//------------------------------//
// Prologue; Chapter 1 
// Story: How a Man and His Friends Helped Save Equestria 
// by FinInfinite 
//------------------------------//


How a Man and His Friends Helped Save Equestria


Prologue

It was raining outside.  Ah, how comforting it was to know that you have a house to protect you from the weather.  Spry sank comfortably into his bed and went to sleep.

***

        Carson and Mitch paused at the enormous circular metal hatch after a few insurmountable challenges that they impossibly surmounted and nodded slowly and solemnly to each other.  
They had been sharing this same dream for a little under a month. The first time the two already-friends had met each other in this dream, they had had some strange experiences.  Over the next week and a half, they had learned the game of this dream, fighting and struggling through a direct path to some strange door.  
Each day, they woke up in Dream-Land closer to this door, which they had not even discovered until the end of that first week.  When they finally got to the door, seemingly out of nowhere. A voice coursed through both their minds, saying that in the opening of the door, they could either destroy two worlds, including their own; or save both from destruction.  But, in not opening the door, a great possibility existed that their world would remain unharmed, but the other world would surely be as good as dead.
After a few weeks, they had come upon the decision to open the door, no matter what the risk.  They were afraid of what might lay beyond that door, but would not sit idly by while another world was being destroyed.  Besides, the possibility still existed that their world would be destroyed anyway.
It was then that they realized that they had no idea how to open the door.  Of course, it was not as if they hadn’t done anything like this before. Focusing their minds, Carson and Mitch located the lock on the door - a complex machine of a lock right in the middle.  Mitch felt his fist in surprise (for it was protected and studded by a thin layer of adamantium) then opened it, revealing a strange mechanism that had emerged from the near-invincible glove.
It started glowing profusely, then floating, and suddenly, it shot right into the door.  A loud crack sounded, and suddenly, there was a discernible crevice running the length of the door.
“Well, that was easier than I expected,” Carson remarked.
He then noticed a wheel, the kind used to open hatches, slide out to the right of the door, after an opening appearing in the metal to let it through.
“I guess it’s pretty obvious what we’re supposed to do, huh?” noted Mitch.
Carson nodded and turned the wheel just a bit. Just as he was doing this, blinding white light shot out from the crack made, slightly startling the two. After a slight pause, Carson turned with more vigor, eager to see this light (and what was producing it) in its full glory.
As the door opened fully, they noticed that it was not simply white, but also green, cyan, and magenta mixed in splotches.
“Let’s hope we don’t die,” said Carson with a touch of apprehension to his voice.
“Yeah, that would kind of suck,” agreed Mitch as they both jumped in.


Chapter 1

        Carson and Mitch dropped onto a path, about 9 feet in width, seemingly made of light itself.  The walkway was encompassed by a deep green wormhole-looking tube, appearing to have no solidity, and to be made entirely of energy.  Large green bolts of electricity appeared and disappeared sporadically, following the path of the wormhole and walkway, though staying on the edges of the wormhole.  The path in and of itself seemed to have no end, though it did look to disappear into a horizon line in the distance.
        “Do you think this might be the ‘other world’ that voice was talking about,” asked Mitch.
        “I don’t know, but let’s keep going and see if we can find out,” answered Carson.
        
They walked down the path for a while, noticing that everything became increasingly brighter, and strangely enough, that horizon line seemed to get closer.
Curiously, the two walked more swiftly along the path until they could no longer see because of the brightness.  By then they were thoroughly confused, but Carson told Mitch,
“Keep going forward, or we’ll lose all sense of direction.”
As soon as Carson said this, they both walked off the path, which had ended abruptly, and fell through a white nothingness for a while - enough to wonder when you would stop.  Suddenly, the speed of their descent was greatly increased.  They both felt all of their nerves going haywire.  Everything tingled, itched, and felt extremely painful all at the same time; as if their very anatomies were changing.
        “What’s happening?” Mitch yelled.
        “I have no idea!” Replied Carson as they hurtled through blinding light.
        The extra speed ended as soon as it had begun, though the pain still persisted; and even increased in intensity.  Carson and Mitch were brought to a grinding halt, inducing a huge amount of whiplash on the two.  At this point, Mitch blacked out from the pain, and Carson soon afterwards.


***

        The two woke up disheveled and moaning.  “Uuuggh... My head hurts,” moaned Mitch.  He then went to grab his head to staunch the pain radiating from there, only to find that he had no fingers to grab it with.  In fact, his “hand” seemed as hard as a rock. “What the...” began Mitch, before an exclamation from Carson made him turn.
        

