//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Recon-figuration  
// Story: Starting with a Force-A-Nature 
// by Sonic XLR 
//------------------------------//

"Alrighty then. Why don't I just stretch out my wings for a sec here. Bet I'm a natural." Scout straightened himself out and decided that flying upside-down was not in his best interest. 

For once, Scout actually had been spot on, he could fly very easily, and could feel exactly how all the little movements work. Hah, guess I can be great at everything. He landed on his hind hooves and tried to balance himself. He failed. 

Scout awkwardly landed on his fore hooves and cursed internally. Seriously? I can fly but I can't stand? Great. Scout stood still for a moment, unsure of anything at the time. Now what?

Scout flung his backpack over his shoulder and ruffled through the contents. Having an Australium lining that bended reality so that he could store nearly everything made it really hard to find anything though. There was a faster way of grabbing what's needed, but for Scout, it was mainly done on instinct. After all, he didn't really pay attention when overalls was explaining all the sciencey stuff to everybody. 

Scout expected to find one of the mirrors he kept around to admire just how pretty he was, but all he could find was an Australium-gold scattergun. Too impatient to find a mirror that may not be there in the first place, he used the reflection off the scattergun to see just how he looked like.

Removing the Australian color tint, Scout determined that his skin was indeed, cyan. Or at least the fur was. It was a bit off from the normal blue attire he had worn, but was relatively the same color. His hair also didn't seem to different. It might've been a bit more copper, but the only noticeable difference was the specks of dust that seemed to be intertwined, and brushing through his hair with his... hooves showed that the dust particles were part of the coloration. 

The most noticeable facial change, other than the muzzle, was the fact that his large eyes now had green pupils. "Sweet," Scout said as he admired his reflection. He then took a quick look for any other changes to his exterior. 

Only one thing had stood out, there were large marks on his backside depicting a winged lightning bolt, fashioned in a similar way to his normal winged shoe emblem. "Pfft. That's wrong, it's supposed to be-Never mind." Scout depressingly looked at his hooves, still expecting feet. 

"This is gonna suck. At least there's a good view, not just of myself of course." Scout put away the make-shift mirror and walked to the edge of the cliff that he 'spawned' on. Scout widened his eyes at the view, at the world seemed somewhat...pristine. "Lame." Scout quickly dismissed the sight. 

Scout did, however, spot a couple of buildings near a really poor-lit forest. His amazingly keen eyesight could even spot a small object in the sky much further away, that slowly moved towards those same buildings. "Welp, I hate to do this, but gotta ask for directions."

His stomach grumbled. "Huh? I just ate. Guess the high metabo-whats-it is still a thing." Scout remembered that Medic told him he ate a lot to restore the energy he burned up in the blinding sun that is his glory-defining awesomeness. Well, not the last part, but Medic probably meant that too. "Alright food then. But first, this is gonna get borin' pretty damn soon so..."

Scout ruffled through his rucksack again, and pulled out a boombox, only to take out the tape and place it into a smaller device that he forgot the name of. Scout plugged the device into his headset, so that the other ginormous ear can still pick up any small sounds. He started playing one of the ridiculously many tracks he had stored every time anything important happened.

Scout got a running start off the cliff and started flying faster than basically everything, since he doubted anything could possibly be faster than him. However, his decision to fly was more than the fact that he could frikin' fly, but also that he needed to make flying an instinct rather than a thought process. 




After a couple of seconds, or around an hour if Scout had actually been paying attention, he reached a small ledge overlooking the small village. Spotting a sign, along with a couple of farms in the distance, Scout decided to take a small break to memorize the layout of the place, and more importantly make fun of the name. "Ponyville. Wow, that is so creative, just no words. But at least I know that either the people here are obsessed with dumb little horses that got ripped out of a cartoon, or the people are ponies, with sign-making abilities."

To further prove his point, the town had several ponies frantically moving about the place, as if they actually had a place to go, and not just eat grass! However, all the little ponies he saw had wings like him, unicorn horns, or nothing. Hah, they got the short end of the schtick, huh. Then again, I did get turned into a blue horse. 

Before he took off, Scout noticed a small multicolored tornado in one of the plazas. The tornado dissipated leaving a rainbow-colored horse with a similar hue Scout had and a purple pony with a ridiculous messed-up hairdo. "PFFFFFTTTT. Bahahahaahahhaha! Aw jeez. That's good stuff, I need to do that later." Scout laughed a bit more as the two seemed to have a conversation that Scout did not care about. 

