Snowlet looks down at the open gates from the top, sitting down on it outer walls’ ledge and watching both humans and aliens dragging in their alien allies, both injured and passed on. She then looks out into the city, watching their drop ships hovering around, looking for their new enemy hiding within the buildings and alleys.
She carefully gets herself down onto her feet from the ledge and walks down the staircase from the side of the inner wall, casually getting down from the wall. She looks around her surroundings and decides to do what she was here for. She gets down to the ground on one knee with her pack open and takes out the spherical camera. She searches around as she stands up and waves over a Peace Keeper closest to her and seemed to be just patrolling the area.
He goes up to her and salutes at attention, “Yes, ma’am?” he says.
She shows him the sphere, “Can you toss this up thirty feet?” she asks. He nods and tosses the ball into the sky and came back down. He shows the device to her, “Thank you. You may go back to work.” She says with a grateful smile as he nods and went off.
She puts the camera back into her pack beside the plushy, closes it with a ‘click’ and puts it back on onto her back and stares at the castle up and down, admiring the architecture. She speaks up as if speaking to herself, “Captain. How many Crawlers have you brought down?” she asks hopefully, already beginning to plan on how to tackle her large objective.
“Plenty. Stand by.” He answers as a ship stops in mid-flight in the distance, then glides over to the courtyard where Snowlet was standing. Its hatch opens up and lowers down, the flying machine now just ten feet above ground. As it hovers, ten dog like machines leap out with different colored stripping covering their heads and bodies and all scurry away to get to their respective leaders. Last one jumps out and quickly goes up to her, it body covered in cyan blue stripes. She pets it with a smile and begins walking in the castle with her personal Crawler close behind.
The castle halls, as her Crawler measured, were thirty feet high with columns supporting the arching roofs above and each window she passes were ten feet high and five feet wide. She was at awe of how beautiful and smooth the designs were etched into the white stones on the walls, floor and columns. The large, long, red carpets were either stitched expertly to one another to connect them, or the whole thing was one huge carpet in itself, which was an impressive feat on its own.
Sadly, everything she sees weren’t in perfect condition. The stone halls were filled with gash and scorch marks and a few crumbled pieces of wall laid about. She could only imagine what it might have looked like when every, single inch of this world be intact. It’ll stake some time, as with many of her own kind, but with a bit of repairing on both the environment and the alien cities, she could call the planet her new home. She especially wanted to learn all there is to this new world and its secrets.
“Mm… maybe someday…” she says with a small smile and stops. She looks down at her Crawler. “Cyan.” She speaks up as it straightens out its stance and stares blankly ahead. “Map out the current floor and return when finished.” She orders her follower.
The Crawlers’ back opens up a small circular hatch and a crystal-ball-like object begins flashing red at near impossible speeds, but creating no visible light to blind anyone nearby. With that, it starts galloping ahead without looking back to carry out its command. With an approving nod and a smile, Snowlet takes out a small pen-like device from her belt and a ring of green light lights up on the back end. She walks over to the wall to her left and presses the sharp point onto it with a soft grunt, digging it into the hard wall just a tiny bit with difficulty, even with the help of her exo-skeleton, it was still tough. A tiny screen flares up within her helmet, spelling out the word, ‘Granit’. She presses the pen onto the floor, the columns, windows and everything else she sees around her, gaining different answers within her helmet.
As she passes by a door slightly ajar, somewhat satisfied with the data she was collecting, she stops mid-step as she hears the whining and yelps of creatures. She turns to the door in interest and gently opens it a little more to peek inside, the door itself creaking against its own weight. Her eyes widen at the sight of small, fluffy puppies crawling about, either play fighting with each other or just snoozing away with others in a small pile, cuddling one another for warmth.
One of them spots her at her doorway and begins stumbling towards her. It starts yelping at her as it reaches her and sniffs her feet. Snowlet opens the door a little more, crouches down and starts petting the puppy with a giddy smile. “Oh, you’re so Adorable and Cute! Yes you are!” she gushes at the little pup, sits herself down on the floor and picking up the fluff ball up to her face.
It starts licking her cracked visor greedily as it rests its paws on it as well. She giggles, resting the pup down onto her crossed legs and gently caresses its ears back against its head. As she does, the other pups notice their new visitor and began going to her in curiosity.
