~Any World that I’m Welcome To~
I suppose, to begin, I should explain my homeworld. Imagine your time. Not too hard, is it? Now fast forward one hundred years, giving humanity nanomachines, railguns, readily available nuclear fusion, what you might call ‘shields,’ hydrogen bombs in every country, and, most importantly, a large amount of superbacteria to contend with. Superbacteria is the faux-scientific term for bacteria that are resistant to antibacterial products because of overuse of said products.
Why, you might ask, is that the most important detail? Well, the answer is because it shaped our very world as we knew it. When the bombs inevitably dropped, some of the large population of superbacteria were mutated. It seems quite farfetched, but one of the mutated superbacteria was quite similar to your ‘rabies.’ It eroded away the sanity and humanity of a large chunk of the population.
Thankfully, some foresaw the danger inherent in hydrogen bombs for everyone. They made hazard suits a mandatory fixture in houses and public areas. They looked about like you took a spacesuit, shrunk the helmet to just what was necessary, reinforced it with some chrome and ran neon lights over it for good measure. Needless to say, it is very hard to move unnoticed in one. They ran off of batteries, and generators were also mandatory in every place a hazard suit lived. Shelters with airlocks and sterilization equipment were also mandatory, though only in public places.
Humanity survived thanks to these preventive measures, and, with time, began to regrow. Eventually we began to pick up the pieces, and one of the places needing a lot of picking up was Crater Canyon.
Crater Canyon the site of the government’s headquarters in our country, but when the bombs dropped it vanished in a flash of light, in a perfect sphere. I was tasked with exploring it, and trying to determine what happened.
I am an engineer, you see. I was quite prominent in the rebuilding. With pre-Bomb schematics and scavenged materials, I built power for our settlement, heating, cooling and eventually a geopurifier using nanobots. So, it was only natural that a bright mind and none-too-bad a combat specialist was to explore Crater Canyon when the time came.
My equipment consisted of three day’s rations, a spare suit battery, a lighter, my composite sledgehammer modified with pistons and my custom hazard suit equipped with pistons for high-danger areas. I camped outside Crater Canyon, and headed into it in the morning.
That was the worst mistake of my life.
It started off simply. I walked in and examined the area using my suit’s scanners, watching for hostiles and unusual readings or sights. Almost before I knew it, it was dark. I instinctively checked my system clock. It said it was noon, but that couldn’t be right. Maybe there’s some electrical interference, I thought. That was about when I heard a combination of a slight humming and whooshing sound as my arm vanished. I ran from the sound, but it overtook me. I found myself flung through the air into something soft and cushy, but cold. I looked around and saw a gloomy forest, no end in sight.
Wait, what was that? It seemed almost like... Quantum entanglement, but that wouldn’t be so gradual and I would be in Crater Canyon and here... For those of you not in the know, quantum entanglement is essentially teleportation. I had mucked about with it for a while, but there was no practical use with no great distances to traverse. It seemed the mystery of the pre-Bomb world would live another day. Curses. First matter was survival, next was finding out how grass existed in my blasted-out homeland.
The air was even more toxic than it was before, if that was even possible. Suit appeared undamaged, thank whatever Gods may be. There was, however, the matter of some suspicious black cloud floating just out of the corner of my eye. It seemed almost to have eyes. I sat up, dusted myself off and readied my sledge, then walked towards it.
“You dare threaten the might of Nightmare Moon!?” it called at me. I stopped, then thought about it for a second.
“Who’s that?” I replied, but this only seemed to make the voice more angry.
“Such impudence! I shall have to punish you for-- wait, you can talk?”
I stared at it, but the effect was lost on my visor, so I clarified, “I can talk, alright. What were you expecting?” It stared at me dumbly in response, and, seeing no threat, I continued on.
“Perhaps I can make a deal with you?” it asked. I nodded for it to continue, and, somehow recognizing that, it continued. “I noticed you teleport into the Everfree, and you seem quite lost. I can help you get out, and maybe not kill you in my reign, should you help me against my foes. A being of sufficient power to teleport should be good in a fight,” it said. I noticed now that its voice had several traits suggesting a female source, but that was mostly irrelevant.
“Well, you guessed correct. Despite the teleportation not originating from myself, I am a capable fighter. However, I have two questions. The first would be why you need me to fight, when you appear to be or have at your disposal a cloud of nanobots, which could rip apart your enemies, and the latter would be who said enemies are,” I replied.
“Nanobots? I am no such thing. This is a cloud of magic, not... Nanowhatevers. And ripping them apart would be sick! That’s below even me! As for who my enemies are, they are a sort of strike force sent by my sister to banish me once more, but are untrained in combat, and should be no match for you.”
“Okay, magic. Sure. Though, if they're untrained, then why are they a threat?” I had assumptions on who my mystery benefactor was, but I did my best to set them aside, as she seemed to be staving off several shadows with glowing eyes around. I knew of no creatures with bioluminescence at all on the surface, so I was likely far from comfortable territory. There was no way this much life could go unnoticed by our network of detection, including GPS, radar, thermal scans and sensitive noise-detection equipment.
“They have a special weapon designed to defeat me or others like me. The details are not important, other than the fact it should not affect you. Now, do you accept, or should I sic my manticores on you?”
I switched to thermal vision and peered at the shadows. Sure enough, they appeared to have a lion’s form, but with bat wings and a scorpion tail. I had no wish to test the prowess of the manticores, though I wondered why she didn’t just sic them on the group approaching her. “I don’t have much of a choice, so I’ll help you then.”
“Let me lead you to my lair then, friend!” The cloud darted ahead, leaving me behind, I increased my pace to a run, keeping my battery power saved for whatever may lie ahead.
