"She is a very qualified candidate your highness,". Celestia glanced at the sergeant with a concerned look.
"She has the strength of a bunny rabbit and the courage of a mouse. She cannot operate our weaponry, or charge in the face of danger. Her genetics match up, sure, but her family is infamous for insanity and weakness, and lack of skills. I remember her great grandfather died without a cutiemark. Obviously not war material, and trust me sergeant I have lived for a millennia and experienced the most crude of wars and have seen ponies like her go to war. It did not end well for themselves nor the citizens of Equestria. She should just stay home and tend to her farms."
"Yes, but m'am, times have changed, we have developed newer technology, newer weapons, weapons that can only be operated by ponies such as herself if our calculations are correct, and this is no ordinary war, this is not of Equestria, or of our entire planet either. Chances are to be taken at the best opportunity."
"Do you even think this is a war? How can you be so sure? They are possibly a threat. I have done the math myself, there is a 8.0423% chance that they are going to interact with our planet. Nothing to change the course of ones destiny over. And certainly not something to turn a pony into a weapon over either. As far as we know, they don't even know we exist."
"But that's the thing princess Celestia, what if they do? What if they try to kill us, wipe us out? The security of Equestria has been based on precautions. Remember the changeling invasion? It was simply a rumor that changelings had wanted to invade, and because we took this rumor so seriously, Canterlot would have been destroyed if it weren't for the ponies who asked the question 'what if'. What if there is an invasion? That was the question that saved Canterlot, that is the question that can save us now."
"Actually it was twilight and her friends that saved Canterlot"
"But if it was because of the precautions would you be just as inspired?"
Celestia looked at the sergeant with a look that questioned his legitimacy before playing his little game. "Sure, I guess... But I still don't think drastic measures are required."
The sergeant looked up at the princess and sighed. "Princess, I figured you would say that. There's something I would like you to see. Bring it in Sweetdrops!" The doors opened suddenly and a female unicorn entered the room carrying with her a crystal. She placed it on the ground with her magic and a bright flash filled the room. A picture emerged from the crystal giving a holographic image of what at first seemed like a crater with smoke emitting from the center.
"Play the video," said the sergeant as he gestured the unicorn. She nodded and the image started moving.
Ponies were gathered around the crater whispering to each other when suddenly a strange energy emerged from the smoke to form a bipedal figure that was composed completely of some weird energy.
Plasma flickered violently around it. The figure could be described as a werewolf on fire expect there were no specific details or features that could be pinpointed at a given time, simply an intense electrical being taking a form that was cross between plasma and solid.
It jumped high up into the clouds until nopony could see it an then dropped right in front of the camera crouching down and producing an extremely high pitched sound that was almost unnoticeable it was so high. The pain it inflicted on every ponies ears was noticeable however because the camera showed nearby ponies ears bleeding a little. Then fireponies got a hose and sprayed the creature down.
The creature reacted violently to this and hit one of the ponies into the crater. Eventually there were dozens of hoses spraying down the creature, and it gave in and the plasma dissipated to show a weird disfigured rock that had holes in it like Swiss cheese.
The video ended.
"The rock was sent from the alien object and crashed down somewhere near philidelphia. There were 8 casualties. Most died from the immense sound wave, others from the monster itself."
Celestia was silent. Not exactly sure of what she just saw.
"M'am, if I can also...." He was interrupted as Celestia lifted up her hoof and nodded.
The sergeant nodded in return and said to the unicorn, "tell the others that project C.O.M.E.T has been approved, and that we should start operations immediately."
A few years later......
The RORY was beeping. The RORY never beeps.
As Halley was having her afternoon stroll around ponyville, her rory transmitter in her left coat pocket was beeping. It never beeps.
Halley felt a rush. She didn't know hat kind of rush, or of what was the rush, only that it excited her. She started screaming at the top of her lungs.
"The RORY is beeping! The RORY is beeping! Ahhhh!" All the other ponies around her started to back away from her as she was in her euphoric state. Halley darted toward her home in a flash. She may have knocked some people over but that didn't matter to Halley. All that mattered now was the RORY. That the RORY was beeping. And that maybe finally after her long wait, she would prove to everypony that she wasn't crazy. She would finally get the recognition she deserved. Maybe she would even be recognized by the federal space organization themselves.
