Everypony continued to stare at the blue-green orb below them.
“Ahem!” Discord called. “I said what now? Honestly, it’s like none of us can even think right now.”
“Now…” Luna said. “Now… Uh… Now…”
“Now we send a message,” Celestia said. “I shall craft one immediately. Starlight, create a Projection Orb.”
“Yes ma’am.” Starlight closed her eyes and created a simple, blue globe. “This work?”
“Great, thank you.” Celestia cleared her throat and made her face welcoming - but authoritative. “Greetings. I am Princess Celestia of Equis, one of the rulers of the ship you can see in orbit. We mean you no harm. We have been exploring the cosmos for countless decades, looking for habitable worlds. We come to you in peace, looking to become friends and to exchange cultures. I understand that you most likely cannot translate this message - which is why we are also sending down a large portion of our database as a gesture of good faith. May we talk in person soon, hopefully as friends. Until then.” She closed the message. “Prepare the friend package. It’s finally going to come to some use.”
“You’ve been waiting forever to use that…” Twilight said. “We’ve got it all ready, let’s just transmit it!”
Celestia nodded, looking deeply into the projection orb. “Transmit on all frequencies, drop this orb down next to a center of large population. Don’t hit anyone.”
“Got it,” Twilight said, beaming. “This is so exciting!” Then she stood still. “...I told them I’d wake them up if we found something this big.”
Celestia smirked. “Send the message, then we can go wake the promised up. The time has come to fully crew the Ark.”
Twilight teleported away. Cadence gasped, tears already in her eyes. “I… I can let them out?”
“Yes,” Luna said. “Yes you can.”
~~~
The Great and Powerful Trixie Lulamoon grunted. “No more… I need my peanut butter crackers…”
“Trixie! Wake up!”
“Huh?” Trixie said, slowly opening her eyes. “S-Starlight? Is it visiting day again?” She rubbed her face. “Ugh… Always have a headache…”
“It’s not visiting day.”
“Then whyyyyy in the name of Celestia would you wake me up?”
Starlight grinned. “We found a planet.”
Trixie’s eyes widened. “Are. You. Serious?!”
Starlight nodded.
“Ohmygosh! Starlight! We can finally do something! I can put on a show under a sun again! And for ponies who haven’t seen the show already!”
As the two friends talked they noticed Cadence. She was staring at Shining Armor and Flurry Heart hugging each other after so long. Tears were streaming down her cheeks while she grinned the cheesiest grin imaginable.
Shining looked at his wife, smiling back. “This has been really hard on you… But now we don’t have to be apart anymore. I’ll be here for you. We can be together.”
Cadence squealed and rushed him into an embrace - Flurry Heart giggled, trying to cast some magic in celebration, but failing - the magic inhibition spell was working well.
Elsewhere, Luna and Celestia were releasing the leaders of Equis. Leaders of all the nations were released into the open - griffons, minotaurs, zebras, even Thorax and Ember stepped out of their pods and looked ready to take on anything. It was mostly hand/hoof shaking politics, but the leaders were very relieved to finally be free.
As the leaders began to discuss, Twilight arrived. Discord was already there, waiting.
“Ready?” He asked.
“Ready.” Twilight confirmed, pulling the lever she had set up to release them all. Two earth ponies, two pegasi, two unicorns, and a small dragon were all unceremoniously dumped out with a shake. Twilight winced as they hit the ground. The simultaneous release was probably not a good design choice.
Pinkie Pie was up first, cheering. “I told you all we’d make it!”
Applejack groaned. “Why’d it dump us? It was all calm the last few times…”
“Egghead reasons,” Rainbow Dash said, attempting to look unfazed - and failing, just like every other time.
Fluttershy barely stood up before Discord offered her some tea. She ignored it, just rushing to him for a hug.
Rarity smiled despite her headache. “Oh, you two are so cute!”
“Yeah,” Spike said, laughing nervously. “Cute.” Rarity rolled her eyes.
Then the last unicorn walked up to Twilight and smiled. “Hello Twi, long time no see, I presume.”
“Sunset!” Twilight said, grinning. “We found a planet!”
“I gathered,” She smiled. “Shall we get to work?”
Discord grabbed them all up in a big hug. “Oh let’s enjoy ourselves first - the Smooze is ready to party!”
The Smooze jiggled slightly. Rarity sighed. “Why did you have to let him out Discord?”
“Close friend reasons,” Discord said. “Now… Let’s celebrate!”
