Vapour and Corroder looked at the scene ahead of them. A small gathering of villains had gathered in the ruins of an old castle in the forest several of them had landed in.
“-and the worst part is…” Corroder continued his lament about the current situation, pointing toward the black and red villain, whom everyone in maximum security had called ‘the untouchable bruiser’, “IS APPARENTLY OUR CURRENT LEADER!” The blue sniper villain looked over at Core Hunter, who was currently admiring a ‘revision’ of one of the old columns, which was holding up nothing.
“That’s just beautiful pinchy, it’s a completely different side of me.”
“He’s still acting like that claw is freaking alive.” Vapour droned.
Core hunter turned back towards the troupe of villains who had gathered there. “Now, anyone has any ideas where the others are!?!”
Vapour stood up “Von nebula is being coy about his plans, the fire villains we have no idea, Xplode, Splitface, Thunder, Rotor, and the Fangz that Witch Doctor brought have their signals jammed, Thornraxx told me explicitly to tell everyone to go scrap your hindquarters and weld your head in its place, Jawblade got lost, and Voltix, Speeda, and XT4 say they are busy. The former, however are trying to establish radio contact.”
“How long will that take?” Core Hunter snapped.
“Right now.” The voice of Voltix rang through the hologram communicator that had been set up. The image of XT4 and Speeda demon.
Core hunter wasted no time ridiculing them for not being here in person. “You’re all late!” he boomed.
Speeda snapped back. “Even I get lost sometimes Core Hunter”
Core Hunter made a double take at the hologram. “Got your voice synthesizer fixed I see.”
“Of course you would find the voice amusing, considering you’re a complete idiot.”
Core hunter fired a round at the hologram, only for it to pass through harmlessly and hit Toxic Reapa and send him flying across the room. Speeda just kept smiling. “Shut up” the brutish villain muttered under his breath. He turned to Voltix. “Well, what your excuse?”
“Obviously, I don’t need one, as I have been attending to a matter you have overlooked. In this world, we have no way to recharge ourselves after long periods of time. I have been constructing a makeshift energy collection net for our need while we stay here, I will send you the coordinates shortly.”
Core hunter nodded, a rather annoyed look on his face he turned to XT4. “As for you?”
The yellow multi tool robot stood at full attention. “Conducting surveillance on nearby village; populated by Equus ferus caballus. Unable to regroup.”
Core hunter blinked. “Um, in English?”
XT4 began again “Conducting surveillance on nearby village; populated by Equus ferus caballus. Unable to regroup.”
“No, the middle part” core Hunter said, narrowing his gaze on the android.
“Populated by Equus ferus caballus.”
“He means the non-scientific name!” Corroder shouted “IS THAT SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?”
“Thank you, for clarifying.” Vapour droned sarcastically.
XT4 turned back to core hunter “Populated by ponies.”
“What”
The room fell silent. The only sound that could be heard was the distant chirping of birds and the light hum of the hologram generator. The silence lasted at least a full minute before a crackle of a radio transmission broke the silence.
“Can anyone hear this? I can hear you. NOT YOU, SOMEONE ELSE. Like who? Drilldozer? I don’t care; it could even be Thornraxx for all I care!Don’t call him; he would be a good person to chat up anyway.Well that’s one thing we can agree on. ALL RIGHT! If anyone who isn’t Thornraxx can hear us, respond before I have to tear my ears off from listening to this guy!”
Core Hunter snapped back into reality, he quickly turned to Meltdown. “Boost the signal! Now!”
In a moment a hologram of the self-loathing Splitface came to life. “Freaking finally!” the robotic half grumbled, sparking in a few places.
“What is it you fools want?” Core Hunter snapped. “If it’s a rescue party, forget it.”
The Organic side turned towards the burly villain.“No, It’s worse, the heroes are already here!”
“WHAT!?”
“We were attacking this nightclub, and Stringer showed up! He was with this white unicorn and-”
“Wait, so not only is this place populated by ponies, there UNICORNS TOO!?!” Core Hunter roared, before turning to Voltix. “What’s a Unicorn?”
Voltix slapped a hand to his helmet. “They’re a figment of mythology, a kind of horse with a horn which are said to be magical, though I severely doubt-”
“You mean they’re magical now!?” Core hunter shouted; his attention turned back to Splitface.
“Well yes, there were unicorns and pegasi, and regular ponies too, and they were all different colors and- GET TO THE POINT!I WAS! Now that white unicorn hooked up this huge speaker to Stringers guitar gun thing and before we know it we found ourselves in the middle of some weird garden with statues everywhere.”
“So, the heroes are already here…” Core Hunter turned to XT4 “Find and scrap any hero you find, it’s more than likely that they landed nearby!”
XT4 nodded “And, if they have made contact with other ponies?”