Snowlet notices nearly all the puppies going towards her as she stops petting the one on her laps. “Oh dear.” She looks around a little more to see if someone else was here, but all she sees were open, wooden pens and a few large female dogs feeding their pups in them.
Then right ahead of her, she sees a large, brown and white dog come into view and stares at her with the pups sniffing, licking and pawing at her with little whines, barks and yelps to gain her attention. The dog starts going towards her with its head lowered, wary of the new visitor, and slows down as it got closer. Snowlet leans her head back in fear as she hugs the puppy against her chest, fearing the worst from the large dog. It sniffs her helmet, but a bark stops it and looks back at a laying dog. It begins looking through the piling pups and looks at the one pressed against her chest. It starts pawing at her arm with a whine. Snowlet quickly but gently puts the pup down as it gently picks it up by the scruff by the back of its neck and prances back over to its fellow kind.
“Oh my goodness Snowy, you are so lucky right now! But it’s… a little strange as well… Aren’t we on an alien planet?” A female voice says through her helmets' radio.
“W-what?” Snowlet says dumbly, now getting back to reality as she was being swarmed by fluffy and whining puppies.
“The dogs, why are there dog like creatures on this planet?” the voice says again.
“I-I don’t know.” Snowlet replies and starts petting the whining puppies to calm them down the best she could.
She looks ahead as a voice catches her attention. She sees one of the aliens round a corner saying something quietly and gently with a soothing voice, but the moment it spots all the puppies piling on Snowlet, it ‘Eeep!’s and hides itself within one of the empty pens.
Snowlet just stares as she pets the puppies. The dog quickly goes over and stares within the pen the alien was hiding behind. It barks and whines a few times, the alien replies back, still not getting out, but then the dog goes in and starts pulling on its clothing, bidding it to come out, lightly growling.
“Um… hello!?” the curious researcher speaks up.
The dog stops pulling as the alien starts slowly peeking out, its hands resting on the edges of the pin as it stares at her with wide, teal eyes.
“Um… uh…” Snowlet looks around for a moment but then a thought occurs to her and smiles to herself. She looks down at the puppies, picks one up and holds it out to the alien with a hopeful smile.
Giving cute, fluffy things always worked as a sign of peace and friendship She thinks to herself.
Just as the shy alien begins slowly coming out of hiding, metal click-clacking on the stone floor stops it and with a yelp, hid itself back in. Snowlet looks over her shoulders to see the lens of her Crawler looking back at her, its crystal ball like object going back in its little compartment in its body. The machine then looks down at the little creatures and starts scanning the little pups with its little red scanner from its chest.
A loud screech echoes into the room and through the hall, scaring the researcher as she jumps a little with a yelp. Snowlet looks back to see a tall white alien with a horn and a fashionable clothing covering its body as it backs away from her and her Crawler. She also spies a short, purple, scaly creature with a green vest on hiding itself behind the aliens’ legs, staring at her warily. The white aliens’ hands raise up to its chest height and starts glowing a blue aura. Snowlet’s radiation warning begins flashing within her helmet. Her eyes widen, she slowly shimmies behind the other closed door, but when she was fully hidden, the door was swung open, surprising her with a short scream and starts shacking in fear for her life.
“C-Commander K-K-Kelly…” she says to her radio with a shaky voice.
“Yes?” she hears.
“I… I’m…” she tries to say, but quickly begins sending her camera feed as well as her location within the castle instead.
“Keep calm, I’m coming.” Kelly assures her.
The alien shouts at her and takes a step forward; its hands beginning to glow a little brighter as plasma warning starts flashing within her visor as well. She whimpers and stumbles back onto her rump as the little pups start scrambling away from her with little whimpers and yelps. Her Crawler blocks the aliens’ firing range from its designated owner and its small wall of shield activating to protect the human.
Just when Snowlet thought the alien was going to fire, a gunshot rings out and the stone floor near the aliens’ hooves explodes. It jumps in surprise with a short scream of its own, its little follower doing the same. A few more gunshots rang out as the bullets made the aliens dance and back away with yelps. Snowlets’ guardian comes into view as she brings out her hand for her. Snowlet quickly takes the hand as Kelly helps her up to her shaky feet, but kept her magnum pointed at the alien.
Snowlet quickly hides herself behind her protector and both start backing away from the open doors and the white alien. As they back away, a group of alien guards blocks there way and points their spears, guns and glowing hands at them.