“PARTY SENSE AT FIVE THOUSAND PERCENT!” Pinkie Pie yelled. “MISSION ACCEPTED!” She set to work.
~~~
The Lobby was filled for the first time since launch. Individuals of all races were celebrating the discovery of a habitable world. There was punch, balloons, piñatas, and random presents all set beneath the glow of the Tree of Harmony. Some of the more religious types had left them by the Tree, using its base as a sort of altar.
Everyone was smiling and having a good time. And it was about to get more interesting. Twilight, Sunset, Starlight, and Spike were messing with the screen input, ready to surprise everyone.
“We’re good to go,” Sunset said, closing her laptop. “Here it goes…” She flipped a switch, and the screens in the Lobby all lit up in life, each one displaying a video feed taken from the planet below.
Most of those present knew what the natives of the planet looked like - it hadn’t taken much to get a single image to show everyone - but they still stared at the unusual creatures. They were bipedal - two arms, two legs, a head - but aside from that they were quite different from all the Equis races. Their skin was a perfect pristine white, the only color on it coming from shadows. Their bodies were angular - sharp elbow joints, raised shoulders, and pointed chins. Their faces apparently had no nose to speak of, but the large bright eyes, simple small mouth, and double-pronged ears were easily visible. Surrounding all of their lower legs and lower arms was a growth of some plastic-like material, giving them natural gloves and boots. Their hair appeared to be made of a stranded form of the same material, and as evidenced from the many videos being shown the hair could be pressed into impressive gravity-defying shapes. They all wore clothes.
Of note was the fact that only certain parts of their body could be colored. The eyes, hair, gloves, and boots were always one bright color, of which there was only thirteen options: white, gray, black, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, teal, sky, and blue. The color seemed to have no effect besides a cosmetic one.
Everyone in the room was fascinated by these new creatures. The screen that got the most attention was apparently a newscast - a white male was talking in the alien language with an animating picture of Celestia on screen. Twilight had managed to catch that he was saying “Equis” and “Princess Celestia” in context, enabling her to begin learning their language. It would be much easier than trying to decode the alien message since she would have a huge sample size. She didn’t glean much information from the newscast, but she did get the sense that the native was giving out limited information.
The video cut off to show a bunch of the natives throwing parties with images of Celestia and the Ark everywhere. Some were apparently even making ‘landing pads’ that appeared horribly makeshift.
It cut again to an interview with a very angry yellow female. Twilight didn’t know what she was mad at, but she was mad at something.
After the interview, it cut to a sky female who was smiling and seemed way too excited, with a pink one in the background that couldn’t stop dancing.
“I can tell you right now,” Celestia announced. “These people run on strong, passionate emotion.” She smiled. “I can’t wait to actually speak with them.”
Then the video showed a darker scene - mobs. Mobs holding signs with angrily scrawled notes, and with mutilated pictures of Celestia. They were angry - and then something exploded in the video, cutting it out. The newscaster returned continued speaking, segueing into the weather.
The Lobby had fallen silent.
~~~
“What do we do if a giant space rock comes hurtling at us?” Twilight had asked.
“Throw the sun at it.” Starlight had answered without hesitating.
The thoughts of that meeting weighed heavily in Celestia’s mind as she felt the presence of things around Equis. There was the planet itself, the moon, the sun a little further away, and… it. The thing slowly coming right for them. It was the size of Ponyville.
She didn’t know what it was. She couldn’t get any visions on it. It was a blank…
So she needed to make a choice. It was going to enter the sun’s orbital in a few seconds. She could destroy it now. But… what if it was just lost? She felt sure it wasn’t just a meteor, but something more. Could she just kill it?
No - move the moon in front of it, get a closer look. Maybe make contact with whatever it was…
She was shocked out of her thoughts. She sensed a power buildup in the foreign object - scarily similar in signature to a unicorn laser spell on a much larger scale. A planetary scale.
She wasted no time ramming the sun into the unknown, vaporizing it. But it would have the last laugh - for the energy buildup coursed through the sun, tearing it molecule from molecule.
Celestia felt part of her soul get wrenched away when the sun popped.
And then she saw Starlight appear next to her - a broken, battered, scarred unicorn in an absurdly heavy winter coat. “I’m here to undo this.” She had said, and she lit her horn. Celestia felt the very fabric of reality shift and turn around the world, around her. She felt the area where her sun once was shift with the annals of time.
