Cryo-7

by Metal Pony Fan

Dawn Over an Old World

"It's beautiful," Strawberry whispered.

Before her, Picus IV stretched out among a field of stars. Grey-green planet filled the lower half of the view screen, dark fog and storm clouds rolling across the surface. The stars across the rest of the screen started to fade as the blue dwarf Picus crested into view. The screen dimmed as the star's light flared through the atmosphere, illuminating daylight on the planet below.

Strawberry watched the star-rise from the darkened cabin, mouth hanging open in wonder as celestial lights sparkled in her eyes. "I’ve never seen a planet from space before," she breathed in wonder.

"Why are you whispering?" Twilight asked from copilot's chair. "And can we turn the lights back on?"

Radio and Astral laughed.

"Lighten up Twilight." Astral dialed the lights up a little, but kept them dim, allowing just enough light to see the controls. "Can't you remember the first time you saw a planet from space?"

"I know I can," Radio butted in. "Ribbon and I borrowed a two-man fighter on our fifth birthday and took it into orbit. Star-rise over a crystal planet has to be seen with your own eyes. Screens and recordings just don't cut it."

Astral gave the colt a skeptical glance. "Ribbon, 'borrowed,' a fighter?"

Radio shrugged, not taking his eyes of the viewscreen. "Well, maybe I did the actual borrowing, but Ribbon did the piloting." He glanced at the two ponies who were currently his commanding officers. "So, what were your first times like?"

Twilight crossed her hooves and leaned back. "I don't really remember. I've seen so many planets that they start to look alike."

"I don't believe that," Astral scoffed. He looked at Radio. "I was younger than you, couldn't have been more than four. My dad took me on a cargo run, just the two of us. It wasn't the first time I had tagged along, but his old ship didn't have fancy screens or windows, just radar displays. On the last day of the trip, my dad woke me up and said that we were almost home, then he asked if I wanted to see. Ten minutes later, I was in a spacesuit tethered to an open airlock, staring down at Serus from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. It was night time, and I can just remember all the lights, and little fires. Looking down at the planet was like looking up at the stars."

He looked away quickly, shaking his head. "Anyway, we need to land." He flipped the lights to standard levels without warning, bringing a hoof to his eyes as he flinched. "Strawberry, get off the dashboard."

"Oh, right!" The blinking earth pony scrambled to comply, shuffling back away from the viewscreen until her hoof caught on the locked-down copilot's steering controls. She had enough time to mutter, "whoops," before pitching back, knocking Twilight out her chair and onto Radio, flattening the poor colt to the deckplates.

"Slow down you two!" Twilight picked herself up and checked on Radio. "We don't even know where we're going to land yet."

Radio dusted himself off and waved off her attention. "You're a bit on the heavy side, but not that heavy."

She stared at him in disbelief. He did not just say that. "Excuse me?"

He looked up, met her glare, and glanced side to side in confusion. "What?" he asked innocently.

Astral choked back a snicker, and decided to intervene before the colt had his head chewed off. "So, where do we start our search? Scanning for lifesigns only brought up a couple thousand results in the one square kilometer we tried to scan. Do we just start picking random spots? Maybe we should throw darts?"

"Ooh," Berry bounced in her seat, excitedly raising a hoof. "I could build a random number generator, would that help?" Three ponies turned to look at her. "Ohhh, that was sarcasm, wasn't it?"

Astral nodded. "Yeah."

"Oh." Berry flattened her ears back, embarrassed. It was only a few seconds before they were up again and she was poking at the sensor readout. "Why don't we scan for traces of refined metal? Unique crystalline structures should read easier than lifesigns at this distance."

"That could work." Astral started working the controls. "OK, starting a new scan, cross-referencing metallic materials with nearby lifesigns. Well, four results so far, but that's better than the last scan. Five, six, there's three there, so nine."

"Well, we were at about a hundred at this point in the last scan." Radio gave a hooves up. "I'd say that's a good sign."

"Ok," Astral scrolled along the list that populated on his screen, "scan complete, we have twenty-nine results, and that's just on the largest continent."

"That few?" Twilight asked. "Computer, holographic display, sensor results."

The scan list that Astral was looking through flashed to life in the middle of the cockpit. Strawberry let out a low whistle when she saw it. "That's got much better resolution than mine."

Twilight pointed to the first result. "This is underwater, three hundred meters down." She flicked her hoof to the side, dragging the listing along to start a new column of results. "Same with these." She dragged two more results over.

