Day 1
11:31 AM
"Firework"

“Who’s out there?” I called out yet again. There was a small tinge of restiveness that ran through my newly acquired torso, and I found it to be rather unbearable. Suspense was something of which I was never an actual fan of. There was an exceedingly short silence, and I didn’t like it, prompting me to call out yet again. “C-Come out already!”

A few more intolerable seconds passed by, and I started to believe that I may have made a fairly bad decision. The way I worded that could be taken in the wrong way, and the last thing I wanted to do was seem like a threat to someone. However, I know for sure that it has to be someone from the crash, how else would they know my name? Unless, I didn’t know… it had the potential to be an extremely small possibility, nevertheless.

I let out a sigh of relief upon hearing the voice call out to me yet again. “Omega? Spaaades? Anyone?” The voice was gruff, a deep baritone, somewhat reminding me of a lumberjack. Before I had anymore time to actually think about it, I saw a barrage of gray plow through the forest.

I completely froze where I stood, unable to make any sort of verbal or physical movements before my eyes actually focused on the behemoth on the other side of the clearing. It was another pony, fairly similar to me, except not really. Unlike my bright blue coat, his was a boring grey. His short, chestnut mane hung down as he squinted suspiciously at me. To be honest, it was rather difficult to see him, as he blended into the brush rather well. One thing I could tell, however, was that he was absolutely massive.

“Firework? Is that you?” The pony asked, taking a few steps in my direction. “It’s me, Turbo! You okay?” he then proceeded to actually gallop through the clearing. Every time a hoof of his hit the ground, it reminded me of some sort of train.

So, Turbo was turned into a pony too? Weird, he didn’t seem to have any wings… oh man, this was going to be a pain in the ass to sort out.

Turbo stopped literally inches from my face, making me flinch. For a moment, I thought he was actually going to crash into me, and that’s definitely the last thing I wanted at the moment. “Oh man! Am I glad I actually found someone! I was starting to get a little lonely, heh...” Turbo reached his forehoof up to the back of his neck for no other reason than to nonchalantly scratch it. Meanwhile, I was at a loss for words.

I simply stared at him, slack jawed. He happened to notice that I was gawking, and a smug grin appeared on his face, his oak-colored eyes wistfully poking through mine. “What? See something you like?”

“...”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, kid.”

Was...was he serious? Was he seriously oblivious to the fact that he was a pony, and that he was also staring at one straight in the face? “No...but I am staring at a huge freakin’ pony right in front of me,” I said, rather bluntly. With that, Turbo raised an eyebrow and looked back down at his body. About two seconds later, from his mouth emitted a loud “oh”, before busting out in an unnecessary bout of laughter.

“Oh yeah! That! I almost forgot,” he chuckled.

Oh my god…please tell me he’s not serious. I was on the verge of having a panic attack, and this guy seriously couldn't give a hoot. I decided that Turbo was the least of my worries right now, I had other questions that needed answering anyways. “Turbo, what the heck happened? Where are we?” I asked Turbo, as a coy smile appeared on his visage. He brought a hoof up to his mouth as he pondered.

“Hell if I know,” he finally responded. I wondered how he could possibly move his forelegs without losing his balance… how did he even manage walking, by the way? I can’t take two steps, but this guy can already gallop. Ugh, I’d figure him out later, but it’s really hard to keep from wondering. “The ship crashed, that I know for sure,”

“Well, no shit.”

Turbo glared at me, which was just enough for me to remember just how much larger than me he was. He was literally double my size, so I made another mental note to watch myself. He wouldn't hurt a defenseless little pony with wings, right?

“Yeah, I’ve been awake for the last hour or so...lemme tell ya, these hooves are pretty hard to use,” I simply nodded in agreement. Obviously, he learns pretty fast. That could be somewhat useful. “I’ve been wandering these woods for a while now. I’m actually on my way over there,”

Turbo proceeded to point off into the distance, straight over the treetops. I had to squint, and it took me a minute to actually realize what I was looking at, which was a black array of smoke billowing from somewhere a few miles away. I immediately understood. It must be from the ship. I had to admit, if I got launched from the ship this far away from the actual crash site, I’m actually surprised that I survived. It’s no wonder that Turbo did, given his rather gigantic frame. Maybe 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' didn't always apply.

