Shattered glass trailed behind me as I spread my arms to either side. The leap of faith, as many call it, was actually easier than it looks. I used my tail to flip myself in the air as the rim of the city flew past me at alarming speeds and the wind rushed past me.
"ARE YOU CRAZY, OR STUPID?!" GLaDOS shouted. I looked down at her for a second before responding,
"Yes." I assumed a position that could be most closely compared to sitting, the water coming closer to me blaringly fast.
"Three, two, one, stop." Suddenly, the world stopped coming closer as time froze around me.
"WHAT THE FUCK?! ARE YOU CRAZY, OR STUPID?!" A deafening voice shouted from right behind me, one that would have knocked me over had I been standing up.
"YES!" I shouted, not realizing how loud I was shouting,
"YOU WERE JUST GOING THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY AFTER A SMALL SETBACK?!" It half shouted half sputtered,
"NO! I KNEW YOU WOULD HELP ME OUT!" I earned a deep growl for a few seconds before he let up.
"...Fine."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" I felt massive claws wrap around my body as shadowy black blocked my vision, moving me out of the air and setting me down on the ground.
"Do not try that again. I may not be able to save you." The presence left as I realized that whoever that was... it wasn't a man in white. I stood up and brushed myself off, retracting my helmet.
"What just happened?" GLaDOS asked,
"Let's not question life saving events." I shrugged, making sure all my things were in order before calmly starting my trek back to Ponyville.
5 HOURS LATER
I released a massive yawn, barely managing to cover my mouth as I stopped to lean on a tree, cloaked. At the moment I was in the town from the night before, stumbling towards where the file had directed me.
"Oooh... I'm really tired... GLaDOS, why am I tired?"
"You've been sleep deprived for several weeks now, using your cloaking a lot, which is draining a lot of your energy, you're completely out of food, and you've been running for several days now. Does that answer your question?"
"Yes... it does." I said, walking around the circumference of the really thick tree. I stopped in front of the door to the tree, taking a deep breath.
"Well, here goes nothing..." I raised a fist, then knocked on the door.
"COMING!" A juvenile voice from inside shouted, followed by "Woah, woah, woah, OOF!" and a loud thud, a patter of feet, and finally the door opening. What opened it was baby dragon, probably half as tall as me with my helmet retracted. He had purple scales and tall green spines and eyes with a beige underside. "I didn't think you'd be back so soon Twi...light?" He quirked an eyebrow, looking around. "Hello?" He said. I realized my cloaking was still active, so I deactivated it. His jaw literally dropped as he stared at me in terror. I retracted my helmet to show him I wasn't a monster. He looked slightly less terrified.
"Hi." I said.
"Uh... hi? Ack!" He yelped as I picked him up by his armpits and hugged him tightly. "Urk... Ack, can't breathe!" He wheezed.
"OH! Sorry." I apologized, setting him down to catch his breath. He took a few breathes before asking,
"Who are you and why did you hug me!?"
"I'm your brother!" He stared at me for a few awkward seconds before shaking himself out of the trance. "WHAT?!" He shouted, gaining the attention of some nearby ponies.
"Shhh! Come on, let's get inside!" He nodded dumbly as I ushered him into the tree house, closing the door behind us. We went up a flight of stairs, then sat on a couch in the bedroom upstairs.
"So, again, WHAT?!"
"We're bros!" He stuttered for a few seconds before fainting. The sight of him sleeping made me think of sleeping, and suddenly, my eyelids seemed like the heaviest things in the world.
"GLaDOS?"
"Yeah?"
"Wake me up when he wakes up." I said before drifting into slumber.
"Yeah... I'll do that..."
250 YEARS AGO.
A massive sleight gray building with a domed roof, half embedded in one of the mountains surrounding the massive city that sprawled out radially across the valley, the buildings ranging in diversity from short black obsidian dwellings to tall bright white crystalline structures. The tops of the bordering mountains were dotted with snow blasted watch towers sporting artillery and anti air guns that had just recently been fitted. The capitol of the dragon empire was a beautiful site indeed, though the inside of the aforementioned dome roofed building was a whirlpool of chaos.
