Vanquish

"Mother of me, where is this creature? What does it want?"

The thoughts that crowded Celestia's mind right now weren't good at all. This creature supposedly had a weapon and wasn't affected by magic at all. She didn't want to admit it, but the latter piece of information scared her a tad bit. Nothing could be TOTALLY resistant to magic...could it?

The white alicorn had been flying over the Everfree for what seemed like hours, trying to spot the creature or anything related to it. The only thing she knew was that it was bipedal and had some sort of "advanced armour" on. It wasn't everyday that you'd see a bipedal creature with armour on in the Everfree.

After about another hour of searching, Celestia was about to give up when she saw the old royal castle. She used to live there with Luna, mainly before her banishment. It'd crumbled and become decrepit. The plant life around here had grown all over it, covering it with moss and ivy.

"Maybe I should check in there?"

She doubted that the creature would be in there, but it was the only building in the Everfree. Even if it was decrepit, one could still hide in there if they wished.

After thinking about it for a few seconds, Celestia landed just outside of the castle. She noticed that the entrance was still locked.

"Good. The magical lock is still active. It should have stopped the wildlife from getting in."

Seen as she was the one who put said lock onto the entrance, she could easily unlock it. As she pointed her horn at the entrance and disabled the lock spell, the entrance opened as she expected. She walked in and memories began flooding back to her.

"I remember all of these robes..."

The robes and paintings on the wall showing her and Luna made a few tears come from her eyes. After a few seconds of this, she heard a bang from the floor above her.

"What was that?"

She went to investigate, hoping that what caused that sound would be the creature they had all been looking for.

Steel Blade and the guards who had originally seen the creature, or "monster" as they called it, had been looking for it for a good couple of hours now. They had hoped to find it quickly.

They were wrong.

"Alright my fellow guards, I think it's time to..." He was about to call the search off for tonight until he heard somepony screaming.

"HELP!"

Steel Blade and the other guards started running towards the screams and after a few minutes, he found who was screaming.

"Oh buck..."

What he saw startled and shocked him. There were a number of guards, about 3 or so, all pegasi, who had been injured. They looked as if something had penetrated their wings.

"Guards! Check on those 2 over there! I'll get this one!"

All the other guards saluted and went to do as the Lieutenant had said. He went over to see to a single Pegasi guard and checked his wings.

"Can you hear me?"

The guard nodded.

"How many hooves am I holding up?"

The guard looked at him. "2."

The Lieutenant smiled a bit at that. "Good. At least he's not disorientated."

He looked at the guard. "Do you know what happened to your wing, son?"

The guard nodded. "I remember....a bit. We were chasing this....strange creature and we were about to fly down to capture it, but it moved incredibly fast. Faster than any bipedal creature should be able to move."

The guard coughed and continued.

"It turned to face us and rolled backwards, going onto its knee's. It then used its weapon against all of us with impossible speed. It was so fast that I didn't even see it use the weapon. All I know is that my wings had been injured and then I fell down to the ground. That's all I can remember."

Steel Blade frowned. "Celestia..what have we found?"

The Lieutenant got up and put on a fake smile to the injured guard. "Don't worry. We'll get you all of you to the hospital to get you patched up. There appears to be no bleeding, which is strange, but good. I have to go find the princess. I'll leave you in hands of these fellow guards."

Steel Blade shouted to the guards and motioned them over to him. "I am going to find the princess. Take these injured guards and get them to the nearest hospital to get their wounds seen to."

The guards saluted. "Yes sir!"

He nodded at them and flew into the air. "I better find the princess soon so I can report this to her. Maybe she's even found the creature...hope she's alright if that's the case.."

"Ugh...how did I manage to fall out of bed?"

Sam expected to wake up and find himself staring at them weird horses he encountered yesterday. Instead, he was greeted with the floor.

He rubbed his uncovered head and remembered something all of a sudden. He checked the inbuilt storage (he called them pockets like any human would) in the suit and sighed in relief when he found what he was looking for.

"Shit. I'm glad I suddenly remembered about these. If I didn't have them, I might as well be dead already."

He brought out a packet of ciggarettes and his lighter. He popped one into his mouth, flicked his lighter open, lit it and put it to the ciggarette. He calmly breathed out the smoke and grinned to himself. "I swear, these babies can fix any problem."

His grin vanished when he heard the sound of someone walking upstairs...no...it sounded like something else...

Trotting.

He activated his helmet so that it covered his face and grabbed his weapon which was by the side of the bed. He quickly got up and pointed his weapon at the door.

"I'm prepared for you motherfuckers..."

Celestia was just outside of her old bedroom. She heard something moving about in there when she was climbing the stairs. She breathed in deeply.

"Why am I so nervous? It might not even be anything..."

She slowly opened the door and when she saw what was inside, she was shocked.

It was, what she presumed to be, the creature that they'd all been searching for. It stood as nearly as tall as her. Maybe an inch or two off. She realised what her guard meant when he said "advanced" armour. It had a weird looking thing covering its entire head. She guessed it was some sort of helmet. Its entire body was covered in mostly white and a bit of black. The helmet covering its head was nearly all white as well, albeit a few tiny parts were black and a few lines covering it were an orange sort of colour. A blue part was on the lower part of the helmet, where she guessed the mouth would be.

She also saw, what she presumed to be, its weapon. It was pointing it directly at her. She felt something that she hated.

Fear.

This was an unknown creature. For all she knew, it could kill her or harm her in an instant. She had no idea what it was capable of.

She walked into the room a bit more and noticed the creature backed away a bit and put its weapon closer to it.

"It's feeling threatned. I better say something..."

She cleared her throat and spoke. "Hello..?"

The creature kept its weapon raised at her, but it replied to her. "Hi."

"Good. At least I know the private was telling the truth when he told me about it talking to them..."

She stepped forward a tiny bit. "May I ask..."

"What are you?"