//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: An Exile's Journey // by Palibakufun //------------------------------// What happened after Twilight had used the teleportation spell was all a blur to her. As soon as the spell took effect, she knew she was moving: and moving very fast. Though teleportation is supposed to be instantaneous, the location she was heading to was such a great distance that it seemed to actually take time. In that short amount of time, Twilight was moving at an incomprehensible speed, with the entirety of space seeming to move by her faster than her brain could handle. After some period of time that Twilight was unsure of, she felt her hooves touch something hard underneath her, and then she passed out. When she awoke, she found herself lying on a small bed in what seemed like a very small room. Her eyes didn’t open on command, so she inclined to stay where she was and think about her situation. She tried to regroup her thoughts; she had used the teleportation spell,and then she was moving at an incredible speed, and then she found herself somewhere but passed out before her brain was able to process her surroundings. Luckily, it seemed she had passed out in what was a somewhat safe place, considering they put her on a bed, albeit a tad bit uncomfortable to her liking. After sorting her thoughts, she went through with opening her eyes. She was correct about the small room; it was barely just big enough to hold the bed that she was lying on. The entire room seemed to be covered completely in a dark grey metal. She was on her back on a cushioned piece of metal that hung out from the wall that acted as a bed. The only real feature other than the bed was a door that was almost within reaching distance of a hoof just from the bed. Although it was obviously a door, Twilight saw no handle. There was some sort of thing on the door that had what appeared to be symbols on it. She sat up in her bed and simply looked at the device, trying to decide whether it was worth messing with, or if she should just sit and wait for someone to come check on her. Now that she was used to her new powers, Twilight was surprised that when she reached out with her mind, she felt almost nothing. There was a sort of sound, but it was very faint. She couldn’t tell anything about her surroundings or whether there were even other living things near her. Suddenly she felt another conscious brush up against hers, and she retreated immediately. A few seconds after that, the door in front of her slid open from bottom to top. In the doorway stood a bipedal creature with brown robes draped over its body. While she didn’t have the knowledge to judge its gender, it looked masculine in build and appearance to her. It had a very short mane on the top of its head and a small beard around its mouth. It also appeared to have fully functional opposable thumbs, like primates. She and the creature sat in silence for what felt like minutes, simply staring at each other, waiting for the other to make its move. Twilight grew impatient and decided to break the ice. “Uh… hello.” She said, giving a very nervous smile and waving a hoof at the creature. “Uhm… Hi.” He replied back. It was male, she could determine from the voice. So they spoke the same language somehow; that was a bonus already. They continued to look at each other. “So… Uh, how’re you?” Twilight asked the male creature, having no idea how to proceed with this conversation. “I’m doing well, thank you. You appear to be doing well too, which is very good. You just sort of appeared in the main room of my ship and passed out immediately.” “S-ship? So we’re on a boat?” “Uh, no.” He looked to his left and his right, then to the ground, and then back up at her. “Can you stand?” “I think so.” Twilight slid down from the bed and felt her hooves hit a solid metal floor with a clunk. Her legs were a bit shaky, but a minute or two of walking would solve that issue right up. “Yeah, I’m good to walk, I think.” “Okay, good. Let’s get out of this tiny room so we can talk.” She already liked this guy: straight to point. She followed the man directly to the left as she left the room that entered a small hallway that lead to a much more sizeable room. What she was seeing though was very odd to her. All of the ceilings and walls and the floor were covered in the same dark grey metal that adorned the room she was just in. As soon as they entered the bigger room, there stood a large table looking object in the middle that seemed to have holograms appearing from it and hovering above it. “Wow… I’ve been five steps and already this place is amazing. You have fully working holograms in this world?” “This world? Are you not from here, then?” “Well, no.” She stated simply. “I think we both should start with introductions, or this might get really confusing, really quickly.” “That’s a good