Light Star Cruiser Valentine
Unregistered Star System
18th Imperial Exploration Division
Grey metallic walls, sleek black floors and panels holding the personal belongings of Imperial troopers next to flat bunks with precisely folded sheets. An Imperial Barracks. The steady hum of a light cruiser's engines just a few decks below combined with the occasional muffled screaming of a docking TIE fighter patrol as background noise drowned out the steady marching of crewmen carrying on with vital tasks to keep the vessel operational at peak efficiency. TS-588, A scout trooper in the Imperial Navy, was laying awake in their bed and staring at the ceiling. It was regulation to undress and wear only their armor's body glove when resting, but it was nearly time for TS-588 to join her fellow scout trooper on a planetary run. Orbital scans could only provide so much information for the fleet, thus making her role in the Empire a vital but thankless job.
"Trooper TS-five-eight-eight, report to the hangar bay for deployment." The slightly bored noise of an Imperial officer spoke over her personal communication system.
Taking a deep breath to fight off lethargy, TS-588 heaved herself from the bottom bunk, normally reserved for her partner, and moved towards the door of the barracks. "Understood command, moving." She replied with equal practiced enthusiasm.
Her armor was about as form fitting as it was mass produced. Blaster fire would leave black scorch marks, so rather than repair the damaged armor, she would be issued pristine white armor the moment she had recovered in the medbay from any incursion. It was cheaper to replace armor than it was to train another trooper after all. Creating an armor that would prevent death by blaster fire was good enough for the Empire, as most enemies that were left to fight were more focused on the tide of troopers behind the fallen one than finishing off someone like TS-588. The Scout Trooper variant of armoring was designed with mobility in mind, as she was supposed to travel at high speeds atop specially manufactured Speeder bikes to survey as much land as possible, and to avoid return fire if spotted.
Moving through the flawless halls of the cruiser Valentine was easy, as most crew were busy making preparations for the more elite Stormtroopers that would be next in line after the scouting reports had come through. TS-588 wasn't entirely sure what the purpose of scouting this unknown world was, but the officers seemed very focused on doing their jobs correctly for once, which usually meant that someone higher on the food chain was breathing down their necks. TS-571 was waiting for her in the main hangar, already loading his speeder bike into the Imperial Transport that awaited them.
With the expeditionary force consisting of only two TIE transports and a light cruiser, the Empire wasn't expecting any trouble so far away from the main sightings of Rebel forces, as they were on the opposite end of the galaxy. What had attracted the Empire's attention to this particular system was the inexplicable orbit of the system. A medium sized planet was at the center of the system, with the much larger sun orbiting the planet. When such a planet was discovered, rumor aboard the ship was the Emperor himself took interest with it, and tasked an admiral to chart the planet himself.
Naturally, the Admiral decided they had better things to do with their time than follow the Emperor's commands, and tasked a fleet captain to perform the task for them. Now, we find TS-588 and TS-571 loading their scout speeders into an Imperial Transport.
"You remember to bring your blaster this time, Eighty Eight?" TS-571 asked brightly, the trooper mask he wore distorting his voice as he made final checks of his own chest pockets. "I'm never gonna forget that time on Ord Mantell when that rebel blasted you in the chest 'cause you left your blaster on your bed."
"Yeah, well did you make sure your bike has a power cell in it, Seventy One?" TS-588 countered, patting the blaster that was holstered to her right hip. "Be a shame if you had to drag your speeder back again like that time on Tatooine."
Seventy One pointed a black gloved finger sharply at Eighty Eight, "Hey, that was one time, and we got out fine didn't we?"
Eighty Eight chuckled, pushing her own speeder bike up the loading ramp of the transport. "Yeah, but I'd rather not get yelled at by Lieutenant Krandel again. He wasn't too happy about your deals with the jawas."
"Still better than you getting blasted off of your speeder by a kid, Eighty Eight." Seventy One snarked, his helmeted head lifting like he was giving a smug grin behind it.
"Troopers." The formal bark of an Imperial Officer announced. "You are set to depart in three minutes. Secure your speeders and prepare for departure."
The two scouts swiftly turned towards the hangar's floor to salute the officer that had escaped their notice. "Yes sir."
"Trooper TS-five-seven-one," He continued, pointing towards his hip, "Your blaster is at half charge. You will recharge it before your departure."
Seventy One glanced a look down to his blaster, and the light on the back was a solid yellow. A groan escaped his mask as he returned to attention. "Yes, sir. Right away."
