My Own Flesh and Blood

by NioFox

1: Terminal Velocity

Terminal Velocity

A long, loud yawn split the silence in twain. A pair of very dark orange eyes slowly crept open, desperately trying to adjust to the extremely intense light bombarding them. The specially enchanted wall of the stasis bubble only did so much against the raw fury of the sun.

He stretched slow and deliberately - four lithe legs extending outwards from his spotless, white-coated body. A mid-length mane sprouted from his head and along his neck, tapering off near the small of his back. It was a combination of evenly intermingled red, orange and yellow strokes. The absence of gravity made each individual hair dance in slow-motion, as if hoping to one day be free of him.

Identical markings covered both his flanks. They painted a picture of two fireballs, one yellow-orange and the other a pale yellow, with their flickering tails curled back behind them as they circled each other. A slightly diminutive pair of wings was folded neatly against his sides, their pristine feathers all but shining, except for the left one. A peach-sized hole near the outer tip cut a crescent into the wing, its edges a sooty black. On his fore-hooves he wore diamond-plated obsidian shoes, with patterns of a raging fire travelling a few inches up from their base.

'Already?' he thought, '… felt like a few minutes since I drifted off …'

He looked around as the fog cleared from his mind, albeit too slowly for his liking. The vast expanse that represented only a tiny section of this galaxy lay before him; its scenery remaining relatively unchanged for the past two thousand years, even after travelling so far from his home, able to remember the view from there like it was yesterday … or five minutes ago. There was nothing quite like the miracle of stasis magic.

'What am I- oh, right,' he remembered suddenly as his mind finally became clear. It was time. He rubbed his hooves together anxiously then started doing warm-ups like an athlete getting ready for his winning performance. 'Limber up- very important, never forget that!' a stray memory falling into place. Finally, he took a deep breath and snapped his head forward.

Blazing through the cosmos, his eyes aglow with the same color of the very star he just happened to be getting used to since his arrival in this solar system, he streaked toward the little blue planet that he could not yet see. The trail of blinding red magic marking the way he had come, a magic far beyond his capability, an ever present reminder of his origin and his mission; the very purpose for his existence. And the single thought now running through his mind as his eyes narrowed to mere slits: 'CELEST- hang on, was that … is that a comet?' And thus, after two millennia of travel, the unbroken line of magical essence suddenly veered off, seemingly without any direction at all.

---

A thunderous sneeze shook the grand meeting hall. Princess Celestia blushed slightly at the staring delegates.

"Well that has not happened in decades!" she exclaimed weakly with a smile, quickly followed by somewhat forced chuckles from a few. "Please excuse me for a moment everyone," she added, leaving the room with her usual grace faltering ever so slightly.

She was almost visibly perturbed, but by what … she could not figure out. Something at the very edge of her perception nagged her thoughts for a few moments before it was gone, just as suddenly as it had come.

Blinking a few times as the feeling passed, she sniffed quietly, becoming suddenly aware of the fact that she had not noticed the guards outside the slowly closing, over-sized doors between which she still stood. They seemed to be concerned, but it was almost impossible to tell with their impassive stares fixed to the floor as they remained bowed the entire time.

"As you were," she said after curtly clearing her throat and turned to rejoin the discussions she'd left behind rather unceremoniously. She slipped back through the doors just before they closed. 'Priorities Tia, priorities!' she scolded herself, putting on her most lavish smile for the expectant 'audience', one she was sure would all be paying her extra attention as a result of her unusual behavior.

---

The translucent yellow glow of magic would have been unmistakable to any unicorn, had they been near enough to see it. The expression on the young stallion's face would have been a huge smile if not for his mouth being as wide-open as he could manage. From his position right behind the comet he was recombining, distilling and teleporting water from its tail into his stasis bubble all at once, its frigid temperature raised a bit in the process, but still feeling amazingly refreshing on his out stretched tongue. A trick he had taught himself in ... happier times.

With a snort he jerked out of his reverie as the diverted focus caused his control of the bubble's course to slip, its flawlessly smooth surface slapping him in the face as it shuddered, reverting to its previous course.

'Awww … well it was fun while it lasted,' he thought, still staring at the comet as it quickly became a pin-prick in the distance, his face and fore-hooves smushed awkwardly against the bubble's inner surface, like a colt at a candy-store window that knew he could get none of the delicious treats behind the glass. He pushed slightly and returned to his original spot, floating weightlessly in the center of the bubble, brooding once more on the task at hand.

