My Little Commander
Part One: Equestrian Dawn
Chapter One
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Dear Princess Celestia,
Today I have learned tha
A sudden crash made Twilight Sparkle jump, the quill she was using in her letter making a massive splotch on the parchment she was using. She looked around, almost half expecting that Rainbow Dash had somehow crashed into the library… again. But, except for a few books that had tumbled from their properly assigned spots, nothing else seemed to be out of the ordinary; Spike was sleeping, the books she was studying through were still in a neat pile (though on page had turned on her during the crash. A quick spell turned it back for her, though).
The violet unicorn pony sighed, before returning back to her letter. Or, rather, the mess that her letter had become due to the sudden distraction. Sighing again, she summoned another piece of parchment from the pile next to her desk, magically setting it down in front of her. Using her horn, Twilight starting writing again.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Today I ha
Yet another crash echoed through the library. This time, Twilight was lucky enough that her quill didn’t land on the paper, ruining another letter.
Nope. It landed on her muzzle, spilling the black ink on her face.
“Oh for the…” she growled, grabbing a cloth with her magic and wiping her face off before turning around to see a wide-eyed Applejack and Rainbow Dash panting heavily inside her door.
“Twilight, ya’ll got a come quick!” the orange colored earth pony gasped in her thick accent.
“Something just crashed into Sweet Apple Acres!” Rainbow exclaimed.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Are you sure it just wasn’t a, you know, apple?” she replied sarcastically.
Both shook their heads quickly. “No! Ah saw it come from the sky!” AJ replied. “So fast ya’ll have no idea! Faster than Rainbow Dash!”
“Ya! It…” the blue Pegasus pony started, before realizing the trap that the farmer had set for her. “I’ll get you for that,” she muttered.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Alright, let’s go see what it is then.”
Rainbow and Applejack immediately dashed off, running and flying as fast as they could back to the farm. Despite the urgency of the matter, they still couldn’t put aside their differences long enough to not race each other.
When they arrived, they saw Twilight already standing near the rather large crater in the middle of the apple orchard, near the small river than ran through it.
“How did ya’ll get her so fast?” AJ asked, panting heavily.
“You forget that I’m a unicorn, right?” she said, turning away from the crater. “One that can teleport?”
Applejack sheepishly chuckles. “Ah, ya, that…”
But Twilight had already turned back to the hole in the ground. She continued to study it for a good while, before at last turning around back to her other two friends.
“Well, what we got here is a meteor,” the studious pony stated, “just a lump of rock from outer space that managed to survive going through the atmosphere and embedded itself in your field, Applejack.”
“So, nothing dangerous then?” Applejack quizzed her magical friend. “Nothing that should harm mah apples?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Though maybe checking again later might not hurt. It is still hot from the re-entry into the atmosphere, so staying away would be a good idea until tomorrow.” Twilight started to trot past her friends back toward Ponyville. “Now, if you excuse me, I got a letter to write.”
“I still think it wasn’t as fast as me…” Rainbow grumbled, crossing her front legs together while still hovering above the ground as Twilight walked away.
“And Ah think you’r jealous that a big rock from space is faster than ya’ll!” Applejack shot back.
“Oh cm'on, I was clearly at 20 percent faster!”
The orange pony rolled her eyes, flipping her tied ponytail. “As if!”
The two continued to argue for the rest of the night.
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The sun was slowly working its way out of the west when Applejack yawned and stretched from her sleep. Waking up, she clip-clopped her way down stairs of the large, homely farmhouse she resided in with her family, and walked out to start another day of farm work, grabbing an apple with her teeth to munch on while she went about her morning chores. She looked up to see a kinda cloudy day above. Looks like Rainbow Dash slept in... again.
She wandered her way through the large orchards that surrounded the homestead of the Apple family, humming to herself as she did so, looking for any apple trees that might need some more proper TLC than what they usually got. She was looking at one tree near the entrance to the farm, when she heard singing. And that singing could only be from one pony.
Applejack looked down the road toward Ponyville, and chuckled as she saw Pinkie Pie bounding her way down the road. The permanent smile on her face seemed much brighter than usual (if that was possible, Applejack thought), and she had her side bags with her. Which, when putting two and two together, could only mean one thing…
Pinkie Pie continued to sing as she bounded up along the road toward Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack stepped out from the orchard as Pinkie came up, stopping the bouncy pony in her tracks.
Before the farmer could get a word in, Pinkie Pie exclaimed; “Hi Applejack! Just the pony I was looking for! I was going to bake some desserts for a party tonight, but we were all out of apples for Sugarcube Corner, and since no one else in town has a food cart open yet, which is kind of confusing because then how would the ponies who have to work in the night get food if they can’t go to a cart, unless they bring their own food, but then how would they carry it, unless they have a bag like I do…”
Applejack tried to continue following the one way conversation, but everything after that seemed to go into a downhill spiral, though she did manage to pick out “cloud,” “fudge,” “baseball bat” and “piano” from the seemingly random conversation, until at last Pinkie Pie stopped and took a deep breath.
“…and so, to make sure no one can screw up Halloween, I’ve come to ask for some apples!” she finished, smiling at the confused Applejack.
“Uh, yah, shure thing Pinkie Pie,” the orange pony drawled, her mind still spinning from the complete randomness (or was it?) that Pinkie Pie blabbered out. “If ya’ll just come in, Ah’m shure I can getcha some apples for your… thing.”
“Yay! Thank you Applejack! You know you are the best friend a pony can have! Much like…” Pinkie Pie started again before she stopped, starring wide eyed toward the center of the orchard. “Um, did you dress up your trees with those shiny green gems?”
