May 1, 2016 - USS George H.W. Bush
I stood on the deck of my ship watching pilots complete flight drills and such, it was 7 after midnight, the sun was shining in the distance as it began floating above the sea. We were crossing through the Pacific Ocean, no one on this ship knows why excluding two people, me and Staff Sergeant Pierce Lewis. I was given two orders, number one is to move the ship near an island and two is to allow command to fly a drone over the island for a short while. I didn't know why and Pierce doesn't either, the higher ups only told us what to do. But they also gave us forty marines and two chinooks, which is very unusual and it was easy to tell that whatever command was planning, it wouldn't be long before I figured out.
The bridge was silent with the only crew member inside being Pierce who was busy staring at a monitor. "Is the drone ready?" I asked causing him to quickly jump out of his chair and give me a weak salute.
"Yes sir, I ran a few tests on it, no signs of damage."
"Alright, we need you to be ready in about an hour, that's when command wants to use the drone."
Iron Hammer inspected the blueprints for the special request that Celestia had sent him to build. it was a large fortress, the blue building plans showed it to be circular in shape with walls that were required to be at least thirty feet high which would be made out of titanium. The walls of the fortress would have windows for guards to survey and defend the area, the inside of the fortress would have buildings for housing, forging, and planning. Their was another building though, that confused Iron, it was a building that was shown in the middle of the fortress which was made out of Crystalime. Crystalime is a material that could only be found in the Crystal Empire, it is many times more durable than titanium and can only be made into a shape with a difficult to learn magic. He tried to think of a reason to build the fortress, even though Equestria had been attacked many times, their was little to no ponies actually being injured especially with the Elements of Harmony protecting them and the very few guards that actually worked outside of Canterlot. Iron cleared his thoughts and readied himself for the coming labor as he saw a row of carriages carrying workers and building materials coming his way in the distance.
I stared in disbelief at what I was witnessing through my binoculars, a small town with bright,wooden buildings that were either light brown or a completely different color. The town looked to be more than a mile wide, their was a large building in the middle of the town surrounded by what looked to be a market and a farm with a tall windmill behind the town. But that was not the reason why I could not comprehend what I was seeing, the reason why was because their was horse like things there that did not look anything like any normal horses. Each one of those things had bright colored hair and bodies, not only that but they seemed to be highly intelligent, they were communicating, eating, and working. That was when I realized that this village wasn't built by humans, it was built by whatever the hell those, things were. I looked towards rick who was as wide eyes as I was. I looked back at the town but this time I saw more and it cause me to become even more confused, I saw something that would only come out of Greek mythology, some of the horses had horns and wings as well. "Rick." I said causing him to slightly jump back
"Y-yes sir?"
"Go tell the guys to get their asses over here right now." Rick dashed away towards the camp, I sat silent as I continued looking towards the town before me. I looked inside some of their homes and noticed things, they had lamps, books and even stoves. From gathering this I could easily tell that this was an advanced civilization which also meant that this was not close to being the only town on this island.
"Alright sir the first thing I want to know is why the hell is Rick shaking so much?" Luther said as he walked up the hill towards me with Charles and Rick behind him.
"Take a look at this and then you'll know why." I said gesturing him to walk towards me.
"What the hell is this." Charles said as he looked down at the town.
"It's exactly what it looks like, now look at those moving things." I told him as I watched him stare at the town with the same expressions as me when I looked at it for the first time.
After a few minutes of waiting for them to get over their panic attacks I decided to make a plan. "Alright guys settle down." I said as I planted my foot on a nearby rock. "As we all know these things are intelligent, very intelligent, which also means when they communicate they have their own language to do so, not only that but I saw books inside of their homes before you guys got here. So what I think we should do is a little reconnaissance and since we probably won't get in touch with anyone outside the island until command comes for us and they will, I think we should do something to pass the time. So this is the plan, we go hide behind some a bush or something to hide us that is as close to one of those things as possible and see if their language sounds anything close to ours, if it isn't then we leave, got it." The entire group nodded in unison.
General Winston stared silently at his laptop which displayed a map of a large island before being interrupted by a knock on the door. "Come in." Winston said calmly. The man who entered was Colonel John Lint, he slowly shut the door and took a seat on the chair in front of the General's desk.
