Transmissionby CyberpunkedChaptersTill DuskEntry OneDroneI'm Blue (Revised)Till Dusk[TRANSMISSION] Another night spent working on the project. Wires of copper bent into coiled shapes, perfectly circular runes charged to full magical capacity, readings taken from the charts connected to every important portion of the machine. A yelp, and a single drop of red smeared itself onto a wire. Reflexes kicked in a matter of milliseconds later, sending the hoof rocketing towards a nearby panel of wood. The energy provided by this hoof rattled the machine, no doubt knocking some parts out of their meticulously designated positions, unknown to the pony at the time. A grunt, and a light illuminated a nearby window, straightening the machine on the desk with the smallest scrape. Was it really practical to be working at such late an hour? A glance at the timepiece told her it was exactly thirty nine minutes and twelve seconds past the witching hour. She sighed, gazing at the machine with bleary eyes. How long had she been doing this? Long enough, anyhow. It was far past the time she usually went to bed. As she turned to leave, a noise came from the machine. It wasn’t the tock of a rune left sitting still for too long, nor a tick from the timepiece, but a different sort of sound. Like a vinyl record on a gramophone, crackling and popping. It was simple, so simple, but the fact that it was coming from the machine she had built had made it all the better. A grin of unadulterated happiness spread onto the pony’s features, lighting the room up better than Celestia herself could. - Twilight Sparkle had gathered her six friends and assistant into the library with a hastily stated “come to the library the project is done” reason. Each one of them looked at the cylindrical machine resting on the table in the middle of the foyer with a different emotion on their face. The most outstanding were Rainbow Dash’s air of aloof interest, earlier stating that she needed to get somewhere quickly, possibly for a nap, and Pinkie Pie, who had a hoof stuffed in her mouth from the former because of the fact that she simply would not stop talking. Applejack had simply cocked an eyebrow in the air, looking between the mass of wires and wood like it was a machine that had crawled out of the local clockmaker’s basement. In fact, that was where Twilight Sparkle had acquired most of the parts. Rarity was more focused on the hodgepodgedness of it, thinking to herself of ways to make it look more pleasing. Fluttershy simply sat on the floor, mind swimming with possibilities over just what kind of aliens they would meet. A clink from behind the machine, and the mare of the hour herself emerged, mane going this way and that, a pair of goggles over dreary red eyes, and a set of tools floating behind her. Rarity looked unnerved by how cheerful Twilight looked, but it had been something the mare had been working on for the past two months. Certain things could be forgiven. Forgiven with an hour at the spa, that is. “I see you’re all here,” she stated, matter-of-factly. “Before you ask questions, girls, I need you to be quiet. It took me a very long time to get this ready, and more time to get it tuned in.” The seven of them nodded, confusion growing on their faces save for Spike. Applejack was the first to ask a question. “What exactly are we lookin’ at?” Twilight sighed. “It’s a subspace receiver connected to a radio. It’s very complicated to explain, but the simplest I can say is that it’s got a very long range for picking signals up.” A grin then split her face, the third in the past hour. “It’s been done before, but no pony has ever gotten anything useful.” Rarity spoke next. “Are you going to say what I think you’re about to say?” Before any of them could react, Pinkie Pie bounded into the air, temporarily rewriting the laws of the universe to work in a comical manner. “Aliens!” Twilight and Spike nodded in unison. “I’m not going to go into explanations for anything, save that you listen closely.” A hint of giddiness crept into her voice, but it left soon after. “We’re going to be listening to aliens, but I doubt they'll speak our language.” Spike butted in at that moment. "Still, you never know." Pinkie got free of the hoof gagging her thirty nanoseconds after. "They could speak Griffon!" Eyes were pointed in her direction, soon leaving after a certain cyan hoof once again shut her up. Without another word, Twilight turned to the machine and pressed a single button down. A click, and the room was filled with the popping of static. It cleared seconds later. - “Till-Dusk, I have received your distress signal. Please respond.” -static- “Till-Dusk, I repeat, I have received your distress signal. Please respond.” “-r- y-- the--? He-p u-! W--e ----ing ou- of suppl--s! I-- th- o--y one sti- wa-----. The res- have gon- int- Stas--. I- se--ing --o th- blu---int- of th- shi-.” “Till-Dusk, I am on approach from port-rear-upper relative vector at one hundred meters per second relative to your position and decelerating.” “-nk you.” “Not a problem. It’ll be thirty seconds until docking on port-rear-upper relative. When I’ve docked, remove all passengers and transfer them to my ship.” “Thank you! I thought we were all going to die!” “Hopefully that doesn’t happen for a good long time.” “Just... thank you. Thank you so much!” “Like I said, not a problem. Just doing my duty.” “I’ll get everyone woken up. When are you docking?” “Fifteen seconds and closing. Best get moving.” “Alright. I’ll get to it.” - The group looked at the radio in surprise after the transmission ended. “Were those aliens speaking Equestrian?” All seven of them turned to each other, confusion highly evident on their faces save for Twilight Sparkle, who was very near to acquiring the powers of Pinkie Pie in the ways of suddenly breaking into song. Were the song to come to fruition, it would've been about the aliens, and any possibilities it may have been. It did not come to fruition, save for the mare giddily bouncing up and down, grin going from ear to ear. In the pregnant pause of three seconds that followed, Fluttershy was the first to speak up. “W-well, that one alien was helping the others... w-with the thing that happened. Oh I hope none of them were hurt!” The rest of them were silent. A rescue mission conducted by a complete stranger to the aliens onboard the Till-Dusk. That wasn't what they expected. Another pause. “What did we just listen to?” They looked to the sky, seeing a twinkle. Pinkie Pie grinned. Oh she would have a party to plan, and no language barrier to worry about! The last words were from Spike. "Will they have rayguns?" Not a single set of eyes met him. Entry OneIt was another day in Ponyville. The birds were chirping, the breeze was blowing, and the sun was shining. All was well. It was just another day for the locals. One pony was walking at the edge of the town, through grass a bit too