Chapters Chapter 2: First Contact (Rewtten)
Kelly now adorned an exo-skeleton over her suit, armored with dark and light gray advance armor, protecting her chest, back, shoulder, thighs, shins and her toes and heels. On the face of the chest piece, a small piece protrudes out to partly cover her neck; had her rank emblem stamped on with a silver star with three bars at the bottom. But her left arm was bare of protective, metal covering, just minor, standard steel plating. Why waste good armor plating when there’s a good chance that same arm might get blown off? Well… she had a feeling.
She shakes and moves around her body in the locker room to see if any parts were loose or restricting her movements. With a smirk of approval, she walks over to a wall, a clear space between the lockers and it. She presses her right hand onto it, creating glowing spots on the surface where her fingertips were placed.
The whole, twenty-foot-long wall suddenly jerks inward and swiftly slides up, revealing many, different set of equipment and weapons. First, she walks over to the far right to grab one of ten, armor plated packs. She unhooks it from its resting place, swings it over her shoulder and attaches itself onto her back with a few audible ‘clicks!’ onto her shoulders and under her arms. She steps to her left, grabs two, large swiss army knives in her small holsters and clicks them both on her lower back. She then grabs four grenades and set two on each, magnified indentations on the front of her thighs. She moves a little further down, looking at all the firearms, searching for the right ones, and stops with a smile.
What she learned about the firearms that the ship authorizes to use in dire situations, is that she loved them. Sure, the small Tasers were effective on their own, as well as the dart rifles, but they lack any real kick to them, no power to be felt. Nowadays, not a single firearm uses combustion- gun powder -to fire bullets anymore, they use magnets. Not a measly refrigerator magnets, no, but magnets that fire a metal slug twenty percent faster than the normal means. Of course, each type of gun has their limits to how much power they can give out, but she does know she prefers the weaponized, cluster of magnets on a stick than the pea shooters.
“Thought I never get to see you, ever again.” She reaches out and unhinges the assault rifle from the wall and inspected the weapon like every good warrior should. She grunts in approval, swings the weapon over her back and attaches itself onto the side of the pack. She grabs five magazines of ammo for the rifle and stows them away in a compartment on the side of her backpack. She grabs two Magnum pistols with both living and mechanical hands, and put them in their rightful holsters onto her thighs, grabbing a couple magazines for it as well. She steps back to let the wall close itself and turns back to her locker a few paces away from her. She reaches up into her locker and looks at her reflection on the large fishbowl like visor, tinted gray with a couple grooves etched into the visor.
She smiles, crams the helmet in the crook of her left arm and starts walking out, the lights turning themselves out in her wake.
Once she reaches the correct Docking Bay, she hops off the transporter and floats across and stops herself on a railing. She scans the large hanger while planting her feet on the floor with a light thump; the area was filled with different kinds of ships, in rows upon rows of either sides of the walls. She spots her captain and a young woman standing beside him, wearing her own ex-skeleton; painted white, light plating for minor armoring, and overall looked more delicate. With a quick hop, she travels across the bay over to him, stops dead in her tracks as she steps down a few paces away from them with a little help of small thrusters located through her body and magnifying her soles. She gives her captain a swift salute.
He smiles at her, “Ah! Good timing, Commander. Let me introduce you to Miss Snowlet. She will be accompanying you down on the planet. Your job is to protect her and keep an eye out for any danger or object of interest.” He says.
The white-suited woman steps forward carefully and awkwardly, trying to find gravity that wasn’t there, and brings out her hand with a small smile. She was few inches shorter than Kelly, her hair blond and bright in the light and her skin brighter than the Captain himself. Her baby blue eyes staring at her in kind and innocence.
Kelly firmly shakes her hand for a brief moment. The woman smiles a little wider, “Nice to meet you, Commander.” She speaks with a soft voice. Kelly nods in reply and looks back at their captain.
“Okay you two. You will land on the southern part of the alien city and move up north towards the castle. We would be your eyes from above, but it looks like some cloud cover will be down there in a few moments, but we will keep radio contact and the cameras on your helmets will be our eyes.” he steps aside and gestures to the hatch of the small ship opening down, making a short ramp for them to step in. “Stay safe you two.” He says to them both. Kelly places her helmet on, Snowlet doing the same with a more delicate looking one and both nod to him.
They both salute at him, “Sir! Yes, sir!” they both say in unison and turns to the ship. The short woman takes a step but loses her footing and starts floating up with a squeak. Kelly grabs her foot, pulls her down and gently pushes her towards the opening of the craft. With a quick ‘thank you’ the woman goes and quickly sat down on the co-pilots’ seat. Kelly follows soon after with a hop, the hatch closing behind her and sat herself down. They strap themselves onto their seats and both felt a sudden jolt of motion, the small ship being lifted up in the air by a large, mechanical arm protruding out from the ceiling of the hanger. They both see the captain walking away from them as the arm turns them around and places them in a short, launch tunnel with a transparent, plasma field at the end, stopping the vacuum of space. Kelly powers up and the ship to get the engines started, while Snowlet sits in place, trying to prepare herself of finally going out of the ship but fails as her body shakes a little with anxiety, gripping her armrests tightly.
The captain turns around and waves at the ship right before they were launched right into space. Kelly grabs the wheel and the jets to the sides and two at the back of the ship erupts to life, making the ship swerve to the left and slowing it down. She stabilizes the ship and waits for her co-pilot to calm down for a few moments.
Kelly looks at her passenger with a straight face, “Ready?” she asks flatly. Snowlet nods, holding a hand on her chest as she tries to slow her heart and breathing. With her approval, Kelly looks ahead and lets the ship move forward, towards the planet.
They were awed, seeing the planet not through a screen, but a window. Snowlet does her best not to shed a tear, knowing that she wore a helmet, while Kelly was in trance, staring the planet with hope, but quickly changes to determination; determined to fight and help her species to settle down on the planet.
A target lights up on the screen, showing a series of rings to show Kelly where to fly through space and land. After a few moments, the ships begins shaking and deafening noise rattles their minds. Snowlet clenches the armrests once more, closing her eyes shut, praying for both their lives.
Kelly ignores the violent shaking, years of practice doing their work as she descends down and past the layers of clouds, her ship burning up in the atmosphere but she still follows the path of red rings carefully with small adjustments of her wheel. As they broke through the last clouds, she quickly activates the cloaking of the ship. Slowing disappearing from head to back, becoming part of the sky, the only thing showing were four, blue after-burners of the engines. The violent shaking dies down and Snowlet sighs in relief with a small chuckle.
“Everyone, doing okay?” they both hear their captain in their ear pieces.
“Yes, sir. Entry a little shaky but everything’s still working.” Kelly answers, checking the ships’ systems for a moment before looking back at the path of rings. “Landing in T-minus thirty seconds.” She says once more.
She guides the ship closer to the ground to try and hide the after-burners from view of the city, just in case. She then guides the ship under the city itself and slows down to a stop behind a small waterfall. She slowly lands it down and kills the engines as the landing gear was set firmly on the wet, gravel ground. They both unstrap themselves from their seats and Kelly was first at the door.
As the hatch begins lowering itself down, she grabs onto her rifle from the side of her pack and points it out. She looks at her charge, “Stay until I say so.” She orders her, and Snowlet nods in quick agreement.
Kelly looks back out and slowly does down the steps, pointing her gun in every direction, trying to search for anything suspicious. To her, every single thing she sees was alien to her. The rocks, wet gravel, the wall and ceiling of rock and even the stunning waterfall. Living her whole life in a ship and the strict restrictions alienated her mind on what was normal and what was alien, and at the moment, the whole planet was one, huge, strange ball of dirt. She felt a little heavier, she felt the air itself pushing a little against her movements, but nothing too taxing with her augmented body. Even just being able to see for miles, confused and dazed her in awe, but still true to her training, she continues to search the area for any danger. After a minute or two, she finally calls out.
“Clear!”
The woman steps out and her eyes bulges out in awe and shock. She stays at the entrance for a few more moments, just staring at her surroundings until she sees her bodyguard standing around, searching the area with her gun lowered and her visor cleared to show her face. She quickly goes down the steps and plants her feet on gravel ground. She stops and looks down at the wet ground in awe and grins. She walks around for a few moments giddily until Kelly clears her throat, she looks up at her with a happy smile.
“We’re going to have to send the ship in the clouds, Miss Snowlet. Please step back from the vehicle.” She says as she walks past her and goes up near the opened hatch. A display lights up in front of her and she starts typing out a few things with her left hand, and when she was finished she quickly steps back as the engines starts up and the hatch, with the ramp, closes itself. When it hovers in the air, its clocking activates itself and rockets towards the sky and into the clouds after bursting through the falls, leaving a small rainbow for a brief moment.
Kelly looks back at her charge, “If we get into trouble, it’ll go right to you, and if I’m gone or passed on, go right in and it’ll take you back on the Child of Earth. Understood?” she says in a commanding tone, and the short woman nods, in both fear and understanding. “Good, now get to work. We only have so much daylight to spend.” She turns away from her, “I’ll be searching the area.” She says before walking off to see if there was an easier way to get into the city, quite literally, right above them.
Twilight stands beside her old teacher at the gates of the castle, looking out towards their crumbled city of Canterlot. A cyan Pegasus mare with rainbow hair and tail lands right in front of them with a thud, small bits of dust flying off. Her body was covered in light armor, but the chainmail was left out and the armor plating itself was thinner to make it light, and looked smooth and elegant to make her look aerodynamic. She had two, short holsters strapped to her sides where her two short swords rested, enchanted to be able to stab through heavy armor like knives through warm butter, but took more effort to slice across.
The Pegasus smiles at the lavender friend, “Ready to go, Twi?” she asks and plants her hands onto her hips.
Twilight nods with a small smile of her own, “Yes, Rainbow. You?” she replies earning a quirt nod.
A gentle hand rests on Twilights’ shoulder, Twilight looks up at Celestia, “Stay safe you two. I’ll be at the balcony shortly to keep an eye you both.” She assures them.
“Don’t worry, Princess. I got her back.” Rainbow Dash gestures to herself, “Whatever that came out of the clouds won’t hurt my best friend.” She pulls Twilight in for a bear hug, causing the poor mare to wheeze as she drops her helmet.
Celestia giggles at the display, “Still, travel the Canterlot grounds with caution. We don’t know if the thing is dangerous or not.” She warns.
“Of course, Celestia.” Twilight answered with a smile as she frees herself from her friends’ iron grip and picks up her helmet, putting it on with a strap.
Celestia smiles at them, “I’ll see you both soon and stay safe.” She says to them both before they ran off. Twilight turns around, lifts both arms up to her sides and closes the gates with her magical grip. She takes her breath as Rainbow pats her back.
“Where should we start first?” she asks.
Twilight straightens out as she turns to look at the once, lively, bustling city, “We start here and head south as we go. Just to make sure nothing ‘ell jump us.”
Kelly walks in, in what looks like some kind of store. She inspects the surroundings with her charge at her tow. As she walks ahead, Snowlet looking at a piece of item on top of a high counter and walks towards it in interest. She slowly reaches up and grabs a plushy looking dull from its resting place. It was fluffy and plush to touch, colored a dull green and one of its left black button eye was missing. The dolls’ shape itself was a little strange; almost like a teddy bear with stubby limbs, but it had heart-shaped markings on its thighs and its muzzle a little longer. It had blue stringy tail and hair and that was about it.
She looks around a little more and sees similar items scattered around the shop. She looks closer and the whole place was littered with layers of dust. When she sees her guardian walk out of a room, she smiles at her and waves the plushy to her.
“I guess we’re in a toy store, Commander.” She says and quickly walks over to her, showing her the plush doll. Kelly grabs it with her left hand, briefly inspecting from all sides before showing it back to her charge. Snowlet accepts it and looks around the shop once more, “Captain, are we allowed to take samples?”
“Of course, Miss Snowlet. Carry on.” they both hear their captain.
She takes off her backpack and kneels down. She opens it up, dusts the doll first, stuffs the plushy in carefully and closes it back up.
“Come on,” Kelly says as she walks back in the room she was just in before, “there’s a hole to the other building in here.” She finishes and waits for her at a doors’ threshold. Snowlet quickly follows her in and both jumps across an alley to get to the other building. After they search the empty building, they go back into the streets and walks into a cross section. Snowlet taps Kelly on the shoulder and shows her a ball full of small glass eyes.
“We need to take images, so can you throw this up?” she asks.
Kelly rests her gun on her pack and accepts the ball from her, “How high?” she asks, handling the ball with her right hand.
“Ten feet first, then forty, if possible.” Snowlet answers.
Kelly nods and tosses the ball at the said height, with a small flash, it drops back down and Kelly catches it. She swings her arm around and tosses the ball even higher in the air. She catches the ball once more and shows it to her charge. Snowlet smiles and takes the ball back and puts it back into her pack. “Thank you.”
As Snowlet begins looking around, Kelly turns towards the castles’ tower and sees something that interests her. She points her gun at it and looks through the camera scope. To her surprise, she sees something looking back at her with a larger scope of its own. It stands up straighter and it looks like it had polished armor on. Even from this far, Kelly knew the alien was rather tall.
“Captain?” she asks as she continues to look through her scope and activating her visor to polarize it.
“I see we finally found them. Advance to the castle with caution.” He orders her.
She lowers her gun and turns back at her charge near a building entrance, “Hurry up! We’re heading to the castle!” She yells, and right after she says that, a fast and swift shadow goes across the street and lands on top of the building Snowlet was inspecting, hitting the roof with a loud thud. Kelly quickly sprints over to her charge and points her gun in the air, “Inside! Now!” she whispers.
They both quickly went in, Kelly shut the large door with a slam and when she sees a tall shelf to the side she quickly goes around it and tips it over, covering the doorway. She looks up and spots a large hole on the ceiling to her left and ushers Snowlet to go a little further in. When they reach a corner wall, they hear something moving around the roof and a glimpse of something in the street.
Suddenly, a mass of armor and feathers fall down from the ceiling and drew out its swords from its sides, the edges of its blades lightly glowing bright greens, pointing them both at them. The door and shelf breaks open to show another intruder wearing a set of armor as well, its hands raised to them, emitting a faint purple glow like smoke. Snowlet whimpers and starts shaking at the hostile aliens. Kelly activates a lazar pointer on the gun and aims it at the head of the winged creature when it takes step forward, daring it to take another step. The thing crosses its eyes to look at the small dot on its forehead. As it tries to take another step towards them, Kelly swiftly aims just to the side of its head and pulls the trigger. With a bang, the creatures and her charge jump in surprise as the bullet shatters a small pot and creates a hole in the wall.
