"Applebloom! Applebloom where are ya?" Applejack yelled loudly for her sister to hear her. The fair's loud noises almost drowned out her voice. She groaned in frustration realizing that the filly wouldn't be found that easily. "Why does she do this to me every time?" Rainbow Dash flew towards her and landed.
"Well Applejack I just don't think she's here anymore. Do you think that Applebloom might be in the clubhouse with the other crusaders?" She asked. Applejack realized that the clubhouse was probably the first place they should have looked.
"Of course the clubhouse. Why didn't I think to search there first?" Rainbow gestured to the clock meaning that it was getting late. "Right we should go." Said Applejack as she trotted back to the orchard. Walking in silence they passed by other ponies enjoying the fairs attractions. The sun was starting to go down turning the day into evening.
After quite sometime they reached the cutie mark crusaders clubhouse. From inside Applejack and Rainbow could hear them talking with each other. "I'm telling you girls it's going to be a success. With the new telescope I saw weird meteors coming to ponyville. And when they land bam! Astronomy cutie mark here I come." Said Scootaloo with confidence in her voice.
"IF they land Scootaloo. We still can't be sure if what you saw was real." Said Sweetiebelle. Applejack walked up the ramp to the door of the clubhouse and entered. The crusaders looked up at her and smiled. Applejack looked right at her sister with a mad glare. Appleblooms smile faded and she realized she was in trouble.
"Applebloom. Why didn't ya stay at the fair like ah told you to?" She asked her. Applebloom had a realization of what she forgot to do before Scootaloo came and got her and Sweetiebelle.
"I'm so sorry. I forgot when Scootaloo told me about the meteors coming to ponyville." She said throwing her friend under the bridge.
"Hey don't pin this on me." Scootaloo defended. Applejack sighed and her scowl fell as her anger started vanishing.
"Applebloom ah ain't mad. I'm just frustrated that after countless times of you doin this you still couldn't think of at least asking me first." She said calmly. Applebloom hung her head at the thought of making her sister so worried. "Listen, are ya sorry?" After She asked Applebloom slowly nodded her head. "Alright then I forgive you. I'm just glad Rainbow Dash and I were able to find you."
Applebloom raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Rainbow Dash? She's here?" Applebloom asked.
"Well yeah. She's right here." Applejack turned around but Rainbow wasn't there. "Huh?" Applejack walked out of the door and onto the ramp again. "Rainbow Dash!" She shouted out loud.
"Applejack I'm up here." She replied above the clubhouse. She was flying in the air looking at the sky not breaking eye contact with the stars. "Hey I have a question, was there supposed to be a meteor shower tonight?" She pointed to the sky as large balls of fire drew closer to the ground.
"What in tarnation?" Two of the biggest meteors she'd ever seen were getting closer to the clubhouse and now the crusaders were watching too. Dash sprung into action and flew towards the girls yelling for them to get out of the way. "Jump!" She yelled as she grabbed Applebloom and flew her off of the ramp. Applejack grabbed Scootaloo and Sweetiebelle and jumped onto the ground too.
Using their bodies as shields they covered the foals from any flying debris. They heard a loud crash and the splintering of wood as the meteors crashed through crusader clubhouse. As soon as the noise stopped they all looked up at the tree they had occupied not one minute ago. It was completely destroyed with wood, papers, and memories being completely shattered in an instant.
The crusaders felt tears well up in their eyes as they watched their very childhoods be ripped to shreds. Applejack and Rainbow were completely speechless at the sight in front of them. Two loud explosions were heard deep in the orchard as smoke rose from the crashes. "Girls we need to go. We need to get back to town now and get somepony to help." She said while slightly shivering.
"I knew the meteors were coming. I just didn't know they'd destroy the clubhouse." Scootaloo said a little shaken up.
"I don't know about you Applejack but I'm going to check it out." Rainbow Dash said with a hint of excitement. Her need for adventure started overwhelming her fear like usual.
"Are you crazy Rainbow? Let somepony else who's more qualified take care of it. If not at least wait for Twi and the others." She said trying to convince her to come with them.
