"I mean, come on! From the top it looked a like a regular tree! You can't blame me for trying to land in a tree!" Qwark reasoned.
"I totally can! You just ruined HOURS of book stacking...whatever you are!" A small purple dragon with green spines was fuming at him.
Qwark had just crashed through the tree. Not into and out to the side, straight THROUGH...to the bottom...onto a table. It was almost like he picked the only tree that was hallowed out and turned into a library. Who even DOES that? Why didn't they just put those books in a regular boring old public building, anyway?
"What I am? Don't you mean who I am, little guy?" Qwark asked.
"Stop calling me that! The name is SPIKE!" Spike huffed.
"I'll call you that as soon as you stop calling me the Green Giant, kiddo!" Qwark retorted.
"Alright, just WHAT is going on in here?"
A purple pony rushed in from the front door. Spike turned to acknowledge her while Qwark continued to stare at the little dragon. Usually kids like him would be running up to him asking for autographs when he made a grand heroic entrance...like he just did.
Spike spoke up first. "Twilight! This Green Giant minotaur-looking thing just crashed into the library!"
"Minotaur? Kid, I'm not some mythological creature! Hah, next thing I know you'll be telling me that unicorns exist!"
Qwark felt a burning gaze fall upon him, and he turned to see the purple pony called Twilight glaring at him...hard. They had a horn on their head...and were those wings on its sides? There were flying unicorns here?!
Eh, he'd seen worse from the inside of a Protopet before. It wasn't THAT odd to him now that he thought about it.
"Uh...I'm sure there's been some huge misunderstanding here. I'm Captain Qwark, galactic superhero...and former president!" he said, striking a buff pose.
Twilight's eyes faded from anger and into starry wonder. "A...galactic superhero?"
"That's right, little purple pony! I've saved the Solana galaxy from countless threats and abominations that dared to disturb the peace...and I've taken down a few with one hand tied behind my back."
"Hand? What's a hand?" Spike asked.
Qwark stared blankly at the dragon. How did they not know what a HAND was?! Even he knew what a hand was, and it only took him four years to figure that out!
Qwark realized that would be difficult to explain though, especially coming from him. He thought for a minute, then asked a simple question.
"Uh...you got any crayons?"
-----------------------------
Nefarious crashed into one of the buildings over in the floating city on the clouds. He surmised that landing on the ground was a bad idea given his thin, lanky metal frame that constantly needed readjustments from Lawrence.
His crash landing hadn't gone unnoticed, however. His red eyes looked past the rubble he landed in and saw ponies. Tons of squishy, winged ponies staring at him.
He didn't like those overly large eyes staring at him. Not one bit.
"What are you squishies staring at?! RUN! Be in TERROR!" he yelled as he burst out from the rubble, claws extended in the air menacingly.
They all fled, as expected. Nefarious smirked, and proudly took a step out of the rubble and onto the clouds they walked on.
He promptly fell right through.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." He screamed as he fell...but then he remembered he still had jet-powered feet. He activated the thrusters and stopped his descent, then rose back up to the cloudy city.
He thought for a minute. Why didn't he use those earlier when he was falling?! Lawrence could have told him that he could do that!
AAAAGH! That's it! He needed Lawrence NOW!
"Lawrence!" Nefarious called out. No response. This irritated him.
"LAWRENCE!" Again, no response came. He sighed before saying Lawrence's name one last time.
"Lawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeence!"
Lawrence's hologram finally appeared. "How can I be of assistance?"
"Lawrence! Where are y-" Nefarious began, but Lawrence interrupted.
"Just kidding! You've reached my holographic voicemail. Leave your name and a brief message. Ta ta!"
"AAAGH!" Nefarious screamed in frustration, dismissing the hologram and throwing his metal claws into the air in balled fists. "Useless butler!"
With Lawrence unable to be contacted, Nefarious resolved to...ugh...ask one of the squishy ponies where he was. He floated around looking for a pony to talk to that he hadn't already scared off earlier.
Turns out a pony would find him first as a grey mare slammed into him from above and sent them both through the clouds.
Again he activated his thrusters to stop them both from falling as he looked at the grey pony in his claws. She had a blonde mane and tail, and there were pictures of bubbles on her flank.
Nefarious was baffled. Why did this squishy have bubbles on her butt?! What did that even mean?
The pony then turned her head to look at him, and he saw the strangest eyes looking back at him..or was it one eye? The other eye was off doing something else entirely, and Nefarious had an odd feeling in the back of his mechanical brain. Sympathy.
He remembered Ratchet's grenade scarring his face, and how one of his eyes got loose after the blast. That was a bad memory he didn't want to resurface.
Nefarious decided this pony was worth talking to after all. He'd consider annihilating her last if he had the chance.
"You, squishy, where am I?" Nefarious asked.
She didn't appear to hear his question, for out of the blue, she hugged him. "Oh, thank you thank you thank you!"
Nefarious didn't quite know how to respond to this. He considered getting angry, but remembered his Fongoid anger management classes. Getting angry now would probably drive them away, and he needed information. But...how to respond?
"You're...welcome?" Nefarious tasted rust in his mouth. That hurt for him to say, but he quickly regained his composure by slowly pulling the pony off of him, holding them in the air.
"Now, I'll ask again, squishy. Where am I?"
"Oh, well, you're in Cloudsdale! And my name's not 'squishy,' it's Derpy. Derpy Hooves."
Derpy?! Suddenly he thought 'squishy' was doing them a favor. He resolved to call them by their name now.
"Alright...Derpy, is that the name of this flying city?"
"It sure is!" Derpy exclaimed.
"Well, what's the name of this...world, then?"
