System recovery successful. Authorizing boot-up procedures. Initializing system diagnostic…
Minimal abdominal damage. No additional problems detected. Terminating hibernation.
I knew it! This was going to be a pattern! Starscream mused, excited that he had accurately predicted something, however bad for him the subject of his prediction was. Starscream’s optics activated, slowly bringing his surroundings into focus. The huge brown blob began to sharpen, revealing itself to be a wooden ceiling.
He sat up, finding himself to be on a large wooden table. How it supported his weight was beyond him, but he allowed surveying his new environment to take precedence.
It was a sort of library. Bookshelves adorned nearly the entirety of the circular room’s walls, only stopping to make way for a couple of windows, two doorways, a staircase up, a staircase down, and a fireplace. He was located on the side of the room opposite the lit fireplace, and about a quarter of the way around the room from one of the doors that appeared to lead outside.
Aside from the fireplace and a candle found on the large table occupying a good amount of the space in the center of the room, there were no other light sources. There was a window above him that was open. Peering through, he saw that it was nighttime.
Whoever owned this place was asleep, he inferred, providing an opportunity to escape if he so desired. Problem was, though, that he had many questions that he wanted answered, among them being where he was specifically.
But, hey! He was in a library; there ought to be books that’d help him obtain the information he wanted.
Swinging his legs over the side of the table, he carefully pushed himself off it and onto his hooves. Silence was his priority at this point, as he didn’t want to awake the owner and be a cause of alarm.
Though, by virtue of having been attacked, he was already a cause of alarm, so that was a lost cause. Oh well.
The floorboards remained relatively silent as he snuck by the nearby shelves, scanning them for any books of interest, more specifically, anything to let him know where he was and what to expect of the area.
His search yielded no results, and after a few minutes and going over a couple of shelves, he gave up. He kept his frustrations to himself, however.
Starscream’s gaze scanned the room again for anything of interest, eventually falling to the fireplace, where he observed the lulling and gentle flickering of the orange flames.
Thinking back, he had never really been in the presence of a controlled flame like that before. Sure, the torches back at the Hive bore flames, but they were an unnatural green that made them less alluring. Fire, to him, had always been a byproduct of conflict, death and destruction. It was a force that, during battles, none had bothered to quell, allowing it grow into raging infernos, provided it had the tinder to do so, before they died down on their own. Never, really, had he considered fire to be a thing of warmth and comfort. It was almost relaxing, though, to know that something so dangerous and unpredictable could be controlled and be made useful.
If only other dangerous and unpredictable things, like Galvatron, could be controlled and made useful. Oh well; what could one do but dream?
Snapping out of his introspection, Starscream returned to the immediate task at hand: finding out what happened to him. He looked past the table in the center of the room and to the table he had awoken on. Maybe he could play dead for a day and listen in on things. That would be a non-intrusive way of satisfying many of his inquiries.
However much he disliked lazing about, he agreed with himself that that would be a good course of action -or rather, inaction- to pursue. He made towards his table, passing by the table in the center and sparing it a glance as he did so.
On glancing at the table, he noticed that papers were strewn about it, all covered in writing and diagrams, along with a neat stack of weathered-looking paper placed randomly in the mess. Being in a library, pages of notes ought to be commonplace. He was about to ignore the mess, but another glimpse at one of the diagrams caught his attention. For good reason; the diagram was of him.
Starscream decided to take a closer look at the papers on the table; if they were about him, he had a right to know what they were. Grabbing the sheet containing the diagram, he inspected it.
The specific diagrams were merely measurements of various parts of his body, including his wings, legs, and thrusters, as well has his overall length and height. The drawings, though, were elegantly and precisely drawn, with the actual measurements recorded in some sort of elaborate penmanship.
All in all, he wasn’t exactly interested in that particular document. Setting it aside, he grabbed another sheet so as to take a look at it. The first line was all that was needed to convince him to continue reading:
Dear Princess Celestia,
Not more than an hour ago, Rainbow Dash was helping me get accustomed to my wings and with flying out in one of Ponyville’s southern fields, when we heard something loud approach and pass us. I was unable to see the thing, but Rainbow Dash did, and she, for some reason, pursued it. I chastised Rainbow Dash later.
I don’t know the details of what transpired, but in the end, the item had crash landed in the area of Ponyville Lake. Rainbow Dash was near the fallen form when I arrived, prodding at its unmoving form. This was when I chastised Rainbow Dash.
It looked much like a pony, though it was made entirely of metal and had a few minor differences in structure. There was a gaping hole in what I presumed to be its chest, and other parts of it looked banged up. I assume that it’s a machine and was damaged by the landing.
I would like your permission to study this thing, as well as your advice on how to handle this situation. However, I don’t know if it is dangerous or not, so I can understand if you’d rather be cautious about handling this development. Please respond quickly.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
I ought to find this Twilight Sparkle, then, as she -or, I at least assume it’s a she- has connections with Celestia, thought Starscream as he set the letter aside. For some reason, he was interested in figuring out what Celestia’s response was, so he grabbed sheets at random, skimming through them long enough to see if it was the document he wanted. Discarding the pages that weren’t the response, it was only a couple of pages in before he found the document that he was looking for.
Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,
Firstly, I would like to remind you that you are a princess now, Twilight, and not my student. I know it’s a new and likely uncomfortable experience for you, but know that I have the utmost faith that you will succeed.
Secondly, hearing of this incident is perturbing news. Mechanical creatures are not a sight seen in Equestria every day. Now, while I would not like to associate with this machine, it is, perhaps, for the best if we were to study it. Make your primary goal to repair it and find its place of origin. Hopefully, we will be able to send it back in working condition before somepony becomes angry and searches for it.
As you are an Element of Harmony and have the other Elements nearby, it is best for the machine to remain with you. Try to have at least one of the others with you as often as possible, and be ready to retaliate if it is hostile. We shall allow the dealings with this mechanical pony to be your first responsibility as a princess.
Good luck, my little pony,
Princess Celestia
There were no dates on the letters, he noticed; nothing to give him any sort of sense of how long he had been out. Curious about this, and about what details this Twilight Sparkle may have learned by studying him, he rummaged through the other pages on the table, reading each one in its entirety. Twilight’s notes were very lengthy and detailed, and he spent a hefty amount of time reading through them, finding out only a few things as a result.
Apparently, any racket he had caused had been forgotten by the town after a couple of days, as Twilight reported that ‘nopony’ had come to bother her about him after about the fourth day. She made many notes about his anatomy, namely about his thrusters and the fins that jutted out of his rear knees, and was clearly stumped as to how they related to the roughly triangular flying thing Rainbow Dash had reported seeing. As he neared the end of the notes, though, he found that he had learned next to nothing about his situation.
Some time passed before he had finally reached the note page for day sixteen. In this report, Twilight made mention of finding panels on Starscream that revealed his inner workings, except for one, his cockpit, that had a small stack of rolled up and abused paper inside. She recalled that she identified the papers as a mix between schematics and a set of instructions, and made the connection that the part detailed on the paper was the hole in Starscream’s chest.
Before continuing, Starscream looked over the table, locating the stack of worn paper he had noticed earlier. He reached over and lifted up the top sheet from the stack, immediately recognizing the writing that was revealed on the underside. They were the schematics he had drawn for Ivy. He didn’t know whether to feel violated that someone had be prodding around inside of him without his knowledge, or glad that they found those.
There were more important things to worry about, though, and Starscream resumed reading.
Twilight’s report continued on, saying that she had brought over another pony by the name of Rarity to assist her in making repairs. He had seen the name brought up in a couple of past day’s notes, apparently helpful due to her magic, drawing skills, ability to interpret drawings, and attention to detail. Together, they had managed to solder together the ends of his broken wires using dragon fire and had recoated the fixed wires in a new layer of rubber.
As he read, his hoof idly wandered down to his wound, where he was surprised to find the hole had been covered. Looking down, what looked like a small piece of sheet metal that had been bent to match his curvature had been fastened on over the hole with...well, duct tape wasn’t the worst thing to use, he supposed.
He peeled the metal away like it was a bandage and tried to get a look at the damage. It was hard to get a good view, but he managed to see a couple of wires that he recognized as ones that had been broken, but were now fixed. He smiled, re-adhered the sheet metal and went to resume reading.
Just then, a sound like that of someone stumbling came from the staircase near him. Starscream jumped to his hooves, making himself ready to draw his sword, and turned to face the stairwell. There, he saw a lavender pony correcting itself after an apparent misstep. Its mane was straight and went down to it’s shoulders, it’s color a shade of dark purple with a stripe of pink and one of a light purple. A short horn protruded from its forehead, and on its back were a pair of wings. As the pony looked over him, he could see a multitude of emotions cross its face, ranging from obviously justifiable surprise and fear to what seemed to be excitement.
While the pony didn’t seem to be reacting to him in what could be described as a hostile manner, a paranoid and scared part of his mind pervaded. The pony took a cautious step down, and Starscream backed up, bringing his sword out and pointing it at the pony.
Yelping, the pony retreated back a couple of steps, but it looked otherwise unfazed. “It’s alright,” the pony whispered to him, “I’m not going to hurt you. Please, put the weapon away; there’s no need for it.”
And truly there was no need for it. Complying, Starscream shamefully lowered the weapon to the ground. What am I doing? he berated himself. I need connections with these guys; pointing weapons at them certainly doesn’t help.
The pony slowly inched closer. Starscream sighed, reverting his sword back into his wing, and gave the pony as apologetic a look as he could muster. Surprisingly, the pony didn’t appear upset about what he had just done. “Do you speak?” the pony asked him as it neared.
“How long were you watching me?”
“Oh, you do speak!” the pony exclaimed, giddy with excitement. “I mean, you were reading my notes, so I guess it was obvious that you understood my language, but to know that you can actually speak it, that’s just-”
Interrupting its rambling, Starscream asked again, “How long were you watching me?”
