Hollow Mask

Hunter was sitting in the pilot chair of the space ship. The little room in which the two main controls were located, was chaotic. Cables were visible all over the place and machines and computers had been crudely patched together with duct tape and more cables.

It was a mess. Even with the handbook, Olivia had provided, she needed about an hour to figure out how to get startup the main systems of the ship. Currently, she was typing numbers into the navigation computer, who hadn’t accepted any inputs as valid, yet.

Olivia was leaning back on the copilot seat, smirking whenever Hunter did something wrong or distracting her with small talk.

“Have a name yet?” she asked innocently. The short interruption distracted the yellow girl beside her enough that she got shocked by a blank copper cable when she slipped.

“Ouch. Maybe,” she said while observing her finger.

“And?” Olivia inquired further.

“You now, I wanted to name her ‘Tranquility’, similar to the only other ship I know of,” she explained.

“Tranquility,” Olivia tried the name, “I like it. Although not as good as Serenity.”

“Yeah, but that one is taken, isn’t it?” Hunter deadpanned.

Their small talk was interrupted when the navigation computer finally accepted the data and booted fully; “Navigation System Online. Data Accepted. Ship ready for launch.”

“HAHA!” exclaimed Hunter, “Ey, should I get Twilight and Dash? They would be excited!”

“Pff, your ship. Your problem,” said Olivia dismissively. She conjured up a book and leaned back, “Just don’t do anything, stupid, like ponynapping the princess or something.”

“Good idea.”

“I didn’t say anything,” smirked Olivia.

Hunter stood up and walked the gangway to the loading ramp. The airlock was opened and closed swiftly. She fell on her four hooves when the transformation aura of the ship ceased.

“I liked the hands,” she whispered with a sad undertone.

A second later Hunter perked up again. She had to find Rainbow and Twilight. Twilight wouldn’t be a problem, but Rainbow Dash didn’t know her new form unless Twilight told her. Dash probably wasn’t the kind of pony who would go adventuring with a random pony that appeared out of nowhere.

Hunter jumped when a shrill voice startled her.

“Heya, Hunter!” cheered Pinkie Pie.

Now that she was concentrating on it, she could feel the subtly pressure on her head caused by the pony’s strange abilities.

“How do you know it was me?” she inquired.

Pinkie began to explain, “Oh, easy, yesterday my little thingy made beep, which means a time lord regenerated or it boiled a chicken egg and I’ve seen the Doctor today and he is okay and I’ve seen you and my Pinkie Sense didn’t go off and the only new pony in town was you and since I’ve already met you that would mean that you are a time lord and have regenerated yesterday. Gasp. And I have to throw you a Regeneration-Party and a Welcome-to-Ponyville-Party now.”

“You can’t join that many sentences with ‘and’,” stated Hunter.

“Yes, I can. I just did it, you silly filly,” cheered Pinkie, “Now if you excuse me, I have serious party business to do. See you later, alligator!” In the blink of an eye she was gone.

“We’ll that was weird,” muttered Hunter, before she returned to her quest for Rainbow(s) and Twilight.

Twilight perked up when a nearby window exploded. She had been absorbed in a study about the effects of refined starlight on enchantments. Most would considers this book a bit boring or even dry but for Twilight it was the read of the century.

Well, until her window exploded, due to yet to be discovered reasons. The lavender pony decided that the cause of the sudden destruction of her window was more important than the book.

When she neared said window, she spotted a stone, about twice the size of her hoof, on the floor. She determined that it was likely the stone was partly responsible for the property damage.

She walked to the open window and looked outside.

On the street before her castle stood a certain red haired and yellow coated Unicorn, who, for some reason, looked angry.

“Finally,” she yelled, “I’m throwing rocks at your castle for like an hour, now.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, “This is no reason to smash a window just because I didn’t hear you.”

“Yeah, I noticed you were completely oblivious to your environment, Miss Booknerd,” Hunter smirked.

“MISS BOOKNERD?!” Twilight yelled, her glare fixed on Hunter.

“Anyways, I apparently have a spaceship. Wanna fly?” the unicorn asked innocently.

“HOW DARE YOU AND CALL ME BOOKN…. Wait! Spaceship? As in, flying in space?” asked the surprised Alicorn.

Hunter smirked, “Yeah. Flyin’ in space an’ all. You want in?”

The anger about the destroyed window was forgotten. Twilight thought about two million things and studies she could do in space. New things, never seen by equine eyes beforehand, to be discovered. Space, ponykind’s final frontier.

“Yes or no?” Hunter interrupted the Alicorn’s thought process.

A creepy grin appeared on Twilight’s face, “Yeeesss,“ she whispered, “precious studies. My precious. Yeeeessss.”