idea. I’ll start. You may call me Kaleb. I’m a Jedi master, and captain and sole occupant of this ship, the Ebon Hawk.” “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I’m a…. an ambassador from the land of Equestria. I traveled here using a strange spell that I found in a book.” “That just gives me so many more questions to ask. I think you should start first, though.” Kaleb said to Twilight, scratching the back of his head. “Okay. Where am I?” “You are aboard the Ebon Hawk somewhere very far past the outer rim of the Galaxy. I’m just saying, I don’t think you realize just how lucky you are that you managed to land on my ship while I was in hyperspace, and not somewhere randomly floating in space.” He stopped for a minute, pondering. “There is no luck, only the force… Okay, next question.” “Wait. Did you say space? As in, THE space? The black thing in the sky with all of the stars? That space?” Twilight sat down right where she sat, her eyes going wide. She managed to land on a space ship. “Uh, yeah. Space. Next question?” “I… I need a moment… I’m on a space ship?! This is incredible! Absolutely incredible! Oh my gosh, the technological advances in this world for you to be traveling on the outer rim of a galaxy, piloting a space ship on your own must be so much farther than we could possibly even imagine where I’m from!” “Wait, where did you say you were from?” “Equestria. It very well may not even be from this dimension for all I know. As I said before; I found a teleportation spell in a book, and after much thought and preparation, I decided that using the spell and exploring wherever it lead would be beneficial to us. That’s why I labeled myself as an ambassador.” “You’re telling me you used actual MAGIC to traverse space, time, and another whole dimension, and you’re impressed by interstellar travel? I don’t even know what to say.” “I do! This is incredible!” Twilight clapped her hooves together in glee. “Also with that book came the mixture to a potion that gave me some sort of weird powers. The only indication of what the potion was, was a word at the top that read ‘midichlorians.’ Might you have some idea as to what that means?” “Yes, midichlorians are what make up the Force.” “The Force?” “Yeah. I guess you could say it’s sort of like magic, but not. It’s… sort of complicated.” “I’ve got a while.” “Yeah, but we just met about three minutes ago. I think there’s quite a bit else we need to discuss before we get to that. Here, come back up to the cockpit with me.” He walked across the room with the holographic table and down another, curvy hallway, and Twilight followed. It went straight for a few feet before curving, and it lead to a single room with a window up front. When she saw that they were indeed sitting in space, her jaw almost dropped to the floor. There were so many different instruments and panels and buttons and switches that she had no idea what was going on in the cockpit. Kaleb sat down in a chair at the front of the room, and he motioned for her to take the other seat. She complied and sat down in the chair next to him. “Wow… I’m really sitting in the control room of a real space ship. I still just can’t believe this.” “Yeah, I guess if you’ve never been to space before, it’s sure something. I remember when I was young: I used to stare up at the sky quite often, admiring the stars. It’s really sad how much you get used to it after so many years of space travel…” “How fast does this travel?” “This ship here? Oh, I don’t know the exact speed, but it’s probably somewhere near twenty-thousand times the speed of light, I’d estimate.’’ Twilight didn’t say anything. She simply stared at Kaleb. He returned the look. “Is that surprising to you?” “I… I really almost don’t believe you. How? How?! It’s impossible! That is so incredibly fast… I can’t even comprehend that sort of speed!” “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. It’s not as hard to believe when you hear how it’s done. This ship -- and most others --have hyperdrive engines that allow them to slip into another sort of dimension, if you will. While on this side of the dimension, the speed of light is as fast as anything can possibly go, on the other side, that’s as slow as anything can possibly go. That makes traveling at speeds many times that of the speed of light much, much easier. If you had to travel the speed of light, it’d take forever to get anywhere. It’s all very neat stuff, if you ever want to read up on it.” “Excuse me again… this is just… the technology here is so far ahead of ours I can’t even begin to form the correct metaphor. My species has never even reached space before. Electricity is a relatively new thing, honestly.” “Really? Huh. I have a datapad on it you can read later, if you want.” “Datapad? If that’s anything like a book, then I’d be all over that. So, where are you headed?” “Beats