//------------------------------// // The Fuzziest of First Contacts // Story: Urohringr // by Imploding Colon //------------------------------// KAPOW! A chunk of rock flew into a hundred smoldering pebbles, rattling across the forest floor along the southern edge of the crater. Roarke stood up straight from a nimble crouch. With a metallic hiss, a miniature missile launcher retracted back into a sheath that was attached to her shoulder. She flexed her forelimb, feeling the tug of the metal braces fitted neatly around her figure. "Hmmm... I can barely feel the temperature increase. I guess that confirms that the thermal layers are in working order." "Heh... that was a pretty nice one, Roarkie!" Kera said from where she sat on a grassy mound of dirt at the forest's edge. She grinned, her horn glowing as she stared at the clearing smoke. "I especially like the way it went 'kapow!'" "Yes. It tends to do that." "You should make one that makes a lot of flame! Y'know... Phwoooomb! All bright and orange n'stuff!" "That's not necessary," Roarke droned, her nostrils flaring. "My days of watching forests burn are... well behind me." "You know, for a pony who deals with explosions so much, you really don't seem to be all that proud of them." "It's not about pride, Kera," Roarke said, trotting back to her box of equipment. "If anything, it was all about getting the job done. Believe it or not, such tasks required more subtlety." "Really?" "Indeed. Several of my Searonese sisters were dependent on shock and awe alone, but most of those metal mares didn't live to see their own bounties turned in. Their weapons had the awful tendency for blowing up in their faces." "Oh. Not cool." "Indeed, not cool in the least," Roarke droned. "But it was to be expected. You have an entire culture devoid of mothers and fathers and you give the blood-thirsty daughters a hoofful of death machines and... well... the results aren't entirely surprising." "Wow." Kera blinked, then smiled. "You must be super-lucky to have survived as long as you did." "I almost didn't," Roarke said, pausing to stare blankly into the treeline. "I was taking jobs with higher and higher stakes each passing month. Imre did all she could to keep me alive, but it didn't matter. I had it in my head that I had to impress Pestiferous. At last, I had a huge Ledomaritan bounty that would have given me a fortune. There would have been several Franzington heads thrown in to boot. But... looking back..." Her words trailed off. Kera gazed curiously at her. Roarke sighed out her nostrils. "Well..." She muttered, "Looking back now, I realize that Pestiferous would very likely have betrayed me despite my professional diligence." She fiddled with the equipment in her container. "'Roarke Most Rare' was just a banal monicker. In the end, I didn't owe my luck to myself. I owed it to a mare simply for kicking my teeth in. She changed my life." "Uh huh..." Kera stifled a yawn, twirling several pebbles magically above her head. "I bet it doesn't change the fact that you're pissed at her." "Hmmm? Rainbow?" "I mean—yeah! She beat you up, didn't she?" "Kera, you're still a foal," Roarke droned. "I can't even pretend to explain to you the fine intricacies of—" She glanced up, and her lenses retracted. "...how long have you been doing that?" "Hmmm?" Kera's eyes darted over. "Doing what?" Roarke pointed. "The rocks. Floating them." "Hmmm?" Kera looked back at the cyclonically twirling pebbles. "Oh, these?" She smirked. "I snatched them from the last explosion." Roarke tilted her head aside. "You caught them in midair?" "Yeah, sure." Kera shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not bored or anything." She pointed at Roarke's equipment. "It just takes you so long to load another missile, so I'm just passing the time." She kicked her legs playfully as she hummed to herself. Roarke turned and looked at the pockmarked cliffface. She turned back towards Kera. Silence. She trotted away from the equipment case. "Kera... I'm thinking..." "Huh?" Kera glanced up. Roarke stood above her. "I think I've tested enough of my weapons for the time being." Her lenses pistoned outward. "How about you get some practice out of the way instead." "Me? Practice?" Kera's eyes twitched. Her tattooed face grinned. "You mean I get to fire some rockets?" "No." "Awwwwwwwww..." "What I mean is..." Roarke gestured towards the shattered boulders lying on the stone floor. "I would like to see you move some of these rocks with your magic. What do you think?" "Meh. Please..." Kera rolled her green eyes. "I