Four astronauts leave Earth to be the first humans to ever colonize a planet. However, a failure in their ship makes them crash in an unknown planet, with no chance to escape or to populate it. How will they fare in this strangely similar land? How will ponies react to these new intelligent beings?
In the year 2050, the ANSA (American National Space Administration) launched humanity's most ambitious space project ever: light-speed travel and planet colonization. The idea was pretty simple, a spaceship with the new light-speed travel technology, the Icarus, and it's crew would travel for eighteen months and land in the nearest habitable planet. In said planet they would establish a base and then they would populate the planet. At the same time they would prove the Hasslein Curve theory, which involved time dilation due to near-light speed. The ship crew included hundreds of genetically modified human zygotes that could be implanted on a fertile woman to give birth to a new kind of superhumans. They had been designed to reach adult age in seven years and be able to learn everything an adult needed in that time, while their own descendants wouldn't inherit these traits that would result in overpopulation.
The Icarus traveled through the immensity of space at the speed of light for it's sixth month. The last person awake inside of it was the ship's engineer, lieutenant Robert Eisenfaust. He was checking the status of the rest of the crew as they hibernated: their leader John Stringer, their “steward” Matheus Sheinfeld and their medic Nanami Kato. Each of them was the best of the best in what they did. Colonel John Stringer, aged 35, was an expert on commanding. A veteran from the Afghan war, his purpose would be to lead the colony like a military settlement until they were numerous enough to choose their own leaders in a democratic way. He also was a marksmanship wonder with any kind of weapon, something much needed if they found dangerous fauna. Being a battle hardened soldier, he knew how to keep everything under control, specially his men. Lieutenant Matheus Sheinfeld, aged 28, had been named the steward by the rest of them because his only purpose while aboard was preparing the food and cleaning up. His real mission was to make their colony self-sustainable with his knowledge, as he was an expert on wildlife and agriculture, and to be a reliable source of knowledge in case of encounter with both flora and fauna. Something noticeable was that he was really strong, as he had been training for the IronMan competition before being hired for the mission. Lieutenant Nanami Kato, aged 24, would watch over their health and determine the order of fecundation. With her guidance they wouldn't face certain death in case of acquiring an alien disease (they all feared dying like the Martians of “The war of the worlds”) and their descendants wouldn't suffer inbreed related diseases. She was also a psychologist, essential to maintain mental stability. Last but not least, she would give birth herself to the first extraterrestrial humans, becoming the Eve of their new world.
Robert himself knew their ship, the Icarus, like the back of his hand. He had been part of the development team who designed it before he was chosen to undergo astronaut training because John Stringer himself had said: “We need someone there who knows which knot he must screw before the ship explodes or something”. Robert suspected that they had chosen mostly because he was the only engineer in the team who was less than thirty and healthy. The training was really intensive and hard, but who would refuse the chance to become part of human history at the age of 25? Even though he wouldn't see his friends ever again, he knew he had made the right choice. His knowledge of engineering and science in general placed him as the technician required to design buildings, perform reparations and replicate Earth technology on the long run, specially remote communications. The only thing he lamented was all the time he had lost learning Spanish and Chinese, as he would never use them. All of them were athletic after the astronaut training, although Matheus far surpassed the others, and they had learned about teaching, child-care, and many other essential subjects that a new civilization would need.
He watched a screen which displayed the estimate year on Earth. They had spent only six months in the ship, but if the Hasslein Curve theory was right, due to their relative speed it was as if seven hundred years had passed on Earth since they departed. He felt weird knowing that everyone he had met was dead, and he wondered how Earth had fared. 'Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who has sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother... keep his neighbor's children starving?' he mused. Now he would join the others in hibernation for the next twelve months, and then they would awake in the forty first century. He took a last glance to check that everything was working properly as he lied down and activated his own hibernation process, the sedating drug already working on him.
Robert woke to the sound of crystal shattering and the feeling of said material falling on him. He opened his eyes to see Matheus' arms pulling him out of his hibernation chamber. He managed to keep his balance and tried to ask what the heck was happening, only to be interrupted by John, who was near the Icarus' door.
“Rob, we've landed on water! The ship's sinking! Do something before it's too late, and check if the atmosphere is breathable!” He quickly ordered.
Robert took a second to process everything and ran past Matheus to the pilot cabin. There he started to push buttons in a seemingly random pattern as he checked the screens which displayed a lot of news, most of them bad.
“There's atmosphere, no toxic gases and oxygen enough, we can breathe! Something big hit us while we slept,” he shouted as he managed to stop the sinking by activating the last working engine, “the ship is barely functioning! It won't be long until it sinks to the bottom of the sea, or whatever this is! We have two minutes to wake Nanami, pack everything we need and leave!”
As he pronounced Kato's name the two others took a sad glance to her chamber.
“Rob... Nanami won't wake up,” The captain sadly said, “she's... You better see it for yourself.”
Robert approached Nanami's chamber and discovered to his horror that the beautiful medic now resembled an Egyptian mummy. Her chamber had malfunctioned and she had died of dehydration without even noticing. He stood there for what felt like an eternity, but was only 20 seconds, too shocked to react, until Matheus placed himself between Robert and the corpse.
“We can't waste our time mourning!” He cried, “Pick your things up and head to the exit!”
As soon as he said that, he lifted the two huge backpacks he had dropped to snap Robert out of his daze and ran to the door that John had already opened. Robert quickly grabbed another backpack and followed Matheus. Fortunately, the door was above the water level, and with a few struggles they managed to pull out the liferaft, which inflated itself in a few seconds. They threw the four backpacks to the raft, jumped to the water, which was salty as Robert noted, and immediately climbed to the boat. When they managed to sit comfortably they all watched the sinking Icarus in silence, the three of them lost in thought. Robert noticed that they were on a lake of crystal clear water.
“Maybe the lake isn't too deep”, he nervously said. “We could recover-”.
“Recover what?!” Matheus interrupted, “Nanami's corpse?! The now useless embryos?! We are fucked and you-”.
“Silence”, the captain ordered with a calm voice which Sheinfeld obeyed, “we must reach the shore and check what we have and what we lost. Then we will discuss our options”.
“Yes, sir”, they both replied.
For anyone looking it was obvious that Sheinfeld wanted to say more, but he knew better than going against Stringer and remained silent. Robert opened his bag and picked his multipurpose glove. It was a big and heavy glove (which resembled a Middle-Age knight's gauntlet) covered by solar cells. The gauntlet was known as technoglove, and it was the most useful tool they had. He grabbed a cubic device from the backpack, attached the small string that hanged loose from one side to his glove and threw the cube to the air. He pointed the nearest shore with his finger and the cube glided to the spot thanks to the four wing-esque appendages that had protruded from it when Rob dropped it. As the device landed the four appendages gripped to the terrain. The string started reeling when Robert moved his fingers in the right order, dragging him, and the liferaft with all it carried, to the shore. In the meanwhile he noticed the lack of life in the zone that surrounded them. There weren't fishes nor plants in the water, and the land that surrounded them was desert. As they reached the shore they jumped out of the liferaft and pulled it out of the water. They started sweating as soon as they stepped on the alien floor, the heat was almost unbearable. The captain pointed a small hill.
“We must reach higher ground so we can observe the surrounding area”, he stated, “finding potable water and evidence of life is our first priority”.
“The water purification system can provide us-” Robert started.
“Too noisy, it may be dangerous” Matheus said.
“He's right, we must be careful until we know more of this place” conceded Stringer.
Five minutes later, they reached the top of the hill. From there they could see the desert reaching the horizon, and a few more lakes.
“I think I see something!” Matheus exclaimed.
John opened his backpack and, after a few seconds of searching, pulled his binoculars. He used them to watch the zone Sheinfeld had signaled.
“It looks like a forest to me, take a look you two”.
He gave his binoculars to Matheus, and then to Robert. They all agreed, it was unmistakably a forest, located 20 kilometers away.
“Robert, how many hours of daylight do we have?” Stringer asked.
“This planet rotation is similar to Earth's, so we have about 5 hours of light left”, Eisenfaust replied.
“We can cover that distance before sunset”, said Sheinfeld.
“Yes, but with this heat it would be tiring and we can't afford wasting energy and water”, replied Stringed, “we will cover the distance tonight”.
They descended the hill to be under its shadow. As soon as the sun rays stopped their relentless assault on them they dropped the backpacks and they ate the infamous space food they carried and drank a bit of water.
“We have four hours until sunset,” stated Stringer, “Matheus, I want to know how deep the Icarus has sunk. Robert, we must know if there are technological advanced aliens in the planet, try to detect radio signals or something. I will scout the area in the meanwhile, I'll be back in less than two hours”.
“Yes, sir”.
Matheus took his own technoglove while Stringer took a hunting rifle and a lot of ammunition as he said “there's no kill like overkill” and they left. Meanwhile Robert took a device with an antenna from his backpack and headed to the top of they hill they had climbed before. He placed it on the floor and soon the antenna began to rotate. The young man went back to their base and used his Geiger counter. Luckily, the radiation detector displayed safe levels of the invisible and potentially lethal particles. After that, he turned on the monitor linked to the signal detector and watched it, looking for anomalies. An hour and a half after John and Matheus left, the latter returned completely soaked.
“The lake isn't too deep, about seven meters” he revealed, “we can get into the ship and retrieve anything we need without air supplies”.
“Could we pull the ship out of the water?”
“I don't think so, the bottom of the lake slopes steeply, we would need a lot of power to do it”.
“Damn it” Robert cursed as he got up, “I'm going to take a dump, take my place with the signal detector”.
Matheus nodded and Robert left. Twenty minutes later he returned to find both John and Matheus chatting. As soon as they noticed him they stopped talking.
“Any signal?” Eisenfaust asked.
“Nothing yet. But the captain found something”.
“Rob, I discovered it while I explored”, said John with a serious tone, “We are not alone”.
He showed him what could only be the skull of an animal.
“It looks like...” Rob began.
“An equine, but it's not like Earth ones”, Sheinfled ended Rob's phrase, “It has the eyes on the front, like a carnivore, but the teeth are designed for an herbivore diet. It looks like it has a big encephalization quotient, but I'm not sure, specially dealing with aliens that could have more efficient and compact brains or something like that. Oh, and it's muzzle is also too small.”
“Anything else?” asked Robert.
“As I told John, if such an evolved animal lives in this planet there must exist many other kind of smaller animals and vegetation. There may be predators too, so we must be careful.”
“From now on, we will always be armed and we won't wander alone. I don't want to become the dinner of a six-legged, sparkling, vampiric wolf”, commanded John with humor, “Robert, have you found something else?”
“The radiation levels are safe, so at least the vampire wolf won't be radioactive”.
They all laughed for a few seconds, as they hadn't since their tragic landing. As soon as they finished John took the word.
“Before we leave, I would like to honor Lieutenant Nanami Kato, whose death was unexpected and tragic. She was kind, honest, loyal and generous, and she was also the first to laugh and cheer. Earth lost a great woman when she left with us. For our friend Nanami, I want to observe a moment of silence."
The three of them stood still and silent for the next minute, then Rob and Matheus saluted as John fired his rifle in an improvised volley. When the echo of the shot couldn't be heard their commemoration ended.
“It is time to leave. We will reach that forest before sunrise, rest until then and explore”.
Two hours after they left the crash zone twilight led to night.
“Whoa! That moon is huge!” exclaimed Robert, and then he thought 'don't know if huge or just very close'.
“Good, we will have good illumination”, added John, “but I would have loved to have more than one”.
“Or a moon which wasn't white”, said Matheus, “that would have been interesting”.
They felt silent for a couple of minutes, until John asked them if they recognized any star or constellation. None of them did. One hour later they arrived to the forest. The transition between desert and wood was radical, the sand and the stones led to grass, mud and trees.
“Now this is weird” Matheus said while he rubbed his head, “a few of these trees are similar to Earth ones, while most of them are different. My theory is that, being this planet Earth-like, many species look terrestrial due to convergent evolution. I will need to investigate it further as soon as possible”.
“So... We are going to explore the forest now?” asked Robert.
“Yes, we will put up the tent here and go into the forest. We won't go far so we can return to this clear area quickly if we find something dangerous”.
A couple of minutes later they had set up the tent and wandered into the forest.
Five days had passed since John, Robert and Matheus had awakened aboard the sinking Icarus, and they had managed to establish themselves since. Most of the time they had been exploring their surroundings. They had found a river of potable water and a cave which they inhabited since. They had also sighted some animals running from them. They had eaten some fruits that Matheus had labeled as “edible... I think”. Matheus had opposed to hunting down animals because it would make domestication harder.
John had decided that they had to explore further to know the extension of the forest and what could be found beyond it. The plan was to travel East, to a distant mountain Matheus had spotted when he climbed up a tree, and then return, so they only carried light weapons, emergency rations, a med kit and technogloves. The forest was gloomy and slowed them considerably, so a few hours travel would take them most of the day. They had been traveling for six hours when John raised his hand, signaling a possible danger ahead. They all loaded their hunting rifles and placed themselves back to back. After a few seconds they heard a rustling noise coming from a few bushes ten meters away. John aimed, ready to fire against a foe. They heard the noises again and a few leaves and one of the bushes was shaken. Suddenly a small deer jumped from the bushes and sprinted away. Robert lowered his weapon, chuckling.
“Be careful! Big bad Bambi wants to eat your intes-”.
Suddenly he felt something heavy pouncing on him, making him fall. Everything was noises, pain and darkness for a second and then he managed to open his eyes overcoming the pain. From the ground he saw a menacing wolf biting his left arm and dangerously close to his neck. Robert tried to unsheathe his knife with the spare hand, but the wolf stopped moving and fell on his side before he found the handle. Matheus pulled off his own knife from the beast's skull and helped Robert to get up. John fired his rifle against a bush and they heard a whimper, followed by the noises of the wolves retreating.
“Whoa! That was close!” said Robert, “it almost tore my arm off!”
“Lieutenant, you forgot one of the basic rules” replied John with coldness, “don't let your guard down unless I order so. You could have died or be crippled, and now we will waste our valuable time and medicines because of your imprudence. Don't fail me again, this is an order.”
Robert gulped and nodded to his leader. Matheus didn't say anything as he disinfected Robert's injuries with alcohol and bandaged them.
“It could have been worse, the cuts aren't too deep and they will heal in a few days, but you won’t be able to use it without pain until then” said Matheus.
They continued advancing in silence for a few hours, eating without stopping and always keen to their surroundings. Soon the sun was too low to illuminate the ground and they lit a camp fire.
“Tomorrow we will reach the mountain and climb it, we will take turns watching the fire, those wolves could come back.”
“Colonel, may I ask you something?” said Matheus.
John nodded.
“What are our long-term plans? We have spent five days without talking about it and I think it's about time.”
“As you know, with Kato dead we can't colonize anything. Because of that our initial plan has changed. I want to check if there is intelligent life here and how advanced. If there is, we will make contact. If there isn't, I want to retrieve the Icarus from the lake, repair it and go back home.”
“How are we supposed to retrieve the ship?” asked Robert.
“I don't know, you are the one who should plan how to do it.”
“Well, we could domesticate some animals to work as draft animals or something.... Or we could build some kind of crane, maybe we could do both. It will take a lot of effort and time, though. Also, even if we move the Icarus to a dry and safe place, it is very damaged and it will take months or years to repair it, if it is possible at all to perform such repairs”.
“Then we can only hope that you can repair the ship. That's pretty much all the plan, Matheus. We will face the problems when we reach them. Any other question?”
“If we can't leave the planet and we don't find sentient beings, what will we do?” asked Matheus.
“We will live here until we die,” John folded his arms across his chest. “It's not like we have any other option”.
They remained silent for a few minutes, staring at the fire, until John stood and told them to sleep while he took the first guard. The night went along without incidences, and they started climbing as soon as the illumination allowed them to do so.
After climbing the first meters Matheus found a small path made by the stepping of animals, which eased their ascension. They reached the summit at midday, from there they had a great vision of the surroundings. The forest covered most of the zone, and they could see the desert they had crossed when they looked west. They found that the forest ended a few kilometers East and led to grasslands with a few mountains here and there.
“I thought the forest would be larger” Robert said.
“Well, we may be in the narrowest part, which is already 20 kilometres long, so it may be bigger than it looks like” replied Matheus.
“I see something weird... Is it me or there is smoke coming out that cave?” said John as he pointed South.
They followed his arm to the nearest mountain, where a faint column of smoke ascended from a cave.
“I see it too. Could it be some kind of intelligent beings using fire?” asked Robert, suddenly nervous.
“It is a possibility that we can’t ignore. If there is a sapient race in this world we must establish contact as soon as possible, so let’s go” replied John.
Luckily, the cave was near the bottom of the mountain, so it took them less than an hour to descend from their mountain and reach the cave’s entrance. The entrance was big enough for them to enter side by side, and they couldn’t reach the highest part even if they jumped. From the dark depths a slow, deep and regular rumble could be heard.
“It sounds weird, could it be some kind of volcanic activity?” asked John.
“Probably, we should avoid breathing the smoke just in case.” replied Robert, as he donned his technoglove on his unharmed arm. He threw a small ball into the cave which illuminated the zone.
“Are those rocks... moving?”
“Those aren’t rocks! Those are scales! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
The three of them ran to the forest as a brutal and angry roar erupted from the cave.
“What the fuck man?! There are freaking dinosaurs in this planet!” cried Matheus.
Robert looked back for a brief second before resuming running.
“Shit shit shit it’s coming out of the cave!” he said.
John looked back too and he paled.
“It’s huge and it has wings! Run faster or he’ll eat us roasted!”
They ran through the forest, as they heard the wings of the beast flapping above them and it’s powerful growls. Fortunately, the trees were too big and too close for the creature to land. Robert felt a heat wave behind him and, when he turned around, he saw a wall of fire between John and him.
“Keep on running! I will distract it and meet you in our cave!” John shouted as he readied his weapon.
“Are you crazy? Those bullets won’t harm him!”
“I will aim for the eyes! Now obey my order!” he replied as he turned back.
Robert ran, never turning his back, until the sounds of the beast and John’s weapon were only a murmur. He stopped to recover his breath and noticed that Matheus was leaning on a tree a few meters away. They both locked eyes, too shocked to say anything.
“So... That thing was a dragon?” quietly asked Matheus.
“I... Think so”.
“So we’ve landed on a planet with giant flying fire-breathing lizards”.
“...”
“And John is facing that thing with a weapon that couldn’t kill an elephant”.
“... Yes?”
“OK, it’s official: We’re fucked”
“We aren’t. We are going to return to our base, wait for John and next time we will bring the armor-piercing bullets and tore holes the size of melons on anything that looks dangerous”.
Matheus looked convinced and started walking to their cave’s location.
“That thing must be the apex predator of this place, and we have enough firepower to kill it... We may have a chance after all”.
They walked fast for a few minutes in silence, trying to hear John or the dragon. Soon they stopped trying.
“So... Now that John is missing... Who’s the superior officer?” asked Robert.
“We have the same rank so there’s no leader. Don’t do anything stupid and I won’t have to order you around”.
Many hours later they found an apple tree and decided to rest while they ate apples. They would never admit it, but they hadn’t stopped until then because they were afraid of being found by the dragon or some other creature. When they finished eating it was already too dark to continue, so they decided to sleep until sunrise. Robert was soon sleeping while Matheus took the first watch.
The sound of an alarm clock woke Robert up. He immediately got up, confused. ‘Why would Matheus use an alarm instead of waking me up himself?’ he thought. He shook his head to force the sleepiness out and looked around. Matheus had disappeared. The clock was still making noises, so he looked after it. What he found was Matheus’ technoglove, laying beside his sleeping bag. Robert donned it and the alarm stopped, only for a recorded message to replace it. It was Matheus’ ragged voice.
“I can’t take this anymore. Kato and John are dead. We’re stranded in an hostile planet with no chance of escape, rescue or survival. N-nothing of this should have happened... Everything was supposed to be fine... I have lost all hope, and I don’t want to live without a purpose, waiting for death to come and take us. Because of that, when you listen to this I will already be dead. I know it’s very selfish, but I want you to make something for me... I want you to make sure that humanity will know about us if someone else ever comes here. I’m really, really sorry for leaving you alone like this, but I made my decision days ago and I couldn’t let you interfere. Goodbye, Robert Eisenfaust, it’s been a pleasure to work with you. Goodbye, my friend.”
A few noises could be heard and then:
“Oh! Don’t worry about my corpse. You know I don’t believe in afterlife and all those things so don’t waste your time with a burial. Also, you would have a hard time finding it, I’m rather good at hiding, he he”. The faint laugh sounded more like crying.
Robert stood still for a minute, waiting for Matheus to appear shouting “April’s fools” or something like that. He had always thought that Matheus was as strong-willed as he was physically. The idea of Matheus so depressed that he resorted to suicide after a week was unthinkable. Slow but steady, shock faded and a mixture of sadness and anger appeared in Robert’s mind. He throwed Matheus’ glove away and started crying and shouting profanities that would make a drill sergeant blush. It took him a few minutes to be serene enough to stop making noises that could attract predators and start gathering his things. He left most of Matheus’ belongings, but he took the technoglove and his weapon. He wondered how Matheus had managed to kill himself without it, but he decided to stop thinking such morbid thoughts. He succeeded in forcing everything out of his mind and focusing only in the present. Ideally, he could reach the cave before the sunset. His right arm was occupied by his rifle, so he had to carry more weight with his left arm than he would like due to his injuries. It was midday when he arrived to a lake. He hadn’t heard any suspicious noises since he woke up, but his left arm remembered him, with a wave of pain when he dropped everything, how dangerous it was to assume he was safe. He didn’t feel hungry and his stomach didn’t want to cooperate, but he forced himself to eat something to have enough energy. He had sweat more than he expected due to the extra weight and he had to renew the bandages, so he decided to swim in the lake for a while. The crystal clear water was simply too tempting. He scanned the lake with his technoglove’s sonar, afraid of being eaten by some kind of lake monster while he swam. The scan didn’t show anything weird, so he put off his clothes and bandages and jumped into the water. It was a bit cold, but he didn’t care.
He had been swimming for twenty minutes when he heard rustling noises behind him, where his clothes and equipment was. He quickly reached the shore to find that all his possessions had disappeared. He caught a glimpse of something moving past the trees, so he ran to catch it. Little by little he managed to shorten the distance and discover new details of the thief. It was running on it’s hind legs and one foreleg, while the other was occupied carrying the stolen things. The creature’s anatomy resembled that of a gorilla, but it was taller. Robert felt worried because of that, the creature could be way stronger than him and he had no weapons. However, if it was escaping it may be scared of him so he didn’t stop. Soon the creature stumbled over a fallen tree and fell to the ground, unable to stabilise itself with only a foreleg. It quickly got up and faced Robert, who discovered that the creature resembled a mix of gorilla and dog. It snarled, but Robert stood his ground. Robert was almost sure that the beast was stronger than him, but he had to use the creature’s instinct against it. If he acted like he was the strongest one, his opponent would escape instead of risking it’s life against an unknown foe. Then Robert noticed that the beast wore a leather collar. ‘Clothing means intelligence! Are these creatures domesticated by others or intelligent on their own?’ he thought while he maintained his façade.
“Leave!” Robert shouted as he gesticulated with his arms, “those are MY things!”
“Now they are mine!” it answered.
Robert was paralyzed by what he had heard, his mind full of questions regarding that alien creature that spoke English. The talking creature noticed that Robert was stunned, so it dropped Robert’s belongings and attacked. Robert was too slow to avoid the charging creature, who lunged at him. The beast was over Robert, who quickly delivered a knee to it’s private parts. While the creature was immobilized by pain Robert got up and ran for his weapons. He took his rifle but the dog lunged at him again while he was turning. It tried to bite Robert in the neck, but he beat the dog in the face with the rifle’s butt. The beast growled and started swiping, aiming at Robert’s neck and face. Most of the attacks failed as Robert blocked them with his rifle. He knew the beast would eventually beat him if he didn’t do something, so he fired his weapon. The dog stopped attacking when it heard the gunfire and Robert took that chance to shot the dog in the chest. The beast cried with a half-human, half-dog voice that chilled Robert’s bones and fell to the ground besides the human. Robert got up and blew the dog’s head off with another shot. He panted a few times and noticed an intense pain in the neck. He touched the zone with his left hand and noticed it was now covered in blood. He numbly thought that he had to cover the wound before he fainted. He blacked out before he could look for the bandages.
Everything was covered in darkness for Robert, his senses providing zero information of his surroundings. All he could feel was pain. Pain and darkness. Suddenly, darkness lead to something else, a vague stimulus to his sight. Was he dreaming, was he dead? He didn’t know. All he could do was observing the subtle changes in the darkness. Time passed, it could have been a second, a minute, or a whole day. Then he heard the voice, too low to be understood. It screamed, whispered, laughed and cried while it spoke. He listened to it for an unknown lapse of time until it abruptly stopped.
Robert woke up, his eyes still closed. He covered his neck with his hand, remembering why he had fainted. He felt bandages, which covered all his neck and part of his face. Then he noticed something else: he was covered with something. He opened his eyes and realized that he was laying on a bed, covered with sheets. The place was dark, but he could distinguish some things. First, he was inside some kind of room. Second, there was furniture. Third, there was a window with the curtains closed. He tried to get up, but he stopped when he felt an intense pain in his torso. ‘This is what a broken rib feels like?’ he thought.
Then he heard voices again, this time very real. Voices of women below him, speaking loud enough for he to understand what they said.
“How did you find this... whatever it is, Lyra?” said the first voice
“I was taking a walk near the Everfree forest, I always do that when I have composer’s block. Then, I heard a very strange noise, like some kind of explosion, coming from the forest. It sounded twice. I decided to investigate, so I went into the forest. I trotted for... Fifteen minutes? until I found him. He was unconscious, soaked in blood. There was a dead diamond dog beside him, too. I noticed he was still breathing, so I covered his neck wound with a bandage I found in a weird sack next to him to stop the bleeding, then I brought him here. It was already late after Fluttershy managed to stabilize him so I decided to sleep here. Then I went to the library and you know the rest”.
“You wandered into the Everfree by yourself? That’s very brave” said the purple unicorn. “Now, do any of you know what he is?... Ok, I'll go to the library, maybe I can find something in the books”.
The sounds of whatever was talking about him leaving was the last he heard before falling asleep again.
His slept felt like he had only blinked, as he didn't have dreams. Slowly, he managed to get up while avoiding to feel more pain than necessary. He started walking the distance between the bed and the window using the wall as a support. Before he could reach his goal, he hit something with his arm. Said thing fell to the ground and made the unmistakable noise of glass breaking. Shortly after he heard noises below him, so he deducted that whatever had brought him here was about to arrive. The noises didn’t resemble footsteps at all, it was more like the sound of horses walking on wooden floor.