"What is it that you asked me here for sir?" he asked.
"You know about that one island, well, of course you do, I'll just get to the point. You probably know nothing about what we are doing there but what I will tell you that some elites in the pentagon probably know something we don't." John furrowed his brow with a confused expression. "Since you're the only one I trust with this information I'll let you take a look at this." He said as he pulled a document out of his filling cabinet. "This is everything you need to know about Task Force 03's mission, I'm the only one in this entire base that knows about this." He handed the file to John who reluctantly took it. "Read it, they were supposed to contact us an hour ago."
We started sprinting down the hill, the trees hiding us as we did. Everyone took cover behind a row of bushes next to some buildings. I took a short glance over the bush, nothing was there except for the back of a bright red painted home that had a small flower pot lying on it's window. I vaulted over the bush and hid behind the house, there was nothing in sight through the window or around me, I gestured my team over towards me. while peaking my head around the corner I found, nothing, then I began hearing voices from the opposite side of the house, they sounded English but I was not too sure, I slowly steeped around the corner of the building trying my hardest to not to make single sound, then as quickly as I could muster I peeked around corner for a split second. I saw two horses, one was dark purple with red hair and the other one was light grey with blue hair and wings, although I did not spend a long time looking at them I noticed that they had different facial structures, one was square like and the other was more rounded. I quickly moved my head back behind the home and began to move back towards my men. But then I heard something heard something that made me freeze like an animal in front of headlights.
"Did you see that?" I faintly heard from one of them. I quickly moved back towards my men who all had different looks on their faces ranging from confused to scared.
"They speak English." I quietly whispered as I began hearing footsteps heading towards our direction and we all dived back into the bushes.
My entire team and I began to slowly push ourselves into the bush as the footsteps got ever closer. "I saw it over here." one of the voices say.
"You're probably just imagining things." Said another in a higher pitched voice.
"Yeah, I probably was, but It looked so real." The footsteps moved away from us and I checked back over the bush, they were gone. Charles stared at me with a somewhat shocked face. "What do we do now sir?" he asked.
"Well the only thing we can do now... Is try to communicate with them, If they speak English then we're probably fine, and by the looks of this place they may not be too aggressive when they see us." I stood up and dusted off my pants.
"how about we go in through the entrance of the town, I saw it before we went over here, it had at least ten of those things there." Charles said.
"Yeah, if we enter without trying to scare them then that plan should work fine.
"Are you sure about that sir, what if they attack us." Rick said
"If they attack us the logical thing to do would be to fight back." I told him as I signaled the group to follow me. We went around the town through the forest viewing the town as we did, most of the building were homes that were two stories tall, but I could also see what appeared to be shops which had signs with different images on them, all of these building were connected with a stone road that when I overlooked the town, saw they leaded all of the way to the farm. We reached the entrance to the town which had a long road that led towards a small market with horses and had a green four story building behind it. "Don't say anything stupid guys, remember that this is first impressions." We slowly walked towards the center of the town and took in our surroundings, homes and lamp posts led down a straight line with different roads leading towards other buildings. I heard sounds of doors closing and looked towards the houses, then I saw a window being shut and others following in tow, I then looked back at the market, the horses were gone. We continued walking slowly towards the market, their wasn't a single living thing in sight besides my men. We reached the market and looked around, it was filled with shops adorned with different assortments of food and what looked to be jewelry. I looked towards the large four story building in the center, all the windows were shut. "Well so much for making an impression." I said walking towards the door of the building. I slowly laid my hand on the door and pushed, as we walked inside I held a slightly tighter grip on my rifle. The inside of the building was almost pitch black, we turned on our helmet mounted lights, the room seemed to be devoid of anything except for a stage in the front. We began opening windows, the room was now fully visible and we were now able to see a long staircase that led towards a hallway with balconies. I then noticed Charles quickly turning around at the corner of my eye. I looked in the direction he was looking and saw eight horses, but these ones were different from the others, each one was wearing a suit of grey armor and carrying a spear except for one with wings who carried a bow and wore a helmet with a feather mohawk, from it's different appearance I could conclude that it was their squad leader or someone of higher rank. They did didn't look too happy to see us which was pretty obvious since they all had their weapons pointed towards us. I also saw that all my men had their weapons trained on them, "Stand down." I said firmly causing them to slowly lower their weapons, I looked back towards the horses who also began to do the same. The one with wings then stepped in front of its comrades.