"Trooper TS-five-eight-eight, you are issued one Long Range E-11 blaster rifle for this mission. You will not fire upon any life forms unless ordered to, understood?" The officer continued, un-slinging a cumbersome looking rifle from his shoulder and presenting it to her.
"Yes sir." She replied, walking down the loading ramp of the transport to acquire the rifle. "Are we expecting any trouble?"
"Information is your job, TS-five-eight-eight." The officer immediately replied with annoyance, "However, orbital scans have revealed what appears to be a primitive hamlet. Your transport will touch down in a nearby forest and you will proceed along the coordinates you've been briefed upon. If the locals prove to be hostile, you will report back after achieving a safe distance."
TS-571 nodded. "That's what the blaster is for, I take it?"
The officer glared at Seventy-one, causing the scout to return to attention. "Yes, trooper." Looking upwards to the hangar bay control center, he waved his hand in a tight circle before addressing the scouts once again. "You have two minutes. Make ready." The troopers barely had time to acknowledge the officer's order before he was walking away, off to perform more menial tasks that the higher officers wouldn't bother themselves with.
"Well, that went well." Seventy-one sighed, drawing his blaster and pulling out the power cell. "Better than our last drop, at least." he added, sticking the cell into a nearby charger in the ship. "Still, how did I not notice my blaster was half empty?"
"Could be the Corellian wine we had last night." Eighty-eight smirked behind her helmet. "Not as good as the stuff from Dantooine, but still."
"Do you have everything ready?" The transport pilot asked while leaning from their chair. "We're launching in thirty."
The troopers finished the last of their checks and secured themselves into the folding drop seats that retracted from the transport's walls. "Ready sir." Eighty-eight replied.
Seventy-one retracted the power cell from the wall and returned it to his blaster before sitting down. "Ready."
"Alright you two, get ready for launch." The pilot replied, pressing a few final buttons as the ship's communications sprang to life with clearing codes and official chatter. "Time to do some exploration."
Equestria
Ponyville
Twilight's Castle
"Did I ever tell you how much I love star-gazing?" Twilight Sparkle asked idly, peering into her specially made telescope at the night's sky. "I mean, I liked it before I met Luna in person, but now that I'm able to spend more time with her as a part of my duties now, it just has so much more meaning!"
The princess's company, the very tired pegasus named Rainbow Dash, was sprawled out on several pillows nearby. "You've only told me like a hundred times, Twilight." She tiredly replied, trying to hide a yawn. "Is there any reason you wanted me to be up so late tonight? Applejack wants some help with her orchard tomorrow and I have to get up really early if I want to be there on time."
Twilight gasped, knocking her telescope askew. "I completely forgot about that! I didn't mean to keep you so long, Rainbow." She apologetically smiled. "You can go home if you want; I'm going to be out here for a while."
"You sure? Don't you have a meeting with somepony tomorrow too?" Rainbow questioned, pulling herself from the soft embrace of multiple pillows.
"Eh... they decided to cancel it. Apparently the Saddle Arabian council doesn't like the cold air all that much." Twilight sheepishly replied. "Hey, honest oversight I guess." She added, looking back into her telescope.
"Well, good luck with tomorrow then. I'm gonna go... hit the hay." Rainbow Dash yawned, readying herself for flight.
"Wait a minute..." Twilight whispered, her stance changing to one of interest. "That's not a star..."
Mid launch, Rainbow Dash's interest was nudged ever so slightly. "What do you mean? Of course it's a star. That's all there is up there."
"Rainbow, I think this 'star' or whatever it is, is headed for the Everfree forest!" Twilight excitedly pointed out, bouncing on her hooves. "Oh, I hope it's a meteor!"
Rainbow Dash breathed a heavy sigh while rubbing her eyes with the side of her hoof. "Alright, Twilight. Let's go and look at the meteor."
Twilight's smile was wide. "Really? But what about Applejack?"
"Knowing you, you'd probably get yourself into trouble if you went alone. I'm sure Applejack will understand." Rainbow joked while blinking away tiredness. "Lead the way to the exploding meteors, Twilight."
Imperial Transport IN-3912
Landing Site Aurek
Mission Time: 00:02:00
"Got your helmet on?" Seventy-One joked at his speeder's engine roared to life, causing it to hover just a meter off of the transport's deck.