The aliens step back from them, alarmed at what she could do. With the warning shot well understood, Kelly turns on her comm.
“Captain, what should we do?” she whispers, still aiming the gun at the sword, wielding alien, its eyes now glaring at her.
In a long moment of silence, she notices the purple one looking at her charge, in what looks like interest and concern. The thing looks at its partner and speaks in gibberish to the other. The blue one seems conflicted and speaks back to the other. The purple one replies and points at her shaking charge. The purple one seems to convince the blue one, as it growls and takes away its swords. Kelly looks at the purple one as it tries to calm her down. The only person that needs calming down was her charge and she felt her flinch behind her when the purple one takes a few too many steps. She quickly aims the gun at it, causing her partner to rest its hands on its sword handles till the purple one hisses at her to back off.
“I advise you to lower your gun, Kelly. The purple one seems concerned with Ms. Snowlet. And remember, we’re here to make a new home.” Her captain says to her.
Kelly didn’t respond, just turns off the lazar and threw her gun over her back and onto her pack, causing both aliens to jump in surprise at her sudden movement and her visor depolarized to show her poker face, never leaving her gaze at them. Though, she kept her hands close to her pestles just in case.
Twilight was most intrigued about the two visitors; they were a tad shorter then her and Rainbow Dash, but the left arm of the first one looks mechanical in nature, but moves around like a real arm as if it were biological. She has questions, but at the moment that doesn’t seem she’ll get any answers.
“Can… you both understand me?” she asks hopefully with a little smile, but only receiving blank stares in return. She pouts and slumps her shoulders a little in disappointment.
“Did you think they would understand you, right off the bat?” Rainbow comments with a short chuckle.
“Shush, you! Your brash actions nearly caused us to make another enemy! We’re doing bad as it is, but do you really think we would survive if we made another!?” she replies with a light glare. Rainbow lowers her gaze down to the ground.
“Sorry, Twilight.” Her friend apologizes in shame.
Twilight nods at her and looks back at the two visitors, “Um… home?” she asks, yet again, receiving blank stares. She looks around for a moment, and when she finds a piece of paper, she levitates it over, earning surprised looks from them both. She carefully starts ripping it apart, and when she was done she shows the house shaped, torn paper to the two visitors and taps it a couple times and points at them.
After a moment, the front creature points out the door and into the street of Canterlot. Twilight looks at the two and right back at the streets. She points outside and turns to the armored alien, “Outside?” she asks. She didn’t know if it understood her or not, but it nods its head nonetheless. She looks at Rainbow and gestures to the smashed entrance, “Maybe they’re trying to show us outside?” her friend shrugs and both walk right out. Twilight notices something off, so she looks back at the two to see them both just standing there, briefly talking to one another before they look at her, so she waves them over.
When they were all out, the shorter one shakily points a digit at the new object in the clearing sky. “Whoa! Is it saying, they came from that thing, in the sky!?” Rainbow says in awe and gestures to the ship before shielding her eyes to see more clearly at the object.
Twilight glances at the two, their advanced clothing or suits and equipment seem to say they did. Then a thought came and she looks at the armored alien in nervousness. She points at the device it pointed at her and Rainbow moments ago and gestures to herself and her friend in fear. “A-are… are yo-you here to… invade…?” she asks shakily, quickly gaining the attention of her friend, her own eyes now just widening in realization of her error.
The alien reaches back and inspects the strange device closely, looks at its own companion and shakes their heads at them both, while putting the thing back on its backpack-like-thing, sticking onto it like a magnet. Both mares inwardly sigh in relief, Maybe they came in peace after all. Twilight thinks to herself then turns her gaze at the distant castle. She then looks at her friend, “You think Celestia and Luna would want to see them?”
Rainbow looks at her as if she just grew another head, “Twilight… this isn’t one of those times where we can do this on our own.” She replies, making her friend blush a little in embarrassment, chuckling lamely to herself while twiddling with her fingers.
Briefly composing herself, Twilight turns back at the two visitors, points towards the castle and waves for them to follow her with a gentle smile.
“Captain, we might need a Crawler to communicate with them. Holographic images might do much better than simple gestures.” Kelly speaks as she follows their purple, alien tour guide.
“We were thinking the same thing. We will send down a few if you give us the green light.” Their captain replies.
As they close in on the great walls and gates, the grounds, roads and buildings look even worse than any other they saw earlier. Even the wall itself; scorch marks, crumbled potholes and even a few green and red splatter marks painted onto the wall and a few buildings around them.
Her charge stops and slowly walks over to a green splatter on the road nearby to the left of the road. She crouches down to it and takes off her pack to take a quick sample. Just as she opens up her pack, a loud, ear piercing screech sounds out in one of the buildings. Kellys' augmented senses swiftly turns her gaze towards the building, seeing a dark, bug-like creature jumping out of its hiding place and blasting out a glowing green projectile towards her charge from its arm.
Just as Snowlet starts to turn her head towards the building, Kelly leaps towards her, reaching out to block her charge with her left arm. Just when the green, flaring ball was about to hit her, a blinding, green, flash of light hit them both and their ears begins ringing.
By the time she recovers, she finds herself staring at the somewhat cloudy sky and being dragged along the ground by her right arm, a scraping sound obviously being made by her armor. After a closer inspection, she sees part of her helmet was cracked, webbing out like a spiders’ web. Then she sees she was dragged past the gate and everything darkened a little by its looming shadow.
When she stops, she groans and something starts speaking to each other frantically, a hint of fear and confusion sounding out between them. Many more starts shouting and sounds of running, fighting and battle cries filling the air.
She rolls her head to her left and sees her charge crawling towards her, part of her own helmet cracked and dark ash covering parts of her helmet and chest. She lifts her left arm to assure her charge, but to her surprise, half of it was missing; sparks arching out as she moves it around and thin wires stiffly wobbling about.
She sits herself up with the help of her fellow human and looks at her, “We stumbled ourselves into a war.” She whispers to both her ear piece and Snowlet.
Author's Note
So that's chapter 2 edited, I hope you enjoyed it.
Chapter 3: Lock n' Load (Rewritten)
As the armored aliens run about to defend the castle grounds, Kelly slowly gets up to her feet with the help of her human companion, and reaches up to her cracked visor with her own remaining intact arm, still feeling a little dazed.
“Captain, we might need a backup on this.” Kelly looks around, seeing some technicolor creatures limping away from the wall with bandaged limbs and bodies, some being carried away entirely to get in the castle.
She looks up at the wall itself and sees some of them running around, shooting out arrows, spears, bolts of colored auras coming out of their hands, and even shooting modified, Winchester-like rifles, but instead of a standard one shot loading system, it had some type of feeder to the side of the gun with a magazine feeding through it. But they weren’t shooting out plane metal slugs, to her, it looked like they were shooting out some type of glowing objects out the end of their barrels. There were also green balls of light streaking overhead, either hitting the castle to create scorch marks or flying into the clouds with a burst or dissipating in the air.
“Their numbers are declining, and by the looks of it, sir, they won’t last too long.”
“Back up will arrive in a few minutes, Kelly. Just h-hold out a little longer.” His voice cracks as if he was in a hurry.
Kelly looks at her charge beside her and then looks around for the purple alien they met eariler. As she spots it talking to the blue winged alien and also a heavily armored orange one, she walks over to them with Snowlet right behind her. As she walks, she notices the purple one had a pair of wings as well, neatly tucked away behind its dark hair.
“Hey!” it jumps in surprise and turns back at them both, a surprised expression written on its face. Kelly gently brings Snowlet up front; points a finger at it and to Snowlet. Kelly gently pushes the woman towards it; lifts up a thumb to herself and points back towards the wall. She reaches down and brings out one of her magnums, briefly spinning it around with a finger and then grips the handle, switching the safety off with her finger.
Twilight and Rainbow Dash stares at their visitor in awe and shock. One moment ago, they saw it being blasted away and losing its left arm in the process, but now its standing right in front of them, with its smaller device drawn out with its remaining arm while the other occasionally sparks with arching electricity.
Twilight points at its torn, sparking arm, “Aren’t you in pain?” she asks. It looks at its arm for a brief moment, moving the remaining stump of a forearm, then simply shakes its head ‘no’. This confuses her even more, but mentally shakes her head and looks at Rainbow Dash to her right, “Rainbow, can you bring it up to the wall with the others? I think it wants to help.” She says.
Dash felt a little uneasy but steps forward and glares at the alien visitor, “Do any funny business, I’m dropping you.” She says to it sternly, but all it does in response was turn around and waits. She growls but lifts up the somewhat heavy creature and flies off.
“What… in tarnation… are those thin’s?” Applejack speaks up. Twilight turns around and looks down at the shorter visitor, only managing to reach the height of her shoulders. It looks between the two of them nervously like a frightened mouse.
“They came from the thing in the sky, right over there.” Twilight points.
AJ looks to where her friend points and her eyes shoots open, “What in the hay!? When did that thin’ show up!?” she adjusts her hat and gently scratches the scar on her right cheek.
“Just today, AJ. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think our visitor wants me to keep an eye this one. I’ll be with Princess Celestia if you need me.” She finishes and gently begins nudging the alien towards the castle entrance where everyone injured were dragged in. In all honesty, she was scarred to the core, but she wore her brave mask to keep others from getting too scarred as well. She wonders if her old teacher felt the same.
Kelly drops down onto the roof of the wall and her carrier starts informing the others by shouting and pointing at her. She moves over to the edge to see what creature blew part of her arm and attempted the kill her charge. She didn’t expect a variety of beetle like creatures attacking the fortress.
The horrid creatures varied from; the four winged fliers with thin, stick like bodies, resembling more like living skeletons than anything else. The ones with horns jutting out from their foreheads were a little taller than the fliers, they also had wings but didn’t seem to use them for flight, more like a cape. Lastly the ground troopers that looked like they were pumped with steroids by the moment they were born or created. The caped insects were a head taller than their flying brethren, just about the same size as the aliens beside her, but the hulkish creatures were nearly a head taller than her native allies and appeared more robust. Every single one she sees had one thing in common; all their left forearms looked like little canons, shooting at their enemies. But the canons varied as well; the fliers had more thin, long and sleek looking ones with a sharp ‘beyonet’ at the very tip, the horned bugs looks a little plain and normal but had two, one foot spikes at each side of the weapon pointing out, but the big ones' canons, like their bodies, looked robust with small holes covering near the tip with a sharp, axe like blade at the bottom of their ‘barrel’. All in all, to her, they were huge bugs with a nasty sting of their own.
Too bad for them, like every bug in their breeding farms, they were the prey and on the menu. She then briefly wonders how they tasted, sense her favorite snack-bug were salted cockroaches, but quickly dashes those thoughts away to keep on track.
I shouldn’t have skipped, lunch she thinks to herself.
She looks back towards the castle and sees her charge was being led to the castle doors, and the orange one going towards the gates with a shield and a large warm hammer on hand. It went out the gates and begins shouting out orders with the blue winged alien as the gates closes behind them. To her, it seemed they were ready to die to keep their enemies at bay.
A green bolt suddenly flies right over her head, causing her to duck in surprise. She calms herself, embarrassed with herself with such a rookie mistake, then her helmet speaks to her while she turns back towards the city, “Activating Shields.” Her whole-body glows from head to toe for a moment, revealing plates of small hexagons all over her body, and some on her left shoulder and arm, but fades as it got close to the torn forearm. She looks back down the wall and sees her new allies battling it out, both sides going an all-out war, but the bugs seemed to be winning by sheer numbers. She can hear screams of battle and pain on both sides, but sense the insects tried to kill herself and her charge, she’ll gladly help her new friends defend.
“T-minus, ninety seconds till arrival, Commander.” A feminine voice says to her through her earpiece.
“Better hurry up.” She urges, draws up her arm and takes her first shot… her first ever kill.
The flier she aimed at cries out in pain as green blood sprays out the wound and the body falls down to its allies in a heap. She feels a wave of electricity flood her body, her mind briefly ringing alarms to tell her what she did was morally wrong, and her hand holding the gun felt heavy and trembles. She wanted to drop the gun and run back to her charge, she wanted the war to stop, but all that were from her youthful, innocent subconscious. She was warned something like this would happen eventually during her early years of training; only shoot when necessary. In times of war, nearly every time was necessary to aim to kill and survive, and this was war. She than begins a mental mantra to keep her calm and collective, and thinks back to when their captain spoke in a funeral, years ago.
“The strength of the pack is a wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack . This, simple line says so much more than a simple team effort. It represents family, kinship, loyalty, and respect for one another. Every piece of the group is important, no matter what anyone tells you that, they are not. It is the only reason why we are here today, travelling between the stars, breathing and living. We must look out for one another more-so then ever before, even if it means trading your own life for another. Today, we are here to morn a loss of a Peace Keeper. A fellow citizen. A fellow family.” He finishes, then all the Peace Keepers stood at attention with their right fists pressed firmly on their chests to where their hearts were located. Then, all at once, they chant the line, and so does she as she grips her magnum tightly.
“The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”
It might have been self-delusional, boarder-line stupid even, but it was one thing that Kelly and her kind was good at; Determination.
She brings herself back to the world and begins shooting the fliers right out of the air, off the walls and rooftops, killing with expert precision of her senses and handling of her gun. She finishes her third magazine for her pistol and was about to load out another as her backpack juts out another cartridge for her at the side of the pack, only to quickly feel the back of her suit pressing against her skin, indicating something was incoming from behind, but she was too slow to react in time. The alarms within her helmet goes off as her shields were broken.
The mass pushes her down against the edge of the wall, causing her to drop her gun on the floor, and said mass screeches, with a few more others joining around her as her alien allies were ether surprise attacked and killed, or backed away just in time to defend themselves. Quickly as she could, she reaches up and over her back and grabs onto something a little squishy, causing the creature on her back to wheeze and begins to struggle in her iron grip. She then throws her arm forward with the flyer going with, and cracks its cranium onto the outer-wall before dropping the body. Kelly swiftly grabs her large army knife from behind and twists herself down to her left to dodge a bolt of plasma aimed at her head. As she continues to twirl around, she brings out her arm and slashes her serrated blade across the shooters’ knees, severing arteries and tendons to bring it down. As it falls onto its bloody knees, Kelly forcefully stabs the end of the blade into the creatures’ skull, abruptly silencing its screeching pain.
She then dodges the insect that stood behind she just killed by leaning to the side and back, the thing trying to lance her with its bayonet with a screech. She continues to dodge every attack for a few times before she spins down low with her right foot out in a cutting motion, tripping the creature down on its side, dazed. Still going with the momentum, she front-flips with a bit more force with her other leg out instead, and smashes her heel down onto the aliens’ head like a swinging sledgehammer, ending its life that instant. Her allies then quickly takes the rest around her as she gets herself up and picks up her handgun, now looking over the battle once more to assist.