"What are you and why are you here?" It asked in a shaky feminine voice. Judging from their voices the ones with the rounder heads were females and the ones with more square like heads were male. I decided that this was probably a good time to make a good impression on them.
"Well, my name is Gary Peterson and our species is called humans." I said gesturing to my men "your island showed up on our satteli-. maps for no apparent reason, we came here to look for explorers that we lost contact with and now, we can't leave since we also lost contact with anyone off of this island." I told them in the most formal manner that I could muster.
"s-so you're not going to eat us?" The horse asked with a voice that was a little less shaky. I looked back at my men with a smirk, I noticed Charles try to hold back his laughter.
"No we are absolutely not." I said with a raised brow causing them all to sigh in relief.
"Well not that we have everything figured out how about we introduce ourselves, I am Ironstep the guards captain for Trotting Greens, which is the town we're in right now by the the way." she said in an unexpectedly cheery voice before pointing to the guards behind her "this is Thrust, Yellowdust, Flint, Camp, Dagger, Trance, and Mellow and we are ponies."
'Like I would remember those names.' I thought to myself.
"Right, welcome to the wonderful nation of Canterlot! I don't really know what is happening right now, apparently Princess Celestia said that something evil was going to attack us and the sky also started acting strange, so we thought that you were going to be those evil things Celestia was talking about."
'Princess what now?'
"Oh sorry I'm getting ahead of myself." She said in response to our slowly rising brows "Princess Celestia is the ruler of Equestria, and so is Princess Luna, and they kinda control the sun and moon." The explanation answered our questions but created many more in the process. "We can save the history lesson for later now that we know each other how about I introduce you to the town!"
'Well this is certainly going to be an interesting day.'
We stopped in the market while Ironstep and the guards went around town telling "everypony" that we were not dangerous.
"What are we going to do once command sends guys to come for us?" Luther whispered to me.
"All we can hope for is that they don't come in guns blazing, they probably already know about this place but haven't told anyone about it." I told him before noticing a crowd of ponies coming towards us.
Ironstep walked towards us while conversing with another pony in tow, this one was a dark grey male that was wearing a suit unlike the other ponies surrounding us that wore no clothing, which seemed to mean that he was of a higher social standing. He walked up to us and extended his hoof.
"Hi their I'm Hent Greensten, the mayor of this wonderful little town!" I tried my best to shake his hoof as he directed a warm smile towards us.
'You people are terrifyingly cheerful.'
"I know who you are because Ironstep has already told me all about you so how about I show you around town!" he said while directing us towards him with his hoof. "Since you all have already seen the town hall, I guess I'll have to show you everything else then."
We began walking down the stone road each side had rows of houses and shops with black lamp posts in a line. Ponies also walked to different destinations who all waved at us with a big smile which was unnerving at times. "So, where do you humans come from and how did you get here?" Hent asked us.
"Us humans come from many different lands all across this planet." I told him.
"Planet?"
Rick came into the conversation "I don't think He's from this planet Gary."
"A planet is the giant rock that we're on right now, but you are probably from somewhere else because no such place named Canterlot existed a few weeks ago."
"Oh, so you are explorers for your race I presume?"
"No we were sent here by our nation to find a group of explorers that had gotten lost but it didn't turn out too well."
"How so?"
"Well, we can't contact our people anymore for some strange reason, and the explorers were killed."
"Killed, how is that possible, their is nothing dangerous in these woods!"
"Apparently it is an unusual sight if you have never seen it, a large lion with a scorpions tail and wings attacked us when we were there."
"A manticore!, those are only found in the Everfree and they have never been seen outside the forest before! That can never mean a good thing."
"Luckily for you it's dead, we were able to take it down before it could hurt anybody else."
"Thank you so much, you truly are a brave bunch!" They then encountered a large, three story, dark green wooden building with a sign that had a drawing of a bed. "Here is the Grand Maple it's the hotel you'll be staying at, I believe it will accommodate you well." Hent said as he stopped and pointed towards the building.
"Wow, you guys really are on top of things when it comes to unexpected guests." said Luther who was pleasantly surprised.