was saving Belle's and Phoenix's skin back in Blue Nova while you were busy crashing your ship into the ground. Good job with that, by the way. You know, according to Propsy, that mana vessel of yours looked just like a giant—" "Hmmm. I understand." Roarke turned and trotted back to her container. "If you deem the task too taxing..." Kera stood up straight, brow furrowed. "Is that supposed to be some sort of a challenge?" Roarke glanced up briefly while shuffling through her equipment. "...Meh." She looked back at her things. Kera fumed and fumed. "Yeah... well..." She glanced at the floating rocks, then shot them off like bullets into the trees. "I can make a rock spin into orbit!" She hopped down from the dirt mound and stomped her hooves. "See if I can't!" Roarke glanced up with a bored expression. "Prove it." "An entire city?!" Fawful exclaimed, breathless. She and Rainbow Dash stood on cushioned benches beneath an array of dimly-lit lanterns inside a wooden lounge. "Made out of Valkyrie Silver?" "Floating buildings," Rainbow Dash said. "The whole city flew. And what you call Valkyrie Silver—well—it's really a bunch of granite and stone buildings older than I can even pretend to tell you." Across the way, several old ponies with white manes glanced at one another, murmuring in awe before returning their gaze upon the ongoing conversation. "And..." Fawful stroked her frayed bangs back, staring blankly into the shadows. "And while in Stratopolis, you were attacked by this matriarch named 'Axan' and her brood of fire-breathing children?" "No no no..." Rainbow held her hooves up, chuckling slightly. "That was Silvadel. See, you're not letting me tell the stuff that I've seen in order." She smiled. "My friends and I survived our ordeal in Stratopolis only recently. Silvadel was nearly a year ago... well... for me it was. I've since flown through Ledomare and Xona and... and..." Rainbow blinked, squirmed in place, then shrugged. "Well, that's about it, I guess. Heh. But Silvadel and Darkstine and Emeraldine were all before that." "And you claim to hail from... Emeraldine?" Rainbow smiled. "Equestria." "I-I'm sorry..." Fawful shuddered. "It's just... all so much to take in." Her red eyes narrowed. "To think that there's actually more than one kingdom outside of Durandana, beyond the greens!" "Yeah, crazy, huh?" Rainbow smirked. "Now... hee hee hee... if you'd just let me tell it all in order—" "Please forgive me..." Fawful chuckled warmly. "I-I suppose we're just keen to ask so many questions—" An old stallion spoke up from another bench. "Are there ponies living in proximity to the basin?" Fawful rolled her eyes and smiled, blushing. Rainbow craned her neck to look at him. "What? You mean right outside the crater?" "Crater?" Rainbow gestured with her hooves. "This place—Durandana, as you call it—is basically one huge bowl of earth surrounded by a series of high mountains called the Sky Stabs and—" The stallion and several other Gray Feathers stared at Rainbow blankly. "... ... ..." Rainbow blinked. "Ahem." She slinked back in her seat. "Yeah, there are places right beyond the greens. One place is called Alafreo. It's a pretty swell community built on a bunch of bluffs overlooking the arctic wastes. Just imagine a bunch of metal platforms overlooking crashing surf and populated by a bunch of big sentient turtles. Really nice turtles, by the way. Boy were those guys really swell to hang with..." "Turtles... as in shelled reptiles?" a wrinkled mare remarked. "And they can think and talk?" another stallion stammered. "Er... right..." Rainbow grinned. "Where I come from, there're dogs, dragons, sea serpents, griffons—all capable of talking, laughing, hugging, and farting up a storm. Whew! Boy, lemme tell you! And don't get me started on the foxes that my buddies Josho and Eagle Eye found in Aurum. Heh... talk about jobbers..." "Dragons...?" A mare murmured. "Sea serpents?" Another mare nodded. "These names are... odd." She squinted at Rainbow Dash from afar. "Do you mean to say that there are creatures who aren't the foals of the Valkyrie?" "Yeah, well..." Rainbow fidgeted. "You guys are so big on birds, right?" She smirked and gestured. "You really expect yourselves to believe that the Valkyrie squirted out an albatross in her day and age? I mean, come on..." "Animals are different, child." "Ahem." Fawful cleared her throat and smiled. "Sivrem and his flock claim to have seen ponies without feathers on board Rainbow's flying Valkyrie Silver. The First-Borns Kitsune and Jerrio confirm this." She stared at the