Top Hats & Metal Wings

“You darn kids! Stop drinkin’ up all my soda!” –Tellis Argonis

“So, what you’re saying is… I’m in an alternate universe?” Tellis asked Darius while rubbing his head with his Omni-hoof’s hand where the pan had hit him.

“Why yes, my strangely named friend, it appears you are, along with these two Snowbell priz- I mean humans.”

Michael and Bryan shared a laugh as Tellis shouted at Darius, “Hey! My mom gave me that name, tubby!” he pointed a metal finger at Darius’s cutie mark, which was two chocolate cupcakes covered in pink frosting.

“Sir, I assure you, I meant no harm when I said that, I was merely observing that you had an unusual name, like myself!” said Darius as raised his hooves in defence.

Tellis put his augmented foreleg back down and said with a wry smile, “Well is that so? What is it?”

“Darius Ellistar,” Darius proudly stated his name once again, dramatically posing while the corners of his overcoat seemed to flutter in some unnatural breeze for a few seconds

“So, alternate universe, huh? I’ve had worse, I remember this time I was sucked into a Daring Do book and—Aw, long story short, I ended up with the golden Pincan treasure and with it I bought my autobuggy!”

“Autobuggy?”

“You’d think it’d be self-explanitory…(sigh) a carriage that you don’t have to pay anypony to pull,”

“Oh! You mean like Twilight’s Arcane Recreational Carriage? ARC for short, it’s powered with self-perpetuating steam engines.” Darius said Twilight’s name with at least enough venom to kill a ‘roid raged rhino.

“Uhh…Yeah, I guess. Only mine runs on Flim Crystals, it’s mostly just quartz mixed with opals, but that somehow turns a little bit electricity into a lllllot. It destroys the minerals in the process. So the price of both minerals skyrocketed! Well, enough talking about our rides…” Tellis turned towards the two humans and said as he extended his robotic hoof-hand out for a ‘handshake’ and said,” So, these are humans… I guess Lyra wasn’t full of it after all!”

Michael said back to the wingless pegasus as he shook his cold, 4 fingered hand, “After all you’ve been through, how could you not believe her?

“I dunno! She just kept talking and talking and talking about humans, we all just tuned her out after a while. But enough chitchat, we need to go find Comet!”

Darius said as he activated a light switch on a nearby post with his magic, “Well, from what you’ve told us about her, she’ll be fine out there on her own for a while, especially if she’s anything like Rainbow!” the lights bathed the surprisingly large room with blue white light from magical orbs inside glass and metal containers with a flame-like aura around them, revealing that they were on a balcony hanging over the rest of Darius’s home, which was just one giant room. His living quarters were downstairs and the ‘rooms’ were seperated by metal walls painted white and had no ceilings, all except for one structure, which may be the bathroom.

“Woah, this place is just getting cooler and cooler by the minute!” Michael walked over to the railing and admired the slightly over-engineered loft while Bryan continued filldling with his ‘smart’ phone, “Dude, quit playing Angry Birds and come look at this!” Bryan groaned as he put his gadget into his pocket and walked over to Michael.

“Wow… is this where you live!?” Bryan asked while looking around with his jaw on the ground

“Yes, my humble abode,the place I hang my hat, see, there it is!” A dark brown bowler hat custom fit for a unicorn hung on a coatrack near the door. Well, there was a hole in it where Darius’s horn went through it when he first put it on, if you want to get technical.

“You guys, her being like Rainbow Dash is what I’m worried about! Shut up and let’s go!” Tellis motioned his good hoof over at the front door as he headed downstairs on the blue carpeted staircase.

“Hey, watch out for the-  (Clang!) Pipe…”

“Ah, me face!”

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

Comet could barely hear a small, familiar voice as she came to, “Why did you call me here? I’m a mechanic, not a doctor.”

Comet kept her eyes shut tight, which didn’t help the massive headache she had at all, and she hears another familiar voice say to the previous one, “I thought you interned at that hospital for a year?”

“Well, yes, but that was a long time ago. And it was small things, like putting band-aids on little fillies and colts… I fix robots, not ponies…”

Robots? Okay, something freaky was up, the only robots back home that Comet knew about were the ones that made autobuggies, and she certainly didn’t know anypony that worked on them! Deciding to not waste any more time, like her timid old self, she leapt up into the air with a battle cry from her… comfy bed?