However, what happened after the conversation did catch his super-important attention. The rainbow one went through several clouds and dissipated them. In the two seconds(two actual seconds) it took for Scout to register that information and more importantly, that he might be able to screw with clouds. In the next three seconds, Scout instinctively pulled out a normal pistol and focused his aim at a far away cloud. Scout focused his attention and shot the cloud, which did, in fact, disintegrate. "Oh man, that is cool." 

Scout assumed that the cloud would attract barely any attention since no one ever looked up. An important lesson he learned over several years of fighting. Putting away his pistol, Scout flew him and his amazing intellect towards the farms he saw earlier, and stuck to the far surrounding of the town. 




However, in that one moment, one pony had been looking up. The purple pony from earlier, otherwise known as Twilight Sparkle, was gawking at the prismatic mare, who introduced herself as Rainbow Dash, as she had made a prideful assumption of how fast she could clear the sky of clouds. Although Dash was most likely just boasting, Twilight decided Dash would manipulate her into clearing the weather, which had been Dash's job before she decided to slack off instead. However, Twilight did not expect her to actually manage to get rid of every single cloud. 

"10 seconds flat." Rainbow Dash said as she landed on the railing of a bridge nearby. Satisfied by showing off her speed, Dash smiled as she saw the stupefied expression that Twilight had. "I wouldn't leave Ponyville hanging."

Flying over, Twilight interrupted whatever Dash was about to say, "Bubububu, that's...impossible! Nopony should ever be able to do something like that! How did you even manage to get the one cloud over there?! I didn't even see you fly anywhere near it!" Twilight pointed in its general direction.

Rainbow looked around and actually didn't remember clearing that one, but she did remember that it was going to be a pain to clear while she was slacking off earlier, so Dash did know there was a cloud there. However, it's not like she would admit it, after all she did say she would clear all the clouds in the 10 seconds. "Oh that one? Guess I went too fast that you didn't see me go and buck it."

Far from satisfied with Dash's answer, Twilight had rather just leave and find the next pony on the checklist. Dash, however, continued with her earlier thought, "You're a laugh, Twilight Sparkle. I can't wait to hang out some more." Dash did a quick loop-de-loop and flew away upside-down. 

"Wow, she's amazing!" Spike, a baby purple and green dragon, who had been there the entire time, looked back at Twilight. He couldn't help but play with her messed-up hair, much to Twilight's annoyance.




"Carrots. Ew. Spinach. Ew. Bushes. You can grow those? Ew. Where is-oh, well I guess those are okay." Scout had made it to the farming areas, and slowly looked at what crops were grown and which ones he would actually eat. When he spotted the apple orchard a little further ahead, Scout got lazy, as a champion occasionally does,  and settled with eating an apple or two and stealing a couple more for later. It's not like he was going to consider staying in a silly peaceful village full of cottages for that long. Scout might try the big city that was on the mountain earlier, and possibly destroy it if the locals decided to bother him too much. 

Scout went towards the edge of the massive orchard of apple trees and settle with the second closest tree to the outer edge, don't want ponies from outside gawking. Scout could hear a Western-style celebration off in the distance, which was probably louder than the one Engineer had sometimes, except once where Scout decided to maximize the volume so everyone's ears would bleed from country music. He had earplugs though. 

Deciding that those country festivities over on the other side of the orchard would be time consuming, and they would probably sleep from exhaustion later, Scout 'celebrated' by quickly chomping down the first two apples in reach and throwing the cores far away in case of an inventory check. Scout also pocketed seven apples to eat on a journey further down the road. Scout then decided to fall asleep. Right on the branch that he was on. Since it was about to reach nighttime, Scout fell asleep. 

But in a few moments later, Scout forced himself awake to react to the coming footsteps, er...hoofsteps. Unluckily, Scout woke up too late to get away without being seen, and not having an angry farmer try and hunt him down or possibly stab him with a pitchfork. He instead simply waited in the tree and didn't move. He figured that again, no one ever looks up.

"What the hay are ya doing up there?" A thick Texan accent said from under him. God dammit. The voice sounded female, but considering everyone was a sissy pony in this place, he didn't assume anything. Well, actually, Scout assumed a lot of things, and he knew that he was probably right, since Scout wouldn't ever be wrong.

"Dash, Ah see your hooves. Ah thought ya'd want to know that Pinkie went and prepared a surprise party for Twilight. I'm sure ya met Twi, since y'all were in charge of weather and she was gonna check up on ya. So would ya get up already and come with me?" The voice rang under him. Scout then knew several things. Firstly, the voice thought he was someone else. Secondly, making eye contact or saying anything may jeopardize that assumption. And finally, he had to meet this 'Dash' guy since he apparently had the very same masculine hooves that he rocked. Scout then decided to do the first thing he thought of, and its unlikely it would go wrong, after all, it was his plan. 