Berry let out a girly squeal. "It's interactive?! Where did they put the sensors? How do you make the computer recognize actual input and disregard extraneous motion without debilitating processor overhead? How..." She caught herself in the middle of reaching for the display and clammed up, sheepishly clicking her hooves together. "Sorry. Um, these results," she quickly started swiping results into a third column, repressing happy giggles the whole time, "these show a composition indicative of extreme thermal stress, add the identical radiation traces shown in the notes here, and these seem to be part of a ship that broke up in an uncontrolled entry."

"Uh, wow." Twilight expanded one of the results Berry was talking and about and examined it in greater detail. "It looks like you're right, this radiation signature is what you see when a small fusion reactor overloads."

Radio counted out the listings. "Ok, that's seventeen bits of wreckage, and three sinkers. We still have nine possible locations. Can we narrow it down any more?"

Astral reached in and swiped four of the remaining listings into a new group. "These are all transmitting transponder IDs. One seems to be a downed Nav-buoy. One is a distress beacon, but the date coded in the signal is from two hundred years ago. One is an actual ship, but it's over four hundred years old. And, the last one seems to be a remote weather monitoring station. It has a powerful transmitter, and seems to be sending out a realtime subspace stream. It's registered to... Canterlot Interplanetary Forecasts Inc." Astral shrugged. "So, I guess that's as far as we can narrow it down?"

"Hey," Radio interrupted, "don't I get a turn?" He nodded to the remaining listings. "How much detail can you pull up on the lifesigns readings?"

Astral turned back to his console. "We're about to find out." The first listing expanded itself. Dozens of smaller smaller listings scrolled below it, showing masses in kilograms, average velocities, and relative positions for different objects. "That's pretty detailed. Looks like each of these smaller listings is an individual life form."

"Yeah," Radio inspected the numbers for a moment, "well this is a flock of birds or something. None of them has a mass over one kilogram." He swiped that listing away. The next one only had five sub-listings. "Seven hundred Kilos a piece? What the hell are these? And they're underground?" He swiped that away. "Those definitely aren't ponies."

The next listing was a single reading, eighty-five kilograms and standing still, nineteen hundred kilometers away from the focal point of their geosynchronous orbit. Definitely a possibility, but damn, that's a big pony. "Almost as big as Red. Let's remember this one." Radio moved it to the side but left it up instead of removing it. Thousands of sub-listings popped up in its place. Radio scrolled through, but they all seemed to be a uniform mass at less than one tenth of a kilogram each. "Don't know what the hell that is, but I bet it's a nasty squiggling mess."

Radio swiped to the last listing. There were two lifesigns, each about three hundred Kilos, and according to the velocities and positions, they were circling each other. "I don't think those two-" Velocities spiked suddenly, and their relative distance dropped to zero. One of the masses dropped by several dozen kilos, then that sub-listing disappeared, leaving one lifesigns that started to increase in mass by a few kilos every few seconds. "Did you guys see that?"

"Yeah," Astral grunted, "eat or be eaten, huh?"

Twilight stepped in to take over the hologram. "That's all the possible readings, and there's only one that could be a pony." She pulled back the listing Radio saved. "Oh, hell."

Three more lifesigns had appeared. Big ones. Several hundred kilograms each, but the computer kept shifting the numbers, until finally displaying the word, "error."

Astral's hooves flew over the sensor controls as he tried to bring up more information, but the sensors were already at max focus, and they just didn't have the software to resolve any clearer of a picture.

"The navigation system!" Berry switched on the control panel closest to her. "There should be some sort of landing simulator, we can feed the raw sensor input into it like it was a ground readout to get an idea what's happening."

"Do it," Astral ordered, strapping into his chair's safety harness. "Everypony buckle up. Computer, transfer sensor control to copilot and activate manual navigation and overrides for pilot's panel."

Berry copied Astral's movements to strap herself in, then jumped to work on the sensors. Radio started to head for a chair in the passenger cabin, but Twilight stopped him. Wall panels on either side of the cockpit door glowed purple for a second before flipping down to reveal basic emergency seating, complete with safety belts. She and Radio strapped themselves in just as the shuttle nosedived towards the planet.

"It'll take at least three minutes to get there." Astral kicked on the atmospheric engines before the shuttle actually entered the atmosphere. "Hold on."