"You have your blaster charged?" Eighty-Eight shot back, activating her own speeder. "Just hope whatever we find isn't going to be like those Ewoks from Endor. Had enough of rope coming out of nowhere and catapulting me from my speeder."
Hopping onto their speeders and making a final equipment check, Seventy-One scoffed. "Had enough of them to last me a lifetime."
A quick crackle inside of the trooper's helmets announced the communications coming from the cruiser above. "Come in scout team."
"Communications clear." TS-571 replied. "Landing successful and beginning route."
"Understood scout team. Report any unusual activity." The officer from above ordered.
"Acknowledged." TS-571 replied, and the communications channel scratched out. "Like we've ever not reported that."
"Lead the way, team leader." TS-588 offered, pointing an upward palm to the dark trees ahead of them. "Just be sure to not travel too fast, or you might get up close and personal with the foliage again." She added with a chuckle.
"That tree wasn't there before, and you know it." Seventy-one grumbled, revving the engine of his speeder and launching himself noisily from the transport's hold. Eighty-Eight was close behind, and they quickly discovered that the dense forest of their landing site was too much for even their speeder bikes to keep up with the elevation changes alone. Near miss after rotten log, the two had been on their speeders for not twenty seconds before they realized the viability of speeders in these woods.
"Alright, plan B?" Seventy-One sighed, swinging their leg around the chassis of the bike to land with a soft squish on the mossy forest floor. "Eugh. That better not get in my boots."
Eighty-Eight followed suit, pulling her speeder next to her partner's and disengaging the engine. "Well, so much for the bikes this time around. I just hope the entire planet isn't as dark as this place."
"Hey, the flowers are nice though. Not like Felucia where everything would try to kill us." Seventy-One pointed out, gesturing to a patch of blue flowers nearby.
"Yeah, let's not take any chances. It might look pretty, but so did those flowers on Taris. How long did you spend in the bacta tank because of them again?" Eighty-Eight countered, pulling her partner away from the flowers.
"Oh, yeah." Seventy-One gulped. "Never doing that again."
Everfree Forest
Location Unknown
"Twilight, do you see them?" Rainbow Dash whispered, hiding alongside her friend in a nearby bush. "What are they saying?"
"I don't know!" Twilight hissed, "It sounds like they're speaking gibberish to me."
"Well you're the princess, why don't you cast a spell on them or something?" Rainbow suggested, nudging Twilight.
"Because casting spells on ponies we don't know is rude? Not to mention it could be disastrous for relations between Equestria and another nation we haven't seen before." Twilight countered, upset with the inability to speak with these strange newcomers but trying her best to figure out a plan.
"Well, maybe we should just walk up and say 'Hi'." Rainbow offered, "They don't look that tough. Minotaur have way bigger muscles than they do."
"What if they're not friendly?" Twilight worried. "I don't want to hurt them."
"You befriended Thorax, didn't you? I think if you can befriend a changeling, you can make friends of anypony." Rainbow Dash replied confidently.
"That was mostly Spike, Rainbow. I thought Thorax was trying to trick him in the beginning." Twilight reminded Rainbow, growing more nervous. "Maybe we should bring everypony else?"
"Twilight, you're the Princess of Friendship. If anypony can make friends with these two, its gotta be you!" Rainbow insisted, giving Twilight a shove from the bush and out into the open.
"Rainbow!" Twilight quietly hissed in panic. Looking from the bush towards the two white and black figures, she noticed that they looked a lot scarier from the front than they did from behind. She really hoped that they were wearing helmets, and that their faces weren't even more terrifying underneath.
"A...uh... Hello!" Twilight unintentionally stuttered. She had faced far worse things than two tall creatures that looked like skinny armored minotaur, but what worried her the most was the fact that she might have to defend herself if anything was misunderstood between them. It was like meeting the Yaks all over again.
Imperial Scout Group Auresh
Unregistered Planet
"Is... that what I think it is?" Eighty-eight wondered aloud, her voice filtered through her mask with processed clicks and scratches. "Because it looks like a really colorful quadruped, covered in fur, with a horn and wings."
The troopers shared a look of confusion for a moment, and drew their blaster pistols in unison. "I'm pretty sure that thing was talking with something else in the bush." Seventy-one added, the two troopers spreading apart from one another with their blasters trained on the very noisy creature in front of them.
"Think it's hostile?" Eighty-Eight asked, moving on the creature's right side as it sat on the ground while looking between the two with unsteady vocalizations. "This thing might be somebody's pet from the hamlet nearby for all we know."