“Who are you?” asked Carson, pointing his hand at the strange figure in front of him, only to find out that instead of a hand, he had a red hoof, connected to a red arm.  In fact his entire body was red; save his mane and tail, which were long and brown with just a bit of spikiness.  “Who am I?,” he exclaimed in astonishment.
        “Is that you, Carson?” asked Mitch, who was discovering that he was orange all over, and very equine in shape.
        “Yeah, at least I think so... Mitch?”
        “Yeah, that’s me,” Mitch replied. “So what happened, and why does everything look like a cartoon?”
        You could practically see the cogs working in Carson’s brain.  He was coming up with something.  His voice was slightly grave when he said, “Mitch, this is going to sound crazy, but it’s the only solution I can think of,” he began.
        “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Asked Mitch.
        “That we’re in Equestria, and we’re ponies?”
        “Eeyup.”
         “ Well, it makes sense. This must be the other world that voice was talking about.”
        “Exactly!” Said Mitch.  “It’s like a dream come true!”
        Carson asked, “So you’ve been dreaming of becoming a pony too?”
        “Well, duh,” adding a slightly energetic shrug, “What brony wouldn’t?”
“By the way,” Mitch added, “What’s my cutie mark?”
“Well, it looks like like a bass clef!  Ha, that’s ironic, considering that you’re a tenor!”
“You’ve got to remember that I play cello, Carson.”
“Oh, yeah.  What’s my cutie mark, then?”
“It looks like the outline of some sort of bird.  It’s wings are outstretched.”
“An eagle.  Awesome!  Well anyways, now we’re here and we’re here to save both our world and theirs,” Carson said, changing the mood to grim and adding, “Where are we, anyway?”
“Well, we should probably look for the nearest civilization to find that out.  There seems to be something off in the distance that looks like buildings,” replied Mitch, pointing out towards something that indeed did look like buildings, with his orange hoof.
“Well then, let’s get going!” Was Carson’s response.
Before they could get going anywhere though, Mitch suddenly interjected, “Whoa.  You’re a pegasus.”
Carson looked at back.  “So I am... YES!” He said, shooting up into the air about a two feet.  He immediately fell back though, disappointed.  He then noticed something else: That Mitch was a pegasus as well.  “Mitch, you’re a pegasus too!”
“Huh?  Whoa, I am!”  Mitch shot up into the air like Carson, but managed to spin around a few times before plummeting back to Equestrian soil.
“Well, I think I know what we really need to do first,” said Carson, unsuccessfully trying to stand and take a few steps, “We need to learn how to walk and fly.”
“Eeyup.”


	***


	

Learning to walk was easy enough - they got that mastered in a few minutes.  Learning to fly was a completely different story.  Since they had been walking practically their entire lives, Carson and Mitch quickly adapted to four legs instead of two, but they had obviously never had wings before.  Trying to learn to fly was literally trying to learn how to use a completely new and foreign part of the body.
That was when something incredible happened: A glint of red in the distance, and Philomena the phoenix was there in her fiery glory.  Little can be said about this amazing bird without making an understatement.  Even its very presence increased the mood and induced awe, with her flame feathers glowing.  Settling down between the Carson and Mitch, the bird produced two deep crimson feathers with fiery orange shafts.  One feather was very large while the other was still large in its own right, but was dwarfed by the size of the other.  The latter was on a necklace, while the former was not connected to anything, but had the means to do so. 
(note the bottom with a loop to tie the feather onto something)
Mitch took the necklace, while Philomena produced a piece of golden string from beneath her feathers and tied the larger to Carson’s ear.
With the feathers on, the pair felt warmer and more confident.  Everything about them seemed slightly changed for the better.  While marvelling at the effects of the feathers, and the beauty of the feathers themselves, with just a tiny bit of heatless fire around the edges, it took a moment for Carson to process what he saw next.
“Whoa...” started Carson.
“Yeah, I know!” Mitch replied.
“No, I mean your wings - look at them!”
At that moment, Mitch looked at his new pegasus wings.  He didn’t notice anything about a change in shape, but what he did notice was that his primaries, the long, large feathers on the edges of the wings were deep crimson with fiery orange shafts, just as the phoenix feather he was wearing.
”Whoa,” Mitch agreed, continuing, “You know, it’s probably the same with you, it’s just that since you’re already red, you can barely tell.”
To confirm what Mitch said, Philomena hopped over to Carson and, with her starboard wing, pointed out fiery orange shafts in the primaries identical to hers and Mitch’s.
Emboldened, Mitch crouched down, and shot into the sky like a bullet.  Though not completely perfect, he could fly adequately well, and Carson soon joined in.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever known before!” shouted Mitch over the wind in his ears.
“Yahoooooo!” exclaimed Carson in exhilaration, attempting a downward corkscrew, but pulled up too late and, skidding on the ground, ended up with his face planted into the trunk of a tree.  A muffled “I’m okay!” came from the mess of a pegasus after Mitch had gasped in horror.
“Carson!” yelled Mitch, racing towards his friend regardless of what he had said.  As Mitch stood by Carson, after which he lifted his head from the trunk, now with a practically flat face and a wall-eyed expression, Mitch laughed at the former and said,”There’s one thing checked off of your bucket list, Carson”
“What do you mean?” Carson asked as Philomena lighted down beside the pair.
“Your face - it’s derped!”
“Well, that would explain why there’s two of you.  Ha!- Owww, my head...”
“Well, after slamming into a tree like that, It’s a wonder you’re still even conscious!” 
“Speaking of which, my head doesn’t hurt so much.  Must be those cartoon physics!” Carson concluded.
“Must be.” agreed Mitch.
Philomena chirped.  She then jerked her head, as if telling them to follow her.  Afterwards, she took off in flame, and started circling the duo.
“You think we should follow her?” asked Mitch.
“Well, duh, she’s a phoenix!  Phoenixes are always good guys!  Besides, she’s waiting for us; let’s go!”  With that, Carson jumped and flew off after Philomena, with Mitch trailing closely behind.  The phoenix was careful not to go too fast, for fear of them not being able to follow.