She then notices a horned bug beginning to levitate a piece of concrete boulder the size of her own head. Still being dumbfounded, she doesn’t notice the creatures launching the bounder at her with a screech. Before she could recover and react, the cement block shatters on impact, square on her chest, shattering part of her reactivated shield with a quick flash and causing her to stumble back and fall flat on her rear. She shakes her head, dazed once again from the attack and slowly gets back up to her feet.
“Shield recharging.” Her helmet speaks to her again and begins repairing the hexagons on her chest, one piece at a time.
“T-minus, thirty seconds.” The voice of a pilot informs her. Kelly looks ahead and sees four, tiny drop ships coming out of the clouds in the distance.
Suddenly a loud, thunderous roar erupts out right in front of her. She quickly looks down the wall and sees a large, armored, hulkish creature rising out of the concrete road. The orange alien shouts out and its teammates scatters out to try and get away from the large creature. To her, it looks more like a giant crab with a small head and a large cannon attached to its right arm instead, while its left looked like a cross between a large claw and a shield, similar to a hermit crabs’ fore-claws.
As it begins ramming the gates with its body, her alien allies began to desperately firing at it with everything they had, barely putting a scratch on the beasts’ shell. Kelly quickly jogs over so she could be right over the gates and pushes aside her foreign teammates.
The two aliens glares at her, but then looks on intrigued as she grabs one of her grenades, pulls out the pin with her thumb, and drops it down, but not before pressing the red trigger.
“T-minus, twenty sec-”
BOOM!!!
The explosion causes the large creature to fall back as it cries out in pain, its stubby legs blown off and parts of its lower section splatters all over the gates, walls and ground. She smirks, grabs the last grenade on her right thigh and tosses it over to a platoon of dark creatures. A few seconds later, they flew in the air, crying out in pain as well, some loosing limb, and a few blowing up entirely, limbs and gore scattering all around.
The drop ships flies over her head and hovers over the courtyard of the castle. The back hatches flies open as her fellow Keepers ran out and jumps down all of thirty feet and onto the yard with their guns drawn out, a few leaping from their ship and landing onto the wall beside her.
At least four to five dozen Peace Keepers were now at ground zero with her and begins assisting their alien allies with the current threat. The ships themselves drew out their Plasma Canons from the bottom part of the head of the ships and all start firing at the bugs with bolts of light blue, super-heated plasma, causing them to be either knocked down with smoking, charred holes or fly off like a ragdoll. As some of the fliers try to go up and onto the aircrafts, the ships’ defense systems activates themselves, bringing out small turrets all around the outer hall of the flying machine, gunning down any foe that got too close to the vehicle.
With the extra firepower, Kellys' human companions and their new alien allies begins driving the screeching bugs back. But the enemy were determined of taking over the castle, making it hard for everyone to keep them at bay.
A fellow human runs up to Kelly with blue and red stripes on his white armor and a red cross on where his rank was supposed to be located. He shows a new arm for her, “You might need this, Commander.” He says.
Kelly grabs the base of her left arm; twisted it with a ‘Click!’ and pulls it out. She hands it to the Medic and grabs the new one. She jams it in her shoulder as it powers up and she starts move it around to make sure it was fully functional.
Her helmet than speaks up, "Calibrating new prosthetic limb to the host... checking all senses; touch, temperature changes and ghost senses... checking brain signals... checking reaction time... Calibration Complete." She smiles and thanks the man. He salutes at her, putting the damaged arm into a bag just under his backpack and went off to do his duty, while the fabric tightens itself to keep the discarded or depleted medical supplies close.
“Commander Kelly?” the voice of her charge speaks through her ear piece.
“Speak.” She replies, draws out her rifle and aims it at the distant creatures, firing three burst rounds.
“Um… I think the leader wants to speak with you.” Snowlet says nervously.
Kelly stops her shooting and looks back at the castle entrance to see her charge, the purple alien and a taller, white one right behind her, the same tall alien she saw earlier back in the streets. “Everyone, keep the bugs at bay. I won’t be long.” She orders, earning a collective ‘Yes, Commander!’ through her earpiece. She swings her gun back onto the side of her pack, hops down from the ledge and lands with a roll to lessen the impact. She runs up to the trio and stops, looking up at the tall monarch. It speaks to her with a soothing voice and holds onto what looked like a gentle smile. Kelly turns her head at Snowlet, but the little woman just shrugs in response. Kelly looked to her side, “Captain, did you send in a Crawler as well?” she asks.
“Green light?” he questions.
“Green light.” She answers.
One of the four drop ships stops shooting down at the bugs, it then flies over to them, opening up its back hatch, spins around in mid-air like it was drifting across and a dog like, mechanical robot hops out. As it lands down, it starts rolling like a wheel going towards them, swerving around the legs of alien and humans alike, but the tall creatures hopping away in surprise as it passes by. Suddenly, the mechanical dog begins galloping on its four legs with a quick transformation from its ball form and halts right in front of them, sitting down like a loyal dog, dead still.
Its head basically looking like a large camera with one, big eye right at the front with a few sensors dotting it head and the whole body itself looking like a metallic skeleton with a few markings to address where things were.
Kelly looks back at the tall monarch as it and the purple one stare at the crawler in awe. The moment Kelly nods her head, four tiny projectors flare to life on the machines’ head, making a holographic screen in the air beside Kellys' head. The two aliens, and a few others around them, takes a step back in shock and awe. Just then, a little blue, human stick figure shows up on the monitor, waving happily at them with a smiley face. The monarch’s smile grows into a small grin and waves back in kind.
“That’s better.” Kelly mutters.
Just as she was about to ‘communicate’ a little more, a pained yell quickly catches her attention. She quickly turns back and sees one of her men fall off the ledge and land down onto the courtyard with a loud grunt. She quickly runs over and drags him away from the wall, gently settling him down against the large fountain. He thanks her as he covers his burnt wound on his left shoulder, hissing in pain, thankfully it didn’t look to bad from what Kelly sees. The medic quickly sprints over to her, lifting off his pack from his back and kneels down beside the injured Keeper. He asks him to remove his hand from his left shoulder, he nods and sees a nasty burn mark and a part of his armor blown off, its ragged metal edges red from heat. The medic carefully takes the shoulder pad off and asks Kelly to cool it off in the fountain.
As Kelly tosses the shoulder pad in the water, the medic opens up his pack and takes out a small gun like device and pops in a small glass of yellow liquid. He then presses the tip onto his fellow man’s shoulder inches away from the wound and the liquid quickly drains into him with a ‘ksssst!’. He then takes a round, white patch with a red ring outlining the edges and seals up the Keeper’s suite. “You’ll be okay for now, but take it easy with the shoulder. You’ll also have to be quarantined in the Medical Ward for any foreign, alien virus or bacteria.” The medic says to him. The injured man nods, gets up with a grunt with a help of his Commander and grabs his gun from the ground. Kelly looks into the fountain and sees the armor piece have cooled down, she fishes it out.
“Will do, Doc. Thanks.” He replies and begins going back up the wall with the others, his shielding coming back to life.
Kelly hands the shoulder pad to the medic and he puts it away in his disposal bag. She then feels light tapping on her shoulder. She turns around and sees the tall monarch with the purple one beside her, and Snowlet beside the purple one. The Monarch then points at the Medic with his equipment and points at an injured alien nearby, being cared for by one of its kind. The tall alien’s face took on a hopeful expression.
Kelly lightly shakes her head ‘No’ as the robotic canine quickly sits down beside her and projects out its display.
Twilight was beyond thankful the visitors had this dog-like machine with them, and that they practically saved their very lives from those monsters behind the wall. The devices they use to kill and drive the Changelings away were just a little louder than their own weapons but bearable, but the balls they threw shook the ground with tiny tremors and near deafening when closer.
As she watches the display make two figures, one was short and the other taller one, one of her own kind she guesses. The device thing, she guessed their Field Medic used pops up in between the two and injects it to their visitor. They zoomed in and a cut was healed with a flashing green check mark. But when it injects into one of her kind, it begins flashing red X.
She looks up at Celestia, “I think they’re trying to tell us, their medicine won’t work with us.” She says and Celestia nods with a sad sigh.
Celestia looks down at the short, armored creature and nods in acknowledgement. With that, it draws out its weapon from its back and quickly begins running back up the wall to help fight back. To their surprise, it doesn’t use the stairs and just jumps up against the wall with the help of small jets surrounding its body, quickly running up the wall and jumps, reaching out to the top with one hand and pulls itself up with barely any effort.
Suddenly, the little dog-things' ring around its single eye begins flashing red and projects out, showing an aerial view of Canterlot, the fighting happening in the map happening around them in perfect time. The map then zooms out, and in it shows a horde of Changelings going towards Canterlot from the north of the barren Waist Land. Both Princesses eyes gets wide in horror.
“Invasion…” Twilight whispers, covering her mouth in terror.
Their visitor then quickly comes back, annoyance clearly showed in its expression and the shorter one starts to frantically speak to the other as it points at the horde on the screen. The armored visitor looks up at Celestia for a moment then turns away to the side as it speaks to nothing. After a moment, it turns back to them and draws out her hand, causing the whole map to be flipped from being vertical and down to horizontal. Then a short rod like object, with a large head shows up, floating over the map, split into three, points towards the horde and hits the map, pixels exploding out as it did. It then looks up at Celestia and a button materialized in front of her, resting right on the map as it flashes on and off in color red.
A royal guard then went up to them, panting, “Princess Celestia! A horde of Changelings from the north is coming this way!” he says frantically, the fear in his tone clear as day.
Celestia takes a moment to look at the two visitors, a frightened Twilight and at the Guard. She then looks down at the map once more to see the horde slowly getting closer. She closes her eyes and looks at the armored visitor, “You do it.” She points at it and then down at the holographic, flashing button. It shakes its head firmly, points at her and down at the ground. Then gestures to itself and its alien companion, and points up towards the sky.
“Celestia, it’s saying this is your world, not theirs.” Twilight speaks up, now clearly shaking.
She takes a few deep breaths to calm herself and then looks down at the button. A second later, she presses down right through it, but then a red warning sign lights up on the map’s face and zooms out further. They then notice three small arrows rocketing towards their city, but three large target signs lights up on the ever closing horde of bugs. When the arrows got close to their city, they all look up at the sky and three rockets zooms over their heads and past the castle with blue afterburners. They look back down at the map and the moment they do, the ground shakes three times as the arrows hit their targets, companied by deafening explosions and the air pushing them as fine dust threw up into the air.
Then they waited. The map shows a large dust cloud covering the area, obscuring their sight from their enemy.
Celestia quickly unfurls her large wings, jumps up and with a massive wing beat, begins flying up to her watchtower.
“Celestia!” Twilight cries out for her former teacher as she flies up to her tower, her own wings starts to spread, but didn’t seem too confident on using them. She looks at the castle entrance and starts running in to go to their Princess.
Celestia lands down onto her watchtower with a thud; runs around the ring of ledge with guardrails. She stops as she sees the dust cloud, just half a kilometer away from her city. The Changelings had… It then clicks. She quickly looks over to her city and sees all the Changelings that were attacking stopped. Everything was quiet for the longest of time, the wind and the engines of hovering ships the only sound entering her ears. Then the monstrous creatures finally start moving, but not towards her, but away. She quickly looks back at the dust cloud, as it begins clearing from the east wind. A moment later, tiny, black bodies of countless changelings covers the Waist Land, with three large craters, forming a triangular shape.
“Prince-” Twilight suddenly stops as she sees the craters. She slowly walks over and stands beside her as she looks at the craters and laying bodies in shock. “How… wha…” she tries to speak bur fails.
“For such short creatures… they have powerful weapons…” Celestia quietly says.
Kelly and Snowlet walks up the steps of the wall and looks out into the battle-damaged city. As one of her Lieutenants informed, the bugs were retreating and long gone.
“D-did we win?” Snowlet asks.
“It seems like it…” the lieutenants says, raises up his assault rifle and looks through the scope. “Can’t… see… any of them…” he says, then lowers his gun.
“Still. Stand guard. Never know if they come back by surprise.” Kelly reaches up to her helmet to change frequencies and looks at the hovering ships with their canons ready, “Pilots, make a sweep of the city. Try to find any of those things lingering around.” She orders and the ships begins slowly floating around the city, scanning for any danger.
“What if we find them, Commander?” a pilot asks.
“Fire warning shots, drive them away from here. If they stay put and fire back… well, you’re the boot.” Kelly replies, earning four ‘Yes, Commander!’.
Celestia and Twilight watch as one of their flying ships begins shooting around a pack of Changelings, driving them out into the street. They continue shooting around them, but the black creatures start shooting at the ship with screeching battle cries. Celestia squints her eyes to see the device under the head of the ship changing from wide to a narrow barrel. It then starts shooting them with deadly accuracy, splitting the shells of the creature’s chest and shredding them apart. She winces at the sight and then looks down at the ground with Twilight.
“So… what do we do with them?” Twilight asks nervously as she looks down at the courtyard, gripping the rail tightly.
“We establish a Peace Treaty.” Celestia answers, looking down as well.
“What!?” Twilight steps back from her in shock, “You saw what they can do! The shooting, the explosions, and their ships!” she gestures to the patrolling ships hovering around their city.
Celestia looks at her, “They had no other choice, Twilight. You need to be a little more observant. They were trying to drive them away from the city, shooting at the ground around them with their weapons, but the Changelings stayed.” She then points at the large craters, “As you said, I’m in charge of this kingdom. They could have done this by themselves, but they turned to me for the order to launch their fast, explosive rods.” She looks back down at the courtyard and at the mechanical armed visitor, calling out orders and pointing out to its own kind, “They came here for a reason, Twilight Sparkle. They haven’t come all this way to fight. Traveling between the distances of the stars takes years.” She looks at her former student, “Before you were even born, I witnessed a tiny, barely noticeable moving star connect with another brighter one. Ever since then, the once bright star was out a few days before Nightmare Moon returned.”
“So… you think they came from that star?” Twilight asks, now feeling a little sorry for their visitors and from her outburst.
“We will find out soon once we establish a trust between our species.” She answers, turns away from her capital and begins going down the spiraling stairs with Twilight at her tow. She would be lying if she didn’t feel a little threatened by their new friends. They seemed more capable of destruction and invasion than their current enemy. She just hopes they stay peaceful to one another now and in the future.