“Ah, Rainbow!” Twilight spun around startled to see her friend suddenly shouting and hovering above them in the library tower bedroom with an expression of mixed confusion and anger. Wait, did she just call me…

“Huh?” Comet saw what seemed to be Shining wearing some kind of thick brown coat with a yellow pegasus that looked like Molly without the black highlights and longer hair wearing blue coveralls cowering on the floor, frantically putting together some kind of device out of random bits of metal she grabbed with her hooves and wings.

“Fluttershy! What did I say about building turrets when you’re scared!?” Wait, Fluttershy? What was going on!?

Fluttershy stopped short of jamming an coffee can ‘ammunition drum’ onto her crude gun, looked up and apologized with a sheepish smile and a twinkle in her blue eyes, “Hehe, sorry Twilight.” Twilight!?!?

“Now, Rainbow, I want to kn-“ Alright that tears it!

“Hey, my name isn’t Rainbow! It’s Comet! I know I look exactly like my grandma and everything, but for Celestia’s sake, get my name right!”

“Wha- Grandma?“

“Now, I don’t know what’s going on, but I ain’t stickin around to find out!” Comet attempted to fly away, but was seized by Twilight’s magic, which was far more advanced than her flying skills.

“Hey, lemme go! When I get out of here, you’re gonna be sorry!”

“Not until you calm down!”

Comet let out a defeated sigh and said, “Alright, I surrender…”

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

“So, you say you aren’t Rainbow Dash? Because you act and sound almost exactly like her,” Twilight asked Comet as she poured a cup of tea for her and Fluttershy, who was eyeing the exits in quite a sociopathic manner.

“Why are you asking me, smart one? I thought you already knew that! And what’s up with Molly’s grandma wearing blue pants and cobbling together guns on the floor!?” Comet demanded after she chugged her hot tea and slammed the cup back down. One gets slightly irritated after being sucked out of your home in the middle of the night by some kind of big portal thing. Wait a second, Tellis!

“Who’s Molly?”

“That doesn’t matter, I need to find my friend Tellis!”

“Tellis?”

“That sounds a little bit like trellis, like in a garden, heh” Fluttershy quietly joked after she took a sip of her tea.

“Alright, she’s creepin me out. In fact, I think I was less creeped out when she was tryin to make a little gun robot that would have killed me!”

“Don’t worry Comet, I was only using cactus needles as ammunition.”

“Cactus ne- (Exasperated sigh) Fluttershy, I thought I told you to use popcorn kernels whenever you had an episode!”

Twilight began to scold her friend and then asked while opening the altered coffee can filled to the brim with glued together 7 inch long slender desert thorns of pain and suffering, “Besides, where did you get this many cactus needles!?”

“Applejack’s bio dome, obviously,” Fluttershy took another sip of her tea, “She just offered 5 cacti to me one day and I took them off her hooves, I couldn’t find any practical place for them in a machine shop, so I just plucked the needles, made them into doomthorns, and here we are.”

“Im just glad you didn’t use Rarity’s sewing needles this time! That colt almost died, Fluttershy!”

“He didn’t read the signs, the Stare detected a threat, and eliminated it. Simple as that.”

“Well, you need to put more signs out, or use a bigger font, I don’t know!”

“You’re all crazy! I’m getting out of here, for real this time!” Comet backed up quickly, bumped into something hard, making her already terrified face say ‘I’m about to regret my birth, am I?’ and prayed to Luna it was the old rustbucket she knows and loves and not some crazy chainsaw gun Fluttershy cooked up while she was bored.

She turned around to see a baby dragon, no, a robot that looked like a baby dragon. That didn’t stop her from pushing the purple and green metal cherub down as she tried to escape again. Her efforts were in vain for Twilight just sighed and grabbed Comet with her magic again as the robot complained in a vaguely familiar voice as he picked up the tray of cookies that was knocked out of his hands, “Jeez, Twilight, you gotta keep a handle on Rainbow Dash!”

“I'M NOT RAINBOW DASH!” Comet screamed at the robot’s face, his robotic eyes, which were two round indents with a bunch of little green LEDs in each indent that lit up to make the illusion that it had actual eyes, went wide with simulated fear, but then it ‘blinked’ and it’s eyes were stoic as ever

“Well, Notrainbow Dash, I’m glad to meet you!” the robot said as sarcastically as a robot could, which was a lot apparently.

