"What the hell did I do? Not even a day in town and I'm labeled a monster." Martin thought as he looked at the ponies from his place in an ally between buildings. It had been maybe... thirty minutes, after the whole encounter with the six.

"That was pretty sick though." He said to himself, if his body could smile he would have been doing exactly that.

What had happened was something that he didn't want to happen again. Getting to close to the locals seems to have bad results. Results that seem to lead to bodily harm. Martin sighed, his robotic voice cracking as he made the noise.

Martin slunk back into the shadows of the alley, he crouched, his prone body turned invisible and he began to run to another gap between the buildings. He needed to get out of town without being seen at all. Being seen would cause a stir... of sorts.

"Hey, Ghost, can you tell me anything about this place?" He thought as he slipped into another alley.

"The town seems to be named... Ponyville. Not sure if that's because of the inhabitants or not, but I'm just going to ignore that. The residents, small equines, resemble both, old earth animals, and old earth mythological creatures."

Martin had to laugh at this. Ponyville. Such a fitting name so far. Not much but ponies. "Did you get anything on the ponies?"

"There are four variants. The winged ones, Pegasi. The horned ones, Unicorns. The ones with neither horn nor wings, regular pony. And then there is the one with both wings and a horn, I would need for more information to give them a name."

Martin slipped passed another building and was met with a creek and the bridge he first crossed to get into the town. He trudged through the rushing water of the tiny river. "This is such horseshit." He muttered to himself.

"Sister, we wish to speak to you." Celestia said as Luna approached he from the throne room doors.

"What does thou need Tia?"

"Twilight sent a rather concerning letter and I wish to do something to assist her... but I honestly have no clue what to do."

"Show us the letter."

Celestia levitated the scroll in her magic over to her sister, the aura around the parchment going from a bright yellow to a dark blue as Luna unraveled it.

Dear Princess Celestia,

While me and the girls were hosting a party to lift the mood of Ponyville, a strange creature knocked at the castle door. Pinkie had been the one to answer the door, she had been frightened at what she saw and ran to get us, when we got to the door and opened it further to see what the commotion was about, the creature was standing there in what seemed to be armor. It stood there for a minute before turning and running away.

I regret to say that Rainbow, being her brazen self, she chased after it. It was quick but when Rainbow had been catching up to it, it leapt into the air and brandished what seemed to be some sort of magical knife. It tossed it up into the air and proceeded to kick Rainbow in the jaw. After that, it went invisible and ran off. I would like your help on this. I feel that Ponyville might be in danger but I don't know.

Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.

"This is quite the dilemma."

"I should just travel down there and see what's going on firsthoof."

"Then I shall accompany you sister!"

Celestia bowed her head and smiled. She got up from the throne and walked to a window. She scanned the area below and then the horizon, the small town known as Ponyville was barely visible from the distance.

"Okay, to live, I need a plan! Step one, gather resources. Step two, make a base of operations. Step three, win over the population... slowly. No need to make big waves or they might think it's all set up." Martin said to himself as he walked the edge of the forest. The sound of birds chirping filled the air. "Fucking hate birds, won't let me think..." Martin muttered as he looked at the surrounding trees.

He heard some humming coming from his left. He threw his hood onto his helmet, shading everything but his single glowing eye. He walked to the source of the singing and noticed a yellow pegasus fluttering about a garden. She was feeding a variety of animals. Birds, foxes, some skunks, even a bear! Martin crouched below a tree branch and moved closer to the spectacle. He forgot that when he went invisible it sent out a high-pitched noise. The pegasus stopped feeding and looked around.

"Um, hello? Is anypony there?" Fear filled her voice, it was even present on her face.

Martin looked at the pegasus, shook his head, and moved away before his invisibility would wear off. As he walked down the trail into the forest he thought to himself. "Is there any place I can hide around here?" As if on cue his ghost cut in. "There are two structures ahead. One slightly farther in the forest than the other. The one farther in seems to be massive, holding a series of underground tunnels."

"That works. Let's go to that one... Where is it exactly?" Martin asked.

"Keep heading down the trail but don't follow it all the way. Once it bends keep moving forward."

"Got it."

Silence passed between the two as Martin made his way to the structure.

"So, you got a name?" Martin asked.

"We are not given names. We're just made to help guardians."

"I'm gonna call you Nigel." Martin said. He could feel the glare that was being given to him from the tiny robot. Martin avoided a low hanging branch by ducking.

"Don't call me that."

"Fine, but what do you want to be called than?"

"Let's just stick with what you've been calling me. Ghost."

Martin shrugged. "No problem."

Some time passed in silence between the two. As the ruin came into view Ghost decided to speak up.

"There it is. We'll make camp there and hold out until we can come up with something.

"Sounds like a plan!" Martin chuckled and ran to the ruin.

As he approached he noticed the carvings. Two ponies, both had wings and horns. Either statue stood on either side of a large wooden door. Ghost appeared in front of Martin.