Twilight was about to explain why atmospheric engines don't work in space when the holographic display changed drastically. A landscape made of featureless grey cubes appeared before her. Like pixels in a picture, they made up a rough model of trees, ground, and who knows what else. A single blue cube hid among a twisted pipeline of what could only be a representation of tree roots as a red mass approached.

The red mass was made of several parts, a central body on legs, and three twisting, snake-like appendages. "I- I've seen that before," Radio stammered.

"It's a hydra," Twilight pointed out. "Based on its size, if that blue cube is a pony, then it's a renegade male. They can be extremely violent, an average pony won't stand a chance."

The shuttle entered the atmosphere with barely a rumble, then when oxygen levels grew high enough, the fuel that had been building up in the atmospheric engines ignited all at once, creating a rocket-like propulsion that shot the shuttle across the sky of Picus IV like a meteorite.

"You moron!" Twilight scolded, shouting over the sound of rushing air and holding on to her seat as the shuttle shook and rattled. "Fuel safeties exist for a reason!"

"So do overrides!" Astral countered. He started coaxing the ship into a smooth arc towards their destination. "Call me crazy, but don't we need to get there before mystery pony becomes monster brunch?"

The blue cube started to move, slowly creeping to the edge of its hiding place.

Twilight looked at the viewscreen. Flames from re-entry's friction licked the shields, forming a teardrop shaped inferno around them. "Astral, can't you adjust the shields for better aerodynamics? We need all the speed we can get!"

"I'm trying." Astral spared a glance at the simulation. "I know seconds count here, but I don't know what to do with the shield. I've never done this before. What if I slow us down?"

The hydra walked past the blue cube, and for a moment, it looked like it would leave without incident, but then the cube left its hiding spot. It walked into the clearing behind the hydra and something must have happened that the sensors couldn't see, because the hydra stopped in its tracks.

"Use this!" Twilight shouted. Her horn glowed, and for a moment, so did Astral's.

He blinked a few times, shaking his head as several complicated diagrams flashed in his his vision. "What did you just do?!"

"No time! Fix the shields!"

"Gah!" Astral shouted in frustration as he pulled up the shield controls. It wasn't just diagrams he realized, somehow he had a basic understanding of them, and of the theory needed to make them useful in this situation. "You and I are going to have a talk after this!"

The hydra turned around. It spotted the pony and started moving towards it. There was no reaction from the blue cube. If it was a pony, it was either a very brave one, or a complete idiot.

Astral punched in the last adjustment for the shield and the change was dramatic. the rattling stopped, and the roar of wind was reduced to the whisper of friction's flame. The fireball that once surrounded them was now a blowtorch flame extending behind them. And, they were gaining speed, fast. The engines that were merely overcoming the force of friction moments ago, were now able to push them faster and faster. By the time he cut the engines, his panel showed their velocity as mach 43, inching towards double the speed of an uncontrolled re-entry. He would have to start braking now.

He glanced back, fixing Twilight with an icy glare. He wasn't happy with what she did, but he couldn't fault the results. "Eta, one minute."

The blue cube finally moved, running along the ground away from the lumbering red mass. An earth pony? The hydra was catching up when the cube shot up into a massive tree. A pegasus! It juked to the side once on its way up and came to a rest on the lowest branch, barely out of the hydra's reach. It scrambled against the tree, single mindedly chasing the pony as the forest started to move behind it. One branch of a nearby tree started to move, slowly falling at first, then accelerating into a wide arc towards the hydra. A trap! Grey cubes met grey cubes, paying no heed to the red between them, obliterating one head of the hydra's representation.

Twilight, Radio, and Berry watched in shock as the blue cube jumped to the next branch. The one it left started to list and swing down. The blue cube ran along the branch, to the base of the tree, and the branch broke completely free. It crashed to the ground, imapling the second head on its way down.

With only one head left, the hydra flailed about. It was pinned in place by the branch skewered through it's second head. The pony, if that's what it was that so efficiently decimated the massive monster, soared skyward. It almost made it to the treetops before looping and entering a dive.

It dove towards the hydra's head, colliding at more than terminal velocity. The hydra's head slammed back, but the pony just seemed to enter another loop. The hydra's last head slowly wobbled, then slumped against the tree, red mass of cubes starting to fade to grey.

"One lifesign left," Berry mumbled. "Is that really a pony?"

"I don't know," Twilight admitted. "It might be a gryphon. But what was with that attack at the end? Where there any energy readings?"