‘Hoofsteps?’ thought Robert.
He traced the noises as they ascended to his level and approached the door. He looked around, trying to find his weapons or something that could be used to protect himself from a possible enemy. The last thing he had done was killing some kind of sentient half-dog half-gorilla thing, which was called diamond dog by the incoming creatures, so he didn't know if they would react with violence 'they wouldn't have healed me if they wanted to kill me... Maybe they want to judge me or experiment with me?'. The hoofsteps stopped and the door opened. Robert saw two horse-like creatures, one with wings and the other with a horn. The winged one was yellow with a pink mane, while the one with a horn was mint green with a shorter, cyan and white mane. Their heads were huge when compared to their bodies, and they were at his elbow level, more or less. If he tried to ride one, he would probably touch the ground with his feet. They stared at him with their big eyes. The first thing Robert thought was ‘their uncanny valley level is over nine thousand’, as he found their pony body combined with their human-like expressiveness very creepy. He tried to ask them if they spoke his language, but he discovered that he couldn’t talk, and trying resulted in pain.
“Oh my...” said the winged one. “You shouldn’t leave your bed already, you have to recover from your wounds”.
‘Another English-speaking creature, great. How is it even possible?’ he thought. ‘At least I’m not dead and these ponies seem more friendly than the gorilla dog. Their voices sound more human-like, too. I could swear they are young women talking. They have wings and horn... Pegasus and unicorn, then?’.
Robert gesticulated, but his sudden arms movement scared the pegasus, which covered it’s head with it’s hooves. Then the unicorn spoke.
“Don’t be afraid, Fluttershy. He can barely stand, how could he be dangerous now?”
Robert stopped gesticulating and looked around, ‘where are my things?’, Then he noticed he was still naked. He felt embarrassed and covered his private parts with his left hand while he gesticulated again with the right one to draw the ponies attention.
“Fluttershy, you have more experience dealing with Everfree creatures. What does he want?” asked the unicorn.
“I don’t know”.
Robert stopped trying, he was awful with mimicking things. He went to the window, ripped the curtains and used them to cover himself before the ponies could stop him. He noticed it was early in the morning due to the sun position before the ponies drew his attention again.
“Why would yo do that? You broke Fluttershy’s curtains!” exclaimed the unicorn.
They hadn’t moved from the door frame, maybe scared of the unknown creature.
“It’s fine, Lyra. I... wanted to change them anyways.” said Fluttershy with a timid voice, “it looks like he likes to wear clothes”.
“Well, I would wear clothes too if everyone could see my... You know.” said the unicorn, a bit embarrassed. “Anyways, what are you going to do now that he’s not sleeping?”
“I should go ask Twilight. Maybe she has found something in the library”.
“Go now, I’ll watch over him while you return”.
“That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”
Fluttershy smiled with gratitude as he left. Lyra then stared at the human.
“Can you understand me?” she asked.
Robert nodded, feeling no need in lying.
“Can you speak?”
Robert nodded again, but signaled his neck and made a pain face.
“You can speak, but now you can’t because of your injuries?” Robert nodded, “You are very lucky then, if I hadn’t found you so soon being mute would be your last concern”.
‘So this is the pony that found me and healed me. I’ll have to be a good guest for now to show my gratitude’, he thought. ‘Now, where are my things?’
Robert had been looking for his belongings for a while, but if they were in the room they were hidden. So he tried to ask Lyra for them. After a minute of unsuccessful gesticulating he gave up.
“Can you write?” asked Lyra with a sudden inspiration.
Robert nodded.
“Great! I’ll be right back”.
As soon as Lyra left Robert feel an imperious urge: he had to urinate. ‘Do these ponies have toilets? Let’s find out’. He left the room and found himself in a corridor, with stairs leading downwards at his right and another door at his left. He opened the door and found a bathroom which lacked a toilet. The similarities with a human house were impressive. He then decided to descend the stairs, wincing as his broken rib (or ribs, he wasn’t really sure) gave him jolts of pain with each step. In the ground level there was a big living room, where Lyra was looking for paper. There was a kitchen behind a half-closed door, but he didn’t see any toilet.
‘Where do ponies shit? Do they shit marshmallows or what?!’
“What are you doing?” asked Lyra, worried, “you can’t leave your room with those injuries!”
Robert performed the universal “I have to pee, NOW!” gesture. Lyra seemed to understand what he meant.
“Oh, that. There is no toilet in the bathroom, right?” she asked. “I don’t know where Fluttershy... Evacuates, so I guess you’ll have to do it in the wild.”
And then, Robert witnessed something that made a English speaking pony look normal. Lyra’s horn began shining with a golden light, then the door was covered by the same light and opened by itself.
‘WhatthefuckWhatthefuckWhatthefuckWhatthefuckWhatthefuck’ he thought as he stepped back.
“What’s wrong?”
Robert pointed at the door and the horn, with a shocked expression. He was so confused that his left hand left his provisional robe, which felt to the floor.
“What is it?... Oh, the magic” Lyra realized, “you have never seen magic?”
Robert shook his head, still shocked by the magic display. He tried to reach his robe again but he couldn’t reach the floor due to his injuries. Then the robe shone and put itself on Robert’s hand. ‘This is the weirdest place ever’ he thought as he covered himself again.
“See? There’s nothing to worry about. Now you can go and do your business”.
He opened the door and observed his surroundings. There was a chicken coop, a small orchard and many birdhouses. A small river with a bridge crossed the place, and a forest covered the zone behind the house. He spotted a bush which would have the honor of being his toilet. He noticed Lyra was looking at him from the house door, but he didn’t mind. When he finished he cleaned his hands in the river ‘These ponies seem so girly, I better avoid causing a bad impression’, and went back to the house.
Lyra gave him a sheet of paper and a pencil with her magic. He grabbed them with care, he was still a bit afraid of magic. He sat on a sofa, wrote “Hello, my name is Robert. Nice to meet you” and showed the message to Lyra.
“I don’t understand anything. What kind of letters are those?” she asked.
Robert facepalmed, then he tried writing the entire alphabet.
“Nope, I have never seen any of those”.
He tried with some Chinese characters, but Lyra didn’t know them, either.
“Don’t you know Equestria’s alphabet? I will show you”.
She grabbed the pencil and paper with her magic and used it to write some letters. They were forty or so. Robert had never seen something similar to them. He pointed one and looked at Lyra, moving his mouth as if he was talking. Lyra pronounced it, it didn’t sound like any English letter. He asked her to pronounce everyone, then he tried writing “Hello” with the new letters.
“Juil? What is a Juil?”
A few minutes later he realized that the letters were pronounced differently according to many variables. He surrendered, ‘I will need a lot of practice to learn how to write’. He left the paper and the pencil in the table in front of him and leaned on the couch. Lyra looked very confused.
“I have never seen anypony else sitting like that."
She then climbed on the couch and sat like Robert. ‘How can a pony sit like that?’ he thought.
“What, are you going to laugh at how I sit, too?” she asked.
Robert maintained his poker face. He decided it was better to ignore that, as he had a good idea. He drew his clothes, the technoglove and the weapons and showed it to Lyra.
“Those things... They were where I found you. Were they yours?” she asked.
Robert nodded.
“They must be still in the forest. I couldn’t carry you and all those things at the same time, so I hid them in a bush. About that... What happened to that diamond dog? He had very strange injuries, I have never heard of a creature that kills by making small holes in the body like those."
Robert thought it wouldn’t be wise to explain to the pony that he had shot the diamond dog. If he did she would never let him recover his weapons. So, he shrugged.
“Okay, you don’t know that. Do you know what made those awful noises? They sounded like explosions. In fact, I found you following the noises."
Robert shrugged again.
“I find your ignorance hard to believe. If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay.”
They sat in an awkward silence for a minute, until Robert’s stomach growled. He then realized that he was hungry.
“Are you hungry? What do you eat, anyways?” Lyra asked.
‘As far as I know ponies don’t eat meat, I will have to eat veggies for the moment’ he thought as he got up. He went to the kitchen and opened the drawers, looking for something edible. He found bread, some vegetables that he doubted a human could eat, and some others that he knew from Earth. He also found eggs, dairy products, oil and cookies. It was early in the morning so he decided to have breakfast. He found glasses and dishes, so he was soon sitting in a chair with a glass of milk and cookies in the table in front of him.
“Those hands of yours sure are useful. It’s as if pony furniture was meant to be used with them... Can I take a better look at them?” she asked with a hint of shyness.
Robert began eating with his right hand while he left his left one on the table for Lyra to observe. She put her forelegs on the table and looked at his hands. Then she grabbed it with her hooves and flexed his fingers. ‘She’s so soft... I have to pet this pony! How can be hooves so soft, aren’t they supposed to be huge nails?’ Then he noticed that she wasn’t touching him with the hooves, but with the pasterns. He was about to finish eating when she tried to bend his index finger backwards. He removed his hand before she could hurt him.
“It doesn’t bend that way?” he shook his head. “Oh, sorry”.
Robert moved his hand towards Lyra’s head. She recoiled a bit and Robert stopped. Then she returned to her original position and Robert moved again. He touched her horn, it was hard but smooth.
“It’s very rude to touch an unicorn’s horn, you know?”
He stopped touching it. He stroke her mane and felt like a girl with a cute kitty. He didn't see ponies uncanny and creepy since that very moment. She was about to tell him to stop, but then he began to scratch her behind the ears.
“Oh... That feels so good...” she blushed when she heard herself. “Hey, you are taking too many liberties. Stop doing that”.
Robert remembered playing with the puppy his parents bought him when he was 6 years old. He loved to pet it, but this pony made petting a dog seem like petting sandpaper in comparison. He had to use all his willpower to stop scratching her behind the ears. ‘What is wrong with me? Petting aliens you’ve just met is a no-no’, he thought.
They both turned as they heard the door opening. Two ponies stepped into the house. The first one was Fluttershy, the second one a purple unicorn. The unicorn had a purple and green lizard-like creature on her back.
“So, Fluttershy, where is your guest from the Ev...” the unicorn trailed off when she saw Robert.
“Holy Guacamole! What is that thing?” shouted the lizard.
‘Oh, come on! All the freaking animals in this world can talk or what?’ Robert thought as he slowly got up.
“Oh my, why did you let him go out of bed? He must have his rest or he won’t recover” said Fluttershy.
“Well, he had to pee and we couldn’t find a toilet so I let him go out. He hasn’t complained so I think he’s not so badly hurt” replied Lyra. “About the toilet... Where is it?”
“Oh... Hm... It’s...” Fluttershy mumbled something under her breath that nobody understood.
“Sorry? I didn’t hear you” said Lyra.
“Save that for later, we have a more important matter on our hooves” said the purple unicorn, staring at Robert. “State your business, unknown creature” she said with a severe tone.
“Hm... Twilight... That would...” began Fluttershy.
“He can’t speak, his neck is very damaged” said Lyra.
“Well, then let's hope he recovers soon. I haven't been able to find information about him, it's like he appeared out of thin air. I haven't been able to examine him properly without my equipment. We should take him to the library” said Twilight.
“Is it really necessary?... I mean... He’s just awoken and he has many injuries”
Twilight groaned, but accepted Fluttershy’s argument. Then she made a weird face.
“Fluttershy, is he wearing your curtains as a skirt?” asked Twilight.
“Yes... He doesn’t like to be naked”.
“That’s weird, why wouldn’t he?”
“Well because of... Oh my... because of that” said Fluttershy, blushing and averting her gaze.
Twilight faced Robert again, just to see his genital area, which was just at her eye level.
“Okay okay, I get it! Cover yourself!” she angrily said. “Do we have something that he can wear without him having to hold it still with one hand?”
“His things should still be where I found them, I could go and-” began Lyra.
“Yes, you and Fluttershy go there and bring his things, I want to examine them, too.” said Twilight with a happy face. “Bring Spike, most of the Everfree creatures won't go near you if they smell a dragon”.
“Are you implying that I should take a bath, Twilight?” asked Spike with a frown.
“Yes, no!... Maybe? Well, you could bath more often, but that's not what I meant” she said with an apologetic smile “I meant that your dragon hormones scare monsters”.
Spike considered her answer for a moment until he got off her with a smile and followed Lyra and Fluttershy to the Everfree. As soon as they left Twilight faced Robert with a frown.
“I’ve never seen something like you. You understand what I’m saying?”
Robert nodded, he felt like he was doing it all the time, which was probably true.
“Good. I've never seen anything like you, and Lyra told me that she found a dead diamond dog next to you. My friends seem to think you aren't dangerous, but I'm not so sure. If you lay a hoof, I mean hand, on anypony you will be punished, understood?”
'This pony means business' he nodded with a severe face.
“Where are you from? Wait, you can only answer with yes and no... Are you from the Everfree forest?”
‘Should I let them know that I’m extraterrestrial or will it be a bad idea? … I think I will tell the truth’. Robert shook his head.
“Are you from another country?” another negative, “then where did you came from?” she said a bit frustrated.
Robert pointed upwards.
“The roof?”
He facepalmed and pointed upwards again.
“The sky?”
He pointed upwards another time.
“... Space?”
He nodded.
“You expect me to believe you came from space? That’s crazy!”
He shrugged, ‘if they don’t want to believe me it’s their problem’.
“Can you do magic?” Negative “Then how did you reach space? You can’t do such thing without magic, hey, where are you going?”
He went for his paper and pencil and drew a spaceship.
((I wanted to draw it myself, but I don't have a scanner T_T))
“What is that thing?”
He drew a happy human face inside the “window” of his rocket.
“It looks like a firework... You can’t travel in one of those, they explode! Also, you need magic to make them fly and you said you couldn’t do magic”.
Robert facepalmed, ‘if only I could talk... Or write, for that matter. Hm... I wonder...’ He showed his alphabet to Twilight.
“Hm? What is that? It looks like an alphabet... Sorry, I have never seen those letters before. I will search in the library, though”.
‘I haven’t tried with numbers... It’s worth a shot’. He drew all the numbers plus a few mathematical symbols.
“What are those?”
He drew a few single operations: 0+0=0 1+1=2 1*1=1 2+2=4 1+0=1 2*0=0. He was interrupted by Twilight.
“Those are your numbers?” he nodded, “so these symbols here are numbers and these operations” he nodded again. “Interesting, but we can’t communicate with numbers”.
Robert was exhausted, he had forced himself to ignore the pain until he was more or less sure that these ponies were inoffensive. Now that he wasn’t afraid of being mistreated while he slept, he got up from the couch and headed to the stairs.
“Where are you going? I have more questions!”
He turned and made the “sleeping” gesture, then he tried to climb the stairs, but their strange proportions, meant for quadrupeds, made him stumble and fall backwards. He readied himself for a hard impact, but he suddenly felt a force stopping him and a purple light clouding his sight. The force put him on his feet and vanished. He stammered a little but managed to stay afoot.
“Be careful, you don’t want to hurt yourself more”.
Robert smiled and gave her a thumbs up. ‘This magic thing is amazing. I wonder how Earth would be if humans could do all these things’.
As soon as he covered himself with the bed’s sheets he fell asleep.
Robert woke up covered in sweat. He had dreamed with the voice again, but he still didn’t understand what it said. He had apparently slept the entire day and night, as it was morning again. He felt very tired, but he didn’t feel pain as he got up. He found that he didn’t have bandages in the chest anymore. ‘What did they do while I was sleeping?’. He dressed up with his curtain-skirt and went to the ground floor. He noticed that most of his wounds have totally healed while he slept ‘I don’t know how to explain this, so it must have been magic... I still can’t talk, though’. He almost stepped on a bunny, but he noticed it just in time to stop. ‘Is this guy going to start talking too?’
The white bunny stared at Robert with a serious face and made a gesture with it’s paw that meant “I’m watching you”. ‘FINALLY, AN ANIMAL THAT DOES NOT TALK! It’s still more intelligent and... humanized that Earth bunnies, but beggars can’t be choosers’ Robert happily thought. He walked past the bunny, ignoring its antics, looking for ponies. He didn’t have to search for long, as he found Fluttershy sleeping on the couch. ‘So the colorful pony woman sleeps in the couch while I sleep in the bed... If it weren’t for the circumstances my manliness would feel really hurt... I hope they found my things, I miss my underwear’. He gently shook Fluttershy’s shoulder until she woke up. When she saw him looming over her she squealed and covered her head with her hooves. After a whole minute she looked at him and managed to talk.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting to see you, and you are so big and scary...”
‘Wait, they live in a place with dragons, gorilla dogs and who knows what else and she thinks I am scary?!’ he managed to hide his frustration behind a smile. He saw his paper, which had few blank spaces left, on the table and pointed to the drawing of his clothes and weapons.
“Oh, that... Well... You were asleep so...” she moved her lips but no sound could be heard.
‘This is both adorable and annoying’ he cleared his throat, which was a bad idea because doing it was really painful.
“Oh... Hm... Sorry... I meant that you were asleep so Twilight...” she did the same thing.
Five minutes later he managed to extract all the information he wanted from her. His things were in Ponyville’s library, he had guessed that was the town’s name. He had been healed by Twilight with magic, which made him feel tired because it used his own energy reserves. However, she hadn’t healed his throat because doing it wrong could let him mute forever.
‘Alright, time to consider my options. A: I can run to that library, grab my rifle and get the hell out of here before they begin with the vivisection. B: Go crazy because nothing is making sense. C: Be a good boy until I can properly communicate.’ He chose option C and pointed to the drawing again.
“Twilight will come back a bit later. Then I will ask her to bring anything you want”.
‘But I want my things now!’ he thought, then he realized that the pegasus had been peacefully sleeping until he woke her up, scared her and forced her to satisfy his curiosity. He managed to wrap his curtain around his waist so it wouldn’t fall over and then he lifted Fluttershy. She made a faint squeal and began trembling. Robert was surprised by how light she was. Given the size and body structure, he had estimated between 60 and 80 kilograms. The pony he was carrying weighed less than forty. ‘Maybe flying ponies have hollow bones or something...’
He soon arrived at the bedroom and placed the still trembling pony on the bed. She opened her eyes when she realized where she was.
“No, please, you are my guest. It would be unkind of me to sleep while you are awake”.
Robert would have none of that, so he tucked her in, closed the remaining curtain and left.
“Hm... Okay... Thanks” she said while she yawned.
‘Yes, go to sleep so I have a free hand to explore the place now that I am fully healed’.
He searched for his things all over the cottage, but he didn’t find them. He was surprised by the amount of critters he found, all of them apparently unable to speak. They weren’t afraid of him, so he guessed they were pets and that he shouldn’t mistreat them. The abundance of nest boxes and feeders confirmed his idea. He also found many tools identical to the ones used by humans, like a sewing kit and cutlery.
‘How do they handle all these things? With their mouths? Ew, everything must be covered with dried saliva’.
He soon found that there was nothing else he could do to spend his time until something happened, so he decided to explore the surroundings. He was about to see if chickens could talk when he heard the unmistakable sound of his rifle being fired less than a kilometer away. He immediately ran to the source of the noise, mentally cursing everything.
“SPIKE! I told you NOT to touch it! It could be dangerous!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Twilight and Spike were covering in fear behind one of the many huge artifacts in the library’s basement. Robert’s rifle was laying on the floor a few meters away. Twilight managed to calm herself enough to notice that the artifact, after making the painfully loud noise, had tore a hole in a wall. She approached the hole and noticed something inside of it, so she extracted it with her magic. She found a few small fragments of steel buried about 20 centimeters in the ground.
“Spike! That thing just pierced the entire wall! You could have killed somepony! Don’t touch anything that belongs to the alien!”
“So now he is an alien, uh? You laughed at me when I called him that!”
“That was before I examined these things. There is nothing like this in Equestria."
“So are you going to send a letter to the Princess now, as I told you to do since I first saw him?”
“Not yet, we can’t discard the possibility of him being a strange creature from a distant land. First, we are going to see Zecora, maybe she knows something about him. If she doesn’t I promise I’ll write that letter”.
“So, what are we going to do with all these things?”
“I’m going to put them in a place where nopony can find them by mistake, they are just too dangerous”.
Twenty minutes later she had locked everything but the clothes in a magically sealed chest. It took her more than Spike would have wanted, as she insisted in making a checklist of everything she placed in the chest, spending many minutes in making up names for the mysterious artifacts. As soon as Twilight finished the sealing spell they heard a mare shout “The horror, the horror!”, followed by many screams of fear.
“What is going on out there?” asked Twilight. “Another bunny stampede?”
‘Robert, you are such a genius’ was all he could think when the ponies panicked at his sight. ‘I hope they don’t have a police force, I don’t want to receive a beating from these alien ponies. Now, where is the library?’. He wandered through the streets for a few minutes until a pink pony suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Hello! My name is Pinkie Pie” the pony spoke with a happy voice, “I’ve never seen something like you. What’s your name? What are you? Do you like parties? I sure love parties! I know, I could throw a welcome party for you! Why are you wearing one of Fluttershy’s curtains? How do you stand on two feet without a tail? Why do you have so little hair?”
He covered Pinkie’s mouth with his right hand, making her barrage of questions stop before it overloaded his brain. Then he drew a book in the dirt with a finger and let Pinkie talk again.
“A book? You can’t make a party with books, you silly! Oh, wait, maybe you can! We should go to the library and ask Twilight if there are book parties! Follow me!”
Pinkie Pie began bouncing down the street, so Robert followed her. They approached a huge tree with windows and a balcony. A pink pony with a blonde mane saw Robert and shouted “The horror, the horror!”, then she fainted. Many ponies became aware of his presence after the shouting and ran away, screaming. Pinkie seemed to ignore them as she approached the door. She was about to knock when it abruptly opened, almost hitting her in the muzzle.
“Pinkie, what is going on?” Twilight asked as she left the tree.
“I don’t know. I was just walking when I found this strange bald monkey and then he asked me to have a book party so I told him that you sure would know if there are book parties and then-”
“What are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to leave Fluttershy’s cottage! You are causing panic!” Twilight said to Robert, ignoring Pinkie. Robert just pointed at his curtain-skirt with a frown and crossed his arms above his chest.
“See? I told you we should have left the clothes at Fluttershy’s! But noooo, you had to examine them” said Spike with an annoyed tone.
“I did it in the name of science!”
Twilight and Spike began arguing, while Pinkie still talked about book parties. Robert circled them and went inside the library. ‘An entire library inside a living tree? How is it even possible?’ he thought, but he forgot about it when he finally found his clothes near the entrance. He dropped the curtain and happily dressed. He had specially missed the boots, as running bare-footed from Fluttershy’s cottage to the library had been a painful experience. When he was fully dressed he remembered why he had come in the first place. He could smell gunpowder in the air, so he deduced that the rifle had been fired inside the building. He looked around trying to find it, and then he noticed Twilight, who was staring him with a serious expression.
“What am I going to do with you? For all I know, ponies may be assembling a mob to drive you off, torches and pitchforks included. I’m going to explain everything to the Mayor so she can calm everypony down before the worst happens. Spike, Pinkie Pie, watch over him and don’t let him abandon the library”. Both of them did a salute, Spike serious and Pinkie trying not to laugh.
As soon as Twilight left Pinkie asked Spike to tell her everything he knew about their new bald friend. Robert began looking for the rest of his belongings while the attention wasn’t focused on him. He didn’t find anything in the ground floor, so he went upstairs and began inspecting the first floor. He was opening a drawer in a bedroom when he heard a strange sound. It was very faint at first, but it quickly increased its intensity. He looked through the window and saw a weird rainbow crossing the sky and closing the distance with him. The rainbow broke through the window before Robert could take cover, hitting him in the chest and knocking him down. The hit knocked the wind out of him, so he instinctively rolled to position himself over his aggressor. He saw a female blue pony with a rainbow-colored mane between his legs, trying to hit him with her hooves while shouting.
“You think you can come here, scare everypony and steal whatever you want! Not on my watch!” she said.
Robert found himself able to overcome the pony’s physical strength, so he pinned her hooves down with one arm and the head with the other. Her wings, however, were stronger than his legs and managed to unbalance him with a few powerful beatings. The pony took the chance to free herself from him and buck him in the chest, making him fall backwards. Robert was surprised by how weak the impact was, a pony from Earth may have killed him with that kind of hit. He thought that maybe these ponies were to ponies from Earth what humans were to chimpanzees, so they were a lot weaker to compensate the superior intelligence. With that in mind he quickly got up while the pony prepared to buck him again. He jumped sideways to avoid the attack and left the room. He heard the pony’s wings behind him so he closed the door and barricaded it with a chair. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with relief, only to see Spike and Pinkie staring at him.
“What are you doing?” asked Pinkie.
“Pinkie Pie?! Is that you? Open the door!” a voice said from the locked room.
“Rainbow Dash? What are you doing here?” asked Spike.
“No time to answer! That monster locked me here and must be still in the library! We must find it before it escapes!”
Spike tried to open the door, but Robert grabbed him by the tail and lifted him to his eye level.
“Hey! Drop me!” he complained.
“What is going on out there?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Why don’t you come and see it?” asked Pinkie.
“Because I can’t go out!”
“Can’t you leave through the window?”
“I...” the sound of wings beating could be heard by Robert, Spike and Pinkie.
Robert dropped Spike carefully and grabbed the chair and wielded it like a weapon. A few seconds later the flying rainbow came into the library and tried to hit Robert again, but this time he used the chair as a baseball bat and hit his opponent with it. The chair shattered and the pegasus was diverted to the wall by the force of the impact. Robert dropped the remains and grabbed another chair, the last one in the corridor. Rainbow Dash slowly got on her hooves again, disorientated after hitting her head with the wall.
“What are you two doing?!” Pinkie managed to say, “why are you fighting?!”
She tried to hit Robert with her fore hooves, but she only managed to graze his legs. He decided that hitting her again would be a bad idea, so he dropped the chair and took a few steps away from the pony.
“Dashie, stop it! He’s not bad, see?” said Pinkie.
“But he... Panic in the streets... Twilight’s room... With a chair...” complained Rainbow Dash.
“You should rest for a while, you hit your head hard and you aren’t making sense” said Spike, “we will tell you about him when you recover”.
Rainbow nodded and fell to the ground, either asleep or unconscious. Spike brought a pillow and put it under her head, then he rubbed his temple.
“Let me guess, she attacked you without provocation, right?” he asked Robert, who nodded in response. “You shouldn’t have hit her so hard, though”.
Robert shrugged, ‘this place is more dangerous than I expected, at least I’m stronger than these ponies’.
“What were you doing in Twilight’s room?” asked Pinkie, “there are no party books there”.
He used one of the broken remains of the chair as a fake rifle, then covered his ears. Both Pinkie and Spike looked at him with confusion, until the latter realised what Robert meant.