“Crawler.” Kelly speaks up, changing the machines’ stance from being defensive to just sitting down and projects out a video from Snowlets’ point of view. It shows them when she peeked into the room, petting the puppies, trying to greet the shy alien with said puppy as an offering and when the white one screamed and raised its glowing hands at her.
Twilight and Celestia quickly went through the halls when they heard the devices shoot out, followed by the voice of Raritys’ short yelps. When they arrived, they saw the Royal Guards pointing their weapons and hands at ready at the two visitors. Twilight looks up to see Celestia lightly frowning in a questioning expression.
Suddenly the visitors’ companions burst through the windows out of nowhere and points their devices at the guards and the royals, lasers pointing at their targets. The rest gets in through the halls and blocks their exits. Twilight just knew she and her guards were at a disadvantage, and one wrong move might get one or all of them killed in a heartbeat. Celestia starts pulling through the guards, much to her formal students’ concern.
“What is the meaning of this?” she questions, then nearly all of the visitors’ lazar sights point to her.
The different dog like machine goes up to her and projects out a video from the shorter ones’ point of view. As it finishes, Twilight was pretty certain Rarity almost crushed their trusts between their species. Just when Celestia was about to speak, a few stick figures blinks to life on the screen, one tall and white, while the other two were short; one green while the other black. When the tall one raises a sword at the green figure, the black one raises a firearm at the attacker and the green one quickly hides itself behind its protector. The figures disappear and replaces them with a globe of a world and a small ship beside it. Two figures come out of the two objects and one from the planet multiplies into countless figures, while the other only manages to make a small bundle, being dwarfed by the other.
The monarch begins sternly ordering out commands to its guards as they hesitantly lower their arms.
“Lower your guns.” Kelly orders and every one of her fellow human did as commanded, though they remained wary.
“Another close call.” Their captain says through Kellys’ radio.
“Agreed.” Kelly replies and turns to Snowlet behind her, “Keep close. Our ships are going to sweep the city one more time before we get ready to go.” She says and Snowlet timidly nods.
As they all start going back out, Kelly notices her charge feeling down and staring at the floor, so she rests a comforting on her shoulder, causing Snowlet to look up at her protector.
“This isn’t your fault. We’re all jumpy, and some of the natives hadn’t seen us yet, so I’m expecting something like this to be happening a little often around here. Just inform me when you want to go scouting around next time so I can have someone watching you, or myself. Okay?” Snowlet smiles a little and nods in agreement.
As every human and alien calms down, they all went back to what they were doing. When they were out, the captains’ voice calls out to his commander, “Okay, time to get ready. Kelly, you know what to do.” he says.
“Single row! Now!” she shouts and waits with her hands behind her back. All of her Peace Keepers runs into a single row and stands at attention, their firearms lowered in front of them. Kelly walks over to the far left, looks at the person and further along the row, “Count Down!” she orders and begins hastily walking along the row as they shout out their respective number when she reaches them.
As she reaches the very end, she notices the orange alien was having trouble keeping its large dog at bay as it barks and snarls at her last Keeper, but the only thing she notices was he didn’t shout his number. She looks at him with a slight glare, “Count Down!” she orders once more. As she waits for her team to reach the very end, the dog continues to bark at the silent man and she keeps on glaring at his polarized visor.
She made sure that all of her Keepers were to never polarize their visors when they were in drill, to show respect to their higher ups. She was not amused with the one in front of her right now.
The second last sound out, “Fifty!” with a feminine voice.
Kellys’ glare hardens, “What is the meaning of this, privet!?” she barks. He knocks on his helmet and shrugs.
“Um… Commander?” Kelly turns her head at Snowlet a few paces away from her, her Crawler projecting out a small screen in front of her, “The Captain only sent out fifty Keepers.” She says with a nervous tone.
She looks back at the short man, “Captain… is she correct?” she narrows her eyes at the man.
“Ye-” before he could answer properly, she launches her right fist skyward, the Keepers’ body following along and lands down in a heap. His body begins flickering with static and flickers out completely to reveal a flier, bleeding out its green blood from its broken mouth. As it starts getting up on its hand and knees and flutter its four wings, Kelly sprints and kicks it from the side of its head, once again, sending it down on the dry ground a few feet away.