Author's Note
So, that's chapter 3 edited, I hope you enjoyed this.
Chapter 4: Warning (Rewritten)
Snowlet looks down at the open gates from the top, sitting down on it outer walls’ ledge and watching both humans and aliens dragging in their alien allies, both injured and passed on. She then looks out into the city, watching their drop ships hovering around, looking for their new enemy hiding within the buildings and alleys.
She carefully gets herself down onto her feet from the ledge and walks down the staircase from the side of the inner wall, casually getting down from the wall. She looks around her surroundings and decides to do what she was here for. She gets down to the ground on one knee with her pack open and takes out the spherical camera. She searches around as she stands up and waves over a Peace Keeper closest to her and seemed to be just patrolling the area.
He goes up to her and salutes at attention, “Yes, ma’am?” he says.
She shows him the sphere, “Can you toss this up thirty feet?” she asks. He nods and tosses the ball into the sky and came back down. He shows the device to her, “Thank you. You may go back to work.” She says with a grateful smile as he nods and went off.
She puts the camera back into her pack beside the plushy, closes it with a ‘click’ and puts it back on onto her back and stares at the castle up and down, admiring the architecture. She speaks up as if speaking to herself, “Captain. How many Crawlers have you brought down?” she asks hopefully, already beginning to plan on how to tackle her large objective.
“Plenty. Stand by.” He answers as a ship stops in mid-flight in the distance, then glides over to the courtyard where Snowlet was standing. Its hatch opens up and lowers down, the flying machine now just ten feet above ground. As it hovers, ten dog like machines leap out with different colored stripping covering their heads and bodies and all scurry away to get to their respective leaders. Last one jumps out and quickly goes up to her, it body covered in cyan blue stripes. She pets it with a smile and begins walking in the castle with her personal Crawler close behind.
The castle halls, as her Crawler measured, were thirty feet high with columns supporting the arching roofs above and each window she passes were ten feet high and five feet wide. She was at awe of how beautiful and smooth the designs were etched into the white stones on the walls, floor and columns. The large, long, red carpets were either stitched expertly to one another to connect them, or the whole thing was one huge carpet in itself, which was an impressive feat on its own.
Sadly, everything she sees weren’t in perfect condition. The stone halls were filled with gash and scorch marks and a few crumbled pieces of wall laid about. She could only imagine what it might have looked like when every, single inch of this world be intact. It’ll stake some time, as with many of her own kind, but with a bit of repairing on both the environment and the alien cities, she could call the planet her new home. She especially wanted to learn all there is to this new world and its secrets.
“Mm… maybe someday…” she says with a small smile and stops. She looks down at her Crawler. “Cyan.” She speaks up as it straightens out its stance and stares blankly ahead. “Map out the current floor and return when finished.” She orders her follower.
The Crawlers’ back opens up a small circular hatch and a crystal-ball-like object begins flashing red at near impossible speeds, but creating no visible light to blind anyone nearby. With that, it starts galloping ahead without looking back to carry out its command. With an approving nod and a smile, Snowlet takes out a small pen-like device from her belt and a ring of green light lights up on the back end. She walks over to the wall to her left and presses the sharp point onto it with a soft grunt, digging it into the hard wall just a tiny bit with difficulty, even with the help of her exo-skeleton, it was still tough. A tiny screen flares up within her helmet, spelling out the word, ‘Granit’. She presses the pen onto the floor, the columns, windows and everything else she sees around her, gaining different answers within her helmet.
As she passes by a door slightly ajar, somewhat satisfied with the data she was collecting, she stops mid-step as she hears the whining and yelps of creatures. She turns to the door in interest and gently opens it a little more to peek inside, the door itself creaking against its own weight. Her eyes widen at the sight of small, fluffy puppies crawling about, either play fighting with each other or just snoozing away with others in a small pile, cuddling one another for warmth.
One of them spots her at her doorway and begins stumbling towards her. It starts yelping at her as it reaches her and sniffs her feet. Snowlet opens the door a little more, crouches down and starts petting the puppy with a giddy smile. “Oh, you’re so Adorable and Cute! Yes you are!” she gushes at the little pup, sits herself down on the floor and picking up the fluff ball up to her face.
It starts licking her cracked visor greedily as it rests its paws on it as well. She giggles, resting the pup down onto her crossed legs and gently caresses its ears back against its head. As she does, the other pups notice their new visitor and began going to her in curiosity.
Snowlet notices nearly all the puppies going towards her as she stops petting the one on her laps. “Oh dear.” She looks around a little more to see if someone else was here, but all she sees were open, wooden pens and a few large female dogs feeding their pups in them.
Then right ahead of her, she sees a large, brown and white dog come into view and stares at her with the pups sniffing, licking and pawing at her with little whines, barks and yelps to gain her attention. The dog starts going towards her with its head lowered, wary of the new visitor, and slows down as it got closer. Snowlet leans her head back in fear as she hugs the puppy against her chest, fearing the worst from the large dog. It sniffs her helmet, but a bark stops it and looks back at a laying dog. It begins looking through the piling pups and looks at the one pressed against her chest. It starts pawing at her arm with a whine. Snowlet quickly but gently puts the pup down as it gently picks it up by the scruff by the back of its neck and prances back over to its fellow kind.
“Oh my goodness Snowy, you are so lucky right now! But it’s… a little strange as well… Aren’t we on an alien planet?” A female voice says through her helmets' radio.
“W-what?” Snowlet says dumbly, now getting back to reality as she was being swarmed by fluffy and whining puppies.
“The dogs, why are there dog like creatures on this planet?” the voice says again.
“I-I don’t know.” Snowlet replies and starts petting the whining puppies to calm them down the best she could.
She looks ahead as a voice catches her attention. She sees one of the aliens round a corner saying something quietly and gently with a soothing voice, but the moment it spots all the puppies piling on Snowlet, it ‘Eeep!’s and hides itself within one of the empty pens.
Snowlet just stares as she pets the puppies. The dog quickly goes over and stares within the pen the alien was hiding behind. It barks and whines a few times, the alien replies back, still not getting out, but then the dog goes in and starts pulling on its clothing, bidding it to come out, lightly growling.
“Um… hello!?” the curious researcher speaks up.
The dog stops pulling as the alien starts slowly peeking out, its hands resting on the edges of the pin as it stares at her with wide, teal eyes.
“Um… uh…” Snowlet looks around for a moment but then a thought occurs to her and smiles to herself. She looks down at the puppies, picks one up and holds it out to the alien with a hopeful smile.
Giving cute, fluffy things always worked as a sign of peace and friendship She thinks to herself.
Just as the shy alien begins slowly coming out of hiding, metal click-clacking on the stone floor stops it and with a yelp, hid itself back in. Snowlet looks over her shoulders to see the lens of her Crawler looking back at her, its crystal ball like object going back in its little compartment in its body. The machine then looks down at the little creatures and starts scanning the little pups with its little red scanner from its chest.
A loud screech echoes into the room and through the hall, scaring the researcher as she jumps a little with a yelp. Snowlet looks back to see a tall white alien with a horn and a fashionable clothing covering its body as it backs away from her and her Crawler. She also spies a short, purple, scaly creature with a green vest on hiding itself behind the aliens’ legs, staring at her warily. The white aliens’ hands raise up to its chest height and starts glowing a blue aura. Snowlet’s radiation warning begins flashing within her helmet. Her eyes widen, she slowly shimmies behind the other closed door, but when she was fully hidden, the door was swung open, surprising her with a short scream and starts shacking in fear for her life.
“C-Commander K-K-Kelly…” she says to her radio with a shaky voice.
“Yes?” she hears.
“I… I’m…” she tries to say, but quickly begins sending her camera feed as well as her location within the castle instead.
“Keep calm, I’m coming.” Kelly assures her.
The alien shouts at her and takes a step forward; its hands beginning to glow a little brighter as plasma warning starts flashing within her visor as well. She whimpers and stumbles back onto her rump as the little pups start scrambling away from her with little whimpers and yelps. Her Crawler blocks the aliens’ firing range from its designated owner and its small wall of shield activating to protect the human.
Just when Snowlet thought the alien was going to fire, a gunshot rings out and the stone floor near the aliens’ hooves explodes. It jumps in surprise with a short scream of its own, its little follower doing the same. A few more gunshots rang out as the bullets made the aliens dance and back away with yelps. Snowlets’ guardian comes into view as she brings out her hand for her. Snowlet quickly takes the hand as Kelly helps her up to her shaky feet, but kept her magnum pointed at the alien.
Snowlet quickly hides herself behind her protector and both start backing away from the open doors and the white alien. As they back away, a group of alien guards blocks there way and points their spears, guns and glowing hands at them.
“Crawler.” Kelly speaks up, changing the machines’ stance from being defensive to just sitting down and projects out a video from Snowlets’ point of view. It shows them when she peeked into the room, petting the puppies, trying to greet the shy alien with said puppy as an offering and when the white one screamed and raised its glowing hands at her.
Twilight and Celestia quickly went through the halls when they heard the devices shoot out, followed by the voice of Raritys’ short yelps. When they arrived, they saw the Royal Guards pointing their weapons and hands at ready at the two visitors. Twilight looks up to see Celestia lightly frowning in a questioning expression.
Suddenly the visitors’ companions burst through the windows out of nowhere and points their devices at the guards and the royals, lasers pointing at their targets. The rest gets in through the halls and blocks their exits. Twilight just knew she and her guards were at a disadvantage, and one wrong move might get one or all of them killed in a heartbeat. Celestia starts pulling through the guards, much to her formal students’ concern.
“What is the meaning of this?” she questions, then nearly all of the visitors’ lazar sights point to her.
The different dog like machine goes up to her and projects out a video from the shorter ones’ point of view. As it finishes, Twilight was pretty certain Rarity almost crushed their trusts between their species. Just when Celestia was about to speak, a few stick figures blinks to life on the screen, one tall and white, while the other two were short; one green while the other black. When the tall one raises a sword at the green figure, the black one raises a firearm at the attacker and the green one quickly hides itself behind its protector. The figures disappear and replaces them with a globe of a world and a small ship beside it. Two figures come out of the two objects and one from the planet multiplies into countless figures, while the other only manages to make a small bundle, being dwarfed by the other.
The monarch begins sternly ordering out commands to its guards as they hesitantly lower their arms.
“Lower your guns.” Kelly orders and every one of her fellow human did as commanded, though they remained wary.
“Another close call.” Their captain says through Kellys’ radio.
“Agreed.” Kelly replies and turns to Snowlet behind her, “Keep close. Our ships are going to sweep the city one more time before we get ready to go.” She says and Snowlet timidly nods.
As they all start going back out, Kelly notices her charge feeling down and staring at the floor, so she rests a comforting on her shoulder, causing Snowlet to look up at her protector.
“This isn’t your fault. We’re all jumpy, and some of the natives hadn’t seen us yet, so I’m expecting something like this to be happening a little often around here. Just inform me when you want to go scouting around next time so I can have someone watching you, or myself. Okay?” Snowlet smiles a little and nods in agreement.
As every human and alien calms down, they all went back to what they were doing. When they were out, the captains’ voice calls out to his commander, “Okay, time to get ready. Kelly, you know what to do.” he says.
“Single row! Now!” she shouts and waits with her hands behind her back. All of her Peace Keepers runs into a single row and stands at attention, their firearms lowered in front of them. Kelly walks over to the far left, looks at the person and further along the row, “Count Down!” she orders and begins hastily walking along the row as they shout out their respective number when she reaches them.
As she reaches the very end, she notices the orange alien was having trouble keeping its large dog at bay as it barks and snarls at her last Keeper, but the only thing she notices was he didn’t shout his number. She looks at him with a slight glare, “Count Down!” she orders once more. As she waits for her team to reach the very end, the dog continues to bark at the silent man and she keeps on glaring at his polarized visor.
She made sure that all of her Keepers were to never polarize their visors when they were in drill, to show respect to their higher ups. She was not amused with the one in front of her right now.
The second last sound out, “Fifty!” with a feminine voice.
Kellys’ glare hardens, “What is the meaning of this, privet!?” she barks. He knocks on his helmet and shrugs.
“Um… Commander?” Kelly turns her head at Snowlet a few paces away from her, her Crawler projecting out a small screen in front of her, “The Captain only sent out fifty Keepers.” She says with a nervous tone.
She looks back at the short man, “Captain… is she correct?” she narrows her eyes at the man.
“Ye-” before he could answer properly, she launches her right fist skyward, the Keepers’ body following along and lands down in a heap. His body begins flickering with static and flickers out completely to reveal a flier, bleeding out its green blood from its broken mouth. As it starts getting up on its hand and knees and flutter its four wings, Kelly sprints and kicks it from the side of its head, once again, sending it down on the dry ground a few feet away.
Kelly cricks her knuckles and turns away from the unconscious bug, “That’s new.” She mutters to herself as the dog stops barking and starts wagging her tail at her, its tongue hanging out happily, “Captain, send down heavy duty container. We got ourselves a specimen.” She says and stands back in front of her fellow humans.
“Noted.” He replies.
“Four Rows!” she shouts out as the drop ships starts hovering back over to the courtyard.
Twilight was lost for words. She thought Winona was just acting up on their visitors, but just out of nowhere, their leader threw a punch at one of the changelings impersonating one of them. She guessed their leader suspected something was out of place. When she sees their flying ships getting closer and their leader shouting out orders, she feared they were getting ready to go back to their space ship.
“Pri… Celestia, what are we going to do?” she asks fearfully and looks up at her former teacher.
Celestia clears her throat, gaining the visitors’ attention. It then looks at a ship landing down and the first row starts going into the open hatch. It looks to the side and speaks. A moment later, all ten mechanical dogs lines up in a single row. A cyan striped machine went beside Celestia and projects out a blank screen in front of them. One by one, little red lights turns on on the machines’ backs and produces a live feed on the once blank screen.
The armored visitor snaps her fingers and gives out orders to the machines. After it spoke, two on the sides split to the sides and rest start galloping out the gates. As they did, they all notices their bodies disappearing, turning invisible right before their eyes.
When all of their visitors went into their four ships and flew off, that remained the two; the short alien and her protector. Celestia and Twilight were a little confused as to why they were left behind, but the sound of erupting engines right above them catches their attention. As they look up; they see a cloaked, smaller ship slowly descending down. With a gust of wind, they cover their eyes from the wall of dust. They look up once the air around them calms down, and stare in awe at the small ship opening up a little stairway for their visitors and the whole object became visible. Twilight and the others looks at the windshield, expecting a visitor to be driving the small ship, but no one could see the alien pilot, just an empty cockpit.