"This hotel was built to accommodate both visitors and guests of high importance, you can explore this place once we are done with our tour if you wish."
We continued walking still receiving waves from all of the ponies we encountered through what looked to be the busier part of town, lined with stores and restaurants that gave off the scent of well made food, I was then was met with the sight of a floating, glowing cup of coffee. "What is that?" I asked Hent pointing him to the unusual sight.
"Do you humans not have magic where you come from?" He asked us receiving a shake of heads.
"Well I shall show you how it works once we arrive at the library, I promise you."
We made are way across a short stone bridge that went over the river we had followed to get here. Hent than pointed us towards a large field of crops "this is Pearl Fields, our main source of food, we grow carrots, apples and potatoes here." I looked over towards the windmill I had seen before, the bottom was made of stone and the rest wood.
After taking a short break at the sight of the forest and hills, we began walking back towards the town "if you think this place doesn't seem like much it's probably because this place is one of the newest towns built in Equestria, and towns usually don't grow very quickly in these parts." We were lead back into town were we stopped in front of a building made completely of stone with windows that were blocked by iron bars. "This right here is the armory, this is were the guards sleep and is also were we put the bad guys which there is none of luckily, recently we've had a lot of guards join, we had two before but a few weeks ago six guards transferred here including Ironstep" He quickly turned a different direction and continued leading us. "Alright, since you wanted to learn about magic I'll introduce you to the most skilled unicorn in town, hopefully he has the time to teach you the basics."
We arrived at the library, it was with most certainty the nicest building, It had a more triangular shape than the other buildings with a large clock at the very top and was at least three times the size of the houses. The inside was filled with rows books, their was only one pony inside, it was a green unicorn who was sitting in a group of chairs focused on a large levitating book. "Brightening, you have visitors." Hent said to the pony, who slowly looked up from his book only to meet his eyes with us before expanding them a much larger size than they previously were and jumping behind the chair.
"Visitors indeed Hent, maybe you should have given me a warning before showing me the highly intelligent being you discovered." The unicorn said as he rose from his hiding place. "So, what brings you to the library of Trotting Greens because if you want to learn about Equestria it would be a much better idea if you went to Canterlot instead."
"They can't learn of our past right now Bright, especially since they may not be here for long, I brought them here in hopes that you could give them an understanding of magic, because of the absence of it in their homeland."
"Alright then I'll tell you what magic is, but I won't go too in depth because that will take weeks to teach, so have a seat over here." he said as he sat back down in the chair he had been sitting in. We all accompanied him in the chairs that were laid out in a circle, they were a lot more comfortable than I had expected, although their wasn't much space for my back, we rested our rifles on our laps in to give our backs a little breathing room.
"The first thing you need to know about magic is that it's everywhere, all living creatures even if they aren't unicorns contain a little bit of magic, that being said unicorns are some of the only being able to transfer to objects which is why we are able to levitate things with our horns which I'm sure you saw me do when you came in."
"So does that me that we have a little bit of magic in us to?" I asked him.
"Technically, yes but their could be an exception because of the fact that you have never seen magic in the land you from." He answered "Now, magic isn't that easy to use, ponies that can use it need years of learning to do more than just lift and move objects for example." The book that he had dropped on the floor then instantly disappeared then reappeared next to Hent "teleportation. Now while you can do all of these things with magic, using it for much more than you can handle can grow very tiring which is why ponies who have done it for longer can do all of these impressive spells and why some unicorns never try to use magic in their entire lifetime." He clapped his hoofs together "Well, those are all the basics you need to know about magic I hope you come to visit again, If you can."
"Thanks Bright I knew I could count on you." Hent said as we stood up from our chairs thanking him as we left. The outside was much more darker than it was before as the sun finally began to fall being replaced by the moon.
"So how do you get to Canterlot from here?" Luther asked Hent.
"We have a train station past the mountains behind the farm that leads to Canterlot and Vanhoover."
"You have a train system!"
"Yep, leads towards all of the cities of Equestria!"
"You guys are a lot more advanced than I thought you would be."
"Well how about I show you a map of Equestria so you can have a better picture of what it looks like."
"That would be great!"