Berry shook her head. "No, nothing." She tapped her controls. "I'm going to try something real quick." Bits of green showed up in the grey landscape, several in the grove where the blue cube started off, one in the center of the hydra's last head, and a few among the branches of either tree where traps had been set. She looked up at the others. "Those are the metal readings. Maybe some type of weapon? And anchors for some sort of rope for his traps?"

"Almost there," Astral announced. "Speed is down to mach one, and we're about to break through the cloud layer." All eyes went to the front as the shuttle dipped into the clouds cast over most of the continent. "Berry, can you find a good landing spot? Get us as close to that battle as possible."

Berry nodded. "I'll try." She looked down at her console. "It's gone!" Her eyes shot to the holographic simulation. "The pony's gone!"

"Focus, Berry. He can't have gone far." The shuttle broke through the clouds into the dreary grey of average Picus weather. Astral slowed the shuttle to a comfortable cruising speed and decreased altitude until they were just over the tree tops. "As long as he's not in danger we can take the time to search. Let's land, then we can decide our next step."

Berry nodded. "I’m transferring three sets of coordinates to your console now."

Astral checked the coordinates. The first was the location where the hydra fell, the second was the largest concentration of metal in the area, and the third was a clearing roughly halfway between the two. "Good thinking, Berry." He headed the shuttle for the third option. "Ok, Radio? New planet, you know what to do."

"Yes, sir." The colt started to unbuckle himself. "Um, it is safe to get up, right?"

"Yes," Astral affirmed, undoing his own restraints. "Unless I hit a tree or something."

Radio paused, hooves still on his seatbelt. "Uh..."

Astral waved his hoof back. "Go on, the shuttle's hovering right now. I still have to make sure the ground is solid enough to land on."

Radio left his seat and headed to the back of the shuttle. He returned a few seconds later with his scanner under his wing. "Ok, ready."

"Setting down then." Astral lowered the shuttle. Treetops, then towering, vine-wrapped trunks filled the viewscreen. This went on for almost a hundred meters down. Even the smallest tree around them stood at over twenty meters tall. A small dust cloud kicked up around the shuttle as they set down on packed, dry dirt. It was stable ground, and didn't shift under the shuttle's weight. "So, what happens now?"

"We find that pony," Twilight answered immediately.

"No" Astral turned around in his chair so his chin rested on the headrest, "that happens soon, but not quite now. Radio? What happens right now? This is your call."

"Nothing." The colt sighed. "We can't open the airlock."

"Ok, wasn't expecting that." Astral shifted so he was sitting in his seat the right way and spun to face his crew. "This planet is out of the way and abandoned, but ponies come here- Well, I won't say all the time, but with enough regularity that it's classified as a safe-travel planet."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "The planet of monsters is a safe-travel planet? What's considered dangerous?"

"Safe-travel just means that you won't get sick by breathing the air. No virulent diseases, no exotic spores, and breathable air mixture." He scratched his chin. "So, what's out there that keeps us from opening the hatch?"

"It's not out there." Radio shook his head, then nodded to their newest member. "It's in here."

"Strawberry?" Twilight asked.

The earth pony looked up from the sensor panel for the first time since the simulated battle ended. "Huh?"

Astral sighed. "Shoot. Berry, you probably never had an immunization in your life, have you?"

She blinked. "Um, a what?"

"I have the vaccines with me, but it would take at least a week to administer them all." Radio shook his head. "Even if I just gave her the recommended vaccine for this planet, wide spectrum retrovirus, it would still take twenty-nine hours to become effective."

"Well the sooner you give it to her, the sooner twenty-nine hours goes by." Astral looked at Twilight. "Sorry, but whoever's out there can probably take care of themselves for another day."

"No," she said absent-mindedly, "I understand. I don't want to risk anypony getting sick." She stared at the wall for a moment. "But..." She looked over at Radio. "Wait, Berry can't go outside, but what about the rest of us?"

Radio consulted his scanner again. "I can't see why there would be a problem."

"Hold on now." Astral pointed at Twilight. "You're thinking of teleporting out, aren't you?"

She folded her hooves. "Do you have a better idea?"

He folded his. "What do we do if there's an emergency? We won't be able to come back inside. And are you planning to sleep on the ground, or do you expect us to stay awake the whole twenty-nine hours?"

"For your information-" Twilight blinked. "Wait... Us?"