"I'll just be a minute don't worry." Rainbow started flying towards it completely ignoring the requests of Applejack and the crusaders. As she drew closer to the fallen space objects her heart raced faster. She hovered closer and soon her sense of smell was filled with ash and smoke. She hovered over a bunch of crushed trees and smashed apples.
Soon she found a large trail in the ground leading to the meteor. Looking down into the trail she saw large strips of metal with blue markings on it. Picking it up she examined it closely looking over every inch of the mysterious and cool object. Suddenly she heard rustling coming from the flames. Sounds of moving metal and large crashes were filling the air. She noticed a large mound of rubble lodged in the middle of the fire as it start moving.
She flew into some trees that were still standing and watched the pile. A large white arm popped out of it and grasped the outer most part of the pile with strange talons. It pulled itself out of the rubble and stood there in pain. RD had never seen anything like it. It was at least seven feet tall, it had four arms, in one of its arms it carried a club looking object that had fire on the end, his head was large and covered in armor like skin as was the rest of his body, and his back was draped in a light blue cape.
The behemoth gripped its abdomen with one of its arms and garbled some gibberish which must have been its language. "Keed av fal yan winter." Winter was the only thing Rainbow understood out of its sentence. She heard rustling from the beneath her and soon she heard cackling noises like of an overgrown insect.
Five smaller creatures appeared before the bigger one. They only had two arms and were much shorter. In addition they had teal colored scarfs around their necks. The creatures each had a small object in one of their hands with a small handle, and in their other was a knife with electricity surrounding it.
They pointed the smaller objects at the much bigger alien and the lead one started yelling at him. All Rainbow could make out of it the entire time was the word "Wolves". The large alien tried lifting up its big weapon but he couldn't and he fell to his knees. The five smaller ones ran up to him and started stabbing him and tearing him limb from limb. Large amounts of blood was sprayed across the grass and he screamed in agony as he was torn apart. Rainbow had to hold back the urge to barf at the sight.
The small aliens screeched as one of them took the now dead larger ones weapon. He placed it on his back and cackled. Rainbow exhaled silently trying not to get the deranged creatures attention. However they all stopped and remained silent hearing the faintest noise coming from the tree she was in.
Rainbows heart nearly stopped as they all looked into the trees leaves with their dead black eyes. She prepared herself to fly until a loud scream was heard from the other wreck. They all glanced at the tree one more Time then ran off. Rainbow released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. After waiting there for a few minutes she took to the sky as fast as she could back to ponyville to tell the others of what she saw.
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Earlier
Twilight walked in to her library and yawned. It had been an exhausting day and she was eager to get some rest. She walked up the stairs to her room and opened the door. Looking to the ground she saw spike sleeping soundly and she smiled. Walking to her bed she got in and tried to get comfortable.
Feeling the embrace of sleep draw closer she sighed in content. Suddenly a large explosion echoed throughout the town waking her and spike from their sleep. "Huh Twilight what happened?" Spike asked groggily while rubbing his eyes. Twilight got out of bed with a yawn and an aggravated sigh.
Walking to the window she saw something off in the distance. Two large clouds of smoke grew above Applejacks apple orchard. Looking to the sky she saw several fiery objects plummeting to the ground. There was one that stuck out however. It was faster than all the rest and left a bright trail in the sky behind it. The small dot hovered over the Everfree Forest and landed.
As soon it was under the thick trees of the dark forest Twilight felt a burst of strange magic travel through the ground. It was foreign and extremely tame, but immensely powerful at the same time. It almost seemed perfect, and perfect was not an accurate way to describe magic in Equestria.
Her magic analysis was cut short when piles of debris fell into the Everfree. When these things crashed she sensed something dark and evil. It felt like a sinister darkness had just landed in the peaceful country. This power made her heart stop and her fear was escalated at only feeling this. She dared not imagine what vile creatures carried this dark power on their shoulders.
"TWILIGHT!" Spike shouted at her. Twilight shook her head releasing her from her trance. Just then she realized spike had been trying to get her to respond, but she wouldn't listen. "Twilight tell me what you felt. You're starting to scare me." He said concerned.
Twilight looked at him saying nothing and knew what she had to do. "Spike we have to make sure everypony in town is safe but we can't do that without some help, take a letter."