-----------------------------
Lawrence had landed in a castle after crashing through some decorative glass. Surprisingly, he came to little harm after the impact. His rotund body was naturally somewhat rubbery, so he bounced around for a bit before stopping and coming to his feet.
He dusted himself off and observed his surroundings. He had landed in a very ornate-looking throne room. Not quite as fancy as some he had designed begrudgingly for Doctor Nefarious, but it had met his standards.
He turned around and saw a white pony wearing golden regalia upon them. He surmised that they were the ruler of this castle, if not the town he landed in, and decided to play it cool...for now.
He gracefully bowed and returned to his usual neutral pose with his arms at his sides, standing up straight and tall.
"Greetings, madam. Might I ask where I've landed?"
"Freeze!" came a shout from another pony. In a moment, Lawrence was surrounded by a group of ponies clad in golden armor.
Golden armor? He had hoped the gold was merely decorative, because it was hideous armor to wear otherwise.
They had also pointed spears at him. Lawrence resisted the urge to smile, instead stating a rather obvious fact to him, if not them.
"Please, put those away. You'll scuff my suit," Lawrence stated.
"Keep your hooves where we can see them!" Another guard called out to the strange robotic figure.
Lawrence mused at the term they used to describe his hands. He wisely raised his hands up in the air, indicating surrender.
The royal-looking pony spoke loud enough so the guards surrounding Lawrence could hear. "Weapons away, my Sun Guard. I can handle things from here."
The Sun Guard were wary, but put away their spears and gave Lawrence some space as the regal pony left her throne to approach him.
Her question was simple, but firm. "What are you?"
"A butler, madam. My name is Lawrence."
"And I'm Princess Celestia...but you don't look like any butler I've seen. That also sounds more like your occupation, not what you actually are."
Lawrence registered her title. A princess? These ponies were truly medieval.
"Oh, sorry. Didn't know you asked it in THAT sense. I'm a robot then, built to be a butler."
"A robot?" Celestia tilted her head. "What's a...robot?"
Lawrence rubbed the spot where his temple would be. This would be a long explanation for ponies that clearly have shown themselves to already be technologically inferior.
-------------------------
Qwark took two hours to draw a vague explanation of a hand. Turns out he was a terrible teacher, as his explanation just seemed to confuse Twilight and Spike even further. Almost giving up, he tried the simplest explanation he could think of.
"They're things that let me do things that you can't do with your hooves."
"Like what?" Twilight asked.
Qwark thought for a moment. How was he going to show that?
An idea hit him. He reached into his buttock pocket and pulled out his blaster.
Er, he thought it was his blaster. It was his Pocket Crotchitizer.
Twilight "oohed" at the strange device he pulled out, not knowing what it was, but being mystified by it all the same.
Meanwhile, Qwark was having a mental dilemma, the worst possible battle he could ever fight. He had to be very gentle in explaining precisely what he was holding.
"This is a...pocket...scratchitizer! It relieves the...uh...stressful itching I have all over my body," Qwark said.
"How does it work?" she asked.
Qwark prayed the charge pack was empty. "Well, you just press this red button here and it...just works."
Qwark pressed the button. It began to grasp at nothing. Son of a-...him!
He didn't want to give it to Twilight now, so he did a different kind of demonstration as he began to place it at different spots across his body. Everywhere...but THERE. It was incredibly awkward as the Crothitizer pinched and pulled at his arms and chest while he tried to make relaxing facial expressions.
The Crotchitizer stopped after a few minutes, its charge pack fully depleted of power as it whirred to a halt. Qwark breathed a sigh of relief. Twilight noticed, so he quickly explained it as a sigh of...well, relief from the itching.
She seemed to accept that explanation. Spike didn't.
"Since when did superheroes like yourself need stress relief?" he asked.
"No one ever said being a superhero would involve working in a stress-free environment, kid. Even superheroes like me deserve some well-earned R & R from time to time," Qwark stated with his usual blank stare.
"I can understand that," Twilight stated. "Ponyville is such a crazy place that sometimes even I need to rest myself."
"Ponyville? Is that what this town is called?" Qwark asked.
Twilight blinked before responding. "Oh, that's right. you're not from around here, are you?"
"Twilight, one moment I was sitting at a Galaxy Burger drive-thru, and the next moment I find myself flying through the sky towards your tree...house...library...thingy?"
Twilight didn't understand what a drive-thru was, but she understood that he was probably more confused about her world than she was of his. "Right, sorry. Well this town is called Ponyville, but the whole land is called..."
--------------------------------
"Equestria? I'm WHERE?!" Nefarious screamed.
Derpy was taken back slightly, now free of Nefarious's grasp. "Yeah, this whole place is the land of Equestria! I should know, I'm one of the designated mailmares that delivers mail all across it!"
Nefarious paused as he remembered exactly how he met Derpy. If she delivered the mail like she met him...she would be a very destructive ally.
He HATED that idea, though. Teaming up with a squishy would probably cause his brain circuits to fry.
"Well, Derpy, is this land of...Equestria...led by someone? A ruler, perhaps?" he asked.
"Sure! It's ruled over by Princess Celestia!" Derpy wore a smile at saying her ruler's name.
FINALLY, someone he could identify as one in a position of power! He now had another target to consider taking out as soon as he annihilated Qwark, wherever that fat oaf was.
...but he DIDN'T know where Qwark was, and that bothered him immensely. Still, this leader he heard of was a better lead to follow than nothing.
"Could you tell me where this Princess Celestia is?"
"Tell you? Why, I could take you there! I've got some deliveries to make there next anyways!"
Great, a traveling companion. At least it wasn't exactly teaming up with her, WHICH HE DESPISED.
Plus, she could prove useful in helping him get past whatever security they had stationed at the castle. He flew off behind Derpy, letting her lead him to this Princess Celestia pony.