Transmission

It 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.