It wouldn’t go back. The powerful time spell ran into a wall. It hit the edge of the magical field. Celestia frowned. “Starlight, you should stop…”
“No! You haven’t seen what I’ve seen yet! It can’t be this way! It can’t!” She roared. “I can’t let my advice destroy this world…”
Celestia reeled - the thought of freezing had already crossed her mind, but she had pushed it out. Starlight pushed harder, her horn glowing brighter than Celestia had ever seen it. “I have to undo this!”
“Starlight! You’re pushing too hard! The-”
Then reality tore open before Starlight. She screamed, falling into the tear, vanishing right before Celestia’s eyes. She was gone.
Celestia woke up with a start. That was no normal memory - that had been a vision. That timeline was not the one she remembered. She had smashed the sun into the meteor - but she had not remembered Starlight appearing. She didn’t even know she had been there when the unicorn had tried to undo everything.
She teleported into the Lobby where the leaders were trying to piece together the alien language.
“I have had a vision!” She yelled. “Disaster is going to-”
The entire Ark shook as something exploded next to it. Red lights flashed, alarms started blaring, and the ship shook as its engines started failing. The Ark drifted towards the planet below while all present devoted all the magic power they could to the shields…
A trail of broken hull trailed across the starry sky, glinting in the light of the new sun…
It was perhaps premature of them to wake everyone up so early and giving them what can still turn out to be false hope for finding a planet. But then again maybe a full crew will be needed for what lies ahead.
*edit* Congratz on making it to the feature box.
7854572
Not everyone was woken up - there's THOSUANDS in storage. Just leaders and close friends were woken up to fully crew the Ark.
Edit: thanks, I've been there the last few weeks I've updated. It's a great feeling to be up there. Wonder if it'll actually become featured eventually?
-GM, master of dinky think.
Judging that their reaction seems to have been as segmented as ours would be (some excited, some convinced they need to kill them all), I'm betting this is a premeptive strike from their version of North Korea or Russia, which may be this worlds superpower or leading government
7854625
Oh hey Zeus! Nice to see you here!
Without giving away spoilers, you're half right. But there's more to it than that.
-GM, master of the large bowling balls.
Look, Humans! Three entire lines referencing humans! Don't worry, there's no need to explain!
No, seriously, why? You have one fictional setting and set of characters that's been established, (Equis and the Ark), and you're going to be introducing another setting and characters, (the aliens), and that's a good recipe to make some cool story out of... but you also throw in Humans out of nowhere. Never mind that "the humans who are somehow part of the Ark" apparently won't be a big part of the story, why are they here at all? Having a random Human thrown in the background doesn't just distract from everything else, it's also jarring and sticks out like a sore thumb. If you'd included a couple lines describing Spike as having pink scales and also being male, it wouldn't be as out of place as President Donovan Hailey.
Yes, Equestria Girls is a thing, but that's in a separate universe. There's a convenient magical mirror world that you can leave all the distracting Humans behind in. In fact, you don't have to mention them at all! Even in Equestria Girls there's a deliberate separation of the setting from Equestria. The Ark that the story's been taking place in so far was made by Equsis for Equis, so why include any kind of Humans at all?
7854631
There was one BIG reason for this:
If the inhabitants of Equis COULD have moved to The Equestria Girls Universe, they WOULD have. Meaning there would have been no reason to create an Ark or anything, just send everyone through the portal, take your magic with you, problem solved. No drama, no story, no long drift in space. And I suppose I could have just ignored them, but Sunset has some major roles to play later, so that wouldn't work.
I do believe I explain this later, but I'll go ahead and say it now - the humans had a nuclear war that completely toasted their planet. You are right, it actually isn't that important overall - but it is a point I had to address somehow.
If you're worrying about the humans taking spotlight, they won't. They'll mostly be in the background, Sunset being the most affected by them.
-GM, master of commas.
7854625
you forgot god ol' MURICA, FUCK YEAH!
I agree that bringing humans into it at this late date is a distraction. I mean the story doesn't even have the humans tag.
7854708
Read my lower comment for the explanation. I had to explain it somehow, and I wanted Sunset to be here. The humans won't play a major role at all, so I don't think I'd need a human tag if I understand correctly.
Don't worry, it'll still mostly be ponies and these new aliens interacting. Ignore the apes. There's not too many of them anyway.
-GM, master of man.
7854650 Hey! Until Trump goes into power, I'm conviced we wouldn't premeptivley attack aliens... at least Obama wouldn't, he's chill.