“Twilight locked your things in a chest. You will have to wait until she comes back, her spell won’t let us open it”.
Robert crossed his arms over his chest and frowned, ‘first they manipulate my weapons without my consent and manage to fire my rifle and now they don’t let me recover them. Great, just great. I’m going to, I’m going to... Shit, literally’. He had seen a toilet in the bathroom while he was looking for his possessions, so he had decided it was about time he pooped in a real toilet. It was, after all, one of the things he had missed the most since he left Earth. When he left the bathroom and went downstairs he found that Twilight was already back. She, Spike and Pinkie were sitting around a table.
“Pinkie, for the last time, he does not want to have a book party!” said the unicorn with frustration.
“...Then why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he can’t talk!”
“Oooooh”
Twilight didn’t notice Robert sitting in the couch next to her as she spoke with Pinkie, so he clapped his hands once, startling her.
“When did you...?” she shook her head, “the Mayor has managed to calm everypony down. However, you won’t leave the library until we decide what to do with you”.
Robert frowned.
“You must understand. Nopony has ever seen something like you, so they are frightened. Moreover, the more we know about you, the more dangerous you seem. Will you stay here for a few hours so I can go to Zecora’s and ask her if she knows anything about you?”
‘How can I convince her of the futility of her plan? It’s not like that “Zecora” is going to know anything’ he thought. He tried with gestures, but it was useless. Drawing didn’t help, either. He ended up writing curses all over the paper.
“That’s mean! Why would you write that?” asked Pinkie Pie.
They all looked at her, dumbfounded.
“Pinkie... You can read what he’s writing?” managed to ask Twilight.
“Of course I can, silly filly!”
“But, but... Where did you learn to read something like that?!”
“Well, duh, my parents taught me! They said it was ‘ye olde writing’ that ponies used before”.
“Wha- how- AAAARGH” shouted Twilight, frustrated by Pinkie’s explanations . “If ponies wrote like that before, how is it that I’ve never read about it during my studies while your parents have?”
“Because they are Amish!” Pinkie answered, a bit angry.
Twilight raised a hoof and opened her mouth to reply, then she closed it and lowered the hoof.
“Pinkie Pie, you are SO random. At least now we’ll be able to properly communicate”.
“FINALLY” wrote Robert, “don’t try to learn anything about me from people here, it’s useless.”
Pinkie began reading aloud Robert’s messages. At first, his terrible calligraphy forced the pink pony to read slowly, most of the time mistaking words. Due to that he began writing slower, trying to make himself understandable. It was a slow method of communication, as they all had to wait until Robert finished writing, but it was much more effective than gesturing.
“I came here because I heard one of my weapons being used. They need constant supervision from someone who knows what he’s doing, so give them to me before something bad happens”.
“I can’t do that, for all we know you could use them to hurt ponies”.
Robert hit the table with a fist, startling the ponies, but he remained calm enough to continue writing.
“My name is Robert Eisenfaust, I am a human from planet Earth.”
“Earth as in ground, floor?”
“Exactly. My ship crashed on your world a week ago. I am the last survivor of my crew. I come in peace to...”
“Equestria” said Pinkie before Robert wrote the question.
“...Equestria. I can’t leave your planet, as I can’t repair and drive my ship alone. I will answer your questions now”.
“Well... That’s a lot to take in, Robert” said Twilight, “first, when did you learn to speak Equestrian?”
“Where did you learn to speak English? The language you call Equestrian is the same I speak since I remember. I don’t know how it is possible for two separate worlds to have the same language”.
“What do you mean when you say that you are from other world?”
“You know what stars are, don’t you?”
“Of course, they are the tiny lights that Princess Luna brings along with the Moon at night”
Robert facepalmed, ‘why couldn’t I land in a Star Wars world?’
“The sun is a star, it’s bigger because it’s very close to Equestria. I come from another world that orbits another star. Yes, planets orbit stars, not the other way around”. he added the last phrase when Twilight gave him a weird look.
“That’s impossible, Princess Celestia makes the sun rise every day!”
“Who are these princess? Are they your gods?”
“That is right, they are our beloved goddesses and rulers of Equestria”.
“Goddesses as in immortal and all-powerful?”
“Well, I have never seen them use all their power, but they sure are immortal”.
“I will believe that when I see it. Let’s change the topic, I don’t want to speak / write about astronomy, religion and politics at the same time”.
“Hum... How is your world like?”
“It’s very similar to Equestria, but humans are the only intelligent species there. Many animals are identical in both worlds, but here you are all more intelligent than Earth ones. For example, I saw a bunny that was more intelligent that any non-human on Earth. We don’t have dragons, for us they are fictional creatures“.
“Are there ponies on Earth?”
“Yes, but they aren’t sentient” he decided that telling them about using horses for war, travelling, plowing fields, eating them, making glue and etcetera wasn’t a good idea.
“I would love to know more about your home, but we don’t have time. Why did you leave?”
“It was a mission. We were supposed to establish a human settlement wherever we landed, but we failed. We were also trying to prove some theories regarding space travel”.
Twilight was also scribbling something on a piece of parchment, “more questions for later” she said when they asked her what it was.
“Now I want to know more about you. How old are you?”
“I’m 25 years old. We usually live about 80 years”.
“Are you a representative specimen of humanity?”
“What kind of question is that? Yes, I think I am. Most humans are physically weaker than me, though. My job requires me to be athletic”.
“Do you have any ability that ponies don’t?”
“I doubt it. Moreover, magic does not exist on Earth, so in any case you are the ones that have extra abilities”.
“A world without magic?” she shivered. “Next topic... What do you eat?”
“My species is omnivorous. We can’t digest some of the vegetables you ponies eat, but we eat meat”.
“That explains the fangs. What is-” she stopped asking when Robert began writing again.
“I’m really hungry, is there anything to eat here?”
“You don’t want to eat a pony, do you?” asked Pinkie when she finished reading.
“Vegetables are fine, as long as I know that I can eat them. I can’t digest grass and leaves, for example”.
“What about cakes? Can you eat pastries?” she asked with suppressed excitement.
“I can eat them and I like them... It is weird when you read my answers to your own questions, if someone is snooping he may think you are crazy”.
Twilight remembered what Dash told her about Pinkie and her imaginary friends, so she decided to change the subject.
“Robert, I must tell you that eating meat is going to be near impossible. However, Fluttershy may have meat substitutes that you can eat. She usually deals with carnivores so you should ask her”.
“That’s good. Now, I must stress how important it is for me to recover my possessions. Or, if I can’t have them, let me at least go back to Fluttershy’s house. There I will probably be safe when things begin exploding”. He maintained a serious frown, if they discovered his lie he may lose their trust.
“... You are kidding, right?”
He shook his head. Twilight began doubting, she had witnessed one of his artifacts in action and she didn’t know what the others could do. After a few seconds she gave up.
“Follow me, I will let you check them. But if you do something that looks dangerous I will take them off of you”.
Robert nodded and followed Twilight. She opened a door that lead downstairs, to the library’s basement. It was only one room filled with strange machines and laboratory instruments. She stopped in front of a wooden and metal chest, ‘it looks like the chests of Zelda’s games’ thought Robert. Her horn glowed and the chest opened itself. He slowly grabbed his rifle and removed the magazine, then he switched the safety on. He did the same with his pistol and Matheus’ rifle. He showed Twilight a bullet.
“What is that thing?”
He looked around and noticed a small hole in a wall. He pointed the bullet and the hole alternatively. He gave the bullet to Twilight, who grabbed it with her magic. While she was inspecting it he took his technoglove and hid it in one of his pockets.
“How does these... weapons work?” she asked, but he made a “later” gesture.
He placed the weapons inside the chest and took the bag with all the food. ‘The astronaut food will keep me healthy until I learn what I can eat safely’ he thought. He also took two walkie talkies, as he thought they might be useful to show that not everything he carried was meant to kill things. He was surprised to find that he hadn’t let them behind with the rest of useless things when Matheus killed himself.
“What is in there?” Robert answered with an “eating” gesture. “And those black things?” he made the same “later” gesture, “OK, I’m going to close it now”.
They both left the basement after Twilight finished channeling the locking spell. Pinkie Pie had decided to invite Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack and, by Robert’s demand, Lyra to the “Welcome to Ponyville slumber party” she had decided to throw for Robert that night.
“Should we write to Princess Celestia now?” asked Spike.
“I don’t want to bother her. We will learn more about him and then I will send her a complete report” answered Twilight.
Robert spent the rest of the morning until lunchtime learning to write in Equestrian with Twilight’s help while Pinkie Pie and Spike played with the walkie-talkies. He wanted to be able to write and read as ponies did. They were eating when Rainbow Dash showed up, fully recovered. Twilight quickly explained everything to her. The pegasus was a bit stubborn at first, refusing to believe that he came from another world,but after a few minutes she accepted Robert’s story and apologized for attacking him. Robert apologized back for hitting her too hard, but she told him not to worry. Twilight invited her to have lunch and Pinkie invited her to the party. After they ate she left to “continue her training”, which meant she wanted to take a nap, and Pinkie went to invite everypony else and work on the party preparations. Robert and Twilight continued with Equestrian writing the until the evening without interruptions, but the constant stream of Pinkie Pie nonsense that came from the walkie talkie that Spike held gave Robert a powerful headache that made him regret giving the pink pony such an artifact. When he finished his lesson he could slowly read and write like a small foal. Twilight thought that he could reach an acceptable level with two or three lessons more.
Pinkie Pie appeared and arranged everything for the party. Lyra and Fluttershy arrived shortly after she finished and were delighted to see that they could communicate with Robert thanks to the party pony. Rarity arrived fashionably late, and she was more surprised by Robert’s clothing than himself. They both “talked” for awhile and Rarity immediately liked him after hearing that humans were almost always clothed. She was already planning to design clothes for him when Applejack appeared.
“Howdy girls! Pinkie told me she was preparing a party for a newcomer. Who’s the... What the hay is that?!” she said, staring at Robert.
“Pinkie, you forgot to tell Applejack that the party wasn’t for a pony?” asked Twilight.
“Oopsie!”
After they explained her everything she quickly overcame the shock and befriended Robert. Rainbow Dash showed up a few minutes later and the slumber party officially began. Robert learned a lot about Equestria and the ponies, he was really surprised when they told him about other sentient species such as gryphons and minotaurs. When they told him about the Elements of Harmony and some of their adventures he gave up trying to rationalize anything else and decided to just accept it all, including the cutie marks and how they managed to hold things with their hooves. He noticed that Lyra didn’t know much more than him about the other ponies, as she didn’t belong to their group. She told them about her own friends, like her roommate Bon Bon.
“Your roommate? I thought you two were...” began Rainbow Dash.
“We’re not lesbians!” replied Lyra, “I don’t know where that rumour started, but it’s false”.
Robert took that chance to ask them something that had been bothering him for awhile.
“Where are the male ponies? I haven’t seen any,” read Pinkie when he asked her.
“Well, Ponyville is sort of famous for having a large proportion of mares. Many colts have special talents that don’t have high demand on small towns, so they move to the big cities. There are many small villages in Equestria whose only males are the police officers and some farmers”, Twilight answered.
“So the cutie mark you acquire is determined by your gender?”
“The short answer is ‘yes’. The long one is that we don’t know, as cutie marks seem to obey some kind of magic that nopony really understands. Many ponies have tried to solve that mystery with no real progress”.
“Twilight... What is a lesbian?” asked Spike.
“Well, uh... Hey! The book says we have to tell scary stories now!” she quickly said.
Twilight wanted them to follow all the steps in her “Slumber 101” book, but they convinced her to leave it in its shelf when she read an annex about drinking and kissing games when there were ponies of both genders present. Robert had never had a slumber party before, as it was a “girly thing”. When he was a boy sometimes he would have a sleepover at a friend’s house, but they usually played video games until their parents told them to sleep. There were moments when he felt as if he was out of place, but he wasn’t the only one, Spike had the same feeling. Due to that, Robert played with Spike like his father did with him when he was a child while the ponies dressed up, gossiped and played on their own. It was much easier for Robert to play with the dragon, as he was more similar to a human, and he refused to have his hairstyle changed or his beard of two weeks shaved (although he knew he really needed a haircut and shaving). After a while Robert found himself sword fighting with a broomstick against Spike, who was surprisingly skilled. Before they went to sleep Robert asked some questions more.
“How old are you? You are adults, don’t you?” he wrote.
“We sure are. We’re all over 14, which is when ponies are considered adults” said Pinkie Pie, “we mature faster than humans, from what you’ve told us, but we also have a smaller lifespan, a pony older than 60 is really old. Why would you ask that?”
“Because this is the kind of party human girls love when they are young”.
“You’re just like gryphons, then” said Rainbow, laughing, “as soon as they are old enough to drink it’s as if there’s nothing else to do!”
They didn’t have enough beds for all of them, so Twilight brought sleeping bags for everypony. Robert had realized during the party how different ponies were, ‘what kind of human would have a party with an alien after meeting him? They are so friendly it’s almost scary’ he thought. He fell asleep surrounded by ponies with a smile on his face.
Robert had no time to be bored during the days following his “Welcome party”. Twilight had convinced the Mayor that Robert wasn’t dangerous, but they had decided it would be better if they kept him hidden until he regained his speech. He spent most of the day improving his writing and answering Twilight’s questions. At first, she had asked him about human physiology, history and culture. She had also “asked” him to perform some physical and psychological tests, to compare him with ponies. They found that he was, considering the physiognomical differences, stronger than ponies, but he had less stamina and was a far worse runner. However, since she learned that he was an engineer, she focused mostly on his scientific knowledge. Thanks to magic, ponies had surpassed human science in many fields, such as teleportation, weather control and time travel. Moreover, Robert knowledge of mathematics, physics, electromagnetism and its applications was far wider. Twilight tried to explain him how magic worked, but he soon gave up. She told him that it was almost impossible to understand magic without being able to use it, so he shouldn’t feel bad for it. At times, Robert thought that maybe he was dying besides the diamond dog and that everything was some kind of delirious dream due to blood loss, but most of the time he just played along with all the seemingly impossible things that happened around him. Everyday he learned more things about ponies, mainly about their civilization and their anatomical differences with Earth ponies. As being confined to the library all day was exasperating for Robert, a few nights they led him to another place to sleep there, spend the day and return to the library the next night. The first time he went to Fluttershy’s, but after Angel almost managed to get himself killed by annoying Robert until he reached his limit, they decided he should try another place. So, next time he went to Applejack’s, where he met the Cutie Mark Crusaders and Big Macintosh, who finally proved Robert that male ponies did exist. The three fillies tried to earn various alien-related cutie marks, with no success. Their methods often involved doing embarrassing things to Robert, but he endured them all. ‘I almost messed everything up with the damn rabbit. I must behave today’ he repeated to himself. After that day he refused to leave the library unless it was really imperative.
What he enjoyed the most was spending time with Lyra. She would go everyday to the library for a few hours to watch over him so Twilight could leave the library without worrying. The first day after the party she had brought her lyre with her to play a few songs for him. She was amazed when he showed her how he played the instrument (with little success) with his fingers. “I wish I had hands, playing the lyre with my magic is very weary” she had admitted. He learned that non-unicorn ponies used both their mouths and their hooves to manipulate things. When he asked her why they didn’t design things to be used without hands she replied that she didn’t know, but she suspected that most of the things was meant to be used by gryphons, small dragons, minotaurs and other species with hands, claws or paws. She wasn’t interested in his technical knowledge, which was both a disappoint and a relief for Robert. On the one hand, he liked to teach people, or ponies, about everything he knew about science. On the other hand, he could only focus on those subjects for so long until he reached his fill, which Twilight covered by herself. He was also very fond of Spike, he was like the nephew the human never had and the only one around with opposable thumbs. Sometimes Robert thought that Twilight was too severe with the young dragon, but he had refrained himself of telling her so. Her obsessive attitude towards learning everything she could, both about what he taught and himself, made him feel a bit uncomfortable. The only other pony he frequently saw was Pinkie Pie, who would suddenly appear without notice to make him doubt everything he knew about physics and rational thought... and maybe to read what he wrote with English letters until he managed to write Equestrian fast enough. He also suspected that the pink pony was the smartest of them all, as she had understood how to solve problems applying integrals when he explained it to Twilight, even when she had never studied maths beyond basic equation solving.
The only things that bothered him were that he still couldn’t talk and that every night he dreamed with the same voice. He had given up any hope of John being alive after facing the dragon, so the thought of returning to their cave didn’t cross his mind.
Twilight, on the other side, was simply delighted. She had found a source of knowledge that no book in Equestria held, even if Robert was a mediocre teacher. Her report for Princess Celestia was already so long that Spike couldn’t lift the parchment by himself. Robert’s anatomy wasn’t really impressive, as many inhabitants of Equestria shared common traits with him, so she hadn’t written too much about it. He had drawn a world map of Earth, which had a similar proportion of earth and water, but it had many continents whereas Equestria was a single supercontinent surrounded by an ocean. When he told her a short version of human history she found a bit scary how prone to violence and war humans were, rivaling with the fiercest especies of Equestria. He had also explained her how they lived when he left, the development of internet and telecommunications, fast travel, globalization and much more. ‘They are so different, yet so similar to us’ she often thought. One last thing she had learned about humans was that they reeked. She blamed it on her herbivorous instincts, the smell of a carnivore stood out for her and she couldn’t get used to it, which also explained why she found Spike ‘smelly’ sometimes. Additionally, his clothes carried his human scent and he didn’t wash them as usual as it would be ideal because he had no spare clothes. That was solved by Rarity, who gave him a few clothes she had designed as a gift. Both Twilight’s nose and Robert were very appreciative of the unicorn’s generosity. Another reason for being grateful was that Rarity owned a washing machine, a very rare artifact in a society where clothes weren’t usual, so she always cleaned Robert’s clothes.
The morning of the tenth day after Lyra found Robert in the Everfree, Twilight completed her report. She knew it was too big for Spike to combust, and even if he could it was dangerous to send such a large and heavy parchment without knowing where it would land. Due to that, she decided to send it by mail and write to Celestia a letter to notify her both about Robert’s existence and the incoming report. Twilight wrote the letter in her bedroom while Robert took a bath, as she felt awkward writing it in front of him.
“Dear Princess Celestia,
Although I still continue to study the magic of friendship, this is not a friendship report. I’m writing to you about a strange visitor that has arrived to Ponyville. His name is Robert and claims to be a ‘human’ from ‘planet Earth’. He was found barely alive in the Everfree forest, with a neck injury that makes him unable to speak as it has yet to heal. I’ve written a complete report about his species, his planet and the knowledge he has shared with me until now. I would like to know how to introduce him to civilization, as he is currently living in the library to avoid causing unnecessary panic among ponies, what should I do?
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”
Spike burnt it and they left the room. Before they could go downstairs Spike burped a letter.
“An answer already? That’s weird” thought Twilight aloud.
She unfolded the letter with her magic and read its contents.
“Twilight, Humans are VERY dangerous. Don’t trust him, don’t let him leave, don’t let him make contact with other ponies and do NOT let it use any kind of artifact that looks unusual. A royal escort will arrive in less than six hours to bring him to Canterlot, where I shall deal with him. Try to act as usual around him until then.
Princess Celestia”
Twilight lost control of her magic grip and the letter fell in front of her. Spike read it and gasped. Not only the message was worrying, but also the shaky hornwriting, which usually meant that the unicorn, or alicorn in this case, who wrote the letter was unable to properly concentrate. They both stood frozen for a whole minute, until Spike managed to utter a few words.
“What... are we going to do?” he whispered.
“I... I think we should follow Princess Celestia’s command” replied Twilight in the same tone.
“But... Nothing of this makes sense” he said, “how can be Princess Celestia afraid of him? He’s as nice as anypony... Almost”.
“I don’t know, Spike. But Princess Celestia is always right, and she said we must not trust him. He may have been acting the entire time so he could recover from his wounds”.
A few minutes later Robert left the bathroom. He had finally decided to shave his beard, so he had asked Twilight to give him a razor blade. He wanted a haircut too, but he knew it would have to be delayed until he could be introduced to pony society, as he didn’t dare to do it himself. He decided to ask Twilight about it during lunch, as he was tired of being trapped in the library. He spent the rest of the morning until then reading a book about Equestria’s fauna. He had at last got the handle of Equestrian writing, and he could read and write it slow but steady. When he noticed Spike going to the kitchen he followed her to help him as he used to, but the dragon turned down his help. Robert didn’t think about it and resumed his reading. Had he been less captivated by the book, he may have noticed the side glances that both Spike and Twilight gave him from time to time, as well as the unusual silence in the library. They had lunch in such silence that Robert began feeling awkward and decided to initiate a conversation.
“When will I be able to leave the library?” he wrote in Equestrian.
“Well... I’m not really sure” said Twilight with a frown, “Your neck should finish healing soon enough”.
“I haven’t left in 5 days. I want to leave the tree for a few hours. Any problem with me going somewhere else tonight? Without annoying bunnies or fillies, please”
“I’ll ask to my friends if any of them can accommodate you for this night”.
He stopped writing and finished his meal. He missed watching the news between his lunch and his nap, but he was content with reading more until he got sleepy. Back on Earth he never napped, but the nightmarish dream forced him to catch up with sleep one way or another to be fully active the entire day. He soon fell asleep on the couch while reading about windigos.
He woke up when he heard his name being called. He opened his eye and saw two ponies, Lyra and an unknown earth pony. The pony was female with a pale cream coat and dark blue and pink mane. ‘So this must be the famous Bon Bon’ he guessed.
“Oh, you’re finally awake. You really are a heavy sleeper” said Lyra, “Robert, this is my best friend Bon Bon. Bon Bon, this is Robert the human”.
“N-nice to m-meet you” said Bon Bon with a hint of fear in her voice.
Robert moved slowly, as he had noticed that aliens making sudden movements scared the ponies, and grabbed his writing utensils.
“Nice to meet you too, Bon Bon” he wrote. “Lyra talks a lot about you and I wanted to meet you”.
“She talks a lot about you, too, so the feeling is mutual” replied the earth pony, a bit less nervous.
“See? Told you he wouldn’t gobble you up” said Lyra with a smile. “Robert, could you show Bon Bon some of your hand magic?”
Robert rolled his eyes and performed some basic shadowgraphs with his hands that Lyra loved. ‘Seriously, this pony has a hand fetish or something’. After that he did a few other tricks that ponies couldn’t, but Bon Bon was not very amused, so he decided to use his best weapon: tickling. He did it to Lyra first so Bon Bon wouldn’t feel scared with the sudden contact. The earth pony hesitated for a few moments, until Lyra convinced her. The earth pony laughed so hard she felt to the floor and began rolling, her legs shaking wildly. It was then that Twilight came back from visiting her friends to inform her about Princess Celestia’s letter. When she saw Bon Bon she remembered one of the orders from the Princess: Don’t let him make contact with ponies.
“Lyra! What is Bon Bon doing here?” she asked, worried.
Robert stopped his tickling attack when he heard the unicorn’s voice.
“I convinced her to come and meet Robert, is something wrong?” asked Lyra with a frown.
“But, but... Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, you let those fillies meet him, so I thought there would be no problem”.
Twilight knew Lyra was right, as she didn’t know about Celestia’s order.
"What was he doing, anyways?"
“He was tickling Bon Bon” admitted Lyra with a grin.
“What?”
“He’s really good at it, you should let him try with you.”
“Eh... No, thanks. Anyways... Could you-”
Twilight stopped talking when a pink blur appeared between her and the other two ponies.
“YOU!” it screamed with Pinkie Pie’s voice.
“YOU!” replied Bon Bon.
They stared at each other with the wrath of a million gods, until Pinkie Pie broke the silence.
“What are you doing here?!”
“It’s none of your business, this is a public library so I can be here if I want to!”
“You fool nopony, you want to take Twilight to the dark side!”
They suddenly began to fight.
“What is all of this about?!” asked Twilight.
“Don’t worry, they are always like this” replied Lyra with a bored tone, “you see, Bon Bon has the second biggest pastry shop in Ponyville after Sugarcube Corner, so they always act like this when they see each other”.
“But... they are fighting! We must stop them before they get hurt.”
“Nah, they won’t harm each other, look”
Pinkie and Bon Bon had drawn pastries from nowhere and were force feeding each other, while trying to speak with their mouths full.
“Bon Bon is only this random when she’s near Pinkie Pie” said Lyra, laughing.
Robert was just staring at them, trying to understand anything. Two minutes later the two ponies stopped their fighting.
“Wow, how did you make that white chocolate so yummy? It was delicious!” exclaimed Pinkie.
“I will tell you if you show me how to make the frosting of those vanilla cupcakes”
“Okey dokey lokey! Come to Sugarcube Corner and I will show you!”
Bon bon nodded and they both left. The two ponies and Robert exchanged glances. Robert wrote “Pinkie Pie” and the ponies nodded, as further explanations weren’t required.
“It seems like Bon Bon won’t come back. When she focuses on candy confection and all those things it’s impossible to stop her” commented Lyra, “I guess I have to go home to make dinner, she usually comes back late and hungry after so much cooking”.
Suddenly, all of them heard a door slam and a masculine voice shouting at the same time.
“Stop right there, you criminal scum!”
Robert immediately adopted a fighting stance. Three armoured male pegasus were charging at him, so he jumped back to avoid the impact. One of them put himself between Robert and the other ponies in a defensive stance, while the others tried to surround him.
“Monster! You are under arrest! Surrender yourself!” shouted one of them.
“What the hay are you doing?!” said Lyra, “you can’t just come to somepony’s house and arrest ponies that haven’t done anything wrong!”
The guards ignored her and continued focusing on Robert. ‘Shitshitshit. I guess resisting won’t do any good in my defense’, he thought.
“Put your claws behind your head and kneel, now!”
“Robert, do what they say, please” asked Twilight.
He slowly did as they said. One of them handcuffed him, ‘they’ve got handcuffs?! How can you put handcuffs to someone with hooves?!’.
They led him out of the library. The street was crowded by curious ponies that wanted to see what was happening, their murmurs stopping when they saw him. He was forced to enter in a strange vehicle, half chariot half cell. While the cell was being locked he saw all the ponies he had met before. They were giving him concerned glances, but they didn’t try to stop the guards. Lyra was the only one who ran to the chariot.
“You can’t do this! He hasn’t done anything wrong!” she cried.
“Move back, miss. We’re carrying royal orders” replied a guard.
“You lie! Princess Celestia would never order to treat somepony like this!”
“I said move back!”
“No!”
THUD. Robert witnessed how the pegasus hit Lyra with a foreleg, prompting the entire crowd to gasp. ‘To hell with it, no pastel pony will hurt a friend of mine!’ he thought. He took his technoglove and used its electromagnet to attract the keys, that were placed a few meters away. Before anypony could stop him he opened the cell and the handcuffs and left the chariot.
