Welcome to Equestria, Please do not Wrangle the local Wildlife

During the planning of the Alien Recovery Project (ARP), Twilight had overlooked something very important; Riding in the back af an apple cart covered in apples, unable to move is incredibly uncomfortable. Particularly when you are in the cart with a restless eight-year old.

"Are we there yet?"

"No"

"Are we there yet?"

"I said no!"

"Are we there yet?"

"*sigh* You just gonna keep this up?"

"Yep... are we there yet?"

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The cart finally stopped, Big Mac looked back to where the two aliens were hidden, hearing hushed voices, "Hey partner, we there yet?"

"Eyup."

They both poked their heads out from beneath the apples and looked at where they would be staying until further notice. It was a small storage building on the edge of town.

"How in the world are all of us gonna fit in that tiny thing? I thought those ponies were supposed to find us somethin' big."

"Eyup" Big Mac was also puzzled by the small accommodations, but he knew that since Pinkie Pie was involved things were not as they seemed. Speak of the draconis, he thought, Pinkie came bouncing towards the cart with her usual grin.

"Hi everypony! Come on inside! I can't wait to show you your new house!" She bounced to the door and entered the building. Ayla looked to Lonestar and shrugged before hopping out of the cart and skipping happily after the pony, her chain clinking along after her. Lonestar took a moment to extract himself from the pile of apples and opened the door. Inside was a simple room with a few cardboard boxes in it, hardly what he would call a house.

"Sooo, how long are we gonna be staying here exactly? This ain't really my idea of livable conditions."

Pinkie just smiled, "Oh there's more to it, follow me!" and with that, she opened up one of the boxes and disappeared inside. Lonestar opened it up to find that it was actually a disguised chute that led down into a much larger area. He lowered himself down and Ayla hoped after him. They both looked around themselves to find that it was practically an entire house's worth of rooms and space.

Pinkie Pie held her front legs out in a "Ta-Da" gesture, "Well? What do you think?"

Ayla grinned, "Neat! I want that room!" she skipped over to a big bedroom with several very large beds. It had been furnished by Applejack, and function was clearly put above form. She then locked the door and soon her light snoring could be heard through the door.

"Oh umm, That's the boys' room, the girls' room is over there." She pointed a hoof down the hall to a different room which had obviously been decorated by Rarity. There was a lot of lace, gemstones, and other things that she loved to use in her designs. Ayla slowly walked out of the boys' room, a dangerously calm look on her face, "Oh, okay, of course, I'm a girl, I have to like pink things and lace don't I? Okay then, I'll sleep in there." She walked into the room and shut the door.

"Aww she's a real cutie isn't sh-urk!" Her voice was cut off by Lonestar, who knew what was coming, grabbing her by the neck and running for cover behind what appeared to be a kitchen counter. A loud rumbling came from the hallway and red light flashed from underneath the doorway of the now occupied room. Pinkie uncovered her ears long enough to hear maniacal laughter what sounded like a tornado. The storm died down and silence filled the room. The door opened again and Ayla skipped out, her face now back to its normal toothy grin.

"You were right! I did like it in there!" Pinkie curiously looked around the corner and into the room. It was almost completely destroyed; the walls had scorch marks, the lace had been burnt to a crisp, the gems had reverted into the volcanic substance they came from, and a smell of sulfur permeated the air. Pinkie's jaw literally dropped to the floor, not even Spike caused that much damage so quickly when he gotten a cold and sneezed all over the library.

As Ayla happily raided the fridge Lonestar came over to Pinkie and said, "Word of advice, it ain't a good plan to tell her what to do, it only pisses her off and then she throws a tantrum, which pretty much means your ass is screwed unless you take cover."

"I think she just needs a hug!" She began to bounce towards the green skinned psychopath.

"NO WAIT!"

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Back at the castle Twilight was transcribing Fluttershy's report of the events in the forest to Celestia.

"And then this horrible black creature came out of nowhere! We just ran but the alien and Rainbow stayed and fought. Zecora and I ran back to her hut and boarded it up. About half an hour later Rainbow Dash and the alien came back, and they had another alien with them, she said her name was Ayla and that she was only eight years old."

Twilight finished the letter and had Spike send it off, "You're the local animal expert, did you recognize what the creature was?"

"N-no, it wasn't like anything else I've ever seen."

