Once upon a time, before the magical land of Equestria, a race of creatures called humans lived alongside their pony cousins in peace and harmony. Together they would laugh and play in times of happiness, comfort each other in times of sadness, protect each other in times of danger, share their belongings in times of need, and open their homes to each other at night. Of all the creatures in the world, no two races shared such a close bond.

Because of this, the two races were given a special gift: two magical seeds that would create a pair of trees to mark the ponies and their human friends as the caretakers and guardians of the world.

To the ponies went the Seed of Harmony, from which the Tree of Harmony sprang. With its gifts, some ponies became stronger and formed a link with the land, while others grew wings that allowed them to fly and tend to the sky, and a third group grew horns to create several miracles with their magic. With these gifts, the ponies ushered in a new age of prosperity for themselves.

To the humans went the Seed of Life, from which the Tree of Life. However, the Tree of Life declared that it would only grant its magic, the power to manipulate the magic force of chakra to one. Instead of letting its magic seep into the world, the Tree of Life stored and nurtured its power, letting it accumulate over time so that it would one day bear a single fruit. A fruit promised to bloom in one thousand years time after the tree reached maturity.

Because of the tree’s refusal to share its gifts with all of the humans, the two-legged people became embroiled in conflict, each one desiring the fruit for themselves when the promised day would come, and a single human would be given magic. Although the ponies tried to stop them, jealous of the fact that their tree had shared with the ponies so completely, the humans refused to listen.

Then, the promised day came, and a human ate of the fruit from the Tree of Life, gaining its immense power. With this, she conquered the humans and proclaimed herself an empress of all creatures, humans and not. While the wars had ended, a dark time of subjugation began as the empress consumed the whole of the Tree of Life to fuel her own greed.

However, as all things came to an end, so do did the rule of the empress, thanks to the efforts of her sons, one of which used his power to seal her spirit and power within himself, and then cast the remains of the Tree of Life into the sky to become the first moon.

This son had two children of his own, which he passed on his powers to in the hopes of ending the conflicts that had begun to start up again after the death of the empress. Because of this, the sisters, who were ponies born from the Tree of Harmony to lead their race, declared they must leave their human friends before their little ponies were once again swept up in the growing conflict.

Using the power from the Tree of Harmony, the ponies left the realm of their birth for another. But before they departed, the elder of the sisters gave to the eldest son of the firstborn a special magic that he could use to one day call the ponies back should the conflicts end, and the humans were ready to welcome the ponies home.

To this day, we still wait for Indra to call us home.

Twilight looked up from the book in the restricted section of the palace library, and over to her mentor and fellow princess. Celestia had an odd look in her eye that Twilight had only seen a few times before, when the larger alicorn had become wistful. But Twilight had found that the best thing to do at such times was to simply continue and let the ancient pony focus on something else.

“You know princess, when I asked you if there really was anything to Lyra’s crazy human tales after my coronation yesterday, I wasn’t expecting something like this,” the new alicorn mumbled as she looked up from the ancient scroll that was preserved only thinks to the magic keeping it from being harmed by hooves or age. The fact that the town crackpot was actually right about there being a real government conspiracy to hide the presence of humans was a bit...disconcerting.

The comment got a chuckle from Celestia. “Yes well, you did ask for the truth Twilight. And after hearing that stuff you called evidence about humans in Equestria, I thought it best to show you this. We may have had a shared history once, but I can assure you that there have never been humans in Equestria. What exists now are simply ancient myths and legends passed down through the years about our time spent together with old friends.”

Twilight nodded and looked back down at the scroll in front of her with its ancient words mixed with several pictures that showed old drawings of what had to be the Tree of Life and the sisters giving a human a scroll of his own which was the instrument of Celestia’s planned return.

“It’s just sounds strange to me,” the purple alicorn said without taking her eyes off the pictures. “I mean…these humans and how they fought amongst each other, they don’t sound like anypony I would want to meet. Then there’s this Empress character…how could we have been friends with creatures like that?”

From what the scroll alluded to, it sounded like the humans were some kind of evil and greedy monsters, fighting and even killing each other over the fruit of their tree. Of course, Twilight could understand the basic sentiment behind the idea with the fruit, it had been one of her first lessons in friendship that you couldn’t put one pony above the rest without causing problems, but to go as far as they did…

“I know it must be difficult to imagine for one who has lived with the Magic of Harmony all her life, but remember the Hearts Warming story Twilight,” Celestia reminded her. “The truth of it was that after we came to this world, ponies separated into tribes for many years because of their differences and no commonality like the humans which kept us together. Luna and I were too tired to stop it, the spell we used put us both into a deep slumber for many years so we could recover. Ponies did manage to mend their ways, but only after the windigoes threatened their lives, if that had never happened, ponies might still be living apart like before.”