"Yes, us." Astral scratched his head. "It may be a stupid idea to go out there now, but there's no way in hell you're going alone. If there's an emergency, and I mean an absolute emergency, Berry can put on one of the spacesuits in the back, then we can come back aboard." He held up a hoof. "I still recommend we wait a few hours so we aren't spending a night outside, but I'll let you make the call."

Twilight chewed her lip for a moment. "Astral, you know what I'm going to say."

"Yeah," he sighed. "I'm ready when you are, just give me my jacket back first." Twilight nodded, and in a flash, they were sitting on the ground outside the shuttle. Astral hung his head with a weary groan. Somehow, she even managed to give him his jacket back during the teleport. "How impatient can you get?"

"I'm sorry, but we can't wait." Twilight stretched her newly freed wings. "I'm not going fail anypony else." When she finished her stretches, she lifted her right hoof. Wrapped around the ankle was one of the communicators. "Radio, can you hear me?"

"Yes," came the colt's voice, small and tinny through the compact device. "But only because the shuttle's exterior camera has a microphone. Push the button to talk, remember?"

"Oh," she chuckled nervously, "right." She pushed one of the devices buttons. "Like this?"

"That's the self-destruct."

"What?!" Twilight scrambled to pull the thing off, but Astral stepped in and grabbed her hoof.

"Radio," he said sternly, "that wasn't..." He glanced over at Twilight, who had gone about as pale as a sonorran winter. "Ok, that was kind of funny. But, don't do it again."

"You got it, boss. Only works once anyways."

Twilight went red in the face as she started to recover her color. "He's exactly like Rainbow," she muttered with a small pout.

Astral chuckled and spoke into the communicator. "Ok, Radio, if you're done playing around, we can get this show on the road. We'll check out the hydra first, and see if we can find any way to track down the resident badass. I want you to keep scanners on and report any major changes. More hydras, bad weather, whatever, I want to know about it. Other than that, just get Berry's vaccine taken care of."

"That reminds me." Twilight pulled her hoof away so she could have access to the communicator. "Berry, what were you doing with the console? You seemed pretty focused."

---

"Huh?" The pink earth pony lifted her head. She didn't think she was that hunched over, but the curls of her brown-flecked hair were touching the screen. "Me?" She wasn't paying too much attention, but she was pretty sure that last question was directed at her. "Um, I was reconfiguring the sensors. We only had a clear picture of the hydra battle because we knew where to focus the sensors. Now that we don't know where the, um, target, is, we can't just tell the sensors to find it. Scanning for lifeforms the right mass is a little difficult too, because we're at ground level and there's a little bit of a Doppler effect going on. It seems to be inflating the mass readings. So, what I did is set the sensors to follow you, calibrate off your masses to compensate for the Doppler shift, and notify us if you get within thirty meters of a life form between twenty-five and a hundred and fourty kilograms."

"That's a pretty wide range," a voice crackled out of the communicator Radio had set on the console. It was twinned by a clearer voice out of the holographic camera view hovering in front of the main viewscreen. "And thirty meters isn't much warning."

"The Doppler effect gets worse the more you try to scan at once, so a wider radius would mean a wider range of masses." A red dot appeared on her screen, and she tapped on it, making sure it wasn't an error. "Speaking of, um, well, it seems like there's a fourty kilogram lifeform headed towards you now. It's on the ground to your left."

"Yeah," said Astral calmly, "I see it."

"See what?" Twilight asked. "Holy crap! Big snake! Big, big snake! Ok, I'm searching from the air. Astral, Have fun down here, cause I'm- What are you doing?!"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're getting ready to shoot it!"

"Twi, that's a Traborean arbor snake, they're harmless, vegetarian, and almost as popular a pet as prills. I guess this is just their native habitat, the continent of Trabor. Go figure."

"Then why load the gun?"

"Because I don't know if the next creature will be so benign. Hey, Berry, leave the upper end of that scan range off, would you? It would be nice to know if we're accidentally sneaking up on something big and sleepy."

Strawberry entered the necessary commands, then rested her hooves on the console, well away from any active controls. Then, she rested her head on her hooves and listened to Astral and Twilight bicker with a smile. Each time one of them made a point, the other would present a counter-argument, and that would just get shot down. Then the other would make a point, and the same thing would happen in reverse. The tension, the name calling, the verbal joust, it almost seemed like they enjoyed it, and were keeping up the fight just to have a little more fun. "They get along well, don't they?"