high to be considered proper. Not that she cared. She'd moved here a couple years ago, and it was more grass than she had ever seen in Canterlot. Ever. This pony, a unicorn by the name of Lyra Heartstrings, was currently sitting by the water, enjoying a daisy sandwich she had purchased not but a couple minutes ago. It was delicious, as always. She loved daisy sandwiches, loved them more than she ever did the stuffiness of Canterlot nobility. Not that she ever loved the Canterlot nobility. That would be silly. Her mind drifted to exactly three days ago. That day, she was practicing with the local band. She couldn't remember which tune she was playing, though the part they were interrupted in was near the end. Something about a duel, written by a Griffon composer a couple years ago for a movie that flopped but had a wonderful soundtrack. Then Pinkie Pie had barged in through the window, screaming something about aliens with radio and rescue missions. The band packed up early that day, namely due to Blues "getting out of the groove", so to speak. It'd take another three or four for him to get back in, and in that time Lyra was either practicing for the next big event, reading the cheesy science fiction detested by most nobles, or walking around town. Then something went snap on the other side of the burbling brook, drawing her attention away from the distressingly small portion of sandwich left. She froze when her eyes saw what lay on the other side, shimmering imperceptibly but not moving at all. It was massive, standing a head above Celestia if she had to give the smallest measure, with a barrel twice as wide as a pony, hide with no imperfections but a single bisected ridge in the center. From the bottom of that barrel extended two massive legs, three toes shifting the grass only slightly. Massive, heavily muscled arms stuck out from the side, one of them holding something that looked like a block of metal, the other held up to the thing's face. Oh the thing's face. She would never get the sight out of her mind, not in a million years. Pushed back to perfect smoothness- no, flat- with no coat of fur but slowly oscillating hexagons in its place. Two eyes blacker than the space between the stars, almost-imperceptibly small blue dots in the center, icy and cold and calculating. There was a hole in the center of it, right where the muzzle should have been, and below that a grin with teeth too many and too sharp to be natural, but no jaw to match them. A tiny, rational part of her mind whispered unheard that it was a skull, that it was just psychological, and that it was probably more afraid of her than she was of it. The overwhelming majority was screaming in terror so loudly she'd have mistaken it for a Sapphire Shores concert, their cries that of get away and it sees you! In the upper reaches of the bureaucracy of the psyche, a major revolution was averted, and instead she locked up. After a time that was far too long, the thing removed the limb from the side of its head, lowered it, then paused. Lyra started breathing very, very raggedly. The thing waved. Not a big "help me" wave that you'd get from a pony stuck on an island, nor a whole body "long time no see" waves, but a "hey how you doing" wave, just a little twist of the wrist. If it was smiling, then it was smiling cruelly. Lyra had decided on not panicking, as that would involve running away. This thing wasn't scared of her. No, it wasn't. In fact, it looked to be about as scared as a tiger was looking at its prey. Another pause, this one more tense. Lyra took the time to examine it more closely. The thing cocked its head to the side. It wasn't a Diamond Dog, as no Dog could grow to be that large without it being known. It wasn't a Minotaur, for they had muzzles as long as or longer than a pony's. An illusion was possible, but what purpose did it serve? As a distraction for a robbery? No, there were few if any robberies she had heard of. Besides, the thing was far too real looking even through the shimmering. A glance at the three toes earned her a mental nod. There was a relatively large branch, one that would have taken Big Macintosh effort to snap, and the thing had snapped it by stepping on it. With as much effort as squashing a fly. Then a thought smashed into her head. It's still watching. Her eyes met the red dots in its, and she shuddered. It didn't look alive. It looked like a painted statue, suitable for an artists garden in Canterlot, or a convention of science fiction aficionados Something you'd see talked about over dinner between a student and her father, at lunch by a professor and his peers. Then the thing chuckled. It was cold, biting, mechanical, even. Not warm. Not nice. It couldn't have come from anything on Avalon. Nothing could make that noise. A noise that was heard over the brook and the chirps and the breeze, echoing three times over though the acoustics would not have allowed it. In the space of a second after the chuckle, it faded. Faded such that she could see nothing of it. Not hide nor hair or anything else. Her mind had settled on it teleporting away, deeming her unthreatening. That made sense to her. Since when did the physically and technologically superior alien species ever deem ponies a threat in the books? She let out a breath she had been holding for far too long, then looked at the rest of her sandwich. Her appetite had disappeared, and so did the sandwich underneath the water. The fish could have it, for all she cared. The two red dots following her movement went entirely unnoticed. DroneTime Turner was a fairly average stallion, if serious and sometimes unfun. He built clocks, he repaired them, and he appraised them. For some odd reason, the citizens of Ponyville needed their clocks repaired every other week. Or it was the nobles of Canterlot needing a new timepiece to match whatever style was in that week. Maybe an avant-garde designer in Manehattan needed a base to build something off of, and only wanted it on one particular day and delivered at one particular time. Right now, his attention was focused on the door, waiting for something, anything, to happen. There hadn't been any business at all that day, and a thought had said "just close up shop, there won't be any business, not today or tomorrow". Then his gaze traveled to the newspaper he had picked up that morning. The publisher was in Canterlot, but they accepted stories from anywhere. Most of them were hoaxes, but the one that involved Sapphire Shores enjoying that show about the things called "humans" was confirmed. Right now, as he flipped through the pages, one story caught his eye. ANOMALY SIGHTED IN SKY Hm. That could've been interesting. Unfortunately, a pony named Lyra burst in, breathing so ragged Turner could've mistaken it for the old moth eaten vest in his closet. Not that he cared about that vest. He never much liked vests. Right now, his attention was