Core hunter wasted no time with his response. “Terminate them. Leave no evidence.”
XT4 nodded and his hologram faded out. Core hunter turned to the rest of the crowd, who were murmuring to each other. “Now… back to business. Speeda demon, search for a suitable base of operations in case we are discovered here. Voltix! I want you to re-establish communications with the other villains who are still missing, as well as Black Phantom! The rest of you I will leave to your own devices, cause crime, mayhem, whatever! Just report how many of the heroes are here, and be ready for when we go home!”
A tremendous amount of cheering rose from the other villains.
Core hunter hid his smile behind the helmet that covered his face. As the other villains split off, he turned back to Voltix. “So, I assume Von nebula hasn’t told you anything either?”
“Predictably. Though I do assume you would learn to be secretive if your powers could tear open time and space itself. Any more orders? Or are you just trying to improve your intellect via conversing with me?”
Core hunter scowled. “Just prepare that energy net, and prepare several superchargers, and tend to your guests as well.” With that, Core hunter deactivated the hologram generator, and turned back to admire the sculpture of him made by Pinchy.
“What?”
Voltix whirled around. He knew about the three organics watching him, and in an instant he had all three in his sights, one tangled in his electro whip, the second he had his volt blaster trained on, and the third one was targeted by the electrical nodes on the sides of his helmet. The figures froze instantly. Voltix looked them over; they were Pitch black in color, similar in shape to equines, however with insectoid features. The figures were frozen in fear, and Voltix could only smirk.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise”
ALERT! ALERT! UNAUTHORIZED ACESS IN ARCHIVE TERMINALS!
“Now of all times?” the visibly annoyed unicorn grabbed the nearby microphone with his magic.
“Inferno! Sparker! Overdrive! Lock down the archives!” as the unicorn looked over the monitor he looked over the three ponies racing to their destination. A thought popped into his mind, regarding an earlier occurrence.
“Pony feathers! I forgot to fix the door!”
Thunder looked back and forth through the halls, the sound of hooves thundering across the tiled floors becoming greater and harder to ignore. Realizing that it was his only other option; he wound up repeating the same action he swore to never do again only moments before.
He posed as a statue for the second time today. “This was a horrible idea” he thought as a fiery Pegasus and a small red filly with a red construction helmet rounded the corner. He let off a mental sigh as the pair passed him without so much as a glance, and listened in on the conversation.
“Horse apples, the door’s locked!”
“Don’t you remember the pass code?” the small red filly asked.
“… No”
“Break the door down?”
“Break the door down”
Thunder seized up for a moment what happened the last time he posed as a statue, but he was more surprised when the red filly charged the door at full speed and busted it open in a single charge. He was about to start attempting to sneak away when a yellow stallion rounded the corner and shouted at the two mares.
“YOU KNOCKED THE DOOR DOWN!?!”
“Oh don’t get your saddle in a knot Sparky, I forgot the password again”
“I did most of the work!” the cheerful filly piped up, oblivious to the stallion’s anger and dismay.
“DON’T YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO REPLACE THOSE THINGS?”
“You reinstall them every time someone breaks in lightning rod.”
“JUST... let me check to see if the sever is still secure…” the stallion gave into the rather insane logic behind the Pegasus’s actions and walked into the room. “And make sure that whatever snuck in here doesn’t sneak away!”
As the three filed into the room, Thunder began to sneak away, still listening to the conversation.
“Doesn’t look like it’s been touched.” The stallion drawled, still aggravated at the destruction of the door. “No viruses either.”
“So you think it didn’t get inside?”
“It couldn’t have!” the red filly piped up “the door was still intact, and if it sat off the alarm, it couldn’t have known the code.”
Thunder started moving faster, knowing that a single glace out the door would give him away.
“Well if nothing got in, then it should have been outside hiding in the halls?”
“There’s nowhere to hide.” The stallion snapped. “These halls are so clear; you could run a wonder bolts race through here”
“What about that statue outside?”
Scrap.
Thunder slowly turned his head back to the room the ponies were in, and set his sight upon three sets of eyes, all staring back at him. Without waiting for a reaction, he turned and bolted.
“IT WAS THE STATUE THE WHOLE TIME?” Inferno shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Raise the alarm! We don’t know what it took, but we can’t let it get away!” the stallion barked. The young filly pressed the alarm button, and charged out the door alongside Inferno, leaving only the stallion in the room. He looked all around the room before turning back to the console. Walking towards it, the stallion gave of a brief glow of green flame before change into his true appearance. He pulled a small device from under his insect like wings and stuck it into the computer, as the device did its dirty work; he pulled the microphone on his headset.
“This is Mirage” the changeling spoke. “I’m in.”