"Hmm, it could be some kind of lost species, I'll check through my books to see if I can find any hint of them, do you think you could draw it for me?"

"Um, sure, I'll try." She proceeded to mouth-draw with the pencil Twilight gave her to make a crude sketch of the beast that attacked them.

"There you go, I need to get back to Angel, He'll be worrying about me." With that she ran out of the door and off to her cottage.

Twilight looked to Spike, "Alright my number one assistant! we have some research to do. Grab any books on ancient or prehistoric monster that you can find."

Spike saluted, "Right, you don't think that maybe its something those aliens brought with them do you?"

Twilight gave him a worried look, "I don't know Spike, I sure hope not." They both began to gather books for the night's research.

Pinkie Pie opened the door, "Hi Twilight! hi Spike! whatcha' reading?"

Twilight looked up, "We are studying to see what migh- WHOA! Pinkie what happened to you?" Pinkie Pie was not looking her normal self, her normally bright and puffy mane was sticking out in straight lines and the whole thing looked as though somepony had stuck it in an oven. Her entire coat was slightly blackened and a few spots of fur were entirely gone. In essence, it looked like she had stuck a fork in an electric socket.

"Oh nothing, I just found out that Ayla doesn't like to be hugged. I'm sure we'll still be good friends though! I just need to find a good way to apologize." She hopped over to Twilight and twisted her head around to read the title of her book, "Starswirl's Compendium of Monsters? Ooo why are you reading that?"

Twilight hesitated, a bit unnerved by Pinkie's condition. She shook it off, reasoning that if she was seriously hurt than she wouldn't be at the castle. "Well, Fluttershy says that while they were in the forest, they were attacked by a monster, but one that she had never seen. So, Spike and I are looking through all of the old books on monsters to see if we can identify it, no luck so far though."

Pinkie Pie went over to a pile of books and grabbed the book from the bottom of it, "It will be in this one, its always in the last book you check so I'll just save you some time." She began to flip through the pages, "How about this? It looks almost exactly like the picture Fluttershy drew!"

Spike and Twilight rushed over, sure enough, the creature in the book was the spitting image of Fluttershy's mouth-drawn sketch. Twilight looked at the name over the image, "Monstrous Genericus, also known as a Shadow Maw, was one of the greatest scourges of the early pony tribes before the unification of the three kinds of ponies. A vicious predator, it was designed to be the perfect hunter of earth ponies although it would also hunt unicorns if they were available. They are thought to have gone extinct when The two Royal Sisters established their rule and ponies began to become more organized, and more often traveled in groups."

Twilight looked up excitedly, "Pinkie do you realize what this means? A species that was though to be extinct is still alive in Equestria! We have to mount an exposition to see if we can find one and study it and" she was cut off by Pinkie tapping her on the flank.

"Umm, Twilight? Shouldn't we be more worried about the fact that pure evil pony-eating monsters are loose in the Everfree?"

"Oh, right, of course, I'll send Celestia another letter, maybe she knows more about them than this book can tell us." She jotted down a quick note and had Spike send it, "I'm sure everything will be fine!" Spike began to hiccup.

"hurk! I think a reply is com-ING, Twilight!" He burped up the letter and opened it. "Huh, its from Derpy, she said that a few ponies have heard about some kind of giant squid thing saving some ponies from a group of griffin pirates that were holding them hostage. Think its another alien?"

Twilight nodded, "I can't think of anything else it might be off the top of my head." she turned to Pinkie, "I need you to go and talk to Lonestar and the new one, Ayla, and see if they know what this is, if they do, get Vinyl, head out there and see if you can bring it in."

Pinkie sprang into a salute, "Sure thing Twilight! It'll also give me time to get to know them better!" She galloped of to the bunker.

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Just outside the library a certain group of three fillies gasped. "Did you two hear that? Twilight said that there are aliens out there!"

Applebloom looked doubtful, "I dunno, Scootaloo we don't want raise any kind of trouble unless we are sure of it. Remember the last time we thought we had discovered aliens?" That particular incident had not been a crusade as much as a panicked race to the authorities which had landed them all several week's grounding.

Sweetie Belle grimaced, "Maybe we can just ask her about them, she might tell us."

"Right Sweetie, and maybe I'll be a Wonderbolt someday, if there really are aliens there's no way Twilight will just tell us. Did you hear what she said to Pinkie? Maybe we should follow her and see what we can find out."