me. You’ve managed to catch me at the beginning of a new journey for me. I just left behind the rest of my companions to do some… soul searching of sorts, and some searching for someone.” “Oh, I’m so sorry if I’ve interrupted something, then.” “Oh, no worries. Actually, I was just starting to think how lonely this was going to be. If you plan on sticking around for a while, that’ll sure alleviate some of the boredom and loneliness.” “I… have a feeling I’m going to be spending a very long time in this world. I do have means of returning, but I can here to explore and to learn. If that takes a few years, then so be it.” “Years… how many days in a year are you calculating? And how many hours in a day?” “Uhm. 356 days in a year, 24 hours per day.” “Wow, you even use Standard time dating. That’s sure convenient.” “What do you mean?” “Well, it’s awfully lucky that you even so happen to speak Galactic basic, let alone use standard years and days.” “I was also thinking how queer that was…“ Twilight sat and thought for a moment, turning her attention to the blue tunnel that spanned in front of them. For the first time since she woke up, she sat in silence and thought about the vast amount of information she was just forced to take in. So upon using the spell, she managed to land on a space ship that was traveling at thousands of times the speed of light while in dimension different even from its own. Twilight knew already that there was to be a lot of learning and exploring to be had in this new world. Her thought process was broken though when Kaleb spoke up. “So, I’ve answered some questions, now it’s your turn. So tell me about this magic stuff.” “Oh, yes. Well, you can see this horn on my head.” She poked her horn with a hoof, and Kaleb nodded in response.” That means that I am a unicorn, which is a sub-species of Equestrian, or ponies as we call ourselves. Unicorns like myself are able to channel our natural magic into our horn, where we can manipulate it to cast spells of all sorts.” “Wow. So Unicorns just naturally have magic?” “Well, all ponies have magic of some sort. But really, all creatures have magic of some sort. We draw a lot of our power from around us. Allow me to demonstrate.” Twilight’s horn lit up as she attempted to levitate something that she saw lying on the console of the ship. She found that lifting it was taking way more effort than it should. So much so, that it was actually quite hard to actually lift the object. “Oh… Wow… This is so much harder than it normally is. Normally I don’t even have to think about something as simple as levitation. This world seems to have no magic of its own. I’m having to use all of my own natural magic.” “This magic stuff… it’s very, very similar to how the Force functions. The force flows through all living creatures to some degree.” Kaleb reached out his hand towards the object, and it seemed to just rise into the air on its own. “As you can see, with the Force I can do similar things. I can feel a very strong connection to the force within you… You said you made some sort of potion, and that it gave you powers?” “Yes. When I took it, it felt as if I had so many brand new senses opened up to me. I could hear the thoughts of others, I could feel my surroundings, and I could even communicate completely nonverbally with another pony across a fairly long distance after she also took the potion.” “That’s incredibly surprising, honestly. The Force usually doesn’t flow so freely from someone who hasn’t actually trained how to harness it.” “Maybe it has something to do with the sheer amount of magic in my world? Maybe it made it much easier, just like I can hardly use magic here. That explains probably why I’m having so much trouble reaching out with… the Force as I did before. This world is just lacking raw magic in the air.” “You know, this uncanny connection to the Force and your magic is probably a lot of the reason why you ended up on my ship.” “Why’s that?” Kaleb sat and stared forward in thought. “I… I need to think on this myself before I can answer that question.” “I understand.” Twilight sat quietly in her seat, staring into space as it was, pondering over everything again. Although she just got here and was not planning on returning home until she was finished with anything she planned to do here, she was already excited to get back to Celestia and tell her all about what she had learned in about ten minutes about this new world. Celestia… It dawned upon Twilight that she wouldn’t get to see Celestia for possibly a very, very long time. She simply hoped that time passed much faster here than back in Equestria. It would leave her absolutely heartbroken if she were to come back to find that her friends were long dead to old age. “You seem troubled.” Kaleb said without looking over. “How do you know that?” “Unlike you, I’ve practiced very, very hard in