CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS DUNGEON EXPLORERS YAY!

Ryu walked down the beach, tail dragging through the sand.

“Come on man, get psyched!  I want to join the Guild to help others, be a hero! … But how?  Why would the Guild accept a coward like me?”  He reaches into his shell and brings out a small rock.  At first glance, it seems unimportant, but a closer look reveals intricate carvings all across the surface.

“Not even Dad’s Lucky Charm could get me to go up there.  I’m so useless.”

The creature’s bout of self-loathing is cut off by a sound akin to a bubble popping, and that pop releasing the equivalent of a small tornado.  Ryu quickly scurries behind a rock, and watches as three beings fall from the sky to the beach below.

Scootaloo came to tasting sand.  She groans, rolls over onto all fours, and looks around.  She is on a beach of some sort in the middle of a gorgeous sunset.  Rocks adorn the edges of the sandy expanse, but she can see paths through them.  Scootaloo looks a bit closer to herself, and sees two piles, one blue with hints of red, and one white with hints of black.  As she watches, the blue pile shakes, and a voice emanates from it.

“Oh, mah head.  Girls?  Ya still here?”

Scootaloo stares in shock. “A-Apple Bloom?”  The pile lifts up, revealing a head with two large floppy ears, two red stripes on the ends, and a protrusion on the front with another red stripe near the junction of protrusion and head.  Definitely not a pony head.  Definitely not a pony body either; small, stout, with four stubby legs and a tiny, hairless tail.  In fact, there isn’t much hair on Apple Bloom at all.  Two small black eyes look in Scootaloo’s direction in shock.

“Scoots?  What are ya?  Ya look like a blue raccoon, or dog!”  She spots a pool of water close by, collected in the hole during high tide, and races over.

Sure enough she’s blue.  Not blue like Rainbow Dash, but a dark blue, like the stripes on her scooter.  Her head is dog-shaped, with little ears sticking up, and a short muzzle.  Fur like a black mask covers the areas around her eyes, with two large somethings on either side of her head.  Blue paws instead of hooves, with white bumps on the backsides.  It’s starting to get uncomfortable walking on all fours, so she stands on only her back legs.  Strangely, it feels more natural for her to be in this position.

Apple Bloom stands, and walks over, gasping at her new body.  “Ah look like a baby elephant!  A blue… baby… elephant…” she turns to her friend.  “Scootaloo, where are we?  Why do we look like this?”

“I don’t know, girls, but I hafta say,” they turn and see a creature with Sweetie Belle’s voice, “we look awesome!”  White fur adorns a sleek, dog-like body.  The only black parts are claws on the end of each of her four feet, a furless tail, the face, and a wicked-looking scythe-shaped protrusion sticking out of the side of her head and arcing up above it.

“Wow Sweetie, you look so cool!  But, what’s with that thing sticking out of your head?”  She reaches up and gasps when she touches the scythe.  She too gallops over to gaze at her new body.

“I-I dunno.  It’s hard, like a bone, but it doesn’t feel like a bone.  Weird.  Hey, did any of us get cutie marks in shapeshifting?”  They all gasp excitedly, and search their flanks.  However, their jubilation is cut short.

“Um, girls?  Can we still get cutie marks if we aren’t ponies?”  They all ponder, but are cut off by a shout from the rocks.

“Hey!  Give that back!”

“Why?  What would a wimp like you want with a dumb ol’ rock anyways?  We should just throw it in the ocean.”

“What?  No!  It’s really important!”

The trio move to investigate when a third voice pops up.  The first voice sounds young and timid, a bit like Snips back on Equestria, but without the nasally undertone.  The second sounds a lot more like Snips, like whoever is talking has trouble with its sinuses.  The third voice is deep and slow, like Snails, but with more of a hacking, gravelly undertone.

“Whoa!  If it’s important, Zubat, we could actually get something for it!  I wonder how much the Keckleon Brothers would pay for a rock like this.”

“Oh yeah, Koffing.  I bet we could get some good dough for this!”

The girls peek around a rock and behold the strangest sight since, well, waking up on a beach in animal-ish bodies.

A small blue turtle is backed up against a rock, flanked by a very large bat and a crater-pocked purple ball that is floating of its own accord.  In the bat’s ‘feet’ is a small black rock, obviously the object of this hullabaloo.  The two fliers laugh, more of a cackle, and fly off down the beach.  The turtle slumps down, and begins crying.

“One of us should go help him.”

“Why only one a’ us?  I think he’ll need all tha’ support he can get!”

“Apple Bloom, if he sees three creatures walk out from behind a rock after seeing two other creatures take something obviously precious to him, I think that’ll scare him more than anything.  So, who’s it gonna be?”

The other two Crusaders look squarely at Scootaloo.  She glares back.  “Oh come on!  Why me?”

“You’re the one who suggested it, Scoots, so you should be the one to go.”

Scootaloo harrumphs.  “Fine.  But you two had better be ready to help me if things go bad.”  She steps out from behind the rock.  “Hello?”

The turtle glances up, then shoots upright.  “What do you want?” he glowers.  Scootaloo puts her hooves (paws, this is gonna take some getting used to) up defensively.

“Hey, take it easy, I’m not gonna hurt you.  I saw, and heard, those two meanies take something from you.  Do you need any help?”

He pouts.  “Nah, it’s not important.”