on the unicorn panting and mumbling and trying to breath. Of course, what could she have gotten so worried about this time... Probably that DJ Pon-3 character coming to the town, but Lyra didn't look happy. She looked scared. Really scared. Not the "ohmigosh I saw a spider" scared but "ohmigosh what is that" scared. He took a deep breath. Then he threw the newspaper at Lyra. That knocked some sense into her. She looked at Turner with wide eyes, then calmed down. Her mouth was open, trying to stutter out words, but Turner held up a hoof to shut her up. It was deadpan when he spoke. "If you're going to panic, you can do it where the public can see you. Otherwise I might get arrested." Lyra nodded. Turner always liked his deadpan voice. He could do well as an actor, maybe a lemony narrator, but clocks had been his calling. Or was it wasting time? He couldn't tell. Either way, Lyra walked out the door, allowing Turner to get back to reading his newspaper. ANOMALY SIGHTED IN SKY Turner hummed. Then he got to the part saying that sightings of odd creatures, along with pictures, had been sent in. "Now that's a bunch of lies," he muttered, looking at the grainy picture. It looked like a minotaur, save for the lack of horns and straight legs, but that was it. For all he knew it was just photo editing. And the image of the "anomaly" in the sky? It just looked like a ship from that one science fiction series with the evil alien conglomerate or whatever, on the side of the ponies. He never much got that, how the ponies in those stories were always victorious even though they were far out of their league. He much preferred non-fiction. Fiction had to be believable. What time is it, he thought. A glance at the clock told him. Fifteen seconds until noon. At fourteen seconds, he had ear protection in. State of the art, acquired from the factories of the Griffon Republic. At ten seconds, his papers were secured. Orders, requests, doodles, notes, all of those and more. At five seconds, the bars were over his windows. He could remember the first time this happened, how the windows had blown out and scattered glass all over that mare with the cowpony hat and orange coat. At two seconds, he was in the backroom. Parts of everything loomed at him, secured in little metal boxes or hanging loose. At point five seconds, he whistled. Not a particularly loud whistle, just a little tune he thought of. Impulsive, really. A resounding DING went through the building, shaking dust from the ceiling. A chorus of smaller dongs, some sounding before or after the main group. Such was the joy of being a clockmaker. Turner muttered underneath his breath, then returned to his desk. He'd have to clean it up later, but for now, he just swept the dust off the counter. That was the disadvantage of living and working with clocks, especially with skill like his. At noon and midnight, that would happen. It'd happen until every single clock was out of sync with each other. The chances of that happening in his lifetime were minimal. That was a curse and a blessing. Being such a skilled clockmaker. He sighed, then laid his head down on the counter. Oh thoughts of taking a nap tugged at him, whispering and murmuring and sighing, trying to get him to let his eyes go boop and then he'd be drooling. Hm. Maybe he could remember that wonderful idea for a clock... No! He had a job to do. He could nap when it was the weekend. Weekends were for napping, he had decided. There was a buzz, coming from just outside his window. He glanced in that direction, but only saw a flittering black shape. Looked like a beetle, if a large one. Maybe he could lend it over to Snails. He liked bugs, right? That sounded correct in his mind. Snails and bugs weren't too far apart, were they? They were both slimy. Or was that snails? Either way, it left an odd feeling in the back of his mind. Meh, he'd figure that out later. A minute passed, the sounds of normal Ponyville life resuming in the wake of the massive wave of sound coming from his tiny shop. Another half hour passed. The mailmare arrived, dropping off the mail that was addressed to him. How a pegasus with eyes like hers managed to fly was beyond him. Very nice, polite too, with a bubbly personality. Didn't she have a daughter? Yeah, that sounded about right. He'd go visit her the next chance he got. Turner wasn't very good with remembering who was who. The rest of the day was boring. Turner packed up at six o'clock exactly. Such was the joy of making clocks. I'm Blue (Revised)BANG. Blueblood sighed. That was the fifth tray this week! ... No, maybe it was the sixth. Or the fourth? He was having a hard time remembering. An incredibly hard time remembering. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he'd gone the week without hardly a wink of sleep, all because of some string of stolen books. It confused him. No, it didn't confuse him. It wormed its way into his brain, ate away at the part of his brain that controlled incredulity, logic, and spatial reasoning, and left behind waste that told him that maybe he should go to bed because HE REALLY NEEDED TO SOLVE THIS CASE! He laid his head to rest on his desk. Any second now, the secretary would come in with a tray, replace that one, and he would try to continue to figure out this case. "Sir?" "Lay the tray on my desk. By the flower pot." The clip-clop of hooves on wooden tiles. "Sir, you don't have a flower pot." That didn't surprise him. "What happened?" "The flower's died because you forgot to water them." Great. He'd need to run by that mare on the street who sold flowers, replace those flowers, then get back to solving this infuriating case. "Just... lay the tray down. And please, get me a glass of water." Clip-clop. "No, caffeine, double-espesso." "Sir, we don't have double-espresso." "Normal espreso will do." With that, Blueblood closed his eyes. One would think that an expert crime solver like him would see connections in this case. One would think that maybe all Blueblood would have to was to pull something out of thin air, quip, then put on a pair of sunglasses while the intro of some old song started up in the background. Really, really, he just wanted this case to be done. His mind drifted back to the start of this case. Just a couple missing books. Just some stuff about the history of ponies, technology, science, biology, stuff like that. Just five books, from the public library, easy enough to track down, but then it all went down the drain. An eye, bloodshot and red, cracked open to glare at the paper below it. 