“Well, I broke you. Time to go,” the Unicorn giggled, “Oh, and before I forget, tell Rainbow to come too, I’m currently too lazy for that. Thanks.”

With that she turned and left the grinning Alicorn on the doorstep.

Hunter was walking peacefully through town. At least, she tried to. Unnoticed by her, a Unicorn mare was following her, stepping in the shadows and out of sight when Hunter turned and looked around.

The eyes of the mare followed Hunter without fail, never looking at anything else. She giggled silently.

When Hunter stopped to observe the antics of one of the salesponies in his stall, she moved in for the kill.

Hunter was surprised when the blue Unicorn tackled her. Her mane was two-colored, in a darker blue and a greyish white. The steel blue eyes stared into Hunter’s, as if she wanted to suck her soul out through them.

While Hunter was struggling to get out of the Unicorn’s hoofgrip, said pony used her magic to forcefully open Hunter’s mouth.

The yellow coated Unicorn panicked as she imagined what the blue pony might do to her and all the while completely forgetting her own magic.

The blue pony looked into Hunter’s mouth and inspected something. A frown appeared on her face as she let loose the pony’s jaw.

“Brushie, brushie,” the Unicorn giggled and grinned again before teleporting away in a bright flash.

That left Hunter stunned on the ground. A giggling brought her back into the world around her.

Twilight and Rainbow were standing a few meters away, grinning at the Unicorn’s expense.

“What the fuck just happened?” asked Hunter.

Twilight coughed and switched into lecture mode, “That was Colgate. She’s the dentist. If I’m informed correctly about her schedule, you can expect her next week.”

“Expect her for what? And how does she make money like that?” snapped Hunter.

“She lives with Time Turner, who pays part of her bills and fines, plus, most ponies pay her for her little visits, too. If you don’t have anything to bad, you will wake up to a Unicorn brushing your teeth thoroughly. If it’s bad she might try to pull it out.”

“Oh, great; mouth rape,” deadpanned the yellow Unicorn, “At least I can expect it somewhat.”

“Where is the spaceship?!” grinned Twilight. Without the distraction of Colgate’s antics, her mind had returned to the important things of her life.

Hunter sighed, the Alicorn’s antics beginning to grind on her nerves, “Right in front of the library.”

The grin on Twilight’s face vanished slightly, “I would have noticed that.”

“SEP-Field. Short for ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’ or ‘Somepony Else’s Problem’ in this case.”

“Ooohh,” Twilight said with slight confusion, “Why does that even work?”

“I don’t know nor do I care,” Hunter snickered, “It just does. Now, move up little Miss Booknerd, we have a whole new thingy and stuffs to discover!” She moved towards the still ‘cloaked’ spaceship, which thanks to her visit, was now clearly visible for her.

She stumbled slightly when she passed the airlock and transformed into a human. Twilight stopped outside, confused when she couldn’t keep her eyes fixed on Hunter.

With a loud clicking the ship became finally visible for Twilight. Before the field dissipated she could have sworn she could see it out of the corner of her eyes, but now she could finally see it.

The whole thing looked rusty and old. It’s front looked like a swan’s head. Below it was the loading ramp, which had also an open door, presumably the airlock. The loading ramp was lowered and the inner door open and Twilight could see inside.

The large room inside the ship was almost the size of the ‘belly’ of the ship. It had several hanging walkways leading to different parts of the ship.

Twilight walked to the left and looked at the rest of the ship.

Behind the head where two large round things attached on little wings. Be the looks of it she determined that they could rotate in place and that they were most likely the engine.

The back of the ship looked a lot like a firefly. It had a giant bulb on it’s back that rotated slowly with an eerie yellow glow.

The whole thing stood on four little legs and protruded from it’s body.

(Google ‘serenity firefly’ if you want a picture of the ship. It is not my own creation. Watch the series ‘Firefly’ for more.)

“You want to come or look at the ship?” asked Hunter, interrupting Twilight’s inspection of the ship. The Alicorn sprinted forward, not paying attention to the fact that Hunter and Rainbow were already standing on two legs instead of four.

Rainbow was inspecting her feets and hands when Twilight passed the border of the field and face-planted into the ground.

She quickly got up and looked surprised at her hands then at Hunter.

“Transformation Field. Easier to fly,” explained Hunter. She wiggled her fingers to emphasize her reasoning. “You should get something to stop that nosebleed though,” she added.

Twilight reached to her nose. She felt something wet and warm. A bloody finger appeared in her face.

“Oh, great. Good way to start the day of the century,” she deadpanned.

Hunter giggled, “Follow me.” She slowly walked away, leaving the two ponies almost no time to adapt to a bipedal stance, which was easier for them than first expected.

When they had reached the cockpit they had two completely different reactions.