'Step one, gather as much information as possible. Step two, gain her trust. Or, failing that, the trust of those closest to her. Step three, should the opportunity present itself, elim- whoa! So that's what a gas giant looks like up close …'

The bubble zoomed off in another direction, glowing yellow, but leaving its usual red streak, a tad less bright with the guidance spell hijacked ... again.

---

"PARTYYYYYYYYYY!" screamed the pink earth pony at the top of her lungs, fore-hooves launching confetti and streamers into the air from seemingly out of nowhere, her darker pink mane bouncing wildly with the sudden movement.

"For the last time Pinkie it is only a picnic," Rarity said, one eyebrow in the air, staring at Pinkie as she walked daintily alongside her friends toward the spot they had picked in the Sweet Apple Acres orchard. The thought of getting her white coat dirty, or even worse, disturbing her slightly pearlescent purple mane after spending the morning re-curling it was just about the worst thing she could think of at that particular moment.

It was Twilight Sparkle's birthday, but she had insisted on just having a quiet gathering with her friends this year, knowing all too well the kinds of parties that usually occurred. Convincing Pinkie Pie to keep it small was a monumental task all on its own; it took all of them pitching in just to get her attention long enough. Still, they somehow managed to pull it off, and now Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and of course Spike, Twilight's number one baby dragon assistant, were strolling along while keeping up a lively conversation between them, despite Pinkie's random outbursts.

Pinkie Pie's face crinkled in thought, tongue sticking out to the right, eyes unfocused somewhere up in the trees. "PARTNIIIIIIIIIIC!" she yelled this time before continuing to bounce forward on all-fours, the equivalent of walking for her. The rest of them would have been awarded first prize for synchronized eye-rolling right at that moment, had there ever been such a sport.

"So Twilight, what's with the hush-hush this year? You wouldn't be getting old on us now would yah?" asked Applejack in a playful tone, her blond, tied-back mane, and similarly kept tail, blowing gently in the cool breeze, perfectly accentuating the earth pony's orange coat.

"Well I don't know about old, but I'm certainly getting older," Twilight replied with a grin. "Actually, I have to finish my dissertation on transverse mystical dynamics by tomorrow evening, so I can't risk being such a wreck afterwards - like last time," she added, giving Rainbow Dash the 'evil eye'. Despite her faked frustration, she was still a sight with two stripes, one purple and one pink, interrupting her otherwise plain dark blue mane and tail, and an, abnormally mussed, lavender coat. It was obvious she had been staying up all night again and had barely spent any time grooming herself before being dragged away from her beloved books by her friends.

"Who would've thought that Twilight couldn't hold her drinks?" Rainbow Dash snickered in mock defense while doing the backstroke on a low-hanging cloud, one she had pulled down there herself, her sky blue legs and rainbow striped tail hanging off the edges.

"Case-in-point," Twilight replied, face deadpanned, "I wonder whose brilliant idea it was to spike the punch." Rainbow Dash started whistling, a little too loud to be coincidence, just as Pinkie began giggling uncontrollably. Those two discovering cactus juice might have been the ruin of Ponyville, if not for the fact that it was imported from a long way out; further than most travelling traders went.

"Yeaaaaaaaaa …" Twilight was vying for extra credit at 'eye-roll academy' this time, "Just a nice quiet picnic for me this time thanks. I really need to be able to focus tomorrow, what could possibly go wrong?"

---

The surface of the blue-green sea of hydrogen, helium and methane gas erupted briefly into a chaotic swirl, as the familiar glowing yellow bubble erupted from beneath, its single occupant caught in the midst of his most thoughtful expression, one back hoof crossed over the other which was bent at the knee, one fore-hoof rubbing his chin and the other cradling an elbow.

'So that's what the core is made of … who would've thought?' he mused to himself, drifting away from what he did not realize was the seventh closest planet to the sun, coincidentally losing his concentration again. This time however, he ended up getting smacked in the flank as the stasis bubble took off once more on its original heading.

Just as he was peeling himself off of its wall, the bubble started to wobble in a rather unhealthy manner, setting off alarm bells in his head. 'Well that can't be good,' he thought as panic started to set in. He touched a hoof to the surface of the bubble and concentrated for a moment. 'Uh-oh.'

