Rainbow dash had always liked to look at the stars. Not that she would ever admit it, of course, because stargazing was most definitely for eggheads like Twilight. But somehow, many nights, she had found herself outside; sitting on a cloud and peering at the billions of twinkling gems suspended in the sky. She wondered how Luna kept up with it all. She didn’t know any of the constellations or names of the stars (most of which were just long strings of numbers and letters sometimes followed by a “beta” or “alpha” anyway), but she knew that the knowledge would be wasted; her love for the stars was entirely unscientific. Again, leave that stuff to Twi.
Tonight, once again, she had snuck out and flown silently to a large cloud floating beside her house, taking care to make sure nopony saw her. She laid on her back, her rainbow mane flapping lightly in the breeze.
“Ooh, a shooting star!” She exclaimed after a few minutes of watching the heavens, pointing to the streak of light with a cyan hoof. She watched it as it traveled across the sky, then blinked out as it left the atmosphere.
“Another one!” She giggled, following the next with her eyes as it crossed the sky. But unlike the first, it didn’t extinguish itself as it escaped the atmosphere or was vaporized by the heat of reentry. Instead, this one seemed to grow larger by the second.
Dash sat up, watching as the once-innocent little light turned into a raging ball of fire. She gasped, then screamed as it hurdled high over her cloud, streaking past her and towards the everfree forest where it collided with a resounding Boom, causing the world to shake and spitting up a massive cloud of dust and smoke as it skidded a mile and a half before finally coming to a halt with a loud Crunch. It had left a trail of smoke in the sky, and the giant trench it had carved into the ground was surrounded by broken and burning trees. The object itself was obviously on fire, with smaller explosions riddling its body as pieces flew off into the now smoldering forest.
She looked down, watching the town came to life below her as ponies turned on their lights and shouted to their neighbors. “I have got to see this for myself,” she stated before taking off and zooming towards the crash site.
*****
Twilight had watched the meteor touch down in... Or rather, through the Everfree forest. She had known it was coming through the use of her telescope, but had apparently figured its trajectory incorrectly... It was supposed to vaporize in the air over the sea east of Baltimare, miles away, not touch down at an angle in the Everfree forest!
“Oh well,” she sighed. She had already seen the object change its course and left the Library to watch it. Spike had begged her to let him come along, and she had eventually given in. The baby dragon was currently positioned atop her back as she walked towards the planned impact site.
They were standing at the edge of the Everfree when it made impact. She had expected it to be going a bit faster, and thus burn up in the atmosphere, but she could definitely say that she had been wrong. She was knocked off her feet when the object hit the ground, flinging Spike off of her as they both covered their ears from the massive Boom that resonated through the air. A couple seconds later, a sickening Crunch came, sounding slightly farther off. Twilight picked herself up and began to run, grabbing spike and her saddlebag from the ground as she went.
A few minutes into the trek, something streaked over their heads, causing them to look up and watch as a blue pegasus flashed by in a blaze of rainbow colors. “Oh man, Twi, do you think she’s gonna do something dangerous?” Asked the reptile, clinging on to his Owner’s shoulders as she dodged trees and branches that had grown along the path. Twilight answered by increasing her speed, running in an all-out sprint as she feared for her friend’s safety.
Soon, smoke filled their nostrils as they neared the burning wreckage of the object; which now appeared to be metallic in nature and... Definitely not a normal meteor. “Oh wow,” spike gasped, staring up at the strange artifact, and Twilight couldn’t blame him. For one, it was obviously pony-made... It was constructed entirely of a metal of some sort, with long blue windows lining the sides. Besides that, it was huge. It was far larger than any single piece of meteor debris could logically have been, considering the fact that most of it should have been incinerated by the heat of entry. For a naturally occurring spacerock to have survived impact with a body so large left, it would have had to have been many hundreds of times larger initially, and would have contained enough kinetic energy to level half of Equestria by the time it hit the ground.
Twilight spotted Dash, standing around 50 feet or so from the raging inferno. “Rainbow!” She called out to her, cupping her hooves to her mouth as she did so. “Get back here!” The cerulean pegasus seemed to hear her, and heeded her words as she backed away from the wreckage. They stood together, staring at it for a few minutes before Twilight turned toward Spike, levitating a quill and some parchment from her saddlebags as she did so.
“Spike?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to take a letter for Celestia.”
The tiny dragon had grabbed the writing utensils and was about to begin scribbling when a chariot flew overhead, accompanied by several squadrons of gold-clad pegasi and a few squads of armored earth-ponies carried in airborne carts pulled by yet more pegasi. Twilight, Rainbow, and Spike all gasped in awe as troops swarmed around the metallic object, and the princesses stepped out of the gold-adorned chariot.
Celestia nodded her head to the two out-of-place ponies and even more out-of-place dragon in the sea of gold-and-black armor-clad guards and soldiers and quickly constructing caution tape. Twilight was about to ask how she had gotten there so quickly when Celestia cut her off, providing an answer to her unasked question.
“Luna spotted the object and told me it would land here,” she stated calmly, her voice soothing the three. “We came to see it because we noticed it had changed its path... It seems like we were not mistaken.”
“What do you mean, princess?” Asked Spike, scratching his head with a single pointed claw.
“It appears that this object is not natural, nor does it seem to be pony-crafted,” she soothed, “and it also appears to have slowed itself down during its fall.”
The three gasped, the implications of the statement settling themselves inside their minds. The strange object wasn’t natural; and it had changed its course to save itself from complete destruction.
This explains why my prediction was off, Twilight noted with a satisfied grin before her pulse quickened as she realized that she was in the middle of one of the single most important events in Equestrian history... First contact! Well, that is, she thought, if any of the aliens she assumed were onboard had survived the crash.
The group’s revelations, though, were cut off as a squad of 5 ponies in full, yellow hazard suits and gas masks approached the still-burning object, hammers, crowbars, and hacksaws in hoof.
Under the princess’ supervision, they banged on the vessel with their hooves until they found a suitably hollow area. Then, they began to cut a hole in the side of the ship, as the guardsponies pushed Twilight, Rainbow, and Spike back away from the scene.
“Be safe, my little ponies, we can’t risk having you here.” Called Celestia over the din, as the three were pushed back away from the wreckage, their view restricted by the guards stationed in front of them.