“The monster is free!” cried one pony.
“The horror! The horror!” replied a pink mare just before fainting.
The three guards tried to pin him down, but he was faster. He kicked one of them in the chin, where the pegasus lacked protection. A sharp scalpel protruded from the thumb of the glove, meant to be used for surgery but also deadly when used as a knife. He took a few steps back and waved his deadly weapon to dissuade his opponents. Then he felt a strong force pulling his glove off, and found it surrounded by the purple light of Twilight’s magic. He tried to hold it but he had to let it free when the guards charged again, this time flying. They circled him, trying to confuse him, but their armors made them too noisy and heavy to catch him off guard. One of them tried to hit him in the back, but Robert turned around and grabbed the pegasus head. He took the pony’s helm off with a quick yank and beat him with it. He slowly advanced to Lyra’s position, who was struggling to get up. Before he could reach her, the same purple glow enveloped him and forced him to remain still. The guards took the chance and tangled him with a net. He tried to break free until one of them bucked him in the head, stunning him. While he was half-unconscious, Twilight was angrily talking with the guards.
“What kind of professionals are you?! This display of violence is unbefitting of Celestia’s royal guards!”
One of them, apparently the leader, faced her while the others stood behind him.
“Princess Celestia ordered us to bring her the monster no matter what. That includes dissuading ponies from interfering” he said with a serious frown.
“Princess Celestia would never order her royal guard to harm ponies! And he’s not a monster, he’s a rational being!” replied Twilight, angered.
“Orders are orders, now move aside so we can put this monster in it’s cage”.
Robert felt a pony pulling him with his hooves and recovered his senses.
“TAKE YOUR STINKING HOOVES OFF OF ME YOU DAMN DIRTY PONY!!!” he screamed, his voice hoarse but intelligible.
The pink pony that had woken up shouted “The horror, the horror!” and fainted again. The guard that was moving him jumped away, scared.
“What the heck? Monsters aren’t supposed to talk!” he nervously said.
The pegasus leader gaped for a few second and then he facehoofed.
“That is because monsters can not talk. Untangle him, private” he ordered.
“But... What about the orders, sir?”
“The orders were to capture a bipedal monster. If he can speak he’s not a monster, but a unknown rational being.” explained the leader, “Princess Celestia won’t be pleased if we bring her something like him trapped like an animal”.
Robert got up and massaged his head where he had been hit.
“Am I free to go, then?” he said between coughs.
“No. You aren’t going to be trapped, but you are under arrest.” replied the guard with a grin.
“What?” Robert, the two other guards and a few ponies exclaimed.
“You are an unknown rational being and you have proven yourself potentially dangerous to ponies. Due to that, our Code dictates that we must arrest you and submit you to the Royal Princesses for them to determine your status in Equestrian society. Do not try to resist”.
Robert considered the pony’s words for a few seconds “Alright, I surrender. As this is an unannounced and nonviolent arrest, I believe I have the right to prepare myself during the next hour, right?”
“Nonviolent? He just-” began the guard he had beaten with his own helmet.
“One hour, don’t try anything funny. This is already going to be a paperwork hell and I don’t want any of you to make it worse”.
Robert turned to Lyra, who hadn’t moved at all since he first talked “Are you alright?” he asked.
“Y-yes... He didn’t hit me that hard” she said, astonished, “but...”
“It’s OK, we will meet again, I promise” said Robert, instantly doubting his own words.
He turned to Twilight and her friends, “So much for the magic of friendship. None of you moved a single hoof... Well, actually, Twilight did, only to disarm me” he said with heavy sarcasm and bitterness in his voice. He had considered the ponies his friends and he felt really hurt because they hadn’t even tried to help him.
“I- I just...” began Twilight, but she stopped when Robert turned his back on her and went to the library. He appeared a few minutes later with an ice pack on his head and entered the cage by himself.
“I’m ready”.
“I appreciate your collaboration in this ordeal” said the leader guard as he closed the cage. The two other guards moved to the front of the carriage to pull it. A few seconds later all of them were flying towards Canterlot.
“How the heck can you two have enough wingpower to lift yourselves, your armors, me and this freaking carriage?!” everypony heard Robert ask as he was carried away.
Ponyville was completely silent while the Royal Guard was in sight. Then, when they left, everypony began talking at the same time. Rainbow Dash managed to raise her voice above the ruckus so Twilight could hear her.
“Twilight, we can’t leave him to his own like this! I don’t care what Celestia says, he’s not evil!”
“How can you trust him more than Princess Celestia?!” Twilight replied, shocked, “For all we know, he could have been lying or using some magic to make us believe he’s friendly”.
“I don’t know, sugarcube. He seemed a nice and honest fella” affirmed Applejack.
“He used a weapon on those guards, how is that nice?!” exclaimed Twilight, waving the technoglove with her magic in front of them.
“Darling, I must agree with Rainbow Dash and Applejack in this matter” said Rarity, “those colts acted like barbarians towards him and Lyra. It is only right to defend a damsel in distress. We can’t just abandon Robert after such an act of bravery!”
“Yeah! He isn’t a meanie, and he’s our friend, isn’t he?” added Pinkie Pie, far more serious than usual. Fluttershy muttered something inaudible. After a few seconds she gathered enough courage to say it loud enough to be heard.
“I saw him lose his temper when Angel made him fall down the stairs. He was really angry and could have really hurt poor little Angel, but he calmed down and only scolded him... I think a bad pony wouldn’t have done that. I’m sure Princess Celestia is just worried because she doesn’t know him, so we should tell her that he isn’t evil” then the shyness overcame her again, “I mean, if that’s okay with you...”
“Please, Princess Celestia knows you all. Help Robert, you are his only hope” Lyra begged.
Twilight remained silent for a whole minute, looking troubled, before she came to a conclusion.
“I still believe that Princess Celestia knows best,” she raised her hoof when she noticed that her friends were about to argue back. “However, I think we should go to Canterlot. We welcomed him and became his friends, and good friends should support each other even when things are looking bad. We have an hour to make ourselves ready, then we leave so we can arrive there before tomorrow morning”.
They all left for their respective homes, but then Twilight remembered something.
“Lyra, will you come with us?” she said as she glanced back to the unicorn.
“I would love to, but...” she replied with sadness, “I don’t think it would be a good idea. I mean, you are the Elements of Harmony and the saviours of Equestria, while I’m just an unicorn. I think I will stay here until you come back... The Mayor will want to know about Robert, won’t she?... Somepony has to tell her”.
“Are you sure? You were the closest one to him, you could...”
“It’s okay, really. He promised me he would be back and I’m sure you’ll help him keep his promise” she said with a sad smile.
As Lyra left, Twilight felt a knot in her stomach. All of her friends wanted to go against Princess Celestia’s orders! She couldn’t believe it was really happening. She was afraid of the punishment the Princess may inflict upon them for “betrayal”, she was afraid of what Robert may hide and, above all, she was afraid of discovering that her beloved Princess Celestia wasn’t infallible and perfect. The simple thought of Celestia being wrong over something made her shiver like a small filly lost in the darkness. Only when Spike opened the door of the library for her did she notice him.
“Spike... What do you think about all of this?”
“I don’t know... I think we shouldn’t have written the letter to Princess Celestia in secret. He was friendly, but he could have been acting the whole time. Princess Celestia is really wise and she apparently knows about humans. Maybe he is some kind of evil creature like Discord and he was waiting for his chance to attack?” he shrugged, “the best thing we can do is go there and tell Celestia our version of the story”.
“We will need somepony to take care of the library while we are in Canterlot”.
“Eh... No offense, Twilight, but we never receive customers so just put the ‘closed’ sign” replied Spike, rolling his eyes.
“... You are right”.
While Spike ordered the books and made sure everything was fine, Twilight inspected the technoglove. She was very intrigued, as Robert must have had it since she opened the chest for him ten days before, ‘what makes this artifact worth the risk of being caught?’ she thought. She asked Spike to wear it, but his claws were too small and only had four fingers, so he couldn’t manipulate it. Then she decided to use her magic to create a telekinetic hand. She tried flexing the fingers, but nothing happened. After a few minutes of trying a female voice coming from the glove startled her.
“Reminder: the technoglove isn’t meant to be used as a normal glove. If you are doing so, please remove it. If you want to deactivate this warning, touch your thumb with your index twice. If you need help, make a fist three times”.
“Spike! How do you make a fist?!”
“You make a fist when you close your claw!”
Twilight did so and the female voice appeared again.
“Are you a new user? Make a fist once for yes and twice for no”.
Twilight chose yes.
“Do you want gesture commands or voice commands? Make a fist twice for gesture and say ‘voice’ for voice commands”
“Voice!”
“The menu will appear now, read the number of a headline aloud for further information”.
From the back of the glove a small light appeared, which generated an hologram with a menu. Twilight managed to suppress her excitement in order to properly operate the glove.
“TECHNOGLOVE V1.8 MENU 1. Safe use 2. Basic functions and commands 3. Specific functions and commands(opens submenu) 4. Tuned accessories. 5. List of multimedia 6. Settings.”
“Oh, right, it’s written with his letters, where’s Pinkie when I need her?” she thought aloud.
“I can read that” said Spike.
“What? How? Since when?”
“Pinkie Pie taught it to me yesterday, I think it’s easier than Equestrian.”
“Wait, you learned it in one day?”
“I learned to write in Equestrian a week after I said my first words, I’m just that awesome”.
“Okay, what does it say?” asked Twilight.
Spike began translating everything to Twilight so she could properly operate the technoglove.
‘If the safe use goes first I guess it’s important’.
“Safe use”.
A recorded voice began listing all the potential dangers that could happen if the glove was used wrong. It was a very extensive list, but it also explained briefly what each potentially dangerous tool was meant to do, so Twilight learned all of the things the glove could do. After ten minutes the record ended and the menu appeared again.
‘I don’t want to use it... yet, and I know most of the functions and what these accessories are so...’
“List of multimedia”. “MULTIMEDIA MENU 1. All multimedia (1 items) 2. Holovideos (0 items) 3. Records / music (1 items) 4. Images (0 items) 5. Text (0 items) 6. Others (0 items) 0. Back”.
“All multimedia”.
“Reminder: you can say the number instead of the full title. There is only one item, do you want to reproduce it?”.
“Yes”.
““I can’t take this anymore. Kato and John are dead. We’re...” Matheus’ message was played by the glove.
“Oh, sweet Celestia...” muttered Twilight when the message finished and the menu appeared again. Twilight, being one of the most cultivated mares in Equestria, had read about suicide many times. However, the idea of somepony taking his own life was so alien to Equestrians that she had always thought that suicides only happened in fictional stories. That is why listening to Matheus’ last words before he killed himself was such a traumatizing experience. Spike and her hugged, seeking comfort in the mutual contact as they literally cried on each other’s shoulder.
“Spike, this... This could be the proof that Robert wasn’t lying the whole time. We must bring this ‘technoglove’ to Princess Celestia”.
They spent most of the hour checking the basic functions of the glove one by one, to focus their minds in something unrelated to Matheus. Twilight discovered that the glove was meant to be used by humans without training with vocal commands and the help of the menu, whereas a trained user manipulated it with quick gestures. She also learned that the glove recharged itself with solar energy, and that the batteries get low really fast when you use the electromagnet a lot. She decided to look for another technoglove in the sealed chest. She was already lifting it from the now unsealed chest when she heard a knock upstairs and a voice.
“Twilight! We’re ready!” said Rainbow Dash.
“We’re coming, hold on a second!” she replied.
She put the first glove in her saddle, put the other in the chest and close it, not bothering in placing a magic seal. Both Spike and her left the library to meet their five closest friends, patiently waiting.
“Alright, let’s do this” said Twilight with more confidence than she felt, “in order to arrive in Canterlot before the guards we will need the balloon”.
“Are you crazy? Balloons don't fly faster than carriages pulled by pegasi, unless there’s too much wind to fly safely!” said Rainbow Dash.
“Yes, that is why you and Fluttershy will pull the balloon, and when you are tired me and Rarity will create wind with our magic”.
A few minutes later they were crossing the sky. She wrote a new letter for Princess Celestia, telling her about their impending arrival, which Spike sent with his flames. When Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash made their first stop, Twilight told them about Matheus’ message in the technoglove, but she didn’t play it, as she guessed that it would be a bad idea, especially with Fluttershy listening.
_____________________________________
While the Elements of Harmony raced time, Robert pondered in his cage. While he was in Ponyville he had just followed the current, only thinking about the present. Being trapped in a flying carriage with nothing else to do forced him to wonder about his fate and mourn about his past. He missed home, he missed his three colleagues who he would never see again and, above all, he was afraid of a world he didn’t belong to and couldn’t understand. ________________________________________
Twilight and company arrived in Canterlot during twilight, which prompted Pinkie Pie to make a few puns about her unicorn friend. The pegasi and the unicorns were exhausted after working so hard. Two royal guard pegasi approached them when they were near the castle and told them to wait until they were given a landing spot. Two minutes later the same guards pulled the balloon to the designated place. Many unicorns, all of them wearing the Royal guard armor, were waiting for them.
“Miss Sparkle” greeted an older stallion with a more ornamented set of armor, “Princess Celestia has commanded us to escort you. Her Majesty awaits, shall we depart?”
Twilight nodded and they followed him, surrounded by a wall of guards.
“Isn’t all of this a bit... excessive?” asked Twilight.
“Princess Celestia has put all the guard in state of alert,“ he explained. “Apparently, something dangerous has been caught near the Everfree Forest and it is being carried here. That is why we’re taking more security measures than we usually do”. Soon enough, after navigating through a maze of corridors, they stopped in front of a small door. The unicorn knocked with his hoof and a golden glow surrounded the door, opening it.
“Come in” said Princess Celestia with her unmistakable voice, “My loyal guards, you are dismissed” she added a few seconds later.
The royal guards saluted and left. Twilight and her friends crossed the doorframe and, as soon as the last one had crossed, the door closed behind them and they felt a strong magical force. Before they noticed they were surrounded by something white, big and warm.
“My little ponies,” said Celestia, hugging all of them with her wings, “I have been so worried. To think that you would meet such a terrible creature... Is that why you’ve come so quickly?”
“Well... Yes,” answered Twilight, “Uh... It’s hard to talk like this, could you please release us?”
Princess Celestia opened her wings and the six ponies plus dragon regained some personal space. She gazed at them with a warm smile, awaiting.
“Princess, we are here because we don’t understand what has Robert done to justify three guards with license to hurt civilians going after him”.
Celestia’s smile turned into a serious frown.
“Humans are a menace to everything Equestria stands for. As soon as my trusted guards bring him here Luna and I will personally determine what his presence in Equestria means and which course of action we must follow”.
“You talk as if you have met humans before, but he said his group was the first to ever leave their home, how is that even possible?” asked Twilight.
“Because a long time ago, there were humans living in Equestria” Celestia revealed, “they were beings of chaos and evil, so destructive that they ended annihilating themselves. That is why I fear that he may be the first drop of a devastating storm”. Celestia’s revelation left all of them astonished.
“B-but... How is it that nopony knows about them?” asked Twilight.
“Because, after they were all dead, Luna and I made sure no creature would follow their steps to self-destruction by destroying all the evidence of their existence”.
“Are they really that bad?” asked Fluttershy, hiding her face behind her mane “Robert was kind to everypony...”
“Humans are miserable little piles of secrets” Celestia said with coldness, “Nevertheless, now that he can’t do any harm he will be judged with fairness. Fear not, for I wouldn’t be better than them if I judged him for what he is instead of who he is... You really came all the way to Canterlot just to say ‘Princess Celestia, please don’t annihilate the human!’? Really girls, where do these rumours of me being like that come from?” she said, trying to sound playful.
“The thing is, we may have found evidence-” tried to say Twilight.
“Everything related to the human will be discussed during the trial, which will take place after the sunrise, not now. You must be tired and hungry after such a hasty travel, so I have ordered my royal chef to prepare enough food for all of us”.
Princess Celestia stepped aside, letting the ponies see the room behind her. It was rather plain and simple, with only a table big enough for ten ponies, chairs and a little window. The table was full to the brim of delicious looking meals. A basket full of gems stood between the salads and the pastries. The ponies expressed their gratitude and began eating.
“I think it may be too much food” commented Fluttershy.
“Everything is divine!” exclaimed Rarity.
“Emeralds!” shouted Spike before feasting on said gems.
They ate and chatted about everything and nothing. Celestia was again kind and warm, the coldness in her voice when she spoke about humans had totally vanished, and soon the ponies overcame their initial apprehension and began talking with ease. Excluding Twilight and Spike, none of them had ever seen Celestia eating outside formal events, so they were surprised by the huge amount of food she ate. Even with Pinkie Pie on their side, known for being able to eat several times her own weight, the Princess had eaten more than the other six ponies together. Princess Celestia was about to begin with the desserts when the door opened again, revealing the other Princess, who was wearing a light blue pajamas and levitating a cup of coffee.
“Good evening sis...” she muttered before yawning, her eyes half-closed.
Princess Luna took a seat and a sip of her coffee before noticing the unexpected company. When she did, she almost choked on her own drink before she managed to swallow it.
“Wha- how? Oh, it’s you” she said, realizing who their guests were, “We weren’t expecting such a palatable company!”
“That sounds like you want to eat them,” remarked Celestia with a smirk, “enjoyable or nice would be better”.
Luna nodded as she levitated a few fruits and pastries to join her coffee.
“So, what brings the Element’s bearers here?” she asked after the ponies had greeted her.
“You may want to finish drinking or you will choke again” said Celestia.
“Is it that serious?”
“It is. They found a human in-”
Luna lost control of her magic and her cup of coffee fell to the floor, breaking apart.
“Thanks goodness I didn’t tell you near any expensive carpet” said Celestia with a frown, “Yes, they found a human in the Everfree forest and I want both of us to judge him to determine if he poses a threat to Equestria or if there are more humans somewhere.”
Luna nodded with a serious frown, and then she began eating.The mortal ponies had to wait fifteen minutes more until both Princesses finished having dinner, or breakfast in Luna’s case. The Princess of the moon, while less voracious than her older sister, had also eaten enough food to satisfy three regular ponies. Later on, Twilight would explain her friends that the two alicorns spend insane amounts of energy on a daily basis, so they need a proportional nourishment to avoid their bodies weakening. She also mentioned that, before Luna’s return, Celestia could eat up to ten times her own weight everyday. As if on cue, a gentle knock on the door was heard by all of them as soon as the princesses finished eating.
“You may pass” said Celestia.
An earth pony guard opened the door and bowed.
“Your Highness, sergeant Edge has arrived with a prisoner and awaits new orders.”
“Good, lead us to him, if you please” the Princess of the sun replied with a kind tone.
The guard bowed lower and then reacquired a firm stand, waiting for them to get up and follow him. They travelled through the endless corridors, the guard leading the way, Twilight and her friends in the middle and the princesses in the back; until they stumbled upon a heavy wooden door. They crossed it onto a balcony facing to the mountainside. In the middle of it was the cage with Robert inside.
“You again? How did you manage to arrive before we did?” he asked when he saw Twilight cross the door. He opened his mouth to say something else but then he noticed the Princesses and became silent.
“Twilight, I thought you mentioned that he couldn’t talk,” Celestia stated
“He couldn’t until a few hours ago,” she answered with a trace of nervousness, “he recovered his voice just before he left.”
“Guards, open the cage” ordered Celestia.
Robert left the chariot as soon as he could, as the cage was too small for him to stand up or lay down and he was beginning to feel very stiff. He made eye contact with Princess Celestia, but her overall appearance, especially the flowing mane, was distracting him too much for his own good. ‘Do I have to kneel or something? I really should have read more about pony etiquette’ he thought as the ponies approached him. Princess Celestia was too close for his liking, her eyes were the same level as his and her stare was unsettling. He felt as if her eyes were reading his mind with the wisdom of ages.
“Human, your presence here is unexpected and unwelcome. You’ll reside in the ambassadors’ quarters until the sunrise, when you will state your intentions and answer the questions we may see fit to ask,” she stated with a cold voice, “guards, lead our guest to his chambers and make sure that he is given a proper dinner.”
An unicorn guard motioned to Robert to follow him. The human did so, hoping he hadn’t messed up by ignoring some kind of rules regarding royalty, like kissing their horns or something like that. He apparently didn’t, as nopony reacted negatively while he followed the guard. He was led to a luxurious room with a sumptuous bed, a huge wardrobe with a mirror, a bookshelf, a desk and a private bathroom. He peered through the window and found a marvelous sight of the city and the lands beyond. The door closed behind him and he suspected that he had been caged again. He opened the window, but when he tried to stick his head out he collided with an invisible wall. He opened the door and found a pair of guards standing on its sides.
“Do you know when -OUCH” he had tried to cross the doorframe, subsequently bumping his nose against the magic field and falling down arse first. The guards glanced sideways, their faces immutables, “...as I was saying, do you know when will my dinner arrive? I’m starving.”
“In less than fifteen minutes,” answered the guard on the right, “be careful with the magical field, the more you hit it the stronger it hits back.”
“Thanks for the info” replied Robert as he closed the door, “狗屁! My nose! Fucking magic, how does it work? Joder.”
He muttered a lot of profanities in all the languages he knew while he inspected the room. He was impressed when he found human clothing in the wardrobe, but further inspection revealed that it was a mix of clothing for something with a bigger and more muscular torso than him and something with wings and tail. ‘I will take a wild guess and say that they have taken clothing for minotaurs and small dragons and put it all here... I miss my slippers...’ He was halfway through the wardrobe, having only found two pants and three shirts that fitted him reasonably well, when he heard a knock in the door.
“Come in” he said out of habit.
A female pony dressed as a handmaiden trotted into the room, balancing a tray on her head. He took it from her and put it on the desk. When he turned himself he found the pony staring at him, mouth agape.
“You... probably expected to find a pony or something, right?”
After a few seconds the mare nodded. He shrugged and began eating. A few seconds later he heard the mare leaving and closing the door. Then he noticed that he was eating meat, a juicy steak to be precise. ‘No wonder the poor girl was so shy. On the other hand... at last! A decent piece of meat!’ The only meat he had eaten prior was something suspiciously similar to dog food that Fluttershy gave to the carnivorous animals she took care of. After greatly enjoying his dinner he played with the window’s magic field. He discovered that he could throw objects and they would be ignored, unless he coated them with his saliva. He spent half an hour throwing spitballs and seeing how they bounced back faster each time until one painfully hit him in the right cheek. After that he went to sleep, feeling like an idiot for hurting himself like that.
__________________________________
Extra to compensate for the tardy update: Alternative ending for chapter 5.
Robert felt a pony pulling him with his hooves and recovered his senses.
“TAKE YOUR STINKING HOOVES OFF OF ME YOU DAMN DIRTY PONY!!!” he screamed, his voice hoarse but intelligible. The three guards took a few steps back and one of them said “He can talk!”
“He can talk, he can talk, he can talk, he can talk, he can talk, he can talk, he can talk” said Daisy, Lily and Rose at the same time.
Robert got up and, with all the power of his lungs, shouted “I CAN SING!”
“Ooooh help me Twilight Sparkle” said Nurse Redheart in distress.
A weird music was played somewhere and the three “flower ponies” sang in chorus.
“Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle” said Lily alone.
“What is wrong with me?” asked Robert
“I think you’re crazy” replied Twilight.
“I want a second opinion.”
“You’re also lazy”.
The ponies repeated their chorus, circling Twilight as they praised her. Then one of them did breakdance and Lily said “Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle” in a silly pose.
“Can I play the piano anymore?” asked Robert
“Of course you can” replied Twilight
“Well I couldn't before” said Robert to the shock of everypony, as a piano appeared and he played it.
Then Celestia killed them all before Matt Groening decided to sue The Hub and Hasbro.
“Robert... Can you hear me?” a distant voice whispered on Robert’s ear.
“Where am I?” he asked, as he was surrounded by darkness and he couldn’t see anything, not even his hands.
“You are sleeping, I’ve been trying to speak to you but you weren’t close enough to understand my words.”
The voice, Robert noticed, was masculine and serious, but unknown to him.
“So it was you! You are the reason I haven’t been able to properly sleep!”
“That doesn’t matter. Time is short, you must listen and obey.”
“Why? Why should I trust a voice in my head?”
“Just listen: you must go to the palace’s gardens during the sunset, there I’ll explain.”
“You are implying that I’ll still be alive and free by then.”
“I am optimistic. We are out of time, wake up.”
“How am I-”
He woke up and jumped out of the bed, like he always did when he had heavy nightmares. ‘That was one of the weirdest things ever, and I have seen MANY weird things these days.’ he thought while he calmed down. The sun hadn’t raised yet, so he turned on the lights. ‘Wait, lights as in electricity and lamps?’, he looked up at the source of light, immediately cursing and covering his eyes in pain. He waited until his eyes became accustomed to the light and looked again. The source of light was some sort of ceiling lamp with a white and still flame where the bulb should be. ‘Of course, magic.’ Robert thought, not even trying to understand it. He found that the leftovers of his dinner had disappeared, along with the clothes he had discarded. There was also a new tray with a glass of something that resembled orange juice and three bananas. He tasted the liquid, which really was orange juice, so he proceeded to have breakfast. He idly wondered when had the ponies done all those things, the thought of ponies going in and out of his room while he slept annoying him. He was brushing his teeth in the bathroom when he heard the door opening.
“Good morning,” a male voice said, “the sun is rising, you must come with me.”
He quickly finished his business and followed the guard pony, whose horn glowed in front of the door to dispel the barrier that contained Robert. He was led to a fairly big room, the right half covered by white banners with a sun on them, the left half by black ones with crescent moons. A red carpet covered the floor between the entrance and a one meter tall platform where the two princesses were sitting on twin thrones. The six ponies and the dragon were sitting on the sun half, on a row of seats near the platform.
“Come here and sit” said Celestia, as she materialized a chair a few meters in front of her.
“Human, you must know that this is the Trial of the Princesses” said Luna as soon as Robert was seated, “this trial is meant to solve cases where Equestria’s law is unfit. Now, we have a list of questions that need answer, will you answer them with honesty?”
“Yes, I will.”
“What is your name?” asked Celestia.
“My name is Robert Eisenfaust.”
“Where do you come from?” asked Luna.
“I come from planet Earth.”
“How did you come to Equestria?” asked Celestia.
“I came in a spaceship.”
The princesses took turns asking one question each time.
“When did you leave your planet?”
“Between... one and two thousand years ago, as I spent eighteen months travelling at the speed of light and-”
“We know about the dilation of time, you don’t need to elaborate,” said Celestia, “next question: why did you come to Equestria?”