Scout snored. Loudly. Only he messed up, and his voice cracked at that moment, making the rest of the snore a much higher pitch than normal. Shit. 

"Ugh, get up!" The voice said, with no noticeable confusion. Wait, did the idiot under him actually think that poor excuse of a snore was actually 'Dash'? Wow, they probably didn't know each other that well then. However, Scout's main concern was that the voice's user was currently shaking the entire tree. 

Scout snored even louder this time. And the voice crack happened again. Snoring is a curse for making his voice crack apparently. 

"Fine." The shaking stopped. "But y'all better have woken up before the Sun comes up, Ah'll be in Town Hall when ya wake up, so ya better come or Ah'm gonna come back here!" Hoofsteps started going away from his tree-home. 

Phew. Scout was really tired at this point. He had a long day of being a badass, then getting turned into a blue horse, and the nonsense that came with it. Oh shit. He just realized that he should've asked that person about directions and junk since they were isolated. Screw the pitchfork threat, Scout would've just beaten the crap out of them if they refused. Ugh. Scout smacked his head against the branch, and fell asleep.




"Ernahhh" Scout muffled his voice by speaking into a branch. "Ugh, that was really uncomfortable. Still the best sleep I've had in ages." Scout groggily moved himself off the branch and dropped face first into the ground. 

As he got up, Scout started walking towards the town. Considering he was still in the branch when he woke up, the possibility of this being a dream had become near-impossible. At the moment it was currently nighttime, although the sun may come soon, as implied by his current biological clock,  but Scout figured there would be a lack of ponies walking around and that he could quickly ask for his location and figure something out from there. He honestly did not want to think of a plan at the moment. 

As Scout approached Ponyville, he couldn't see any of the ponies from earlier. Traversing through the empty streets, Scout could feel anticipation growing inside him, he didn't know why, but Scout thought that there might be something important coming up and ponies had a sixth sense for it. Or he could just be hungry again. Wiping away the remainder of crust in his eyes, Scout could hear a large amount of shuffling, and some voices. A hefty grunt came at one point, one of the ponies probably hit their head or somethin'. 

Scout tracked the source of the noise to the large building toward Ponyville's center, and could now make out some of the things that were being said, but paid little mind to them as he approached the building. At this point, Scout was thinking of just asking a whole group of them and hope they didn't look at him like a freak for not speaking pony-language. 

"Did you not recall the legends? Did you not see the signs?" Some old chick's voice came from inside. Well, at least they know English...somehow. Scout didn't really care what she meant by 'legends' and 'signs', but it's not like boring and peaceful people (especially hippies) made any sense to him.

"I did!" Another voice came. "And I know who you are. You're the mare in the moon!" As Scout reached the doors he took a quick look at the moon, and did notice it had become significantly lighter. 

"Nightmare Moon!" A collective gasp could be heard. Scout still didn't care about whatever was going on and prepared to knock the door down.





-A few moments earlier-


"And it is my great pleasure to introduce to you the ruler of our land, the pony who gives us the sun and the moon each and every day, the good, the wise, the bringer of harmony to all of Equestria, Princess Celestia!" Mayor Mare motioned upwards, as Rarity drew the curtains to a spotlight shining on an empty spot.

As the confusion settled in, Mayor Mare addressed the crowd, "Now everypony I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this!"

"Ooh, I love guessing games!" Pinkie added. "Is she hiding?" 

Rarity, after a relatively uneventful search of the balcony, said, "She's gone!" 

"Ooh, she's good." Pinkie once again added. And she had been the first to scream at the dark blue mist.

"Oh, my beloved subjects, how good it is to see your sun-loving faces again." The mare that had materialized from the mist looked over the crowd.

"What did you do to our Princess?!" Dash started flying forward, only to be stopped by Applejack.  However, the two Royal Guards that had been stationed outside flew towards the dark mare in her stead.

Only to be immediately shot down, with one crashing into a wall, and the other into the ground, both bleeding profusely. The crowd went silent in fear, and stared at the dark mare, as if hoping they wouldn't be next. 

"Hmph, fools. Does my crown not count now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years? Did you not recall the legends? Did you not see the signs?" The dark mare questioned the audience with a mandatory tone. 

Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, "I did, and I know who you are. You're the mare in the moon! Nightmare Moon!" Everypony in the room gasped, recognizing the old folk tale. 

"Well, well, we-" Nightmare Moon had gotten only two words out before the doors to the building crashed open.

A cyan male pegasus with copper brown hair stood at the door. "Sup, losers! How are you idiots doin'?"