7854644 I figured it was like the Ghost Zone in Danny Phantom, the two dimensions are linked, if one's destroyed, so is the other. It's a pretty common thing when there are two 'mirror' dimensions actually.
7854728
Hm, good idea. I may cycle out the idea that the humans had a war and replace it with "their sun went out too." I dunno, let me think about it for a while.
-GM, master of suns.
7854723
Thing is it wasn't necessary. Sunset could have been eventually forgiven by Celestia and decided to live on the pony side of the mirror. The universes, now in balance, parted whether gradually or suddenly -- the portal didn't work anymore.
Somehow we have "the president of humanity" on board with enough of a title to be important in the scheme of things. Even if they simply had a nuclear war and she was a refugee and the mirror works but goes to a blighted world, humans have a way of making their own import.
It was kind of a shock. Nobody would have questioned Sunset being on-board, beyond asking what happened to the portal.
---
So far it has been a good and interesting story.
7854749
Fair point. Maybe it was a bad decision. My desire to explain things got the better of me I suppose. Not going to change it though, since the way this played out IS somewhat important for Sunset, even if the humans themselves are not important. (Much like most of the other races).
Anyway, glad you're enjoying it. I hope you'll enjoy this alien planet we've come across!
-GM, master of violet.
7854756
Actually that is a bit scary -- the other races being not important. That could be used against the morality of the equestrians. It doesn't matter if ponies were the primary race on the planet -- they were all equal as sentients -- and unless there are not enough of the other races on board to form a stable population (in which case it was not much of a mercy to bring their leaders along as their races will die anyway) there is hardly a guarantee that any specific race will be dominant when a colony is formed.
7854773
Ponies are the majority, though only rare / isolationist races such as humans, centaurs, gargoyles, and breezies have a serious minority problem. The griffons, dragons, and changelings will get good representation. I was more referring to the fact that our main characters - most of which are ponies - will be the ones the story focuses on. Can't say too much else without revealing a bit more than I would like about how this is going to go down.
-GM, master of gravy.
7854644
There are a few easy ways to patch that over so it's not an issue. Say that the sun blowing up disrupted the mirror so it can't be used anymore. Maybe sending thousands of beings through the mirror (let alone millions) would cause deadly inter-dimensional space farts. Perhaps the ability to dimension hop at all has been closed off for various reasons, or was only possible on Equis because magical reasons that don't apply anymore. And, of course, you only need that kind of explanation if you even want to mention it in your story.
As for Sunset Shimmer, there have been many stories that use Sunset Shimmer the pony without ever including her having gone to Humanland. Those stories do have to make a bit of new backstory to explain their version of Sunset, but that's nothing compared to having an entire planet (and the story of how it got into a nuclear war) tacked on.
Keeping Humans! as small as possible doesn't really deal with the problem. Just by having Humans! around changes the perceptions of the story itself. Every time such an out of place element pops up, it will be distracting and will make things seem fake.
I remember one story that centered on Celestia and her struggles to relate to her sister and present day ponies. An important part of the story was that Princess Celestia would need to join in on one of the various big monster fights, and almost died in the battle. Thing is, rather than this monster being believably part of the setting, it was a dimension-hopping, 4th wall breaking eater of worlds. Every time this guy was introduced, talked about, or seen, it was completely distracting from the actual focus of the story (Celestia's inner struggles/angst). Many people were upset about it, and the author explained that he just needed some kind of monster to show up, have a fight, and then the story to move on again as normal. That monster was explicitly out of context, and had no real connection or impact to the story before or after. Even after the monster was completely gone, it still damaged many reader's ability to sympathize with the heartfelt tale of Celestia connecting with other ponies again.
Anyways, that's maybe more of an extreme example than I wanted, but the point is if you want to maintain suspension of disbelief, you have to work to make every element somehow part of the world and story you're telling, or at least feel like they somehow fit the bigger picture. (The other government representatives, whatever small role they will play, instantly feel like part of the Ark.) Including something that doesn't feel like it's part of the story you're telling can lead to doubt in other parts and make it harder to connect with the story, even in parts completely unrelated to that element. (Sorry, I really should have used better and more illustrative examples for my argument, but I used what came to mind.)