“The ship malfunctioned and landed in the nearest habitable world, I’m here by mistake.”
“What was your original destination?”
“We were supposed to land in a planet and colonize it.”
“Are there more humans with you?”
“No, they all died before we found civilization.”
“Will more ships with humans arrive to our world?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Elaborate.”
“The plan was to colonize a planet and then making contact with Earth. Even if I somehow managed to contact them, it would take thousand of years before one of them arrived here.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“As I can’t leave your world, my only option is to stay here until I die.”
“What is your special talent?”
“Eh... Excuse me?”
“What was your job before you came here.”
“I was an engineer, specialized in space travel.”
“I don’t have more questions” said Celestia.
“Neither do I” said Luna after a few seconds.
“These six ponies and dragon claim to have met you, is that true?”
“It is.”
Celestia faced the mentioned group.
“The one who represents you must come here to answer more questions.”
Twilight Sparkle walked towards the platform, standing between Robert and the Princesses.
“Twilight Sparkle, you and your friends want to speak on behalf of Robert Eisenfaust. Expose your reasons.”
Twilight talked and talked and talked until Robert almost fell asleep. After an hour she had explained in great detail everything they knew about Robert and how they all believed that he wasn’t a menace to Equestria. Then she showed Celestia and Luna the technoglove that Robert had used to protect himself from the guards and she gave it to Robert, waking him up from his doze.
“Robert, I found a message in this device. Could you show it to the princesses?”
“Eh... Sure.”
He donned the glove and a few seconds later Matheus’ record was played for all to hear.
“What is the point of this?” he asked, a bit angry.
“This message is the proof that you are indeed the last human in Equestria,” replied the unicorn.
“That is not up to you to decide, Twilight,” said Celestia, “do you have anything else to show or tell?”
“No, I have finished.”
“Then go back to your seat, we must reach a decision” said Luna.
The two princesses spoke in whispers for at least ten minutes until Celestia faced Robert again.
“Robert Eisenfaust, we have taken a decision. Your presence isn’t dangerous to Equestria, so there is no reason to banish or imprison you. Hence, we are willing to grant you Equestrian citizenship, as long as you prove worthy of that privilege. If you decline this offer, you will be escorted to the Everfree Forest, never to come back.”
“Can I have some time to make that decision? I would like to know what means to be a citizen of Equestria and think about it.”
“We will meet again, tomorrow at the same hour. Then you will choose” said Luna, “that is all.”
Robert stood up and was about to turn and leave the room when he heard Celestia’s voice.
“Robert, I would like to speak in private with you,” she said with a gentle but firm voice, ”if you want to.”
Robert suspected that he didn’t have any choice in the matter, so he waited for Celestia to abandon the platform.
“It won’t take long, we will meet again for lunch” she told to her pupil and her friends as she passed by.
The Princess of the sun led Robert through narrow corridors and steep stairs, always downwards. Soon, the stained glass windows and decorated rooms made way to dark stone walls and locked steel doors.
“Excuse me, princess,” said Robert, his voice filled with concern, “where are we going?”
Celestia turned her head, her eyes at the same level as Robert’s.
“You will know soon enough.”
Robert knew better than asking again, so he remained silent. They walked for at least fifteen minutes through the dungeons until Princess Celestia stopped in front of a black metallic door.
“We are in the Royal Vault,” she told him with gravity, “some of the most valuable objects of History are kept safe here. You must cross this door and continue until you find a plain red door. There is something behind that door that you must see, alone. Then we will have our conversation.”
He gulped and nodded. Robert opened the door, its hinges creaking, and walked alone through the barely illuminated place.
The corridor had many doors on each side, each one with an unique painting. There were doors with animals, doors with geometrical motifs and with color schemes. Robert walked slowly, the silence of the place broken only by his breathing and footsteps. He found the plain red door thirty meters away from the entrance. It was a normal, wooden door with a white knob. He grabbed the knob with a strong grip and opened the door. The room was covered in darkness, but as soon as he stepped inside a faint light appeared, growing stronger by the seconds. The first thing he noticed was a showcase with something inside. As he went closer he noticed that it looked like some kind of parchment. It was only when he stood in front of the case that he could distinguish the text written in the old paper. He felt to his knees, staring at the document without blinking.
“Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it,” he muttered as tears flowed freely. He punched the glass that protected the document he knew as the United States Constitution as he screamed.
“You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” he continued punching the magically protected glass until he ran out of tears. He didn’t know how much time he stayed curled in a ball and sobbing under the showcase until he came back to his senses. He looked around and saw many familiar items. Flags, documents, books, a Coca Cola can, a car wheel, a computer, even an Iphone and an Action Man. He remembered that Hasbro had decided to create a new animation series to promote the new line of Action Man toys, and how the show meant for 5 years old boys had become worldwide popular among adult women in the year 2018 thanks to the Internet. Heck, even his ex-girlfriend had been an Action Girl, as they called themselves. He left the room, confused and angry. Celestia was in the corridor, her face masking her feelings.
“When? How?” he asked.
“In the year 2030 of your era. That is when magic appeared on Earth. We don’t know if it was due to some human experiment, some kind of cosmic event or the action of a god. It simply appeared and your world changed. Some species mutated or evolved, like ponies and dogs. Others, like dragons, appeared out of thin air. Humans didn’t change at all, so you started fighting against the new sapient creatures and between yourselves. It didn’t take long until you managed to cause your own extinction with both nuclear and magical weapons, in the year 2100 more or less. We, the creatures born of magic, have a great resistance to radiation. You don’t. So we prevailed and you didn’t.”
“If we are on Earth... How come the Earth globe is different?”
“Before your extinction you managed to acquire a deep and powerful knowledge of magic,” she said with coldness, “your species can’t handle it, but with the help of your technology you could force the magic itself to perform terrifying feats. When you stopped nuking each other, Earth was so damaged that Luna and I still have to use our magic to avoid a change or a stop in the rotation and translation. If that wasn’t enough, we had to deal with a nuclear winter for at least ten years. We are immune to radiation, but mortal ponies can still starve and you can’t grow crops without sunlight. You surely understand now why I had to make sure you weren’t the first of a human colony that had survived somewhere.”
“Why are you the only one that knows about humans?”
“After you were gone, we had to make sure that no other species would follow your steps towards self-destruction. So Luna and I destroyed all evidence of your existence we could find, only keeping a few of your most historically important objects just in case we decided that public knowledge of humanity would be beneficial.”
“... The Action Man too?”
Celestia lost her stoic façade for a second, a grin betraying her.
“Luna said that it would help ponies to know how you looked like. But I think she just became obsessed with that TV show you created.”
“I... I need a drink”
Celestia nodded and, with a flash of light, teleported both of them out of the dungeons. They appeared in a small, cozy room with a couch and a table. Luna was laying on the couch, a quill and parchment on the table.
“I must perform my royal duties,” stated Celestia, “so I must leave you two. See you tonight, sister.”
“See you Celly” Luna replied, and then she faced Robert as Celestia left in another flash of light, “Robert, it is a pleasure to properly meet you. I must say that your species truly fascinate me. It’s past my bedtime but I would love to exchange knowledge with you. If you prefer to stay alone I will understand, though.”
“No, it’s... It’s fine, I’d rather know more about... About how we managed to obliterate ourselves.”
“Huzzah!” she exclaimed, oblivious to his sadness, “I will answer all your questions, but first you must answer one of mine that I have been struggling with and all the human knowledge we could save doesn’t answer: How does Harry Potter ends? I never found the last book.”
Then Celestia appeared again in another blinding flash.
“I almost forgot: Robert, I’m sure you understand that I can’t have you telling everypony about Earth and humankind, so from now on you are a being who came from the moon with Luna.”
“Eh... Sure?”
Celestia nodded and left again. Robert faced Luna again, shrugged and took a seat.
“So... You really never found the last book or film of Harry Potter? He was so popular when I was a boy... Well, if I remember right, Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows starts with...”
They spent the next two hours talking. Robert learned a lot about what happened between his departure and humanity’s extinction, while Luna finally got the answers to most of her questions, many of them related to video games, books and movies. When Luna inquired about his personal life before leaving Earth he felt sad and angry, but talking about it to a listening partner and letting it out made him feel better afterwards. She also told him about Nightmare Moon, her banishment and how hard it had been for her to reconnect with society after so many years. He learned as well how Celestia had become aware of his presence in Ponyville.
“One last question,” said Robert when Luna told him that she was going to sleep, “why do you all say ‘anypony’ instead of anyone and anybody?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. That change happened while I was on the moon,” she yawned, “have a nice day.”
“Good... Day? Sleep well, Princess Luna.”
“I hope you decide to stay here, you are really nice for being a human.”
“Before you leave... Where are we and how do I get out?” he asked, a bit worried, “this castle is a maze and I don’t want to get lost.”
“Wait here and I’ll fetch somepony to guide you,” she replied, stressing the word ‘pony’ as she left the room.
Robert only had to wait two minutes until a maiden appeared. They stared at each other in shock, as she was the same mare that had brought him his dinner last night. She broke the silence when she started crying.
“Why are you crying? I may not be the prettiest man in the world but this is a bit excessive,” he said, feeling really awkward.
“I knew I shouldn’t have hid the cutlery I broke!” she said between ragged sobs, “now I’m going to be eaten by an talking monster!”
“What?! I’m not going to eat you!”
“R-really?” she asked, ceasing her whimpers.
“Why would I?”
“...Because you are big and scary and you eat meat?”
“Wait, you live in a world with dragons, hydras and who-knows-what-else and I am the big and scary monster?”
“If you put it that way...” she said reluctantly.
“I promise you that I won’t eat you or hurt you by any means. Now, could you guide me to my room?”
“Of course, please follow me, sir.”
“Just call me Robert.”
When they arrived to his room, the mare was no longer afraid of him. He asked her to ask Twilight Sparkle to come, as he wanted to speak with her.
“Also, what is your name, miss? I believe you haven’t told me yet.”
“My name is Silken Cloth, mister.”
“Thanks for everything, miss Cloth.”
“It’s been a pleasure to serve you, mister” she said with the monotonous tone of somepony who has said the same phrase countless times.
As soon as Silken Cloth left he realized that he was probably trapped again inside the magical barrier. He tried waving his hand outside the window, and he was surprised to find no magical wall. He tried with the door, finding nothing preventing him from going out except for the two guards.
“You two, it seems like I’m no longer magically contained to this room. Does that mean that I can go out whenever I want?”
“That’s right, sir. However, you shouldn’t try to leave Canterlot. If you try to leave by train you could find yourself in danger with a barrier on one side and the train’s walls on the other.”
“Alright.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes checking the new clothes in his wardrobe until Twilight arrived. Robert heard the voices of Twilight and the guards a few seconds before the door opened and the purple unicorn entered.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, his back turned to her, “we need to talk.”
“Robert, if you are angry because of what happened in Ponyville and you don’t want to be my friend anymore I’ll understand.”
“I haven’t called you to scold you, I just want to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I want to understand why you all changed your mind from being my ‘friends’, to helping the guards that thought I was a dangerous monster, and then back to helping me. I don’t get it.”
“Yesterday morning I sent a letter to Princess Celestia,” began Twilight, and then told him everything she and her friends had thought and done since then until he arrived to Canterlot.
“So that’s why Lyra wasn’t with you,” he thought aloud as he turned to face Twilight.
He stared right into her eyes, pondering in silence for a whole minute before speaking again.
“This is a stain on your record. You broke my trust in you and that is something that won’t be fixed anytime soon. I’m willing to forgive, but I won’t forget. That being said, I will give you and your friends another chance. I owe you that much at least, seeing that you made everything in your han*ehem*hooves to help me and that I have grown fond of you. Friends again?” he said, extending a hand and smiling.
“Friends again!” she said with a smile as they shook hand and hoof.
“Now, you have to tell me how the heck you managed to find the record on Matheus’ glove without knowing the gestures or my alphabet.”
“I would love to, but I think it’s near lunch-time already and I think we may be... Tardy!” she said, suddenly scared.
Were it not for their training, the guards wouldn’t have kept their composure when Twilight left the room galloping with Robert trying to keep up with her, and failing miserably, as she berated him for being so slow.
AN: Sorry for being so taaaardyyyyy, but with holidays and everything I have been procrastinating A LOT. Here goes the chapter, I hope you like it as much as I do writing it (when I’m inspired, sometimes I take a writer’s block to the brain and it’s just frustrating)
________________________
Despite Twilight’s worries, both Robert and her arrived to the room in which they were meant to have lunch before Celestia herself. Since the other five ponies and Spike were already there, Robert took that chance to tell them that what happened in Ponyville was water under the bridge. The Princess of the sun arrived a few minutes later, surrounded by levitating parchments in which she wrote with quills. It was quite a sight for Robert, the godly pony writing on five parchments at the same time with her magic. One by one the parchments disappeared in trails of smoke as she finished writing. Only then she took a seat and, as soon as she did, lunch magically appeared on the table.
“Sorry for being late,” she apologized, “but those documents were just too important. Now, bon apetit!” she said with a wink and a smile.
The lack of meat in the menu was soon forgotten by Robert when he noticed, as his pony friends did the day before, the HUGE amount of food that Celestia was ingesting. After he finished his own meal he just stared, mouth agape, at Celestia. If she noticed it, she didn’t show it. Twilight did, however, so she began talking to Robert to include him in the conversation she was having with Pinkie Pie about adding hot sauces to pastries. Thanks to the pink pony randomness he found himself talking about Japanese etiquette, which had been somehow inherited by the oriental dragons, which apparently resembled the typical Chinese dragon. Then he heard Celestia’s voice inside of her mind.
‘Robert, while I can’t allow you to spread the truth about Equestria’s origins, you certainly can tell these ponies everything if you feel like it. It is up to you.’
‘Wait, if she can do that... Can she read my thoughts too?’
‘Before you ask: I can speak to you but I can’t read your mind unless you can perform the spell I am using.’
Robert nodded and resumed his conversation, as he didn’t know if he wanted to tell them or not. Twilight told him that she was going to give her friends a guided visit around the castle, and invited him to join them. He refused the offer and decided to spend the rest of the day in his room, learning about Equestria and waiting for the sunset so he could meet whoever was talking with him with dreams.
He left the room when the sun began to set and told the guards that he wanted to do some exercise to release the energy excess, so he would be running in the gardens until it was too dark to see. They didn’t make any objection, but they forbade him to leave the castle in order to avoid unnecesary risks. He got lost twice before he managed to find the gardens, but as soon as he did he felt a strong intuition leading him. This strange feeling led him to a labirynth, and told him when to turn in every junction. After thirty minutes he found a strange statue. The statue decipted a weird creature, which looked like a combination of many animals. It had a slender body, a bat wing and a feathered wing, a lion paw, an eagle claw, a leg with a hoof and another leg with reptilian claws. It had a long, horse-like neck which led to a face which showed horror.
The voice spoke to him while he was focusing on the mismatched eyes of the creature.
‘You are finally here’
“Where are you?”
‘No need to speak aloud, just think about it and I will listen’
‘Celestia said that was impossible’.
‘Maybe it is for her, or maybe she lied. She has lied a lot recently, especially to you’, the voice said darkly.
‘Who are you and how do you know about me?’
‘I am Discord, the protector of humankind. I have been turned into stone, but I still can feel the presence of humans in a limited area, that is why I have been trying to contact with you since you appeared in Ponyville. Robert, you are the only hope of mankind.’
‘You are speaking nonsense!’
‘I hear that a lot. I think a history lesson will make you understand. Celestia told you an interesting mix of true facts and lies. Humanity didn’t disappear because of wars and radiation, the extinction was caused by magic, which rendered all the humans in the world sterile. Soon we were too few and too old, the entire system collapsed. Many nuclear weapons and power plants were left unattended, and a few of them exploded, while others released radiation to the atmosphere. We focused all of our efforts to find a solution, but our experiments with magics released horrors far worse than radiation.’
‘And how do you fit in all of this? Twilight told me about you, she said you are the spirit of chaos and disharmony, not some kind of benevolent guardian’
‘I was a human once, just like you, but one of the experiments we performed changed me into this. I tried to use my powers to save humankind, but Celestia and Luna turned me into stone before I could find a solution. However, your presence here changes everything.’
‘How? How can I save humanity by myself?’ asked Robert, confused.
‘It is really simple. I know many things, including the details of your mission. All the humans who weren’t on Earth when magic appeared are still fertiles, that includes you and the embryos that wait in the Icarus. I want those embryos to be the first generation of a new humanity.’
‘That’s impossible, there is not a single woman left who can host them.’
Robert heard a dark laugh that made his entire body shake.
‘That, my dear Robert, is where the irony is. The same magic that caused our disappearance will make us return! In this state I am almost powerless, but I have focused enough energy to give you a gift. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this.’
The snaggletooth of Discord’s mismatched figure fell to the ground and Robert took it with care.
‘That fang is enchanted. It will suck the chaotic energy of the Everfree forest while you travel to the Icarus and, when it reaches full power, if you and a willing female of any species hold it at the same time you will swap species. Then she will be able to give birth to humans.’
‘Why don’t you just make a “change species” spell? This seems unnecessarily complicated to me.’
‘Because that’s not how magic works. Changing a creature’s species out of thin air requires a huge amount of power, while swapping is almost cost-free. It’s magic, you wouldn’t understand.’
‘So... Let me get this straight. You want me, a single man, to somehow find a female that is willing to become a human and rent her womb to give birth to as many embryos as she can, until humanity becomes a viable species again?’
‘That is right.’
‘You are MAD! I can’t do all of that! I lack the medical knowledge and the resources needed, and I can assure you that those two pony gods won’t just watch while I bring humanity back to Equestria. I will just accept their offer and live peacefully the rest of my life.’
Robert felt as if Discord’s mental presence was a needle in his brain when he talked again, his voice full of fury.
‘Your playing small does not serve the world! There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. You cower before them, stop that! You will do what you must and you will succeed, and when humanity is back they will all know HOW GREAT WE ARE!’
His voice stopped for a few seconds and returned, calm and slow.
‘Nobody and nopony will be able to stop you, because they need you. When magic appeared, it created a balance between order and chaos. Ponies represent order, and with their supremacy Equestria hasn’t evolved in the last three thousand years, they need our chaos to reach equilibrium but they don’t know it yet. The magic itself is creating chaos right now to compensate, that’s why in the last three years Equestria has faced more turmoils than in the last century, and it will be worse as time passes. This is your destiny, and the powers of fate will lead you. You have no right to right to say no, you have no right to end humanity, and probably ponykind with your passiveness created by fear, insecurities and conformity. You will bring humans back, because it is your duty, because it is the right thing to do, and because you won’t ever forgive yourself if you don’t.’
‘I... I need some time to think about all of this.’
‘If you are too craven to do what you have to do, at least bring my tooth back to me and try to ensure that the Icarus is safe, magic might as well give humanity another chance a few centuries later.’
‘You mean to tell me that the same magic that ponies use is some kind of sentient being that will act if we don’t?’
‘Magic is as sentient as water currents, what happens is that if you build a dam in the course of the river and you don’t let water pass it will break the dam, overflow it or find a way around. When humanity disappeared I became the spirit of chaos, and it is both my “duty” and my biggest pleasure to cause as much chaos as our whole species would. However, I was too good at what I did and there was too much chaos on Earth, so suddenly the Elements of Harmony appeared and they stopped me. Now that there is so much order, these ponies have control over weather itself!, you have come back to Earth, I find it hard to believe that you arrived at the right place in the right time just because of your ship malfunctioning.’
‘All this talking about magic is giving me a headache, I’m going back to my room. If I don’t come back it means that I have decided to play savior of mankind.’
‘Oh, one more thing before you leave,’ said Discord with a hint of mischief in his voice.
‘Yes?’
‘Is it true that the ANSA was sued by many copyright associations because they considered that carrying songs, films, books and all of that in the ship to be freely used by all the settlers was piracy?’
‘Yes! They sued the ANSA, the government, the astronauts, including me, and they even wanted to sue the embryos just in case!’
He left laughing, and hearing Discord’s laughter resonating in his mind. When the laughter stopped Robert began thinking about how doomed he was and how he should proceed. When he arrived at his room he already had a very basic plan in his mind.
He was woken a few minutes after the sunrise by the same servant that he had already met twice.
“Sir Robert, Princess Celestia wants to meet you.”
“Uh? You again... Linen Cloth?” he asked, groggily.
“Silken Cloth,” she corrected him, “I will be waiting outside to guide you when you are ready.”
“Alright, give me a couple of minutes, one does not simply walk naked and with morning breath to a meeting with the god empress of ponykind. Also, stop calling me sir, it reminds me of a song of ice and fire.”
“Okay, mister Robert.”
“Drop the mister, too.”
“Alright, Robert-sama.”
He opened his eyes and saw Silken Cloth grinning. Her smile was contagious and he found himself smiling too.
“You know, I have always thought that Lord Robert sounds rather cool.”
“Well, you don’t have a lordship so I can’t call you that,” she replied as she left him alone.
This time he was led to another room, smaller and without lunar motives. There was only one small table with four chairs, one of them occupied by Celestia. She asked him to take a seat when Silken Cloth left them.
“Good morning, Robert.”
“Good morning, Princess Celestia.”
“I’m sorry for waking you up so early, but I have a very busy day and I can only spare a few minutes to deal with your situation so let’s get down to business. What have you chosen?”
“I want to be an Equestrian, but I don’t want to settle down in a place yet. I want to travel for a time before that.”
“I think that is a good idea, but I suggest you not to leave Equestria, and by Equestria I mean the nation instead of the world. Above all, avoid the Badlands, they are a nuclear wasteland and you will die for sure if you go there.”
“Alright, is there anything else I should know?”
“You should be safe amongst ponies, but my little subjects are prone to xenophobia so you will need this,” she materialized a necklace with a sun made of steel, “it has my magic sign, which means that you are under my protection. Nopony will dare to harm you as long as you have it, unless you break the law. When traveling to another place, the rule of hoof is: if the locals say that a place is dangerous, it probably IS dangerous. Apart from that, I don’t want you to jumpstart Equestria to the industrial age, my little ponies are taking their first steps in that field with ingenuity and magic and I fear that your influence could be prejudicial. Finally, there is a place in Canterlot for you as an ambassador of the Moon people should you ever need it.”
“That is very generous of you, Princess. Sadly, I can’t think of a way for a single man such as me to reciprocate such gratitude.”
“Live happily and don’t draw too much attention to yourself, that is all I ask.” she said with her trademark smile.
“Alright. So, when and how do I leave?”
“My faithful student and her friends will leave soon in their balloon. I suggest you to go with them. When you decide to leave Ponyville make sure that all your belongings that you won’t need, especially the weapons, are sent to me. We can’t have ponies using reverse engineering on your firearms, right?”
“Right.”
“You are free to go now, Robert Eisenfaust. Have a nice journey.”
“Thanks you, Princess Celestia. Say goodbye to Princess Luna for me.”
They both smiled at each other until Robert left the room, then they both frowned.
“Luna,” whispered Celestia, and the dark alicorn appeared in front of her, “I want some of your night guards to follow him. I have given him an enchanted necklace that will let them know where he is as long as he wears it. I fear that he’s planning something.”
“He is just a man, what could he do?”
“I don’t know, and that is why I am worried.”
“And then I told him: Oatmeal? Are you crazy?!” finished Pinkie, causing all the ponies, including the guards that were leading them, to laugh like maniacs.
Robert didn’t laugh at all, and when the ponies recovered their senses he said: “I don’t get it”, causing more laughter.
“Here we are, ladies, dragon and human,” said the guard when they reached the balloon, “Our pegasi team will lead you out of Canterlot, and then you are on your own."
“Thanks, Red Anvil,” said Twilight.
“It’s been a pleasure, miss Sparkle” he replied as he and his stallions left.
“Do you know all the guards here?” Robert asked.
“As I told you, I have lived here almost my whole life, that’s why I know most of them.”
“Hm... Are you sure we will fit in there? It seems too small.”
“Don'tcha worry, partner,” said Applejack, “Ah’m sure there’s room for all of us.”
Applejack was right and they all arrived at Ponyville, even if Robert almost fell off when a sudden gust of wind made him lose his balance. He decided to tell them about Equestria being Earth all along and how he was the last human, as well as the story of him being from the moon so they all could tell everypony else the same thing. They didn’t talk at all after that, since Robert’s revelations were quite a lot to take in for the ponies. As soon as they landed they all went to their homes, tired and eager to check if everything was right. A crowd gathered around Twilight, Robert and Spike, asking about everything.
“Listen to me, everypony!” shouted Twilight, “we have had a long travel and we are tired. I’ll ask the Mayor to gather the town so all your questions can be answered.”
“Until then,” continued Robert, “know that my name is Robert Eisenfaust, I am a human from the moon and I won’t cause any trouble.”
Ponyville’s Mayor managed to move through the crowd and focus their attention on herself.
“You’ve heard him, there is nothing to see! Carry on, carry on!” she said, effectively dispersing the crowd. Soon the only ones left were Twilight, Spike, Robert and the Mayor, who turned around and looked at them, very annoyed.
“Twilight, dear, could you please someday turn your disasters attractor off? Since you moved here we have suffered more weird happening than since the town’s founding,” her eye twitched a few times, “we all have waited enough, knowing that you were hosting this being in the library, now I want a full explanation so I can speak to the ponies tomorrow.”
Robert answered before Twilight could.
“Ah, yes, we are terribly sorry for that, but you see, I was badly hurt back then and I couldn’t talk so we decided that, until I could speak again, I should stay in the library and learn a bit more about Equestria. I suppose there won’t be any problem if I explain everything to you while Twilight goes back to the library?”
The Mayor was a bit taken aback by the talking bipedal creature, but she quickly overcame her emotions.
“Excellent, come with me to the town hall so we can speak privately.”
“See you, Twilight,” Robert said as they left.
He soon discovered that the Mayor was a nice pony, but the stress of her job could make her a real bitch sometimes. He told her all the lies he was supposed to tell, trying to be vague about the moon. ‘The simpler the story, the easier not to make mistakes’, he thought. A servant brought them lunch, which luckily didn’t contain vegetables that Robert couldn’t eat, while he talked about how he ended up half dead in Ponyville.
Finally, he left the Town Hall, his throat sore after talking so much. The sun was already setting and he had decided to go to the library and ask Twilight to give him back his things. The ponies looked at him with frowns, but at least they didn’t run away at the sight of him. He was reaching the library when he was rammed by something big and mint colored that almost made him fall to the ground.
“Robert! You are safe!” Lyra said as she hugged him.
“Oof! Hey, I promised you I would come back,” he replied as he returned the embrace.
“I was so worried!”
“It’s alright, I’m here and I’m fine” he reassured her.