'Books Stolen At Canterlot Public Library' it read. No clues, police stumped. An identical article from a newspaper in the Gryphon lands, showing the blocky outside of their capital's public library and the chief librarian. The same thing happened to the Minotaur Republic, and the Federation of Allied Zebras, missing books from all over the libraries in every country. Not a single smidgen of evidence. The top unicorns underneath him had tried tracking spells, the most effective and long ranged that could probably match the princeses themselves, but even they came up short. A grim chuckle. Blueblood could remember the black-coated colt with the crescent moon cutie mark, bewildered looking as he stared up at the sky and told them all that he could feel the books in the sky between him and the moon. He'd gotten some crazy looks, but when the rest had tried they'd all come back to the same result. The books were in the sky! Floating! Right near where that weird asteroid that refused to fall to the ground, that looked like a big hunk of metal. He was going to use some of his vacation days, book a flight to Manehatten, see the sights, relax, try and get some shut-eye when this was all done. Heck, maybe even meet some of the family that he actually liked. Clip-clop. "Thank Celestia, my espresso!" Blueblood cried, shaky levitation already reaching out to grab the cheap styrofoam cup and bring it through the doors. "Could never live without this." He barely noticed his secretary watching him with wide eyes. Why should he? The sort-of lukewarm liquid energy was refreshing, despite the inevitable crash in exactly... four hours? Yes, four hours sounded right. Not three, not five, four. "Sir, are you okay?" "Perfectly fine, Secretary, just looking at a case about a bunch of missing books that I can't solve!" Blueblood slammed a hoof into his desk. "Wait a moment!" A bright light came to his eyes, hidden by a fog of deviancy and unrest with a cover of barely-kept up blond mane. "Secretary, I need an outside opinion! Yours will do just fine!" "Wait, what?" The red eyes of the colt went wide, but then it hit him that this was just another one of Blueblood's antics. He'd play along, if only to get back to his desk job. "If it helps, sir, I'll gladly tell you." "That's a good attitude!" Blueblood leaned back, "now tell me, what do you know about this case?" A pause. "A bunch of books went missing?" "Yes! Correct, one hundred percent, right on the money!" His eyes became deathly serious. "That isn't it, there's something underneath it and I don't know what it is but I want to find out!" Secretary backed away. "Sir, are you sure it isn't simply a group of pranksters?" "No, pranksters would leave a mark! Something to tell that it's a prank! Besides, after a month, pranksters usually undo the prank but not with this one! The books are still gone, so where could they BE!" Once again, Secretary paused. "Look at the photos of the crime scene, sir." "Yes, good idea." A folder scattered open on the desk, showering the files and papers on it with little square images of libraries and the innards of libraries. Blueblood scanned over them. "I don't see anything, do you?" Secretary trotted over, taking a look at a couple of the pictures. One of them caught his eye. "Do you see that one?" he said, the tip of his hoof on the aforementioned photo. "Yes, it's just an odd track. Why should we be concerned?" The fact that the Secretary for the Canterlot Investigation Agency knew a lot more about tracks than Blueblood was apparent to the Prince. This fact was forgotten at times, then rediscovered. Right now, in the dusty, overworked insides of his cranium, this fact was being excavated, and in three exact seconds, it would be unearthed. "It's an odd track! We have all the right to be concerned!" Blueblood whirled around to face Secretary. "Tell me what you know." "Sir, I know that this isn't any track I've seen before. It looks like gryphon, but it's got a pattern like a minotaur or a diamond dog. That's all I know." Blueblood racked his brain for anything that might fit the description of two legged gryphon, but nothing came to mind. "Do you have anything?" "No sir." "Well then we're still at squar-" he stopped. "Wait a minute!" "Al-" A hoof to the mouth interrupted him. "Stop being stupid for a second." Blueblood looked to the ceiling. "If the books are in the sky and the tracks aren't known, plus there's an odd anomaly that I'm fairly certain isn't natural between us and the moon, what does it mean?" Secretary removed the hoof from his mouth. "Sir, as far as I'm concerned, that hunk of something in the sky is just a hunk of something in the sky." "Hold on!" There was a flash, and another folder appeared. "Look in here. Actually, don't. This is a report we got from a local police station in Ponyville about some crazy red eyed two legged skull monster with gryphon feet. Now, it's from an upstanding and perfectly sane citizen, so I'd put some salt into it, plus we have sketches done, so that's good too, but have you put two and two together yet?" He paused. "Wait, I still don't get it." "Aliens, my boy, aliens." "What," was all Secretary could say. "Sir, you need to get to bed." "No, it makes sense! That anomaly in the sky is totally the alien space ship! You know that thing they saw was an advance force, and they're stealing books to research us!" Blueblood made a noise that Secretary couldn't quite place. "We need to tell the princesses!" Secretary facehoofed. "Sir, the monster near Ponyville was sighted near the Everfree. Chances are, it was simply some being native to the Everfree. The hunk of something in orbit is just a hunk of something in orbit, not a space ship as some would believe. These books are just being stolen because someone wants to steal them." When he looked back at Blueblood, the crazy prince had put on his best puppy dog eyes impression. Despite his self-proclaimed hard-boiledness, Secretary knew that Blueblood was incredibly manipulative, might've been crazy, put on multiple facades, and it would just be easier to play along with whatever craziness he had cooked up for that day. The memories of the Sixty-Three Incident were still fresh in his mind. Even fresher were the Grand Galloping Gala memories, wherein Blueblood had gotten cake slammed into his face and humiliated by that small-town mare who had dreams of being a princess. Blueblood had told him it was because most would just try and marry him to get money, position, or power, and he was trying to avoid that kind of problem, but Secretary had an inkling of a shadow of a suspicion that Blueblood just liked to be a dick for being a dick's sake. He'd probably start a war and end ponykind with that, but in the now, Secretary just wanted things to get back to normal. "Fine, there might be aliens, but you need to get to bed!" And getting back to normal would involve playing along with Blueblood. "Oh, alright!" Blueblood then fell down, scattering bits of paper. A second later, Blueblood was snoring incredibly loudly. "Sir? Are you faking it again?" Secretary poked Blueblood. He got no response. "Sir?" When he lifted an eyelid, all he got was an undilated mess that didn't focus on anything. "Fine, you're asleep. If you need me, just ring the bell." With that, Secretary trotted out.
