Metal Hulk Down.

Calico stood there looking at his ship and his home. It was teetering and hanging out of the second story of the Ponyville town hall. He stared at it for a moment, but he wasn’t actually looking at it. He seemed to be looking through it out into space. As some would call it, he had the thousand-yard stare, something only a trained sniper on a battlefield would have. This world couldn’t have snipers in it though it is far too perfect. Well it was, until he interrupted the serenity of their nice little town and not only destroyed their building but also probably destroyed his chances at making something a kin to friends in this strange world.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

Twilight was confused; shouldn’t she be the one to say that? She had been insensitive and didn’t think about what was going through his mind since he awoke. She had been too interested in finding out about him. She wanted to write to Princess Celestia about his arrival as quickly as possible so she could be apprised of the situation.

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you all like that. You don’t deserve my anger,” said Calico, his head still turned towards the ship. He reached up his left hand to rub his head a bit as he looked on at the task ahead of him now that he had cleared his mind of his faux pas. He kneeled down and stood quite still on just his flat feet, leaning forward over his folded legs for balance as he began to draw in the dirt, occasionally looking up at the smoke coming from the main door. With some level of frustration he decided it was easier to sit fully and try to concentrate on what he was doing.

Twilight and the rest were still somewhat stunned that he was the one to apologize in this situation. The only thing she could do was look at the other three ponies and see what they though. A shrug was all she got from all three of them. Fat lot of good that did. She watched as Calico sat down and was drawing. What caught her eye was the way he sat on the ground. She could see his butt was on the ground but he couldn’t keep his wings flat against his body as he had been the whole time he was walking around. Instead she watched as he opened them up a bit and formed almost a tent shape around his body with them. It seemed almost like they moved in slow motion as they formed the A frame. He eyes bugged a bit at how large they were.

‘They had to be large, they hung down to his upper legs. What was I expecting?’ Twilight thought.

“I’m sorry too, I didn’t mean to be so inconsiderate and I don’t think of you as a pet.” Twilight said as she slowly walked around to his front. The other three ponies followed as well with Pinky Pie hopping instead of walking as she often did.

“No worries, it was my fault for allowing my anger to let loose on you. Past that, we have each said our peace about the situation so now we have a bigger one to focus on.” His voice was stiff, like he was talking, but not really focusing on the conversation.
“How do we remove the ship without destroying the building?”

“Well, ya’ll got the Apples here to help fix it up, uh, once Apple Bloom gits back that is.” AJ said confidently looking over to see that her brother was already setting up a ladder and prepping to take a closer look at the damage himself. The second story balcony was still holding up really well, but the ship had the luck of landing itself right in the doorway that lead outside.

“So Sparkle, do you have any ideas? All in all I think the building would stand alright if I just backed that thing out of there.”
Twilight looked over the area around the ship from where she stood. The building was built to be pretty strong, but just moving the large ship out without bracing things first may be a bit of a hazard. The other issue was the fire on board, or whatever was busy smoking on the metal box. She couldn’t really classify it as more than a metal box.

“Do you think it will still fly?” Twilight asked skeptically.

“Oh, oh, oh, I wanna ride in it.” Pinky said as she bounced in place.

“Only one way to find out and no, you can’t ride on it right now.”

Calico’s statement made the fluffy maned pony visibly sad. Her bottom lip quivered and she gave him large puppy dog eyes, trying obviously hard to change his mind. Calico smiled, some of the anger that he had earlier waning, and he couldn’t help but put his hand out on top of her head again and rub her mane a bit.

“Don’t be too sad, I said right now. Once this is all taken care of, I’ll take you for a ride.” Calico said with a smile to her. He couldn’t help but feel like, of this little group of ponies, the pink one had to be the slightly mentally challenged one. Noting what he had said Pinky perked up and smiled again.

“No time like the present to test the theory,” Calico said standing up, his wings quickly folding up against his back, almost snapping against him. He stepped up and hopped up onto the railing grabbing the top of the second floor balcony with his working left hand. With minimal effort he kicked off the banister and flipped head over heels up to the balcony. He rolled his body one hundred and eighty degrees perfectly to land on his feet facing out towards the ponies he had just left on the ground. The acrobatic move slightly stunned Twilight and her friends, but then they really didn’t know what to expect from him. Calico turned to head towards the door of his ship when he noticed that Twilight’s horn had begun to glow. In an instant she disappeared and then reappeared right next to him on the inside section of the balcony railing.

“The Hell was that?” Calico yelled in shock. Twilight looked at him like it had been nothing at all.

“You’ve never seen someone teleport before?”

“NO! Do I look like I come from a land of magic...” Calico stopped and thought about this for half a second and before Twilight could speak he stopped her, “Actually, never mind, don’t answer that.”

Twilight just looked at Calico as though he was crazy; to be fair that assessment had been rolling through her head since he had started to talk to her the first time.

“Well, if you can do that, you may be useful in other ways. Come on into the ship, lets see if we can get this hunk of junk moving.” Calico said with a slight look of dismay. His survey of the outside of the ship was indeed good, but who knows if the thing would still fly.

“I thought you said this was your home? Why would you call it a hunk of junk?”

“It is my home, but sometimes my home is a pile of junk. Have you never had to live in a heap of trash at some point?”

Twilight somewhat gazed away from his eyes. He looked at her and didn’t need an answer to that question, though there were so many others. All the questions could wait though; he needed to move his home. He walked towards the open door that was half swung open. The door hung over a fall that would probably hurt most non-flying creatures to jump from. With one quick leap he landed inside the doorframe and the ship heaved heavily backwards and creaked loudly in disagreement to the sudden shift in weight. The smoke that was still pouring out of the door was a bit concerning for him but he was prepared to put it out as fast as possible.

