Two possebilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not.
Both are equally terrifying.
-Arthur C. Clarke
"Rarity?" I weakly asked, my head pounded as if somepony had just bucked it. Opening my eyes seemed to be a bad decision as it only increased the splitting headache but a groan coming from beside me made me try again. A strange creature with long red hair was laying in the waving grass, it yawned revealing a set of sharp canines in its mouth.
Oh no, it's going to eat me! I struggled to get as far away from the predator as I possibly could... And froze as I got my first look at my claws, they were furrless and unlike Spike's claws didn't have sharp endings to them. My mind was running in overdrive as I individually bent and stretched the claws and eventually touched my face experimentally, There's no muzzle! Celestia no I'm a monster like that one!
Wait... If I'm a monster like that one, who is that?
"Sweetie? Scoots? Y'all here?" The monster said in a southern drawl I would recognize anywhere,
"Apple Bloom? Is that you?" I asked, my fear of the creature was lessening as it seemed to be my friend.
The former earthpony opened her eyes as well and was just as scared of me as I had been of her moments earlier before she made the same realization as me. "Sweetie? What's goin' on, why are you... that?!"
"I-I don't know." I stammered and started looking around our immediate area, we were on a hill that on one side had a large orchard and on the other, there was a massive field of grain that seemed to go on for forever. In the distance, we could also see some sort of tall buildings and a couple of... wires? running so high into the sky that they disappeared from view, "Where's Scootaloo?" I asked, suddenly realizing that the orange pegasus was the only one of my two friends that wasn't with us.
"AAAH, oof." Branches snapped in one of the orchard's trees just before another creature like the two of us fell to the ground.
Is it wearing clothes? wait... I'm wearing clothes as well?!
Apple Bloom hobbled over on her back legs to the creature and raised an eyebrow as she studied the newcomer. "Scoots?"
"Yeah? what's up?" Scootaloo replied clutching her head with the dull claws while also trying to use a tree to get at the same eye level as her red-haired friend.
"Good, just checkin' to make sure I've got the right creature." Apple Bloom fist hit the former pegasus square on the jaw, the dull thud of Scootaloo hitting the ground made me wince, "YOU HAPPY NOW?!" Apple Bloom shouted, enraged at our friend. "YOU GOT YOUR ADVENTURE BECAUSE Y'ALL HAD TO TOUCH THE GLOWIN' MIRROR, DIDN'T YOU!"
"How was I supposed to know what was going to happen?" She defended herself but this didn't seem to matter to Apple Bloom. I hobbled over to my two friends and helped Scootaloo up on her back legs while Apple Bloom was shooting a glare in her direction, this was incidentally also the first time Scootaloo got the chance to study our new bodies, "Sweetie? Where's your horn?" The friend in front of me was immediately forgotten as I touched my forehead with my claws to check my horn.
N-No this can't be happening! How am I supposed to use magic now?!... Why is Scootaloo so calm? Hasn't she lost her wings as well?
The answer to that question followed almost immediately as Scootaloo spoke up, "This stupid jacket is pinning my wings to my back!"
She still has them?! That's not fair! But... wouldn't they be just as useless as in Equestria? Ugh, now I feel bad.
"Quit whinin'. We got them clothes for a reason so we're keepin' them on." Apple Bloom snapped, "Our sisters can't help us fer at least five more days 'cause that solar storm, so we're gonna go to that city to get some food and water before goin' right back here."
The bulge that formed on the clothes on Scootaloo's back as her wings tried to shoot out were a good indication that she wanted to protest but for some reason, she kept her mouth shut. The grain in the fields around us waved in the wind as we made our way to the large structures, the closer we came the more the air seemed to smell of something being burned. The other side of the city seemed to have thick black clouds coming from while at the same time irregularly flashing of purple light that were more defined due to the setting sun was corresponding with new black clouds rising up from behind the buildings.
"Scoots is it just me or are those clouds not natural?" We had just entered the city proper and there was seemingly nothing alive, my voice only a little over a whisper. Scootaloo's face also had a frown painted upon it as she studied the black clouds.