Till Dusk[TRANSMISSION] Another night spent working on the project. Wires of copper bent into coiled shapes, perfectly circular runes charged to full magical capacity, readings taken from the charts connected to every important portion of the machine. A yelp, and a single drop of red smeared itself onto a wire. Reflexes kicked in a matter of milliseconds later, sending the hoof rocketing towards a nearby panel of wood. The energy provided by this hoof rattled the machine, no doubt knocking some parts out of their meticulously designated positions, unknown to the pony at the time. A grunt, and a light illuminated a nearby window, straightening the machine on the desk with the smallest scrape. Was it really practical to be working at such late an hour? A glance at the timepiece told her it was exactly thirty nine minutes and twelve seconds past the witching hour. She sighed, gazing at the machine with bleary eyes. How long had she been doing this? Long enough, anyhow. It was far past the time she usually went to bed. As she turned to leave, a noise came from the machine. It wasn’t the tock of a rune left sitting still for too long, nor a tick from the timepiece, but a different sort of sound. Like a vinyl record on a gramophone, crackling and popping. It was simple, so simple, but the fact that it was coming from the machine she had built had made it all the better. A grin of unadulterated happiness spread onto the pony’s features, lighting the room up better than Celestia herself could. - Twilight Sparkle had gathered her six friends and assistant into the library with a hastily stated “come to the library the project is done” reason. Each one of them looked at the cylindrical machine resting on the table in the middle of the foyer with a different emotion on their face. The most outstanding were Rainbow Dash’s air of aloof interest, earlier stating that she needed to get somewhere quickly, possibly for a nap, and Pinkie Pie, who had a hoof stuffed in her mouth from the former because of the fact that she simply would not stop talking. Applejack had simply cocked an eyebrow in the air, looking between the mass of wires and wood like it was a machine that had crawled out of the local clockmaker’s basement. In fact, that was where Twilight Sparkle had acquired most of the parts. Rarity was more focused on the hodgepodgedness of it, thinking to herself of ways to make it look more pleasing. Fluttershy simply sat on the floor, mind swimming with possibilities over just what kind of aliens they would meet. A clink from behind the machine, and the mare of the hour herself emerged, mane going this way and that, a pair of goggles over dreary red eyes, and a set of tools floating behind her. Rarity looked unnerved by how cheerful Twilight looked, but it had been something the mare had been working on for the past two months. Certain things could be forgiven. Forgiven with an hour at the spa, that is. “I see you’re all here,” she stated, matter-of-factly. “Before you ask questions, girls, I need you to be quiet. It took me a very long time to get this ready, and more time to get it tuned in.” The seven of them nodded, confusion growing on their faces save for Spike. Applejack was the first to ask a question. “What exactly are we lookin’ at?” Twilight sighed. “It’s a subspace receiver connected to a radio. It’s very complicated to explain, but the simplest I can say is that it’s got a very long range for picking signals up.” A grin then split her face, the third in the past hour. “It’s been done before, but no pony has ever gotten anything useful.” Rarity spoke next. “Are you going to say what I think you’re about to say?” Before any of them could react, Pinkie Pie bounded into the air, temporarily rewriting the laws of the universe to work in a comical manner. “Aliens!” Twilight and Spike nodded in unison. “I’m not going to go into explanations for anything, save that you listen closely.” A hint of giddiness crept into her voice, but it left soon after. “We’re going to be listening to aliens, but I doubt they'll speak our language.” Spike butted in at that moment. "Still, you never know." Pinkie got free of the hoof gagging her thirty nanoseconds after. "They could speak Griffon!" Eyes were pointed in her direction, soon leaving after a certain cyan hoof once again shut her up. Without another word, Twilight turned to the machine and pressed a single button down. A click, and the room was filled with the popping of static. It cleared seconds later. - “Till-Dusk, I have received your distress signal. Please respond.” -static- “Till-Dusk, I repeat, I have received your distress signal. Please respond.” “-r- y-- the--? He-p u-! W--e ----ing ou- of suppl--s! I-- th- o--y one sti- wa-----. The res- have gon- int- Stas--. I- se--ing --o th- blu---int- of th- shi-.” “Till-Dusk, I am on approach from port-rear-upper relative vector at one hundred meters per second relative to your position and decelerating.” “-nk you.” “Not a problem. It’ll be thirty seconds until docking on port-rear-upper relative. When I’ve docked, remove all passengers and transfer them to my ship.” “Thank you! I thought we were all going to die!” “Hopefully that doesn’t happen for a good long time.” “Just... thank you. Thank you so much!” “Like I said, not a problem. Just doing my duty.” “I’ll get everyone woken up. When are you docking?” “Fifteen seconds and closing. Best get moving.” “Alright. I’ll get to it.” - The group looked at the radio in surprise after the transmission ended. “Were those aliens speaking Equestrian?” All seven of them turned to each other, confusion highly evident on their faces save for Twilight Sparkle, who was very near to acquiring the powers of Pinkie Pie in the ways of suddenly breaking into song. Were the song to come to fruition, it would've been about the aliens, and any possibilities it may have been. It did not come to fruition, save for the mare giddily bouncing up and down, grin going from ear to ear. In the pregnant pause of three seconds that followed, Fluttershy was the first to speak up. “W-well, that one alien was helping the others... w-with the thing that happened. Oh I hope none of them were hurt!” The rest of them were silent. A rescue mission conducted by a complete stranger to the aliens onboard the Till-Dusk. That wasn't what they expected. Another pause. “What did we just listen to?” They looked to the sky, seeing a twinkle. Pinkie Pie grinned. Oh she would have a party to plan, and no language barrier to worry about! The last words were from Spike. "Will they have rayguns?" Not a single set of eyes met him.