Celestia gander at their mechanical armed visitor as it strolls over to the still unconscious changeling; grabs its hind leg and starts dragging it closer to its ship and its charge. It drops its leg as they all heard erupting engines above once more.
As another ship initiates its slow descend, Celestia begins walking over to the couple, Twilight scurrying up in her tow. The short one notices and looks up at her, then taps her guardian on the shoulder. It looks back at its charge, then up at Celesita and Twilight. Celestia draws out her hand with a gentle smile.
Kelly looks at the aliens’ hand for a second before she shakes it, her hand nearly engulfed by the other as it speaks to her kindly with a little bow of its head.
When the new ships’ ramp touches down with a locking sound from their bigger drop ship, Kelly turns away from the monarch and walks over to unconscious bug, grabs its arm and drags it over to the ship as a heavy looking, metal crate opens up, two heavily armored Keepers standing by its side within the ship with shotguns at ready. She tosses the body in the crate with a thud and nods to her Privets. They both salute as the crate closes itself up and locks with a hiss, a small green light lighting up with a ‘beep!’, to indicate the crate was now airtight.
She walks back out and stares up at the drop ship as it closes up. “Package is secure. Take ‘er home.” She says.
The engines erupt once more; the aliens around the area covers their faces as a wall of dust was thrown up by the rising ship.
Kelly walks back over to the small drop ship and nods at her charge. Snowlet nods back and quickly walks in and takes her place at the co-pilots’ seat. Kelly looks at the monarch and the purple alien; nods once and walks herself in the ship. As she seats herself, the small hatch closes itself with an audible hiss.
She holds the joysticks and slowly rises the ship into the air, circles the alien city once, spotting the aliens waving away before she rockets into the sky. “Entering orbit, Child of Earth. ETA ten minutes.” She says as the whole ship rattles and gravity working against her and her charge.
“Acknowledged. We’ll see you home, Commander.” A feminine voice replies back.
Celestia silently walks through the halls of her once, scratch free castle. Accompanying her was a small, mechanical dog; each step it took made metallic ‘clicks’ on the carpet and stone floor. She looks down at her little companion, bringing a sly smile to her face as it reminds her of little Twilight when she was young; always clingy and curious.
She came up to a pair of double doors, painted in black, purple, blue and navy blue in decorative patterns to indicate her sisters’ beautiful night. She smiles and just when she was about to run her hand across the surface, her little friends’ head lights up with lazars, quickly followed by a flash of light.
She looks at her little friend and sees it looking at the double doors with interest. She lightly giggles and waits for it to finish.
A moment later, she opens the door and walks in the dim room and walks over to the circular bed that held a resting mare. Celestia slowly sits down beside the body, “How are you feeling, sister?” she asks.
“Art thou serious, dear sister?” Luna brings up a hand and covers her forehead with a light groan.
“Mm… I see…” Celestia says, as the sound of clicking enters the room.
Luna opens her eyes in surprise and looks around, only to find her empty room, “Show thineself!” she calls out as she tries to get up with a wince.
“Luna, calm down.” Celestia gently pushes her back down with a motherly voice. “It’s nothing to be afraid of… we had visitors today.” She smiles at her sisters’ confused look.
“Are these ‘visitors’ the cause of the explosion and the quakes?” Luna says as she continues to look around her room. “Where is it?”
“Yes, Luna. They caused the explosions and such, savings us from the Changelings that were quite ready to invade the castle.” Celestia looks back down at the floor and sees her friend just looking at her, “They all went back to their home, but they left these little dog-like machines to keep an eye on the city.” She scoots out of the way and gestures to it with a small smile.
Luna pulls herself closer to the edge and freezes as she stares at the eyeglass of the machine. Its lenses adjust itself and leans its head closer to her. After a moment of intense staring, the machine looks away from her and begins exploring her room, looking at all the items with great interest.
“These little machines they created were used to communicate between our ponies and the visitors. The visitors are fairly short, but their technological skills on making machines is phenomenal, to say the least. And… I think… they’re looking for a new home to live in, judging by their vast spaceship that’s floating in the sky at the moment.”
“Really!? Is it there now!?” Luna asked excitedly with a big smile.
“Yes, but-” Celestia answers with a hint of concern.
“No ‘but’, dear sister. We like to see it.” Luna pulls off her blanket to reveal her whole body wrapped in bandages, only revealing small patches of fur that stuck out and no clothing to cover her body with.
“Luna, please. You’re in no condition to be moving right now.” Celestia pleads.
“Tia, please, just a single look. Single look and we will never ask, thou again.” She squeezes her hand with begging eyes.
Celestia looks down at her lap for a few moments before she slowly nods, “Okay, b-but please, slowly.” She gets up to her hooves and holds onto Lunas’ hand for support. Luna smiles gratefully at her and slowly inches over to the edge of her bed. She draws out her hooves and gently set them down onto her floor for the first time in months. She slowly unfurls her wings as well, but her flight feathers were nothing more than burnt little stubs. What remained of her long tail was wrapped in bandages as she sits on her bed.
With the help of Celestias’ magic, she slowly rises on her own two hooves with a small whimper and a wince. As she stands, her smile alone was endangering to split her face in half.
“We… I…” Lunas’ eyes develops little drops of tears with a single sniffle.
Celestia leans in and nuzzles her nose lovingly, “You’re getting there, sister. Now, slowly, let’s go over to your balcony.” Celestia takes a step back, while Luna takes a slow step forward with a happy chuckle. As they continue, Celestia notices her little friend was following them from right behind Luna.
When they reach the closed, glass doors, Celestia slowly opens them up with a nudge of her wings, a light breeze starting to come in. Luna basks in the cool air, her aches and pains slowly melting away from her. As they get out, they see the sun was halfway submerged in the horizon.
“Where is it, sister?” Luna asks as she starts looking at the sky with searching eyes.
Celestia points, “Right there, Luna. Right above the clouds.” She answers with a raised arm.
The Captain watches in amusement at the alien monarch and its darker, bandaged counterpart in his office. The smile and look of awe on the bandaged alien was enough to bring a smile on his aged face. It was strange how everything on that world was similar to their own world; animals, plants, the architectures and etcetera. That’s something they’re going to try and find out if the aliens’ leader was okay with his kind living here as well.
When he looks back at the monitor he jumps in surprise to see the bandaged aliens’ face took up to whole screen, staring at the camera curiously. It giggles, as if it knew it surprised an observer. He sighs with a chuckle.
“I hope I can convince them to let us stay.” He says to himself and leans back on his chair, continuing to watch the aliens' adorable curiosity of their Crawler. He then looks down at Kellys’ cracked helmet and runs a thumb across the cracked visor with a sigh, “Stay safe, my little angel…” he whispers and looks back at the screen to witness the two aliens hugging one another.
Author's Note
That's chapter 4 edited, I hope you enjoyed it.
Chapter 5: Prep (Rewritten)
Kelly sits in her own office; stripped of her powered armor. The room was dim but bright enough for her to see her journal on her empty desk. Its cover was hard and brown with leather, it had a little tail like black ribbon pocking out from the bottom of her personal book and was closed shut with a leather strap.
She just stares at the book for a few more moments before she sighs and grabs it. She takes the strap off and opens it to the very first page and reads the slightly shaky writing.
If she should ever fall Who will stand and lead us all? She is our Guardian Angel She is our sword of light She is our hardened shield And she is the Demon to the enemy She is our savior She is our leader She is our beacon of hope in the darkest hour Who will stand tall and lead us all If she should ever fall?
She wasn’t too sure if the Keeper was talking about her own fall or someone elses’ fall, maybe no one at all and he just really liked the little poem, but she was sure to keep up with her own job to protect and serve her people. She reads the page again and gently runs three of her fingers on the cover of the page, sending her back to her early childhood when she lost her arm and rested in one of the Medical Wards’ recovery room.
She lay on the bed, facing the ceiling, both pain and the constant beeping of a machine keeping her awake. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about the Peace Keeper that saved her life from an explosion, even if he knew there was little to no chance of her possible survival rate. Yet, he willingly threw himself to save her, and now here she was… resting and waiting for the doctors and nurses to come back to give her the news about her condition she already knew.
She ever so slowly turns her head to her left and looks at the large bandage on her shoulder, her missing arm lost in the explosion. She was sure she had a glimpse of her arm while they were evac’t, her and the Keeper to the ER; quite literally burnt to the bone, being held together with nothing more than cartilage and what remained of her muscles. She was terrified of living a life of not having a flesh and bone left arm, or the scar that will permanently be there to remind her; she was now a handicap.
The door slides open quietly with a soft hiss, earning her attention as she sees a lab coated doctor, a nurse, and lastly her father. She wanted to cry on her fathers’ shoulder when he got closer, but it was too painful to simply sit up on her own, so she just lets the tears slide down her cheeks as she stares at them. Her father quickly goes around the bed and squeezes her only hand, leans in and kisses her forehead for ten long seconds. The kiss alone was almost enough to distract her from the pain.
She smiles up at him, “Thanks, daddy.” She speaks just above a whisper with a dry voice.
The nurse plucks out a tissue paper from the stool and gently wipes Kellys’ tears away, “There, there, sweetie. You’ll be all right.” She says in a motherly tone to try and comfort the child.
Kelly looks down at her bandaged shoulder sadly, “Will I?” she replies and turns her head away from both doctor and nurse and looks out the window into the empty park.
“Angel…” her father gently says, earning her attention. He takes out a leather book from within his uniform, gently lifts her hand and rests the book down, where her palm was before. “Before the Commander past he wrote on this empty journal and wanted you to have it.” He finishes.
Kelly looks down at the book with the best of her effort in wonder at her new journal. She then reaches out on the edge of the bed and squeezes the fabric, causing the little touchpad to flip up from the side. She presses her finger onto the screen, taking control of the whole bed and slowly rises up the top half of the bed, gently letting her to sit up. She stops the climb halfway and returns her gaze back down onto the book.
She picks it up to her lap and with a bit of a struggle, takes the strap off and opens it. With a little surprise, a dog tag slides off the page and onto her thin blanket.
She gently grabs it and rubs away the ashy surface with her thumb, only to be met with a distorted surface, caused by the extreme heat.
It must have swung around his back to reach me . She thinnks to herself then looks down at the journal and silently reads what her savior wrote before his pass. On that day, a spark flickered, igniting a small candle to light her way to her destiny. She has done everything and anything to reach her destination, and will continue to walk the road not taken to keep her fellow endangered species safe and sound, even if it meant sacrificing her own life to do so.
She grabs onto her two dog tags, her own and the unknown. She has etched her destiny onto her own stone, now set for all of her natural life, if only a little sadly.
She stands up from her seat and walks over to the right side of her office where her tools, equipment and gears sat on another table. She pulls up a stool for herself and looks down at her antique arm on the table. She then grabs a few of her tools from the tool box to her left and starts taking it apart as her little tags dangles from her neck. She smiles as she works, thankful she was given another day-off after yesterdays’ event. On the back of her mind, she always wanted to be an engineer or a mechanic, even when she was a little girl. Now, in her own little world, ribbons of her dream came true in her little hobby. It felt good to be young again, making nick-nacks and little gadgets, or even fixing up other stuff for the fun of it.
With quick “Oh!” she searches around the table, and with a smile she grabs a small remote from where she left it and presses ‘Play’. Neon blue lighting lights up around the room as Alternative Rock begins playing without vocals, as well as other beat heavy music in her playlist. Her smile grows a little more before she goes back to work on her old arm.
The Captain casually walks through the halls as he made his way to the Medical Ward to check on a couple of patients.
He was beyond thankful that Kelly got back from her mission with only a few scratches on her armor, and that her cracked visor stayed intact throughout the whole crazy event. His wife would most likely be as, if not, more so worried for her daughters’ wellbeing as well if she was here, but he won’t get in her way to do her job. She knew her limits, but that doesn’t stop him from worrying, though, he does his best to not show it in front of her. She always seems to get jumpy and falter with things when she knows he’s on edge. As any follower would if they see their leader starting to falter and crack.
Not long after, he reaches the Ward, nods at all the doctors, nurses and patients going about the sterile environment at the moderately large waiting room. He goes up to the front, ring like desk where a couple nurses were working, typing on keyboards while looking at a screen, directing patients where to go and speaking through their earpieces.
He clears his throat, gaining one of their attention, “Hello, Ms. Can you point me to where I can find a Peace Keeper under quarantine?” he asks nicely. Her small smile widens and presses a key to the side. After a moment of waiting another nurse comes in through a double door and waves for him to follow her. He smiles down at the mute, office nurse with a nod, “Thank you kindly.” he says before following the other nurse through the hall.
After going through corridor after corridor and to different parts of the large connective buildings they finally reach their destination after a couple minutes; in front of them was an airtight, airlock that was made to withstand a direct hit from an dozen explosive, RPG shots. Alien pathogens are taken seriously here. In fact, this part of the building will spray everything in the Q-Building with a type of flammable liquid and gasses, then spark and combust every nook and cranny into flames hot enough to turn anything flammable into ashes within thirty seconds and into nothing after a minute. Then the vents open to the vacuum of space for six hours to make sure everything is eradicated. If all else fails, the building will be ejected off the ship, rocket off in the distance and explode like a small nuke.
Hopefully, it’ll never happen today. There are good people in there keeping everything in check to prevent such an event.
Princess Celestia walks the halls of her castle without her armor, her little mechanical friend following along by her side. Her subjects were up and about to do their jobs on maintaining everything in and around the castle; tending to the wounded and sick, cooking, prepping for another battle, etc, etc. She nods and smiles at all her subjects that went by, some old and others young, then she comes across her old Dining Hall. It was converted into a storage room for all their food, water, medical supplies and as well as a bit of kibbles for their animal helpers.
She sees her former student inventorying everything they have left, and she was sure the young mare was thinking up another schedule to conserve all of what they had left, though, with so many injured and mouths to feed, those supplies were dwindling quite fast.
She walks up to her former student, “Good morning, Twilight.” she greets with her trademark motherly tone.
The young mare jumps a little, engrossed in her work before being interrupted by her former teacher, causing her to drop her paperwork. She looks up at Celestia, “Oh… Pri-Ce-Celestia. Good morning.” she replies and gathers up her work from the floor hastily, not realizing that she had magic.
“Do you know how long we have left before our supplies are finished?” she asks the Princess-in-training mare.
Twilight checks her notes uncertainly before answering, “Less than five days, m-maybe sooner if a situation arises.” she answers solemnly.
Celestia sighs and looks around the large room as ponies came and went with food, water, medicine, etc. They needed to resupply everything they had, but the city before them had dried up, picked clean from everything, not even a single barrel or bottle of alcohol could be found within the pubs.