other elders. "Some ponies in Rainbow's group have horns sticking out of their head—one even has them branching out like tree limbs." "The dudes with a single horn are called unicorns," Rainbow said. "And where I come from, they're just a race of ponies." "A race?" "Yeah." Rainbow nodded. "Just like earth ponies and pegasi." "So... there are ponies who can't fly?" "Oh, totally. Sad, isn't it?" Rainbow grinned. "But hey, we're all special in our own little ways. Unicorns can perform magic—er... what you may call 'the lights.'" The Gray Feathers all murmured amidst one another. "And earth ponies—well—aside from being boring as mud..." Rainbow rolled her eyes with a smirk. "They're actually really, really strong, not to mention freaky-good at raising crops and doing farmwork. Aaaaaand... uh... as for that one dude with the 'branching horns?' That's Floydien, our ship's pilot. He's an elk. As to why he can use magic... uhhh... I-I haven't actually figured it all out myself." Rainbow gulped. "I mean, y'know, I'm awesome and all... but I don't know the answers to everything. Sorry." "It's quite alright, child." A mare smiled from across the room. "Your words are mystifying... but enlightening all the same." "And, y'know... about our 'Valkyrie Silver,'" Rainbow said. "It's not really as crazy as you probably think. Sure, the Noble Jury looks freaky on the outside, but really all that keeps it up in the air is a combination of a bunch of different magically-powered technologies. But—to be honest—I find your big glowy tower thingies to be pretty snazzy as well. I mean—heck—I don't know how they work! But I'm sure there's a way!" "They magnify the Light From Above," an elder said. "Huh?" Fawful smiled. "At the start of every day, the Light From Above appears over the eastern edge of the greens. The earth's summit there allows for a fixed point of luminescence to shine through at dawn. Ages ago, when the Durandanans inhabited this basin by the Valkyrie's blessing, we sought to harness the glow of the Light in hopes of better exalting its majesty." "So we constructed the towers," a stallion said. "While also equipping them with sacred relics of the Gold Lights. We were able to broadcast the glow throughout the basin, but it required three towers to do." Fawful continued. "We adjust their height and rotate them at regular intervals. By the grace of the Light's glory, we've relegated the glow to three magnified points in the day." "First Light... Second Light... and Final Light," Rainbow murmured with a nod. "I get it. The Towers are just projecting sunlight as it passes over the basin throughout the course of a day." She smiled. "That's so cool..." "We are blessed by its shine," Fawful said. "It is one of the many signs of the Valkyrie's glory still at work in this land, along with the life-giving heat from the Gold Lights." "Uh huh." Rainbow leaned forward. "And where... are these Gold Lights." Fawful's eyes darted towards the other elders. They stared back. Fawful focused on Rainbow once again, smiling. "One thing before another, Rainbow Dash. We know you wish to comprehend who and what we are, and we feel the same way about you. But... it is certainly challenging. A lot of what you say is hard to fathom." "Yeah, okay..." Rainbow nodded. "No rush or anything..." "I'm afraid it's not exclusively up to me to share with you the majesty of the Gold Lights. It is... very sacred to us." Fawful chuckled slightly. "It's an odd thing to even have to explain that fact to another pony. You see, we've never once had a reason to prepare for speaking with an outsider about this." "Heh. I get it. It'd be like me trying to explain pizza or something." Fawful gave Rainbow a blank expression. "Erm..." Rainbow cleared her throat. "Did you... h-have more questions or something?" "Well..." Fawful leaned back, smiling. "I would absolutely love to hear more about where you came from." "What, you mean Equestria?" "Please. If you wouldn't mind. I am most excited to know more of this... multi-faceted landscape." "Well, you see, it's all really simple." Rainbow leaned forward. "It's a monarchy run by two matriarchs named—" Just then, she froze, her expression paling. "What?" Fawful blinked, her eyes bright with concern. "Is something the matter, Rainbow?" "Erm..." Rainbow shuddered with a crooked smile. "Maybe we should... uh... g-go for a stroll or a flight or something?" The ponies exchanged curious glances, then stared collectively at her. Rainbow gulped and said, "You may need some fresh air for some of the stuff I'm about to tell you..."