“Whoa…”

“Yep. I’m guessing that anyone from the ship who was actually smart would head there,” Hmm, that’s actually some smart thinking. Turbo may be oblivious, but he’s definitely not stupid.

“Well, I guess we’re just going to have to rendezvous there?” I asked more than actually said, making him wildly nod his head. But that was when I remembered something: I couldn’t walk yet. “Uh, but I don’t know how to walk on these things yet,” I admitted, I started to lift up one of my forelegs, but immediately stopped upon envisioning myself falling face first into the dirt.

“Pfft,” Turbo said, rather rudely. “It’s easy. Just watch me! I figured out how to do it all by myself!” With that, Turbo began to eagerly prance around the clearing, like a little school kid on his first day to class. Now, normally I’d take note on the way he moved his hooves, and how he managed to actually walk. But when he started to literally walk circles around me, it began to make me feel bad. “See? It’s easy!”

After a minute of observing, I decided that I would actually try it for myself. Uneagerly, I lifted up my left foreleg and put set it down a ways in front of me. I was pretty sure that the next leg that I saw Turbo move was his… right hind leg?

Nope, wrong answer.

The second I lifted up that leg, I instantaneously regretted the choice I had made. With a soft plop, I landed face first in the wet soil, smacking my chin and quickly prompting me to groan in distaste. “Ugh…”

Turbo had to keep from chuckling at my failure. “Pfft… uh, I mean, good try! Uh, let’s go again-”

As much as I loved to make a fool of myself in front of someone of which I barely knew, I did not think that learning how to walk was going to come easily. “This is going to take too long!” I said whilst flailing around on the ground like a fish, before actually getting back on all fours. “I think we should worry about meeting up with everyone else instead of wasting time with this,” I argued.

Turbo furrowed his brow after calming himself down. I swear he looked like he was going to have a heart attack from holding in his laughter. “Yeah, that’d make sense. However, you still can’t get there, duh,”

Obviously. I had known that when I had actually said that. Although, I really did not have much of an argument. I needed to learn if I wanted to actually meet up with the others. Turbo noticed my displeasure, and frowned at me. “Here, get on my back, you can learn later. It’s probably not a good idea to simply sit out in the open like this anyways,” Turbo admitted.

The way he worded that brought another thought in my mind: Were we actually alone out there? What else lived in these woods?

I had a horrid feeling resonating in my stomach...

***

In the course of five minutes, Turbo ended up hoisting me over his back, horizontally. I had to admit, it was fairly uncomfortable. I’ll just say this, he had a very consistent spring to his step that almost caused me to fall off more times than I could count. Although I decided not to say anything about it, for I was simply not in the mood to.

The terrain hadn’t shifted a bit as we made our way through the forest. It was still as calm as ever. The wind would shimmy its way through the trees every now and then, and the plants below us danced to the forests’ ginger song. A few birds chirped dazzlingly, flying headlong over the treetops with an ever-flowing grace that couldn’t be rivaled. Well, I did have wings? I sighed, that was completely out of the question.

Turbo appeared to be having next to no trouble carrying me down one of the coincidentally placed trails that we had found. Lucky us, right? It should lead to the crash site...unless the path swerves into another direction entirely. Well, it’s all we had to work with at the time being.

“So…” Turbo suddenly cut the awkward silence between us. “you come here often?” he asked, giving another cheeky grin. I rolled my eyes and attempted to change the topic on my own.

“Honestly, what do you think happened? I can’t remember a single thing from the ship except for a split second when we were crashing,” I explained. Turbo looked up in thought, once again pondering to himself.

“Not much, I actually passed out too…” I could see Turbo’s cheek’s slightly pinkening. “... yeah you see, I have this thing with heights-” It was at that point where Turbo actually cut himself off in an effort to save himself the embarrassment, we may not have known each other long, but he should know that I wasn’t the type to simply belittle him because of his faults.