"They're rising." She stated, more flashes of light appearing as well. "The light isn't coming from the clouds, it's from the ground. Those are smokestacks and the light is a fire of some sort." The pegasus' final conclusion sent a shiver up my spine as the smokestack was easily large enough to engulf Canterlot whole.
"Maybe we should turn around and get out of here if the city is on fire?" I suggested to Apple Bloom who was still steadily moving forward into the city. She huffed but didn't change her pace.
"We ain't gonna leave before we find somecreature, we're gonna have to get some food and water before we can go back to the hill."
Moments after Apple Bloom spoke Scootaloo forcibly grabbed Bloom's foreleg, "Maybe my words didn't get through your thick skull, WE ARE WALKING TOWARDS A MASSIVE FIRE!" She snapped, my two friends standing muzzle to muzzle, but that wasn't what had my attention. A strange buzz came from further up the street, breaking the relative silence which reigned the city previously.
"AN' WE WOULDN'T BE HERE IF YOU HADN'T TOUCHED THE DARN PORTAL!"
"Girls?" The buzzing was growing louder more rapidly as the two were shouting at each other.
"THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD BE WALKING INTO ANOTHER DANGEROUS SITUATION!"
It wasn't long before a swarm of brown bugs came swirling around a tall building further up in the street. Are those Changelings?! "Girls!"
"WHAT!" The two simultaneously shouted at me but their rage immediately vanished as they followed my gaze towards the approaching bugs. Their eyes went wide, the three of us slowly walking backward as the bugs approached.
"Y'all think those are the reason why this city is so quiet?" Apple Bloom grimaced, her gaze thoroughly fixed on the rapidly approaching swarm. The tool of the leading bug began glowing a bright green and it pointed it at Scootaloo. Time slowed down for me as the green glow shot forward. In a panic, I automatically lifted my claws and made a pushing motion, a green glow that looked similar in color to the bolt flying straight at Scootaloo enveloped the claws and the former pegasus seemingly got knocked out of the way by some sort of a mysterious force just before the projectile would have hit her.
The green bolt hit the ground where Scootaloo had just stood and scorched it black. Loud noises not unlike thunder suddenly started coming from a street further up the block, holes appearing in the insects making them drop to the ground as their green blood spewed out of their backs. In the corner of my eye I could see something green rapidly approaching us from the side, already in a panicked state I swirled around to the thing and raised my hands once again but this time nothing happened. My heart beat faster than it ever had as I looked at the approaching creature, it was the same species as we were only larger and it was wearing a completely green outfit with heavy looking plates that reminded me of guard armor.
D-did he kill those bugs? Is he going to kill us?! My mind rattled off before going almost completely blank as the creature reached us. All those times I had heard ponies talk about fight or flight, always telling that somepony would have one of two responses to a situation.
They seemed to never recognize that there is a third option that could happen,
Freeze.
As the creature stopped in front of me I did absolutely nothing, neither running nor fighting. Nothing. "You three girls are the luckiest to be alive right now but to stay that way you're going to have to come with me." Daring to look away from it I glanced at my two friends, the two of them were also clearly in distress as our eyes darted between each other.
"C'mon girls let's go." Apple Bloom spoke up while taking a hesitant step forward, both me and Scootaloo following suit as a box on the creature's chest suddenly started speaking,
"Someone, report! Who the hell fired those shots?!"
Have they figured out long-range communication spells?! Not even Twilight has managed that yet!
"Three civilians were being attacked by the bugs, I took them out." The creature replied, we were running at a decent speed further down the alleyway we had been led into.
"Jenkins, is the primary diverting any assets?"
The gruff voice from the radio asked as the creature that had led us up to another armored individual of his species,
"Negative, Sergeant Major, Primary is still on course steadily burning settlements." Another voice came from the box answering the first voice's question,
"Copy that, Jenkins. Wick, get those civilians to the tether asap."
