Unity: One Year Later

by Kieva Lynn

Tour

Unity: Today

Twilight Sparkle stood just inside the front door of the Golden Oaks Library and sighed deeply. This was going to be a long day. A year and a half earlier, a mysterious storm had struck Ponyville, transporting the entire settlement and it's population to an alien world. It hadn't taken long for Twilight and her friends to discover Fallow Meadows, a town of humans from yet another world also abducted and bought here by the storms. In time, the towns had been merged for mutual defense from the local wildlife and renamed 'Unity.' Meanwhile, the storms kept coming, bringing both new friends and terrible enemies.

Six months after arrival, Twilight and several others made the long journey to what they had come to suspect was the source of the storms. Instead of the expected confrontation, they found a would-be ally; Pazu, an A.I. recreation of a long dead alien, explained that his people had built the storm generator, called Singularity, as a way of saving sapient species threatened with extinction. Sadly, at an age of well over two billion years, the facility is malfunctioning, bringing in targets even when they aren't in any danger at all.

With Pazu's help, they managed to make contact with Eqqus and Earth, who it turned out had been searching for the missing towns, and had already made contact with each other, and with a beacon provided by the human scientists it became possible for windows to be opened for communication. A human on Earth or a pony on Eqqus, standing inside the window when it is open, can be seen, heard, and interacted with by those in Unity as if they were actually there, and vice-versa. At first, the windows were small, only a few feet in diameter, and reserved for official use. But over the past year larger window facilities had been built on both homeworlds, large enough to encompass the entire downtown area of Unity.

Which leads us back to Twilight's sigh. Today was the grand opening of the new windows. People on Earth and Eqqus with family in Unity were now welcome to visit. As were the media. The Equestrian media, who insisted on Twilight as their tour guide thanks to her status as Celestia's student. The Earth media, who insisted since she had given the one first-hoof interview they had with a pony, a year before. The media, who were standing right outside the door, waiting for her...

"You know Twi, we could still probably get Sheriff Tucker to do this." Spike suggested. "Or Trixie, you know she'd eat up the attention."

"Thanks Spike, but this is my responsibility. (And besides that, Trixie's in Shetland Crossing for a show today...)" Twilight answered. She took another deep breath. "Let's get this over with..."

A podium stood just outside the door, and Twilight climbed to the stage and reared up on her hind legs, forehooves balanced on the podium, and looked out over the crowd. Close in were perhaps two dozen ponies, divided evenly between the tribes, along with a pair of gryphons and three zebras. Half again as many human journalists stood just behind them, along with a trio of minotaurs. Curious Unity townsfolk of various kinds stood at a distance beyond them, intermingled with visitors from other nearby towns: Sylphs, Yilane, Goblins, and free-hive Changelings.

"Hello everyone!" Twilight called out, "Hello and welcome to Unity! For those who don't know, my name is Twilight Sparkle, student to Princess Celestia, and I've been asked to be your guide today. I've designed an itinerary that will take about two hours to complete and will show you around all the major sites in Unity's downtown area. Before we begin, though, I'll take any questions you may have!"

A human journalist called out "Why just the downtown!?"

Twilight replied "Remember, all of you are actually still on Earth or Eqqus. Your ability to 'travel' and interact with things here is limited to the size of the window facilities there, which have been positioned to be centered on downtown. Next question... You sir?"

A Unicorn asked "How can we interact with physical objects here then?"

"The interaction is virtual. I wouldn't recommend trying to eat or drink anything. It would just vanish from your body when you left the window, which would probably be harmless but why take the chance?"

"What about how you were able to come to Earth?" A human women asked.

Twilight shook her head. "That was a function of the Singularity facility. It's still an option if needed, but considering that we would need to fly eight thousand miles round trip to access it, combined with the fact that it is very limited in the number of passengers it can accept, automatically recalls those passengers after one day, and is itself malfunctioning now which is why my friends and I ended up on Earth, and our human counterparts on Eqqus, I would call it a last resort." She motioned to a Minotaur. "Yes miss?"

"Will these 'windows' ever be made into doors? Will we ever be able to travel freely?" The Minotaur asked.

"Both Equestria's Arcanum Guild and the humans' newly formed Department of Transtemporal Physics are researching the possibility." Twilight answered. "Both are confident it can be done, but there's not any specific timetable yet. All I can say is, 'Someday.'"

"And in the meantime, we all have to live in fear that this 'Singularity' will decide to snatch up our town next!" Someone shouted.

