Friendship Through the Smoke
Prologue
“Let’s do it again! And again! And Again!” Pinkie said, bouncing up and down, in complete happiness.
“W…where are we?” Rarity asked, rubbing a hoof on her head as she slowly rose from the ground. The sound of groaning and pain came as a reply, as her friends tried to rub the pain away from their bodies.
Having been churned and swirled by the portal, most of the six ponies felt too nauseas and dizzy to comprehend their surroundings. Rubbing sore bodies and awful headaches, they tried their best to stand up as they looked around their new surroundings.
Twilight, who was one of the first to regain her composure, shook her head as she pushed away the last of the pain from her head. Looking around and taking a good look at their surroundings, she got a good view of a large green field all around them.
All around them, where open green fields, with a forest of tall threes in the distance, and soaring white mountains out yonder. Trying to look for major land marks that she could be familiar with, she found none that she could easily identify and soon gave up. This was truly a new land, a place she hasn’t been before.
“Where the hay are we?” Applejack remarked, readjusting her hat as she got up and looked around them.
“I don’t know…” Twilight said, shaking her head before feeling a familiar sensation ran through her. “…but I think our cutie marks do.” She said, finishing as she glanced towards her cutie mark which was still glowing bright.
Having been guided by their cutie marks, the six friends had been urged by a gut like feeling to go through the portal. Normally, their cutie marks would point them to the large map inside the castle and tell them where to go, but the case they were currently handling seemed different. Instead of pointing them to the exact direction, their cutie marks seemed to be pushing them, giving them hints.
It took them a while to figure out the feeling they were sensing, but after Pinkie Pie accidentally bumped onto the homemade portal in the castle, something inside Twilight had lit up.
After days of adjusting, trying to find the right frequency, Twilight had finally found the correct world that her cutie mark had seemed to be telling her.
Now, after jumping, she and her friends find themselves in a world that seemed similar to her own. But knowing how these portals work, no matter how familiar it may be, there was always something different about it.
“So…uhhh…what are we even supposed to be doing here?” Rainbow Dash asked, hovering by them as she rubbed a hoof on her temples.
Despite being used to conduct high speed maneuvers, the spinning and churning inside the portal was something she wouldn’t get used to anytime soon.
“Well, knowing how all of this works...” Twilight said, pointing towards her cutie mark. “…I’m pretty sure that we’re supposed to fix some kind of friendship problem.”
“Hopefully an important one too…” Rarity groaned. “…because I didn’t go through a portal just to solve some simple problem…”
“Yea, but where do we go from here?” Rainbow Dash asked, as she began looking around.
The friends remained silent for a moment, as they tried to figure out the answer. Despite their cutie marks glowing, they didn’t seem to be urging them to go on any general direction.
“How about we go ask that pony over there?” Fluttershy asked, as she pointed towards direction of a dirt road just to their north.
Turning their gaze towards there, the six ponies saw a large brown pony galloping through that path, the sound of its hooves echoing throughout the area. Studying the pony, they noticed something strange on top of him, as if there was some kind of large object riding behind the pony. But since the pony was too far, it was too hard for them to distinguish what it was.
“Well, whoever that pony is, he seems to be in a hurry.” Rainbow Dash remarked, as the pony soon disappeared in the distance.
“Well, maybe he’s heading to someplace important?” Twilight said.
“Maybe that’s we’re supposed to go too.” Applejack said.
Twilight nodded. “Well, seeing that we don’t actually know where we are, we might as well follow him.” She then turned her head to face
Rainbow Dash. “Do you think you can catch up to him so we can make sure we know where we’re going?”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes before shaking her head. “Please, Twilight, nopony in Equestria or any dimension can out speed me.”
With that, Rainbow Dash flew away, flapping her wings fast so she could catch up.
Watching Rainbow Dash fly away, Applejack shook her head before sighing.
“Well, I guess we’re walking…”
“Hey, over here!” Rainbow Dash called, as she urged them to hurry and take cover behind some bushes. “You are not going to believe what I have found.
Following the galloping pony was an easier task then she had imagined and after a couple minutes of following him, she had found the destination on which he was going. Once there, Rainbow Dash found something interesting and seemingly exotic.
“Why, what is it?” Twilight asked, entering the bush they were hiding and peeking out on the other side.
“Well, why don’t you take a look for yourself?” Rainbow Dash muttered, as the other joined them.
Looking out, Twilight saw a large town nearby, with its wooden and brick houses all over the place. Seemingly peaceful and calm, the town looked exactly like Ponyville. In fact, it looked so alike that she could have easily mistaken it for it, if it wasn’t for the lack of her Crystal Castle.
Trying to remember the sign that they passed earlier, she remembered the town being named ‘Gettysburg’.
Moving her gaze away from the town and to the west, she saw different figure moving. Some of the figures, the ones closest to them, were ponies, and there were a lot of them.
Dozens if not hundreds of tall ponies stood by there, seemingly waiting for something as they bore heavy pack on them.
But as she continued to gaze at the ponies, she noticed that they had reigns on them, attached on their heads and keeping them in place.
Holding these reigns were tall bi-pedal creature, wearing blue coats and hats.
Recognizing the figures, Twilight’s eyes widened as she saw that they were humans, creatures that she was all too familiar with. But unlike the multicolored humans she once saw, these humans seemed to have only one pale color. Some swimmingly had a bright or darker shade than the other, but still the same color.
Now it gave her the idea that they somehow ended up in a human dimension, one that was different from the previous one she had encountered.
“Hey, look!” Pinkie exclaimed as she pointed towards the group of black tubes on wheels. “Those things look just like my part canons.”
But just as she said that, the canons Pinkie was pointed at let out a loud roar before being followed by a screeching sound. The sound made all of them stiffen in fright as the sound was louder than anything they thought could emit from such a device.
They may have looked like party canons, but whatever they were, they were definitely louder.