“Hm, maybe one of the other’s will know,” I mumbled the last part under my breath, making sure that he wasn’t able to hear me. “well, that’s if they even survived,” Yeah, I know it was a little morbid to think about, but you never know. I hope that they all lived through that. I mean, if I did, I was sure that they would as well.

“Speaking of which, random question,” I started, as another thought burrowed its way into my head. “how did you know that I was Firework? I mean, I’m a pony. At first I had no idea who you were…” I said truthfully. I probably would have figured it out fairly quick that he was Turbo by simply looking at his sheer build, but I didn’t bring that up. If I was the first pony he met, how did he know who I was?

“Well, I didn’t at first, until I saw that awesome butt-tattoo of yours! It’s much better looking than mine…” he sighed, turning back to look at his own. Butt tattoo? I -very awkwardly- maneuvered myself so that I could turn to look at my rear. It appeared that Turbo was correct, I had a very weird drawing on my butt. There were three fireworks soaring in the air, actually in the midst of exploding and spouting colors. The first one and the third one was ruby in color, fairly similar to my mane, while the firework in the middle was a navy blue. “Yeah, when I saw it, I just put the pieces together…”

I flicked my tail out of the way so that I could observe Turbo’s tattoo. Might I add that having a tail is extremely weird, however moving the muscles in my posterior that could control the movement of my tail actually came naturally. Anyways, Turbo’s tattoo was way different than mine. There was a simple black triangle, which I found to be rather plain. In the middle of it was a scarlet, crude, arrow that zig-zagged as is ran downwards towards the bottom of the triangle. It was much less detailed than mine…

It kind of made me think...was it a coincidence that my tattoo and my codename went hand in hand? Or the fact that I made fireworks? This was getting complicated. If that was the case, what the Hell did Turbo’s tattoo mean? Power or something? Ugh, I decided not to dwell on it.

After a few more minutes of talking, walking, and some uncomfortable pain in my groin area, Turbo suddenly stopped. “You hear that?” he asked, looking from left to right as I literally saw his ears twitch in various directions. I paused my breathing for a moment as to create less noise for myself. What was it? Was it a monster? Some kind of predator who likes to eat young, semi-defenseless horses!? Oh sweet god, I couldn’t die like this.

It took me a few seconds, but eventually my ears tuned into exactly what Turbo was hearing: some sort of shouting. I looked up into the sky to confirm my suspicions, and yes, we were exceptionally close to the pillar of smoke in the sky. Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who it was. The only part that sparked my curiosity was the fact that I didn’t know what they were arguing about. Or who exactly was yelling in the first place. I guess we’d find out in a minute.

“It must be the other group,” I told Turbo, whose ears still continued to twitch around. He thought for a moment, before he nodded.

“Must be! I hope they have food,” Turbo said, as he started to trot towards the sound of the arguing. I felt my stomach rumble just slightly, vibrating against the colossus pony’s spine.

“Psh, me too.”

***

Eventually, Turbo and I finally reached the clearing where the crash site was. Let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty in the slightest. I felt my jaw drop just slightly as I stared at the remains of the space ship. It was absolutely torn to bits. Scrap metal, rubber, and glass were strewn about the area, reminding me of one of those find-it books. You could barely even tell that it was even a ship to begin with. It made me slightly nervous, knowing that if I had not gotten launched from the ship, I most certainly would have died.

There were six other ponies at the crash site. I used their butt-tattoo’s in order to figure out who was who. If Turbo figured it out, surely I could do the same.

There were two ponies meekly staring at what was left of the spaceship. A dark green pony with a short, black and emerald mane. It was odd, his mane seemed to literally stand up, as if it was gelled. I noticed the tattoo, and judging by the fact that it was a simple wrench, assumed it to be Jolly Rogers.

