//------------------------------//
// Legacy Prompt #19: First Contact 
// Story: Ponywatching 
// by ThunderTempest 
//------------------------------//

Twilight Sparkle stared out of the window, into the black void of space. Stars glittered and shone in the distance, and Twilight was trapped inside a cage of steel and plastic. Her hooves made a hollow, ringing impact, as opposed to the hard sound that she was used to from walking on Equestria’s surface, or any solid earth, to be honest.

The thought of Equestria brought a wave of melancholy to Twilight. She couldn’t have known what was going to happen. Couldn’t have prevented it, but that never stopped Twilight from wondering, or missing her many, many friends that she had made on her now absent planet. Even Celestia and Luna were gone, and Twilight had to assume that Cadance was missing to, though that was unlikely, given her old foalsitter’s nature. 

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Now she was on a space ship, having been ‘rescued’ from inside an asteroid belt, and she had all kinds of new things to study.

Or she would, if that mechanism on the wall would stop buzzing commands at her. Ever since she’d been taken aboard the ship, it had been barking commands almost non-stop. Of course, Twilight had cast the ‘Babel’ spell on her own ears, so she could understand what it, and her captors were saying, and the reactions had not been good.

They’d been trying to get her to go to the ‘Med Bay’ for some time, which Twilight could assume was the ships’ medical facility, presumably to understand how she was able to survive out in the cold black of space without suffering any damage. Twilight didn’t think these aliens were going to be able to understand magic, or the concept of a self-fulfilling immortal. Truth be told, Twilight wasn’t sure that the aliens who had found her were nice ones, but she was reserving judgement.

“Look, will one of you stupid idiots get into that room and get that purple horse into the med bay? She’ll fetch a high price, and...”

Twilight didn’t need to hear anymore. If her translation was correct, and she was ninety eight percent sure that it was, then these aliens were intending to sell her, and probably other things too. She fired up her horn, and scanned the ship. Sure enough, her magic returned that there were several captive life-forms held in the floors of the ship below her. Slavery was not a new concept to Twilight-several of the cultures that she had run into had practiced it.

And every time, Twilight found it abhorrent. And this time, there was no standing culture or watchful government to make sure that Twilight didn’t interfere. Rearing back, Twilight thrust her horn at the outer wall of the ship, and blew a hole, opening it to the absolute emptiness of space.

The first time that Twilight had discovered that she didn’t need to breath had been on a practice teleport to the Moon. Twilight had stayed up there for a full half-hour before she realized that she hadn’t taken a single breath. In her defence, she’d found some really interesting rock formations and craters. Still, as an immortal, Twilight was more or less immune to harsh conditions of space, and thus simply teleported up to where she guessed the aliens flew the ship. There, she floated outside the window, and waved hello to the aliens. She watched as they scrambled about, yelling to each other. Or so Twilight guessed. She couldn’t actually hear them. But judging by the way that they were running about, Twilight guessed that they were yelling.

****Time****

Now sure that her captors were convinced that she was some kind of space monster, Twilight teleported inside the ship again, and by levitating the aliens into a room, and then using her magic to seal the door shut, she took control of the space ship. After all, it was a far better mode of transport than an endless chain of teleports.

“Well,” said Twilight, as she arrived back in the control centre of the ship, “maybe I can find something interesting to do out here. Maybe even new friends.”

With that, Twilight set about studying the controls of her new ship. She didn’t want to accidentally steer into the heart of a star, and she wanted to see if these aliens had gotten around the faster-than-light problem.