Horizon

by Nagmeister

Day 300 - Part 2

The ride was short and quiet. The kerbals were busy taking in the beautiful view below them to notice when they started descending towards the town. A sheen suddenly came over the carriage. Before Jeb could ask, one of the guards simply said, “Cloaking spell.” and that was that. The carriage set down in front of the library unnoticed; the four kerbals quickly slipped inside before it took off again. Inside, the library was warm. Shelves of books lined the wall, a horse-head statue stood perched in the center, and two staircases were all that was in view. One of the staircases seemed to lead down, while the other went up. Both ended in doors that they did not dare to open. After five minutes of waiting, Jebediah decided to go check whether anyone was even home. “Hello?” he called. When he received no response, he went up to the door leading up to the upper floor and knocked with his fist.

“Who's there?!” asked a voice that Jeb recognized.

“It's me, Jeb.”

“You're here already?”

“We've been hear for about five minutes already. Didn't you already notice us?” asked Jeb.

“Sorry,” replied Twilight, “but I've been studying. I probably wouldn't even notice of an explosion went off six feet outside.”

Jebediah saved that information for potential future use before continuing, “Well, anyway, do you have any place the four of us could hole up until we're ready to have our own place?”

Twilight thought for a moment. She had no available rooms, but the library couch could potentially work; however, if any early-morning guests were going to come in and see kerbals sleeping on the couch, they – Oh, who was she kidding; nopony ever came to the library earlier than noon. “Fine, you can use the couch downstairs.” she said. She heard the sound of footsteps going down the stairs before she opened the door.

Downstairs, the Kerbals were already unpacking their things. Jeb was carrying a large metal tube marked “RTG” towards the edge of the library while Bill and Bob were carrying a box-shaped thing with a grill on one side. Hanald was sitting at some sort of desk with a thin metal wire coming out of it, turning knobs and watching little dials move. He was also wearing some sort of clunky thing on his head, with a wire leading into the console. “Testing, testing, 1... 2... 3... Do you read, Horizon?” he said as he continued tuning the machine.

“Loud and clear, Hanald,” said a voice through the console. “Turning on vidfeed now.”

Suddenly, the face of a Kerbal appeared floating in midair. It took twilight a few moments to realize it was only a two-dimensional plane. On each side of it, a metal spire reached up about a meter, each emitting a faint blue glow. Those must have been what was allowing the projection to appear. The kerbal head looked at her, and she could see minor surprise in her eyes. “Is that one of the natives? It looks familiar from one of the vidfeeds...”

Jebediah walked over to the console and pointed at her. “This,” he said, “is Twilight Sparkle. She's probably familiar because she is the first pony to make contact with us.”

“Ahh, so that's what they call themselves? I think that the scientific name Equus will have to suffice for now. So, what's up?”

“Just some testing. I'm detecting you're going over the horizon, so I'm going to shut off comms now.” Hanald pressed a button and the head disappeared, replaced by a few lines of text that said only, CONNECTION TERMINATED. The screen then shut off and Hanald removed the headphones. Jebediah walked away from the console and got back to unpacking before looking up at Twilight, who had descended to the bottom of the stairs.

“Want something?” he asked as he lifted up a box of dehydrated taters. She simply watched as he carried the box over to the library's kitchen, dumping it onto the counter and looking back.

“No, not at all,” she replied. “Just curious as to what's going on here.” Jeb just pointed at what's going on and said one word.

“Unpacking.”

A few hours later, the boxes were unpacked and put in their proper positions. Jeb decided to take a short walk, so he got up from the couch and walked towards the door. “Wait!” he heard Twilight shout. “Are you sure you want to go out there? Ponies might not take too kindly to you walking around, no offense,” she said. He just shrugged and walked to the door, twisting the handle as he walked out. The door closed almost silently as Twilight internally freaked out at what might happen.

The town was empty; unusually so. The streets were completely deserted; not a single kerbal, pony, or animal was wandering around. Jeb walked down the desolate main street, noticing the closed curtains and locked doors. He walked up to one house and tapped on the glass. As soon as his finger made contact, he heard a feminine scream coming from inside. He retreated from the house and walked down towards the town center.