Dash tried to act casually, but was actually just confused. The machines around her beeped and whizzed, doing stuff and whatever. She put her hands in her pockets, which seemed entirely natural to her.

Twilight, on the other hand, found herself in heaven. The advanced technology in the ship could be the object of her studies for years and she wouldn’t have found all secrets.

“Radial-In engine not synchronized. Warning! Engine unstable!” echoed a metallic voice through the ship.

“What was that?” asked Twilight with a raised eyebrow.

“Nothing”, dismissed Hunter and kicked a computer under her control panel.

“Radial-In engine synchronized. Ship ready for launch.”

(Radial-In would be synonymous with the port-side of a ship or the left side, in this case. Spaceships and stuff!)

Olivia, who hadn’t been seen by either Twilight nor Dash, perked up at this; “Well, this is my sign to leave.”

Hunter looked at her, the question obvious to everyone.

“Relax, the chance that you will blow up is rather low. … I think,” reassured Olivia, “I just have to… do some things and … stuff. Yes, stuff.” She smiled awkwardly before disappearing in a flash.

“Huh, well, anyways, you two should buckle up or something. If you want, that is,” suggested Hunter. She was controlling a few settings and typing data into the computers.

Twilight and Dash shared the left seat in the cockpit, staring outside through the windows.

“Landing Ramp closed and secured. Pressure and Life Support on go,” announced Hunter.

A hissing echoed through the ship, followed by a load roar. The seat underneath the two guest vibrated for a few seconds.

“Engines running and on go,” commented the captain, “Lift off in 10 seconds.”

There was a pause, in which nothing happened, except the rumoring of the ship and the constant movement from Hunter.

“5… 4… 3… Engines on full throttle… 1… Lift off!” yelled Hunter in excitement.

Nothing happened. The scenery outside didn’t change nor did the ship move.

Hunter cursed, “Dammit. What’s wrong this time?”

“Maybe you forgot the handbrake,” joked Dash.

Hunter blinked a few times, then facepalmed. “Fuck. Stupid Hunter.”

She grabbed a lever on her side, pressed a button on it’s end and moved it down. The ship reacted by vibrating heavily again and the finally moving.

Hunter’s left eye was twitching, “You will never speak of this. EVER!”

It slowly ascended into the sky, Twilight and Dash staring outside and the residents of Ponyville staring at the metallic monsters in the peaceful village.

Since monsters were actually quite common, most ponies continued with their daily business not shortly after they had spotted the craft.

Inside the Firefly-class ship, Dash and Twilight were trying their best not to act worried. During the few seconds the ship was in the air, several alarms of various degrees had gone off and Hunter had either ignored or disabled them.

Hunter was currently looking at the altimeter, which was ticking towards 100 meters. When it finally displayed a third digit, she grabbed the throttle and slammed it as far forward as possible.

The ship jumped and the two passengers were pressed in their seats before the artificial gravity corrected. A few seconds later, a loud boom echoed through the craft.

“What was that?” asked Twilight worried.

“Soundbarrier. Our current speed is 392 meters per second, acceleration is 12 meters per second squared.”

“That’s like… a lot,” interjected Rainbow Dash.

“We’ll reach space in about 8 minutes. It’s that much. Our acceleration will peak out at 92 meters per second squared.”

“But that much force on a body can be deadly,” cried Twilight.

“Nah. Artificial gravity will suppress the acceleration forces. I hope.”

The next few minutes nothing exciting happened, except the sky slowly fading to black. Without any warning, Hunter reached for the throttle and moved it down slowly before securing it in the zero position.

She coughed a few times, “Ladies, this is the captain speaking. We reached our cruising altitude of 301 kilometers and are currently traveling at a speed of 10981 meters per second. It’s a lovingly minus kill-me-dead degrees whatever-unit outside. Sunrise will be in 3 minutes. Orbital period is 1869 seconds or about 31 minutes.”

“3 minutes? It was barely lunch time when we started!” noted Twilight.

“Yeah, but we have flown quite bit already and are coming around the darkside. I prefer it that way, sunrises in space are cool,” explained Hunter. She switched something off and suddenly Twilight felt weightless.

The belts held Hunter in the seat as she watched amused how Dash and Twilight were adapting to microgravity. Dash tried to flap her wings and banged her head while Twilight tried to do something scientific about the situation and banged her head.

Hunter snickered a few times. “I want to see you doing better!” exclaimed Rainbow.

The challenged Unicorn released her belts. She floated a bit around before she grabbed the console and pushed herself forward into Dash. They collided in midair. Hunter grabbed Dash and stopped their motion near a wall. “Always grab something. If you stop moving in midair your screwed,” she ordered.

“Yeah, yeah,” dismissed the pegasus, “Whatever.”