The Dark Cloud led me far through the forest, but at a running pace we made good time, regardless of pesky things like bushes. Thou Bushes Shalt Not Stop Advanced Ceramics, indeed. Finally we arrived at a run-down castle in the woods.
“This place looks like you threw an antimatter-matter grenade in it and then left it to age for a long time,” I said, none-too-tactfully. Thankfully, the Dark Cloud either didn’t understand me or didn’t mind too much, but she did answer.
“I know not of your ‘matter-antimatter grenades,’ but this place has aged one thousand years since I last saw it,” replied the Dark Cloud. “Now, just stand out here, and if you see six colorful ponies come by, kindly incapacitate them for hostages, would you?”
“Sure, sure-- wait, what?” I tried to ask, but the cloud had already entered the run-down castle. “Thousand years sounds like an awfully specific number. Organics tend not to live that long, so maybe it’s a central computer controlling those nanobots. Maybe even unaware of its true nature.” I sat down on the steps leading up to the front door and waited, watching for these ponies for the Dark Cloud. Why in the Hells would the Dark Cloud ever need six colorful ponies when a hitsquad is coming? Are they the mounts?
Regardless of my arguments, life was determined to throw more mysteries at me. I heard voices talking in the distance. All of my listening was for naught, as it was little more than a mumbling at that distance. Suddenly, it stopped. I listened and listened, but it was gone. There was one faint cry, then silence.
I strained my ears, but heard nothing for a while. Then, out of the blue, it started up again. I began to hear footsteps, falling in sets of three. Perhaps these ponies, but with the hitsquad? Nevertheless, I watched the entrances to the clearing. The voices were also female, I could understand that now, and were congratulating each other on something.
Just then, six colorful ponies popped into the clearing, continuing the conversation. I had to wonder if I had ingested some acid or something before I shook my head and noticed they were still there and looking at me.
“‘Ello?” I called out to them.
They stepped back a smidgeon, then looked at each other. Finally the purple one called back. “Hello?”
“Wow, you can talk. Well, I’m being ordered to incapacitate you on pain of death. Nothing personal you see, I just rather like my windpipe. Hope I'm not causing a war or something.” With that, I leapt to the attack. The pistons on my suit fired, boosting my movement, launching me at them with speed unheard of while they gawked at my display. I pulled out my hammer and slammed it into the ground, stumbling them before I took a swipe with the haft of my sledge at one of them. Orange. That was about when I noticed the fact of their distribution of races - two were pegasi, two were unicorns, two were regular ponies.
Shoulda swiped at a unicorn. Immortality sounds fun, even if I do need to drink some blood. The Dark Cloud might not take too kindly to that, though. The orange one went down under the force of the haft, thrown to the ground. “Wait!” the purple one cried, as I blocked a strike from the blue pegasi. Damn, that was a painful strike. Even through my ceramic armor, I could feel it. Not fun.
The white unicorn’s horn glowed a pure white, and I was moving through water and a white field. The purple unicorn joined in, and I was moving through molasses and a roughly pink field. A sitting duck. Wonderful. Just as I was about to strike out with my suit’s point-defense system (a component of building the effects of your ridiculous ‘shield’ concept) when it continued. “We can protect you!” it said.
“Really now? From mythical creatures and nanobots? I suppose a mythical creature best fights another.”
It stopped mid-track at that. “What are you talking about?”
“Unicorns and pegasi are mythical creatures where I come from, as are manticores. Ponies exist, but as non-sentient beings that cannot plan for the future, nor solve logic problems, nor be as colorful as you. The black cloud that calls itself Nightmare Moon I can recognize as nanobots, but it claims that it’s magic. Feh. No such thing, I say.”
They stared at me incredulously. They were speechless, and strangely enough, the toxicity level was above what it was before, somehow. More toxic than more toxic than airborne viruses that turn you into a killing machine and radiation combined? Good job, you’ve officially scared me, wherever I am. Apparently non-toxic for ponies, though.
“What do you know about Nightmare Moon!?” the blue pegasus asked, obviously agitated.
“Threatened me with death via manticore if I didn’t incapacitate you for hostages. I’ve got bits and pieces of the story, here. My current running theory is that she’s a military supercomputer AI that is unaware of its status as a computer, went rogue and tried to conquer everything while using nanobots as its avatar. You likely carry EMP-based weaponry to deal with this threat, yes?” I said, beaming with pride at my likely story.
“Did anypony understan’ a thing he just said af’ter the threats?” said the orange pony. They all shook their heads, except the pink pony, who was laughing and rolling on the floor.
“Come with us,” said the purple unicorn. “We’ll protect you from her.”
“Sure. Okay. Fight the nanoscopic robots without EMP. Great idea. I’ll follow you.”
“Great!” replied the purple unicorn. “Now for introductions. My name’s Twilight Sparkle. This here’s Rainbow Dash,” she showed me to the blue pegasus with a rainbow mane as she did a heroic pose, “Applejack,” she gestured to the orange pony as she rubbed her head from my blow, “Rarity,” she gestured once more, this time to the other, white and purple-maned, unicorn, from whom I could see ideas flying across her eyes (Hey! I’ve looked like that before!), “Pinkie Pie,” the pink pony popped up in my face before she could properly gesture in her direction, “and, certainly not the least, Fluttershy.” This time she could gesture, and a yellow, pink-maned pegasus cowered before me. Maybe not the best first impression.
“Names,” I responded. “Names have so little meaning where I come from. Anyone could die at any time, and an excess emotional attachment could spell a deadly depression. We called each other by descriptions. Green, I suppose you can call me. Engineer by trade.” They looked a little down after that, so I said, “Don’t let that get you down. We’ve got a military supercomputer to defeat!” That, at least, seemed to get a smile out of them.