"Yeah," Radio answered. He was watching the argument on the display. "I keep waiting for it to come to blows, but it never does. They always come to some sort of understanding before it goes too far. That, or one of them realizes they were wrong and backs out as gracefully as possible."

"Ugh, fine. Just be careful with it."

"Like that?" Berry giggled.

"As somepony I recently met would say, eeyup." Radio rolled his eyes. "Honestly, I don't see how they can keep up the energy."

Berry chewed her lip for a moment. "You know, one of the characters from grandma's stories used to say that all the time. The red farmer who was strong enough to move a house, and tall enough to reach the tallest shelf." She tapped her hooves on the console to mask the silence as she debated her next words. "There were also a bunch of stories about the best flyer in the universe, a sky blue pegasus with a rainbow for her mane and tail."

Radio slowly sat down, suddenly somber and serious. "That sounds like my mom," he said quietly. "She was an amazing flyer, able to outclass all but the very best atmospheric fighters with just her wings. I probably don't even compare." He looked over at Berry. "And, you know, you look a lot like somepony in mom's old photos."

"Do you think they knew each other? Your mom, and my grandma?"

Radio nodded. "And Mac, he's the red pony, and Twilight. I'm sure they knew each other. I think they were friends from another time. I don't know the whole story, but I know that somehow, they ended up frozen in cryogenic storage, then something went wrong, and Astral and Twilight are determined to find them all."

"Think she can do it?" Berry asked hopefully. "I want to know more about Grandma, and Granpa too. Meeting their friends would be a good first step."

Radio shrugged. "Well, they found us, didn't they?"

Berry nodded in agreement. "They did."

---

"You idiot!" Astral huffed as he ran through the jungle. Surprisingly dry and dusty, and smelling of salt, it was still a jungle. As such, it was full of all the vines, underbrush, and brightly colored, likely poisonous, small creatures one would expect from a jungle with a much higher moisture content. "How the hell am I supposed to find you now?"

She was gone, out of sight. Something caught her eye in that clearing, and she chased after it without a second thought. Then, like the idiot he was, he chased after her without a second thought. Did he really think that he was going to keep up with a flying halicorn, or whatever she called herself, while on hoof?

Still, he continued on, hoping that once she caught up to her quarry, she would realize she left him behind and retrace her path back to the shuttle. "Twilight!" He groaned in frustration. As smart as she claimed to be, she didn't think far enough ahead to give him a communicator before leaving the shuttle. "Twilight Sparkle! You are a thick-headed, impatient, self-important, bossy, nagging, dolt!"

There was a rustle behind him. He was facing the sound, crouched low in a protective stance, weapon at the ready, by the time a small, birdlike reptile flew out of the underbrush. He sighed and stood up as two more followed it, one of them stopping on a nearby branch to click and warble at him. About the size of a sparrow, it was a dull, dusty grey, perfectly blending in with the rest of the dreary jungle. It probably didn't have poison to protect it, so it relied on camouflage instead. It flicked its blue forked tongue out and warbled one last time before flying up into the canopy.

Astral resumed his trek. That bird-lizard-thing obviously wasn't that worried about getting away there, given that it stopped to look at him. But he still turned his head at every snapping twig, rustling leaf, and crunching soil he heard.

He continued like that for several minutes, encountering nothing larger than a beetle whose shell looked like it could be turned into helmet. "That's it," he punched a tree and turned around, "she can take care of herself. I'm going to wait outside the shuttle."

There was a sound behind him, a thump against wood, in the direction he had been walking just a moment ago. Was that a hoof? He headed for it, cautiously. It sounded like a hoof against wood, but that might have been wishful thing. There had to be other things on this planet that could sound like that. It could also have been an echo from hitting the tree.

Another sound, two thumps, farther ahead. Whatever it was, it was moving away from him, into dense undergrowth. He picked up the pace a little, wanting to find the source of the noise. As he got closer, it became a little more distinct, the sound of hooves, somepony walking.

He broke into a run, and so did the pony ahead of him. He followed it as it wove through the underbrush, through areas of hanging vines, past jagged, porous, rock formations, and what seemed like dried up bogs. He didn't follow it all that far though, the terrain just changed quickly. It seemed like there were distinct changes to the surroundings every hundred meters or so. The only thing that remained constant was that the other pony stayed out of sight.