Entry OneIt was another day in Ponyville. The birds were chirping, the breeze was blowing, and the sun was shining. All was well. It was just another day for the locals. One pony was walking at the edge of the town, through grass a bit too high to be considered proper. Not that she cared. She'd moved here a couple years ago, and it was more grass than she had ever seen in Canterlot. Ever. This pony, a unicorn by the name of Lyra Heartstrings, was currently sitting by the water, enjoying a daisy sandwich she had purchased not but a couple minutes ago. It was delicious, as always. She loved daisy sandwiches, loved them more than she ever did the stuffiness of Canterlot nobility. Not that she ever loved the Canterlot nobility. That would be silly. Her mind drifted to exactly three days ago. That day, she was practicing with the local band. She couldn't remember which tune she was playing, though the part they were interrupted in was near the end. Something about a duel, written by a Griffon composer a couple years ago for a movie that flopped but had a wonderful soundtrack. Then Pinkie Pie had barged in through the window, screaming something about aliens with radio and rescue missions. The band packed up early that day, namely due to Blues "getting out of the groove", so to speak. It'd take another three or four for him to get back in, and in that time Lyra was either practicing for the next big event, reading the cheesy science fiction detested by most nobles, or walking around town. Then something went snap on the other side of the burbling brook, drawing her attention away from the distressingly small portion of sandwich left. She froze when her eyes saw what lay on the other side, shimmering imperceptibly but not moving at all. It was massive, standing a head above Celestia if she had to give the smallest measure, with a barrel twice as wide as a pony, hide with no imperfections but a single bisected ridge in the center. From the bottom of that barrel extended two massive legs, three toes shifting the grass only slightly. Massive, heavily muscled arms stuck out from the side, one of them holding something that looked like a block of metal, the other held up to the thing's face. Oh the thing's face. She would never get the sight out of her mind, not in a million years. Pushed back to perfect smoothness- no, flat- with no coat of fur but slowly oscillating hexagons in its place. Two eyes blacker than the space between the stars, almost-imperceptibly small blue dots in the center, icy and cold and calculating. There was a hole in the center of it, right where the muzzle should have been, and below that a grin with teeth too many and too sharp to be natural, but no jaw to match them. A tiny, rational part of her mind whispered unheard that it was a skull, that it was just psychological, and that it was probably more afraid of her than she was of it. The overwhelming majority was screaming in terror so loudly she'd have mistaken it for a Sapphire Shores concert, their cries that of get away and it sees you! In the upper reaches of the bureaucracy of the psyche, a major revolution was averted, and instead she locked up. After a time that was far too long, the thing removed the limb from the side of its head, lowered it, then paused. Lyra started breathing very, very raggedly. The thing waved. Not a big "help me" wave that you'd get from a pony stuck on an island, nor a whole body "long time no see" waves, but a "hey how you doing" wave, just a little twist of the wrist. If it was smiling, then it was smiling cruelly. Lyra had decided on not panicking, as that would involve running away. This thing wasn't scared of her. No, it wasn't. In fact, it looked to be about as scared as a tiger was looking at its prey. Another pause, this one more tense. Lyra took the time to examine it more closely. The thing cocked its head to the side. It wasn't a Diamond Dog, as no Dog could grow to be that large without it being known. It wasn't a Minotaur, for they had muzzles as long as or longer than a pony's. An illusion was possible, but what purpose did it serve? As a distraction for a robbery? No, there were few if any robberies she had heard of. Besides, the thing was far too real looking even through the shimmering. A glance at the three toes earned her a mental nod. There was a relatively large branch, one that would have taken Big Macintosh effort to snap, and the thing had snapped it by stepping on it. With as much effort as squashing a fly. Then a thought smashed into her head. It's still watching. Her eyes met the red dots in its, and she shuddered. It didn't look alive. It looked like a painted statue, suitable for an artists garden in Canterlot, or a convention of science fiction aficionados Something you'd see talked about over dinner between a student and her father, at lunch by a professor and his peers. Then the thing chuckled. It was cold, biting, mechanical, even. Not warm. Not nice. It couldn't have come from anything on Avalon. Nothing could make that noise. A noise that was heard over the brook and the chirps and the breeze, echoing three times over though the acoustics would not have allowed it. In the space of a second after the chuckle, it faded. Faded such that she could see nothing of it. Not hide nor hair or anything else. Her mind had settled on it teleporting away, deeming her unthreatening. That made sense to her. Since when did the physically and technologically superior alien species ever deem ponies a threat in the books? She let out a breath she had been holding for far too long, then looked at the rest of her sandwich. Her appetite had disappeared, and so did the sandwich underneath the water. The fish could have it, for all she cared. The two red dots following her movement went entirely unnoticed.
DroneTime Turner was a fairly average stallion, if serious and sometimes unfun. He built clocks, he repaired them, and he appraised them. For some odd reason, the citizens of Ponyville needed their clocks repaired every other week. Or it was the nobles of Canterlot needing a new timepiece to match whatever style was in that week. Maybe an avant-garde designer in Manehattan needed a base to build something off of, and only wanted it on one particular day and delivered at one particular time. Right now, his attention was focused on the door, waiting for something, anything, to happen. There hadn't been any business at all that day, and a thought had said "just close up shop, there won't be any business, not today or tomorrow". Then his gaze traveled to the newspaper he had picked up that morning. The publisher was in Canterlot, but they accepted stories from anywhere. Most of them were hoaxes, but the one that involved Sapphire Shores enjoying that show about the things called "humans" was confirmed. Right now, as he flipped through the pages, one story caught his eye. ANOMALY SIGHTED IN SKY Hm. That could've been interesting. Unfortunately, a pony named Lyra burst in, breathing so ragged Turner could've mistaken it for the old moth eaten vest in his closet. Not that he cared about that vest. He never much liked vests. Right now, his attention was on the unicorn panting and mumbling