Ganymede couldn't help but stand stiff as a board as he absorbed his surroundings. Trees, real ones not artificial ones, towered above him, their leaves rustling and branches shifting in the wind as it blew. Birds chirped and sang as they roosted in the trees or flew through the air. He could feel the sun, filtered by a working atmosphere, shine down on his skin and hair in rays of pure light and warmth.

And, as the nanites that composed of his body finished installing a working pair of lungs, for the first time in just over two centuries, Ganymede breathed. He breathed twice, once through his mouth and again through his nose, each breath was pure euphoric bliss. Air...sweet, unadulterated, unpolluted, unsterillized, unfiltered air.

As he stood there taking deep breaths and basking in the suns warm rays he suddenly noticed a small white rabbit staring at him as if he was the most bizarre thing it had ever seen in it's entire life.

"A rabbit?" he thought as he studied the small white ball of fur. "A RABBIT!!!" he shouted as he used his wings to quickly close the distance between him and the rabbit. The rabbits expression quickly changed from a quizzical one to one of utter terror as the strange beast suddenly swooped in and cluched him in his odd claws. Ganymede was overwhelmed by feelings of joy as he felt the soft fur and squishy flesh of the rabbit in his hands.

"HOLY FUCK A RABBIT, I haven't seen one of these in over two centuries!" yelled Ganymede as he flew up into the air higher and higher as he gave the biggest bear hug he could could possibly give without crushing the little thing in two.

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Angel didn't think he had ever been more scared in his life. He was just off for a hop through the forest looking for something to do while fluttershy was away, when all of a sudden a big black and red round thing appeared out of nowhere followed by three big black boxes and some strange monster.

Next thing he knew the monster screamed something and took hold of him in his claw's and started flying high up into the sky, all while trying to crush him to death! He was too focused trying to get air to his lungs to notice what the beast said but soon the bear hug of death ended as they landed again on the soft grass.

"Holy hell i can't believe it, after all these years I...you know what little guy, for being the first living thing i've seen for the past 233 years, i'm gonna make sure nothing ever tries to eat you or get you sick ever again!" said the beast.

Angel started to calm down when the monster said he wanted to protect him. He thought of all the predators that roamed around the Everfree and began to get a smug look on his face. That was quickly replaced by panic again when the creature suddenly procured a large syringe from seemingly out of nowhere, filled with a weird silver liquid that looked like it was alive.

"Whoa there little guy," the monster said as Angel began to squirm like his life depended on it. "just hold still this won't hurt a bit"

Angel would have scoffed at that if not for the fact that he was too busy trying to get the hay away from this crazy thing to care. Luckily the monster must have lost it's grip on him because Angel soon found himself back on the ground and, without waiting another second he took off sprinting for Fluttershy's house as fast as he could to warn her of the crazy monster running around with syringe.

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Ganymede smiled through his face mask as he waved goodbye to the bunny as it sprinted off free as bird from him.

"See ya little guy, enjoy the long life free of sickness and hungry predators!" he yelled as the nanites that made up the now empty syringe melded back into his body.

"Fucking hell that guy's heart beat is nearing the speed of light," he said to himself as he could now see the creatures heart rate in his view. "guess I must have scared him a bit more than I thought."

As he turned around and noticed the three blocks of nanomass where the portal used to be, he remembered the reasons he brought them here. He quickly gave the nanomass directives aimed at exploring the surrounding landscape and local wildlife, not least of wich was to keep an eye out for signs of more advanced intelligence, language, tools that sort of thing.

No sooner had he finished giving his orders than the blocks of nanomass began to deform and spread over the immediate area, quickly absorbing a few trees and shrubs to gather data over their composition and any properties they might have, as well as gain materials to make more nanites.

Confidant that that situation was handled, he decided he needed to get a hold of himself before he tackled another random ass animal to the ground and thanked it for being the second living thing he'd seen recently. With that he took to the air and scanned the horizon for other areas of interest.

Soon he saw another interesting landmark to add to the local map in his database, a large collection of appletrees. But what was strange about these trees was that they appeared to be growing in rows, way too ordered to be natural. Then he remembered as he sifted through his data for an explanation. An appletree grove! That indicated skills in farming, which would indicate the use of tools and beasts of burden, which indicated intelligence!