Astral caught up to the sound in a thicket of much smaller trees. They were grey, smooth-barked , and not a one was more than half a meter across. Astral's fur stood on end. Something was wrong. He didn't catch up with a pony, he caught up with a sound. He could still hear a pony running, but it was nearby, continuing over and over like a recording. He inched towards the sound, towards a small shrub near one of the trees. And, leaning against the tree, he peeked over the shrub.

Before him, stretched a large, grey centipede. Just under a meter long, with several legs sticking up the wrong way, from its back. Four of these legs drummed on its shell, mimicking the sound of galloping hooves.

"Clever girl," Astral muttered as the bark under his hoof split into segments.

He jumped back as the camouflaged insectoid waiting there reared up, hissing like a leaky gas tank. Easily four times the size of the lure, it lunged at him only to be dropped by a well placed shot to the face, the semi-incendiary round turning the centipede's head into charred paste.

The unicorn suddenly wished he had his old pistol, with its higher ammo capacity, instead of the revolver he now carried. Several more of the creatures were crawling down the trees, hissing and clicking. He counted six of them, not counting the lure that was still hiding behind the bush. He had four shots left. At some point he would have to reload. Running wasn't an option either, The lure was able to outrun him, staying ahead of him every step of the chase, so he could only assume the rest could do the same.

Astral took a deep breath and muttered something his parents used to say. "If my only option is to fight, I'm ok with it." Astral raised the gun and fired, taking out the largest one, and most of the trunk it was clinging to. The carcass hit another centipede as it fell, and they both fell to the ground with a satisfying crack.

The sudden loss of two comrades spurred the others into action. They let go of their trees and curled up as they fell, unfurling the moment they hit the ground. The two closest ones , ahead and to his left, surged forward. Again, Astral chose the larger of the two and fired a single round into its hissing maw. Then, to dodge the other, he side-stepped into the path of the falling carcass, ignoring the splatter of ichor as it hit his back. He twisted and bucked, throwing the dead weight at the other creature, knocking it on its back as it turned to attack again.

The others were drawing near, and one of them reared up. Astral dropped that one without a second glance and then shot the one that was working to free itself from its fallen brethren. Five shots, six bugs, not a bad count, but he was down to brass.

He spun and kicked as the last centipede leapt into the fray, knocking it in the head and stunning it for a moment. He grabbed a speedloader and dumped the spent shells from the revolver. As he tore the lid from the full clip, he realized that the sound of galloping hooves had finally stopped.

"Crap!" He threw up his hoof and twisted away as the lure, the small centipede that got him into this mess, threw itself on him, aiming for his neck. The bug latched onto the arm of his jacket as it hit him, rolling the unicorn into the dusty dirt. He recovered quickly, but there was still a good twenty kilos of insect latched onto his leg, trying its dead-level best to crush the bone.

He lifted his hoof and slammed it back down several times, trying to shake the determined creature. When that didn't work, he rolled on top of it, pinning it down and using his body's weight to keep its many legs from scratching at him. He used to his free hoof to punch at it. Once, twice, when even a third strike didn't seem to phase the creature, Astral stood up as much as he could. The creature's legs immediately started flailing about, scratching and cutting the pony's underside.

Astral let loose with a battle cry, voicing his pain and anger, as he reared up, dragging the meter-long centipede off the ground. As soon as he reached full height, he threw his weight back down, bringing both his weight and the centipede's in to a vicious stomp. His hoof crushed the monster's carapace, breaking its grip on his leg.

As the lure squealed and died, Astral turned his attention to the last centipede. It was now standing over him, menacing and angry, ready for the meal the others died for. Smallest of the bunch, it still towered over him, mandibles clicking together in anticipation.

"Bring it," Astral whispered. He charged forward, ramming his shoulder into the centipede's midsection, knocking it back, but catching a scraping claw across the back of his neck for his trouble. As the creature struggled to right itself, Astral scrambled for his weapon.

He found the revolver, and the now empty speedloader, where the lure had knocked it out of his grip. The new cartridges were dumped out and scattered across the grove. He could see one round resting against one of the fallen centipedes, and he grabbed it. It then became a race, as the centipede righted itself, to see who would land the final attck first.

As the monster rushed forward, Astral stood his ground, loading the single round into the cylinder, then locking the cylinder into position. He took aim as the monster jumped, then was gone.