They needed to travel to another town to restock, but the changelings are too much of a threat to let her ponies go on by their own without her, and she needed to stay put to look after everything sense her sister is bedridden. She needed another well rounded, experienced lead-
With a spark of realization, she looks at her little companion inspecting all of the supplies they had with strange lights coming out of its chest, inspecting all the items closely as it held them with great interest, trying to find out the greatest secrets of a jog of orange juice.
Celestia just hopes they are willing to help her with the job she requires of them. A quick pit-stop in Ponyville shouldn’t be too hard, right? Besides, she needs to make sure if there are still ponies in that little town that were left behind when the invasion started.
The Captain smiles at the Keeper within a thick, glass room, still wearing his torn armor and suit as he walks into one of the dozen or so rooms of the Q-Building. All the doctors and scientists were up and about like ants around the room, working overtime on their first patient. He also sees a woman and a little boy up against the glass, smiling and talking with his Keeper.
When the protector sees him, he quickly stands up from kneeling and salutes at attention.
“At ease, Privet.” he says as the small family turns to him, the boy holding onto a crewed drawing.
The Keeper nods as the short boy stares at the Captain in awe. He smiles at the boy and ruffles his hair playfully.
“I-is he going to be okay?” the woman asks a little nervously.
He looks at all the people in the room and walks up to their chief scientist directing them here to there. The lab coated woman had blond hair fixed into a bun with a few streaks of silvery gray, had a pair of thin glasses and, to be honest with himself, looked quite beautiful in his eyes, even if she was almost as old as himself.
When she sees him going to her, she smiles and adjusted her glasses, “Good morning, Captain West! A surprise to see you here.” she greets happily with a slight British accent and puts her hands in her coats’ pockets.
He fights hard not to blush with a straight face, and he was grateful he didn’t embarrass himself this time around.
He clears his voice, “Good morning to you too, Dr. Sandlers. How is our patient doing? Are there any alien deceases in his body?” he asks and checks behind him to see if the visitors were eavesdropping.
“Yes,” she answers bluntly, which in turn causes him to worry a little about an outbreak and the mans’ life, but she continues, “though, it’s a little surprising his immune system is winning very quickly.” she turns and waves for him and both walk over to a monitor jutting out of a wall. It turns on by itself to show their progression. “We took small samples of the new pathogen from our host and did some tests to see how dangerous it is. So far most of our antibiotics work very well to hold back and eliminate the infection; some other medicines work as well but not all of them. With our hosts’ help, we managed to identify the symptoms as well as follows; slight dizziness, minor headaches and low fevers. Nothing serious but it’ll effect the host nonetheless with their daily activities. We activated his suits’ temperature function to heat his body a little more to help fight off the decease, so all he needs is some rest for a couple more days in the containment to keep an eye on him.” she finishes with a smile.
“Oh… well that greats to hear!” he looks around a little more before he leans a little closer to her and whispers, “Have you checked with the other patient?”
She nods a little and nudges her head to the door to let him follow her out. The captain tells the good news to the young woman before going out with the good doctor.
When they get into another room a few halls down from the Keeps’ own containment, the room was the same size as all the others, though, this time the glass container was built like a tank, imbedded in a wall. The people going about work in here were different; zoologists, insectologists, xenologists, paleontologists, and many other scientists he guessed were important. On the other side of the thick glass wall was a moderately sized, white room containing their first ever, alien creature.
It was jet black, insectoid alien that tried to infiltrate their home. Its carapace was smooth, elegant and jagged at some points, its wings were translucent with wavy lining to keep it all together and was about the same height as him, though, a just a few inches shorter. Its large, cool blue, compact eyes were pretty much staring at everything as it twitches its head from to and that, its own childlike interest showing. Its overall head shape was close between their new alien friends and their dogs; long and sleek. Its stick like body was smooth and at the end of its limbs - except its right arm - had strange holes. Thankfully, it wasn’t using its primary weapon at the moment. It seemed more confused and curious than anything else.
Both himself and the doctor walks up to the cell.
“This bipedal, insectoid creature is rather interesting and strange to say the least. Just like the ants or termites, this is their flier or scout.” the alien creature takes interest in them and goes up to them warily. At a closer look, the captain notices it had three staples on its lower jaw, near the base where a crack was visible that ran all the way down with dried, green liquid or its blood sticking onto its natural body shield.
“Commander did some damage on the poor thing.” he says while leaning in a little, but jumps back with a surprise as it suddenly presses its left, three fingered and two thumbed hand onto the glass in lighting speed.
The doctor giggles, much to his embarrassment, “They’re quite fast as well. It’s simply amazing our Keepers actually kept up with them with their fast metabolism and quick and sensitive nervous systems, but I do wonder how its main weapon of an arm works exactly as well. It might prove useful in the future.” she checks her data-pad and presses and slides her fingers onto it, “We scanned its body earlier while it was unconscious and we repaired its mandible. There was nothing abnormal in particular that was detected, but we don’t know these things quite well, but by what we know about how life works in general it was normal. Though, its potential energy output in its weaponized arm and a little bit on its own body as a whole was quite high as well as its aura of magnetic field and it had quite many nerv endings and a smaller brain-like system in the arm as well, leading us to assume it had complete control on how it forms and shoots bolts of plasma. Its cranial brain might be four-fifths the size of our own but that doesn’t mean its dumb. To actually perform such a-feet as forming and shooting plasma suggests this creature is smarter than it appears…”.
With a flash of green like flame, the creatures’ appearance changes into an exact copy of the good doctor and mimics what she said with the same tone of voice.
“To actually perform such a-feet as forming and shooting plasma suggests this creature is smarter than it appears…” it finishes, leaving the captain dumbfounded for a moment as he stares at the mirror image of the woman.
“We’re still trying to figure out how it does that as well but we’re coming up empty. Very nice vocal cords, though.” she smiles and waves at it and it mimics her with the same gesture. “We figured out how to expose their illusional cloak though.” she taps a short video feed through her pad and gestures the device to him and it shows it was in thermal; the creature standing in front of the blue glass as straight as a human than slightly hunched over. He looks back up and sees the same woman standing within the containment.
“This’ll be very useful, Doctor Sandlers. Thank you.” he gives the device back to her and she nods with a bright smile.
“You’re very welcome, Captain.” she replies happily, feeling a little prideful.
“So… any ideas on what’ll happen if it escapes? I mean, I know we had insects as large as household pets at one point on our planet.” he asks warily.
“It’ll most like pass out after a few minutes. Our air mixture is not that different from the planet itself, it’s just a little more dense and compact than our own. The little room inside the containment is imitating the environment down on the planet to prevent it from falling unconscious.” she answers and checks her touchpad.
“Captain?” a feminine voice speaks up through his earpiece.
“Yes?” he replies and looks to the side.
“The leader of the alien city is… tapping the lens of our Crawler. She seems to want to have a word of helping them restock their supplies.” The female operator says.
“What makes you say that?” he replies, a little confused.
“Well, the Crawler just found their supply room by following the leader and the supplies themselves seems very low… and because she keeps pointing at their stuff and showing us a map to a nearby town…”
In honesty, it kind of amused him that their new friends figured out how the Crawlers worked to some degree just after a day, but a little bad at the same time because he needed to postpone his Commanders’ day-off to another day.
He sighs and turns to the pretty doctor, “Duty calls. I’ll see you anther time, Doctor Sandlers.” he says with a smile and turns to leave.
“Soon, hopefully!” he hears her yell back with a giggle before the hatch door behind him closes, making him blush as she effectively broke down his mental barrier with a couple simple words.
As he starts going down the hall while trying calm his blushing cheeks, he calls up his girl, “Commander Kelly?”
“Yeah, Captain?” she replies.
“Our new friends need a little… assistants on moving to a small town and back to resupply. It seems they dried up their city.”
“Yeah, there was pretty much nothing left edible in the buildings I and Ms. Snowlet investigated.”
“So… are you up to it?” he asked a little nervously.
“I don’t have much to say in the matter, dad. You are my commanding officer.” he hears tools clattering about as she puts them away.
“Yes, but you’re still my daughter, Kelly. Your feedback is still important. What do you say?”
After a moment of silence, she eventually replies, “I can’t trust someone else doing this job for me, dad.” she replies.
“Okay, I’ll see you at Docking Bay Three, than.” he says before changing the feed, “Send a reply to the leader.” he commands.
“Of course, Captain.” a feminine voice replies.
Celestia watches as their little friend projects out a screen of their planet in blue and their visitors’ ship as white; a small ship going down onto the planet, following a line of dots. At the bottom of the screen were two rows of twenty long rectangles and the one at the bottom right corner blinks once before splitting into five small squares and blinks ten times before going out and moves onto the other square.
“Hmm… ten second blinks… sixty seconds with each rectangle… Oh! They should be here in twenty minutes!” Twilight says in amazement and felt a little proud of herself that she deciphered what the hologram showed and tried to tell them.
Celestia looks down at her former student, “Can you gather up your friends for the trip to Ponyville?” she asks.
Twilight looks up at her with confusion, “Um… not to be a little rude but… why me and my friends?” she replies.
“Because you six know the town better than anyone in this castle, Twilight. Yes, I know there are Ponyvillian civilians in the castle, but I’m not sending out even one of them because they’re not equipped and experienced in battle. As far as I witnessed, you and your friends are the best team to lead some of my guards out there, without question.” she puts a comforting hand on the young alicorns’ shoulder with a motherly smile, “I have complete faith in you and your friends, Twilight. I trust you to make the right calls out there with our new space-age friends.” she finishes but kept her hand in place.
Twilight takes a few deep breaths with closed eyes before nodding up at her former teacher with a smile, “I won’t fail you, Celestial.” she says before wrapping her arms around the white alicorns’ waist in a close hug, her head resting right under Celestias’ large mammarys. The Princess giggles and returns the hug in kind.
“I know you won’t, Twilight.” she replies as she uses her wings to hug the shorter alicorn as well.
The doors open to the War Room as five mares walks in and stands around the roundtable. They all looked okay, though, Rarity was still a little peeved that she had a week of cleaning duty with an old maids’ outfit after her little stunt with a visitor and had a tongue lashing of a lifetime by Twilight herself, a little bit by the rest of her friends and the Princess. They didn’t say anything else after because the poor mare was embarrassed enough with all the whistling she gained by the local stallions. Doesn’t help that the frilly skirt only reached down to the mid of her thigh and had the tendency of sliding up in the middle of her work. At this point, she was sure she flashed at least a dozen or so ponies while on her hands and knees.
“Good morning, everypony! I have orders from Princess Celestia for today.” she announces.
“Do I get to take this tacky thing off?” Rarity hopes and Twilight nods.
“So… what’s the news?” Rainbow Dash asks from Twilights’ left with crossed arms.
“We’re going back to Ponyville.” she replies with a calm voice, “We’re going home, everypony.”
Than a sudden puff of pink smoke and streamers blows up right in the middle of the table with a tune of a kazoo sounding out, “We’re Going Home!” Pinkie screams as she bounces on the spot with a party hat atop her curly and puffy pink mane while squealing like an excited filly.
Author's Note
And those are all the chapters that have been edited, added and rewritten for this story. I do have written a little bit of the sixth chapter, but no promises on when it'll be out. It will update when it happens. I'm also working on a new cover-art for this to update it.
So till next time, comment if you like if you see any errors, have a nice day/night, and good reading, everyone.
The twenty minutes was nearing up, Kelly was ready to go but her captain wants her to keep an eye on Snowlet once more and one extra, though, she doubts she needs to keep an eye on their eldest AI of the ship, well, a copy of it anyways.
She knew the AI since she was very young, in both her childhood and during her path to becoming a Peace Keeper. The AI considers itself a ‘she’ and a type of clone in a sense. She was created and copied from one of the greatest mind on earth at the time, copied and saved all of what was left of the planet within her digital mind, as well as the massive quantum database and has been on the ship ever since. Which might have been the reason why she was a little moody.
There were other AIs and VIs on the ship as well, but none stood out as much as her. All the others took orders and did their job as accordingly with no questions asked, but this one was her own person; she took orders of course, but wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and make suggestions.
“Captain West, I’m sure I know what I am doing.” the AI copy says with a young, French accent.
“Yes, we are a hundred percent positive my copy will do admirably, Captain.” the original says as well with confidence.
The two AIs were currently standing in front of their captain on a projector on the floor; both were a couple inches shorter than him but that alone was considered tall for a woman these days. Their whole body was gently glowing a snowy blue, though the copy was a little darker than the other, both wore a roman robe, had strapped slippers on and had their hair tied in a bun. Their stance said; proud, wise and intelligent, all at the same time and many considers her the core or heart of the ship; the second in command in a sense.
“I, quite literally, nearly spent my entire processer time debating and planning what we should expect about the possible alien contact; whether they be advanced or… not so much like you ordered me to.” the original points an accusing finger at him for a brief moment, the copy nodding in agreement and huffs in annoyance with her arms crossed and a little frown forming.
She may be just a clone AI, but she’s still a person at heart with a little bite of her own , Kelly thinks as she quietly walks up and stands beside her charge nearby as the three continue speaking to one another.
“I know, you two, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded.” the captain tries to calm both of them down a little.
Their frown deepens a little and looks away at the same time, “Doesn’t make it any less annoying, Captain West. I thoroughly looked through and processed the information and orders you gave out to me two dozen times.” the original says.
Yet sometimes acting like an adolescent teenager , Kelly thinks once more with a small smile.
“Hey!” he chirps cheerfully, “Look on the bright side; at least you can get to examine the natives and their home up close.” he finishes with that same smirk.
Both Gliths pouts a little, knowing well that their captain had just won the argument, “Do you have what I requested?” the copy asks in bitter defeat.
“Yes, of course, Glith. Crawler Mark 3 should be waiting for you in the Heavy Transporter.” he turns to Kelly and gestures to the AI copy, “Commander, if you will.”
She nods and walks up to the AI as Glith 2.0 smiles at her.
“Good morning, Commander.” both of them greets sweetly at the same exact time.
Kelly nods to both of them with a small smile of her own and reaches out for a shake, “Good to see you too, Glith.” she replies.
Both AIs’ smiles’ widen a little and the copy rests her own digital hand on her. Starting from her feet, the AI begins to turn into tiny pixels and downloads herself into Kellys’ suit within a few seconds. Not a moment later, Kelly feels a splash of cooling sensation in her brain as the AI starts to carefully link herself with her mind through a Brain Link Port at the back of her head and her suits’ systems.
“Synchronizing with subjects’ mind and suit… done. Well, as sharp as ever, Kelly.” Glith 2.0 complements through her earpiece.