“Heh, I have yet to get over you talking. I already miss seeing you scribble with your awful spelling.”
“Then I won’t sing near you, or you may do something drastic so I don’t speak ever again” he replied laughing.
She dropped to her four legs and asked him to tell her everything. He looked around, making sure that nopony was listening to them and he told her the truth instead of the fake story. She didn’t interrupt his story at all, listening with attention.
“I knew it” she said when he finished.
“What?”
“I knew that humans lived in Equestria, the hints are everywhere. Just for example: we have a decimal system, which is illogical as nopony has ten limbs to count, we have doorknobs that only unicorns can handle. Even words! Why would we use the word handle, when we don’t even have hands? When you said that you were from another world I thought that maybe some humans came here before you, but it didn’t make sense as you said that you were the first human to travel to another world. It all makes sense now!”
“Yes, it explains many things, especially why we speak the same language and how Pinkie Pie was able to read what I wrote. She said that their family are amish, so they must have passed on our alphabet even after Celestia made sure that nopony would learn about it... But that is not important right now, there is something else I must tell you, Lyra. There may be a way for humans to perpetuate, but it’s risky and I can’t do it alone. I don’t want to pressure you, but you are the only one in which I can trust the future of humankind.”
“H-how could I help you with something like that?”
“I want you to know the full truth before making your decision, so here it goes: we would have to swap species, so you could become a fertile human. Then you could give birth to the human embryos that are safe in the Icarus, my spaceship. The princesses will try to stop us if they learn about this, so we would hide in the Everfree until we could prosper and grow without me manually implanting embryos. Then we could just go out and become a part of Equestria, because the princesses aren’t the kind of rulers to destroy an entire race because it suits them.”
None of them spoke for ten seconds, until Lyra came up with a rational answer.
“Robert, that is the craziest, stupidest, grossest plan I have ever heard. Count me in.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to sound like an excited filly talking about Justin Beaver, but I have spent years trying to know more about humans. Since I found you in the Everfree, I have dreamed about how great it would be if there were more humans in Equestria. Being the key part of your plan to bring humans back to Equestria is, like, the best thing I can devote my life to. Apart from that, you are a friend in need, and friends help each other in these cases.”
“You don’t need to devote your life to this, if you give birth to just one female it will be enough.”
“And having you dealing with babies for the next Celestia knows how many years, apart from forcing my surrogate daughter... Heh, that sounds weird... to carry the burden of giving birth to more humans as fast and as soon as possible? I can’t do that, Robert.”
“Lyra Heartstrings, I feel like kissing you right here, right now. Have I ever told you that you are the best person, pony or not, that I have ever met?” he said as he knelt to hug her.
“You humans better build me a nice statue after this,” she said jokingly as she broke the hug, “by the way, I don’t how to perform a swap spell.”
“That won’t be a problem. I met a spirit in Canterlot that gave me the means to do that spell, and some hints. I want to leave Ponyville tonight, is that fine with you?”
“It is a bit rushed, but it’s fine. What do I tell everypony?”
“Tell them that you are coming with me, because I want to travel around Equestria and you want to accompany me.”
“Fine, meet me at midnight in the park.”
“Lyra, I don’t want to talk against my own plan, but... Have you really considered all the implications of following me? It’s going to be dangerous and long, as in until we grow old. I want you to promise me that, if you ever stop wanting to do this, you will tell me and we will forget about it”
“It is fine, Robert, really. I appreciate your concern, but now that I know that your species need me to survive I would never forgive myself if I didn’t help at all. Anyways, what is the worst that could happen? The princesses might prefer you humans gone, but even if they catch us they will see that we only did what we think is best and they won’t be harsh on us. Furthermore, I have always wanted to know how it feels to have hands,” she added with a dreamily tone, “being the savior of humanity is a small price to pay for being a human!”
“... You are agreeing to this just to have hands?”
“What? No! I have already explained why I want to help you, being a human for a while must be incredible, but I would never agree to all of this just for that. I know you need me and I want to help, that is all. Now I must prepare myself for this crazy adventure.”
“Me too, I will bring all the survival equipment, so don’t worry about that,” he said, already turning to the library.
“Robert, one more thing,” she said, stopping him, “do you know who is this spirit that is helping you?”
“No, I don’t,” he lied, “it talked to me in my sleep last night, but it never gave away his name or identity. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that not all the spirits in Equestria are good-doers, some spirits just want to watch the world burn. I am pretty excited about this, but if we find that we are being manipulated by an evil being we must stop.”
“I know nothing about magic, but if this spirit is evil it must have placed some kind of curse in the magical artifact it gave me. Can you unicorns detect those things?”
“We can, but I don’t know how because it’s not what I always do. You will have to bring a spellbook from the library.”
“Good, good. I will meet you in the park, then. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Robert.”
They went separate ways, the unicorn excited and the human worried.
AN: Yo Robert and Discord, why don’t you just give up and let me finish this story? It’s getting weirder as time passes. Also, if any of you readers find some error, be it grammatical or about the plot, point it out so I can fix it or something.
It was midnight in Ponyville, and most of the townsfolk were sleeping in the safety of their houses. Robert walked through the dark alleys, carrying his heavy backpack in silence. He had been lucky, as Twilight had forgotten to seal the chest in which she hid his things, so he had avoided telling her about his departure face to face, choosing to leave a letter for the purple unicorn which said that he and Lyra were going to travel around Equestria for a long time. The letter also detailed what Twilight should do with the equipment he had left, like his many electronic devices (such as his radar and movement detector) or Matheus’ clothes. He had found the book that Lyra wanted, “Scanning spells for dummies”, as well as “Basic spells for dummies” and “Healing spells for dummies”, predicting that he may become a unicorn and stay in that form for some time. Soon he arrived at the park, and as soon as he did he began hearing a faint music. He followed it to a bank in which two unicorns were sitting, one of them in a very unusual position. Both of them stopped playing their musical instruments when they saw him. It was a bit dark, so Robert could only see that he was male, his coat dark enough to look black at night and with some kind of violin as a cutie mark, which fitted with the violin he was levitating in front of him. The stallion tried to leave, but Lyra stopped him with a hoof.
“It’s alright, he’s the one I was waiting for,” she said.
“Lyra, you didn’t tell me we would have company” Robert said.
“A-and I w-was expecting a pony, not a... Creature” the unicorn said, not daring to look at Robert in the eyes.
“Robert, this is Passionate Heart. Passionate Heart, Robert Eisenfaust the human,” she introduced them, “we are leaving now. It will be a long journey so... Could you keep this safe until I come back?” she gave the other pony her lyre, which he took with his magic along with his violin.
“Lyra, are you ready?” Robert asked.
“Yes, let’s go,” she replied, “goodbye, my friend. I will be back, and we will practice again so take good care of my lyre.”
“Good luck on your journey,” he said, nervous, “when will you return?”
“We don’t know, we might miss a few winter wrap-ups before we come back” she said as she left the bank, took her saddlebags and joined Robert, “until we meet again”.
“Yes, until we meet again”.
The human and the pony left Passionate Heart alone and worried.
‘This is wrong’ he thought, ‘why would they leave in the middle of the night like this? That hunam or whatever must be up to something. What should I do?’
He went home, resolved to do something about Lyra and Robert in the morning.
“Are you sure we are going in the right direction?” Lyra asked.
“Yes, my glove is leading us to the provisional camp we made in the limits of the forest,” he explained, “the ship is 20 kilometers away from there. It won’t be hard to take what we need from there and make a more permanent settlement in the forest.”
“If only we could avoid the Everfree forest, but it would take weeks, maybe months to surround it and reach the Salty Desert.”
When Robert was still living in the library he had learned more about the places he had already been at. According to Twilight, the Everfree acted as a border between Equestria and the Desert, which led to a mountain range and to the sea. Later on, when talking with Luna, he had discovered that Canterlot and Ponyville were located east of the former Mojave Desert, known as Salty Desert because of its lakes of salted water, created by a temporal overflow of the Pacific Ocean when the continents moved and replenished by aquifers. He had given up trying to learn all the changes on Earth and how that place became this one, but at least he had learned a bit about his surroundings.
“I think it’s a risk we should take. If we cross the forest we will reach our destination in less than two days. We will walk a bit more and settle camp. Are the Everfree creatures afraid of fire?”
“Most of them are, but not enough to sleep safely without somepony making guard.”
Two hours after entering the forest they found a small clearing and they decided to start a campfire and sleep there. Robert taught Lyra the basics of shooting, so she could use one of the two rifles he had brought to kill, or at least scare, the creatures that may attack them. Using her magic to hold the arm and aim wasn’t very precise, but it was better than nothing.
“Don’t worry, the weapon’s noise will scare the creatures and wake me up even if you miss,” he said when she voiced her concern about her total lack of skill. She took the first watch, as she tended to fall asleep whenever she woke up too early. Before Robert fell asleep, she showed him something.
“Robert, this is what made me start looking for humans, I found it buried under the sand in Manehattan’s beach.”
She took something from her saddlebags and levitated it to Robert’s hands. He immediately recognized it: it was a small statue of liberty, made of steel, its torch and part of its head missing.
“It looks like the Statue of Harmony, and I was very intrigued because of that.”
“This is a copy of the Statue of Liberty, and the name of the island was Manhattan... Also, we had Castelot instead of Canterlot, and I’m sure I could find more of those with enough time. I don’t want to think about it, put this in your bag again.” They didn’t speak anymore, and the night passed without incidents, so they raised camp as soon as there was enough sunlight and continued their travel.
At the same time, Twilight Sparkle was woken up by an insistent knocking on the library’s door. She watched the Sun, noticing how early it was.
“The library’s doesn’t open until 9 o’clock!” she angrily shouted, “come back later!”
The knocking stopped for a second, then returned stronger than before.
“Who could it be so early in the morning?!” Spike asked after Twilight’s shout woke him.
“It must be something important, go and greet him while I prepare myself,” she commanded.
The baby dragon left his basket and opened the door. He found a unicorn stallion with a dark blue coat and a disheveled brown mane about to knock again.
“Oh, thanks Celestia. For a moment I thought nopony would come,” he exclaimed, “there is something I must tell Twilight Sparkler, could you tell her so... Spine?”
“Sparkle and Spike” the dragon corrected, “she will come as soon as she’s ready, what is all the fuss about?”
“Last night, I was playing music with Lyra in the park when that creature, the humen, came and they left together.”
Spike turned his back, noticing for the first time that the coach where Robert should be sleeping was empty.
“Come in, Twilight will want to speak to you,” Spike declared.
A few minutes of awkward silence between them later, Twilight descended the stairs, her mane combed and her face cleaned.
“Well, what is it?” she harshly asked.
“Last night, I was playing music with Lyra in the park when that creature, the humen, came and they left together,” Passionate Heart repeated.
“They left? Where to?”
“They didn’t tell me, but Lyra said that they wouldn’t return in years!” he exclaimed, “they must be hiding something, or they wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night like that. I came here as soon as I could because I fear that Lyra might have gotten herself in trouble.”
Twilight didn’t reply for a few seconds, processing all the information and making a mental checklist of her following steps.
“Alright. Spike, look around in the library for anything that Robert might have left. You,” she said pointing at the stallion, “why did you wait until now to tell us?”
“Because... I didn’t want to wake everypony up?” he said, making Twilight facepalm.
“If they haven’t stopped in the whole night we might not find them at all! You did well telling me, but you have woken me and Spike up so the only thing you did was wasting time.”
The stallion lowered his head in shame.
“Is there something I can do to help?” he asked.
“Yes, go to Sugarcube Corner and tell Pinkie Pie to bring our friends here as soon as possible. She can gather everypony faster than anypony else.”
The stallion left galloping, and Twilight went to the basement, only to confirm her suspicions when she saw the sacked chest.
“Twilight! I found something!” Spike exclaimed as he joined her in the basement.
He gave her a letter, written with Robert’s unmistakably terrible mistakes, which she read aloud for both of them.
“Twilight and Spike, Lyra and I are going on a travel around Equestria. I want to see your world with my own eyes and she wants to join me. I have taken some things from the chest, they are mine anyways so I don’t think I need to explain myself. Everything I have left there should be submitted to Princess Celestia, as she wants to add them to her collection of human objects. Speaking about the pony god empress, she is already aware of my plans so you shouldn’t bother her with a letter. I know it’s rude to leave without warning, but I know you all would have managed to convince me to stay and this is something I want and must do. PS: Three Swedish switched witches watch three Swiss Swatch watch switches. Which Swedish switched witch watch which Swiss Swatch watch switch?”
The unicorn managed to pronounce correctly the entire tongue twister.
“Woah Twilight! That was awesome!” the dragon exclaimed, causing her to blush.
“Let’s focus, Spike, I’m starting to think that that unicorn might be right: there is something fishy going on. Help me with this, I want to pack all this human things for Celestia before anypony arrives.”
“Robert, are we ever going to walk faster?” Lyra asked, “if anypony is following us they’ll catch us in no time.”
Robert felt a bit embarrassed when the pony that was carrying all of their equipment, minus his rifle, on her back asked him that.
“No, your travelling pace is faster than mine and I don’t know if I will be able to go so fast for days. Still, I must say I am impressed. I thought that we would be even with you carrying everything.”
“Well, I was a travelling musician before I started living in Ponyville, so I am quite used to walking long distances with all my possessions on my back.”
They continued walking in silence and paying attention to their surroundings, well aware of the dangers of the Everfree.
“Darling, I hope this is worth interrupting my beauty sleep!” Rarity chimed.
“I think it is, Rarity,” Twilight replied, “last night, Lyra and Robert left without telling anypony, which is very suspicious. We must find where they are.”
“How? They could be anywhere!” Rainbow Dash said.
“Don’t worry, there is a spell that will help us,” Twilight revealed.
“Wait, you can use your fancy magic to find somepony?” asked Applejack, “Why didn’t you use it when y’all looked for me when I left Ponyville?”
“Because the spell needs the blood of the pony you want to find.”
The rest of the ponies looked at her with confusion.
“Are you implying that you have taken blood from Robert?” asked Rarity, “how gross!”
“He was a voluntary donor! I asked for a sample so I could study it and he accepted,” she justified, “I can cast the tracking spell in a few seconds, but it will only make my horn point to his current location. Dash, I want you to fly in a straight line to their position, you are fast enough to cover the distance between us in less than an hour. If you find them, tell them to return. If you don’t, come back and we will come up with another plan.”
“Alright!” the athletic pegasus said.
Twilight ran to the basement and returned with a vial full of blood. Rainbow and her went outside and her horn beamed with energy until, suddenly, her entire body turned.
“There they are! Try not to deviate or you will miss them!” she said as the pegasus darted off.
Rainbow Dash might not be the best brain in Ponyville, but when flying was involved she was short of being a genius. As soon as she took off she noticed where the Sun was, memorizing its position to correct any deviation due to wind. Sadly, it was all in vain, as she stopped as soon as she realized that she was flying over the Everfree forest. She turned back in a rainbow-colored blur and returned to the library.
“Why are you coming back?” asked Twilight when she saw her friend.
“They are in the Everfree forest! I can’t fly over there.”
“Why not?” asked Applejack.
It was Fluttershy who answered the question in a burst of confidence.
“B-because flying over the Everfree is a death sentence with all the m-manticores, wyverns and other winged monsters that can see you, jump behind you when you least expect it and eat you!” she explained, covering immediately after finishing.
“Not that I am afraid, of course” Rainbow Dash nervously added, “it’s just that I can’t fight all those monsters and catch Robert and Lyra at the same time!”
“Girls!” somepony exclaimed, “Lyra has left with that human!”
The pony was no other than Bonbon, who joined the group.
“She left a letter telling me that she was leaving on some kind of journey, like she did when she was younger.”
“Robert has done the same,” explained Twilight, “what should we do?”
“Twilight,” answered Spike, “I think this is one of those things that the Princess should know, and I think we should ask her what to do.”
“Yes, yes! Take a letter,” she waited for him and began dictating.
“Oh, so it’s true that you can write letters to Princess Celestia herself,” Bonbon said with awe.
“Dear Princess Celestia, Last night some unsettling events transpired. Robert, along with Lyra, the unicorn who found him, left Ponyville in secrecy. They left letters explaining that they wanted to travel together, but we have learned that they are currently travelling through the Everfree forest. We are worried for their safety and we don’t know what course of action to follow. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”
Spike sent the letter with his magical flame while Twilight Sparkle asked Bonbon more questions about Lyra, trying to learn anything that could help them.
“I’m sorry, girls,” Bonbon said after a while, “I fear that there is nothing I know that could help.”
“Don’t worry, sugarcube, we’re all on the same boat.”
“Yeah, it’s not your fault that *BURP*” Spike’s words were interrupted by Celestia’s response, which Twilight immediately began reading.
“My dearest, most faithful student Twilight, The Everfree is a dangerous place, even for an armed human and an unicorn. I share your concern for Robert and Lyra, but following them will only increase the number of ponies in danger, so we must stand aside and hope for their safety. If you learn more about their whereabouts, don’t hesitate to write again. Princess Celestia”
“She wants us to do nothing?” asked Rainbow Dash with surprise.
“I know it sounds weird, but she’s right,” replied Twilight, “going after them is too dangerous, we must wait for them to return.”
“But, what if they are attacked by some horrendous beast?!” exclaimed Rarity, “they could be in dire danger as we speak and we would never know it!”
“Don’t be silly!” replied Pinkie, “I’m sure Twilight can use her fancystastic magic to know if they are fine.”
“Can you do that?” asked Bonbon.
“Well, there is a spell... But it’s blood magic...”
“So what? You already used that vial of blood to make magic!” said Rainbow Dash.
“It’s not the same! The spell I used doesn’t need blood, it can use hair or other bodily fluids. This is real blood magic, the kind of magic that is forbidden and its abuse can curse the caster with the forbidden knowledge of the horrors trapped in eternal slumber in the darkest and deepest pits of Tartarus!” she finished with an otherworldly echo.
“Really?” they all asked.
“Yeah, really,” she said, her right eye twitching, “that is why I won’t do it, no matter what.”
They all said their goodbyes and left to their respective places. When Twilight and Spike were alone in the library, the dragon spoke.
“Seriously, Twilight, you have to stop reading H P Trotcraft!”
“Well, it IS forbidden magic, if I am going to do this I must make sure that nopony knows it.”
“Okay... So, what do you need?”
“Prepare a checklist.”
The little dragon groaned.
Three days passed without incidences in Ponyville and the Everfree. Lyra and Robert were very close to their goal, less than fifteen minutes of walking and they would arrive. The sunset reminding them that they would have to be fast to avoid walking in the darkness of the night.
“So, when I become a human I will always wear shoes?” Lyra asked.
“Well, maybe you will have strong soles that will let you walk barefoot, but if you have feet like mine you will need shoes to walk or you’ll hurt yourself.”
“And of course I will have to wear clothes, too,” she said, not expecting an answer.
“Well, we are almost here, if we are lucky the animals won’t have messed-”
BANG! Robert instinctively threw himself and Lyra to the ground, as a bullet hit a near tree.
“Come at me!” he heard a very familiar voice shout, “I will kill you all, damned bugs!”
“John? John! Don’t shoot, it is me, Robert!”
“Robert? Come here with your hands over your head so I can see you, I promise I won’t open fire.”
Lyra whispered him not to, but he rose up and did as he was told. He didn’t see anyone, until he felt cold steel against his neck.
“Don’t freaking move, Robert. If it is really you. There are intelligent creatures here that can take the form of anything, including me.”
“It is really me, sir.”
“Don’t move, it is an order.”
The knife left his neck and he felt a stabbing pain on his hand.
“Red blood... Eisenfaust, I thought you were dead!”
Robert turned around to face his leader, and his smile turned into a frown immediately.
“...What happened to your arm?”
John Stringer looked the same as he did when Robert last saw him, except for his missing left arm which had been replaced by a knotted sleeve.
“The dragon happened. You look fine, what have you and Matheus been doing?”
“...I think we both have very long stories to tell, and there is somepony you must meet.”
“Did you just say somePONY?”
“I have met the dominant species of this planet. One of them is with me, so hm... Don’t kill her as soon as you see her.” John nodded.
“Lyra, come here. It is safe.”
The unicorn obeyed and left her hiding place.
“... Ponies?” John asked.
“Ponies” Robert said, nodding, “John, this is Lyra Heartstrings. Lyra, this is my captain, John Stringer.”
“Robert, I think you have a LOT more to explain than me. Let’s go to the cave, there we will speak without strange creatures attacking us. Oh, and mind your steps, I have placed traps everywhere and it is already surprising that you haven’t fallen in one.”
As they struggled to follow John’s fast pace, both Lyra and Robert noticed a disgusting smell.
“John, what is that smell?”
“You will know very soon.”
Twelve minutes later they arrived at the cave. Almost everything was just as Robert remembered, save for a mountain of black corpses surrounded by a green substance.
“What the fuck is that?!”
“I am not an expert in biology, but they are some kind of insects that can adopt the form of other animals with something that looks like magic. Imagine my surprise when I saw a copy of myself, the only difference being the hair color. Soon I learned that they revert to their original form if you kill them and that their blood is green. Oh, and they don’t burn, so I decided to stack them up there as a warning for the others.”
Upon closer inspection, Robert found that the creatures looked like a cross between a pony and a beetle. They had a black exoskeleton, with holes in the legs, insectoid wings and curved and sharp horns on their foreheads.
“Lyra, have you ever seen one of those things? They kinda look like ponies,” Robert said with a grimace.
“No, I don’t know what they are.”
“Maybe later you can help me move them somewhere else to avoid the reek. Doing it alone is dangerous and cumbersome with only one arm,” John said nonchalantly.
To their relief, they couldn’t smell the rotting creatures inside of the cave, where they left their luggage. Robert noticed that John’s technoglove was being used to display the records of nine cameras which were located in the forest.
“So that’s how you were able to ambush us,” Robert said, pointing at the device.
“Yes, I usually don’t fire warning shots, but when I saw you instead of a cheap imitation of me I decided to give you a chance,” the coldness of John’s voice made Robert and Lyra gulp.
They sat, forming a triangle, with John facing the entrance with his pistol on his hand. Then he started speaking.
“Well, it’s been two crazy weeks for me. Pony, has Robert told you about how we were separated?” she nodded. “Good, then I will continue from then. The dragon, because it was a dragon, didn’t expect me to fight him. That is why I managed to blow one of its eyes off with a precise shot. Unfortunately, it started flying around, too fast for me to hit it in the other eye. It created a wall of fire around me and it landed, and then it began speaking in our language! It said that I didn’t deserve to die burned or something like that, so it tried to eat me. I jumped to the right, but it managed to catch my arm. Then I took my knife and stabbed its remaining eye, but then it tore my arm off. It began roaring and trying to kill me with its claws, so I took all my ammo and threw it inside of its mouth. I was lucky, because it tried to breath fire and all the bullets fired themselves in its throat, killing it. I stopped the hemorrhage and came back here, expecting Matheus and you to return sooner or later...”
He continued with his story, telling them about the improvements he had made to the camp, how he had managed to survive without his left arm (which meant he couldn’t properly use rifles), and how he had fought against the insectoid creatures for the last five days. Robert noticed some unusual things on John’s behaviour, mainly how his pupils were shrinking and expanding at irregular intervals, even when the illumination was always the same. He also had a nervous tic on his left eye, and his right hand, which never left the gun, sometimes began shaking noticeably. He blamed it all on the stress that John had suffered, hoping that he would recover.
“...And that’s pretty much everything. Your turn.”
“I think I will make dinner. Meanwhile Lyra can tell you about their civilization and their control of magic... Have you tried eating those bugs?”
“They are edible, but the taste is awful. I got a lucky shot on a stag, use that... Wait, magic?”
While Robert made a fire outside to cook the remains of the stag that John had killed rather recently, Lyra began talking about magic and Equestria. Robert took Discord’s fang while he watched over the fire, noticing that the lower half was no longer made of stone, but of a white and smooth material that probably was real ivory. Seeing the tooth, which was big as a kitchen knife, reminded him of something he had seen on the Internet a long time ago.
He remembered that ponies weren’t omnivorous when he brought the dripping meat into the cave.
“How is it going?” he asked.
“I am intrigued,” John said, “is it true that there are two immortal ponies with wings and horns ruling this Equestria?”
“It is, I have met both of them, and they really look like goddesses. Lyra, I don’t know what to cook for you, are you alright with eating provisions tonight.”
“No problem. I have told John almost everything I think he needs to know, and I must say that I expected him to be more surprised when I showed him my unicorn magic.”
“I have seen dragons speaking English and bugs turning into me in a flash of green fire, I have reached the point where nothing can really surprise me.”
“Well, there are some more things I must tell you,” Robert said, “they are very shocking, so you may want to drop the weapon.”
John looked at his pistol for ten seconds, before he left it next to him and motioned Robert to continue.
“First, as you may suspect, Matheus is dead. He left while I was sleeping, leaving a suicide note, and I never saw him again.” John nodded somberly, “the other thing that I have to tell you is that... We are... We are home, John, this crazy place is our Earth.”
John started laughing.
“Robert, I think these ponies have messed up your mind,” he said between laughs.
“John, this pony found this on a place they call Manehattan. Show him, Lyra.”
She took the souvenir and showed it to John, who stopped laughing and stared at it without blinking. Then he started laughing again, this time sounding like a madman.
((AN: Use a nadsat-english dictionary (google it) if you want to find the meaning of the weird words you will read later on.))
John laughed like a maniac for minutes, holding the small Statue of Liberty with his hand. When he stopped, Robert dared to speak.
“Are you alright?”
“No, I am not. I have lost my left arm, and now you are telling me that this cursed place is out Earth. What the hell happened?!”
And so, Robert told him everything he heard from Celestia about humanity’s fate. He also told him his plan to bring humanity back, which was met with incredulity at first, until Robert told him that it was almost like their original mission. They decided to sleep, and John activated a series of motion sensors positioned in the cave’s entrance, which would activate a really strong alarm if anything bigger than a leaf crossed it.
“If you wake up and you need to go to the toilet there is a can over there. Use it and do NOT forget to close it afterwards. If any of you shit on my floor, I will end you.”
“Yes, sir,” Robert said.
“We will wake up tomorrow with the sunrise and go to the Icarus,” he continued. “Can your pony magic raise something heavy as a house out of a lake?”
“No, a team of powerful unicorns could, but I can’t do that alone.”
“All of your answers about magic raise more questions,” said John, annoyed, “let’s just try to sleep.”
Lyra woke up, her sensitive ears picking up something. It took her one full minute to recognize what she was hearing: John singing. With one half-opened eye she saw that John was awake, standing and facing a wall while singing with a distant voice which was almost a whisper.