The thought Celestia’s words brought up caused Twilight to shiver. Just the idea of being in a world like that, separated from her friends in such a way… No, if the tribes of ponies had never found each other again, Twilight knew that she would have never gotten to know them at all. That thought was disturbing in the extreme.

Not wanting to go down that road anymore, Twilight switched her mind to thinking about something more academic. She could tell it was a pain in Celestia’s heart. “So, this magic that humans used, or some of them anyway, what was it like?”

“Destructive…and curative, depending on how it was used,” Celestia explained. “It all depended on the human wielding it, although not many could when we left I remind you. My sister and I felt a kinship with Indra because of the special kind of magic he possessed within his eyes. When activated, they would glow red, and allow him to send others into a waking dream or ignite unquenchable flames with a thought. He named the in our honor…well, our ancient names, the ones ponies forgot while Luna and I hibernated.”

The pony princess smirked. “I think Luna misses her older one, it sounded more regal. But…I’m betting none of the foals she connects with so easily these days wouldn’t like to try and pronounce Tsukuyomi.”

“So…what else were they like princess? Their magic, I mean. What kind of magic did the human empress possess, and you mentioned sons, so there had to be more than just one practitioner. What kind of magic did the other human have, and the ones before them, who were the children of the empress, if its passed by bloodline, they must have had special magic as well, right?”

Celestia couldn’t help but laugh at Twilight’s inquisitive nature. It was good to see that her former student hadn’t stopped searching for knowledge once she had achieved per status as an alicorn. “Very well my student. I shall tell you all that I remember.”

What had been one of the former hidden lairs of the internationally wanted criminal Orochimaru was just as Sasuke remembered it during his time training under the former Leaf ninja before the man had met his end at Sasuke’s hands…and later Itachi’s. Although, if the snake was truly dead, Sasuke would put on a leaf headband again.

Thankfully, the hideout they had managed to find on their way to the Kage Summit was one of Orochimaru’s resupply bases instead of a lab, or one of the larger hideouts that had either been abandoned, destroyed, or overtaken by the experimental subjects like most of the others. As far as he knew, none of them had actually been discovered by the other villages.

It was also the bunker that Sasuke could use to replace the powerful summon that he had lost during his fight with Deidara. Manda might have been a creature that would have stabbed Sasuke in the back given half the chance, but that didn’t affect his usefulness. Although he could still call on serpents, they were of limited use with the strongest of their number now dead; and Sasuke didn’t have time to wait for the serpent that called him master to become fully grown.

In fact, at the rate his eyesight was going, and how much he would need to use his Mangekyou in the coming battles against Danzo and Konoha, Sasuke doubted he had more than a couple of years before blindness overtook him completely. Within two years, he wouldn’t be able to see at all.

Unless…

Sasuke crushed the thought before it could form. Itachi had made his choice to betray his family for Konoha. It wasn’t a choice that Sasuke could agree with, but he would respect his brother’s wishes insofar as not using Itachi’s eyes to attack the Leaf, even if it cost Sasuke his ability to see. He owed his brother that much.

Unfortunately, the worsening of his eyesight was causing Sasuke another problem at the moment as he looked at the grid of storage boxes built into the wall that held the numerous summoning contracts Orochimaru had acquired over his long life… He couldn’t understand the blurry pictures on the side of the summoning scrolls that told people just what animal they summoned.

“Gah, dude, would you make up your mind already?” Suigetsu said as he looked around the large chamber holding the numerous scrolls. A second later, he pointed towards a scroll close to Sasuke’s head. “Look, there’s a one for cats. Just grab that one and sign it. Remember the cat lady’s granddaughter? She was hot right? Sign a contract and summon her.”

The option was actually considered by Sasuke for a whole of two seconds before he tossed the idea of summoning cats away. He had already defeated the head of their clan when he was a child and…the memory wasn’t something he liked to bring up. Ever.

In fact, Sasuke was actually a little grateful when the redheaded female member of his team struck Suigetsu in the jaw as hard as she could and sent him flying into a nearby wall hard enough to break it. Apparently, his recovery from their battle with the eight tailed beast wasn’t as complete as he claimed if his liquefaction power was still taking so long to activate.

“Don’t say things like that you idiot!” Karin shouted before she stood back up and adjusted her glasses. “Sasuke’s not into bestiality! Hell, that’s sick, even for you!”

The final member of their team, an apparently young boy with orange hair spoke up. “Technically Karin, you can’t call a summon a beast. They do have sapience and the ability to speak after all. The term you’d be looking for relates more to a Xenophile, although that’s stretching things a bit.”

