//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: An Introduction // Story: Romantically Equestrian // by NightMist //------------------------------// In the world of Romantically Apocalyptic ... Zee Captain skipped merrily down the desolated streets of a dead city as he and his companions had done many times before. One pissed off Mr. Snippy and exhausted Engineer followed behind Captain, one carrying a backpack bigger than he was filled to the brim with left flip-flops and the other carrying a similar pack filled with right gloves. Meanwhile, Pilot ran circles around them with an old katana on his back and a toy jet in his hand making airplane noises. “This is ridiculous,” Engineer moaned once again as they continued their (in his eyes) pointless journey, “I am a scientist! Not some shoe carrying pack mule!” Captain stopped dead in his tracks. Engineer gulped in slight fear, it wasn’t so much the Captain he feared as it was his insane, sword wielding lackey, Pilot. Captain suddenly spun around and got face to face with Engineer. “I’ll have you know, my dear little Engie," Captain began, "that those are flip-flops! Not only flip-flops, but zee finest left flip-flops in zee area!” Zee Captain turned around and continued to skip as Engineer angrily mumble under his breath “At least 200 pounds of damned flip-flops… jerk… retard.” The rest of the journey was silent, minus Pilot’s plane noises, until Snippy decided to break the awkward silence, “Hey where did you get all thes--” but he was interrupted by Captain. “For see love of Santa, everybody stop!!!!” Everything went deathly quiet; Engie looked nervously at Snippy only to be met with a confused shrug. Pilot had frozen midair, only touching the ground with the tippy top toe of one his boots. The silence was broken by Captain “Mien straw is broken!” Captain said with an over-generous amount of drama and a hint of German accent. Within the blink of an eye, Pilot pocketed his toy plane, unsheathed his sword, and took a defensive stance around the Captain as if some invisible force was to magically bitch slap him into a pool of radioactive goo (which has happened before). Snippy and Engie got closer to see the great ordeal that Captain was going through. Captain was attempting to drink his scorching tea only to see the delicious liquid flow back into his mug through a tiny crack on the side of the straw. The voice of Snippy’s biomass scarf chimed through his head ‘Well, I guess sucking his brains out through his eye socket with his own straw is out of the question’ Snippy rolled his eyes at the voice that was keeping him alive and replied (accidentally out loud) “I never agreed to that,” Captain ignored him but still turned around to face Snippy. “Mr. Snippy, I have a mission for you.” However before Captain could continue, Snippy interrupted him “Oh hell no!” Snippy interjected and dropped his pack on the ground with a bone-crushing thud that left cracks in the asphalt. “That was the only non-radioactive straw within a radius of 10,000 miles,” Captain was taken aback by Snippy’s reluctance to participate in new adventure. Captain leaned in close to Snippy and whispered to him “Did Engie put you up to this?” He returned to normal volume “Very well, whatever he is paying you, I’ll triple it.” Snippy sighed “When I said that bottle caps don’t count as currency, I really meant anything except for gold, silver, credits, or cash.” Captain made a noise like he was contemplating his decision and began to stroke his chin as if he had a beard. “You are zee tough man Snippy. Very well, I’ll quadruple it in ring pulls.” “Those don’t count either.” Captain shrugged, “Well that’s all I have to offer you. That or these worthless military grade bullets, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want--” He was cut off by Snippy “Whoa whoa whoa whoa! Military grade bullets?! Where the hell did you get those” Snippy paused to recompose himself. He was no business master, but it was common sense that if you let the seller know how desperate you are for an item then they could easily jack the price up. He was quite desperate too, he was on his last two clips for his Valve rifle and last clip for his 9mm pistol. “Let’s talk business.” Meanwhile… Engineer and Pilot played yet another game of tick-tack-toe; Pilot was using his sword to draw the hearts (rather than circles) and Engineer used a bone of a nearby skeleton. As Pilot won his 15th consecutive win, Engineer flipped his shit (for lack of a better phrase). “Screw everything! I hate this game and everyone who has played it! I QUIT! Goodbye!” He stood up and began walking in a random direction while Pilot completely ignored his friend’s outburst and continued to play the game… against himself. Engie’s thoughts wandered as much as he did as he continued his rage-endorsed walk. Everything that humanity had previously achieved… gone. How could it so easily have been wiped away? His thoughts were interrupted when a great light appeared in front of him. His initial thoughts were that she had returned and that he should run like hell, but those thoughts were dashed as the light began to take shape as a doorway of sorts. He turned to go tell the others only to come face-to-face with Pilot. Engineer didn’t get a chance to vocalize his surprise as Pilot instantly tackled him through the portal. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Engineer and Pilot landed on the ground with a low thud. Engineer attempted to roll the heavier-than-he-looked Pilot who was playing dead off of himself. Good god, what sweet a relief it would be for Engineer if Pilot wasn’t pretending, but the smidgen of hope that Engie had was smashed as Pilot’s head jerked up and he stared at him dead in the eye through their goggles. Engineer decided he had never seen anything as green as Pilot’s eye. They were almost entrancing, the wonder, the imagination… However all of that deep philosophical stuff was lost as Pilot’s voice broke Engineer’s thoughts. “Engie, you silly sausage you, you’ll have to be faster if you want to beat me in tackle-tick-tack-toe-rage-quit-hide-n-go-seek,” Engineer shook his head briefly as he attempted to processed the insane man’s words. Engineer wiggled uncomfortably until Pilot rolled off of him and began to make an angle shape in the tall grass of the field they were in. Wait, grass? Engineer sat up and looked around as much as he could, before standing up to get a better sense of his surroundings. They were in grass field of some sorts, surrounded by trees of all types. Engineer scratched his head curiously as he looked around, where the hell were they? There should be no growth as big as this in the world unless the Lifealope was here, but this was still a lot, even for the rogue biomass. Engineer looked over to Pilot who was still creating his grass angel “Look Engie, I have wings,” Engineer rolled his eyes and looked back to the tree line. Something was off, Engineer felt his fear begin to well-up inside of him, yet he continued to stare. Something moved. Engineer gulped nervously and looked at Pilot, thank god he had his katana with him. “H-hey Pilot,” something else moved in the tree line, “P-p-pilot?” He looked back to see that Pilot was missing from the angel shaped indentation in the grass. “Oh shi--” “Boo!” Engineer yelped and flew to the ground a good ten feet back from the now laughing Pilot, “Oh Engie, you crazy carrot you.” He then snapped to attention “Now follow, we must find zee Captein” Engineer swore he could hear Pilot’s heart flutter with the Captain’s name. Why the hell did he say it weird anyway? Engineer sighed an stood up brushing himself off, “Well unless you have a map of where ever the hell we are,” He looked down at himself for final inspections to look up again to see the Pilot once again missing. A familiar voice called him, but it was above him. Engie looked around until he spotted the Pilot in a tree looking though an antique spyglass backwards and in random directions. “You old shoebox you, there is clearly a town in that direction” Pilot pointed in the opposite direction that we was currently looking. Engineer looked in the direction but only saw trees. “Clearly,” He slumped down and sighed and was only mildly surprised when Pilot was standing next to him, “Well let’s go, because why would we listen to common sense and try to find a way back?” Pilot began to skip in the complete opposite direction that he had pointed to before, “Wait a minute Pilot, didn’t you… screw it, I stopped caring about logic anyways.” And the duo was off to an exciting new land of adventure… ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Meanwhile, in Ponyville... Twilight closed all the blinds in the library. “No distractions,” she said. Spike gave a sigh from the top of the staircase, he still thought the whole idea of this ‘re-shelving day’ was foolish and that the entire floor should be the new shelf for the entire library. Or maybe it was the bad memories of what happened last re-shelving day. “Today is too important,” Spike rolled his eyes as his big sister prepared to pull every book on the first floor off of their respective shelves and to the ground. If you think about it, for someone who loses their mind if a book is returned with the spine damaged (or Celestia forbid a page was dog-eared), Twilight was not very careful when she pulled the books off the shelf. “Re-shelving d--” Twilight was cut off as a huge force shook the entire town causing anything that wasn’t nailed down to crash to the floor. Twilight stood up and shook her disoriented head; Spike stood up to his short height and rubbed the lump on his head that had formed after he fell down the staircase. “Twilight,” Spike said, “I think that was a little too much,” Spike winced as he felt the lump on his head. Twilight looked out the window to see if the rest of the town had felt the tremor. Windows had shattered, flower boxes had fallen off of windowsills, and ponies that had been out in the open had begun to panic. “I don’t think that was me, Spike” Twilight said as she opened the door to go take control of the situation. She immediately jumped back to avoid being run over by a screaming Pinkie Pie. Twilight took a step forward but once again had to jump out of the way of Pinkie, who was now running backwards and screaming. The pink mare stopped in front of Twilight before speaking like absolutely nothing was wrong. "Oh hi Twilight, we're all panicking, isn't it fun?" Twilight rolled her eyes before responding, "Pinkie, I need everypony's attention," Pinkie gave a mock salute before running into the library and almost instantly appearing on the balcony of the library. She pulled a megaphone from out of nowhere and took an extremely exaggerated deep breath. "HEY EVERYPONY," shouted Pinkie from the blowhard at volume that could rival the Royal Canterlot Voice, "PRINCESS TWILIGHT WANTS TO TALK TO YOU!" Twilight took a deal breath in, then let it out slowly. She had a plan. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Somewhere in the Everfree Forest, a few hours later... Engineer gave a very blatant sigh, "Where the hell are we?" Pilot gave no reply, which made Engie even more angry, "You don't even know where you're going, do you?" The pilot remained quiet. Engine, momentarily forgetting his fear of his companion, was about bitch slap him when they were interrupted by a voice that was never heard by either of them. "Umm," The two humans slowly turned around to see a four foot tall, cream colored horse; and if that wasn't enough, the horse also had small, feathery wings. "Hello," it said in an almost inaudible voice. Pilot gave a squeal of joy and began hopping up and down like a child, which caused the horse to hide behind her (Engie dubbed it a her because of the pitch of the voice) pink mane. The two stared at the one in silence, except for Pilot's squealing, for what felt like hours - until a fourth voice came from an orange horse. "Hey, where'd ya go Flutt--" the orange mare stopped her sentence as she saw the two humans. 'This horse looked normal-er,' thought Engle, 'except it has a Stetson hat, so that makes up for the lack of wings.' The orange horse glanced nervously at the two humans, unsure of what to do except protect her friend, "Fluttershy," she said, "get ready to run." "What the hell?" said Engineer before he blacked out