“What gems? I don’t have time to use gems on my trees,” Applejack started, but Pinkie placed a hoof on her friends head and turned it toward where the exuberant pony was talking about.
Applejack’s jaw dropped at the sight. From where the little crater that Dash, Twilight and herself had investigated last night, shimmering green crystals seemed to have grown out of it, covering the ground and the some of the trees surrounding it. The green crystals shimmered in the light, dazzling the two ponies standing on the hill.
To Pinkie Pie, the dazzling display below her was too good to pass up. “You know what? I think I’ll just take some of those gems!”
Before she can bound off Applejack pulls on her tail, making Pinkie, in mid leap, fall to the ground. “Hold on there, Pardner,” she said. “I was talkin’ with Twilight last night, and she said it might be best to leave it alone for now.”
Pinkie Pie laughed. “Oh, come on, how bad could it be?”
Applejack looked back to the outgrowth of those strange crystals, and back to Pinkie Pie, before sighing. “Alright, I guess ya’ll can have it if ya want.”
The Pink pony leaped straight into the air, an expression of joy on her face. “You mean it? Yay!” she said. “Thanks a lot!” Before Applejack could reply, she was already on her way to the green crystals, and when the farmer pony looked again later, the bubbly party thrower was still gathering a bunch with her hooves and putting them in her side bags.
As the day passed, Applejack continued looking through the apple orchards, looking at all the apples that were almost ready for Applebucking. But as she got closer to where the crater was, she started to notice that the grass seemed to be browner, while the leaves on the trees were already starting to fall, though it was nowhere near time for autumn. She was growing concerned, especially when she started to notice that those green crystals were sprouting up a fair distance away from the impact zone.
“I wonder how Pinkie Pie is doin’,” she thought. “She shure has been takin’ her time with pickin’ those gems.”
She at last reached the impact zone, and froze in her footsteps. Her friend was on the ground, surrounded by the green crystals. She looked like she was unconscious and was still breathing, but that was almost the only thing she could recognize.
For one thing, her pink coat and mane was now spot-marked with green crystals growing out of her. The cutie mark on her flank had also changed: the balloons that curled up on her was now green, and shined just like the rest of the mysterious substance. Her coat also now had a more green tinge to it, though it was still identifiable as pink. Somewhat. Applejack was stunned: Twilight said that the meteor was okay… right? Yet, here, in front of her very eyes, was one of her best friends, with the green stuff growing out of her.
This was not good.
Not good at all.
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Twilight hurriedly flipped throw book after book, tossing each one behind her as she was done. The little purple and green dragon Spike, her assistant, was running around, trying to clean up the ever increasing mess of haphazardly thrown books all around. She had been doing this for what seemed like forever, as the sun was starting to set in the east, and she had started since mid-afternoon the day before. Sometimes Spike was not sure if Twilight ever slept.
“No… no… no… no…” the unicorn pony kept muttering as she leafed through each book.
“Um, Twilight, what are you doing?” Spike at last asked.
“No…no… no… NO!” she growled, gritting her teeth together. “I can’t find anything about this!”
Spike still looked at the violet unicorn, using her magic to pull yet more books down from the shelves all around her, trying to find SOMETHING.
“What’s wrong Twilight?” Spike asked again.
“Pinkie Pie is really sick, and something is happening to her that is impossible, and something weird is growing throughout Sweet Apple Acres. No one seems to know what it is. And it looks like Applejack is coming down with the same thing as well!” Twilight barked out in frustration. “And I can’t find a single thing about it!”
Spike scratched his head. “Well, what if it’s a new thing?”
Twilight turned around, her mane in a mess, bags under her eyes from over 24 hours of no sleep. “It makes no sense! How can a meteor have managed to make it here do this? It makes absolutely no sense at all!”
Spike was about say something when he paused, and with a belch a scroll appeared, with Princess Celestia’s seal on it. The baby dragon catches the scroll before it could land on the floor, and reads it out loud to Twilight:
My Faithful Student Twilight Sparkle,
I’m sorry to hear of your friends Pinkie Pie and Applejack, and the apparent sickness they are currently experiencing. Many such reports have come into Canterlot in the past few days, and, from what I hear, your friends are lucky to have not died from the exposure to this mysterious element.
However, no information exists as to this mysterious substance in the Royal Library. It seems as if nothing had ever happened like this before. But the smartest ponies in all of Equestria have come together, and have found out a few things about this substance;
First, it appears to be taking the minerals and materials from the ground and converting it into the green crystals, and growing at very fast rates. Experiments have shown that the crystals can be broken down and refined into usable materials. They are currently working on methods to do this on a large scale.
Second, it is very, very dangerous. The crystals seem to merge with the body of any pony, and any plant substance it comes in contact with, turning the host into more of the green crystals, sometimes resulting in their death, but other times mutating them, like with your friends. It also emits highly poisonous gases, so all contact should be avoided.
Twilight, I must ask you to please do your best to keep calm in Ponyville. This substance, though highly dangerous, also has valuable properties as well. Our scienponies need more time to research it before we can confront the problem.
Also, they have given it a name. Due to some of the first reports coming from the area of the Tiberony River area, they have named it Tiberium.
Further information will be sent when more is learned.
Your teacher,
Princess Celestia
Spike looked up from the letter to see Twilight standing in shock, looking out the window of the library toward Sweet Apple Acres, and the soft green glow emanating from one of its orchards, much larger than it was but just a few days before when Pinkie Pie and Applejack first got sick.
She at last sighed, and looked away. Twilight glumly climbed down from the window, and slipped out into the night, most likely heading for the hospital, where both Applejack and Pinkie Pie where in, isolated from the other patients.
And they were not going to be the only ones, sadly. Twilight was almost certain that this problem wasn’t one Friendship could solve. So what could?