	


	***


	

“Hey Mitch, where do you think we’re going?” asked Carson.
“How should I know?” Mitch answered with another question.
Carson shrugged.
Philomena chirped again, and pointed to a familiar cloud formation - a huge bundle of different clouds, with one enormous cumulus professing rainbow waterfalls, and building formations.  Despite these, there was one thing dead wrong about the place.
“Cloudsdale,” the two said in unision.
“But I sense something wrong about it,” Carson said.
“Me too, but I can’t quite put my fing- er... hoof on it.”
Carson laughed.  “Well, I guess we’ll find out when we get there!
They found out, alright.  As they neared the city of clouds, they heard nothing of the bustle of a city.  In fact, other than ambient noises, such as the wind and rainbow waterfalls, the entire city seemed completely deserted and eerily silent.
“Is anypony there?” called Carson.
“Quiet!  There might be somepony there, but I doubt that it would be anyone we would want to see!” scolded Mitch.
“Wait, listen!” replied Carson.
Indeed, there was a sound: a voice, faint but existant.  It sounded muffled and trapped.  The voice sounded obviously female, and also hopeful, but uneager.  It sounded as if any chance of a struggle had long since faded from her thoughts, and that this was just a hallucination.
“Where are you?”  called Mitch
“I’m over here!  Help me!” cried the tired voice.
Philomena called out to the pair of pegasus ponies.  She started flying towards where the sound was and, once again, signaled for the two to follow her.  They did and came to a pile of rather humorous rubble.  (The fact that the rubble was composed partly of marble, but mostly of clouds was what made it humorous.)
“Are you there?” called Carson to the pile.
“Yeah!  Help me!  I can’t move!” the voice told them.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out!” Mitch yelled to the voice.
If viewed from a normal point of view, the situation would be rather odd - two cartoon pegasi rescuing the source of a voice trapped under a pile of clouds - but in this case, the two took this seriously; somepony was in there, and they needed to get them out!  They dug, but most the cloud rubble was much too heavy to be lifted.
“Mitch, help me lift this one,” called Carson, pointing to a large, but not-too-heavy piece of rubble.
They proceeded like this for an hour or more, exerting all of their strength finding ways to diminish the pile without harming the voice.  Finally, out of the darkish-white monotony of construction cloud, an anomaly appeared - a cyan hoof!
“Is this your hoof?” asked a tired Mitch to the voice.
“Yes!  Get the rest off!” came an even more exhausted answer.
“Okay, Mitch.  We need to go about doing this carefully.  Get the small stuff off and I’ll use the bar I found to help move the larger stuff,” said Carson, for he had, indeed, found a bar of a similar cloud-substance  and had been using that to leverage some of the more heavy rubble.
After another short while, another part of the voice’s body was uncovered.  “Is that what I think it is?” asked Carson.
“I think it is,” replied Mitch.
“A rainbow mane?” continued Carson.
“Rainbow Dash?” Mitch asked to the voice.
“How do you know my name?” replied a very tired Rainbow Dash.
Mitch was repeating, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh...” while Carson stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed in wonderment.
“Mitch,”
“What?”
“We need to get her out; this is serious; I mean, it’s Rainbow Dash!”
Mitch paused for a moment, then agreed, “Yeah.”
Now that they knew the source of the voice, they worked all the more vigorously, though still being careful not to injure the pegasus trapped inside.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out!” Carson yelled to that cyan pony that we all know so well.
In their vigor, they made quick work of the remaining rubble; at least enough so that Rainbow Dash could get (or really, be pulled) out.  They would yank, push, and pull until a cloud was off, then go onto the next one.  All three would get excited every time some segment of Rainbow Dash’s blue body would be uncovered.  At last, Rainbow Dash was out.  Unfortunately, she did not come out completely whole - her left foreleg was broken.