We finally arrived at the center of town which was pack with ponies who were buying or conversing at the shops. While making our way to the town hall a light yellow pegasus approached us "sorry for the intrusion, my name is strike I just really wanted to know what those things hanging on your backs were?" The pony asked us which also sparked the attention of other ponies including the mayor.
"Well, this is called a firearm it's basically a bow that fires small arrows at high speeds." I told them in a way that they could easily understand.
"Wow that's amazing!" The pony said to me before strolling back towards one of the shops with the other ponies also going off to wherever.
We finally entered the town hall, which was devoid of other ponies. "Follow me to my office." Hent said while he began climbing up the staircase. We reached the second floor, which had a balcony looking over the first floor and a hallway that lead to three doors. We were escorted to the first door, inside was a room with a desk, shelf, filling cabinets and a map which had a representation of a landmass. "Alright here it is." he pointed towards the map, I scanned over it. On the map were locations of different cities, towns and land forms, I was also able to see their capital of Equestria which was somehow hanging from a mountain, not the most unbelievable thing I have seen all day. I also saw where we currently were, the town was directly under a place called the smokey mountains which was probably the mountains that Hent had mentioned the train station was behind, but the town was only marked by a small circle. I also saw many interesting sights on this map, a city called the crystal empire which had some strange Eiffel tower like building, and a cloud city.
"Is that city actually on top of the clouds?" I asked Hent.
"Yep this entire map was made by equestrian cartographers." I guess that the place with the griffons and the dragons were real to it was a long stretch from what I had already seen and I had began to develop a headache.
"Well that's all that I can show you for today, how about I escort y'all to the hotel so you can hit the hay." These horse puns were going to be the death of me. We all nodded in unison, I just wanted to go to sleep and see if this was actually just a dream.
We arrived at the hotel, Hent left home as the sun finally began to shine it's final moments. The inside of the hotel looked peaceful lounge chairs were placed on the sides behind tables adorned with various books. The greeter was a female unicorn, she pick up our keys from the rack with her magic, a bright green glow was emitted from the keys as they slowly floated towards the four of us. I snatched it out of the air and felt nothing, which was not what I thought the magic would feel like. "Your room numbers are engraved on the keys, you don't need to worry about the bed sizes, they were made for an alicorn." The pony told us before going back to what ever she had been doing before. I looked at the key, my room number was 5.
The inside of my room was larger than I had expected, their was a king size bed in front of a curtain covered window, their was also a short lamp on top of a dresser that was next to the bed and a small bookshelf to the side, I also had my own personal bathroom. The bathroom was strange to say the least, their was a shower but the shower head was a little too close to the ground obviously to be used by ponies, the sink looked very short but usable and their was also a hole in the ground which I didn't need to think twice to guess what it was used for.
I somehow managed to use the toilet and shower, I won't go into details. Finally, able to rest, I threw myself on the bed and slowly drifted to sleep thinking about what just happened and whatever the hell an alicorn is.
Lieutenant Gleaming Shield yawned, it was already night and he had been walking for hours. He looked towards the large group of guards behind him. "Alright we are going to rest here for a few hours everyone take shifts guarding, We should be there in three hours so someone tell me when everyone has rested." He said, most of his men were trained a few days ago and did not completely know how to fight. After the sky had changed guard enlistment was at an all time high.
May 2, 2016 - TrottingGreens
I woke up as bright rays breached through my curtains and covered my eyes so they could adjust. I took in my surroundings, yep, I was still in magical pony land. I forced myself out of my bed as my eyes finally adjusted and wondered what kind of crazy thing would happen today. I then put on my uniform which did not smell as terrible as I thought it would and I walked out the door.
"Good morning." said the greeter as I began walking outside.
"Good morning." I responded as my stomach began to growl. I realized that I did not have anything to eat for hours and pulled an MRE out of my backpack and ate it on one of the lounge chairs, luckily for me the greeter didn't notice that it was meat. I went outside, which had a strangely strong smell of flowers and looked towards the sun which slowly began rising only to be greeted by a loud chopping noise in the sky that sounded too familiar and ponies screaming while running in every direction. I pulled out the binoculars from my belt and looked in the direction of the noise only to be greeted by two CH-47 Chinooks. I widened my eyes and realized what was happening and sprinted back into the hotel for my teammates.