The smoke was thankfully less dense than he was expecting but it still did a number on his eyes as he tried to find the suppression system. There was another heave to the ship as Twilight suddenly appeared right behind him. She immediately started to cough, not expecting the smoke to be as thick as it was given that it had a way to vent itself. Calico had found his fire suppression system and was directing its spray right at the fire that seemed to be emanating from what appeared to be a kitchen.

“This is what caused all this smoke?” Twilight questioned as she started to cough. She waved a hoof in front of her face to clear away the smoke. Thankfully the smoke had already started to settle now that the fire was fully extinguished. Calico surveyed the area before answering to see if he could find the culprit in the wreckage of his single counter kitchen.

“Hmm apparently I was making a Cheese sandwich before I crashed.” Calico sniffed the remains of what must have been the pan he was cooking in and the crusted and charred remains of the sandwich.

“You’re saying a sandwich started all this?”

“Possibly, Ill make a mental note not to make cheese sandwiches anymore. That should stop me from crashing landing onto random planets.” Calico eyed the charred sandwich and took a moment to take a slight lick of it. The revolting taste made him instantly retract his tongue and spit away from Twilight. “Too much butter.”

Twilight now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Calico was indeed crazy.

“How could this burn for this long? You’ve been unconscious in my house for over two hours?”

“This counter is made of slow burn materials, which is weird since the rest of the ship cant really burn at all…being fully metal I mean.” Calico looked at the now burned and melted counter top with a new question in his head: why did the ship designer make this flaw on purpose?

Twilight eyed the interior of his ship, interested in what saw. It wasn’t as large as it seemed from the outside for starters. The interior was slightly cramped and tight, but was probably fine for one occupant and that was it. It looked somewhat reminiscent of a Winnebago, if she had known what one was. She looked towards the aft section to see the engine systems jutting out from the back wall. Her curiosity got the better of her and she got closer to investigate it. Calico wasn’t too far behind her, as he also needed to check the engine to see if it would function enough to fly. To his chagrin, it would, but not for long. The fuel cells were draining which could only mean a leak in the system somewhere.

“What is this? Ive never seen anything like it in my life,” Sparkle said with amazement. This was something alien in more ways than one and her brain did its normal function in trying to make her learn and understand everything about everything.

“Sure I’ll tell you all you want to know when I land this thing. Preferably someplace where I can keep an eye on it and out of the way enough to not be a danger to others if something happens. You know a place like that?” Calico said with a bit of a rush to his voice.

“There is a large clearing behind my tree, will that work?”

Calico just nodded knowing that as long as he was in the air he would be able to find a place to land but being close to the tree seemed like the best place for now. He knew that he might be reliant on this little unicorn for a while so being close by would make things easier. He turned away from Twilight for a moment and headed for the door. With one quite shout he had told everyone to move away and stay clear as he moved the ship. He waved his one good hand at Twilight to make her come to the front of the ship where the window and main control panels were.

“Have you ever been a navigator before?” Calico asked as he sat down in the only chair. He quickly reached all around the small control panel and above him to flip a few switches and turn a knob or two.

“Not for anything like this.” She said wide-eyed, as though he was asking her to perform maintenance on the thing.

“That’s ok, I just need direction.”

Calico looked down at the last thing that he needed to do to get the whole system running properly, he simply needed to turn the key...with a broken arm. I had to put it, Calico thought, on one side and not centrally.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight noticed the bit of over-reactive sadness in his face.

“I can’t turn the key. My working arm cant reach over that far to turn it.”

Twilight turned and saw what he was talking about and without hesitation her horn started to glow, as did the key, and it started to turn. She looked over to Calico with a somewhat smug look on her face.

“You have a key to start your ship? Isn’t that a bit old fashioned?”

“What do you mean old fashioned? This ship is a marvel of spaceship engineering and it’s…. yes it’s old fashioned. What were you expecting though?” Calico said as he started to pull back on the control system and getting the ship free of the building.
Twilight, shaking a bit due to the friction from the building as the metal brick cleared the building said, “actually I was not really sure, but a key seems like it would be easy to lose.”

“It is, I’ve also locked it in this thing a time or two.”

Twilight looked at him with a slight bit of shock. It was short lived though as she looked up and pointed with a hoof in the direction that Calico should go. He followed and saw the giant tree that they had been in not but 15 minutes ago. He saw the clearing and tried to land as quickly as possible. It was not quick enough for the ship though because as Calico swung the ship around and leveled it out, the engines failed entirely.

Twilight screamed as she started briefly floating before slamming into the ground with an unceremonious thud. Ship had literally fallen straight out of the sky and landed some 25 feet below in a heap on the grass in the large field outside of Twilight’s home.

Calico got up out of his seat and reached down to grab Twilight and help pull her back up. She was visibly shaken and in a slight bit of pain but rose easily enough. Calico smiled and stood fully up, looking around to see the mess his place was in. Items were strewn everywhere and of course, his kitchen area was melted to the floor, in the midst was that sandwich.

“Seems like this isn’t quite as homey as it used to be.” Calico frowned a bit. He slowly walked over to the engines and looked at the state of them. Bled dry, they were. No fuel left, no power, and no ability to fix it with the items and equipment that he had.

“Well, I’m definitely stuck here. Wonderful.”

Twilight looked at him, her heart went out to the stranded stranger.

Author's Note

I hope this is up to scratch. This whole chapter felt like it was taking me so much longer to write and I just wasn't as inspired to do this scene. The next few are starting to get into Calico's life in Ponyville, so I hope its worth the wait.