Lucky And The Search For Friends.

2173 After Earth.

Brilliant streaks of red, orange, and yellow painted the sky in a symphony of warmth, a harmonious congregation of sunlight. The true brilliance of this symphony, was that it was a common occurrence, something you could see every day, yet every time it occurred, the notes were always different. Whether in their arrangement, their speed, their volume, or even the melody. That was the unique, simple, and generally ignored, beauty of the sun.

It was a glorious sunset at the moment, the kind a romantic couple would make up and kiss under, to the powerful swell of romantic music. Or, the kind where two close friends would reunite under, for the first time in years. Or it was the kind of sunset where one sat underneath an apple tree, and thought about a particularly troublesome subject of any sort, something which a small group of assorted creatures were currently doing.

They were an odd mix, even considering the normalcy of such creatures in the current day and age. A couple of miniature zebras lurked at the edges of the group, and nearby sitting beside an apple tree, where a  female minotaur of terrifying height, about 8 and a half feet tall, and plain colouring of a brown coat, and sitting across from her was a small orange scaled dragon, about 1 foot and 7 inches tall. The minotaur wore an animal skin coat, mostly bear hide, and very baggy sweatpants, that still couldn't cover her legs the entire way, well the dragon wore a surprisingly well tailored suit jacket and dress pants, with holes cut out rather neatly to accommodate his still growing wings and tail, and a well maintained fedora that, though old, was obviously well loved by the small dragon wearing it to be in such good condition.

“Do you have any eights?” spoke the minotaur, in a strong but surprisingly quiet voice, considering her size and appearance. She was nervously glancing back and forth, first at her cards, and then at the dragon sitting across from her, who simply gazed back in a nonchalant, almost, defiantly, bored manner. the dragon let out a heavy sigh.

“No, go fish.” He said in a very bored manner. The dragon's voice was scratchy and gruff, with a distinct, but not heavy, Irish accent singing along with every word he said. He took another long pull from his cigarette, as he waited for the minotaur to take another card from the deck, very, very, slowly. This had been going on for awhile now, various card games having been played, and the minotaur had lost every single one. And it had long since passed the point of being funny and kind of adorable, too just plain saddening. He took another pull from his cigarette.

“Look Louise, can we stop now? please?” the dragon exasperatedly asked the minotaur, who simply shot back a sharp glare at him.

“Not until I win at least one game!” Louise growled at the dragon, a normally very intimidating gesture for a minotaur, but in Louise's quiet voice it lost a lot of its edge.

“And don’t you dare throw the game just to get out of this, Cory! I'm winning one, fair and square!” She barked out. The dragon, Cory, took another pull of his cigarette, and let out a very heavy sigh. It was all starting to get rather tedious he mused, both the card games, and the decision making the rest of the group were arguing about. He was all about every voice getting heard sure, no really he would swear on the life of his dead mother, but at some point a decision had to be made, and damn whatever the consequences are.

“Got any threes?” He lazily asked.

“God fucking dammit!” Was her quiet, but very angry, reply. Cory shook his head, and held out his hand, claw, thing, as Louise begrudgingly handed over the three of spades.

“For the last time, no!” came a very exasperated shout from the huddled group of ponies, a few taking a small step back, the zebras, former fraternal twins that were even more identical now that they were both somehow the same gender, breaking away from their hushed conversation to once again pay attention, or at least pretend too.The rest of the group consisted of brightly coloured ponies of varying sizes, with several of them having very noticeable differences, such as a horn, or a pair of wings, either a feathery bird like pair or a leathery bat like pair, but never both at the same time. From the centre of the group came a light blue glow radiating from a chalk white stallion unicorn, with a light chalk blue mane. He was wearing a plain grey wind breaker that was left open, and plain dark blue jeans with hole cut out at the rear to allow his rather messy and knotted tail to poke out. He appeared to be the leader of the group, for the most part, with most if not all of the ponies in the group facing him. He stamped his hoof on the ground, and gave a small snort, his ever increasing anger evident in his cerulean eyes.

“But Reggie.” Stuttered an incredibly feminine light green earth pony stallion, with a dirty blond mane that had dark green stripes in it, and who was wearing a pair of plain light blue jeans, and dark framed square shaped glasses that were two sizes too small for his current, now silver coloured, eyes. “We've been walking for months now, and we haven't seen any other sign of civilization for miles, we should at the very minimum, go and try to converse with them.” Reginald, or rather Reggie, turned his increasingly angry glare towards the green stallion.

The stallion, Jeremy, nervously avoided eye contact with Reggie. He didn't like making Reggie mad, he had been his best friend for a long time, but over the last couple of months things had gone. . . less than swimmingly between them. It was understandable though, they were all under a bit of stress recently, Reggie especially. over the past two months they had all been scared half to death, nearly crushed, threatened to be eaten, and one of them had actually been eaten. They had almost burned to death, starved to death, and pushed to and beyond the brink of both emotional and physical exhaustion, and of course losing eight members of their initial group, one to wild animals, two to a rock slide, three to starvation, and two being kidnapped by weird flying bug abominations, presumably as slaves or food for ‘The Hive’.