She said to herself over and over again. "The RORY is beeping, the RORY is beeping!!!" She wailed in excitement as she galloped down the street. She wouldn't care if someone had offered her a thousand bits, or even a thousand thousand bits. She wouldn't have cared if the love of her life was on the other side of town, she wouldn't have cared if all of Ponyville was going to be flooded at this moment. Nothing was more important then this. Nothing.
She finally reached her house. She ran up stairs panting and ran to her strange gizmo. She Started to punch in numbers on her digital keyboard. "C'mon, c'mon! Please don't fail me now!" And as clear as day the file was right there. The recording that could change her career forever.
She pressed on the screen where the file icon was and opened it. The suspense was killing her, even though it was only milliseconds until she would hear the recording, it felt like minutes. Hours even.
Finally, the recording. She listened, at first there was static. Then more static. Then more. This went on for a while. "That's strange, Rory is only supposed to detect complex radio messages, not background radiation." She was starting to panic. Was this some sort of joke? Static. That's all she heard. Was there something wrong with Rory? No, that couldn't be it, Rory was specifically designed by herself to do his...it's job.
She waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. The cold dark sound was the only thing in the room besides her bed, the window, her closet, and the cereal she dropped earlier that morning and was too preoccupied (also known as lazy) to clean it up.
the feeling was abrupt, and it came from nowhere. It was not slow, it was not gradual. It just came. It came at the realization that her hopes have just been shot down. She started to cry with a big soup of negative emotions to follow after. Confusion turned into disappointment, from disappointment quickly turned into sadness, and there, turned to rage. She got up and smashed her mug filled with coffee. It stained the rug along with cereal but she didn't care. The RORY has failed and she couldn't accept that.
After a while of raging, Halley returned back to her normal self, but with just a little bit of an emotional scar. She hated it. She hated that feeling of being wrong. It was something of a phobia to her. Indeed, a phobia, but what came after was something she despised more. Failure. the feeling of failure. She hated it so much that she devoted her entire life so she would never be wrong or fail. She loved being right, and succeeding. She did everything in her power to keep it so. She hated failing so much, but she was so good at doing it.
Halley created the RORY in order to pick up complex radio signals from space in order to detect intelligent alien life. She used a little bit of magic and an old radio. Although she wasn't a unicorn, she instead used gems that had magical properties that she bought from the magic shop. Although being a genius, she still couldn't understand how they worked, only that they did. She used different minerals that sort of acted like electricity. She gave saw a gal by the name of RainbowDash use them cleverly on her pet named tank as a propeller.
And so, she decided to take a walk and simply rewind and think. She didn't really have a lot to think about so she just looked around Ponyville. She noticed how it felt so different here then in Canterlot, so much more intertwined with nature here. The high walls of Canterlot only covered the beauty of the forests off in the distance, at least in the part where she lived. Where she stayed in Canterlot, she was in the middle of the city She could not see the beauty of Equestria, let alone go outside at all.
She had some change in her pocket and she was feeling hungry, so she decided to head down to the market and see what was there.
When she got there she noticed that the apple stand was up. She could really go for some apple pie. She walked over, but as soon as she got there a line made up of about 27 ponies rushed right in front of her. She got angry again, but she was a patient pony so she could wait.
She used her time in the line to look at the different stuff around her. It was a rather cloudy day, with just a few sun spots shining through. The dirt path had little crevices that she saw some ponies trip over. A lot of old stuff where lying around all over the place as well, nothing she could or any other pony could use though.
She finally got to the front of the line and decided to buy two apple fritters instead of one apple pie. "That'll be 4 bits please." The mare said with a strong country voice. She took the fritters and left, but then she noticed something was terribly wrong.
An arrow that came out of almost nowhere shot through both of her apple fritters. She traced it back to someone holding a bow on the roof of some house. He had a black suit that covered his entire body and goggles that covered his face. He started to pull back another arrow, but before then Halley had already made her move.
She jumped and rolled towards the house the stallion was standing on and was shielded by the roof above her head. She expected the seemingly trained fighter to come down and shoot her, but to her suprise he did not come after her. That could only mean three things, one he had given up ( which she knew wasn't what he did). Two, he has a better strategy, or three he came with...