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Xaya flew through the planets atmosphere without much resistance. She sped up to catch the free falling ships in front of her. "Their trajectory has them landing somewhere down there." Ghost said marking a waypoint on her screen. Soon enough the fallen ships crashed in a large orchard of trees. She flew closer to the crash sites and spotted a town close to them.
"Could be a possible settlement. We have to make sure the natives aren't harmed by the fallen." He said. Xaya nodded and hovered over a forrest at the edge of the town. She landed and got out of her ship. "I suggest we move quickly. There's no telling what the fallen could have already done."
Xaya ran through thick low hanging leaves and passed strange flowers. "So many different objects and life forms. If we get the chance later we should analyze them." Ghost said full of curiosity. Eventually Xaya broke through the forest and came into the edge of town. With her hand canon gripped she ran forth to find the fallen.
Suddenly large crashes were heard behind her. Turning around she saw the last of the broken ship sovereign land in the Forrest just behind her. Complete silence fell upon the area as the guardian listened closely. She heard a twig snap to her left so she turned quickly and shot. Standing there was a terrified bunny that had barely dodged her bullet.
Xaya lowered her gun with a sigh when suddenly she was slashed across the back with blades. She stumbled forward from the strike and a foot kicked her to the ground. Not giving her attacker a moment to think she teleported backwards just behind him and in the air. Seeing the fallen vandal holding swords she stuck out her knees and landed on his back.
He hit the ground hard and dropped his swords. She took out her hand canon and shot the back of his head. It popped off and Xaya watched as an unknown force ripped the soul out the vandals neck. She heard a loud roar come from the directions of the crashed fallen ships. "No doubt about it. That was the wolf archon and he's weak. If we get him now we can put an end to this before it starts." Ghost said.
"Well we better move quickly." She said before running as fast as she could to the archon. "Ghost will I be able to get my sparrow here?" She asked
"Well since your ship is on the planet I think you can but remember that we are disconnected from the tower if it gets destroyed there's no repairs." He said. Xaya reached out to her ship and summoned her red sparrow V-30 given to her by the vanguard. She sped past the town not going into it at all. She reached a white fence and bashed through it.
Bobbing and weaving around the trees she drew closer to the crash sites. Jumping off her sparrow she jumped into the air and rolled when she hit the ground. There was nothing in her line of sight but she could feel them. Walking over to the pile of burning metal she moved some of it. Within a fist popped up and punched her far from the pile. Out of it the archon emerged unarmed, but he roared at her and teleported away.
She recovered and went to go find him but four dregs popped up out of nowhere to slow her down. She stabbed the one in front of her and fired to the ones on either side of her. The fourth dreg grabbed her and threw her against a tree. She fell to the ground landing on her side. While there he ran up to her and kicked her in the stomach. She got up and tried to attack him but he was around her in an instant.
Driving his knife into her shoulder he twisted it and ran. She took out the knife stuck in her shoulder and threw it in the direction he ran. The wound quickly healed and she ran after him. After some time he was gone so she decided to look for other fallen.
"What's the chatter on the comms?" She asked while getting her sparrow.
"Scanning. Hmm..got it! The Archon teleported deep into the forest. They're trying to hunt down the fallen from the house of winter." Xaya sped straight back to forest she emerged from. In order to save time and avoid damage from the speeder she got out of the orchard and blasted across the flat land. Little did she know all of the natives in the town could fully see her.
Bursting through the thick brush that led into the forest she looked at her waypoint again. "If we lose this opportunity our jobs will get a lot harder." Ghost said. The waypoint was right in front of her so she got off of her sparrow. What she saw however wasn't a towering behemoth ready to kill. It was just his teal cloak sporting the colors of the house of wolves.
"I don't understand, he should be right here." Ghost said before scanning the cloak. "Wow. They pulled a fast one Xaya. His genetic code is in this cloak, so when we were tracking him we were only tracking his cloak." Ghost explained to her.
"That doesn't make sense. Couldn't we still track him if his genetic code is in him as well as the cloak?" She asked him. He shook himself in a no motion and lifted up the banner cloak.
