh of relief. She was finally away from that monster, with nothing to. . . to. . .
"Oh my Diamond," Peridot breathed as she looked around at her surroundings. She was standing on some sort of structure very similar in appearance to the Galaxy Warp, the differences being that it was in much better condition. In addition there were no spires ringing the edges. But as impressive as this apparent Galaxy Warp was, what really took Peridot's breath was the collection of structures around it. Initially she thought that the warp had somehow worked and that she had succeeded in returning to Home World, but that notion was discarded as she looked at them. Many of the buildings, while possessing a faceted appearance typical of most gem made structures, were hardly uniform like the ones back on Home World.
But the real eye catcher was the massive, shining, crystalline tower of the absolute purest white she had ever seen standing some distance away, reaching up toward the heavens. The way it shone and reflected the light of the planets sun made it an awe inspiring sight to behold for any that happened to be looking at it, and for a moment Peridot forgot herself as she stood there, taking in the view.
"Where am I?" she wondered aloud, genuinely curious about this place. Had she somehow been transported to some sort of gem settlement? It was the only explanation that she could think of, as nowhere else in the entire known galaxy had she seen or heard of anything like this that was not gem made. Maybe she-
A deep growl interrupted her thoughts, causing Peridot's eyes to widen in fright as she slowly turned around, expecting the fusion to be standing right behind her. What she found instead was almost as frightening for the technician.
Off in the distance, a huge shadowy being of darkness loomed over crystalline buildings, with acidic green and red eyes leaking what appeared to be purple smoke. She did not fail to notice the wickedly sharp crimson colored horn located above the eyes either. Peridot was shaking with fright at the mere sight of it, and she knew she needed to get away from the thing as quickly as possible. It did not appear to have noticed her, as its attention seemed to be focused somewhere else at the moment, but she did not want to stick around long enough for it to-
"Hi!" a high pitched voice said, breaking her train of thought.
Peridot yelped in fright and whirled around, attempting to identify the source of the voice. She formed her cannon with the fingers of her right arm, ready to blast whatever had snuck up behind her into dust. But when she turned around, all she found was a small pink. . . thing, a little above waste height, just staring at her with disproportionately large blue eyes a few feet away from her. And it seemed to be smiling at her for some odd reason that the technician could not guess. Peridot had absolutely no idea what the pink thing was, as she had never bothered to educate herself on the indigenous wildlife of any planet she had been on. The closest comparison she could make were those equine creatures back on earth, but as far as she knew none of them came in such a blindingly bright shade of pink.
Whatever the pink creature was, Peridot highly doubted that it was what spoke to her. She noticed that on both of the creatures flanks was a strange brand consisting of three rounded objects that were blue and yellow in coloration. The brand told her that it was probably domesticated, which meant that an owner was likely not far away. But presently Peridot could see nothing else except for the creature, so where was-
"Are you gonna say 'hi' back?" the pink creature questioned, eliciting another surprised yelp from the gem as she once brought her cannon to bear on it.
"Oh! Is that how you say 'hi'? That's a weird way to do it," it said, not once losing the overly wide grin plastered on its pink muzzle. It then shrugged and added, "But hey, I'm not one to judge anypony's method of greeting', so 'Yaaagh!' to you too!" The pink creature, apparently female judging by the tone and pitch of its voice, then proceeded to walk a few steps toward Peridot, making her back away a little bit, before she came to a stop. Not once did Peridot take her eyes off of her or lower her weapon. "So what's your name?" she asked. Peridot did not respond, still keeping her weapon trained on the creature, although she was slowly starting to get the feeling that this pink thing did not intend to attack her. At least not yet.
Noticing her silence, it. . . she, then said slowly as though she were speaking to a newly emerged gem, with much enunciating and gesturing with her forelegs, "Me Pinkie Pie. Me pony. You?"
Slowly, the gem lowered her weapon, although an incredulous expression remained on her face at the "pony's" antics as she answered back, "Uh, Peridot."
Thrusting her hoof forward, the pinkie pie said with a little too much enthusiasm given what was happening in the distance, "Nice to meet you Peridot! Welcome to the Equestria! Or more specifically, the Crystal Empire! Normally I would break out my party wagon to give you a proper welcome, but unfortunately I left it back in Ponyville. Also, don't mind the eldritch demon unicorn king trying take over too much, this place is actually pretty sweet when you've had a look around."
". . . What?"
Before another word could be said from either party, Peridot heard another voice, this one with an odd accent not unlike some humans on earth, call out in alarm, "Pinkie! What in tarnation are ya doin'?! You don't know what that is!" Peridot looked to see another creature, similar in body shape to the pinkie pie but orange in coloration and sporting some sort of head gear, galloping towards them. Alongside this was yet another creature, except it was a shade of blue with a polychromatic mane and tail. What Peridot found even stranger was the pair of disproportionate wings keeping it in the air.
"Sure I know who it is!" the pinkie pie answered as the other two came to a stop beside her. "This is Peridot. Say 'hi' Peridot"
Peridot, unsure what else to do other than do as she was told, hesitantly heeded the pinkie pies request and said, "Eh, hello there. . . you."