His fore-hooves glowed once more as he summoned up what little magic he had left after all the ... unplanned detours. 'Come on buddy, hold it together. No more shenanigans, I promise. Just get me there in one piece.' There was another wobble, swiftly followed by a jerk. Perhaps the sudden extreme temperature changes were too much for it to handle, a very different kind of beast from the relatively constant cold of the vacuum he'd been travelling through all this time. A particularly useful feature of the stasis bubble happened to be its almost completely reflective surface that kept the intense light of the, admittedly tamer solar masses, from boiling anything inside it.

'Please?' his eyes pleading with the bubble, smiling a bit too sincerely for one talking to a non-sentient object, conjured by one far more powerful than he. With that, they shot toward the now barely visible pale blue dot of a planet. He sighed audibly, beginning to set his mind at ease again.

The next tremor, an instant later, set him bouncing around the bubble like a ping pong ball, the walls distorting with each impact. 'Crap crap -'

"NGH!" he grunted with a grimace on his face as his fore-hooves ignited in a yellow blaze again. He became completely and utterly focused on the task of keeping the bubble stable. It would have been comical to see, as he bounced around the bubble a few more times with the glowing bits of him leaving streaks of light, if not for the fact that if the bubble collapsed, magic or no, he would have been a frozen solid in less than a minute ... after all the other more horrible things happened. He quickly decided to think about something else.

Finally he came to rest once more in its center just before it permanently elongated to resemble an oblong egg, contoured closely around his body, which happened to be facing head first toward his objective. His fore-hooves were tucked in by his sides and the back ones pointed straight as an arrow behind him.

Within minutes the planet was fully visible. The greens, blues and whites all appropriately laid out just like it was described to him. 'Paradise. But not for her,' he remembered darkly, 'Not for much longer.'

His thoughts were cut short as his now heightened concentration made him realize that he was approaching a bit too fast, and on a VERY bad trajectory! The guidance spell must have weaken with his constant tampering. He knew from practice runs that his journey would end rather badly, unless he could reorient himself to breach the atmosphere at a much more acute angle. Sweat began to bead on his brow as he redoubled his concentration, no longer just trying keeping the bubble intact, but also manipulating its course ever-so-delicately.

'A small white pancake, yup, that's what I'm going to be in a moment,' he thought to himself, mentally laughing at the fact that he could still keep up his usual sarcastic internal banter, even as he hurtled toward his doom. The heat generated as he met the atmosphere would have barbecued him to a crisp without the bubble. He rubbed the inner surface gently with the hoof still at his side. 'C'mon, c'mon! Just a little further.' There was little else he could actually do within its close confines.

'There's just no way this is going to be a smooth landing, that's for sure,' was one of his last thoughts as clouds ripped apart by his entrance into the troposphere. Then mountains blew past, the trees, other random bits landscape- he was not really paying much attention to the small stuff. The last thing he remembered was the bubble's transparent surface going completely opaque as he changed his focus from its trajectory (now a lost cause) to keeping it as sturdy as possible, drenching him in a perfect darkness with no sound, smell or touch but that of himself. Not that there were any of those other things to begin with.

In some really morbid way, it seemed appropriate to start humming … something from a long time ago. He did not know why, but it had always been stuck in his head for as long as he could remember. A lullaby perhaps?

The thundering crash, had he been able to see it, was not quite as spectacular as he had imagined.

Author's Note:

All characters and other content from MLP: FiM are owned by Hasbro, the OCs are my own creations.
Reader beware; this story is not for everyone. It is my first fic ever, and I will be taking you down a road that delves into some of the canon characters in ways that some fans may not like. Just know that none of the OC's designed aspects are arbitrary. Fear not, there will be no overpowered alicorn OCs either.

Comments

[Cynewulf]

50,000 words or so... so I swung by. It sucks to see fics with a ton of legwork get few views, and the least I could do is try...

But friend, I gotta be honest. Including asterisks in your story like *stretch* *yawn* *KABLAAM* is not writing English prose. It's roleplaying, which would be acceptable if you were, say, in a chat or IMing or texting or whatever. But in fiction? Never. *Yawn* is an excuse to not write a sentence or two, as is stretch. Why not "So and so yawned, stretching her/his hooves." That's all you needed. We're all here doing this for fun and occasionally for practice--but that's no reason that we can't try and write as mechanically well as we can.

Beyond that, you're short about 12 commas or so. "When you write dialogue, you kind of need one at the end," like that. (well, in some cases, but where I noticed missing commas, there was quite a need.)

I suggest reading some, first. Studying how prose works.

Also--singing?