“The sun's in my heart And I'm ready for love Let the stormy clouds chase Everyone from the place Come on with the rain I've a smile on my face I walk down the lane With a happy refrain Singin', just singin' in the rain dancing in the rain I am happy again I am singing and dancing in the rain”
He suddenly turned around, aiming at Robert with his pistol. His hand began shaking, and he stopped aiming at Robert’s head to put the arm’s muzzle on his own temple. Lyra didn’t dare to move, fearing that he would kill them all if he realized that she was watching him. She could hear faint, high-pitched buzzing noises coming from John. The closest thing she had ever heard was the buzzing she felt in her ears after hearing loud noises. The sounds stopped after awhile and John returned to his sleeping bag as if nothing had happened. For the next two hours, Lyra was too shocked and scared to sleep.
The next morning, Twilight checked Robert’s location. The blood magic might be evil in nature, but its usefulness was undeniable. The spell she had cast on a magical correlated map and a needle made the needle’s tip always point at Robert’s actual location on said map. She noticed that he had just left the Everfree and was now crossing the Salty Desert. She had guessed that they were going to Robert’s landing zone, and now she was almost sure of it.
At the same time, Celestia received a report from Luna’s stallions, detailing how another human had ambushed Lyra and Robert, only to join them later. The new human had apparently been left for dead by Robert, and had lost his left arm. They hadn’t dared to approach the human’s hideout, as it had filled the place with lethal traps, meant for both land and airborne opponents. “Great,” she muttered, “now there is two of them.”
Robert woke up to the annoying sound of metal scraping against metal, and he saw John sharpening his knife.
“You could have used something less irritating to wake me up.”
“Huh” was all he said regarding that, “I’m going to check the traps, I’ll be back in ten minutes, then we have breakfast and we leave.”
They left the cave, the reek of the rotting creatures welcoming them. Robert noticed Lyra reading “Scanning spells for dummies” and he joined her while John left towards the woods. When they were alone, Lyra spoke:
“Robert, there is something wrong with John.”*
“Yeah, good morning to you too... Lyra, I know he is a bit strict and maybe all the stress is making him act weird, but he is nice.”
“No, really. Last night I woke up and I saw him...”
She told him all the events she had witnessed, trying not to forget any detail and casting sideway glances to the treeline.
“Well, that IS disturbing,” he said, his voice showing fear, “I will be alert from now on.”
“That is all you are going to do?” she asked, “stay alert?”
“Well, what do you want me to do?!” Robert angrily snapped, “he’s my superior and my friend, I can’t just get rid of him!”
Lyra winced at Robert’s aggresiveness, but she didn’t falter.
“At least try to make him drop his weapon, I won’t stand being around somepony who can just kill me in the blink of an eye and is clearly not mentally stable. Specially considering that we will be together for YEARS.”
They both stared at each other, until Robert’s glare softened.
“I won’t let anyone harm you. Not even him. I will do whatever I must to ensure your safety, even if it means fighting John.”
“What do you say about fighting me?” they heard John say as he returned from the woods.
‘Quick thinking, quick thinking!’ Robert thought.
“She was saying that you could beat me with both hands, but now I’m stronger. I was about to reply that I’m not fighting you to prove her point, I still remember how you wiped the floor with Matheus and me after that drinking contest.”
John laughed when he heard that.
“Oh, don’t remind me. It was a miracle that they didn’t replace us after that.”
John’s smile disappeared, and a series of nervous tics affected his entire body for a few seconds.
“John?” Robert asked, scared.
John turned back to normal.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Your body began shaking and you zoned out for a few seconds.”
“... I...” he trailed off, “I shouldn’t have tried eating those bugs. It must be their flesh affecting my mind.”
“John, surely you understand that I can’t let you keep your weapon if you aren’t in full control of your body. Can you give it to me?”
John considered it for a few seconds, until he gave Robert his pistol and his knife.
“Yes... You are right... I am in no condition to lead. You are in charge until I recover my faculties, and I won’t carry weapons until them. Maybe we could take some of Nanami’s equipment from the Icarus to diagnose me.”
John’s face showed his concern, but Robert couldn’t think of anything that he could do or say to cheer him up.
“Let’s have breakfast, the sooner we leave the sooner we will be back,” Robert said.
John nodded and the three of them ate the omelets Lyra had made. Robert wondered what kind of eggs she had used, but he decided not to ask, as he suspected that he wouldn’t like the answer.
“Robert, I need your help with something before we leave,” John said, “I want to place some kind of defensive mechanism so nothing can trespass the cave while we are gone.”
“Something on your mind?”
“I have always had a weakness for sentry turrets. I know you can make one with a technoglove and a normal weapon, but I don’t know how you do it.”
“Lyra, can you do the magical scan in the meanwhile?” asked Robert.
“I guess so.”
He gave her Discord’s fang.
“This is the weirdest talisman I have ever seen,” she stated, and she began casting a spell.
While Robert combined John’s technoglove with a light machine gun and an improvised tripod to form a rather formidable turret, the captain talked.
“Are you sure this pony magic thing will work? I mean, I find it hard to picture you two swapping species and all that craziness.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I am pretty sure it will work. Have you considered taking my place and becoming a pony? If you are lucky you may recover your arm.”
“And if we aren’t, she will have only one arm, or whatever disease I have will carry on and kill her. No thanks.”
“...Well, this is finished. It’s not very stable, but I think it will do. I can’t believe we have really found an use for this heavy motherfucker,” he said pointing at the powerful weapon, “once we leave I will turn it on with my glove and it will use your glove to detect targets, aim and open fire. It will run out of ammo soon, but I think we will be back before that happens.”
“I didn’t know you could use the glove as the turning base of the weapon like that. Good job, Robert.”
When they came out of the cave, Lyra was already finished with the spell and waiting.
“I think this artifact is safe,” she told them, “there are probably a lot of spells more I should perform before saying so, but I don’t know them.”
“Take that book with you and do your magic whenever we make a stop,” suggested John.
They left their base, carrying water and food for two days. Robert also had his rifle and John’s pistol, as well as his technoglove. They were also carrying a underwater respirator, a device that worked like a fish’s gills, extracting enough oxygen from water for a human to breathe. It was heavy and cumbersome, and its solar powered batteries only lasted for fifteen minutes of underwater breathing, but it would allow them to reach the Icarus and take everything they needed. They were halfway across the desert when John stopped.
“Robert, give me my weapons, we are about to be attacked,” the firmness in John’s voice convinced Robert, who obeyed him and readied his own weapon.
“What is that sound?” asked Lyra, who heard a faint buzzing.
“It’s the sound of their wings,” explained John, “we must stay together to avoid attacking each other” he ordered as he turned around, trying to find the source of the noise.
Suddenly, two black forms appeared from behind a dune fifty meters away from them. The creatures flew directly towards the humans and pony, but Robert killed one of them with his rifle. The other began moving in zigzag, not wanting to share the fate of its companion. However, John headshotted it when it was fifteen meters away.
“Behind you!” shouted Lyra.
Three more creatures were darting towards them, so fast that they forced Robert and John to jump sideways to avoid being impaled by them. Lyra fired a green projectile with her horn, but it was deflected by the bug’s carapace. The creatures began circling them, closing the distance little by little. Suddenly, John jumped towards the circle and tackled one of the creatures. He fell atop it and stabbed it in its blue eye with his knife before it could react. The remaining two creatures tried to attack him from behind, but Robert killed one with his rifle and John avoided the other’s lunge. The last creature, noticing that it was alone, turned into a black pegasus pony and shouted.
“I surrender! I surre-”*BANG!*
Lyra and Robert looked at John, whose arm was still raised after killing the creature, which had returned to its original form. As soon as the adrenaline rush died out, Lyra began throwing up. Robert helped her while John dislodged his knife from the creature’s skull.
“Why did you kill the last one?” asked Robert, “they talk, so we could have interrogated it.”
“It would have been dangerous. We don’t know what they can do, it may be able to contact its kind, or use its magic on us.”
Robert helped Lyra until she emptied her stomach.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine, it’s just that... You killed them...” she muttered, trying to hold back her tears. Meanwhile, John was busy making sure that all of the creatures were dead. He was going to check the last one, the first one that Robert had killed, when it raised its head and fired a green beam towards John. The beam hit John’s chest, throwing him backwards. He tried to use his pistol, but the creature used telekinesis to disarm him. Robert couldn’t use his weapon, as John was between him and his target, so he ran towards them. John unsheathed his knife and threw it, hitting the creature’s chest. It used its remaining forces to cast a barrage of green beams, which John tried to avoid, unsuccessfully, by rolling on the floor. Finally, it died.
“John! Are you alright?!” Robert shouted.
John replied with a scream of pain. His clothes were tattered, and his body sported many ugly burns and green rays surrounded it until he got up with effort. He grunted in pain, holding his head with his hand.
“My head! That veshch has messed up my rassoodock!” he exclaimed.
Robert tried to support John, but he pushed him with his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!”
While John tried to walk, Robert began hearing some noises coming from him. They were the kind of sounds that you could hear in a Hollywood movie when something with electronics is malfunctioning, and was something that Robert never expected to hear coming from a human’s body. Then John stood still, staring at Robert.
“You are not my droog, you are odin of them. I am ittying to oobivat you!” he said as he pushed Robert, this time with all his might. When Robert hit the sand, he realized what was wrong with John. The weird behaviour, not dying due to blood loss after losing one arm, the weird sounds and, above all, the weird words. There was a simple explanation behind all of those mysteries, John was not a normal human. He fired his weapon against John’s head, but the bullet only made him stagger. He opened fire on his former leader, forcing him to face him instead of recovering any of his weapons.
“Damn it, John!” cried Robert as he rose up, “you didn’t tell us you were a fucking trans!”
John didn’t react to his words, and he continued advancing menacingly. Robert’s weapon didn’t have enough power to harm John’s vital organs, so he aimed at his legs. A few shots damaged the muscles and the tendons of John’s leg, making him fall and resort to a fast crawling. Robert circled John, picking his handgun and knife. Then he noticed that Lyra was closing the distance between them.
“Stay away! John has gone crazy and is trying to kill us!”
As if on cue, John rose up and sprinted towards Robert, who was too surprised to react in time. John tackled him and immediately he was sitting atop Robert and choking him with an iron grip. Fortunately, John couldn’t hold Robert’s arms down and he began cutting John’s hand with his own knife. After a few seconds John released Robert and tried to punch him in the face, but Robert stabbed him in the stomach with both hands. While John tried to extract the knife, Robert reached for his rifle, which had fallen next to him, and used its butt to hit John in the face, making him fall over. Robert distanced himself from John before coughing, feeling a soaring pain in his neck, and getting up again. He saw a green glow before his eyes and he jumped back, noticing that John’s knife was being held in the air by Lyra’s magic, who had stopped it mid air just before it hit him in the neck. The unicorn used her magic and the knife stabbed John’s hand, pinning it to the sand as he was reaching to his handgun. However, Lyra’s magic wasn’t strong enough to hold John down, as he managed to slowly raise his hand. Robert used his rifle and aimed at the pistol, breaking it before John could reach it.
“My pooshka! Now I am bezoomny, you will snuff it for that!” shouted John.
John freed his hand from the knife and ran towards Robert. A shot from the rifle blew one of his eyes, but that didn’t slow him down. With his only hand, John disarmed Robert with a swipe and punched him in the stomach. The pain made Robert bent down, and John gave him a powerful vertical elbow strike on the head, knocking him out.
“John! Stop! We are your friends!” shouted Lyra with fear.
“Shut up, cheena, you and I will have the old in-out in-out after I'm done with him, then you will snuff it, too,” he replied as he took Robert’s rifle.
Lyra had learned from Robert the basics of how their weapons worked, so she tried the only thing that could save Robert: using her magic to clog the rifle. She focused all of her magical power in a thick barrier inside the barrel. When John pulled the trigger the rifle’s barrel splitted like kindling wood. He stood still and confused for a few seconds, giving Lyra time to levitate the knife again and stab John’s neck and slit his throat. A few droplets of blood fell from John’s gaping wound, and he fell to the floor. She ran towards Robert and woke him up. He moved with violence until he saw John’s laying form.
“Is he dead?” he asked, dazed.
“I just cut his throat, that kills people, right?” she asked with coldness.
“Yes, but he is not people, give me the knife.”
She did as she was told and he used the knife to open John’s abdomen. None of them noticed John’s neck healing at an unnatural rate meanwhile.They were welcomed by a disgusting mix of bodily fluids and the sight of repulsive organs with metallic implants. With a grimace, he inserted his arm in John’s entrails up to the elbow, pulling something out from beneath his heart. It was a small battery, which Robert threw as far as he could. John opened his eyes and tried to grab Robert, but he stopped mid-movement and dropped dead.
“Now we are safe,” muttered Robert.
“Wha- what did just happen?!” she asked, shocked.
They both stared at John’s corpse, not daring to stop looking at him.
“John is a transhuman, the apex of our technology. He has been genetically modified and has received cybernetic implants.”
“...Equestrian, please?”
“We use our technology to enhance his body and mind, then we add metallic things on him. Transhumans are more intelligent, stronger, and live more years before showing signs of aging. I... I just don’t know what went wrong, why would he go mad? I need to know.”
“How?”
“If we are lucky, he will tell us,” Robert said as he fumbled with his technoglove. After a few seconds, he released his breath, that he hadn't realized he had been holding.
“This will be hard to explain, so I’ll just do it and later I will answer all your questions,” he told Lyra as he made some gestures with his glove.
John’s mouth opened, and his voice came out of it, with the monotony that only an artificial voice could have.
“Status report: Host: permanently deceased, missing left arm, cancerogenous mutations, abdomen slit open, partially closed wounds of hunting rifle on legs and torso, other minor injuries. System: missing main power supply, partial corruption of system data, damage on hardware, various subroutines reporting errors due to changes in Host’s body.”
Robert changed to vocal mode.
“Explain cancerogenous mutations.”
“Cancerogenous mutations on the whole body. Changes in DNA of cells. Pure human genetic code unaffected. Mutations started upon leaving Icarus. Anomalous burst of mutations five minutes ago, seven seconds after suffering burns. Origin of mutations unknown.”
“Explain partial corruption of system data.”
“Corruption of biomaterial, leading to corruption of memory files. System unable to repair archives.”
“That’s enough.”
“Insufficient energy to restart system. Initiating self-destruction.”
With no further warning, John’s body was caught in flames. Robert had to step back because of the heat. A few minutes later, only a black skeleton and charred electronic implants remained. Robert wiped away the dry tears he had shed.
“We need to keep going.”
Lyra treated Robert’s wounds and they took John’s weapons and provisions. Then they walked for hours in silence, as they were in no mood for talking. Finally, they reached the lake, a few hours before the sunset.
“Here we are,” Robert said.
“Robert, I... I want to know what happened.”
It was hard, but Robert managed to explain the basics of what a transhuman was to Lyra. His knowledge on the field was very limited, so he couldn’t explain how John managed to heal so fast and how he could withstand being shot in the head. He guessed that the source of John’s madness was the magic, which had further altered the already mutated cells of his body, also damaging his electronic implants.
“But, why would you send a transhuman to this mission?”
“For all we know, John might have been able to live for hundreds of years. The bigwigs probably wanted someone who would keep everything under control for a long time, so they sent a transhuman powerful enough to stop any kind of uprising and to rule with a clear and focused mind for many years.”
“If transhumans are better than normal humans, why did they send just him?”
“Because creating transhumans was forbidden everywhere. If people could become transhumans, the ones who couldn’t pay the process would become second class citizens, and in a few decades there would be two species: the rich transhumans and the poor humans. I guess they didn’t dare to send a crew made of transhumans.”
Lyra read on Robert’s face that he didn’t want to speak about John anymore, so she stopped asking. Then all the emotions and thoughts she had avoided while they walked surfaced, and she couldn’t hold it back. In a few seconds, both of them had become a hugging mass of fur, clothes, sweat, tears and sobbing.
“Lyra, if you want to go back to Ponyville after all of this, I will understand.”
“No, I’m fine. I just need some time to think.”
“I’m going to the ship, then. Be careful, there may be more of those bugs around. I think I will be able to hear shooting, but you may find yourself alone.”
While Robert was retrieving everything he needed from the Icarus, Lyra guarded the place, using her magic to wield Robert’s weapon. She was relieved when she saw him emerge. He brought many artifacts whose use was unknown to the unicorn.
“Is that everything we need?” she asked.
“I hope so,” he scratched his head, “I checked Kato’s notes which explained the process, but this is not my field so I can’t be sure. I also took some of her clothes so you have something to wear if mine are too big for you and her technoglove for you to use.”
“Tomorrow we will perform the changing spell, right?”
“Indeed. We should depart as soon as possible, and we must have energy to protect ourselves from those black creatures. I will take the second and fourth watch, you take the other two.”
They passed the night without incidences, but terribly scared of the monsters that lurked in the darkness. The next day they crossed the desert without facing any creature. Even so, they never lowered their guard. When they finally reached the cave, they were a nervous wreck, and they only trusted each other because they had always been together, so it was impossible for the creatures to supplant them. Only when Robert deactivated the turret and they were covered by the stone walls did they relax.
“Alright, I’m going to show you how you use all of these” Robert said, pointing at the medical devices, “so you can do it when we swap.”
They spent the next hour doing that, until Robert thought Lyra was ready. Then he pulled Discord’s fang, which had no trace of rock.
“Alright, if we both hold it at the same time it should do everything by itself. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she replied with determination, “I have performed all the spells and I have not found any curse hidden, so let’s do this.”
She held one end with her mouth while he grabbed the other with his right hand. After a few seconds, the fang began glowing with a golden light, which grew stronger by the seconds. When the light was almost blinding, both of them heard a loud *POP* and they had swapped.
“What the fuck?” said Robert as he fell to the ground, no longer able to stand on two legs.
“Puh!” Lyra spitted Discord’s fang. “Am I human yet?”
Robert rose his head and looked at Lyra. She was lying down in fetal position with her eyes closed. He looked down and saw his two pink forelegs.
“What the hell?! I am PINK!!!” he shouted, “oh, and you are a human now.”
Lyra slowly opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was her two hands curled into fists, so she shouted like a hysteric girl.
“HANDSHANDSHANDS!”
“Lyra.”
“HANDSHANDSHANDS!”
“Lyra.”
“HANDSHANDSHANDSHANDS!” She was so excited that she managed to stand on two legs, but as soon as she realized it she lost her balance and fell on her rump. “Oof!”
“Lyra!”
“What?”
“A little help, please?” he asked, as he was entangled in his human clothes. Lyra crawled towards him and clumsily grabbed the clothes with her hands, releasing him after a few struggles. As soon as he was free he managed to stand on his four legs.
“Good, now get dressed.”
“Do I have to?” she asked with a frown, “it’s going to be hard to do it by myself.”
“Do it, please,” Robert insisted, ‘she still has green hair, and not only on her head!’ he thought, blushing under his coat.
“So... How do I look?” she asked as she struggled with her underwear.
“Disturbingly sexy.“
“What was that?”
“Well, you still have green hair and golden eyes, which aren’t natural colors for humans. Other than that, your body is totally human. And well... You are pretty sexy...”
Lyra’s bare skin didn’t hide her blush. However, after nearly suffocating herself with the shirt until she managed to stick her head out of it the blush had extended to the whole face, which was crimson.
“My turn, how do I look?” asked Robert.
“Well, you are an unicorn, your coat is pale pink and your mane is black... It’s kind of funny, your coat is kind of similar to human skin and your mane is like your hair.”
“Yes, but... Piiiiink” he whinnied, “wait, you said I have a horn?” He touched it with his hoof, “woah.”
“Oh, your cutie mark is...” she frowned, “I don’t know what it is.”
“I have one of those?” he turned his head, which was a dizzying experience due to his new long neck, and saw a symbol he knew too well.
“ACTION MAN?! WHAT-THE-FLYING-FUCK?!”
“You know what that is?”
“Something like G.I. Joe, but cooler.”
“What?”
“It’s a human thing. I guess the spirit put this on the spell to mock me.”
“Okay, but what does it mean?”
“It’s the logo of Action Man, an action figure for boys. It was very popular a few years before I left Earth.”
“... You humans are weird.”
“You know what’s weird? Moving your ears is weird,” he said as he wiggled them, trying to change the subject.
Lyra, now fully dressed save for the bare feet, tried to stand, but failed.
“How do you stand on two legs?”
“Use the walls for support at first. I’m still trying to walk without stumbling.”
They spent the next hours practicing until they got used to their new bodies. Lyra learned to walk slowly without support and to use her hands with dexterity. Robert managed to walk and trot with ease, but he didn’t dare to gallop, and he levitated a pebble a few centimetres, which he proclaimed a magical feat to Lyra’s amusement. They also learned how to perform the activities of daily living, which Robert called “a dirty and embarrassing but necessary affair to avoid dirtier and more embarrassing situations during the next days.”
Twilight Sparkle was re-re-re-checking the new organization of the books (or rather, Spike was doing it while she supervised him) when she heard the noise she dreaded most: papel being ripped. She ran to the source, and found that the enchanted needle that was marking Robert’s location was shredding the map.
“What’s going on?” asked Spike.
“It’s impossible! My spell has lost Robert!” she explained as she stopped the needle, “how could this happen? He can’t teleport or travel in time, so how has he disappeared?!”
“What do we do?”
“I can’t write a letter to Princess Celestia. She will know I used blood magic and she will be disappointed and I won’t be her student and she will send me back to... MAGIC KINDERGARTEN!!!” she added, her mane suddenly more disheveled and her eyes twitching.
“You DO need professional help with that foalhood issue,” Spike muttered.
“Did you say something?”
“Eh... Why don’t you research about the spell you used? Maybe you will find a list of causes for that,” he pointed at the shreds of paper that had once been a map.
“You are right! Spike, this is very important, so I won’t be able to supervise you.” she returned to a safer and less volatile mood, “You think you can finish checking those books by yourself?”
“Don’t worry, I will manage,” he said with heavy sarcasm, which was unregistered by the purple unicorn.
“Lyra, stop doing that. You can’t do that in public, it’s gross.”
“But it feels so good!”
“I don’t care, you can’t just put your finger in there whenever you feel like it.”
“Do you know how HARD it is to do something like this without fingers? It’s easier for unicorns, but fingers are a lot more precise than magic. It’s like they were meant to do this!” she exclaimed, causing him to groan.
“At least use a tissue or something to clean yourself when you are done.”
A few moans of pleasure later, Lyra stopped picking her nose and waited until Robert finished his levitation exercises. His magic was already as powerful as Lyra’s had been, but his total lack of magical knowledge and practice made him struggle to perform the easiest tasks at first.
“How long will it take until I am as good as you with magic?” he asked for the umpteenth time.
“It takes years for foals to achieve their full potential, but that’s because they have to wait for their horns to fully develop. You should be proficient enough in a week or two if you keep practising.”
“It’s late already. I’m going to reactivate the turret, so be careful with that,” he tried to put his hoof inside of his glove, and groaned in frustration before activating voice commands.
That night sleep didn’t come easy for any of them. Robert studied magic until late hours and Lyra kept fiddling with Kato’s technoglove.
The next morning they decided that it was time to perform the first embryo transfer. Lyra did it all under Robert’s supervision. The process had been greatly simplified over the years since its creation, allowing someone like Lyra to do something that decades earlier required a medical doctor and some luck.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Lyra when she was done.
“Yeah, we should... Celebrate or something.”
“How?”
“Hm... We could cook something for each other, and you should start eating meat,”
Lyra frowned.
“I know you must find eating meat disgusting, but you need it to be healthy, a cave in a forest isn’t a place where you can find substitutes for meat... Would you rather eat fish? You may find them less... Relatable.”
“Okay, I’ll try fish,” she said, sighing, “but how are you going to catch it??
“It’s too dangerous to go alone, specially with those bugs around, so we’ll go together and gather whatever we need.”
Robert discovered that day how insultingly easy it was to fish with magic. He only had to spot a fish and levitate it out of the river. He cooked a salmon for Lyra, who prepared a salad and sandwiches.
“Wow!” exclaimed Robert while cooking, “the smell of salmon being cooked is the same as ever, but now I find it disgusting. It’s such a strange sensation, I hate its smell but I remember that I liked it.”
“Same here. I tried to eat a daffodil on the way back and I had to spit it.”
“Those are toxic for you now. I think we should keep on cooking for each other until we learn what we can or cannot eat.”
“Agreed.”
Lunchtime arrived and they both stared at their meals. Robert began eating the salad first, which he enjoyed greatly. A few seconds later, Lyra ate a small piece of fish.
“This... is... delicious!” she exclaimed, and she continued eating with care, as Robert had warned her about the bones.
They spent the rest of the day practicing with their new bodies, but always on guard against the black pony-like insects. That night, bizarre events transpired.
“You won’t believe this.”
“Believe what, Robert?”
“John’s luggage has tons of booze!”
“What is booze?”
“Alcoholic beverages.”
“Like cider?”
“Not at all... Everclear?! This is very strong stuff. I guess transhumans need higher quantities of alcohol to get drunk... Hm... I wonder...” a glint of mischief appeared in his eyes. “Lyra, it’s time to find out who can drink more: humans or ponies.”
And so, they got drunk. So drunk that they didn’t notice any change in their alcohol tolerance.
“You know, Robert? *hic* You are pretty cute now that you are a... a... horned pony.”
“Well, you are the prettiest human in Equestria!”
“You tell the same to all the humans in... Hold on a second...”
They exploded in laughter and took another shot of Everclear. That was the last thing Robert remembered of that night.
Robert woke up to one of the worst hangover he had ever suffered.
“Just like college’s days” he muttered to himself.
He felt warmness between his leg and noticed that he was hugging Lyra.
‘No. We did not do THAT... Right?’ he thought with a mix of fear and curiosity. ‘There’s no way it would work, it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.’
Then he realized that he was being hugged, too. Slowly, very slowly, he lowered his gaze and saw a hole-ridden, black and chitinous foreleg hugging him. He turned around and found himself face to face with the creature, its blue eyes fully awake and its fangs exposed in a grin.
“Hi there, hot stuff,” it said.
They both stared at each other, not even blinking.
“Weird,” it continued, “all the ponies I have met are freaking out by this point. Well, I better leave now before the others start missing me.”
The creature rose and prepared to take off.
“Wait!” exclaimed Robert, “what are you and what did just happen?”
“I’m a changeling. The rest is better left unsaid,” its translucent wings buzzed as he flew out the cave, “thanks for the dinner!” it shouted as it disappeared in the woods.
Ten minutes later, Robert came out of his stupor.
“That never happened. There was only two of us and we just slept. Nothing else happened. Nothing. At. All.”
Lyra woke up several minutes later.
