The Son of Earth

The sound of a voice slowly carried to him from afar. He found himself standing, on something firm; looking down, he saw a bed of what looked to be clouds. The sky around was various hues of a deep purple and black, and strange screen-like objects were floating in the air around him. The voice came again, sounding much closer this time. A form began to materialize out of the mist, slowly taking shape. He stared in fascination at the thing which had appeared in front of him; it stared back. It looked quite a bit like the creature he'd first encountered, albeit with some visual differences. It was far larger; it was colored a deep blue; and it had a massive horn-like structure poking out of its forehead. He slowly backed away as it approached, only to stop dead in his tracks when it spoke with a massively loud voice.

"What are you?" the strange creature asked. "We have never seen something quite like you before."

"What are you?" David replied. He continued to back away as it slowly advanced.

"Answer our question and we will answer yours."

David took a deep breath. "I'm talking to a freaking alien. Okay." he said to himself before turning to face the massive blue horse-thing. "I am a diplomat."

"You certainly are a very peculiar diplomat," said the creature as it sped up its approach.

"Well, I come from a peculiar place. Now answer my question; what on earth are you?"

"If you are a diplomat, we are a ruler."

"What of?"

"Where are you a diplomat from?" it pressured.

"Somewhere that used to be very far away from here."

"Used to be?" it inquired, stepping closer.

"It's not exactly anywhere anymore."

"What happened?"

"The end of the world."

The blue horse-thing stopped dead in its tracks. "What?" it asked. "The world has not ended! It is still young -"

"The end of my world."

"What do you mean, 'your world'?"

David smiled; after all, it was always nice to try to make a good impression on the king of the horses or whatever this was. "I come from a massive empire, one that used to span multiple thousands of worlds and stars. It was a good time; hundreds of worlds were within easy reach if you had the credits." He sighed as his fake smile began to falter. "Then Tyrus IV happened."

"Tyrus IV? I can't say I ever heard of that," the creature said.

"I'm not surprised. Most people in the empire hadn't, either. That is, until the Link."

"I do not believe your story," the creature said, eying him suspiciously. "You are making up terminology to try and entertain me to your beliefs."

"I swear to whatever religious idol you believe in that I am not lying. Why I'm telling you the truth I don't know, but I am."

"Good." the creature said. "We had a truth spell on you since we found you in this plane," it said, beginning to walk in circles. "We just needed to make absolute certain we weren't being lied to."

"Well, you aren't."

"Continue," the creature said firmly.

"Anyway, the Link is widely considered as the best and worst thing to happen to mankind. It was the best because, by connecting to it, we obtained technology far beyond what we'd developed - easy antimatter containment and production, far smaller and more powerful jump drives that made the minimum effective size of a warp-capable ship drop from three kilometers to thirty meters, and batteries powerful enough to power infantry coilguns, just to name a few examples."

"I do not know any of these things of which you speak. What is antimatter? What do you mean, 'warp-capable' ships? What's a coilgun?"

Ignoring the questions, he continued. "It was the worst thing because it pissed off a millenia-old massive empire, due to how our relatively brute-forced methods of connecting to it may have caused ripples throughout the network that may have eventually led to hundreds of inhabited planets shedding their atmospheres," he said with a sheepish grin. "Of course, nobody knew what happened, so when a fleet of Ceryllians showed up at one of our rimworlds and burnt the surface, we had no clue what was happening. Instead of just taking the punishment and acknowledging we did something wrong, which would probably have saved our bacon, we decided to declare full-on war."

The blue creature's mouth hung open. "That is... certainly an interesting tale."

"It lasted for about five years, with nearly every battle ending in a decisive defeat. The few that weren't decisive defeats were either mostly-defeats or pyrrhic victories, and those were often followed by complete defeat. They steamrolled through our empire, eventually coming to our homeworld of Earth. It only took them thirty minutes to burn it to the point where the major continents were indistinguishable from the seas of molten rock that were once the seafloor. Nearly seventeen billion people died that day alone, not to mention the nigh-trillion who lived in the rest of the Empire."

"That is... Wow." was the creature's only reaction.

"Yep. My people and I are the only ones out of all of Humanity left, and that's why we're here."

"Well, then. I suppose I owe you an explanation of who and what I am."

"Yeah, what are you?"

"I am Princess Luna," the creature said, flaring its wings. "I am a pony, an alicorn to be specific, and I am the ruler of the night, the moon, and the mind."

"Huh. And where the hell are we?"

"Your consciousness," Luna replied. "You can manipulate this with your mind if you so wish. For example, try to create something - anything - in your hoof... thing? Is that even called a hoof anymore?"

"It's called a hand," he said as he stared at his hand. Not a second later, a small object appeared in his hand. "I always wanted one of these," he said to himself. "But the fleet was like 'no, it's too expensive for something so useless.'"

"What is it?" Luna asked as she looked at the tiny black thing.

"It's a holographic laser pointer. Watch this." He pointed it in a random direction, and a solid red beam of light flew out of the tip. "Pretty neat, huh?"

"I can certainly see why this would be considered as unnecessary in a time of crisis."

"Yeah, I know. Still, though, it is pretty amazing."

"Indeed."

"I wonder what else I can do?" David said to himself. A familiar scene popped up in his head; he decided to project it into the plane.

The haze around them cleared, and the inky dark of space shone through. A deep rumbling filled the air - or lack thereof - as a massive silver vehicle passed by. It was dotted with small black dots and windows, and wide hollow tubes tipped the front. A dome sat near the back of the vessel, and behind that thick streams of blue exhaust coming out of enormous pipes. A deep boom resonated as the forward tubes lit up with yellow light before some yellow dot went sailing off into the distance.

"What is this majestic being?" Luna said.

"It's not alone."

As he said this, brilliant flashes of light erupted. More vessels appeared where the flashes of light had been, bursting their warp bubbles and popping into space. Similar things were happening off in the distance. Almost immediately, the muzzles of the massive ships lit up with yellow light, and a swarm of yellow projectiles went flying. It was answered with a barrage of green lasers coming from three massive objects. They appeared like flattened spheres, painted the same shade as the dark void. The battlefield lit up with fire from them as they began to annihilate the fleet. Suddenly, the viewing platform lurched. A tunnel in space and time opened in front of them, and the scene faded away.

"What in Tartarus was that?" Luna said, shocked.

"That was the battle, or at least the beginning of the battle, of Sensil XIV. It was probably the bloodiest battle, save for the death of Earth, in the entire war. Nearly eight hundred ships were lost on our side alone; while the losses on their side were much higher, there was still no hope we could win."

"What were those massive things?"

"Titans," David said with disgust. "Massive behemoths of warships. Nothing we had could penetrate their shields, except for the Battle of Earth when we managed to bounce a shot off their armor before it came back online."

"Will they find you here?"

"Hopefully not. If they do, we're all dead. Oh, by the way, one question for you: how in the name of all that is holy can you understand me?"

"I copied over my knowledge of Equestrian to your brain and took your knowledge of 'English.' It was incomplete, however; it provided me with the basic ideas needed, but didn't go into most other types of memory-connected words."

"That's... mildly disturbing."

"Well, goodbye, Mr..."

"David Wilhelm."

"Actually, before I leave, I have one piece of advice to give to you."

"What is that?"

"If you trust our people, and listen to them, and maybe even show them what you have shown me, or what I have seen in your mind, great things may await."

As she said this, the world around him faded away, and he drifted slowly back into reality.