The captain walks up to them, “You will be looking out for any danger or object of interest like last time. Use the new thermal setting in your helmet to look out for any of those insectoids that are disguised as our own or our allies. Don’t shoot on sight, just warn our allies and if possible, surround it or them. Let our allies decide what to do next and only engage when provoked.” he looks at the AI, “Did you send the orders out to everyone, Glith?” he asks the one standing beside them.
“Of course, Captain West. They are prepped and ready to go as we speak.” she replies with a neutral tone.
“Good.” he than gestures them to the rather large drop ship that looks like a flattened box that could fit eight-tenth of her Keepers in the whole ship, with four rocket engines placed at each corner and the cockpit located at the front-top, sticking out almost like a tortoise sticking out its head from its shell. “Come back safe, everyone.” he finishes. Kelly and Snowlet giving him a swift salute.
Twilight stares up at the sky, eagerly waiting for their new allies’ arrival. It had been nearly twenty minutes now; her friends and everyone else were packed and ready to go with two dozen guards with them, and she made sure to have field supplies packed in her satchel. She just hoped no misunderstandings will arise like yesterdays’ event.
When the ships came into view as specs she was expecting just a few… There were definitely just few, but there was a rather large one being surrounded by other three smaller ships. She gapes at what she sees and she instantly doubts the behemoth would even land within city grounds, let alone within the docks for their airships.
She turns to Applejack and Rainbow to her right with their own stunned expressions.
“Applejack, Rainbow…” they both blinks out of their stupor before looking at their friend, “Rally the guards and get ready to move outside Canterlot.” With quick nods, both jumps off the wall and onto the courtyard and began shouting out orders. Twilight looks at the rest of her friends, “Come on, we shouldn’t let our visitors wait for too long.” she receives nods before they carefully got themselves down from the wall.
Moments later, they all meet their Princess at the gates as she smiles at her subjects, “I hope the best of luck to you all and please cooperate with our visitors. They know what they’re doing and are willing to help us in a time of need. Princess Twilight will be the commanding officer for this supply run, and both Commander Applejack and Rainbow Dash are second in command. Princess Twilight will brief you during or once you reach Ponyville.” Her horn glows, opening the gates with her magic right behind her. “Come back safely, my little ponies.”
Kelly watches the landscape going by from the cockpit while holding onto the co-pilots’ chair for stability. It still boggled her to see the alien city just being there, defying the laws of gravity like it was its bitch, and she was sure the rest of her party felt the same. The prospect of learning the physics as to why the city hasn’t fallen yet, how the aliens around the planet can shoot bolts of plasma and levitate objects, and possibly more was a daunting task. They’re going to have to first learn how these physics defying abilities work, then figure out how to harness those abilities to protect themselves, and most likely use it to fight back.
But until then, they have quick a few selections to choose from to combat and protect themselves from a threat, one in particular she wanted to try, but no situation has called for its deployment. She just hopes she’ll get to use one before her retirement. As they get close to the citys’ outskirts, the Heavy Loader ship she was on slows down to a near crawl and steadily descends down to the wide, open road, facing the gate to the city itself, the bastions high like around the castle itself.
As the ship lands down, Kelly sees the large gates opening up, then a platoon of aliens going out of their city and out into the open. She recognizes the purple alien and its companions going up front, waiting and awed at the ships’ large size.
“Landing pads now firmly set.” The co-pilots says as he flicks switches around his console.
The captain of the ship then turns to her, “Waiting for further commands, Commander.” She says and Kelly nods.
“Open up the ramps. We’re burning daylight.” She commands and starts going down the short flight of stairs.
“Of course, Ma’am.” Replies the captain and flips a switch and a couple buttons.
Twilight was brought to her senses when the large ships’ front end, on the base of the aircrafts’ cockpit neck, two entries began to open up with a ramp. Then out walks the familiar, mechanical armed alien, waving them over.
“Come on, everypony. We’re burning daylight.” Twilight commands and leads her party towards the ship, while the other three smaller ships hover about, looking to be on guard.
Just as they were all half way to the ship waiting for them, an explosion blows out from the side of the mountainside, creating a large hole, and out pours the screeching Changelings.
The visitor shouts at them and begins shooting at the screeching monsters that were quickly going towards Twilights’ group. The guarding ships quickly begins shooting at the changelings as well, as well as the large ships’ own defence systems. In all the chaos, Twilight had managed to get her guards and friends into the ship without getting into real harm, some of the guards needing to fight off that got too close. The visitor quickly hops in as well while still shooting at the creatures that got too close, letting the ramps swiftly close.
They all hear a rumble around the hall as the ship begins starting up its engines, then handlebars pop out of the ceilings and sides, so all of them held onto them tightly. Moments later, Twilight feels the ships tilting on its side while gravity works against her stomach. After a while, she hears the weapons stop shooting, so Twilight and eveypony else visibly relax, thankful that they got away.
Twilight smiles at the visitor, “Thank you.” She says, and after moment, it just nods once, confusion very clear in its expression. Then it briefly stops when it spots Rarity, making the nervous mare go rigid like a stone wall. The alien then points to it own eyes with two digits, and points at the mare tensely, and Rarity quickly and shakily nods before the alien moves away.
Twilight gently squeezes her friends’ arm and gives her a reassuring smile, relaxing the mare somewhat. She then notices another familiar visitor sitting on a wall mounted chair with straps around it, secured in its seat. Twilight smiles once more and waves at it. It smiles back and waves in reply. But once it notices Fluttershy trying to hide behind Rainbow Dash, its’ smile turns into a small grin and waves at her as well a little more enthusiastically. Fluttershy squeaks, but returns a little wave of her own with a timid smile.
Twilight sees another dog-like machine sitting beside the seated alien, but she was aware it looked different; sleeker, yet robust. It also seemed more alive than the ones around the castle with life-like, smooth movements. It then looks up at the protector, actually producing sound, saying something it their language. The armored alien looks back between the dog and the Twilights’ group, then shrugs and nods before going up to the cockpit.
The machine gets up and goes up to the ponies, lighting up dim lazers located around its lens and begins scanning them one at a time, taking interest in their armor, accessorise, different body parts and so on. The robot then quickly takes great interest on Twilight, as it notices that she had both a horn and a pair of wings. Rainbow and Applejack gives it the stink-eye, but goes unnoticed, or it simply didn’t care. Twilight waves a hand at them to ease them, seeing that the machine didn’t really do much but scan and taking a look at her.
It then locates itself in front of her looking up at her face, somewhat confusing her, but then she takes a step back as she and the rest of the ponies in her charge witness the robot morphing its own mechanical body; either shortening and lengthening different parts. Before they knew it, it quickly pushes its front body off the floor and stands on its own hind legs, though, to Twilights’ amazement, it looked vaguely like a skeletal structure of a regular Earth Pony. It stumbles a little, waving its arms around to gain balance, and before long it stands up straight like it wasn’t a newborn foal getting up for the first time. It looks at its own body and flexes its ‘fingers’ and ‘thumbs’ before looking back at Twilight.
To everyones’ surprise, little projectors lights up around the machines’ body and begins creating a layer of glowing, blank white skin around its body. Twilights’ eyes, and nearly every one of her charges’ own eyes, nearly bugs out as the machine creates a blank, female Earth Pony with glowing eyes, no mouth or nostrils, and no… exposing body parts to show, just a blank canvas.
“Whoa…” Rainbow says and rubs her eyes to see if she was seeing correctly.
“Whoa…” the machine replies with Rainbows’ own voice, but still kept looking at Twilight with a slight tilt of its head, shocking everyone once more.
“Now… that jus’ ain’t right. It’s like a Mime or a Changeling, but different, in a creepy way.” Applejack says next, inspecting the glowing, naked body of the machine, while the robot itself looks at AJ curiously. The mare tries to touch it, but her fingers just goes right through, sending a shiver up through the spine of the ponies watching nearby, while AJ shivers herself before stepping back.
Then the machine begins walking from one pony to another, inspecting them with a blank stare, unnerving some of the ponies. Then, without warning, the machine lets out a loud siren and tackles one of the guards to a wall, dazing the pony, to everyones’ shock and surprise. Before Twilight or anyone could intervene, it grabs both the guards’ forearms and twirls around with the pony in the air and slams the dazed guard against the wall once more with a loud thud, surprizing the ponies with tis amazing feat of strength, its siren still going off.
Kelly rushes down to the cargo hold with the rifle drawn out and sees a glowing blank pony retreat from a flickering pony near a wall. Once the flickering stops, it reveals a dazed, insectoid trying to get back up, holding its head with one hand while it pants.
Without hesitation, Kelly pulls the trigger and peppers the enemy with five shots to its chest, sending it back to the floor. It gasps and wheezes in place, holding onto its bleeding holes in its chest, trying to stop the flowing blood. She quickly gets closer, and just as it looks up at her, she shoots its head once, ending its life. She cautiously steps closer and nudges its limp arm and body with her foot a couple times before lowering her gun. Glith scans the body once before nodding at the Commander, bringing a sigh of relief.
“This the only one?” Kellys asks the glowing figure, while she reloads her rifle and switches it to safety.
“Checking…” she turns to the group of aliens and begins looking at every alien in the cargo hold before turning back to her, “All friendly, Commander.”
“Alright in there, Commander?” pilot asks.
“All clear.” She replies and grabs the leg of the dead alien, dragging it towards a door-like airlock towards the back of the ship. “I’m opening the rear airlock to dispose of the body.” She says.
“Acknowledged, Commander. All clear to open the airlock.” The pilot says as Kelly puts away her gun on the side of her pack and dropping the leg. She sees the little green bar lighting up over the entrance, and she grabs the locking handle and pulls it up, unlocking the door. The door jerks outward and slides open to the side, wind quickly rushing in loudly. Kelly quickly drags the body up-front, and kicks it out, the body itself being pushed against the wind as it falls. She reaches out and pulls onto a red lever on the edge of heavy door, unlocking it so she could slide it back in and properly close it.
Kelly turns to her sitting charge and walks over, the short woman slightly shaken, “Are you going to be okay, Snowlet?” she asks.
The researcher nods, “Y-yeah, yeah, I think I will. Just… give me a minute to calm my hammering heart.” She continues taking deep breaths, then Kelly notices a yellow alien with wings taking its own deep breaths with the help of its companions.
She then hears the pilot speak up, “We’ll be arriving in three minutes, Commander.” She informs. “Should I put it up on a screen to show the aliens?”
“Might as well. It should get the natives ready when the time comes.” She replies as a hologram lights up, showing an aerial view of the land bellow, the torn city and the little town. Another series of blocks counting down once more just at the bottom of the screen. The screen flickers for a brief static and shows a count down from one hundred and eighty right beside the blocks. She looks to her second charge behind her and just notices a Glith lowering her glowing, alien hand. She then turns to the group of aliens when she hears something scrambling for something else and sees the purple alien digging into its satchel frantically.
“It doesn’t hurt to show them our own symbols for numbers. If the simple block method keeps going on, they might start thinking that’s how we view as time passing.” Glith says.
Twilight quickly takes out her note book and pencil from her satchel and begins quickly scribbling down the symbols as a count down begins just under a map, a little arrow leading them to Ponyville. At least she finally got the sequence of number-symbols for the visitors, though it only counted down from one hundred an eighty, it was still valuable information. She as sure of herself she can crack the code of the aliens’ number system very quickly with a bit more information, then possibly start understanding one another a little bit when using numbers in some situations. Very limited situations, but something is better than nothing.
“Are those numbers fer them aliens?” Applejack asks as she watches Twilight writing down each symbol from over the mares’ shoulder.
“Most likely.” Twilight simply replies, concentrating on writing and taking quick glances at the screen with her eyes with each little ‘beep’.
“Yah think we’re ever goin’ to learn how they speak soon?” the strong mare asks once more, which was soon followed by Rainbows’ own thought on the matter.
“Soon, hopefully. I mean, those creepy-dog-things are useful, but listening to the aliens talking to one another and you can’t understand a single thing? It’s aggravating!” Rainbow groans as she drags both her hands down her face. “We don’t even know if they’re insulting us or something?! Or if they said a funny joke that we couldn’t understand!”.
Pinkie loudly gasps, “Than we don’t know what kind of party or cake they like! Do they even have parties!?” She gasps once more and clasps her hands over her mouth, beginnings of tears forming, “Do they even have birthday parties?” she says while her friends looked at her strangely, though, that got them to begin forming questions of their own for curiositys’ sake, and no doubt the aliens had their own questions, but Twilight kept on writing, questions can wait for later.
After waiting a little longer in silence; the glowing robot continuing inspecting the ponies, Twilight scribbling alien numbers, and the short alien just looking at all of them in curiosity, Applejack tightens her shield on her arm as she and everyone else feels gravity working against their stomachs. “Okay, everypony, get ready.” She says just as the alien guardian gets down from the cockpit, drawing its weapon and saying something to the shorter alien, said alien nodding in reply.
“Aaand… done!” Twilight says then stumbles in place as the ship lands down. She blushes as her friends, a few of her guards and even the sitting alien chuckles at her dispense. She quickly puts away her book and pencil while trying to calm herself down. She then takes out a clipboard with a paper, filled with a simple list of what they need most, and turns to face the group. “Okay, everyone, here’s the plan for this supply run. Our main objectives are water, food and medical supplies.” She points to a squad leader, “Team Alpha, you will search Ponyville Hospital with Fluttershy.” She points at two other groups as the shy mare squeaks, “Team Beta and Charlie, you will search the town with Pinkie Pie, Rarity and myself. Lastly,” she points at the last group, “Team Delta, you will scout and look out for any danger with Rainbow Dash and Applejack while the rest of us search. If any of you find a pony, please take them here and inform me.” She finishes and all either nod or say their agreement. The ramps began opening, a light breeze going in to freshen the air.
“Huh…” Kelly says as she looks at the town, a little battered but still intact, nearly every building being wooden with thatched roofing. A moment more of just staring at the town later, she turns to her Keepers that stood in two rows. She notices the natives quickly getting ready, being directed by their purple leader and separating in different directions. She turns to her own people, “Okay, everyone! Here’s what we’re doing today!” she points to the town, “We’re keeping an eye out for anything that want to cause trouble to our new friends and ourselves. Help out any whom need help, and protect and fight with our allies against our new foe.” She taps her helmet, “Our helmets are now outfitted with thermal cameras that can detect the enemies’ unique heat signature. Once your helmet properly identifies the living beings’ thermal image, the computer will automatically tag it as either friendly or foe.” She brings out her rifle from her back, “Inform me when you find anything of interest as well as the natives. We don’t know if there are still some of the towns’ citizens hiding out in the buildings, so please proceed with caution when you enter a structure. They don’t know if we’re friendly or not. You got that?!” she shouts, receiving a collective, ‘Ma’am! Yes, Ma’am!’. “Good! Now let’s get to work!” she finishes and all of her Keepers began jogging towards the town.