7854809
Fair points, criticism accepted, and for future stories I will keep that in mind. Yes, I have come to realize there were other things I could have done. (Broken mirrors, dimensional weirdness, etc.) Listening to the arguments and points of everyone here (thanks for the criticism by the way, all of you, I need some legitimate criticism from time to time.) I've come to realize I did make a mistake story-wise here.
I'll let myself think about it for a few days before I do anything, but I may edit them out of the story. Good thing about fimfiction - you are allowed to alter things.
Anyway, they're there for now, may not always be there. I'll be thinking. I'll definitely have made a decision by next update.
-GM, master of retcon.
Did Starlight just make a sun?
7854933
The what? No. Tried to rewind time and failed miserably. Do I need to make that clearer?
-GM, master of time.
7854857
Thanks for hearing me out. Still, remember that it's your story, and you should write what you feel is right. Not every commenter will be helpful or as completely correct as I am. It's been an intriguing story so far, and it continues so in the future.
-Mind, master of Derp
I'm of the opposite mind as Derpmind on the human inclusion. The addition of them actually enhanced the story and got me more involved than I already was. Are these the humans of Equestria Girls? Our Earth that happened to have something go horribly wrong while the Ark was passing by? Something else entirely? That opens up a whole new avenue to explore aside from the main focus. It could even be side-story material.
Honestly, I disagree with Derp. It was NOT a mistake to include them, and it showed that this was not the Ark's first (or even second, as the Mite would attest) encounter with other sapient civilizations (or their remnants), and that coming across a populated world that had a chance to host them showed the weight that the immortals were carrying: not just their world's hopes and futures, but several worlds'.
The inclusion of the humans was a right call. I hope you DON'T remove them.
That went about how I was expecting it to, honestly. The only way you could have surprised me is if these aliens immediately transmitted animated porn of Celestia back after first contact and managed to invite everyone to an orgy.
This brings up something...interesting. Sunset Shimmer is here, doesn't seem to be an alicorn, and isn't there to help out. She might have been out of practice, but she's still intelligent, and a prodigy at magic just as good as Starlight. Why isn't she there helping out the Twilight and company?
(I bring up alicorn because, considering her feats of the past few movies, I consider her to have ascended by this point, especially by Friendship Games end)
7854958 Found what I had missed.
On another note, I wonder how Starlight got out of that one.
I don't feel too hot 9n the inclusion of humans in the story. There wasn't enough detail to care about them yet, so it really just felt so out of place.
7855249
There'll be surprises for you later
I will say though that I kept her a unicorn and didn't have the "sunset may be an alicorn" thing involved at all. She's just a unicorn here - though if she does turn out to officially be an alicorn later, well then, oops on my part.
Personally though, I do like writing Sunset doing magic. BURN EVERYTHING. Always view her as a crazy fire mage.
-GM, master of ictus.
If the people on the planet were the ones attacking I want to strangle them so much, then tell them they literally tried to shoot down THE LAST REMNANTS OF MULTIPLE SPECIES IN A NON-HOSTILE SHIP.
Just to add some more legitness(yes, I'm aware this is not a word) to all the arguments against Hoomans. Why, pray tell us, is she a human anyway?
Both Twilight and Sunset happened to go to the EG world, and back, and back again... you got the gist. And portal never failed to transform them. Yet, here we have a bunch of humans from the world beyond the mirror, judging from your words.
7857538
Well if the humans are kept it's because humans would rather be humans than ponies. Twilight knows the race-change spell. (As evidenced by the whole Breezies thing.)
-GM, master of tongues.
Damn those aliens. But no worries, Discord can just snap it back together again.
7855699
Are those aliens crazy or something? They seriously want to go a round with them. Discord alone would be deadly. Cause I get the sense that during his first ever appearance he was holding back.
7868115
All you need is one insane extremist with a superweapon button. Just. One.
Edit: and yes while Discord is really really powerful, he's not the most technically inclined... He messed UP that Mite.
-GM, master of ones.
An explosion can't deorbit a ship like that unless it was only barely above the atmosphere. Good storytelling, but you should invest in Kerbal Space Program on steam for a good crash course on orbital mechanics. Unless I completely read everything wrong then there's nothing to see in this comment.
No you can't if you don't want to fish your daughter out of space.
using its base as a sort of atlar
typo -- altar
WELCOME TO EARTH BABY! XD
maybe,
First thought was humans.
Second thought was elves.
Third thought was complete aliens (because I thought it said the clothing was attached, which it might say. I'll chalk it up (never using that again) to pony naivety.)
Fourth thought was humans.