The Martian Conquest

Nowadays, the night sky is clear and beautiful, the stars shine brightly and are clearly visible against the dark backdrop, and the moon softly shines upon the ground below with a blueish hue. It is hard to think that it wasn't always like that.

Contrary to popular belief, Luna, while instrumental in its beauty, did not create the entire night sky. The stars were born along with Celestia, before Luna was born. Luna had created the moon, and had helped in the creation of the world's atmosphere. Without Luna's help, the amount of stars one can see twinkling in the night sky would have been greatly less, and not as bright.

The stars, like Celestia's sun, are spheres of brilliant fire, and often have planets orbiting them, but unlike the sun, their orbits are not controlled by alicorns, but rather by strange natural forces. Regardless of the different means of movement around stars, some planets managed to develop life. These planets are extremely rare, even rarer are the ones that developed intelligent life.

With all chances against it, Equestria had come in contact with one of such planets thousands of years ago. Not too long ago, the inhabitants of the same planet ventured the long distance back.

Rainbow Dash awoke to a loud crack. It was late at night after a long day of weather work, and she did not fancy being woken up at such an hour. There was not any lightning scheduled that night.  She attempted to ignore it, but as soon as the welcoming tides of sleep began to wash over her, she was awoken by another loud crack, coming from the same general location. That was it. Rainbow got up and left to give whoever was waking her up a piece of her mind. When she reached the door she saw dark smoke billowing in the distance.

Somepony could be in trouble.

Rainbow Dash sped to the location of the smoke, reaching it in a matter of seconds. She landed on the ground, and her hair stood on end, as the air was negatively charged as if from a lightning strike, but there were no lightning clouds, nor was there any evidence of lightning clouds being there recently. What was considerably more worrying than the absence of lightning clouds was the crater dug into the ground in front of her. Within the crater was a cylindrical metallic capsule with a yellow hue.

"Hello? Is anypony hurt?" Rainbow walked around the crater, wondering what had happened and what the mysterious cylinder was.

"Hello?" She called again, not really expecting a reply.

She noticed a scratching sound, it was subtle, but noticeable against the almost aggressive silence of the night. It sounded like something was trying to get out. Rainbow gasped. She flew from the site towards the library, Twilight usually knew about these types of things.

Moonlight shone through the window and glinted off of the polished bronze telescope, it seemed to glow in the night's darkness. The sound of pages flipping and the squeaking sound of adjusting the telescope were the only sounds in the library, and Twilight loved those sounds. They were sounds of study and sounds of observation, and Twilight lived for study and observation, the foundation of magic. Magic, obviously, was her special talent. She had been studying the stars ever since a loud sound woke her up not too long ago, she had noticed something similar to a falling star when she was looking out of the window. Twilight had also noticed an irregularity in one of the closer stars. This star was one in particular that she had been studying as of late, it was of similar size to Celestia's sun, and it had planets orbiting it. She could tell by the star's "wobbling" over the period of a year.  She focused her telescope on it. It twinkled like any other star would except for one oddity: every few minutes or so, the star would shine extremely bright for a split second, then it would go back to normal. Twilight had not noticed this occurrence before tonight. She flipped through her books furiously, but her efforts were ultimately fruitless, as she found no explanation for the peculiar phenomenon. Twilight continued to gaze through her apparatus seeking answers, until a rainbow colored blur showed up in the lens. Before her mind even registered this, the cyan pegasus had shot through the window and collided with her. Twilight was knocked backwards, her limbs flailing on the floor as Rainbow Dash stood atop her.

"Twilight! Thank Celestia you're up!"

"Rainbow! Couldn't you at least knock!?"

"YouneedtocomeseethisnowsomethinglandedandmadeacraterandistryingtogetoutIdon'tknowifitcouodbedangerousIneedyourhelp!"

"Slow down, I can't understand!"

Rainbow threw her head back and groaned loudly.

"Follow me!"

With that, she flew out of the door, stopping to motion frantically for Twilight to come. Twilight rolled her eyes and galloped after Rainbow.

The night air was crisp and cool, with a pleasant breeze that rustled the leaves of nearby trees as it blew by. The moon hung in the sky like a jewel in a crown, illuminating her path with a dim glow. Twilight wished she could stop to appreciate her surroundings, the night was very beautiful, but Dash seemed to think whatever she wanted to show Twilight was really important, so she continued to follow her to wherever they were going. They passed by Rainbow's cloud house and entered a wooded area to the north of it. Twilight could see the smoke rising from there. They eventually they came upon an enclave.

Twilight's jaw dropped when she saw the smoldering crater.

"Wait a second," Rainbow Dash thought aloud. "Where's the top of it?"

Rainbow and Twilight stared at the open cylinder sitting in front of them.

"I've never seen anything like this before!" Twilight exclaimed, excited.

"When I found this, it sounded like something was trying to get out of it!" Rainbow worried.

"This could be the biggest discovery since teleportation spells!" Twilight grabbed Rainbow's face with her hooves and looked at her with wide, shiny eyes. "Thank you! You are awesome!"

"I know that I'm awesome, I mean who doesn't? But, Twilight, what came out of this thing, where did it come from, and is it dangerous?

Twilight let go of Rainbow.

"You're right. I should write to Princess Celestia. She might know something about this." Twilight started to run back to the library. "Rainbow, you get some rest, you look tired. We could look for whatever came out of this thing in the morning."

Rainbow yawned, she was tired. "Will do, Twi."

Rainbow flew back to her house and went to bed. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.