A massive black and grey dragon, so large that he had to hunch over to not bump his head on the ceiling, high above the heads of any other in the room. Below, many large dragons ran about, carrying stacks of slates, or moving stone pieces around on a world map.
Next to his massive throne, a smaller one sat where a female dragon slept, curled up around a pair of eggs, one of them dark grey with a lighter grey stripe around its equator. The other was purple, with dark speckles sprinkled across its surface.
A smallish green dragon scampered in, stopping in front of a large crimson red dragon wearing -like most of the other dragons in the room- thick black titanium armor that covered his entire body except for his head, mostly because his helmet sat on a nearby table. On his back there was a massive claymore sword and a gun that, by human standards, would equate to a rapid fire artillery gun. He bent over to listen to what the green dragon had to say, then bolted upright. He waved his arms frantically to get King Alduin's attention. The great king turned his massive head to acknowledge the general, who nodded his head.
"Your majesty, we have lost radio contact with Valoran! Could it be-"
"It is... fortify the city limits, alert all guards and soldiers, and make sure all weapons are loaded and manned." He said calmly, the pages in the room each running off to notify all the ones the king had mentioned. "Brace yourselves... The Burning Queen approaches. Engineers, equip my armor." Dragons poured through the doors on either side, each carrying different pieces of the gargantuan dragon's armor, the first wave carried flexible interlocking pieces to cover everything below the neck except for the spines, made up of carbon fiber weaving and a gel layer to take in the force of impacts. After the first wave was finished, the second wave rolled in, each carrying a piece of the chrome colored armor pieces, a mix of titanium plates and adamantium to protect the vital parts, and a helmet covering only the top of his head, leaving his lower jaw free.
Once the engineers were finished, he stood, hunching even more. He turned towards the queen, a huge white dragon with black spines and glowing yellow eyes. He gently shook her, waking her from slumber.
"Caroline, you must take the eggs to the shelter." He whispered. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes before hardening her expression. She sat up, grabbing the eggs. She nodded, turning to go. Before she could take a step, Alduin stopped her.
"Wait." He took off a small section of his helmet, then gestured toward the gray egg. She held out the egg as a tear formed on Alduin's eye, then ran down his cheek, a bright white fire encased in the center of the tear. It fell off of his cheek, splashing onto the gray egg, which absorbed the entire thing. He replaced the piece of his helmet, taking one last look at his wife's grim visage.
"Do not worry, Caroline, she cannot trap my soul like the thousands she has before." he assured her,
"Just... just try to stay safe out there." She said, then dashed out of the room with the two eggs.
"General Tullius... Prepare for battle." He grabbed the Zu'u'fus, or rail gun, off of the wall behind him as the roof of the building split into four different segments. He spread his massive wings, taking to the skies along with the remaining three hundred elite soldiers.
"Today, we are fighting for our freedom.
Not from tyranny or persecution or oppression.
But from annihilation.
We're fighting for our right to live.
To exist.
and should we win the day...
then today will be the day the dovah declared with one voice that WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT!
WE WILL NOT VANISH WITHOUT A FIGHT!
WE WILL LIVE ON!
WE'RE GOING TO SURVIVE!" Alduin panned over the crowd, swinging his massive head around.
"TODAY, WE ARE CANCELLING THE APOCOLYPSE!" He boomed as the soldiers cheered for him.
Caroline dashed through the hallways, finally reaching her laboratory, the door was labeled 'Aperture Science', She burst through, grabbing a tiny device, then dashing out again as Cave Johnson, a tan dragon with dark brown spines and blue eyes threw his hands up at the mess his student, the queen, had just made.
Caroline sealed the door, flicking the lights of the vault on, bathing the utilitarian appliances in white light. She inspected the miniaturized GLaDOS unit. They had barely been able to get any coherent memories into it, but the personality matrix could be called nothing but perfect. This would be a gift to the first to hatch, which she had already decided would be the gray one. The moment she died, the GLaDOS would activate and help guide her child through the world. She set the eggs down on the bed, the GLaDOS on the nearby table, and grabbed a bundle of oranges out of the fridge, eating them in one gulp, then finally curling up around the eggs, beginning her two hundred twenty year nap.