Applebloom nodded, "Sounds like a plan to me." She held her hoof up and the all bumped it, then they proceeded to stealthily follow Pinkie Pie in a way that anybody would immediately notice if they were not Pinkie Pie.

They followed her all the way to the edge of town, where they watched as she went into a small storage building. "Now's our chance girls! lets rush in and prove aliens exist!" They ran in and barged through the door, only to find an empty room with a few boxes in it.

"What? where'd she go?" Applebloom looked at their surroundings, seeing no trace of the pink pony.

"Maybe there is some kind of secret passageway in here?" Sweetie Belle Suggested with a shrug. They searched the walls for any kind of hidden lever but found nothing.

Scootaloo then had an idea, "Hey! how about if we each hide in one of these boxes until she comes back?! then we can see where the passage is!"

Applebloom gave her  look, "Have you been reading Rainbow's Daring Do books Scoots?"

"Huh? What? No! Reading is for eggheads." she avoided looking Applebloom in the eye. "Lets just hide already." They opened up one of the boxes and all hoped in, however they did not expect to fall about six feet. They looked at one another with a mixture of fear and excitement. They got to their hooves and began to creep towards the voices of Pinkie Pie,  and a gruff older stallion.

"You said that it was a giant squid? Well, unless you have that kinda thing 'round here anyway I don't see how it can be anything else but Admiral Swiggins. We should head out and grab him, he won't cause trouble but he has a bad temper when it comes to any kind of pirates or smugglers, we should head out tomorrow with this... Vinyl person you mentioned."

Scootaloo turned and looked excitedly to the other two, "That proves it! there are aliens in Equestria!" Applebloom and Sweetie's excited smiles quickly turned to expressions of fear. Scootaloo looked behind her and saw a terrifying demon with three glowing eyes and green skin right in her face.

"Hi, what are your names?" *THUMP*, three unconscious fillies lay on the ground in front of Ayla. She sighed to herself and took a breath. "Hey Pinkieeee! I think you brought some of your friends here by mistake!"

Lonestar and Pinkie ran into the hallway, "Aw hell, who are these three?"

"Oh that's just the CMC, I don't know what they're doing here though."

"Can I kill them?"

"NO! Dagnabit Ayla you can't just kill anything you see. What should we do about them Pinkie?"

"Hmm, I'll go get Twilight, She'll know what to do." She bounced off towards the ladder, "If they wake up try to be nice to them, they're my friends!"

Ayla looked after her with a bit of a scowl, "What is it with her and being obsessed with friends?"

Lonestar just shook his head, "You know, if you weren't such a psychopath you might have some friends your age. Once we find the team we should see if these ponies can help you with that, they seem to know a lot about it."

Ayla just shrugged, "Who needs friends my age when I have you guys?" She gave him a hug as best she could while wearing her cuffs. Lonestar was shocked by the display of emotion, he wasn't aware the little nut job even cared about anyone.

"Umm... thanks?"  He patted her head a few times.

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Far away from Ponyville, about two miles off the coast two coral poachers were hard at work, stealing rare and endangered specimens of coral to sell. One of them surfaced and passed his bag to the one manning their small boat, "Whew, got a good haul this time!, I'm sure glad these fish can't tell anyone about this, we'd be locked up for years."

His partner answered in a rough Manehatten accent, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they can't, lets just get outta here before anypony tarts to come to the beach, they might wonder what we're doing out here." He went to gun the motor but found that the entire engine had been ripped off.

"What in the hay happened here?!" The first thief came over to look.

"Y-you don't suppose a shark did that, do you?"

A third voice rang out, it had a very proper and angry tone to it, "You're going to wish it was just a shark in a moment you rapscallions!" They whirled around and saw a horrible creature in front of them. It looked like a squid but it was wearing some kind of armor with a tank over its head.

The braver (or stupider) of the two drew a diving knife and charged it. The thing simply sidestepped him and smacked him overboard with the anchor attached to one of his tentacles, "HA! You brought a knife to an anchor fight lad!" it turned to the second diver, who was shaking in fear. He raised his anchor again but before he could strike he dove into the water and swam away screaming about killer squid. Admiral Swiggins laughed quietly to himself, "Ha, another victory for the Admiral!"