It was all a blur, but something just slapped it away, mid-leap. Astral looked over in disbelief as the centipede squirmed and squealed against the crude spear pinning it to the tree. Two more spears, each about a second apart, put an end to the creature's struggles. They hit with a loud, solid sound, and must have been thrown with an incredible amount of force because they buried themselves quite deep in the tree.

Astral turned, and in a swirling whirlwind of color, his would-be savior was behind him. His weapon was knocked away from him, and his rear hooves were swept out out from under him with some kind of stick. He was grabbed by the jacket, and like a ragdoll, got flipped over to face his new attacker. Fangs, fur and the sharp end of a crude, twisted spear greeted him. Out of instinct, he tried to push the spear away, but ended up receiving a swift strike across the face with the butt end of the spear. That was followed by a snarling face in his, clearly warning him of the dangers of trying that again.

Astral took the hint and laid still. His attacker didn't seem interested in eating him at least. It was a beast of a pony, ragged fur and violent fangs, growling quietly as she tried to determine if he was friend or foe. She rivaled Mac in size, and her eyes blazed, even in the limited light of the centipede's grotto. One was bright, fiery red, and the other was icy, topaz blue.

She was a pegasus, but her wings were mismatched, much like her eyes. One was full and feathered, like you would expect on a pegasus, but the other was only partially feathered, with spans of tough, leathery membrane making up most of the wing. Her yellow fur was rough, longer in some patches like a dog's winter coat, or perhaps more fittingly, like a wolf's. Her mane, pink, and long enough to drag along the ground, matched her tail. Seemed like neither of them had seen any serious grooming in a long time.

She straightened up a little and stopped growling, giving a short grunt. Astral stayed quiet, and she grunted again, a little more forcefully.

"What?" Astral asked calmly. Given her size, strength, and fighting prowess, it was probably a bad idea to antagonize this wild pony any further. "I can't understand you."

With a frustrated sound, she stabbed her spear into the ground and repeated her grunt. She kept at it, growing louder little by little until her noises finally resolved themselves into a single word.

"Who?"

"Astral," the unicorn answered. He was starting to understand the situation. "My name is Astral. And you? How long have you been stranded here?"

She made another grunting noise, different from the first. "Shuh." She backed off, letting Astral up. She patted her chest. "Shuh."

"Is that your name?" He asked as he stood up, being deliberately slow with his movements. Was this pony they were looking for? One of Twilight's friends? "It's nice to meet you, Shuh."

"Nuh." She shook her head. "Shuh, Shah, Shh..." She trailed off after a few tries and looked away sadly.

Was she having trouble with her own name? Just how long do you have to be alone to forget that? "It's ok," Astral reassured her. "Don't get upset over it. You can tell me your name later. For now, can I call you-"

"Fluttershy?" Astral looked behind him as Twilight walked into the grove. "I... I heard the shots," she stammered in explanation. "I shouldn't have taken off like that. I- How..." Her hoof squished in the unrecognizable splatter that remained of a centipede's head. "What happened?"

"Twuh?" The beast-pony stepped forward, eyes watering. "Twuh!" She ran forward, past Astral, and buried her head in the alicorn's chest. Anything else the feral pony wanted to try to say was lost in mumbled sobs and grunts.

Twilight was too shocked to react for a moment. Her mind was still reeling. "F-Fluttershy... I-" She wrapped her hooves around the abnormally large pegasus, and buried her snout in the tangle pink mane. "I'm so glad you're safe."

The crying pony let go of Twilight. She stepped back, fumbling for a moment for a satchel around her neck. The cord holding it snapped, spilling her meager possessions out on the ground. And, before either Twilight or Astral could react, she had produced a small knife from the clutter and drawn it across the front of her leg.

" Fluttershy!" Twilight grabbed her friend's hoof, knocking the knife away. It was a shallow cut, but it bled quickly. She turned the hoof over to see how far it extended around the leg. When she looked up, she looked in her friends eyes for the first time. So much was different, but it was still her friend. "Why? Why would you do something like that?"

Fluttershy looked down at the blood on her ragged, yellow fur, then up at Twilight. "Ruh... Real?"

That was the last straw for Twilight's mental state. She couldn't hold back the tears any longer. "Of course I'm real, Fluttershy. I'm really here."

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

7025613 I say assign voice actors. Also, you should in the plot synopsis who you're talking about when you say "he" and "him".

[Timuri]

Well, at least Fluttershy is alive and mostly healthy.

[Ytak]

Oooo. I wish I could read more tonight but my bed calls to me. Poor Fluttershy.