//------------------------------// // BONUS CHAPTER:EPILOGUE // Story: The Alien Warriors: Journey to Equestria // by Texas Style Brony //------------------------------// Carousel Boutique, three months after the celebration After the celebration, the guys split up around Ponyville for employment and for places to stay. Their pony friends were more than happy to provide them with shelter and with snuggles employment. Ramirez helped Rarity with heavy lifting tasks at her Boutique, McLaughn helped Fluttershy take care of animals, Smith helped the Apples on Sweet Apple Acres, and Parker and Summers stayed with Twilight to become her personal guard. Ever since arriving to Equestria, the guys had a problem of finding good meat to eat, since they were omnivorous. They couldn't eat burgers or steaks since cows were sentient, and they couldn't eat bacon, ham, or chicken because the Apple family used them for other parts of agriculture. They could fish, but they figured that they would eat up all of the fish in Ponyville's stream within a year. In the end, the guys decided to hunt manticores. These creatures were common in the Everfree Forest and they had enough meat to feed the men for a whole month at a time. Ramirez walked in all sweaty with his Stryfe rifle slung over his shoulder. Soon, Rarity came over after working on her latest creations. "Daniel darling! How was it?" She asked. "It was definitely worth it! Got some more meat for us and thanks to Jeff, I also got you a present!" Ramirez replied, handing over a piece of freshly-tanned leather while taking a seat. "Oh my! It's so smooth and fine!..... what is it?" Rarity asked upon inspecting the leather. "It's leather! We humans use it to make boots and jackets in our world." Ramirez replied. "I have never seen a material quite like it! Where did you get it?" "Umm... it's manticore skin." Rarity almost shrieked when she heard this answer, but managed to hold it in. "Daniel! Why on earth would you bring me something so....... gruesome?" "Aww Rare! I thought that you might like it. There's never any blood left when you finish making it, and you even admitted that it looked like good clothing material!" "True, but I did not know the source of that material!" Ramirez suddenly seemed kind of hurt by Rarity's statement. She noticed and trotted up and hugged him. "I'm sorry Daniel. I didn't mean to reject your gift so harshly." "It's ok Rare. I understand that hunting is something that ponies find to be a savage practice," Daniel said while returning the hug. Rarity then levitated the material and took a closer look at it. "Hmm..... there is definitely no blood on this. How much did you bring?" "Enough to make a whole new line in your store," Rarity giggled at this. "Ok Daniel, I'll try and see what I can do with this. Thank you for your consideration in my business," Rarity hugged him again. "You're very much welcome Rare," Ramirez said while hugging the pony back. Rarity then trotted off to begin her work on the new material while Ramirez went upstairs to shower and unload his rifle. Twilight's castle, a few hours later Summers and Lyra were sitting on a couch in the castle, cuddling each other. Twilight was nearby, with Spike taking notes on the "human on pony affection study" while Starlight and Parker were nearby talking. "Mmmm!! I think this is my favorite experiment Princess!!" Lyra blissfully told Twilight as Summers stroked his fingers through her mane. When Twilight wanted a volunteer for this experiment, Lyra excitedly stepped up. The guys just decided to go with it. It was simply adorkable adorable to see Twilight go into full-nerd mode after all. "Well after that one time when Starlight and I enjoyed this, I figured that I might as well look into why we find these aliens so comforting, and vice versa," Twilight explained to the green unicorn. "It's definitely relaxing. We humans generally love to play with other species such as dogs and cats," Summers told them. "We have dogs and cats too! That might be a variable to consider! Spike, did you get that?" Twilight asked the small dragon, only to find him playing more games on Parker's phone. "Spike!" "Wha?! Wha?! Oh! Sorry Twilight!" Spike immediately put down the phone (which Parker totally let him borrow) and began jotting down notes. Twilight levitated the phone away for good measure. Starlight was nearby emmitting sparks from her horn, which Parker seemed to enjoy. "That's so cool! How do you do it?!" "Well, you can basically do just about anything with unicorn magic! Wanna see Simino Duplexis?" "Sure!" Sweet Apple Acres Smith was carrying a load of apples along with Apple Bloom after having knocked them out of some of the apple trees. Smith fit into the Apple family really well, since they both shared common southern ideologies and dialogue. He would usually help them with their apple harvesting in exchange for paying for rent and food. "So Jeff, do you know what your special talent is?" Apple Bloom asked the human. "I don't know Apple Bloom. Humans generally don't just 'find' their special talents. They just know that they're assigned jobs by society that they have to do," he replied. "Interestin. Probably explains why humans don't get cutie marks." She replied. One time, she did get curious as to why she and her friends couldn't examine the humans to see if they get cutie marks, but after some stern refusals and explanations, the Cutie Mark Crusaders just took the humans' word that they didn't have any. "Do you think that your special talent is.... war?" Apple Bloom inquired, having heard the stories from the front lines. "War is indeed something that humans are very good at. That can be a good thing to you, but a bad thing to us. Over the course of the past century, humans have developed some extremely sophisticated weapons to destroy each other with, yet conflict is a primal instinct that has resided in all humans ever since the Fall of Creation," Smith explained. "Fall of Creation? Is that like when Sombra took over the Crystal Empire or when Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon?" Apple Bloom asked. Smith was hesitant about how to answer. Being from the belt buckle of the Bible Belt, he wondered if sharing the Christian gospel to a sentient being that did not have a human soul would be appropriate. "It's not that, it's a little more.... complicated. I don't quite understand it myself, but I'll tell you when I get a better idea, ok?" "Ok Jeff, I understand." Apple Bloom hoof-bumped Smith's fist as they kept carrying their harvest back to the