Next to him was another similarly colored pony. Instead of dark green, however, he was more of a turquoise and was exceedingly smaller than Jolly. His eyes were very much like the color of his coat, although it was hard to see, as he kept his eyes on the rest of the ship. His mane was longer than Jolly Rogers, however it appeared to be shorter than Turbo’s. The shade of it reminded me of a crow. Obviously, this pony was Nautics. His tattoo made me slightly jealous, as it was way more detailed than mine. It was a shining light bulb, and a leaf. I have no idea from what tree, though. I’m not really a nature expert.

There were four other ponies gathered in a circle in a different part of the clearing, screaming and hollering at each other. Well, I guess I found the culprits. Turbo happily walked over to the group with me in tow, just as curious as I was to find out what was going on.

“What’s going on!? Where the Hell are we?” A very familiar dark brown pony said. Just from hearing his British accent, I could confirm that it was indeed Omega. His butt tattoo was nothing special, it was simply three letters, “A B C”. I think I’m going crazy, but it that a horn on his head? What are those creatures called again? Unicorns or something?

“How are we supposed to know, you idiot?” another voice droned from inside the group. It was a stallion, one that was as white as chalk. His mane was a sharp grey, slightly relative to Turbo’s coat. He still had the navy blue streak in his hair, though I’m not very surprised. Tome’s tattoo was, you guessed it, a tome. I think I’m onto something with these tattoo’s, or paintings. I wonder if they washed off? Strangely enough, Tome was a unicorn thing as well.

There was only one other male that I didn’t identify, and it was painfully obvious as to who it was after looking at his tattoo of playing cards. The three cards, in order, were a ten of hearts, an ace of spades, and a four of clubs. His body was a sickly green, and the back of his dark lavender mane was curled a little bit. Spades was sitting back, listening to the argument that was taking place in front of him. Oh come on! He had a horn also!? What is this!?

“Don’t get all mad at me for simply asking questions! You’re the scientist, you come up with some answers!” Omega yelled, stomping his hoof into the ground. I found it slightly amusing, as he was not very intimidating. If anything he seemed like he was throwing some kind of hissy fit. It was rather adorable.

“I may be a scientist, but that doesn’t mean I understand freak mishaps. I have no clue what happened. If I could take a guess, we went through some sort of wormhole, and then got trapped in this planets gravitational pull.” Tome thought out loud. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. However, I was not sure.

“Well, someone better come up with an idea, fast.” Spades said, finally speaking up. He shook his head just a few moments before, as if he snapped himself out of his thoughts. “We have little food, and water. As well as next to no shelter.”

“Well, the best thing to do is-” a feminine voice started, however it was inevitably cut off.

“That’s what I’ve been getting at! What are we going to do?” Omega asked, abruptly. I heard a small sigh from behind me as Turbo set me on the ground next to the group.

“Oh man, my pills were on that ship…” said a voice of whom I thought was Jolly Rogers. I do not think anyone seemed to hear him except for me. Maybe Nautics, if he happened to be paying attention.

“What’s going on?” Turbo cut into the conversation, opening up the circle so him and I could get involved.

“We’re stranded! That’s what!” said Omega.

“Uh, guys? Hold on just a seco-”

“There’s only one thing to do at a time like this, and that’s work together!” said Turbo, holding a hoof in the air. He received a myriad of tired glances as a response.

“Turbo, first of all, we’re glad to see that you and Firework are safe.” Tome added, finally turning to look at me. I sighed upon realizing that I was the smallest pony in the group. Well, this is great. I had to make sure that I didn’t wobble as I stood, or moved, for that matter. I’m sure they knew about me not being able to walk when they saw Turbo carry me up to them, but I didn’t wish to seem helpless. I didn’t want to be the “baby” of the group. “Second of all, that’s a load of horseshit.”

I almost fell over when I momentarily thought about placing a hoof over my mouth to snicker at Tome’s unintentional pun. I was lucky that I didn’t catch myself off balance.

“Guys?” the feminine voice once again said.

“Tome, you should chill out.” Jolly Rogers said, as him and Nautics finally joined the circle.