“Spike, be nice to Comet, she doesn’t like it when you call her that,” Twilight set Comet down while simultaneously helping Spike pick up the rest of the spilt cookies. When they were done, she cantered back up to spike, put a foreleg around its neck, and introduced it to Comet, “This is SP-3IKE, or as we call him, Spike! When I was just a little filly, there was this test where students that were applying to Celestia’s school for advanced engineers where they had to create a machine of great power. Spike here was just a pile of scrap on a table,  waiting for me to build him in front of the judges and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make the pieces go together, then suddenly, there was this massive wave of energy, and the judges said that my eyes lit up as brightly as my horn did, and I somehow turned all those peices of of junk into Spike here!"

"Hey!"

"Aww, Spike, you know I say it with love!"

"Yeah yeah..." the little bipedal robot dumped the ruined cookies into a trashcan, his eyes raindrops, then windshield wipers wiped away the 'tears'

“So… Comet,” Twilight began to ask before she took a sip of her tea, “What brings you to Ponyville?”

At least the names are all the same. “Well, my godfather Tellis and I were planning on what to do for the end of spring break, and there was this crystal thing in his leg, you see.”

“In his leg?” Twilight interrupted, curiosity piqued.

“Well, not his actual leg, his hoof-“

“So there was a crystal in his hoof?

“Will you let me finish? He got hurt, I don’t know when, I think a long, long time ago. Tellis lost his hoof and had some doctor replace it with a metal one. It’s more of a hand than anything, and Lyra was all super-jealous of it and stuff.”

“Lyra?”

“I think she means Lyra Heartstrings, you know…” Fluttershy meekly answered while examining part of a strange machine that had no discernable function.

“Oh yeah, doesn’t she always stand in the middle of the market district and scream about ‘hoomin aliens’ all the time?”

The two laugh for a bit, and then they look back to a slightly irritated Comet. These guys are worse than Ruby! And what the heck is a Hoomin? Didn’t our Lyra say something about-

“So, you were saying Comet?”

Comet sighed and continued to tell them about the events that went down back at her house. About how Tellis’s stupid crystal exploded them to some kind of alternate Ponyville! She left out the bit where she passed out in the vortex out of embarrassment. She wasn’’t the best flier in Equestria, but since she looks so much like the one that held that title, much was expected of her. Before she dropped out of flight school because of financial reasons, everypony was always egging her on to do a sonic rainboom. They would say things like ‘C’mon, your grandma could do it when she was a little filly!’ and ‘You can definitely pull it off, just look atcha! It’s in your blood!’

“Hmm, I’m not sure, but it seems that the crystal reacted to the drink your friend had, the caffeine, sugar, and phosphorus(yeah, there’s phosphoric acid in most sodas, yay…) made his natural magic reserves spike and cause the crystal to react in an extremely violent way, you’re lucky that it didn’t just vaporize the both of you!” Twilight explained to Comet, who hardly looked appreciative of that fact.

“Lucky me… wait, magic? I thought only unicorns had magic.”

Twilight took this chance to unleash a tidal wave of information towards an unwitting Comet’s direction, “Unicorns are the only ones that can actively channel their magic through their horns, and that magic is unique to their race. Pegasai magic helps you fly, keeps you warmer at higher altitudes, and makes you really hard to break. And earth pony magic has a deep connection with nature, in which that they have green hooves, so to speak. They can grow pretty much anything with little effort, making them the perfect farmers!”

“Okay, okay! I get it, we all got magic! I didn’t need to hear the entire history of Equestria.” Comet huffed as she pushed her Technicolor bangs out of her eyes with a hoof for the fiftieth time.

“Everypony, get down! It’s the Overwatch!” Spike shouted from a nearby window before bolting underneath the bed.

"Wha... the over-" Comet sputtered before being pushed down by Fluttershy

"Get down!!" Twilight shouted at Comet as they all hid down beside the bed.

suddenly a bright light came and went past the window and curtains as a buck with either a bullhorn or some kind of voice amplification spell bellowed, “THIS AREA IS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE PONYVILLE ROYAL OVERWATCH DUE TO UNNATURAL ARCANE DISTURBANCES, DO NOT BE ALARMED, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES. ANYPONY DOING OTHERWISE WILL BE CHARGED WITH TREASON AND BROUGHT IN FOR QUESTIONING.” The buck repeated the message as the large black blimp type vehicle loomed over the city, looking for you know who.

A/N You know what, screw it. I'm cutting the chapter off here. No reason to not stop it here, right?