Welcome to Equestria, Please do not Wrangle the local Wildlife

Getting the alien back to the castle without anypony seeing him was a bit tricky but Pinkie Pie had an idea. "What if we get that old dragon costume Rarity made when we were following Spike and hide him under that?" This suggestion had the result of everypony present looking towards her, each with their own question.

Rainbow Dash was skeptical, "Err, Pinkie? I thought we got rid of that old thing when we had to follow him and those jerks into the woods? How exactly are we gonna get ahold of it? That was like a two week's walk away from here and I cant carry it while flying."

Pinkie grinned and zipped over to a nearby tree and reached inside of a hole in it, somehow producing the massive costume from within, "I went back and got it, now I keep it here in case of needing-a-giant-dragon-costume-to-hide-an-alien-emergency!" She gasped for air and then resumed her smile and 'squeed'.

Applejack gave her an unconvinced look, "Y'all really had a dragon costume stored away in this exact spot, JUST in case an alien happened to need to sneak into Ponyville without causing a panic?" she snorted, "Pinkie, you have said some weird things but I just don't see how that's true."

Pinkie's smile shrunk down to more of a slightly embarrassed grin, "Yeah, heh, I just thought it would be cool to have a giant costume like that and decided to go and grab it after you girls came back."

Lonestar had no idea what any of them were talking about so he decided to just get under the dragon shaped tarp and follow the ponies. As they walked through the town he peered out through the eye holes that were cut into the neck and took note of his surroundings. It appeared to be a small town that was entirely inhabited by these brightly colored ponies. His eye began to twitch as he imagined lassoing them and then putting them all in a pen. He didn't really know what to do after that part but it was taking all of his self-control not to bring out his rope.

They got back to the castle without incident and quickly hurried inside. Lonestar pulled off the hot costume and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. "Whew I'm glad to be outta that thing, it's worse than being cooped up in a drop pod."

Twilight turned to him, "Is that what that giant fireball that we saw fly into the forest was? We saw an unusually large meteor fly overhead and decided to investigate what it might have been since it didn't look like normal space debris." She began to hover in excitement and as she continued talking a smile grew on her face to the point of almost looking demented, "And now We get to make first contact with an Alien species! Oh my gosh I have so many questions to ask you!"

Lonestar began to slowly back away, the smile on her face was reminding him of the Bovinian scientists who had made him as they watched his skills as a cowboy develop. "Um, well, as long as ya'll keep to just the questions and don't try to experiment on me sometin' nutty like that we should be just fine, what do you need to know?" He had suspected they were an underdeveloped species by the primitive construction of their buildings but this particular pony was acting like she was going to dissect him at any moment, he subconsciously powered up his Hyper-Bull just in case they decided to jump him.

Twilight used her magic to grab a quill and ink from a shelf and got ready to write down the stocky alien's every word. She opened her mouth to ask her first question but was beaten to the punch by Pinkie Pie, " So what's your name? You never said and I can't throw you a 'Welcome to Equestria' party if I don't know your name" This was followed by an even larger grin.

Lonestar had destroyed thousands of robots and wrangled the population of an entire cow civilization but the way that pink pony was somehow able to smile literally ear to ear was creeping him out. "Uh, Lonestar, my name's Lonestar" he decided to inflate his reputation a bit, "I'm called the wildest gun in the galaxy." In all honesty he was the only person who called himself that but he was sure in his mind that if there was some kind of ranking he would be on top.

"Oooo, what's a gun? Is it like my party cannon?" Out of nowhere the frizzy haired pony produced a massive cannon. This in itself was not startling as Lonestar himself could create sticks of dynamite with the nano-generator in his belt but the fact that it was aimed directly at his face was a minor cause of worry.

"HOLY HELL POINT THAT THING SOMEPLACE ELSE!!" He lunged to the side and triggered his burst rocket boots to gain the extra speed and distance he needed to hide in an alcove in the wall.

Rarity chastised Pinkie with a disapproving glare, "Really, Pinkie I would have thought you could restrain yourself just this once for such an important occasion such as this!" She glanced to where the cowboy was now poking his head around the corner cautiously. "Its alright, she wasn't going to fire it at you, its mostly harmless anyway... mostly"

Lonestar came back over to the ponies, his spurs jingling lightly as he did so, "Sorry 'bout that, I get a tad twitchy when I see a gun that big pointed at me, usually that means I'm 'bout to be in some serious trouble."

Twilight gave a slight huff and brought up her quill again, "Well if you are quite done terrorizing our guest I would like to get on with my questions." Pinkie giggled apologetically.

"All right, whatcha got for me?"

She looked over him with a critical eye, "Why are you wearing cowpony clothes? Seems a little, well, primitive for a space-faring race." She turned to Applejack, suddenly aware of the fact she just accidentally insulted most of her family's life style, with a sheepish grin. "No offense."