"A valid concern." Twilight admitted. "But there's just nothing we can do about that. Singularity is too big and too advanced for us to be able to do anything to stop it, even with Pazu's knowledge to assist us. And, in fairness, it has been quite some time since any additional towns have been taken from either of our worlds... I think this would be a good time to go ahead and start our tour. If you'll all follow me, our first stop is the town hall..."

XXXXX

Halfway between Unity and Shetland Crossing, Trixie Lulumoon trotted through the forest pulling her new cart and keeping a wary eye open for dangers. Her friends had been concerned the first time she made a trip like this on her own, given just how dangerous the alien forest could be. She had been forced to demonstrate to them that she wasn't taking any chances: The new cart had a magicite power source hooked up to an array of gems enchanted with shield spells. If anything did come after her, she could be in the cart, protected, in a matter of seconds.

It had only been put to the test once, three month prior, when a slavering... ...something... ...had exploded out of the forest and tried to swallow the cart whole. Teeth broken on the shield, it left faster than it had arrived and never showed it's face again. Indeed, while Trixie would never be so foolish as to get complacent she honestly felt pretty safe knowing how much punishment the cart could handle. As in, safe enough to regularly book shows in the other towns near Unity.

And so it was that she was concerned, but not truly alarmed, when while crossing a small meadow a shadow suddenly fell over her head, accompanied by a long low sound like a horn being blown. Trixie looked up and saw something descending towards her slowly. It was, she saw after a moment, an airship of some kind. But it was not the sole vessel which had been built so far in Unity, not the small balloons Sylphs sometimes used to save their wing power over long distances. And the design also wasn't Equestrian in origin. Trixie decided to hide in the cart, powering up the shields just in case.

Inside, she heard nothing for several minutes. Then there were footsteps, and words she could not make out. Then, to Trixie's shock, the back door was knocked from it's hinges and fell away in spite of the shielding gems. Three beings peered in at her. They were human-like, yes, but not quite like any human Trixie knew. “Just make it quick!” Trixie exclaimed.

Two of the beings looked at each other, and then one of them began to laugh as another spoke in, to the unicorn's surprise, perfect English. “We are not monsters. We mean you no harm.”

“So... You won't hurt Trixie?” Her eyes went wide. “You won't make Trixie into pony-kabobs using her own horn as the skewer!?”

“Of course not. We are lost, is all, and hoped you could give us directions.”

“Lost?” Trixie asked. And then a lightbulb went on for her. “Waiiiit.... Let me guess. Your being lost started when you flew into a really bad lightning storm that came out of nowhere?”

“Indeed.”

“Okay, I guess I'm gonna have to postpone my show. Come on, if you can carry my cart in your ship I'll show you the way to town...”

XXXXX

Twilight Sparkle led the tour group all through the center of Unity. "As you can see," She said, motioning to the tree which held Golden Oaks Library, now planted just outside the old Fallow Meadows Library, "We had to take advantage of whatever open space we could find within the town limits, in order to keep everything inside the outer defensive walls. This world's wildlife would give the Everfree's fauna a run for it's bits."

"And you grow crops out beyond the walls?" A reporter asked.

"Correct. Care and harvesting of the crops is done under the watchful eye of the guard in case someone needs rescued in a hurry."

"And does that happen often?" One of the humans following Twilight asked.

"Happily no." Twilight answered. "The local apex predators seem smart enough to have learned their lesson the first time they tried to attack us. We've had no issues with them since. Of course, there are other dangerous animals about, but so far no one has been killed and we've managed to avoid killing any of them as well."

A Sylph flew by, catching the amazed eyes of several visitors from Earth. "Was that a fairy?" Several asked.

"They live in their own town, Sylph Hollow, a couple miles north of us." Twilight explained. "We trade regularly. Now then, as we continue on our way, we'll come to the Town Hall next. Sheriff Tucker heads up the combined guard out of offices there, and it's also where the Provisional Council meets.”

Before Twilight could say any more, she was interrupted by the sound of a long low horn. It sounded close, and then closer when it rang out again perhaps ten seconds later. “What in the-?” Twilight wondered.

“Look!" A Minotaur exclaimed, pointing up. Everyone looked, and there above the town hall, slowly descending towards a landing in the courtyard before the hall, was some type of small airship.

"More friends of yours?" Someone asked. Twilight shook her head no, wondering how much busier her day was about to get.

Comments

[badninja]

Poor Twilight, I hope she has found any creature to be stress release because she looks to be needing some.

[Sora2455]

Guys, when you're lost and the lifeform you want to ask for directions is hiding, you knock, not rip the doors off their hinges.

It makes a person suspect that asking for directions wasn't your original plan...

[Norshep]

so glad we got a sequel to unity!