learning to control my own force, and not that of the world around me. That means I can still sense your emotions. You’re homesick already.” “It’s not so much homesick as it is I’m afraid about time passage from my world to this one.” “Oh, I see what you mean. But, you did take the risk to come here, no?” “Yes, I did. But that would leave it no more heartbreaking to return home to find nopony alive anymore…” “Nopony?” “Oh, that’s just an expression of ours… sorry about that.” Kaleb chuckled. He looked down at some instruments. “I think it’s time to drop out of hyperspace.” He fiddled with some controls, and very soon the blue tunnel there were in faded away, and the stars slowed down to stationary dots in the sky. “Where are we?” “Hell if I know; somewhere in the middle of space.” “Do you not have a specific place that you’re headed to?” Kaleb looked back down for a moment. “Honestly, I wish I could tell you I knew where we were going. I’m… searching for someone. Someone of whom nobody knows where he went. I don’t know where he went.” “Why are you searching for him?” “I don’t even know the answer to that question. I just feel it’s the right thing to do, I guess. Maybe some other time I’ll tell you more about him, and why I think I need to find him. But that’s something I’m not really ready to talk about right now, if you understand.” “I think I do.” “Good. Hey, let me show you the rest of the ship. Come on.” Kaleb got up from his chair, as did Twilight. “This is the control room where we fly the ship, obviously.” Twilight nodded and followed him down the curvy hallway. Kaleb stopped at a room in the curvy hallway that had all sorts of panels and screens. It was a small room, but there was a whole lot of things going on in it. “In this room, we can monitor the security cameras and control a lot of portions of the ship. We always just called it the security room.” “When you say we, I suppose you mean your old crew?” Twilight replied. “Yeah. It was hard leaving behind my friends… I didn’t even say anything to them. But, I just know it’s what I need to do.” “I understand.” With that they left to the big center room again. “This is sort of a conference room. This holotable here can play holofeed from datapads, show us the current planet we’re on, and all sorts of things. That tiny room right there is sort of a storage room.” He pointed to a door left of where they had just came out of. It was just a tiny room with nothing in it. “You’ll have to explain to me all of this holographic stuff. It’s very interesting” Twilight said as she admired the star map that was currently displayed on the holotable. “I have all sorts of datapads on all of this stuff that you can read about.” “I think you’ll find that reading is one of my strongest traits and favorite hobbies. I do wonder; do you mind if I take some stuff home with me?” She paused for a second and looked down. “Though, I suppose it’s a bit silly to be worrying about what I’m going to be taking home with me this early on. I could be with you, or in this world in general for many years before I return.” “Don’t worry about it. You can stay with me as long as you need to. You’ll be safe with me, too.” “Is this a dangerous world?” Twilight asked, a slither of worry creeping into her expression. “Well, to an extent it is. It’s not horribly dangerous, but it’s not unlikely to make enemies that are more than willing to kill you. It’s just best you stay with me until you learn more about the world. Also, until you learn how to really control the Force within you, you’ll be weak to a lot of different enemies.” “Wow… I’m glad I managed to land in this ship with you of all ponies then.” “Uhm… I’m not a- Never mind. Anyways, yeah: this control room is where the crew and I would normally have all of our meetings and what not. Since the holodeck can project the image of the planet we’re on, and even zoom in on where we’ll be, it’s very useful for planning before leaving. It’s also great to plan out space battles.” Twilight gulped. “S-space battles?” “Yeah, don’t worry about it. This ship may be a bit old, but it’s still one of the fastest in the galaxy. And her turbolaser turret isn’t anything to sneeze at, either.” “Well that’s good, then.” “Now, moving on…” From where they were standing in the room, they took a left into a hallway. “This here to the left is the exit ramp that you would use to leave the ship, were we docked somewhere. For obvious reasons, it stays magnetically sealed when we’re in space. To the right here is the entrance to the garage. It’s got a workbench and plenty of space to store a swoop bike if the need arises.” “What’s a swoop bike?” “It’s a land vehicle that’s good for getting around quickly. It’s also good for racing.” “Okay, neat.” “Now, moving on down the hallway here…” They progressed down the hallway where it curved left. “And this here is the starboard