"Thats not an option. He's teleported far from here. He left the banner as a decoy." He said dropping the banner into her hand. "We should at least take this. It's not often a guardian comes across an archon banner. There's no telling what kind of history it holds for the house of wolves."
Xaya decided to walk back to her ship since there were no leads on where the fallen were. She walked slowly so she could get a good look at the forest. Inside it was really dark, so dark that ghost had to light her way. She had the feeling of being watched no matter where she was in the forest, and looking around she saw eyes glowing in the darkness of the night.
There was however a set of footsteps following her wherever she went. She could hear walking on the floor while trying to remain silent. Over time more footsteps joined in and failed to evade her hearing. "On my mark ghost we'll let them know we see them." She said to him.
Ghost disappeared and darkness soon retook the forest. "I was wondering when you'd let them know." She crouched down and then disappeared from view. She heard them whispering to each other in hushed tones. 'Where'd it go?' One of them said as she crept behind them. She coughed loudly and all of them turned around.
She got one good look at them and saw four ponies with gold armor and spears. One of them had a horn and another had wings. Quickly shrugging off the weirdness of their appearance she let out a burst of light from her hand as if she was activating golden gun. They screamed as their sight was impaired. As they rubbed their eyes she ran back to her ship as fast as she could.
Hearing wing beats above her she looked up and saw Pegasus flying after her in a group of three. Getting back to the open field she saw more ponies tampering with her ship. Next to them was a taller pony with a dark blue coat and flowing blue mane with stars in it.
Xaya ran past them and fazed into her ship without them noticing. Powering it up she lifted off of the ground quickly and took off before the ponies had time to react. With the night quickly coming to an end she didn't have much time to hide the ship. Flying over the town to give herself some room she tilted the ship on its side and pulled up to turn it. Flying back over the forest she looked for any place to hide it as the sun slowly rose.
"There an old structure in the back of the forest." Ghost said spotting a castle deep in the forest. Wasting no time she flew to it and landed her ship behind the structure. Getting out she looked around for any pegasi that may have followed her. Seeing none she let her guard down and walked over to the castle. a large hole was in the back of it and she looked through it. Just then fatigue struck her like a sniper bullet.
"This seems good enough for now. We can turn this into a makeshift HQ." Ghost said. Xaya looked at the castle again as sunlight filled in through the crack. She turned around and got into her ship planning to get some rest.
"Wake me up in an hour or two." She said before immediately falling asleep. Ghost watched her sleep in her armor, snoring loudly.
"I might as well explore the castle, make it more guardian friendly." He said to himself. He flew around to the back of the ship and opened up the hidden cargo section. He pulled out lights and materials to make a fully operational guardian outpost.
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Twilight and the princesses had been sitting in the library discussing what to do about the aliens. "I think the best course of action is to find them and ask what they want. They may be hostile considering what Rainbow saw but we can at least try diplomacy." Twilight pitched. The princesses considered it but knew it would be a waste of time.
"We couldn't even if we wanted to. The aliens are long gone by now especially the one that flew away in the ship." Luna said to her. Celestia nodded and thought of something else.
"If we can't find them then let's wait for them to make the first move. For now we'll station guards here in ponyville just in case they come back to the crash sites." She said.
"That's a good idea, but do you know why the aliens ran though?" Twilight asked.
"I think that maybe they're going to regroup before doing something. Also I think it would be safe to assume that the smaller alien we saw fly away is allied with the others." Luna said to them.
"I agree. Until we find out otherwise we are to assume that. We must take every precaution as well and try to hide this from the media. We don't want the rest of the nation panicking too." Celestia said before standing up and walking to the door. Luna followed suit and walked to the door. "We will go tell the mayor about the guards staying. If they come back don't hesitate to call us." She said to Twilight before leaving and closing the door.
Twilight got up and stretched. A loud yawn erupted from her mouth and she took it as a sign to get some sleep. Walking up the stairs she started to drag her hooves a bit. When she opened her door she heard the chirps of the morning birds and saw the light of the sun shining through the window. She got into her bed and let the fatigue of the long night before set in. She laid there in silence and thought about how it was actually more exciting that the aliens were here than frightening.
Finally Twilight fell asleep and got some much needed rest.