Suddenly another stallion she spotted with the same dress code had a sword in his hand, along with other stallions carrying various melee weapons. But she targeted the one with the sword because he seemed to be the leader. It was just a hunch, but even a hunch is better then nothing. They jumped off and ran towards her all at once. Three were Pegasi. They were all carrying spears. The rest of the 4 had different clubs and sharp weapons. She looked at her surroundings, looked at the ponies charging at her, and it was in that moment she formulated the plan.
Their attack strategy was so obvious, it was laughable. She picked up a wrench, some rope, and a rock. She carried the rope in her mouth, put the rock In her coat pocket and used the wrench as her weapon. The ponies all gathered up in a group and ran at her like one giant mob. She ran right at them looking almost like a barbarian with the ranch held high in the air as she stood on her hind legs, looking like a fool. Unaffected by the ridiculous appearance, the Pegasi broke off from the group and hurled them selves in the air, this was expected and she threw the rope right before the Pegasi could break off. The Pegasi got tangled in the rope and collapsed to the ground like flies caught in a web.
The abrupt descent of the flyers caused one of them to crash into one of the earth ponies on the ground. The other ponies tripped over there feet a little bit but they still managed to keep going, breaking the domino effect. One of the other ponyies jumped up in the air with a mace and attacked, but Halley quickly saw this and slid under the pony. She crashed into the other ponies and they all fell to the ground. She gave them all a big whack on there heads so that they would stay unconscious.
"Now, where is that guy with the sword..." She heard a tight gallop behind her and quickly turned around and saw the stallion try and knock her down with a blow. But Halley caught on quick and blocked it with her wrench, having the two tips make the blade get caught in between. She used the sword to thrust herself upwards almost defying physics and kick the stallion hard in the face. The kick was so hard it left the stallion unconscious.
"And don't think I forgot about you mister!" She grabbed the rock from her coat pocket and threw it at the archer who was camouflaged in some black curtains. The archer quickly leaped out of the way. Now, he was out in the open.
Halley picked up a large wooden plank and started running and screaming at the archer. The archer was startled and jumped back, but while jumping he tripped over a crevice in the ground and fell to the ground looking up at the sky. He was knocked out for a moment before opening his eyes and screaming in pain. Halley suspected that the goggles he was wearing had some sort of vision boosting abilities and knew that the sun would be too much. The dress code was probably because of some weird master mind who insisted to wearing the goggles at all times.
Halley walked over to the stallion and pressed on his arm with her hoof. The stallion winced in pain.
"Who sent you after me? Why are you here?" The stallion did not answer.
Halley started to press down harder. "Answer me or I will break your bones until you do!" Still nothing.
"Answer me right....."
"That's enough Ms.Halley!" A voice called out from behind.
Halley quickly turned around and saw a stallion with a red sergeants uniform and a monocle on his right eye that went well with his up class white mustache and eyebrows. He was accompanied by another stallion with a blue suit who was levitating a clipboard. The duo were accompanied by Canterlot royal guards.
Halley knew almost immediately who the stallions were, and why they were here. She didn't want to go back, not back to that wretched, cramped place again. She immediately started to run away.
She jumped on some crates that lead up to the top of the roof and started to run from there. As she jumped from rooftop to rooftop, she looked behind her and saw nopony following, but she continued to run anyways.
"The forest, that's where I'll go," she said to her self, while changing her direction. There was another rooftop up ahead. It looked pretty far away, Halley didn't know if she could jump it, but she let her adrenaline take over and leaped to the other side, only to fail and fall to the ground. Luckily, there was a wagon full of hay to catch her fall. How convenient she thought.
She jumped out the haystack and looked around for any guards. She saw the streets empty as all the commotion must have scared the civilians back to there homes. She saw no pony and continued to gallop away. And near the outskirts of Ponyville she saw the forest. But just as she was about to head inside a small sharp pain hit the back of her neck. She felt around to discover a dart and picked it out. It was a fluorescent pink dart with blue feathers. She recognized this from the school. It was a tranquilizer dart.
" Oh for buck's sake...." And with that she slowly drifted off to sleep.