Ganymede nearly forgot that he was flying, and almost stopped flapping his wings to keep himself aloft. Almost without thinking, he started flying towards the apple farm, steadily increasing speed in anticipation of what he had searched for for all these years. As he felt the wind flow through his hair, as he could see the farm increasing in size he couldn't help but hold hope that this wasn't some kind of sick joke. Years of searching, years of failure, years of lonliness. Could this be it? Could this be the day he finally found what had eluded him for so long?

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Twilight walked with her friends Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkiepie, Rarity, and Fluttershy as well as the princesses Celestia and Luna along with a small escort of royal guards, as they made their way to Fluttershy's house to discuss plans on how to deal with the disturbance.The princesses had brieffed all of them that they had detected a big disturbance in the fabric of reality earlier today, and with Twilights help managed to narrow down the location of the disturbance to somewhere in the Everfree Forrest.

One thing kept bothering her though, through years of studying all manner of different forms of magic, she wondered why she hadn't detected the anomaly as well. Granted the princesses were much much older and therefore more experienced with these things than her, but a disturbance in the very fabric of reality itself would still require an enormous amount of magical power.

"Princess Celestia, could I ask you a question?" she said.

"Of course my faithful student," Celestia replied. "what do you wish to know?"

"Well it's just that...well i've been studying magic for years now, learning everything there is to know about it,"

"Indeed you have my student." said Celestia, already guessing where this was going.

"well... if this disturbance is as big as you said it is, don't you think I would have at least detected the magic used to cause it?"

"Yes Twilight I believe that you would have." she said, trying to reassure the young mare.

"But if thats true then why didn't I sense it, surely the aftershocks of magical energy must have been staggering for such an event?" she asked, truly puzzled by this point.

Luna was the first to answer "Because that is what troubles us most," she said. "me and my sister hath not detected any magical energy at all."

"Now hold on a minute" Applejack spoke up. "Now ah ain't exactly one'a them magical types, and ah sure as hay don't know the first thang 'bout it. But ahm pretty sure that tearin' open a hole in'tha world takes a bit more than jus' wishfull thinkin."

"You are correct Applejack, these things dont just happen," said Celestia "which can only mean one of two things. Either somepony is trying very hard to hide what they are doing, which suggests they are doing something they shouldn't..."

"Or somepony hath mannaged to generate enough power to tear open the very fabric of reality," Luna continued "without the use of magic."

Everyone let out a collective gasp at that last suggestion. If anypony else had told them that they all would have called them crazy, but it was the princesses that were telling them this. None of them could decide which was worse, the thought that somepony was actively trying to hide something horrible, or the thought of something that didn't need magic to be that powerful.

"W-what could possibly be that p-powerful" squeaked Fluttershy.

"I haven't the faintest idea dear Fluttershy," said Celestia "your cottage is just up ahead, we'll figure out what to do when we get there."

As they neared Fluttershy's cottage they began to notice a much larger concentration of rabbits, birds, squirls, mice and many other animals gathered around her house than usual.

"Oh dear," said Twilight. "I didn't realize you were so busy today Fluttershy"

"I w-wasn't," Fluttershy said hesitantly. "they weren't here this morning when I left."

As she checked on the animals, the rest of them couldn't help but notice that many of the animals seemed more skittish than they usually were. Some even appeared to be constantly swivelling their heads, as if expecting something to burst out of the trees any minute.

"Well I talked with a bunch of the animals," said Fluttershy "a lot of them say they were chased out of their homes when some gray liquid came and started spreading through a small patch of the woods"

"Gray liquid?" asked Celestia, puzzled at the discription.

"W-well some discribed it as a kind of silver ooze, they say it smelled metallic"

"Well...that is quite strange"

Everypony agreed that it was definitly a weird situation, which only got weirder as Angel suddenly came sprinting out of the woods and nearly ran right into Fluttershy as he neared the group.

"Angel, whats wrong?" Fluttershy asked

Angel proceeded to give the group a visual rundown of the horrors he experienced in the clutches of the monster in the woods.

"What's he saying?" asked Rainbow Dash as she hovered above the group.

"He says that he was attacked by a monster of some sort out deep in the forrest."

"Can he describe it?" asked Celestia

Fluttershy proceeded to ask Angel if he could describe the monster to them, which Angel seemed more than happy to do.