“Shut up Jugo!” she shouted before shaking her fist at the formally tall psychopath. “If you weren’t a little kid right now and violence against a child would show Sasuke that I’d be an unfit mother, I’d pop you one.”

Karin’s declaration made Sasuke repress a groan. Despite escaping Konoha and its endless mob of fan girls, the female of his species was still chasing him. It caused Sasuke no end of annoyance. If it wasn’t for the girl’s skill in locating other ninja and her healing abilities, he would have left her to rot at Orochimaru’s old hideout.

“Damnit Karin! I’m gonna slice you in two for-blerk!” Suigetsu exclaimed when a stone fell from the wall and impacted his head. This time, his body reacted the way it should have the first time and turned to a semi-liquid state for the rock to pass through. However, a second after he turned to normal, something else fell to strike him in the head before his body was ready to change itself again.

“Ow! What the hell is this?”

Sasuke looked away from the blurry pictures written on the scrolls and over to the large case that had fallen out of a newly revealed nook, behind the wall where Suigetsu hit it. The scroll case that rolled on the ground was as long as a man and decorated with a multitude of golden suns and silver moons. Despite his failing eyesight, Sasuke was able to make out every pattern of the object perfectly and felt an odd shiver run through his body upon seeing the images.

Karin regarded the case for a moment. “Oh…so that’s where Orochimaru hid that stupid thing.”

His interest peaked, Sasuke looked over to the emotionally unstable woman. “What is it?”

“Just some old thingamajig Orochimaru’s had since forever,” she said with a dismissive wave. “It’s suppose to hold a summoning contract made by the Sage of the Six Paths but…he never could figure out hold to get the damn thing open. So he just stashed it away and forgot about it. Or hid it so no one else could use it.”

Suigetsu let out a snort. “And how in the hell do you know something like that?”

“Hey! Some of us were actually loyal to Lord Orochimaru and did as he instructed!” Karin exclaimed. “Not stuck in a glorified aquarium half the time like you! Come on Sasuke, let’s just grab something and-”

Sasuke reached down to pick up the scroll case, and blinked when the thing opened with a click as he tried to pull it off the floor.

“-okay, wasn’t expecting that,” Karin mumbled to herself.

A strange feeling crept up from the pit of the ninja’s stomach. Sasuke took out the scroll to unroll it, only to find a single name written on the paper. Thanks to the large print, the ninja could read it even with his failing eyesight. “Indra.”

Jugo asked the question they were probably all thinking. “Was that the name of the Sage?”

“No.” The word had left Sasuke’s mouth before he had even known he was forming it. Still, he knew it to be true despite the fact that no one knew what the legendary progenitor of ninjas was called.

After a second of looking at the scroll and considering his options, Sasuke made a decision. He was going to summon the creature attached to this jutsu, and see if it would accept him as a partner. If it was the summon of the first ninja, it...or its descendants must have be exceptionally powerful.

All the rest of Sasuke’s team frowned in confusion when their leader drew his own blood and signed his name to the roll of paper, then added the palm print to seal the bargain. The connection was made, and he stood up to prepare and summon whatever the contract held.

“What the hell Sasuke?” Suigetsu shouted as the ninja with the dark hair formed the hand seals. “Are you nuts or something? We don’t know how big this thing is or what it can even do, and you’re just going to call it up?”

After gathering the appropriate amount of chakra, Sasuke looked over to his underling. “It isn’t as if we’ll find out any other way,” he replied evenly. Although, something in the back of his head told Sasuke that not to be worried about being crushed by the creature that would soon appear before them, or that there was anything to worry about.

Still, the young man had not survived as long as he did under Orochimaru’s care without learning to be cautious. So, he didn’t put as much chakra as he could into the powerful jutsu.

In the halls of Canterlot Castle, Celestia was practicing a skill she had developed in centuries past that aided in her survival during the darkest of times. With practiced grace and care, she nodded her head as the self-important stallion on the carpet beneath her went on and on about how he believed he deserved a special place during the next Equestria Games thanks to his wealth…or land…or some other such nonsense. Celestia just listened with half an ear and nodded at all the right places to insure the jackanape wouldn’t get all huffy.

It had been a long day, the kind that left Celestia feeling that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to lower the sun a few hours early and perhaps give Luna full run of the kingdom for a few years while she retired to the Canterlot spa for a century or two. She deserved some kind of rest for the endless skullduggery and egos that seemed to fill her court as of late. With three other princesses to fill the void, was it so much to ask for a little time off.

Or a vacation of some sort, the alicorn told herself.

As the windbag took another breath to begin yet another rant on his how important he was, a strange chill ran down Celestia’s back, and she let out a gasp of surprise as she felt a mystical link forge itself between herself and…something else.

