The sound of metal clanking against metal could be heard from the basement of an abandoned house. Down at the basement, two people were working on some kind of machinery. One was a middle – aged man, whose face was hidden behind a welding mask. The man was dressed in overalls, which were covered in a thick layer of oil. He was welding something to some strange machine that looked almost complete, but was obviously lacking of some parts. The second one was a blond haired girl that seemed to be no more than 10 years old. The girl was wearing a simple dress that was tattered and greased no less than the clothes of the man. She was looking at the image on a blueprint and was comparing it to the machine at the basement. From time to time, she handed some parts of machine over to the man. Soon enough, the last part was put into its place. The man lifted the faceplate of his welding mask and took a step back to admire the result of their work.
"Phew. Well, Ah recon that’s that."
"Are you sure we have to do this, Dad?"
The man looked at the girl.
"We have no other choice, Irene. This Gray guy knows about these blueprints. And he will stop at nothing to get them. And us. We just barely managed to escape from these goons yesterday. It’s only a matter o’ time before they catch us."
"But still, seeking asylum in another universe? How is this even possible? How can we be sure that this thing will actually work?"
"Ah checked the calculations and blueprints three times. Nothing’s wrong. But still, all we can do is to pray that it’ll work."
"But what about your teammates?"
The man hesitated before answering.
"We’ll find a way to contact them later. But now, let’s test this thing."
The man went up to the control panel and activated the power switch. Several sparks flew out of the contraption and the machine started humming. The man started typing on the keyboard. Soon, the monitor read: “Coordinates set”, and the man pushed the final button, which read: “Start”.
The contraption started emitting sparks like crazy, but nothing other than that. But as the duo was about to sigh in defeat, the air in the giant metal arc that was next to the machine, hooked to it, began shimmering and then, something what looked like an energy wall appeared in the arc. The duo was just standing there in genuine awe.
"Daddy, it worked! It actually worked!"
"Well, Ah’ll be damned..."
The man walked up to the portal and slowly moved his gloved hand to it. The portal was steady and wasn’t going to shut down any time soon. As his hand touched the portal, it went straight through but didn’t appear out of the other side of the arc. The man retracted his hand and sighed.
"Well, this is it, Irene."
"Do you even know where it will take us?"
"All Ah know is that the other side of the portal is fit for habitation. Other than that - no idea."
"Well, let’s go then."
Irene went to grab their backpacks while her dad walked up to the control panel again.
"One last thing to do."
The man typed the code and the monitor showed the message: “Self-destruction mechanism activated. Time left: 1 minute”
Irene walked up to her dad with two big backpacks and handed one to him.
"Everything is set, dad."
"Alrighty then. Let’s go."
As the duo walked up to the portal, the timer already showed: “15 seconds”. The girl and her dad looked at each other one last time and stepped through.
Seconds later, eight armed to the teeth men charged into the room, looking for their targets. Finding none, the biggest of them, who was wearing a combat vest, small googles and bandana bellowed in frustration:
"Damn, they got away! Search everything in the hou..."
The beeping from the machine interrupted him. As the men looked at the machine, the monitor read: “3”
“2”
“1”
“Self-destruction”
"FUCKING HE..."
The scream was cut short however, as the machine exploded with horrifying force, instantly vaporizing the house and everything that was in it.
Elsewhere...
Twilight was agitated. No more than ten minutes ago princess Celestia sent her a letter about some powerful pulse of energy at the old casle. The pulse was so powerful that it could easily rival the power of both princesses or even the Elements of Harmony. Wasting no time, she gathered all of her friends and together, they went to the castle.
So, here they were, standing at the doors of the castle, discussing what to do when they find the cause of the commotion.
"I don't see any reason why we should have a plan. We just go there, and kick the flank of whoever dared to mess with us!", said the rainbow-maned pegasus mare.
Twilight sighed: "We don't even know what is in there, Rainbow. Such surge of power was last registered when Tirek broke free." The lavender alicorn shuddered at the memory.
"B-but what if it is s-something d-dangerous?", the timid yellow pegasus mare squeaked.
"The princesses said that they will come here personally if we are not heard from in an hour. Don't worry, Fluttershy, everything will be fine. I hope. Let's go, girls."
And with that, they entered the castle.
One hour ago.
Everything went white for the duo as they entered the portal. They couldn't feel anything except the feeling of endless falling. But soon, the feeling subsided and the vision was slowly returning to them.
When they could see again, they saw that they now were in some sort of castle. The building looked like it has been abandoned for years, although it was very well preserved. The duo looked around.
"Well, at least the teleportation didn't kill us.", the man sighed in relief. "But where are we?".
His daughter took off her backpack, opened it and took out a modified GPS. "Hmm, there's no signal.", the girl said. "Looks like it's broken."
"Give it to me", her father asked. Irene handed the device to him. "This thing can not be broken, I made it myself. But that means..." The man rushed to the nearest window and looked out. The view outside made him just stay there in shock.
Outside was a large forest that stretched miles away from the castle. But it was not the forest that surprised him.
Not further than 15 meters away from the castle stood a creature he had never seen before. The beast had the body of a lion, a scorpion tail and bat wings on its back.
"What's that thing?", Irene's voice brought the man out of his stupor.
"Heck if Ah know. But if it is real, and Ah'm sure that it ain't some hallucination, it means only one thing.", the man smiled.
"We made it!", Irene exclaimed happily and hugged her dad. "We are actually in another world!"
"We are, sunshine, we are.", the man could barely contain his happiness himself. At last, they no longer had to be on the run, fearing for their lives. Seeing that his daughter yawned, he remembered that they hadn't slept for two days working on the portal. "Ah guess we should find a place to sleep. We've been up for too long." And with that they went to explore the castle.
Soon enough, they found a decent room with two beds. The duo took off their backpacks and Irene dragged them to the corner of the room, while her father placed a toolbox at the entrance. As he pressed a button on his PDA, the box opened and some sort of robot began unfolding itself. In a minute, the entrance of the room was blocked with an automatic turret armed with two miniguns and a rocket launcher.
Irene looked at the sentry. "Is that really necessary?".
"We don't know what's out there. Better not take any chances.", the man replied.
Having no strength left, the duo just lay down on their beds and prepared to drift off to sleep.
"Night, Dad."
"Night, my sunshine."