Celestia hovered a couple miles away from the great city of Gondor, the Dragon Kingdom's capital city, her golden armor adorning her body. A griffin covered in red steel armor flew up next to her.
"Princess, the Blades are ready and at your disposal."
"Good. You know the procedure by now, contain them inside the city so I can concentrate on the spell, then pull out before the beam hits. Then, you get your payment."
"Yes ma'am." He turned to the eight thousand griffin mercenaries behind them. "LEEEET'S DO IT!" He shouted, prompting the Blades to cheer and surge forward towards the dragon city as a wave of blood red death.
As soon as the spear and net wielding griffins flew within range, the flack guns opened up, shredding enemies, only for them to be replaced by more. On the ground, hydra riding griffins and the odd pony here and there were pummeled by artillery strikes and gunfire from atop the mountains, much like their peers in the air. A loud swooshing sound was heard as three hundred massive silhouettes shot straight up out of the city, splitting evenly into two groups, going to either side of the swelling horde of griffins. In the front, a titanic figure shot out of the isolated city, a pulsating blue light coming from the device in it's claws. In a flash, a hole was punched through the entire griffin flock as a tungsten round decimated their ranks, going at a speed somewhere around twelve thousand kilometers per second, smashing into -and destroying- a mountain in the distance. Three hundred dragons descended on the griffins, hungry for the vengeance of their fallen cities. As the dragons reached them, the griffins split from the back to the front of their group, forming a V shape and pushing the dragons back above the city as Alduin swooped in, wiping out three rows with a single claw swipe, then firing his Zu'u'fus through. Blood saturated the ground as more and more soldiers from both factions fell. After what seemed like hours but was probably more like days the griffins let off, relieving the battered soldiers and king.
Suddenly, a far off white gleam caught his eye as the griffins began to retreat. He lifted the Zu'u'fus to look through the blood speckled scope, and what he saw chilled him.
He saw The Burning Queen hovering miles away, her horn glowing as bright as the sun. He looked up to see the sun flaring sporadically. He lifted his weapon to bear as a massive beam of plasma enveloped the city, burning all in it's path, Alduin's armor giving him enough time to fire off a single round into space before his body was burned to ashes and irradiated. A white and red entity flowed from the skeleton, streaming towards the destroyed capital building, deep into the bowels of Terra, phasing through the tungsten and adamantium, and settling inside of a grey egg...
A blue alicorn that had been watching from a distance covered her mouth with a hoof.
"Oh my..." She whispered to herself, before phasing out of the memory fueled nightmare as it ended.
THE DISTANT FUTURE- THE CITADEL
A huge fleet of starships duked it out around the citadel in a battle of Geth versus Alliance. The arms of the massive space station were just about to close as the SSV-Normandy squeezed in, followed by a tungsten/adamantine shell going at four percent the speed of light, smashing through the kinetic barriers of a giant sentient starship like so much paper mache and punching a hole straight through it, destroying its element zero core, then coming out the other side and smashing a hole out through one of the citadel's arms.
"The hell was that?!" Joker, the pilot of the SSV-Normandy yelled,
"Don't question it Joker, now take us in!" Commander Jane Shepard ordered.
I jerked up out of my sleep, breathing heavily. I looked around the room I was in, making sure everything was the same in the room. I looked down at the sleeping dragon that still slept next to me with a smile.
'I did it... I finally found him!
...
... What do I do now? Take him home? I can't stay here, I'm most likely wanted by the authorities. We could try the jungles, but... no, not the jungles. Ugh, I hate those wyverns. Yeah, let's go home.
I walked down the stairs and into a kitchen. I found a couple lemons and oranges sitting on the counter. I grabbed them, then went back up the stairs. I shook Spike awake.
"Spike, wake up, we need to leave soon." I whispered.
"Uugh... five more min- wait WHAT?!" He bolted upright, "Leaving? Why?"
"I'm a wanted dragon, I can't stay in Equestria much longer, and I'm not about to leave you behind after eleven years of searching for you. So, pack your bags and prepare your walking boots, we're going for the long haul."
"You're a CRIMINAL!?"