"None taken."

Lonestar scratched the back of his head, "Well shoot, I've just always worn them. Long story short I was created in a lab by cow-people to be the perfect cowboy as an amusement park attraction to scare the calves. Only problem was security was really low and I broke out. There were just so many cows there I had to start wranglin' and I didn't stop until I couldn't find anymore cows, by that time the whole planet of them was out to pasture." He looked back to the ponies from his flashback and noticed their stunned expressions. "What?"

Applejack was the first to speak, "Mr. Lonestar, you wouldn't mind showing me and some of my kin how to do that would you?" Applejack, while confident in her skills as a cowpony couldn't even think about rounding up an entire planet's worth of cows.

"I'd love to but to be frank,  if I got started I'd probably end up roundin' y'all up along with 'em. And given that it looks like I don't have any way off this planet it wouldn't be the best idea to give everything that lives on it reason to hate me."

Twilight finished writing everything he had said down and looked back up at him, "Why are you used to these... guns being pointed at you? Are you some kind of space soldier?"

He laughed, pulled out one of his cigars and lit it off of the heel of his rocket boot, "Ma'am, I am one of the universe's most skilled mercenaries, I blow up buildings and shoot down robots for a living, gettin' shot at in return is just an occupational hazard."

Twilight began to scribble furiously, her report to Celestia becoming longer by the second. Rainbow Dash seemed to be very disapproving of the fact that he was a hired gun, she flew into his face and glared, "A merc huh? In every story I've read mercs are always the goons of some villian, why are you here? YOU WERE SENT TO SPY ON US WEREN'T YOU?! YOU PLANING SOME KINDA INVASION?"

The stocky cowboy just laughed and gently pushed her away from him before her mane was lit on fire by his cigar. "Listen missy, I ain't our team's spy, I just yell a lot and chuck dynamite, if stealth is what you want you would need to be looking for Leon."

"Team? What team would that be?" Twilight interrupted.

Lonestar gave a swift reply, "I'm an Awesomenaut, we're the best team of mercenaries in the whole galaxy, right now our head honcho is Zork Industries. They make all kinds of stuff including weapons so our job is basically to fight on whichever side of the war that they are currently sellin' weapons to so they live long enough to buy more of 'em, something like that anyway, I just pay attention to the fighting."

Twilight looked at him in shock, "You keep a war on-going just for money?"

"Well, yeah, it ain't any real moral issue though, its just for the money, besides, the war is between two groups of robots so nobody really gets hurt as long as they leave the battlefield before they start fightin'. They get to fight it out over whatever it is they are fighting over, no one really knows what that is, the manufactures get more money than they know what to do with, we get a job, everyone wins."

Twilight thought the situation over in her head, it did seem logical, "Okay, I guess I get what you mean, but you still haven't explained why you are here, We found a circle of burnt trees with your footprints by it but there wasn't any kind of wreckage or ship nearby."

"Well, the thing about the Awesomenauts is that we have a policy of 'As long as you stay out of trouble while with us, we don't care what you did before you were with us, And one of our members is a complete phsychopath, ended up mugging a galactic senator about thirty-six hours ago, the entire posse of that senator came after us and we had to use the drop pods we normally use to deploy on the battlefield to escape, I have no idea where the rest of the team landed, this planet isn't even anywhere on the charts."

Twilight's ears perked up at the last sentence that the space-cowboy had spoken, "Wait you all evacuated? Then I think your teammates also landed here, the night that we saw your pod crash Other sightings of strange objects in the sky were reported all over Equestria."

Lonestar did a double take, "WHAT?!" He looked at Twilight with and urgent expression that almost bordered on fear, "Shucks I gotta get them grouped together before something happens."

Fluttershy spoke up (though whether it was really up was debatable), "Well, as long as they stay out of the Everfree they should be fine, Equestria is pretty civilized."

"It ain't them Ah'm worried about! Its whatever they run into! Some of them have really nasty personalities."

Twilight made an extra note on her report and handed it off to Spike, (who had been silent out of fear) "Quick, send this to Princess Celestia." She turned back to Lonestar, "Now that we know there isn't any hostile force coming, we can help you find your friends!" She smiled like it would be a cakewalk, not knowing how wrong she was.

Deep in the Everfree forest, a pack of Timberwolves was on the hunt, they had caught the scent of something and had been following it for over a day now. They all stopped as they heard a rustling in the bushes near them, followed by sadistic high pitched laughter. A blast of red energy flew out from the leaves and incinerated one of the wolves, the rest began to growl as a short and giggling figure with three glowing red eyes and an aura of crackling red lightning surrounding her jumped out of the bush she had been hiding in. About twenty seconds later she placed her hands back together and her inhibitor cuffs began to suppress her powers once more. Ayla looked around at the scorched remains of the Timberwolf pack and grinned, "This place is dangerous! I like It!