“Then why were you trying so hard to get it back?”

The turtle sighs and deflates.  “Because it belonged to my dad.  He wants me to grow up big and strong and powerful like him, but I’m just a shelless coward.  I don’t deserve any help.”  He kicks at the sand.

Scootaloo chances a move closer to him.  “I feel your pain.  I have these friends, well, we weren’t always friends, but that’s not quite important.  The three of us were scared, because we thought we were alone, and were different from everypony else.  Then one day, during a party for one of our nemesises… nemesees… whatever, we found each other, and banded together.  And when we were together, we proved ourselves stronger than our foes.  So maybe that’s what you’re missing; you need somepony to help, even though you think there isn’t anypony who can help you.”

The turtle sniffles, and looks up.  Scootaloo is taller than him by a good head and a half.  “Thanks, I guess.  By the way, my name’s Ryu.”

She smiles at him.  “I’m Scootaloo.  Would you like to meet my friends?”

“Are they gonna try and hurt me?  I mean, you’re alright, for a Riolu, but I don’t know if I should trust you just yet.”

“Oh come on, it’ll be fun!  We love meeting new ponies!  Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, come say hello.”  The other Crusaders come out from behind the rock cautiously, trying not to appear menacing.

Scootaloo looks down, and Ryu has disappeared inside his shell, leaving only the swirly tip of his tail sticking out.  She leans down, and sees gray eyes peering out at her.  “Come on, silly.  These are my friends.”

“What?  I thought by friends, you would mean more Fighting types.  How in the name of Arceus does a Riolu, Absol, and Phanpy become friends?  I mean, I’ve seen some odd groupings before, but this takes the cake!”

“Well, we grew up in the same town, we’re all basically the same age, and—what did you call us?”

Ryu nervously pokes his head and limbs out of his shell and stands back up.  “I said, how in the name of our Great Creator does an Absol,” points at Sweetie Belle, “a Phanpy,” Apple Bloom, “and a Riolu,” ending on Scootaloo, “know each other well enough to call each other ‘friends’?”

“Oh, so that’s what we are?  Ah’ve never heard of those before.”

Ryu looks at them in shock.  “What.  You don’t even know what Pokémon you are?  How sheltered was this town?”

“What’s a Pokémon?  It sounds funny.”  With that, Sweetie pokes Apple Bloom, saying “Poke-emon”, causing Apple Bloom to retort with a poke of her own.  This escalates very quickly and ends just as abruptly, with the two on their backs in the sand, laughing.

“No, this is serious.  How did you three make it this far in the world without knowing what you are?”

Scootaloo shifts nervously.  “Um, I guess we should tell you about our town.  See, where we come from, everypony’s a pony.”

“What, like a Ponyta?”

“What’s a Ponyta?”

“Looks kinda like a horse, mane of fire.”  Ryu catches Scootaloo’s horrified look.  “What?  With Pokémon, Fire-types are usually part fire.”

“Um, no.  Not like a flaming horse.  Well, kind of, just not on fire.  We’re from a very, very, very long ways away; one of our friends likes to do experiments, and we sorta used one of them without her permission.  I don’t know why we look like this, and… girls, how are we supposed to get back?”  She turns to the giggling pair, worry in her eyes.

They stop, pondering.

“Ah got nuttin’.”

“Yeah, me neither.” A tear forms in Sweetie Belle’s eye.  “Scoots, what if we can’t go back?”

“Sweetie, get ahold of yourself.  Once Twilight finds out we used her machine, she’ll just use it and come rescue us.”

“But, but… remember, right before we came here?  The thing was falling apart.  I-I mean, Twilight’s a good pony, but we destroyed it!  How’s she supposed to rescue us if the thing’s broken?”

Scootaloo’s arms drop.  Eyes half-closed, she moves over and sits by her friends.  Ryu can’t make out their faces from the rock he’s at, but he can hear quiet sobbing.

Crap, man.  You gotta do something.  Be brave.  Be brave.  BE BRAVE! He steps forward.

“This Twilight, she’s really smart, right?”

Sweetie sniffles.  “Y-yeah.  She’s the smartest pony ever.”

“And she made whatever brought you here, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ryu crosses his arms.  “Then it stands to reason she can fix it?”

A glimmer comes to Scootaloo’s eyes. “Yeah!”

“So all you need to do is wait until she can show up and take you home!  By the sound of it, whatever it is took a beating, so it’ll probably take some time.  I know a place we can stay.”

“Really?  It’ll be safe there?  Do you know the ponies there?”

“Not really.  I’m talking about the Wigglytuff Guild.  Pokémon go there to become heroes, to help other Pokémon wherever they go.  I’ve been trying to work up the courage to join them, but…”

“Yeah, you keep saying you’re a coward.  You’re not.  You had the guts to give us hope again.  If it’s a place we can stay, let’s go, everypony!”

Ryu chuckles.  “Okay, but on one condition.  I don’t know how it’s supposed to go wherever you’re from, but here, it’s ‘everymon’ and ‘anymon’, not pony.”

With that, the group sets off towards the safe haven.

They exit the beach, and Apple Bloom draws level with Ryu.  “What about tha’ rock ya had?  Ya know, the special one from yer dad?  Don’t’cha wanna get it back?”

Ryu shrugs.  “It’s just a rock.  I’ve already found something better.”