"Strange, these ruins are thousands of years old, why would someone just leave this place?"

Ghost looked to Martin for some kind of reply but all he got was a shrug of the shoulders. "Let's just get inside and see if we can fortify this place..."

Martin walked past Ghost and opened the oak door. As it creaked open it gave sight to a large library. Tables, chairs, rugs, and bookshelves of the like were scattered haphazardly around the room. In the center of it all was a large staircase leading to two thrones, one of them smaller than the other. Everyhting in sight had a thick layer of dust. As Martin moved into the room, taking in the sights, dust was kicked up from the rugs he walked on. He walked over to a bookshelf and inspected the contents.

"Fall of the Crystal Empire, Night of Tears, Bestiary: A guide to Equestria?" Martin rattled off the titles of the books that he saw.

"This whole place is a library of sorts, I'm pretty sure we can find some useful information here."

Martin looked at all of the books on the shelf. There were hundreds! And this was just the one! "Hm, It seems that when Equestria lacks in technology, they make up for it culture and everything else." Martin took the Bestiary off of the shelf and opened it up.

"Chapter one: Vegrandis Equus." Martin's face contorted. If he had eyebrows they would have furrowed. "Why the hell is this in Latin?" Martin knew how to read the language, but for the life of him he could never speak it. He flipped the page and was greeted with drawings of a couple of ponies. Some of them were pegasi, others were unicorns, there were some of the regular ones.

"Hmm, this is interesting but I can't really spend all my time reading, gotta fortify this place... Move some of the tables around to create a barricade along with the bookshelves." Martin said as he tossed the book away.

He moved along the bookshelf and grabbed the back of it. "I'm so sorry about this." He pulled the bookshelf, and with a massive groan the whole thing began to tip over and fall.

Somewhere in Ponyville, a certain purple pony princess shuddered as a chill ran up her spine.

"Time to get to work." Martin said as he looked around the massive room.

As Martin worked away at breaking the bookshelf into smaller pieces Ghost wandered around the room, levitating books out of their places and flipping through the pages, taking in any and all information that he could get his metaphorical hands on. "Hmm, This place is rich with knowledge, knowledge forgotten here by others... It would be good to look around and see if I can find anything about this place."

————— (This shall be the passage of time)

Martin looked at the barricade from the door, he choose to have the whole thing curve around the room. Meeting both of the corners on the opposite end.

"Looks good so far, time to see if there's anything in the back." Martin said as he walked to the barricade. Jumping over it, he moved to a small door that had a tiny hole where the latch might have been. Ghost saw his guardian open the door so he dropped the book that he had been reading and floated over to him.

"This place is rich with texts. Did you know there are other races besides the ponies? They've got Griffons, Dragons, Deer, even Cows."

"Interesting. Let's check out the back room and see if there's anything else that can help us."

Ghost nodded and vanished. Martin shook his head and chuckled. "Where the hell do you go?"

"Essentially? I'm a part of you. I don't rightly know how to explain it, so I'm just going to say it's complicated."

Martin shrugged as he opened the ancient door. As it creaked open light seeped into the room, the shadows were thick, as if the light burned it away.

"Ghost?"

"Already on it."

Ghost appeared over the shoulder of Martin and acted like a torch as a beam of light was emitted from his single eye and lit the area in front of them.

"Thanks." Martin said, looking at Ghost. Who only replied with a nod.

The area ahead of them was a long corridor with statues lining the wall. "I'm not liking the look of this, be wary Guardian." In response Martin pulled the revolver from his thigh and brought it up with both hands holding the grip and a finger on the trigger. Martin slowly walked forward, stepping lightly as he watched the statues on the wall. He looked at one of the statue closely, it depicted a large pony with a spear in its hooves, and armor covering most of its body. Martin looked away and continued walking down the hall, but stopped as he felt a plate underneath his feet sink into the ground.

"Shit." Was all he said as he watched the hallway shine with a wave of yellow light, the statues began to glow with runes covering their bodies.

Celestia and Luna had been in Ponyville discussing with Twilight and her friends about the creature that they saw. They all sat in the throne room of the crystal palace looking to Celestia who was currently speaking.

"Be wary girls, we don't know what the creature was or if it had good intentions. All we can do is find it and bring it back for questions." Celestia said before her horn flashed with a bright yellow light.

"Princess? What was that?" Twilight asked.

Celestia looked to Luna with a look of worry on her face before turning back to Twilight and her friends. "That was an alarm from the old palace in the Everfree, I thought I would never feel that since we left it."

"Sister, Is this true? Something has activated the security?"

"I believe so, probably just some wildlife finally making it in." Celestia said.

"What the fuck are these things?!" Screamed Martin as he shot at the stone guards with his revolver. Chunks of stone falling to the floor as the shots connected. The electricity being useless against their stone bodies.

"This is not worth it!" Was all Martin yelled as he reloaded his gun and continued firing.

Author's Note

Tell me if you see any errors.