Kelly cricks her knuckles and turns away from the unconscious bug, “That’s new.” She mutters to herself as the dog stops barking and starts wagging her tail at her, its tongue hanging out happily, “Captain, send down heavy duty container. We got ourselves a specimen.” She says and stands back in front of her fellow humans.
“Noted.” He replies.
“Four Rows!” she shouts out as the drop ships starts hovering back over to the courtyard.
Twilight was lost for words. She thought Winona was just acting up on their visitors, but just out of nowhere, their leader threw a punch at one of the changelings impersonating one of them. She guessed their leader suspected something was out of place. When she sees their flying ships getting closer and their leader shouting out orders, she feared they were getting ready to go back to their space ship.
“Pri… Celestia, what are we going to do?” she asks fearfully and looks up at her former teacher.
Celestia clears her throat, gaining the visitors’ attention. It then looks at a ship landing down and the first row starts going into the open hatch. It looks to the side and speaks. A moment later, all ten mechanical dogs lines up in a single row. A cyan striped machine went beside Celestia and projects out a blank screen in front of them. One by one, little red lights turns on on the machines’ backs and produces a live feed on the once blank screen.
The armored visitor snaps her fingers and gives out orders to the machines. After it spoke, two on the sides split to the sides and rest start galloping out the gates. As they did, they all notices their bodies disappearing, turning invisible right before their eyes.
When all of their visitors went into their four ships and flew off, that remained the two; the short alien and her protector. Celestia and Twilight were a little confused as to why they were left behind, but the sound of erupting engines right above them catches their attention. As they look up; they see a cloaked, smaller ship slowly descending down. With a gust of wind, they cover their eyes from the wall of dust. They look up once the air around them calms down, and stare in awe at the small ship opening up a little stairway for their visitors and the whole object became visible. Twilight and the others looks at the windshield, expecting a visitor to be driving the small ship, but no one could see the alien pilot, just an empty cockpit.
Celestia gander at their mechanical armed visitor as it strolls over to the still unconscious changeling; grabs its hind leg and starts dragging it closer to its ship and its charge. It drops its leg as they all heard erupting engines above once more.
As another ship initiates its slow descend, Celestia begins walking over to the couple, Twilight scurrying up in her tow. The short one notices and looks up at her, then taps her guardian on the shoulder. It looks back at its charge, then up at Celesita and Twilight. Celestia draws out her hand with a gentle smile.
Kelly looks at the aliens’ hand for a second before she shakes it, her hand nearly engulfed by the other as it speaks to her kindly with a little bow of its head.
When the new ships’ ramp touches down with a locking sound from their bigger drop ship, Kelly turns away from the monarch and walks over to unconscious bug, grabs its arm and drags it over to the ship as a heavy looking, metal crate opens up, two heavily armored Keepers standing by its side within the ship with shotguns at ready. She tosses the body in the crate with a thud and nods to her Privets. They both salute as the crate closes itself up and locks with a hiss, a small green light lighting up with a ‘beep!’, to indicate the crate was now airtight.
She walks back out and stares up at the drop ship as it closes up. “Package is secure. Take ‘er home.” She says.
The engines erupt once more; the aliens around the area covers their faces as a wall of dust was thrown up by the rising ship.
Kelly walks back over to the small drop ship and nods at her charge. Snowlet nods back and quickly walks in and takes her place at the co-pilots’ seat. Kelly looks at the monarch and the purple alien; nods once and walks herself in the ship. As she seats herself, the small hatch closes itself with an audible hiss.
She holds the joysticks and slowly rises the ship into the air, circles the alien city once, spotting the aliens waving away before she rockets into the sky. “Entering orbit, Child of Earth. ETA ten minutes.” She says as the whole ship rattles and gravity working against her and her charge.
“Acknowledged. We’ll see you home, Commander.” A feminine voice replies back.
Celestia silently walks through the halls of her once, scratch free castle. Accompanying her was a small, mechanical dog; each step it took made metallic ‘clicks’ on the carpet and stone floor. She looks down at her little companion, bringing a sly smile to her face as it reminds her of little Twilight when she was young; always clingy and curious.
She came up to a pair of double doors, painted in black, purple, blue and navy blue in decorative patterns to indicate her sisters’ beautiful night. She smiles and just when she was about to run her hand across the surface, her little friends’ head lights up with lazars, quickly followed by a flash of light.
She looks at her little friend and sees it looking at the double doors with interest. She lightly giggles and waits for it to finish.