A voice crackled to life on the receiver. “Sooner than expected. I assume that the place was unguarded”
“Nope, I just took advantage of an opportunity”
Fluttershy knew that this was a terrible idea. Going into the Everfree forest was a bad idea, going in while the sun is barely up wasn’t an improvement. She hadn’t seen a trace of the person who went into the forest since the glimpse she caught of somepony yellow entering the forest. And now she was lost. The scariest part of all this was the only wildlife she had seen or heard since she entered the forest was a single crow that screeched at her before running away. This was even more terrifying than the time the Crusaders ran into the forest to look for Elizabeak.
“Is anypony out there?” she called out, hoping that she would be answered.
“AROOOOOOOOOO!”
“EEP!” Fluttershy whirled around in fright. Her usual irrational fear was justified as a Timberwolf flew over her head and shattered against a tree behind her. She shivered as she looked over the limp body of the wolf.
“Grrr…”
Fluttershy turned around to face the source of the noise. Through the bushes was a pair of glowing orange eyes. Fluttershy began to back away. The eyes started to move closer. Two large metal claws came out of the bushes along with a very angry wolf. It was smaller than the wolf it had thrown through the bushes, but it was twice as fearsome in appearance. It had three large glowing spikes jutting out of its back, and two steel spikes on either side of its mouth. It crouched down, slowly prowling toward her. Fluttershy began to panic, she tried to use the stare, but the wolf kept prowling toward her as she kept backing away. Finally, she decided to do the one thing anypony would do in this situation. Scream.
“HELP ME!”
The wolf lunged at her, and Fluttershy closed her eyes, fearing the worst.
*CLANG*
The sound of metal impacting against metal was heard. Fluttershy opened her eyes in a flash; the scene above her seemed like it was frozen in time. A yellow and grey bipedal figure with one large arm had kicked the wolf. Time began flowing normally, the wolf flew back and impacted against a tree, and her savior had landed just a few feet in front of her. The wolf slowly got to its feet, snarling at the being that had interrupted its hunt. The figure moved slowly. Fluttershy recognized it as a form of martial arts that rainbow dash practiced. The wolf wasted no time in trying to attack again. It lunged at the figure, who calmly responded with a swift kick aimed precisely at the metal wolfs throat. The wolf fell unceremoniously to the ground, and the figure bowed before turning to Fluttershy.
“Are you all right, Miss?” he asked, his voice calm and friendly. Fluttershy relaxed
“Oh yes, thank you so much…?”
“My name is Nathan Evo” the figure responded.
Rainbow dash woke up feeling cold and tired. While regular clouds are great and comfortable to sleep on, the storm clouds were damp and stiff. She stretched out her wings, both of which felt much better considering how she crashed the day before, though the small pangs of pain told her that she wouldn’t be able to pull off her stunts anytime soon. She looked around and saw Frostbite waking up.
“Morning.” Dash grumbled, rather cranky about the lack of sleep from last night. “Can you see yet?”
“Not quite, can you fly yet?” the stallion retorted, just as annoyed as he always sounded.
In response, the rainbow Pegasus took flight, hovering a few yards above the clouds. “In case you can’t see me, the answer is yes.”
“Well, do you have any idea where we are?”
She looked around. She swore there were not this many clouds when she fell asleep. Clouds covered the view of the land below. She looked towards the horizon and saw a tiny glimmer of color. She focused on it. She couldn’t make out a lot of details but her mind clicked and a flash of a familiar place filled her mind.
It was Cloudsdale.
“I can see Cloudsdale from here!” she shouted excitedly, all traces of her terrible night’s sleep forgotten. She flew back down to the storm clouds and started pushing the large mass of thunderclouds. “It’s about four miles away! It shouldn’t take more than an hour for us to get back!”
“Than what are we waiting for? Let’s move!”
“Uh… we kinda already are.”
“Oh.” Frostbite hung his head, feeling quite foolish. Several minutes passed before he picked his head up again. “What’s that buzzing noise?”
Rainbow dash perked an eyebrow. She didn’t hear anything. She glanced around and gave up after a moment. “Eh it’s probably just a fly.” Frostbite shrugged and tried to get some sleep. Rainbow dash was irked at the fact that she was saddled with all the work and he got to lounge around. It wasn’t long though before he woke up however. “It’s getting louder.”
“What?”
“The buzzing noise is getting louder.”
Rainbow dash looked around again. Still nothing other than Cloudsdale, still at least three miles away. “Dude, there’s nothing around for miles, you’re probably just hearing things.” Frostbite frowned and tried to get back to sleep. In less than a minute he bolted up and was looking… no listening all around.
“Dude! Seriously calm down-”
“You never looked up.”