She was bruised and battered all over and her leg hurt even more.  She would not normally be feeling this, but her exhaustion and dehydration made her hurt the most terribly she ever had, even worse than the only other time she had been really injured - when she learned that reading was awesome.
She was practically crying, not because of pain, but because of emotional stress; anyone would, after being trapped in a stone prison with no chance of survival.  “Wow...,” Rainbow Dash started shakily, suddenly ending with, “Ow, my leg!” bending to the ground to alleviate the pressure.
“What is it?” Asked Carson and Mitch simultaneously.
“I think it’s broken,” she said, motioning to her skewed foreleg.
“Okay, I think I can do this,” Carson started, remembering the Emergency Preparedness he had learned.  “I’m going to make a splint.  Get two stiff things: Sticks, or something like that.  I’ll also need a long piece of cloth to tie and stuff.”
“We also need a stretcher.  Find another one of these poles and another piece of cloth, big this time,” he continued, mentioning the pole he had used to leverage the debris.
“Got it!” replied Mitch, flying off to find the supplies.  Philomena also flew off, probably to help.
With only Carson and Dash, he decided to ask a few questions.
“So, what happened?”
Rainbow Dash shuddered, remembering some horrible thing.  “I don’t really know; I was here at Cloudsdale visiting my mom and dad, and we were at this building that was pretty old.  That was when... it happened.”
“It what?”
“I was getting to that- Ow!”
“Oh.  Go on.”
“So, suddenly, everything went almost completely black,” she said, her voice suddenly raised, “I could hardly see anything!  Ponies were screaming everywhere!”
“I’m not really sure what happened next, all I know is that this huge thing that I couldn’t see was destroying everything, and there kept getting less and less screaming, and then the building caved in on me!  I could still hear the screaming for a moment, but then I blacked out.  When I woke up, It was still dark, but that was because I was trapped- Ow!  My leg again!”
Carson took another look at the broken leg.  “It doesn’t look pretty.”
“It doesn’t feel very pretty, either!” replied the cyan pegasus.
At that moment, Mitch and Philomena returned with the supplies.  “Ptui!” he said, spitting out the ingredients,  “I’m back!” he proclaimed.
“Perfect timing, thank you!  Now, Rainbow Dash, I’m going to have to set your leg.”
“What.”
“Yes,” he picked something up from the ground.  “Bite on this,” he said, placing it in her mouth.
Carson grabbed onto the injured leg, and set it with a twist and a not-very-nice sounding crack.  Needless to say, the rubble was bit on very hard.
“Now,”  The red pony continued, “Hand me those sticks.”
“Sticks,” said Mitch, sliding the sticks to Carson.
Carson placed the sticks along the rainbow-maned pegasus’s  broken leg.  “Now I need the long cloth.”
Philomena chirped, probably saying “cloth” in phoenix, while giving said cloth to Carson.
Carson snugly wrapped and tied the cloth along the leg, effectively immobilizing it.
“Now I need the long pole and the cloth,” said Carson, grabbing the other pole.
“Pllff,” muttered Mitch out of the sides of his mouth as he gave the pole to Carson.  Philomena handed over the larger cloth.
“Alright, now help me with this.  I need to wrap the edges of the cloth around the pole and keep them that way.”
“Okay, how do I go about doing this?” Mitch responded.
“Put one edge of the cloth over the pole,” Carson began, narrating a demonstration, “And roll it a bit.”
“Okay, so, get it over... And roll it.  Got it!”  Mitch said after he finished.
“Annnd... How the crap are we going to carry this thing?”  Carson trailed off, realizing that this makeshift stretcher was made for human hands.  “Greeeat.  Well Rainbow Dash, can you walk?”
“Does it look like I can walk?” was her reply.
Carson sized up the rainbow-maned pegasus and said, “Oh.  Well then, we’re screwed.”
Mitch jumped into the conversation: “Wait, if we put both of the ends we would hold onto our backs, then that’ll work!”
Carson thought for a moment.  “Wow, I didn’t think of that!  Thanks!”
After some careful maneuvering, they got rainbow dash onto the stretcher with Carson and Mitch carrying her.
“So what do we do next?” asked Mitch.
“We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess,” replied Carson.


END OF CHAPTER ONE