A moment later, she opens the door and walks in the dim room and walks over to the circular bed that held a resting mare. Celestia slowly sits down beside the body, “How are you feeling, sister?” she asks.
“Art thou serious, dear sister?” Luna brings up a hand and covers her forehead with a light groan.
“Mm… I see…” Celestia says, as the sound of clicking enters the room.
Luna opens her eyes in surprise and looks around, only to find her empty room, “Show thineself!” she calls out as she tries to get up with a wince.
“Luna, calm down.” Celestia gently pushes her back down with a motherly voice. “It’s nothing to be afraid of… we had visitors today.” She smiles at her sisters’ confused look.
“Are these ‘visitors’ the cause of the explosion and the quakes?” Luna says as she continues to look around her room. “Where is it?”
“Yes, Luna. They caused the explosions and such, savings us from the Changelings that were quite ready to invade the castle.” Celestia looks back down at the floor and sees her friend just looking at her, “They all went back to their home, but they left these little dog-like machines to keep an eye on the city.” She scoots out of the way and gestures to it with a small smile.
Luna pulls herself closer to the edge and freezes as she stares at the eyeglass of the machine. Its lenses adjust itself and leans its head closer to her. After a moment of intense staring, the machine looks away from her and begins exploring her room, looking at all the items with great interest.
“These little machines they created were used to communicate between our ponies and the visitors. The visitors are fairly short, but their technological skills on making machines is phenomenal, to say the least. And… I think… they’re looking for a new home to live in, judging by their vast spaceship that’s floating in the sky at the moment.”
“Really!? Is it there now!?” Luna asked excitedly with a big smile.
“Yes, but-” Celestia answers with a hint of concern.
“No ‘but’, dear sister. We like to see it.” Luna pulls off her blanket to reveal her whole body wrapped in bandages, only revealing small patches of fur that stuck out and no clothing to cover her body with.
“Luna, please. You’re in no condition to be moving right now.” Celestia pleads.
“Tia, please, just a single look. Single look and we will never ask, thou again.” She squeezes her hand with begging eyes.
Celestia looks down at her lap for a few moments before she slowly nods, “Okay, b-but please, slowly.” She gets up to her hooves and holds onto Lunas’ hand for support. Luna smiles gratefully at her and slowly inches over to the edge of her bed. She draws out her hooves and gently set them down onto her floor for the first time in months. She slowly unfurls her wings as well, but her flight feathers were nothing more than burnt little stubs. What remained of her long tail was wrapped in bandages as she sits on her bed.
With the help of Celestias’ magic, she slowly rises on her own two hooves with a small whimper and a wince. As she stands, her smile alone was endangering to split her face in half.
“We… I…” Lunas’ eyes develops little drops of tears with a single sniffle.
Celestia leans in and nuzzles her nose lovingly, “You’re getting there, sister. Now, slowly, let’s go over to your balcony.” Celestia takes a step back, while Luna takes a slow step forward with a happy chuckle. As they continue, Celestia notices her little friend was following them from right behind Luna.
When they reach the closed, glass doors, Celestia slowly opens them up with a nudge of her wings, a light breeze starting to come in. Luna basks in the cool air, her aches and pains slowly melting away from her. As they get out, they see the sun was halfway submerged in the horizon.
“Where is it, sister?” Luna asks as she starts looking at the sky with searching eyes.
Celestia points, “Right there, Luna. Right above the clouds.” She answers with a raised arm.
The Captain watches in amusement at the alien monarch and its darker, bandaged counterpart in his office. The smile and look of awe on the bandaged alien was enough to bring a smile on his aged face. It was strange how everything on that world was similar to their own world; animals, plants, the architectures and etcetera. That’s something they’re going to try and find out if the aliens’ leader was okay with his kind living here as well.
When he looks back at the monitor he jumps in surprise to see the bandaged aliens’ face took up to whole screen, staring at the camera curiously. It giggles, as if it knew it surprised an observer. He sighs with a chuckle.
“I hope I can convince them to let us stay.” He says to himself and leans back on his chair, continuing to watch the aliens' adorable curiosity of their Crawler. He then looks down at Kellys’ cracked helmet and runs a thumb across the cracked visor with a sigh, “Stay safe, my little angel…” he whispers and looks back at the screen to witness the two aliens hugging one another.