“What-”
“This sort of situation happens all the time. Whenever this sort of thing happens, whoever is checking to make sure the coast is clear. Never. Looks. Up.”
“What are you even talking abou-”
“JUST LOOK UP FOR CELESTIA SAKE!”
Rainbow dash looked up right as a huge black hornet tore through the clump of storm clouds. She was flung into a nearby cloud only for the huge black hornet to disintegrate it as it flew by. She started to fly back up and shouted. “WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA YOU JERK!” She ducked her head just as the hornet tried to impale her head on its stinger. As the hornet flew back around to make a pass Rainbow Dash shouted again.
“All right you overgrown bug! You wanna fight!? BRING IT ON!”
“OW!”
“Oh take it easy bulk, it’s just a cracked core casing”
“See how easy it is for you to say?”
“Well if you stopped squirming, it would be just as easy to do.”
Applejack looked at the arguing heroes in front of her. After Twilight explained the orange figure’s presence and explaining how the gray one was smack dab in the middle of the apple orchard, she, Twilight, and the orange robot (apparently named Nex) were back at sweet apple acres, with the latter tending to the grey robot (named Bulk, apparently). She turned to Twilight. “So let me get this straight. That big flash of light was that star exploding, right?”
“Yes” the lavender mare said, staring at the two heroes still.
“And accordin to what the orange one said, happened to open a portal between his world and ours. Right at the time a whole bunch of bad guys break outta jail and escape through it.”
Twilight nodded again.
“And these heroes go after them, and they both wind up landing on our doorstep. And they’re whole reason for being here is to round up every single one of these troublemakers before they make a mess out of Equestria.”
“I find it just as hard for me to believe as you.”
“But it still is the third most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
They both turned their attention back to the two heroes. It looked like Nex was finishing up, so the two walked over.
“There. Was it really so hard for you to stop squirming”
Bulk stood up. “I’ve already had a close call with one core crisis; I don’t want to wind up needing a transplant.”
Nex rolled his eyes. “well, now that you’re fixed up, why don’t you introduce yourself?”
Bulk turned to the two ponies. “all right. My name is Dunkan Bulk, but just Bulk is fine.” He said, extending a hand toward them.
“Mah names’ Applejack” the orange earth pony said, clasping his hand between her hooves and shaking vigorously. Bulk shook his hand out after the earth pony’s rather energetic greeting.
“And my name is Twilight Sparkle, student of princess Celestia, and caretaker of the books and branches library in Ponyville.” She spoke, bowing her head slightly.
Nex chuckled slightly. “I think you and Twilight are gonna get along fine, considering how much reading you did at Quatros.”
Bulk visibly flinched at Nex’s teasing comments. “Nex what did I tell you about-”
*ka-boom*
Everyone started looking around for the source of the noise. “Is there a fireworks show going on?” Nex questioned A slight hint of eagerness in his voice.
Twilight sighed. “It’s probably Pinkie Pie; it would seem like something she would do…”
Bulk sighed a bit. “resident party animal?”
Applejack, in her best impression of her brother to date, responded. “Eeyup.”
Twilight Sparkle turned her head towards the steel gray hero. “I’m assuming your group of friends would have one.”
“Two”
Twilight widened her eyes a bit. She could imagine one pinkie pie being a handful, yet alone two. “how do you stand it?”
Bulk looked turned to face the purple unicorn. “One of them has been my friend as long as I can remember. The other… well.” He jerked his head towards Nex, who was still staring at the town in the distance. “I’m still getting used to.”
“I didn’t know fireworks could be pink!” Nex exclaimed.
Twilight looked at the firework Nex was looking at. It was a very familiar shade of pink, and was arcing down in their direction- “Duck and cover!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. Everyone dived away as the stray “firework” crashed down where Nex was standing moments before.
“WOO! THAT WAS SUPER DUPER INCREDIBLY AWSOME!” The pink party pony popped up from the small pit that was made upon her impact, rather oblivious from the panic her flight path produced.
“Pinkie Pie!” Twilight shouted “What in the name of Equestria were you thinking!?!”
“Oh, that wasn’t me silly filly, there was this big red porcupine-”
“Porcupine?” the two heroes repeated, before remembering the only villain in storage that could fit that description. “Xplode!”
Author's notes;
i apoligize for this chapter taking forever, i forgot to hit the publish button when i finished. :(
now, i will continue working on this fic during break, but im afraid i will have to pull "webcomic time" meaning that unfortunatly the will be no hearths warming eve episode
also, i will make sure that everyone knows the specific point of time this fic will take place in. it takes place between season two for the FIRST half of the fic. this is a two part story, and this half takes place specifically during summer and fall, however the second part will be during winter. yes there will be a winter wrap up, but don't expect it anytime soon. so until next chapter, farewell, comment, and rate whatever you feel like.