Memories from long ago surfaced, and the alicorn’s eyes widened in surprise. A summoner’s link…after all this time? Celestia asked herself.

...

In a dark room, hidden from the sun of Equestria, the princess of the moon awoke as she felt an odd sensation run through her body.

“Wha-huh?” Luna mumbled as her head jerked up to look around.

Then, after seeing the time wasn’t even past five in the evening, she promptly put her head back down on her pillow in order to resume her slumber. Apparently, Tia had been right. It was not a good idea to mix custard and hay before bedtime.

...

In the halls of the Crystal Palace, Cadence looked up from the latest report involving the crystal crop harvest and let out a sigh. When she had become the Princess of Love, the pink alicorn had thought she would be doing more to help ponies actually find their true loves, not…going over reports made in archaic script that had been discarded years before.

An odd shiver ran down Cadence’s back, and she looked around the room in confusion. “Did somepony leave a window open?”

...

Within the Hall of Friendship, Twilight sat alongside her friends as the looked at the two stallions standing in the center of their circle of thrones. Like many ponies before them, they had come to the council in order to have a dispute settled that threatened to destroy their friendship. But, like a few ponies before them, the argument was so insanely stupid and such a waste of time that Twilight decided to try and shock some sense into the idiots.

“So, you both claim ownership of this pie?” she asked the cherry farmer and the chef beside him.

“Yes!” the both said at the same time.

“Those were my cherries that made that pie! Grown in my trees, on my land,” the farmer declared.

“Baked in my oven, using my crust, and my skills!” the chef countered.

“ENOUGH!” the alicorn shouted after signaling her friends with an unfolding of her wings to just go along with her. Twilight banged her gavel on the stand that had been placed before her throne, until both the ponies stopped talking, and handed down her judgment. “It is my decision that the pie shall be cut in half, and both ponies shall receive…”

Twilight paused for a moment as she used her magic to take the object in question from one of her newly appointed guards.

“…DEATH!”

The two stallions let out a horrified gasp as the council nodded in agreement with her decision and Twilight looked over to the desert safely held in her magic. “We’ll eat the pie,” she said before an odd tingling sensation ran throughout her body that made Twilight lose control of her magic and actually drop the cherry pie onto the floor in shock.

What in the hay was that? Twilight asked herself as she felt…something change in the air around her. As if something tiny had attached itself to her magical aura.

“Twi?” Rainbow’s voice rang in her ears from the alicorn’s right-hoof side a second before the Twilight’s vision became obscured by smoke.

For a moment, it felt as if the world had just fallen out from under her as the alicorn was hit was an intense sensation of vertigo, and Twilight was left wondering, just what the hay was going on?”

Then, her ears felt like they popped and she found herself on solid ground, the sensation of tumbling end over end faded, and she coughed the smoke out of her lungs before waving it away with a gust from her wings.

As she closed her eyes for a moment and allowed the tear that was coming to help wash hr vision clear, Twilight looked over in the direction that she knew a certain party pony with a penchant for pranks parked her little pink posterior. “Pinkie, I told you, no more smoke-bwa?” the alicorn finished when she noticed a few things.

Like…how she was no longer in her palace.

Or…that her friends were no longer with her.

And…what stood in front of her were three tall, nearly hairless bipeds...and one that was not so tall.

The short creature with the spiky orange mane atop its head that was wrapped in what looked like a bed sheet cocked one of its eyebrows. “This is the sage’s personal summon?”

A taller creature with a smooth but short white mane in a form fitting shirt with water bottles strapped all around its waist and a large flat piece of metal that looked like an oversized cleaver on its back laughed. “Dude you got screwed!”

“It’s so cute!” the third member of the group declared a creature with glasses and a long red mane that couldn’t seem to make up its mind if it wanted to be straight and orderly or completely chaotic. Judging by its voice, it was a female despite how much it looked like the other three. “But uh…what is it?”

The final member of the group, a slightly pale creature with a mess of a mane that fell down to frame its face and glowing red eyes that made Twilight want to curl up into a ball and hide seemed to study the alicorn for a moment before speaking. She could practically feel its eyes on her as it examined her hooves, then her horn, wings, and neck that had grown a bit longer since becoming an alicorn.

“It’s a kirin,” he finally spoke an a tone that skirted the edge of being shocked.

Twilight could only look up in confusion at the creatures that made something in the back of her mind that had been placed there when she first became a princess. Wait a second…are these…humans? WHAT THE BUCK IS GOING ON?

Author's Note

Here's something that's been running around in my head for awhile as I try to work on stuff from some of my other fics and wait for some pony books from amazon to arrive. No update schedule for this fic either, although I do have a basic outline for it that I plan to follow so it isn't just going to to be dropped after the first chapter like some tease fic.