“Me? Talk to Omega about being chill. He hasn’t stopped his blabbering ever since he showed up here.” Tome said, pointing over in his general direction.

“Guys!”

“It’s perfectly normal for Omega to be nervous. In fact we should all be, we don’t even know where we are!” I decided to add my two cents just for shits and giggles. Only to have it turn around and bite me in the ass when no one even acknowledged my statement.

“What we need to do is look for help!” Turbo said, looking around the circle amusedly. “We need to find out if we’re the only ones out here or not. What if there are intelligent species here who could help us?”

“Or…” Tome rolled his eyes, disregarding Turbo’s comment almost entirely. “We could salvage what’s left from the crash. I’m sure there’s food that wasn’t destroyed, or even some tools. We could even use the scrap metal to make shelter.”

After that, everyone had something to say. The whole group started to increasingly shout and bicker at each other, constantly trying to one-up the pony next to them in terms of being heard. My head was starting to hurt.

“Goddammit, will you all SHUT UP!?” said the voice from earlier. Immediately, everyone ceased their words as a cherry colored pony stepped into the circle in between Nautics and Turbo. The pony was small, just slightly bigger than I was, and it boasted wings fairly similar to mine. Well, by my calculations, the only pony left of whom I didn’t take note of was Windstrom. Her mane was the longest out of everyone else, and was an impressive, shining blonde. Almost reminding me of sand you would find on the beach. Her eyes were a crazy mix of blue and green, like I could not even describe. They squinted as she realized that she had finally gained the attention of the group. What I didn’t understand was her tattoo, which was a single burning flame.

“Ahem…” Windstrom brought a hoof to her mouth and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but I think you all heard what the general-man said back at the Military Facility: I was in charge.” A few ponies, like Tome and Spades, let out a barely audible groan upon being remembered. To me, it was painfully obvious that they didn’t care about the fact that she had just stated. “I do think that there is a lot of explaining to do, but I do believe that we should set a course of action first. I think that Tome has a point when it comes to salvaging supplies-”

“Are you kidding? Look!” Omega stated, pointing upwards at the smoke billowing into the sky. “Say there are intelligent beings out here. All that smoke is going to draw attention to ourselves. I’m siding with Turbo saying that we should move.” Turbo out a small, high-pitched cry upon hearing this.

“Let’s all vote then. Majority rules.” Windstrom said. Wait, this is her first time to shine as a leader, and the first thing she does is claim “majority rules” on something huge like this? Well that makes a ton of sense. “Omega and Turbo vote to go, Tome and I vote to stay. Anyone else willing to vote?”

There was a small pause before a sigh could be heard from Spades. “I’m siding with Turbo. Omega has a point about the smoke. We don’t want to attract unneeded attention…” Spades glared at Tome, who squinted back at him. Well, we're all here for how many minutes, and already Tome and Spades are quickly becoming enemies. I'm sure they'll get over it eventually.

“That’s two to three.” Windstrom kept score out loud. There were only three of us who still needed to vote: Jolly Rogers, Nautics, and I. I really didn’t wish to vote. I had no idea which to actually vote for, in all honesty. I was bad when it came to decision making.

“Come on, someone say something!” Tome exploded after about ten seconds of silence was heard. This prompted Jolly Rogers to quickly come to a decision.

“I, uh, side with Tome…” Well, that wasn’t biased in the slightest.

“Three to three.”

I looked over at Nautics, who simply shook his head. “I refrain from voting,” he mumbled, looking pathetically down at the ground. Wow, thanks Nautics. Make that statement completely knowing that I would be forced to vote. Leave the biggest decision in the youngest ones hands... hooves.. whatever. The rest of the group turned to me, six pairs of eyes staring at me expectantly. I felt a warm bead of sweat fall from my brow upon realizing.

“You’re the tiebreaker. What’s it going to be?” said Windstrom.

Author's Note

Well, finally an update.

Thanks all for reading! Remember that comments and feedback are greatly appreciated!

Have a good one bros!

-Cyneryk