Hastily abandoned food carts formed a circle around the fountain. Jeb heard an eagle screech as he inspected each one. He pulled an old coin out of his pocket, but realizing that probably nobody accepted them here, he shoved it back in. He took to returning to the library when a voice shouted behind him.

“Stop, criminal scum!”

Jeb instantly turned around and saw a young pegasus pointing a fake spear at him. Jeb just turned back around and continued walking, oblivious to the fact that more ponies were appearing in the alleyways. Just as he was turning to walk back to the library, he heard someone say, “Now!” He was instantly surrounded by at least half a dozen various ponies of various ages, races, and genders, all pointing toy spears at him and closing in. “This is going to be a good catch for the traveling circus,” he said as he lifted a net. Jebediah knew instantly what was going on, so he ran. He brushed aside two unicorns as he made his way through the streets towards the library. Just as he began to knock on the door, something grabbed a hold of his leg and he was slowly being dragged back.

Twilight heard the desperate knocking on the door and instantly ran downstairs. She was greatly disappointed with the scene she saw unfolding outside. Five ponies were trying to subdue Jebediah as he thrashed around. He got a good hit on one before a unicorn one burnt a bit of his hair with a fire spell. “Oh, you little shit!” she heard Jeb say before he elbowed the unicorn in the chest. “This one's a fighter!” said one before he dove in to try help subdue the fight. Twilight went unnoticed as she stepped outside her door and shut it silently. She eventually reached the scene of the fight, and cleared her throat.

The five ponies looked at her, and instantly darted off. She went over to Jebediah, who was slightly bruised. He had a look in his eye that made her think this had happened to him before, but she shrugged it off. “You okay?” she asked. Jeb mumbled something that sounded like an I'm fine before getting up and continuing to walk to the library. She then heard him say something about kids these days as he opened the library door and stepped inside.

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CAPTAIN'S LOG #15 –

Y1,D301, 20:36:18

Man, it's been forever since I wrote one of these. I'm pretty sure that the last time I did was about three weeks after we went into warp. But anyway, since this is somehow supposed to help us stay sane, I might as well write a new one. And anyway, I very well may need this, with all the stuff I've seen since we left. Aerobraking and landing went as well as one could expect, with no errors literally at all. It was only after we touched down that things got weird. One of the first things we noticed was the resemblance to Kerbin, especially in terms of life. All the major types of life, things like trees, mammals, plants, etc. that we have observed on Kerbin exist, albeit slightly differently, here. Various creatures that we thought impossible also exist; for example, the Mantikore who attacked us on one of our first days here. Speaking of which, we need more Mantikore jerky; we're starting to run low. Anyway, things only got weirder. The natives here, well... they're something. I thought I'd seen some crazy stuff while I was doing the materials studies all over the system, but... this is insane. These are literally horses. Talking horses, some of whom can fly and some of whom can use magic. I know I sound crazy, but this is real. You can see for yourself; I'm going to snap a picture of the one who's sitting on her bed next to me, reading a book on some sort of “spellcraft”. She was nice enough to let me set up the computer in the upstairs room, where there's enough space for both it and the RTG. Speaking of which, we live in a library now. Yep. The natives literally have a library large enough to house all four of us comfortably. Anyway, picture is being taken.... Now. And now she's giving me a confused look. Ah well, anyway, back to the natives. They appear to be afraid of new creatures, given how almost the entire town hid in their houses when I took a walk down the street. They also appear to be rather gullible, judging form how easily they accepted Purple here's word that we're harmless. Which, by the way, we can not be if we want to. I inspected the rifle an hour ago, and she's still clean as always. Surprising that, after so long in zero-G, she still shoots straight. May not have been such a good thing yesterday, but at least that changeling probably lived. Anyway, Twilight (the purple one) is now watching what I type, so I'd better not say anything else stupid. But, she doesn't know how this works, so she can't do anything about – Okay, she just hit me with her hoof. Well, at least it probably won't happen again. Anyway, I'm closing this log before anything else happens.
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Author's Note:

I'm rather glad I got through this part of the story; I can finally get back to writing a decent plot.

As always, don't be afraid to put criticisms, corrections, or suggestions in the comments