“Um, about twenty minutes, I’d guess,” the pony answered as it made its way to the desk to reorganize the scattered papers. “Of course, when you’ve been harboring something for almost three weeks without getting it to work, and then to wake up to see it reading your notes on it, you can understand my hesitation to come out immediately.”
Starscream’s attention had been drawn to the window as the pony spoke. The sun was just coming over the horizon, indicating that it was very early morning. Had I really been reading for that long?
“What’s going on down here?” another voice said, finishing its statement with a yawn. Both Starscream and the pony turned to face the newcomer, a small, scaly, purple, bipedal creature, as it made its way down the stairs. It was rubbing its eyes tiredly, but when finished, its eyes locked onto Starscream. “Oh,” it said with a surprising amount of disinterest, “Golem’s finally awake?”
“Yes, Spike, it is,” answered the pony. “Did we wake you up?”
“Sure did,” the one called Spike responded, yawning again.
“I’m sorry about that. But, everything’s good down here, so you can go back to bed if you’d like.”
With a shrug, the scaly creature began trudging back up the steps to return to sleep. Once it passed the slight curve in the staircase and out of sight, Starscream returned his focus to the pony. “Golem?” he asked simply.
Looking back to Starscream, the pony replied, “We needed something to refer to you as, and as we obviously couldn’t ask you ourselves, I decided to codename you Golem. Speaking of names, I should introduce myself.” It offered a hoof for shaking. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, librarian of the Golden Oaks Library, and, um, well, a princess of Equestria.”
“You don’t seem comfortable introducing yourself as that,” Starscream noted as he hesitantly shook the offered hoof.
“I’m not, really,” Twilight admitted. “This whole princess thing was pushed onto me less than a month ago, but Princess Celestia has been very helpful with the transition and hasn’t give me too many responsibilities immediately. But I don’t think you’d be too interested in that. Do you have a name?”
“I’m Starscream. I’m a…” He paused, trying to find a suitable word to describe him. “I’m a messenger,” he finally settled on calling himself.
“Starscream…” she repeated, bringing a hoof to her chin. “Quite the exotic name; I like it. I’m sure Luna would, too. Do you mind if I ask who the message you’re carrying is for, and who it’s from?”
Starscream stayed silent, contemplating. Sharing who the message was for couldn’t hurt, but there was no need to bring Chrysalis into the equation yet. “The message is for Princess Celestia, and for her alone. I cannot divulge the message’s origins.”
“I see,” Twilight mused. “Well, Celestia has instructed me to handle any proceedings with you, so you may have to share it with me instead. However, I think it’s much too early to be discussing any type of business. We should get to know each other a little better; I’m sure you’ve got many questions, and I know I’ve got many for you. Should we chat over some breakfast?”
Not seeing much other choice in the matter Starscream agreed. Twilight prepared a breakfast of some sort for herself after he politely explained that he didn’t eat, and they began their lengthy discussion. As his host was occupied with eating, Starscream took the initiative and began speaking, giving a simple explanation of what he was, a transformer, and where he was from, Cybertron. For time’s sake and to make himself appear better, he didn’t mention anything about the Autobots and Decepticons. He further explained that, in an effort to stop a world ending threat, he had died, and for reasons unknown to him, had been resurrected on the planet he was on now.
During that time, Spike had reawakened and came back downstairs, fetching breakfast for himself and listening in to Starscream’s story. The little guy really didn’t seem all too impressed by Starscream’s presence, which baffled him slightly.
Fortunately, Twilight finished eating allowed him to stop speaking then, eliminating the need to go into anything with the changelings, and opened herself up for questions. He surprised himself by having only one: “When can I see Celestia?”
“Nopony can just go see Celestia without any type of appointment, unless there are special circumstances, which happen much too often around here,” Twilight answered, and Spike said a muffled agreement through a face full of gems. “However,” she continued, “as I’m sure you read as you peeked through my stuff, Celestia instructed me to handle you, meaning that anything you need to say to her can be directed to me as well, and would probably be faster.”
Though mildly annoyed, he wasn’t going to argue with a rightful ruler of the kingdom that he had just invaded. For now, playing along would be the best option. He’d get to Celestia eventually.
Letting it drop for now, Starscream tried to think of something else to converse about. The universe, it seemed, had this covered for him. Something smashed through the window behind him and smashed into his back with sizeable force, though he remained mostly unmoved. He twisted to see what it was that had run into him and the window, which was completely fine, somehow.
Laying on the ground behind him, looking somewhat dazed from the impact, was a cyan pony with wings and an unkempt rainbow streaked mane. No, it was the cyan pony with wings and unkempt rainbow streaked mane.
“Ow! Twilight, since when did you have a wall there?” it asked in a grating, raspy voice that Starscream had the misfortune to recognize. The pony shook its head, clearing itself of any lingering effects of the impact, before looking upon the object that it had collided into.
Recognition flashed across the pony’s face, and one simple word escaped its lips: “Oh…”