"He says that it didn't have a mouth or nose, but it had long dextrous claws that could summon big sharp needles. He also says that it had a pair of silver wings, it had either white or peach colored skin, white glowing eyes and was hairless except for the top of it's head in which the hair was brown/blonde. Ummm, oh, and it was tall."

"How tall exactly?" asked Rarity

"Um, a little taller than Celestia...I think he said."

Everypony mulled over what they had just learned. A strange silver ooze was rampaging at some point in the forrest, consuming some but leaving others. And now they had an utterly bizarre needle summoning monster on the loose somewhere in the Everfree.

Luna was the one that broke the silence "Can thy animal friend lead us to where he saw it?"

"Let me see." she leaned down and asked Angel if he could lead them to where he saw the monster. He seemed hesitant at first but finally agreed and began hopping back through the forrest. Leading the way with Fluttershy they were followed by the royal guards who made a path through the forest followed by the princesses and finally the other five friends. They all followed Fluttershy and Angel as they made their way through the Everfree, determined to find what was causing all the mayhem today.

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Ganymede had made it to the grove of trees and was currently studying the way they had been planted. There was no doubt about it now, these trees were planted in such a way so as to be evenly spaced in rows for farming purposes. On each tree were literally dozens of big red juicy apples, grabbing one of them and taking a bite out of it, he noted that they tasted as good as they looked.

As he turned around to look for some sort of watering apparatus, he noticed what looked like a big red building just barely seeable through the trees. As he flapped his wings to raise himself above the canopy of the trees, he realized it was a great big barn.

"hmm, Barn requires construction skills, which requires at least a basic understanding of mathematics, which requires intelligence." he thought, getting more and more excited at the prospect of meeting another intelligent species.

He noticed a stocky looking red horse pulling a cart absolutly filled with apples off in the distance near the barn. Ganymede breifly thought about the fact that the horse was red but let it pass as an interdimensional inconsistancy.

He was about to head towards the barn, when his sensors in the nanomass picked up something that got his attention away from everything else.

Spoken Language Detected.

Those were the first words he noticed in his vision and they were the only thing he needed to see to convince himself to abandon the farm altogether, climb a certain ways into the sky, turn and blast off at full speed towards the initial landing site. This is it, this is what he waited for, this is the day 233 years, 2 months, 14 days, 14 hours, 27 minutes, and 53 seconds of searching became justified.

__________________________________________________________________

"Welp...ah guess we found it." Applejack said as she and her friends stared at the sight before them. What they saw was a tall, large, pyramid shaped obelisk standing in the middle of a small clearing devoid of any and all plantlife. Surrounding it for half a mile in every direction was what could only be discribed as a sort of sea of silvery ooze, that seemed to shift and turn as if it was alive.

"So..." said Rainbow Dash, growing a bit tired of having a stareing contest with grey goop."how exactly are we gonna deal with that?"

Twilight was the first to speak up. "Well...I don't know... maybe if we can destroy that obelisk it will turn everything back to normal."

"Maybe, though if ah may ask, what the hay is that thang anyway."

"I don't know, but whatever it is it's definitely not magical in nature" Twilight said

Celestia stared at it for a while as if considering something. "Twilight is right," she said "I can't detect even a little residual magic on that thing."

"Do you think this is what caused the disturbance?" asked Rarity

Luna was about to answer when all of a sudden a deafening boom could be heard overhead. As everypony looked up they could see a large figure in the air, they watched as he swooped down and landed in front of them as the silver ooze hardened into more solid ground to land on. The guards reacted quickly, forming a line in front of the princesses ready to fend off the newcomer if need be.

Slowly the creature rose from it's kneeling position till it rose to it's full height a few inches taller than Celestia. As it folded it's wings it spoke in a soft baritone voice.

"At last, after all these years, I have finally found you."

Author's Note

Whoo, boy that was a much longer chapter. So yeah, Ganymede and the ponies have finally made contact. What this means is anyponys guess and the only one who knows where it goes from here is me.

So anyway hope you enjoy the chapter, as always feel free to chat me up in the comments about any questions or critique's you have for my story...or you know you could just use it to shower me in praise and worship for my godlike writing ability (heh as if).
Oh, and special thanks to those of you who have already shown me tons of support for me and my story. See ya next chapter.