and trying to breath. Of course, what could she have gotten so worried about this time... Probably that DJ Pon-3 character coming to the town, but Lyra didn't look happy. She looked scared. Really scared. Not the "ohmigosh I saw a spider" scared but "ohmigosh what is that" scared. He took a deep breath. Then he threw the newspaper at Lyra. That knocked some sense into her. She looked at Turner with wide eyes, then calmed down. Her mouth was open, trying to stutter out words, but Turner held up a hoof to shut her up. It was deadpan when he spoke. "If you're going to panic, you can do it where the public can see you. Otherwise I might get arrested." Lyra nodded. Turner always liked his deadpan voice. He could do well as an actor, maybe a lemony narrator, but clocks had been his calling. Or was it wasting time? He couldn't tell. Either way, Lyra walked out the door, allowing Turner to get back to reading his newspaper. ANOMALY SIGHTED IN SKY Turner hummed. Then he got to the part saying that sightings of odd creatures, along with pictures, had been sent in. "Now that's a bunch of lies," he muttered, looking at the grainy picture. It looked like a minotaur, save for the lack of horns and straight legs, but that was it. For all he knew it was just photo editing. And the image of the "anomaly" in the sky? It just looked like a ship from that one science fiction series with the evil alien conglomerate or whatever, on the side of the ponies. He never much got that, how the ponies in those stories were always victorious even though they were far out of their league. He much preferred non-fiction. Fiction had to be believable. What time is it, he thought. A glance at the clock told him. Fifteen seconds until noon. At fourteen seconds, he had ear protection in. State of the art, acquired from the factories of the Griffon Republic. At ten seconds, his papers were secured. Orders, requests, doodles, notes, all of those and more. At five seconds, the bars were over his windows. He could remember the first time this happened, how the windows had blown out and scattered glass all over that mare with the cowpony hat and orange coat. At two seconds, he was in the backroom. Parts of everything loomed at him, secured in little metal boxes or hanging loose. At point five seconds, he whistled. Not a particularly loud whistle, just a little tune he thought of. Impulsive, really. A resounding DING went through the building, shaking dust from the ceiling. A chorus of smaller dongs, some sounding before or after the main group. Such was the joy of being a clockmaker. Turner muttered underneath his breath, then returned to his desk. He'd have to clean it up later, but for now, he just swept the dust off the counter. That was the disadvantage of living and working with clocks, especially with skill like his. At noon and midnight, that would happen. It'd happen until every single clock was out of sync with each other. The chances of that happening in his lifetime were minimal. That was a curse and a blessing. Being such a skilled clockmaker. He sighed, then laid his head down on the counter. Oh thoughts of taking a nap tugged at him, whispering and murmuring and sighing, trying to get him to let his eyes go boop and then he'd be drooling. Hm. Maybe he could remember that wonderful idea for a clock... No! He had a job to do. He could nap when it was the weekend. Weekends were for napping, he had decided. There was a buzz, coming from just outside his window. He glanced in that direction, but only saw a flittering black shape. Looked like a beetle, if a large one. Maybe he could lend it over to Snails. He liked bugs, right? That sounded correct in his mind. Snails and bugs weren't too far apart, were they? They were both slimy. Or was that snails? Either way, it left an odd feeling in the back of his mind. Meh, he'd figure that out later. A minute passed, the sounds of normal Ponyville life resuming in the wake of the massive wave of sound coming from his tiny shop. Another half hour passed. The mailmare arrived, dropping off the mail that was addressed to him. How a pegasus with eyes like hers managed to fly was beyond him. Very nice, polite too, with a bubbly personality. Didn't she have a daughter? Yeah, that sounded about right. He'd go visit her the next chance he got. Turner wasn't very good with remembering who was who. The rest of the day was boring. Turner packed up at six o'clock exactly. Such was the joy of making clocks.
I'm Blue (Revised)BANG. Blueblood sighed. That was the fifth tray this week! ... No, maybe it was the sixth. Or the fourth? He was having a hard time remembering. An incredibly hard time remembering. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he'd gone the week without hardly a wink of sleep, all because of some string of stolen books. It confused him. No, it didn't confuse him. It wormed its way into his brain, ate away at the part of his brain that controlled incredulity, logic, and spatial reasoning, and left behind waste that told him that maybe he should go to bed because HE REALLY NEEDED TO SOLVE THIS CASE! He laid his head to rest on his desk. Any second now, the secretary would come in with a tray, replace that one, and he would try to continue to figure out this case. "Sir?" "Lay the tray on my desk. By the flower pot." The clip-clop of hooves on wooden tiles. "Sir, you don't have a flower pot." That didn't surprise him. "What happened?" "The flower's died because you forgot to water them." Great. He'd need to run by that mare on the street who sold flowers, replace those flowers, then get back to solving this infuriating case. "Just... lay the tray down. And please, get me a glass of water." Clip-clop. "No, caffeine, double-espesso." "Sir, we don't have double-espresso." "Normal espreso will do." With that, Blueblood closed his eyes. One would think that an expert crime solver like him would see connections in this case. One would think that maybe all Blueblood would have to was to pull something out of thin air, quip, then put on a pair of sunglasses while the intro of some old song started up in the background. Really, really, he just wanted this case to be done. His mind drifted back to the start of this case. Just a couple missing books. Just some stuff about the history of ponies, technology, science, biology, stuff like that. Just five books, from the public library, easy enough to track down, but then it all went down the drain. An eye, bloodshot and red, cracked open to glare at the paper below it. 