Twilight observed Hunter while she tried to relearn moving around. Her wings were useless or better, too powerful for usage without proper gravity. Hunter seemed to adapt quite fast, seemingly losing all sense of up or down and just grabbing whatever was near to move around. Twilight felt her stomach getting sick and her head becoming dizzy from the disorientation. She closed her eyes and tried to breath deep.

“Whoah. If you puke now, you’ll have to collect it, Twi,” warned Hunter. She moved quickly to the pilot’s seat and sat down. “Get near the ground guys, fun’s over,” she said.

Twilight did as told, unlike Rainbow, who had way too much fun.

The damp sound of her suddenly hitting the ground echoed through the ship. For Twilight, the world was upside up again and her body calmed down.

“Ey, at least warn me!” yelled Dash after groaning from the pain.

“I did,” stated Hunter simply, “Now watch. Sunrise in space. Would be my first.”

“You never were to space before?” asked Twilight worried.

“Nah. First flight. Well, that depends on how you ask. Did fly a few simulators and stuff. Was called Kerbal Space Program,” she explained, “Relaaax, I’m a professional. Sort of.”

Twilight wanted to say something when the sunrise interrupted her.

Suddenly and without warning, the cockpit was filled with light. There was no slow and gradually rise, since there was almost no atmosphere to bend and reflect the light. After her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness and the windows had dimmed like sunglasses she could see it in it’s full glory.

The sun was shining on a blue and green marble. She could see mountains, tiny as pinpricks sliding under her. She could make out great rivers, now nothing but a small trickle. The sun was moving visibly and fast upwards. A minute later it had passed the rim of the windows and Twilight could see the stars again.

She hadn’t paid much attention to them, but it was so different. They weren’t blinking but a steady burning little light, like someone had poked holes through black paper and was shining through them with a flashlight.

“What the fuck is that?” Hunter’s exclamation ripped Twilight out of her little dream world.

The yellow Unicorn pointed below.

The blue and green of the peaceful planet was suddenly cut of. Behind a visible rim of tall mountains was only a yellowish brown. It looked dead.

Twilight’s ears would have dropped if they would have been on her head, “That are the badlands. The great desert. Near the borders are a few tribes of various species, but farther in… Completely dead. It’s part of our history.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hunter.

“There isn’t a lot known about it, except that when Nightmare Moon ruled with eternal night, the badlands had eternal day. It was a deadzone before though, so nobody’s sure what happened. As far as our cartographs are sure, it covers 49.7% of the global surface.

“Did somebody activate something, like a doomsday device?” asked Hunter.

“Nobody knows. That’s like ancient history,” explained Twilight, “Even our oldest legends are younger than some of the sands below.”

“Hmm…” Hunter seemed lost in thought. Her head suddenly jerked up, “Anyways, I think it’s time for lunch, or breakfast considering local time.”

Rainbow’s stomach agreed.

“Oi, Twilight, do you know what bacon is?” asked Hunter innocently.

“You mean, like Haybacon?" Twilight responded slowly.

Hunter smirked, “Oh, this’ gonna be great.”

Celestia had just finished the last case of day court, the pony involved packing up and beginning to leave, when one of the dragon ambassadors entered.

“Celestia, I have an urgent message,” Azure Flame said calmly and eyed the guards in the room, “Top Secret.”

“Are you sure, Azure?” asked Celestia. Normally the dragons had few things that needed top classification.

“It’s a prophecy,” the blue dragon explained. He was only slightly higher than the other ponies around him, which is why he was selected for this job.

The dragons mostly kept their problems to themselves and had few contacts with pony society. Nonetheless, they had a government and therefore, needed an ambassador.

Celestia nodded, “Guards you may leave. Show Filthy Rich the way out.”

When the last guard had left the room and only Celestia and Azure Flame were present, he spoke again, “The Old One has made another prophecy. Almost equal in importance to Tirek’s destiny, if not more.”

The Alicorn Princess of the Day thought for a few seconds, remaining calm on the outside.

She nodded, “Tell me.”

Azure Flame coughed and unrolled a parchment; “I doesn’t sound very nice, are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then,

Risen through murder,

Fallen through gods,

She will conquer Time and Space,

Sowing Blood and Fire.

The Gods will bow to the Ignis,

they have created in their vanity.

Hear the Calm before the Storm,

Armies of Old are marching once again,

Equestria will Burn,

No thing left to shed tears

And only Ashes left to mourn.

Fire Incarnate

Will walk among us.”

Celestia almost choked on her own breath. The usual prophecies from the Old Dragon were a lot more peaceful and calm than this. This prophecy required utmost attention from every king, princess and ruler on Equis.

The Old Dragon had never been wrong.