barn. Fluttershy's cottage Harry the bear was outside enjoying a big piece of manticore steak that McLaughn gave to him. Even though Harry was hesitant of the human and his loud stick when he first arrived, he learned to trust the human after he began feeding him a share of his meat that he would bring back once a month. Eating berries and honey all the time gets repetitive and boring after a while if you're a bear, after all. "Oh, thank you so much for sharing Corey, Harry gets so happy when you bring him meat." Fluttershy told McLaughn, who was sitting next to her on the sofa in her living room. Even though she was terrified when she saw McLaughn first bring meat into the house, she grew used to the fact that he and Harry needed the protein in order to stay strong. After all, it didn't look so bloody after it was cooked. "Don't mention it Flutters! This is probably the only bear who I can be friendly with! In our world, bears usually eat people." McLaughn told her, while sipping on some sweet tea. "Oh no! It doesn't happen often, does it?" Fluttershy asked him. "Well, it doesn't happen too much. It's usually because the bear want's a human's food or because the human ran into the cubs," he responded. "Oh, that's good," Suddenly, a bright flash of light entered the room, and Discord suddenly popped into the scene. "Hello Fluttershy!! Are your ready for our tea party? Oh, and I see you've brought another friend!" the draconequus stated, looking at McLaughn as he said the last part. "Oh! Is it time already? I'm sorry Discord, I must have lost track of time. Would you like your usual tea?" Fluttershy asked the new guest. "Oh of course Fluttershy! That would be very good! Thank you!" Discord told her while snapping his fingers to summon his own teacup. Fluttershy then went into the kitchen to make the tea. "So Mr. Yankee, I take it that your stay with Fluttershy has been going well?" Discord asked the human who looked at him unsure of how to answer. Discord knew that Fluttershy let McLaughn stay with her, but McLaughn was not around when the two had their special tea parties. "Yeah, she's really nice and sweet and --- what happened to my clothes?" McLaughn questioned when he looked down and saw that he was suddenly wearing a northern blue Civil War uniform. Discord began laughing at this random prank he pulled on the human. "Oh, I just thought that with a name like 'Yankee', you would feel more comfortable in this! Well if this isn't the 'Yankee' style you're looking for, how about this?" Discord snapped his fingers again, and McLaughn was suddenly wearing an American Revolutionary war uniform, similar to George Washington's, while this tune began playing in the background: "Hahaha, very funny Discord. Very funny." McLaughn stated on the new style. "Thank you! I always strive to entertain!" Discord replied, but then he snapped his fingers again and everything went back to normal. He then leaned in to get close to McLaughn. "I can see that you care about Fluttershy very much, almost as much as I do. I can also tell that she likes having you around here because something about you makes her happy, something I am not able to pinpoint," Discord's pointing finger suddenly became a small tack at that point. "But I'm warning you: If I ever hear that you have hurt my best friend in any way, physically or emotionally, whether intentional or unintentional, you will need more than that fancy gun of your's to prevent what would come as a result of that. Got it?" McLaughn gulped at this statement, knowing that Discord's wrath would be something he would NOT want to have to deal with. "Got it." "Very good then!" Discord gave McLaughn some space and leaned back. Fluttershy then came in with his tea. "Fluttershy! Dear! Mr. Yankee and I here were just talking about you!" "Oh really? What did you two discuss?" Ramirez's twelfth log We have been in Equestria for about three months now. The ponies have been very generous by allowing us to stay with and work with/for them. The local population now see us as war heroes walking among them. Even with these new jobs, however, we remain an active special forces unit in Equestria. The Royal Sisters told us that if a threat should rise again, they would have us ready. Fortunately, there have been no threats lately. Life has become peaceful again in Equestria. I am Daniel Ramirez, and until the day of battle comes again, my men and I will stand ready to defend ponykind. Gilbert TX, a few weeks after the Lunar Nightwatch went missing Things were looking very grim. For the past few weeks, locals, park rangers, and police had been searching the area for any sign of the five missing nerf players. The families of the five missing people had already begun to assume the worst has happened to them. After three days of no results, local and state newspapers and TV began sending out their pictures, asking for any information on their whereabouts. Today, two black SUV's pulled into the park. Out of these SUVs came a bunch of men in dark suits. These guys looked like the Men In Black, and were part of a top secret government division known as the Federal Agency of International and Interdimensional Affairs. However, due to the agency's cover program that invested in making toys and shows based on the cases they worked on, this agency was known to the public as the Hasbro toy company. After showing their badges to the local authorities, the men began using strange instruments to scan around the crime scene. "Sir, why are we investigating a missing persons case?" One of the agents asked the agent in charge. "Even though this was a nerf event, the agency dismissed the case. However, when the missing persons' reports showed that all of the missing people were bronies, we had to make sure that this wasn't another portal case." "Portal case, sir?" "Yes. We know that Equestrian magic is self-aware and very real. Although it very rarely happens, the magic will form wormholes between this world and Equestria. It is possible that it took these mlp-lovers from an event where they were armed with our prototype interdimensional weaponry and--" "Sir!", a voice yelled from one of the men. He was holding a device that looked like a PKE meter from Ghostbusters. However, this device wasn't designed to find paranormal energy, but residual magic. His meter began lighting up and going crazy with high readings in the same spot where the portal that took the Lunar Nightwatch to Equestria had formed. The two other agents looked at the readings. "My God...." "We gotta get this information back to HQ."