“Oooooooh, my head,” she complained.
They spent three days without further incidents since then. Lyra embraced her omnivore diet, while Robert discovered the wide variety of vegetables that had become edible for him. Other than that, those days were rather monotonous, as they spent most of their time practicing near the cave. But on the night of the fourth day, a few hours before the sunrise, the sound of the machine gun opening fire woke them up. In a couple of seconds they were both aiming at the entrance with their rifles. The machine gun ran out of ammo and a tense silence ensued. They saw saw a few branches as thick as his legs being pulled out of sight by an unseen creature over the cave entrance.
“Shit, they used a decoy. It must be those flying creatures,” muttered Robert, then he shouted, “STAY AWAY OR WE WILL ATTACK!”
They heard the flapping of leathery wings instead of the buzzing of changelings, and suddenly three dark forms charged in, too fast for Lyra and Robert to react in time. Robert found himself pinned down by a strange pony, similar to a pegasus but with bat-like wings, vertical pupils and a more aggressive look. The stress weakened his magic, so when he fired he hit the batpony’s leg instead of the head, forcing it to fly to avoid being shot again. He quickly turned and found Lyra protecting her head from another pony’s hooves while more batponies came in. He forced them to cover with his weapon while he charged the one that was attacking Lyra. Robert tried to impale the other pony with his horn, but that proved to be a mistake, as the sudden impact against the armor stopped his magic and stunned both ponies. Lyra took that chance to stab the pony in the neck, which was not covered by the armor. Before any of them could get up, the remaining ponies surrounded them and attacked at the same time. Robert tried to cover his head with his forelegs, but it only blocked a few of the impacts. When he felt his jaw being broken by a kick he was sure that he was going to die, but suddenly everything stopped, including the pain he was feeling. He tried to move, but he discovered that he could only breathe and move his eyes. The other ponies were in the same predicament, some of them floating mid-air.
“Jeez, that was close,” a voice Robert recognized said behind him.
‘Discord?!’ he thought.
“I can’t believe she really ordered you to kill these two,” Discord continued, its body floating between them, no longer trapped in stone, “I don’t turn ponies into stone, but I can’t let you go freely, can I? After all, you tried to kill my two friends! What should I do? Oh, I know! You are the lunar guards, so you are going to guard the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONAAA!!!” A golden light surrounded the batponies and they disappeared. Discord scratched the side of his head.
“Luna created an atmosphere for the Moon, right?” he shrugged, “now, you two look like you need some fixing...”
Discord snapped his eagle claw and Lyra and Robert were instantly healed. They realized that they were also free to move again.
“Robert, what’s going on?!” asked Lyra, “Please tell me he is NOT the spirit who’s helping us.”
“Save the emotional traumas for later, we have to move before Celestia and Luna come here,” Discord said, grabbing them both.
Lyra tried to struggle, but Discord just snapped his claws again and they were thrown into a spinning world of confusing images.
“What are you doing?!” shouted Robert.
“Randomly teleporting so it takes them a lot of time to find us!” the draconequus shouted.
Suddenly, they were in a sunny tropical beach, along with most of the objects in the cave. Discord waited until both Lyra and Robert recovered. She just stared at the creature while Robert spoke.
“Why are you free?” asked Robert.
Discord pointed at his fang, which had returned to its original place.
“This little guy has been feeding me with the chaos around you since you left. That is a LOT of chaos. Enough for me to break free with some power. I would have waited a few months more to recover all my strength, but the lunar guard attacked you, forcing me to leave most of it behind.”
“Robert, do you realize you have released Equestria’s worst enemy?” asked Lyra, white-faced.
“Uh... I can explain?”
Something clicked in her mind, and she curled up into fetal position.
“What’s wrong with me?” she muttered to herself, “I was happy in Ponyville, and since I left I have killed creatures and ponies, the Royal Sisters want me dead and I’ve released Discord.”
“We should give her some margin,” said Discord.
He took Robert in his arms and flew until Lyra was too far away to hear them.
“We’re in trouble,” Discord stated, “I can’t defeat the princesses like this, and I won’t be able to hide you two from them for long. I have no more get out of jail free cards, short of unleashing the evils of Tartarus,” when he said that, his face changed between a dark frown and a happy grin a few times, until settling in a frown, “nah, doing that would only make it worse.”
“Can’t we reason with them?” That made Discord laugh while rolling on the sand for a few seconds.
“Luna might even listen to you, but Celestia will attack you the second she sees you.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’m thinking. You should try to comfort your girlfriend, if she doesn’t hate you already for helping me.”
The draconequus flew up to a cloud to think, leaving Robert alone. When he approached Lyra, she turned her back on him.
“I’m mad at you.”
“I didn’t know he would break free.”
“You never told me HE was the one helping you. That changes everything, you lied to me.”
“Yes, I know I did and I know I shouldn’t have. I’m very sorry, but he’s the only one who can help us.”
“Help us? He only used you to escape!”
“Then why did he save us from the lunar guards?” She turned again, showing Robert her tear ridden face.
“Because that’s what he does! He is the spirit of chaos, he tricks, lies and manipulates. I am sure that everything he’s doing for us is actually part of his evil plan to...” her eyes dilated, “Oh no, oh nononononono.”
“What?!”
“T-The baby! He must have done something! WHAT HAVE YOU PUT INSIDE OF ME!” She started crying with desperation.
“Lyra, please calm down. I promise you, I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he said as he tried to touch her.
She pulled back at first, but soon her cries were reduced to whimpers and she let Robert hug her with his forelegs.
“It’s okay, we will find a solution to this,” he said to tranquilize her, “and if we get caught we will say we were hypnotised by Discord and forced to do all of this. They may buy it.”
“I can’t believe the Princesses want us dead, they are always so nice and kind in public. Who would believe that they can order their guards to kill just because they want to.”
“In public... In public! That’s it! You gave me the craziest idea, and it might even work! Discord, come here!” he shouted.
The draconequus appeared in front of them, grinning.
“What?”
“I’ve got a plan.”
((AN: Funny fact, here at Spain Action Man was more popular and had more toys than the G.I. Joes until they made that movie.))
Discord, Lyra and Robert spent the next hours discussing their plan. Before that, Discord told Lyra the same he had told Robert about his past, which was taken by the ex-unicorn with a pinch of salt. When they were ready Discord teleported them.
Robert had only seen Canterlot briefly while he was being moved to the castle, so he didn’t recognize the crowded marketplace in which they appeared. Before the ponies could react to the sudden appearance, Discord used the Royal Canterlot Voice
“CITIZENS OF CANTERLOT! I AM DISCORD AND THESE ARE ROBERT AND LYRA. WE SURRENDER TO YOU!” He waved a white flag with his lion paw at the same time.
Most of the ponies, who were about to run away or throw themselves to the ground, stared at them quizzically. The closest guards flew to the clearing between the confused ponies and the trio.
“You surrender?” the leader asked with caution.
“Yes, I’m tired of being zapped by alicorns and elements of Harmony. What do we do know?” asked Discord.
“Uh...” the guard thought for a moment, “you three stay here until somepony authorized to deal with you comes.” He flew to the castle while the other three guards watched the trio.
“He’s just wasting energy,” commented Discord, “The princesses must have already sensed me and they will appear just about now.”
As soon as he finished the sentence Princess Luna appeared in front of him.
“THOU DARE TO RETURN TO THIS OUR BELOVED CITY AND.... Surrender?” She added when she saw the draconequus waving the white flag.
“Hi Lulu! Long time no see!” Discord happily exclaimed, “I guess presentations are in order. You already know Robert, and this is Lyra. Lyra, this is Princess Luna.”
“Robert? Pony? Another human?” the pieces of the puzzle fell together in her mind, “WHAT HAVE THOU-” Discord waved the white flag in front of her a little more.
“Volume, please. For your information, I have just saved humankind while escaping that boring stone prison.”
“What are you up to, Discord? It’s not like you to do this at all.”
“Oh, but Lulu-
“Princess Luna for you.”
“-that’s the nature of chaos. I would be a terrible spirit of chaos if I became predictable,” Luna rolled her eyes, “Now, where is dear old Celly.”
“Celestia will arrive soon. Come with me to the palace and don’t try anything funny.”
“No.”
“What?! You said you surrendered!”
“Yeah, but I never said it was an unconditional surrender. Our first condition is that we don’t leave the market for our safety. I wouldn’t like you to dispose of us as soon as these ponies can’t see us,” Luna frowned, but she nodded.
“I will allow that, for now.”
“Oh, I almost forgot, does the Moon have a breathable atmosphere?”
“Yes, why?”
“I would have been a total jerk if I had sent your murderous guards to their death.”
It was then, as the ponies began murmuring, that Luna realized why Discord had chosen such a public place to appear.
“You won’t get away with this, fiend,” she muttered.
“You are so cute when you are angry...” Discord jokingly said.
“Robert, I can’t believe you sided with him,” Luna said, ignoring Discord.
“Well, I’m inclined to side with those who want to avoid the extinction of humans. He also saved our lives from YOUR lunar guards.”
Luna’s right ear twitched.
“You lie! We would never order our stallions to kill anypony!”
“Oh oh, I think Celly has been playing with your toys while you weren’t looking,” Discord said with a singsong voice.
“Thou dare imply our sister would partake in such heinous activities!”
“Yes, I dar-” Discord was interrupted by a flash of light which preceded Celestia’s appearance.
“Discord!” she shouted, her body emanating radiant light and power, “this will be the last time you escape!”
“Waitwaitwaitwait, I surrender, I surrender!” said Discord, waving the white flag while he covered his eyes from the light.
Celestia ignored his words and charged him.
“Hey, she can’t do that!” shouted Lyra, “that’s what the bad guys do!”
“Tia, wait!” yelled Luna while she flew towards them.
Discord’s chaotic magic clashed against Celestia’s in a fight over the skies of Canterlot. They moved from one place to the other while Luna and the guards tried to chase them. Robert looked down and found that Celestia had not appeared alone, she had brought the six ponies he knew too well.
“Twilight Sparkle!” he shouted.
“Huh? Another human? And who are you?” the unicorn asked.
“It doesn’t matter, they are sided with Discord so they are evil!” said Rainbow Dash as she charged them.
“Oh no, not this shit again!” said Robert as he dodged the pegasus, “make her stop, we surrender!”
“Rainbow Dash!” shouted Twilight as she stopped her with her magic.
“Hey, let go!”
“Twilight, it’s us, Robert and Lyra! We came with Discord to surrender but Celestia has gone crazy and is attacking him!”
Those two phrases were enough to block Twilight’s brain for a few seconds. Meanwhile, the white alicorn kept on firing solar beams to Discord, who created blue portals which caused the attacks that entered them to exit orange portals, which pointed back at Celestia.
“Stop it, Tyrantlestia!” he shouted, “I’m not here to fight you!”
Twilight’s brain started working again, “okay, I will think about how weird all of this is later! First, why are you surrendering?”
“The lunar guards tried to kill Lyra and me and Discord saved us, so we decided to surrender before the princesses came to kill us in person.”
“How can Discord be free?”
“He gave me an amulet that allowed Lyra and I to swap species, but it also fed him with enough chaos to break free.”
“Why? Why would you want to do that?”
“To save humanity”, said Lyra, “that’s why Celestia wants us dead, to destroy humanity forever.”
All the ponies shouted various exclamations of reject.
“It doesn’t matter now!” said Robert, “those two are fighting up there and we have to stop them before they kill somepony!” ‘Did I just say somepony instead of someone?’
Rainbow Dash flew towards them, ignoring the warnings of her friends. Her superior speed and recklessness allowed her to overtake Luna and the guards. She flew past Celestia’s golden beams and Discord’s bizarre spells until she got in the way of them both.
“Stop you two!” she shouted.
Celestia tried to stop her attack, but it was already leaving her horn and headed to the cyan mare. Her eyes grew to comic proportions when Discord protected the pegasus with his lion paw, which was severely damaged by the attack. That action was enough to stop her.
“Did Ah just see Discord hurting himself to protect our Dash?” asked Applejack.
“Yipee! He’s a good guy now!” said Pinkie.
‘Robert, Lyra’ Discord said with telepathy, ‘change of plans, I have realized something.’
‘We won’t follow our original plan of buying time until you recover your powers by dealing with Equestria’s excruciatingly slow justice?’
‘Nah, I have a better plan which won’t lead to a confrontation against the princesses. Those solar beams hurt like hell. By the way, both of you asked the same question, lol.’
“Robert, what does lol mean?” asked Lyra.
“It means you find something funny.”
Celestia and Discord talked for a few seconds, too far away for Robert to hear them, and then they flew towards the marketplace.
“My little ponies,” Celestia proclaimed, “due to his heroic action, I have decided to accept Discord’s plea of surrender.”
Luna arrived a few seconds later with the guards panting behind her.
“What now?” she asked.
“Well, now that everypony knows we are here you two will have a hard time earning their trust back if you decide to take drastic measures against us,” Discord explained, “so I guess we can go to a more private place to discuss the terms of our surrender.”
Luna and Celestia exchanged glances, but they decided to led them to the castle. While they crossed the city, Luna noticed Robert cutie mark.
“I don’t believe it,” she stated while she rubbed the mark with her hoof.
“Ignore it.”
Luna hummed Action Man’s series song until they reached the room where Celestia held court everyday.
“Discord,” the Sun Princess began, “you were sentenced by the Elements of Harmony twice, and yet here you are again. You will be judged by the Elements again and they will decide if you must be petrified again.”
“After discovering the elements and dethroning Discord, the princesses created a series of laws to deal with supernatural beings which can’t be punished by normal means,” Twilight quietly explained to her friends, “in these cases the princesses use the elements to decide their fate. As the embodiment of Harmony, they will always choose the fairest punishment. That law became obsolete with Nightmare Moon’s banishment, as the elements became useless.”
“Celestia, I willingly submit myself to the judgement of the elements. And so do my allies Robert and Lyra.”
The mentioned pair frowned, but decided to remain silent.
“They are accused of freeing you from your prison,” said Celestia, “so they will be judged separately by a normal tribunal.”
“No, they must be judged by the elements, for you see...” continued Discord.
The Princess of the Sun and the Spirit of Disharmony and Chaos argued for long minutes that became an hour about obscure laws and legal loopholes. It was then that Luna intervened.
“I have decided that they will be judged by the Elements of Harmony.”
“What?” said Celestia, confused.
“Sister, for all we know Discord is trying to make you lose months arguing about our ridiculously overcomplicated legal system until the bearers of the elements die of old age. Just let it go so we can finish this business already.”
The two sister had a mental conversation. Not one based in magic and telepathy, which Discord could have heard, but a real mental conversation based on mutual knowledge, gestures and instinct.
‘You ordered my soldiers to kill these two without my knowledge. Your paranoiac fear of humans is clouding your judgement.’
‘I only try to do what’s best for Equestria. You know how dangerous humans are.’
‘The Elements have never done wrong to Equestria, we must trust them.’
‘You know that’s not always true. They banished you for a thousand years.’
‘We have been over that, it was the less bad decision and you know it.’
‘Argh, fine. But if this backfires you will have to fix everything.’
“Alright, the three of you will be judged by the Elements of Harmony. I will bring them now.”
Celestia left with her characteristic flash of light.
“Discord, are you sure about this?” asked Robert.
“Yeah, what if they turn you to stone again?” said Lyra.
“I think I will be fine. The elements will surely see that I am no longer a threat to them and they won’t hurt me.”
The six ponies who were about to unleash the power of their elements discussed between them. Robert could not hear them, but it was obvious what they were talking about. Rainbow Dash separated herself from her friends and approached Discord.
“Hey, just in case you get stoned again,” Discord had to suppress a chuckle, “I want to thank you for protecting me back there.”
“Well I-”
“But I still think you are a cheater and that you are planning something evil, so don’t get too full of yourself!” She flew back to her friends, who looked at her with a wide range of expressions.
“I’m never lucky with the ladies,” Discord stated as he created a cloud of cotton candy to drink some chocolate milk, “whatever, it’s not like I would ever fuck a pony.”
Celestia arrived with the six pieces of jewelry, “alright, let’s put an end to this,” she said as she levitated each one to its user.
“Could you three stay close?” asked Twilight, “using these is extenuating and I would rather do it only once.”
Lyra, Robert and Discord stood together while the six ponies assumed the firing stance.
“We are ready to taste the rainbow,” said Discord, as he created three white and red targets.
The six ponies began levitating as the magical power of the Elements of Harmony gathered around them. Their eyes shone with pure white light and a rainbow of energy shot towards their target. A magical mist enveloped the area after the rainbow hit them. The six ponies noticed three silhouettes, which became two humans and a draconequus when the mist vanished.
“Yeah, I’m human again!” said Robert.
“Yeah, I’m still human!” said Lyra.
“YEEEHAW!” exclaimed Discord, “I knew it would work! No more stoning for Dis-,” he stopped mid-word when he felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips. Then he noticed that they were slowly turning into sand, “Oh crap.”
“Discord!” said Luna, “what’s happening to you?”
“The damned elements must have decided that I am no longer needed now that humans won’t become extinct,” he stated with a neutral tone, “so they are getting rid of me.”
All of them surrounded the vanishing spirit, concerned.
“I guess this is goodbye, then,” said Celestia, her face betraying a hint of sadness.
“Heh, now I regret that things never worked out between us. I would blame my obligation of spreading chaos, but the truth is I loved ruling the world and doing everything I wanted,” his tail and muzzle began dissolving as well, and his body was shrinking.
“We will make sure these last good actions you have done will be remembered by Equestria,” said Luna, “and I want you to know that... I think you are not dying?” she added while pointing at his right arm.
Discord looked in that direction and found that a human arm was surfacing as his lion paw disappeared.
“Well, this is awkward,” he said.
Luna filled her lungs with air and blowed hard, raising a sandcloud. They found a bald, old and naked human where once stood the strongest creature in Equestria.
“You are... Old!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.
“Oh no!” yelled Pinkie, “now there won’t be more cotton candy clouds that rain chocolate milk!”
“Mirror.”
Celestia created a magic mirror so Discord could see himself.
“I AM old!” he exclaimed, “what happened to my hair and my good looks? I wanted to rule the humans forever with my powers, now I am mortal,” he snapped his fingers, to no effect, “and powerless!”
“...What do we do now?” asked Twilight.
“The Elements have decided to let them free,” answered Celestia, “going against their designs is a dangerous and pernicious affair.”
“So, that’s it? We go back home and forget everything?” Twilight said, incredulous.
Celestia sighed, “yes, that’s it. I don’t like it, but the Elements are always right, so I must admit it was me who was wrong about all of this.”
Lyra looked pensive for a second. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I had some savings in Ponyville to start living on my own, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Robert, “I will make money somehow so you don’t have to work while being pregnant.”
“Pregnant?!” exclaimed the six mortal ponies.
“Wait, wait,” said Pinkie, “if you are a human and he was a pony a few minutes ago... You’re having a centaur?”
“Wait, there are centaurs in Equestria?” asked Robert.
“No there aren’t,” said Celestia, staring at the pink mare with a small frown.
“Well,” said Discord, “if I remember right the Tartarus has-”
He was interrupted by Luna, “please, only one issue at a time,” she said with annoyance.
“Alright,” said Discord with a frown, “by the way, I’m staying here, I hate Ponyville.”
Celestia rubbed her temples with both hooves.
“This is going to be so hard to explain to our little ponies,” she muttered.
“We’ll come up with something,” assured Luna, “let’s just hope we have a few years of peace before the next crysis.”
A month later, the Royal Wedding happened. At least they had been warned by the night guards that Luna recovered from the Moon and by the humans of the changeling’s presence. After being defeated the changelings reached a consensus: if Shining Armor hadn’t learned the anti-changelings barrier spell, the power of Cadance’s love would have just made the invading force more powerful. The changelings who tried to attack Ponyville when Chrysalis gave the order also discovered that the border of the Everfree and the desert wasn’t the only place where one could find mysterious bipedal creatures armed with sticks that spit fire and steel.
Michael woke up to the sound of breaking glass. His instincts kicked in and he rose from his bed, ready to protect himself. He found a gray coated, blonde, cross-eyed pegasus mare lying on the ground, her saddlebags spilling letters.
“Derpy! It’s the third time this month you break one of our windows!”
The mare didn’t react to the reprimand, she just took a the letters, gave one to him and left. He opened it and quickly read it. He muttered something and left his room. Then he remembered he was naked, so he came back to dress himself.
“Mike, is everything alright?” a female voice asked from behind his door.
“Just Derpy breaking a window, mom!”
The female sighed, “I’ll bring a broom for the shards.”
Michael finished dressing up and left his room. He went downstairs to the kitchen and made himself breakfast. He was about to finish when his mother arrived.
“What did Derpy bring this time?” she asked.
He turned back and looked at her mother, Rebecca. She was the first daughter of Lyra and Robert, a ten years old woman which looked like she was between 20 and 25, according to Robert. She had black, curly hair and dark brown skin, which contrasted with all the other humans, as well as as two months pregnant belly. Michael himself had, according to Robert again, Asian genetic parents. He was the first male human born in thousands of years, he was five years old, but his body and mind were at the level of a sixteen years old normal human.
“Well, I asked you a question,” Rebecca said.
“Sorry. She brought a card from Princess Celestia, Discord passed away last night. She wants us to go to Canterlot today.”
“Oh,” she stood in the same spot for a few seconds, “go and make sure that Robert and Lyra know about this. I will wake up your sisters.”
Robert and Lyra lived in the next house down the road, so he only had to take a few steps before knocking on their door.
“It’s open! Come in!” shouted Robert.
Mike did as he was told and looked for his grandparents. He found Lyra breastfeeding her last daughter. It was the tenth one, and they had decided that there wouldn’t be an eleventh. Robert and Lyra were a strange couple, which had had children before marrying, and had married before realizing their love for each other. Mike wondered how they had managed to endure everything, taking into account that they hadn’t been genetically designed to have an unbreakable will and capacity of self-sacrifice for the greater good like he and his sisters and aunts had.
“Hi, Mike. I guess you came because of Discord.”
“Yep.”
“We will leave in the afternoon train. Go and tell your mother.”
“Sure thing, granny,” he added just before he left the house.
Her right eye twitched, “Stop calling me that, I’m not even forty!”
A few hours later all the humans on Equestria were traveling to Canterlot, a family which already had fifteen members, accompanied by eight ponies and a child dragon. Those ponies were, of course, the six Elements of Harmony and the spouses of two of them. On the way there, the rest of the passengers had looked at them with curiosity and awe, as the humans had become famous over the years. A few of them even went as far as to ask for an autograph from Robert or Lyra.
“We have saved the world at least eight times already,” Twilight muttered after Lyra signed the third autograph, “and you are the ones who have fans?”
Robert laughed, “I remember it was you who asked Celestia to keep your heroics deeds in private precisely to avoid this.”
Robert was always in a good mood when he traveled by train, since his contributions to the sector had increased both the speed and efficiency of Equestrian trains, and he had made a fortune in the process. However, this time the reason of their travel darkened his mood. Discord (he had refused to reveal his human name) had lived in Canterlot all those years, writing everything he thought humans would need to know in the future while he waited for his inevitable death. He had known that fifteen years was the most he could have expect of his decrepit body, so he had tried to finish everything before that. Celestia had found in his old arch enemy a valuable source of information about magics so powerful or dark that she had never dared to study, as well as a master of trolling who would always come up with a plan to annoy the nobility. She had even declared that Discord had been punished by the Elements by turning him into a mortal being for his previous crimes, but he had been granted liberty during his last days for his heroic salvation of humankind. Robert wondered how she would feel about Discord’s death. Since she had tried to kill them, all those years ago, both he and Lyra still loathed the Sun princess, but he already missed the old ex draconequus himself, eccentric as he had been. The few times he had been convinced to visit Ponyville (which was now called Humanville by some ponies), he had managed to cause such chaos that some ponies who remembered his first visit thought he would make the houses float in the air or the clouds rain chocolate milk.
“I’m going to miss him,” he stated.
“Me too,” replied Lyra, “he helped me so much when I had the ‘change of mind’. I will always be grateful for that.”
The ‘change of mind’ started as a chronic headache a few months after Rebecca was born, which evolved into fits and changes of personality and attitude. Sometimes Lyra would find himself trying to graze near her house, not remembering how she got there. Discord had gone to Ponyville as soon as he had known. He had told them that she suffered a disease caused by her pony memories and instincts conflicting with her human brain, and he helped her to endure the two months it lasted, teaching her the techniques that had helped him when he suffered it after he became a draconequus (how he became one was another thing he never told anyone).
Twilight changed the subject, “I hope he finished the Tartarus compendium. We had such a hard time beating Tirek because we didn’t know what to do against him.”
“Yeah, how could we know that hitting him with a rocket launcher would only make him stronger?” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.
They kept on talking until they arrived in Canterlot that evening. There they just went with the flow of formalities, customs and etiquette. Lyra and Robert were on their room relaxing on the bed when Princess Luna barged in unannounced, as she usually did.
“Good evening!” she exclaimed, “Discord wrote in his will that you should have this,” she levitated a package towards the couple.
“What is it?” asked Lyra.
“I don’t know, I have to rise the Moon, bye!” she teleported away.
The couple looked at eachother, then at the package. Robert shrugged and opened it. He found a stack of written papers, as well as a note on top of them, which Robert read aloud.
“Robert and Lyra,
If you are reading this I’m dead, if I am not dead... Well, whatever. These documents contain information you must know if you ever decide to go against the princesses, or create your own nation. Since I became human again I lost my powers, but I conserved the ability to feel the balance of chaos and harmony. This balance has been slowly reaching equilibrium over the years, the proof of it being that in the last ten years only Tirek has attacked Equestria, but that may change in the future. That is why you will find here how I became a draconequus, just in case you ever need to acquire such power in order to protect humanity and Equestria. Due to this, it is imperative that nobody except for you and your successors as leaders of humanity reads these documents ever. If you find yourselves unable to keep this in secrecy, I command you to burn it all. I want to tell you that I am proud of you two, and I know the future of our race is in good hands.
Goodbye, Discord.”
“Wow,” said Lyra.
“Wow indeed.”
“What are we going to do with this?”
“I think I will take them home and read everything. Then we will decide what to do with them.”
“No, no freaking way. Last time I let you read something about magic you didn’t summon an eldritch abomination in our basement just because you couldn’t find a griffin feather. I will take them home, make a quick read to see what’s it’s all about and hid them in our safe, just in case we ever need them.”
“Alright...” he stared at the wall for a few seconds, “you know what? I think we could contact a toy making firm to sell Action Men, the foals love playing with griffins and dragons so why not?”
Lyra rolled her eyes, “just forget about humanity, potential fortunes and last wills for a moment and kiss me, silly human.”