Seventy-one was moving around the creature's left side, presenting it only a single opportunity to lash out at one of the troopers. "Well, it hasn't leapt on one of us yet. It could be trying to figure out what we're doing."
"Think it deserves that much credit? Something pushed it from that bush. Look at the grass." Eighty-Eight pointed out, a free hand gesturing to the slowly recovering trampled grass.
"Must mean there's two of them, then. Stun setting?" Seventy-one suggested.
Eighty-Eight adjusted a dial on her blaster, causing the power cell to switch colors from a red to a light blue. "Hate this setting. Uses way too much of the cell, you know?"
"Yeah, but we don't use it that much, do we?" Seventy-one countered, adjusting his own blaster. Both troopers then leveled their blaster pistols at the purple creature between them, angled downward so that any crossfire would impact the ground and not themselves.
"Hey, I'd rather stun someone's pet than kill it. Don't need any more rebels popping up on account of us blasting their kids' best friend." Eighty-eight reasoned. "On three?"
"One..." Seventy-one began, "Two..."
Before the final count, the troopers were interrupted by an angry growl coming from a nearby tree. Distracted by the sudden threat, the two troopers closed in on each other and pointed back to back at the surrounding forest.
"You just had to ask if it was hostile, didn't you?" Seventy-One whispered, scanning the nearby trees. "I swear, if this planet is anything like--"
"Hey, listen for movement and don't panic." Eighty-eight ordered, sweeping her vision around and looking for movement.
Seventy-one felt a tug on his boots and nearly had a heart attack, pointing the blaster directly in the purple creature's face. It had placed what looked like a hoof on his foot and was looking up at him with concern and very wide eyes. "Don't do that to me!" He shouted to the creature, kicking it away and refocusing on the treeline surrounding him.
"Alright, I'm setting it to kill. Screw wasting charge on the wildlife." Eighty-Eight stated, adjusting the settings on her blaster.
"On the left!" Seventy-one shouted, a loud blast projecting a blue circle of energy towards the figure that was leaping out of the forest. The creature lit up from claw to snout with a flash of light and collapsed on the forest floor in a heap, breathing heavily with its face in the dirt.
"Do I even want to know what that thing is?" Eighty-Eight asked, pointing her blaster at the creature's head. "It's like a Kath Hound made of plants."
"Well, just kill it and lets move on. Whatever this other creature is doesn't seem like its much of a threat." Seventy-one replied with a steadying breath, holstering his blaster.
A loud blast and a bolt of red energy lanced its way through the wooden creature's head, causing it to splinter into smoking pieces of lumber all across the area.
"Eugh, I think I got sap on me." Eighty-eight complained, swiping some greenish-brown from her shoulder armor. She was about to holster her blaster when a field of lavender encompassed the entire device and ripped it from her hands. Seventy-One was in a similar situation, as his pistol was also taken from his holster as the two tried to regain their balance from the sudden action.
"What the?" Seventy-one asked rhetorically, searching his holster for his blaster before finding that the purple creature had stolen both of their weapons, and was pointing them directly at himself and his partner.
"Whoa there, take it easy!" Eighty-Eight asked, her hands up and fingers open. "Don't get too hasty with those things, okay?"
"Did that thing just take our blasters?" Seventy-one asked in confusion, his hands raised as well. "How is that possible?"
The purple creature didn't seem too happy with their blasters, and before the scouts could say a word of protest, their pistols were crumpled into a wad of metal and ruptured power cells and unceremoniously dumped onto the ground. The troopers shared a look of helmeted confusion before returning their attention to the small thing in front of them.
"Okay, so, you're better with animals; You try to talk to it." Seventy-one insisted, gesturing with his head towards the purple thing.
"Really, you want me to talk to this thing? It just turned our blasters into scrap metal. I think we shouldn't try to annoy it anymore than we already have." Eighty-eight countered, taking a step away from the creature.
Before she could move another step, both Eighty-eight and Seventy-one were wrapped in fields of lavender energy and lifted from the ground. Trying to maintain balance was a futile act, as all they were able to do was drift aimlessly in the grip of this tiny creature and await whatever fate it had in store for them. What they didn't expect was another creature to join this one, especially one that had a rainbow for hair.
"So." Eighty-Eight asked while floating upside down. "Are we going to report this as unusual activity?"