"Copy that, Wick out." The creature replied before looking straight at us, "You three, stay close to us and if we say you have to do something you do it. Am I clear?" The creature looked... Satisfied as we greedily nodded. "Good, let's go"
We once again ran through the abandoned back street after the creature, these were clearly guards of some sort as even with its equipment it still managed to outpace us the majority of the time. Although that assessment might not be too fair to Scootaloo as she seemed to have no trouble keeping up with the creature. As we passed streets we managed to get glimpses of what seemed to be causing the fires in the distance, a purple metal 'ship' of some sort was hovering in the air on the horizon, beams of fire seemingly being shot from its belly as every time the light touched the ground it created another stack of smoke. Eventually, we found ourselves in front of one of the building complexes that had one of the cables we had seen from a distance running into the sky. Even being this close didn't reveal the top of the cable as it seemed to be running into infinity.
"Is that thing running into Luna's space?! Who are these things that they can build something this big?!"
Inside there were hundreds of the creatures huddled in groups and standing in line to enter further into the facility, "You three go stand in line over there, the loading is almost complete any later and you might have been left behind." The three of us nodded and went over to the creatures that were standing in the line as the armor-clad one ran off again, the voice from the box giving him new orders.
The three of us quietly stood between the creatures, they all seemed to be just severely on edge as we were. After some more observation of the creatures some more differences between us and them became extremely obvious, for one, they didn't have the vibrantly colored hair ponies had, with only a couple of exceptions to the rule they mostly had shades of brown and black hair. Our own hair was faded a little as well but it was colorful enough that it would stand out in the crowd.
The second and much more important thing I noticed was that none of the creatures were using magic or had any wings, even in Equestria earthpony villages had at least a couple of unicorns and pegasi living in them to do jobs like clearing the weather and such. Seeing none of that in the crowd made it very clear that neither Scootaloo's wings nor my magic were normal.
"Scootaloo? I don't think we're exactly normal." The noise of the other creatures in the building made it that only my friends heard me talk.
The former pegasus rolled her eyes, "I figured that out already." Annoyance rife in her voice as we followed the crowd to wherever they were going.
"Not that, I mean that they don't have wings and magic!" Scootaloo and Apple Bloom looked over the crowd and scanned for the two features, both finding nothing.
I could see Apple Bloom grimacing before she spoke up, "Ah reckon they won't be too kind if they figured out we ain't one of them, with them bugs flying around and such."
I nodded to my friend, "We should hide it for now while we figure out how to get back home."
We eventually made it to where everycreature seemed to be going, a massive metal 'box' of some sort was attached to the cable with machinery. "Where are we going?" I asked one of the creatures that was working to get everyone seated somewhere in the contraption.
"Hell if I care, as long as it's not Harvest though if I were to hazard a guess Jericho VII is the most likely planet we're headed to since I remember that star-system to be closest to this one."
D-different star-system?! Have these creatures found a way to teleport that far?! That should be impossible, not even the princesses can teleport that far!
My mind grinding to a halt as I tried to apply my limited knowledge of magic, the creature meanwhile had strapped the three of us into chairs and left to finish up with the last of the passengers.
"Girls? Did he just say star system?" Scootaloo's mask of 'coolness' breaking as she looked horrified at the prospect of leaving the planet entirely.
"Ah think he just did, but Ah don't think there's any gettin' off this thing now." Apple Bloom grimaced as well as we heard metallic clangs from where the door was supposed to be followed by red lights going on and a male voice with an accent similar to the former earthpony's one came from seemingly everywhere at once.
"Everyone, Ah need y'all to stay calm as we ascend the elevator. Y'all be pulling a lot of G's in the ascend so it'll be okay to black out on the ride." My hands were sweaty as I suddenly felt the 'elevator' start moving up, initially it felt the same as the elevators in Manehattan but that soon changed as the pressure on my body increased and increased to a point that it felt like somepony had dropped a closet onto it. Black spots formed in my vision as I heard Scootaloo breathing strangely while Apple Bloom had already seemed to have passed out some time before that.
The black spots in my vision were growing to extreme proportions as the force on my chest was increasing further,
I'm sorry Rarity, I guess we'll be here for a while longer.
The final thought flashed through my mind as unconsciousness took me into its dark embrace.