For a few long moments nothing else was said as both party stared awkwardly at each other. Peridot fidgeted nervously under the gazes of the orange and blue creatures, but for some reason she found the almost manic grin of the pinkie pie to be the most disconcerting of the three. Likewise the creatures, minus the pinkie pie, seemed to be somewhat flummoxed with her, as though they had no idea what she even was. It was like they had never even seen a peridot before. Then hesitantly the orange said, "What are ya? Ah ain't never seen anythin' like ya before."
Peridot raised one free floating finger to answer, but was cut off when the multicolored one, apparently having grown tired with the lull in activity, suddenly threw its forelimbs in the air and exclaimed, "Ugh! We don't time for this! Twilight's teleported somewhere, and we need to go find her and make sure she doesn't get herself killed! We can deal with Perry-What's-Her-Face later." After saying this the blue creature flew off faster than Peridot would have thought anything with a wingspan like that could go, leaving a multicolored streak in its wake.
"Rainbow! Get back here!" the orange creature called after. But it seemed that her plea fell on deaf ears as the rainbow did nothing of the sort, instead flying straight towards the giant shadow monster. Peridot noticed that there seemed to be beams of violet light shooting up at it. Sighing heavily, the orange one turned back towards Peridot and said, " listen Perry, Ah don' know who ya are or why yer here, but right now Ah got bigger problems ta deal with, so if ya could kindly wait here Ah would appreciate it very much."
Peridot opened her mouth to speak, wanting to make it very clear that she had no intention of following the orders of any organic life form, but was cut off when it added towards the pinkie pie, "Stay with her Pinkie. Make sure she don't go nowhere." With that, she galloped off, presumably to get her polychromatic companion back, leaving the gem in a stunned silence as the pinkie sidled up beside her.
"So," she said perkily. "Want to play tick-tack-toe? I promise to go easy on you."
Peridot merely glared at the pinkie pie out of the corner of her visor, wondering if would even be worth the effort to explain exactly why she had no interest in being anywhere near her, before she brought up her arm over her head. Her artificial fingers began to spin rapidly until she achieved liftoff, aiming for the tower in the distance and leaving the pinkie pie alone on the ground.
"Hey! Where are you going?! I'm supposed to keep an eye on you!" Pinkie exclaimed as she watched the weird person fly away and out of sight, receiving no answer to her question as she tried to keep up with the green person. "Awww," she moaned sadly as she realized it was a pointless effort and sat down on her haunches at the edge of the large dais. "And I had so many questions for her too. Like what she was, where she came from, what those weird floaty thingies were, and what her favorite color was. And who's going to play tick-tack-toe with me now?" Letting her head droop a little, Pinkie sighed heavily at the fact that not only had Twilight ran off on her own to fight Sombra, but now a potential new friend had also gone away. No matter which way she spun it, this day was turning out to be a real bummer.
Pinkie's sadness was interrupted when suddenly her whole body shuddered mightily.
"Whoa!" she said, surprised. "Looks like another doozy is coming." Pinkie's prediction proved to be correct as the structure she was sitting on suddenly began to light up again just like before the green person showed up, and Pinkie promptly backed away a few steps so as to avoid having something land on her.
"I wonder what's going to come this time," she wondered, putting a hoof to her chin in thought. "Maybe another green person like Peridot? I hope so, 'cause Peridot doesn't seem like she wants to hang out. Maybe this one will be more friendly!"
No a moment after Pinkie finished her sentence than did another loud boom similar to that of thunder ring out across the city, although truthfully it was hardly discernible from the destruction Sombra, and possibly Twilight, were causing in the distance. A flash of blinding white light followed, and Pinkie shielded her eyes. When the light and noise eventually faded Pinkie looked up to see what was going to fall this time.
The first thing that she noticed was that this object seemed to be bigger than Peridot. Much bigger in fact. But at the moment that was all Pinkie could make out, as the newest arrival was doing an awful lot of thrashing around and yelling before it eventually impacted on the hard surface, throwing up a cloud of shattered debris. Pinkie coughed and waved a hoof in front of her face to dispel of the dust. Afterward she squinted at the new arrival, still unable to see who or whatever it was through the dust, although she took note of the groan of pain emanating from the newly made crater.
"Hey, you!" she called. "Are you alright?"
She was answered by the sound of a million tiny bits of crystal material cracking and shattering as whatever it was began to move. Not long after a series of extremely heavy sounding footsteps echoed in Pinkie's ears, and each step seemed to shake the earth beneath her hooves, causing her to become slightly airborne with each impact.
Soon, the owner of the footsteps emerged from the cloud, and Pinkie found herself looking up and up and up at an utterly massive four armed purple titan with a huge mane of black hair and a rather stylish pair of shades that Pinkie knew a certain DJ friend of hers would likely be envious of. The titan glanced around before its sight eventually settled on the pink pony standing in front of it, barely coming up to its thick ankles, allowing her to see the single eye on its forehead. Whether or not more were hidden behind the shades, Pinkie presently could not tell.
Completely unfazed by the creatures intimidating presence, Pinkie Pie simply smiled, waved, and shouted upwards, "Hi! Oh, wait, I mean Yaaagh! What's your name?"