'Books Stolen At Canterlot Public Library' it read. No clues, police stumped. An identical article from a newspaper in the Gryphon lands, showing the blocky outside of their capital's public library and the chief librarian. The same thing happened to the Minotaur Republic, and the Federation of Allied Zebras, missing books from all over the libraries in every country. Not a single smidgen of evidence. The top unicorns underneath him had tried tracking spells, the most effective and long ranged that could probably match the princeses themselves, but even they came up short. A grim chuckle. Blueblood could remember the black-coated colt with the crescent moon cutie mark, bewildered looking as he stared up at the sky and told them all that he could feel the books in the sky between him and the moon. He'd gotten some crazy looks, but when the rest had tried they'd all come back to the same result. The books were in the sky! Floating! Right near where that weird asteroid that refused to fall to the ground, that looked like a big hunk of metal. He was going to use some of his vacation days, book a flight to Manehatten, see the sights, relax, try and get some shut-eye when this was all done. Heck, maybe even meet some of the family that he actually liked. Clip-clop. "Thank Celestia, my espresso!" Blueblood cried, shaky levitation already reaching out to grab the cheap styrofoam cup and bring it through the doors. "Could never live without this." He barely noticed his secretary watching him with wide eyes. Why should he? The sort-of lukewarm liquid energy was refreshing, despite the inevitable crash in exactly... four hours? Yes, four hours sounded right. Not three, not five, four. "Sir, are you okay?" "Perfectly fine, Secretary, just looking at a case about a bunch of missing books that I can't solve!" Blueblood slammed a hoof into his desk. "Wait a moment!" A bright light came to his eyes, hidden by a fog of deviancy and unrest with a cover of barely-kept up blond mane. "Secretary, I need an outside opinion! Yours will do just fine!" "Wait, what?" The red eyes of the colt went wide, but then it hit him that this was just another one of Blueblood's antics. He'd play along, if only to get back to his desk job. "If it helps, sir, I'll gladly tell you." "That's a good attitude!" Blueblood leaned back, "now tell me, what do you know about this case?" A pause. "A bunch of books went missing?" "Yes! Correct, one hundred percent, right on the money!" His eyes became deathly serious. "That isn't it, there's something underneath it and I don't know what it is but I want to find out!" Secretary backed away. "Sir, are you sure it isn't simply a group of pranksters?" "No, pranksters would leave a mark! Something to tell that it's a prank! Besides, after a month, pranksters usually undo the prank but not with this one! The books are still gone, so where could they BE!" Once again, Secretary paused. "Look at the photos of the crime scene, sir." "Yes, good idea." A folder scattered open on the desk, showering the files and papers on it with little square images of libraries and the innards of libraries. Blueblood scanned over them. "I don't see anything, do you?" Secretary trotted over, taking a look at a couple of the pictures. One of them caught his eye. "Do you see that one?" he said, the tip of his hoof on the aforementioned photo. "Yes, it's just an odd track. Why should we be concerned?" The fact that the Secretary for the Canterlot Investigation Agency knew a lot more about tracks than Blueblood was apparent to the Prince. This fact was forgotten at times, then rediscovered. Right now, in the dusty, overworked insides of his cranium, this fact was being excavated, and in three exact seconds, it would be unearthed. "It's an odd track! We have all the right to be concerned!" Blueblood whirled around to face Secretary. "Tell me what you know." "Sir, I know that this isn't any track I've seen before. It looks like gryphon, but it's got a pattern like a minotaur or a diamond dog. That's all I know." Blueblood racked his brain for anything that might fit the description of two legged gryphon, but nothing came to mind. "Do you have anything?" "No sir." "Well then we're still at squar-" he stopped. "Wait a minute!" "Al-" A hoof to the mouth interrupted him. "Stop being stupid for a second." Blueblood looked to the ceiling. "If the books are in the sky and the tracks aren't known, plus there's an odd anomaly that I'm fairly certain isn't natural between us and the moon, what does it mean?" Secretary removed the hoof from his mouth. "Sir, as far as I'm concerned, that hunk of something in the sky is just a hunk of something in the sky." "Hold on!" There was a flash, and another folder appeared. "Look in here. Actually, don't. This is a report we got from a local police station in Ponyville about some crazy red eyed two legged skull monster with gryphon feet. Now, it's from an upstanding and perfectly sane citizen, so I'd put some salt into it, plus we have sketches done, so that's good too, but have you put two and two together yet?" He paused. "Wait, I still don't get it." "Aliens, my boy, aliens." "What," was all Secretary could say. "Sir, you need to get to bed." "No, it makes sense! That anomaly in the sky is totally the alien space ship! You know that thing they saw was an advance force, and they're stealing books to research us!" Blueblood made a noise that Secretary couldn't quite place. "We need to tell the princesses!" Secretary facehoofed. "Sir, the monster near Ponyville was sighted near the Everfree. Chances are, it was simply some being native to the Everfree. The hunk of something in orbit is just a hunk of something in orbit, not a space ship as some would believe. These books are just being stolen because someone wants to steal them." When he looked back at Blueblood, the crazy prince had put on his best puppy dog eyes impression. Despite his self-proclaimed hard-boiledness, Secretary knew that Blueblood was incredibly manipulative, might've been crazy, put on multiple facades, and it would just be easier to play along with whatever craziness he had cooked up for that day. The memories of the Sixty-Three Incident were still fresh in his mind. Even fresher were the Grand Galloping Gala memories, wherein Blueblood had gotten cake slammed into his face and humiliated by that small-town mare who had dreams of being a princess. Blueblood had told him it was because most would just try and marry him to get money, position, or power, and he was trying to avoid that kind of problem, but Secretary had an inkling of a shadow of a suspicion that Blueblood just liked to be a dick for being a dick's sake. He'd probably start a war and end ponykind with that, but in the now, Secretary just wanted things to get back to normal. "Fine, there might be aliens, but you need to get to bed!" And getting back to normal would involve playing along with Blueblood. "Oh, alright!" Blueblood then fell down, scattering bits of paper. A second later, Blueblood was snoring incredibly loudly. "Sir? Are you faking it again?" Secretary poked Blueblood. He got no response. "Sir?" When he lifted an eyelid, all he got was an undilated mess that didn't focus on anything. "Fine, you're asleep. If you need me, just ring the bell." With that, Secretary trotted out.