“As the leader, I'm saying no, and that's final!” Reggie roared, causing Jeremy to stumble backwards and fall, and everyone in the group to stumble a bit as well. A light pink pegasus mare with black track shorts, and  a violet mane rushed over to help Jeremy up, followed by a clothless dark blue earth pony mare with snow white hair and orange highlights, who cast a stern passing glare at Reggie. She was a little surprised to find her glare returned with equal, no definitely more, ferocity from Reggie. The mare didn't back down, it wasn't her nature to, but it did frighten her a little just how angry Reggie was. Still it was but a passing glance, and the dark blue mare returned her attention towards Jeremy, who had just gotten back up with some assistance from the light pink pegasus.

“Look what's the problem here dude?” Spoke a lazy voiced brown earth pony colt, with a bit of a haughty tone. “That town’s got food, some shelter, hell there's other people down there too right? It’s got everything we need, and yet you’re saying no? What’s wrong with ya dude!” Continued the colt, growing irritation seeping into his voice. More voices raised in agreement with the colt, but before things could start to get out of hand a brilliant flash erupted, blinding everybody in the nearby vicinity for a few seconds, and then just as it came it left, leaving only slight confusion, silence, a slightly out of breath Reggie, and the smouldering remains of the apple tree Cory and Louise were playing cards under. Silence reigned for a few more moments, the tension thick enough to cut ice.

“Got any kings?” Cory nonchalantly asked. Louise used some very choice swear words, and once again, begrudgingly handed over one of her cards. The tension remained intact, but the silence mercifully came to an end as the  group of ponies began quite conversations, and hushed murmurings amongst themselves. Reggie finally caught his breath. He cleared his throat to get the groups attention and, taking a deep calming breath, addressed the crowd.

“Look, I understand all of your concerns, but you need to understand that I'm doing this for the good of all of us.” Most of the group exchanged uneasy looks, but before anyone could interject Reggie continued. “That town down there isn't normal, the things down there are not normal! It’s a dangerous place, and I feel it’s best if we just cut our losses and move on.” Angry shouts of protest immediately rang out, though they were quickly silenced by another burst of light blue energy emitting from Reggie. Everything was silent for another short pause. Finally the dark blue earth pony mare, Jillian, took a step forward.

“Look I don’t know what the fuck has gotten into you, Reg, but clearly everybody else wants to go there, it makes sense to go there, and if we don’t go there right fucking now I am gonna rip off someone’s legs, all four of them, burn them to a black crisp, just so I can eat them and not be starving!” She gave a boisterous stomp, snorted, and glared at Reggie defiantly. The rest of the group enthusiastically threw their support behind Jillian, with a nodding of heads, and even a stamping of hooves here and there. “I say we go down there, and if anyone doesn't wanna, or disagrees, cough, Reggie, cough cough.” Jillian moved closer to Reggie's face as she said this, giving him the most patronizing look she possibly could. Reggie looked a bit flustered at this action, but continued to hold his glare regardless. “They can stay up here on the hill, alone, and probably very damn cold when the night comes. The rest of us.” She said, pointing a hoof down to the town at the bottom of the hill. “Are going to that quaint little town down there, and getting some actually decent fucking rest!” And with a final angry huff, Jillian began her decent down to the town at a decent trot, and after only a momentary pause the rest of the group went after her, a few of them throwing triumphant looks at Reggie, and some of the others offering sheepish apologies and hurrying after the others.

“Finally.” Cory muttered, picking up the cards he and Louise were playing with, much to the chagrin of Louise who had yet to win a game, and hurried after the rest of the group. “Thought they’d never shut up,” he said pocketing the cards. The zebra twins looked at each other, amusement clearly written all across there faces, and together looked towards Reggie.

“The jig is up, the war is won.” Chimed the twin on the left, the right one immediately picking up after the first one. “And looking at the results, we’d say his followers are done.” Chimed the right one, not making any attempt to hide his snickering, though neither was the left one. “You're all alone right now white and blue.” continued the right one, the left one picking up immediately after the right one. “So why don’t we give you an important clue.” they then grinned at each other, and in a loud chorus said. “We’d hurry down this hill if we were you, because otherwise you’ll look like a big damn fool!” Then grinning madly, the raced down the hill to both catch up with the group, and to see who could make it first to the poplar tree halfway down the hill. Reggie felt his right eye twitch rather violently, and suddenly felt the almost unconquerable desire to scream, almost. sighing, and putting a hoof to his head Reggie looked down to the rest of the group, his group. . . and began the walk down to catch up to them.

“You're all making a mistake,” he muttered quietly to himself. He looked down towards the small town, a town made of mostly stone and a strange crystal, sitting in the shadows of some mountains, and wondered where did things go so wrong in his life.

--*--

Nestled quietly in the mountains, at the top of a stone tower of dizzying proportions, an impossibly old stallion woke from his slumber. A scrying orb had just started giving off an ear splitting racket, and so the stallion would have to check it to see what was up. And very much was up indeed he found out, for there, so very very close to the town, was a young unicorn of incredible potential, and he was exactly what the stallion needed. donning a travelling cloak, and a rather tattered hat, the old stallion headed out the door, locking it with a magical click, and proceeded the short journey.

Today was going to be very interesting.

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