dorms. This ship was actually originally intended to be a smuggler’s ship, so there’s a secret stash in the floor right there.” He pointed at a point in the floor that Twilight couldn’t differentiate from the rest of the ship. They walked back out of the room and across the big room one more time where they came to another hallway. “This hallway to the left here leads to the storage room, where we keep food rations and whatever else needs to be hauled. There’s also another smuggler’s compartment in there. If we continue on down this hallway, we would come to the port dorms.” He led Twilight down the hallway to the left, where they came to an intersection of hallways. “This room here to the right is the engine room. That right there is the hyperdrive.” “So that small engine allows you to slip in and out of another dimension, allowing for faster-than-light travel?” “You got it. I don’t fully understand it myself, for the math and science behind it is very, very complex as you would guess. If you go down that way it leads to the garage,” he pointed straight ahead “and this hallway here is where the medical room where I kept you is, as well as the ladder to the turbolaser and the top of the ship.” “Wow. So this this is a lot like traditional seafaring ships, then?” “What do you mean by that?” “Well…” She stopped and thought for a minute. “You’re using nautical terms like port and starboard. You travel space, like a ship travels the sea. I don’t know, I guess I’m just trying to relate it back to familiar material, you know?” “Yeah, I know what you mean. So, that was a tour of the whole ship.” “How do you determine when it’s time to sleep, since there’s no day or night in space?” “Just whenever you get tired, really. You can sleep in either of the dorms, any bed except mine.” “Which one’s yours?” “Starboard dorm, far right bed.” “Hehe…” Twilight giggled out loud. “It’s funny. You even sleep in the Starboard dorm. The Starboard dorm, in our world, is traditionally where the captain’s room is. Our worlds are so different, yet so similar.” “Yeah. Maybe someday I can visit this “Equestria” of yours?” Twilight looked down at the floor for a second. “I don’t know if that’s even possible, to tell the truth. I don’t have any sort of evidence to back up my claims, but I just have this gut feeling that my world is in a place very, very far away from here.” She stopped and thought for a couple seconds more about her trip. Normally when she casts a teleportation spell, she is instantaneously transported to her destination, no matter the distance. She’s traveled miles before instantaneously. But, when she cast the spell not too long ago, she felt like it had taken her a couple seconds to actually arrive on the ship. “It’s just a gut feeling. I’m not sure if this ship could reach there in our lifetime, thousands of times the speed or light or not. I’m also not sure if I could alter my teleportation spell to bring you home with me.” “Oh. Well, that’s fine then. You have a lot to see before we think about sending you home.” “That’s true. Though, we’ve been talking about all the things I’ll see, but where are we going to go? You said you’re looking for someone, but don’t actually know where he’s located.” “Yes. I haven’t the vaguest idea where he might be, or where he might have even wanted to go.” “Well, I guess we’d better start going, then. Let’s go back to the cockpit.” The two returned to the cockpit of the Ebon Hawk, where Twilight took control of the co-pilot’s seat. She admired all of the controls, wondering what all they could possibly do. “I’ll probably wind up teaching you how to fly this thing, eventually. It’s not as difficult as you might thing. Honestly, it flies itself most of the time; all you have to do is plug in coordinates.” “Sounds fun! No one is going to believe me when I tell them I learned how to fly a spaceship!” Kaleb got up to look at the navchart. He stood in front of it for a few seconds, pondering something. “Well, there’s an uncharted system about a day’s flight from here. We might as well go check it out and see if it’s habitable. If it is, it’s as good of a place as any to start our search.” “Uncharted solar systems?! Oh my gosh I can’t wait!” Twilight bubbled in her seat while Kaleb continued to look at the map. “Exciting or not, all of its planets could be uninhabitable due to atmospheric conditions, or even possibly filled with extremely dangerous creatures. “ “Oh… Well, I can handle myself!” Her mood immediately deflated when she realized something, though. “Wait… I can barely use my magic. Maybe I can’t handle myself as well as I had thought…” “Are you normally pretty powerful?” “Well… Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I am widely considered to be one of the most powerful unicorns in the world.” “That’s something. What sort of powers does magic allow you to have?” “Oh, anything, really. Magic is sort of complicated to explain, but if you know what you’re doing, you can make up a spell on the spot for really anything you want.” “Anything, huh? So if you wanted, you could say… make this ship just explode?” “If I wanted, yeah. But, again, I’m so low on magical power that I probably couldn’t now. What about you and the Force? What things can the Force do?” “Well, as far as powers go, it’s not nearly as varied as I bet magic is. I can pick up things as well, I can heal wounds, I can erect barriers around myself, increase my natural speed, etcetera. What really sets us Jedi apart from non-Jedi is our ability to sense the world around us, though. You were able to experience it when you took your potion, yes?” “Yeah. I could just feel… everything around me, really. It was such an amazing experience, feeling every life, every object, every action. It was so… satisfying.” “So that’s one thing your magic can’t do then, I suppose.” “I guess not. So what are these Jedi you talk about? Are they like the unicorns of my world?” “Well, sort of. Like with your race, the Force flows through all living beings. Some though are known as Force sensitive. If they are Force sensitive, they can be trained in the ways of the Jedi, which strengthen their entire being, including their physical, mental, and emotional selves. There’s also bad Jedi though, of whom we know as the Sith.” “The Sith?” “The Sith are actually a long-forgotten race, but their name remained, and that is what those who follow the dark side of the Force call themselves. There is a light side and a dark side. The light side of the Force is focused on helping out others and doing what is right for the entirely of the galaxy. The Sith, on the other hand, have no real sole purpose other than to do what they want. So many Jedi turn to the dark side of the Force because of how enticing the power you can gain is. It completely corrupts the individual and causes them to turn evil.” “Oh wow, so that’s a really common thing? I mean, we have some ponies that turn bad, but it’s a very, very rare thing. Really, Equestria is a very peaceful place. We haven’t had a war for over a thousand years.” “Really, now? Our world has had more wars than you can probably count. This Equestria sounds like a really great place.” “Oh, it is! There’s very little crime, murder comes maybe once every forty or so years at the most.” “You don’t say…” Kaleb stared out of the front window of the Ebon Hawk in thought. For a few moments the two sat in silence. Kaleb tended to the navicomputer in front of them and set the destination for the star system a couple days away. “It sounds like you don’t like how much war your world has.” “No, Twilight, I don’t. As a Jedi, I was raised to defend the helpless against the strong, and I’ve had to do so more times than I wish. Every life that I’ve taken, pure evil or not, resonates in my head. I HATE killing. I hate that protecting people means I need to kill. That just goes against why I protect others, you know?” “I… I’m so sorry about all of this.” When Kaleb looked over, Twilight actually had some tears in her eyes. “I can’t imagine having to take lives…” “I’ve thought about this so much over the course of my life. I always think about how I could save someone without killing, but that’s just not an answer. The evil in this world is so… so strong. The teachings of the Jedi tell us that nobody is past the point of saving. We always look for the opportunity to save the lives of others without bloodshed, but that’s just not always an option.” “It sounds like these Jedi are really great people.” “Yeah. I like to think the Jedi order is the best thing to ever happen to the galaxy. It’s…” Kaleb stopped and sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, I don’t really want to talk about this any further. It’s such a depressing topic, and this journey was sort of a way for me to get away from it all. In the past month, I’ve had a very, very long and harrowing journey. I might tell you more about it later, but I just need to take my mind off of it for now.” “I’m sorry about bringing it up… Let’s get on to brighter subjects, shall we?” Twilight gave Kaleb a smile, which he returned. “So are we heading to this system?” “We are. We’ll be there in 39 hours from now.” “So what do you do in space to pass the time?” “Well, usually I meditate on things. Seeing as I have nothing to meditate on right now, what say we get you started on being able to get a strong connection with the Force? I can feel it flowing in excess within you. You gave more potential than any other individual I’ve ever met before.” “R-really? What about you?” “Even more than me. As a Jedi master, my specialty is using the force, but you have so much more raw power in you than I ever did. But, we need to harness it.” “Okay! I’m willing to do whatever it takes!”