Kelly turns to both her charges, Glith still in her glowing, alien form, “Snowlet, keep close with Glith, okay?” the short woman nods, so Kelly looks at the A.I., “Glith, I know it is very tempting, but please don’t wander far from any form of protection. I know that model is sturdy, but I don’t want any unnecessary rescue missions being carried out. We clear?”
“Transparently, Commander.” Glith replies with a nod.
Kelly nods back with a small smile, “Good. Watch each others’ backs.” She says, pats Snowlet on the shoulder with a reassuring smile before they split to do their own things, but Kelly keeping them in her sights.
Author's Note
This ones' been sitting around for a couple weeks now, I just remembered I still had it, so here it is. I know there isn't much as plot development or anything for this chapter, but I do plan on getting something on for the next chapter. It might be a while before the next chapter comes, though.
Till next time, have a nice day/night, and good reading, everyone.
Chapter 1: Arrival (Rewritten)
A lone man sits on his desk, typing his fingertips across the touch screen keyboard on the surface of his desk while a transparent, holographic screen hovers in front of him. His office lit from long, rod like light bulbs embedded on the edges of the ceiling and a singular dome like light located right in the middle of the ceiling. A small model of planet Earth, slowly rotating on his desk to his left, and a framed photo standing on its one leg to his right; him and his wife smiling at the camera like there’s no tomorrow, while their cheeks pressed right against one another.
Entry#: 546
It seems we finally reach our destination of the new solar system. The star’s a little bigger then our own, and we’re closing in on the planet that is resting on its Goldilocks Zone.
To do a little recap, as well as if my memory still works well, there are at least eight planets that our sensors have detected orbiting their parent star. We already knew this fact, but it was breath taking to see them up close, and we have begun planning on creating bases on said planets and/or their moons for research and resources.
As planned, our Black Knight Satellites have picked up interesting readings since they arrived to their intended target; our new home. The knights have been collecting data for twenty-five years, and I must say they are very promising, if only a little troubling. The moment the satellites started taking images of said planet, their high-powered cameras were either hindered severely, or stopped working entirely. The remaining cameras continued taking images, but they were either too blurred to make out any real detailed shapes, or were distorted for any use at all. It can only be theorized that a large disturbance on a global scale have overloaded most of the systems, and effectively took down a knight out of orbit and possibly crashed down onto the planet. But the good news is, all the other sensors were still running and somewhat intact. Their magnetometer collected data on the planets magnetic fields and its behaviors, radio magnifiers collected radio waves from the planet and the surrounding area and converted the waves into sound for human ears to hear, and a few more delicate instruments still collecting data. I must say, the planet is quite active for the short time our knights have observed it.
We will rebuild what we have lost, and we will endure like we always have done. We have already reached Type One civilization, we have healed Mother Earth and her creatures the best we could, and we have finally grasped the one thing we could not before; peace. If Mother Earth did not craft the most resilient and adapt creature other than cockroaches, then I don't know what to call ourselves.
To be honest, I thought we would never ever reach this system, but thankfully, we kept everything together, both ship and humans alike. All that hardship on Earth; blood, sweat and tears have paid off in spades. I am forever thankful for those who did their job to create such a masterpiece of engineering.
May those we left behind, rest in eternal peace with Mother Earth.
He finishes typing and presses ‘Enter’ with a quick tap. He then cracks his knuckles as well as his stiff neck and sits back, tilting the chair back so he can look up at the white ceiling with a content sigh.
The intercom beeps a couple of times before a feminine voice speaks out with a Japanese accent, “Captain West, we have arrived and now beginning to adjust the ship to orbit the planet. We now wait for your next command.” She finishes.
He leans in and presses the glowing, blue button on the screen of his desk, “I will be at the deck, shortly.” He replies kindly with a rustic voice. The chair moves itself back and twists to the right so he can stand up. Feeling anxious, he strolls over to a full body mirror to check himself for any imperfections to how he looked.
In front of him stood a tall, proud man, wearing a white and grey uniform hugging his body neatly, with a few blue accents to make it look better. His name tag shines in the light; his name, title and the bare surrounding them a shining silver with a blue background. His skin a pale white and a small scar permanently imprinted on his right, dark grey eyebrow. His hair grey of age and stress, with white streaks as he smoothed it out with his hands. He grabs the captains’ hat hanging beside the mirror and puts it on with a smile. His emerald green eyes staring back at him in kind, promising a better future for their last remaining species.
He goes through the sliding, hatch door and out into the hall. People walking and rushing by him, nodding and saluting him in greetings and he nods in return with his trademark smirk everyone seen countless times. He turns to his left and starts walking down. As he looks ahead, he could never see what was always ahead of him past fifty yards or so, as the halls parallel to the structure curves up.
He turns his gaze to his right and out the windows. From his end to the other was two-and-a-half miles long, and three kilometers to circle the barrel. A barrel of homes, farms, grass, dirt, trees and most importantly, his people; living and playing happily on the streets, gardens and parks. Everything pinned to the outer wall of the large cigar shaped ship, ever slowly spinning to keep everyone on their feet. In the middle of the spinning barrel were long, thick, bright rods covering a central piece, imitating as their once, beautiful sun. Ten thousand strong, enough to repopulate what was lost. They were no one race, his kind people came from every part of Earth to keep diversity. It took time for everyone to warm up to one another, and to him, but time was all they all had at the time. Now, everyone practically knows everyone in this ship. Making them one big, happy, slightly dysfunctional family.
He reaches his destination shortly after he returns his gaze at the curving hall and steps into one of three elevators on the bow of the ship. As it closed, he felt gravity pulling down on his stomach; he never did gotten used to the feeling. The doors opens to him, showing him a slowly spinning hall with rounded hatches casually passing by.
He steps out of the elevator and spins a couple of times before he stops himself by reaching out to a handle bar from the ‘ceiling’. His body felt weightless, as it was one of only few places in the ship that didn’t spin. He looks back at the passing by hatches and down the hall filled with handlebars for maneuverability, staff members going by to get to the elevators or through the round hatches, greeting him while doing so. He turns back at the hatch with a smile. He pushes himself towards it with a light grunt and stops as he plants his hands on the cool surface of the entrance. He drags himself over to a small screen and presses his left hand onto it. After it scans his hand, a ring of blue light on the face of the hatch turns green and opens for him with a hiss.
As he enters, he grabs a bar leading him to the bow of the ship while curving inward. He continues pulling himself forward, passing by more rounded hatches that led to more facilities that kept the ship running. When he finally reaches his final destination at the end of the corridor, he presses his hand on a screen yet again and the hatch lights up to a green. When he enters, he was surrounded by pilots and co-pilots alike, wearing tight full body suites with more elaborate headsets floating around or sitting in chairs in the dome like cockpit. The deck was filled with levers, nubs, buttons and touch screens in various colors, shapes and sizes in every direction. This one room alone made him think he was inside a large computer. He seen the schematics for the ship before, and the bow of the ship was practically the brain on how complicated the layers of rooms were.
“Captain on deck!” a woman yells to his right. Everyone halts what they were doing and salutes him for a brief moment before they went right back to work to keep the ship in stable condition.
“Privet.” He looks at the women, “A little push please.” He asks nicely. She nods, grabs his right foot and pushes him towards the center. He stops himself by grabbing onto the chair of one of the main pilots was sitting on. “How is the diagnostics of Child of Earth, Pilot?” he asks.
“Child of Earths’ main engines are off.” The male pilot says as he works the instruments in front of him. Suddenly, a holographic image of the ship flickers to life in front of them. “The stabilizers are working on making the correct orbit around the planet’s gravitational pull; Glith is doing the more delicate adjustments to the thrusters around the shell of the ship. The fission reactor is out putting sixty percent power. Day and night cycle is still normal. Oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are normal. The cycling barrel is still spinning, Captain.” He answers.
The captain chuckles, “How about the planet?” he asks the question he been meaning to ask.
The holographic ship then changes into an almost featureless globe, “After years of observations from the Black Knights orbiting the planet, Captain; the planet is at least five percent larger than Earth. Oxygen levels twenty percent higher. Twenty-six-hour day and night cycle. Sixty percent covered in water. It has its own magnetic field on the outer edges and an ozone layer to protect it from the star’s corona mass ejections. It has mountainous areas, meaning it also has tectonic activity below the surface of the planet, sir.”
“A big sister of Earth…” he whispers. He looks at the blocked windows in front of him, “Split the blast shield, pilot. Uncover all the windows and fill every screen on this ship to show the image of the planet, now.” He orders and the pilot nods a little excitedly and rapidly taps across the board. A small cover at the center of the dome opens and a short column rises out and stops with a glass orb at its tip, glowing blue. The Captain pushes himself over to it as all of the staff members stops to watch their captain. He reaches the orb and just stares at it for a moment, his heart beating a mile a second; he can finally say the next words.
He then presses his hand onto the orb and it quickly scans his hand before glowing a bright green.
The cigar shaped ships’ thick sheet of metal, dented from years of meteor collisions begins to slowly split into four pieces, a thin layer of ice breaking off was it finally moves. All through the ship, blast shields and windows continue opening to show the planet bellow and the new solar system, as well as every screen showed an image of the planet to show the populace wherever they were.
Everyone stops, now just looking down at the windows and screens, staring in awe at the planet and its singular moon. The planet was a display of colors, full of greens, browns, greys, and blues and even white at the poles. One land mass even reached from the very top to bottom, no ocean of water cutting through the middle but small lakes and rivers, and white and dark clouds littering the atmosphere.
The captain leans into the small speaker jutting out from the side of the column, “Good afternoon, everyone, this is your captain speaking. We have finally reached our destination, and I must say, it looks beautiful. Just a little while longer to wait till landfall, I and your crew need to make sure what dangers there are to overcome. I will update you all on our progress. Have a nice day.” He finishes.
As everyone stares in awe and some cheering, though, the captain himself was a little worried for the patches of grey that littered some of the land. He turns to another pilot just a little further from the center of the dome, “You.” He points at the woman. She looks at him, still awed by the planet and what it meant as he floats over to her, “Zoom in on one of the grey spots on the planet.” He orders to her as he grabs onto her chair and she quickly nods.
She taps and runs her fingers on the screen in front of her as a picture of the planet came to life. She taps a spot on the planet, a little target sign now displaying. She puts both her thumbs and index fingers on either side of the target and spreads them apart, causing the screen to zoom in. After a moment, he and everyone in the room were shocked to see architectural buildings standing on the side of a mountain. Buildings and roads littered the streets, and even some kind of castle resting near the northern part of the odd, alien city. The co-pilot zooms out just a bit and sees the whole picture of the city.
Captain West blinks and rubs his eyes a few times, trying to see if he was hallucinating or not, and again, the structures were still there, plain as day.
“Captain?” he looks back and sees everyone was looking at him for an answer, “What now?” the co-pilot asks.
He looks back at the screen, reaches out and begins looking through the streets, trying to see if anything or anyone would show up… nothing. Where in the world are they? He thinks to himself. After a moment of searching, he notices some buildings and part of the castle were crumbled down. He leans back and looks at everyone once more. “Now we investigate what happened to the locals.” He says to everyone in the room.
On the planet, itself, in the crumbled city of Canterlot, a bipedal, lone princess stands on her towers’ balcony, looking up at the sky in confusion. She wore an armor covering her whole body in gold and silvery colors, as well as a new padding her scientists and enchanters developed hiding under the sheets of metal. Her white horn erecting out from her forehead, sprouting out to the sky as she had her light rainbow hair done in a ponytail. Her holster strapped to her hip, holding her sword in place, with a few other equipment attached to her armor; her handheld accelerator that shoots out sharpened, enchanted crystals, Blinding Tossers-or BTs-basically a spherical, enchanted crystal surrounded by small bars with a small crank, and when the crack’s twisted and tossed, it produces a blinding flash. Her tail braded to keep it from going everywhere when she fought in her battles with her subjects. Her large wings folded on her back with bits and pieces of metal covering them as well. Alas, her armor was not perfect. It was littered with scratches, dents and scares of battle; some old and some recent.
If the battles go on any longer, they’ll have nothing but swords, shields, and other melee weapons left to use to defend themselves. They needed materials-raw materials to make more Accelerators and its ammos, BTs and many more. Her scientists and enchanters also need more materials to properly finish the prototypes that might give them an edge in the battles to come.
Alas, her mines were too far to reach, her city sucked dry, and no help to come to aid them. Now she just needs to figure out what the thing was that caught her attention.
She squints her gaze at the small, strange object in the sky, reflecting some of the light from her sun. To her, it looks like a long barrel of some sort, just hovering well away from the day moon. It was strange to her to see the rounded, plate like head of the thing to split apart and slowly moved back to reveal another dome within it.
“Princess?” she looks back and smiles at the smaller, purple Alicorn standing in front of her, holding onto a telescope in her arms and against her plated chest. She wore her own set of armor to protect her form, having a few scars and dents just like Celestia herself.
“Twilight, no need to be so formal with me when we’re alone.” she waves her over with a motherly smile. Twilight quickly walks over, looking up at her fellow Princess. “We’re friends, and friends don’t treat each other like royalty.”
“I-I know Pri-Celestia. Habits die hard, I guess.” she answers, and looks down at the telescope and back up at her, “So why do you need this? Did you see them coming?” her tone and expression morphs into fear.
“No, Twilight. I haven’t seen them yet, don’t worry. I just need to use it at the moment.” She answers, calming Twilight down and runs her three fingers on the younger ones’ cheek.
Twilight sighs in relief and starts setting up the contraption, “Where do you want it pointing at? The North? South? Maybe West?” she questions happily as she adjusts the scope and looking through it, to make sure it was clear and clean.
“The sky.” Celestia casually replies.
Twilight looks at her strangely, “What? In the middle of the day? What are you looking at?” she begins to search the sky herself.
Celestia points, “Towards that thing, near the moon.”
Twilight moves her gaze and lightly gasps, “What in the world, is that!?” she moves closer to the railing of the balcony, raising a hand to cover her eyes from the light of day.
“That’s what I want to find out, dear Twilight. Now go and instruct the Stargazers in the observatory. I will be here if anyone needs me.” She says to Twilight. The young princess eagerly nods her head and rushes down the spiraling staircase as instructed, her armor clicking and clanging as she moves.
Back in the Child of Earth, a lone woman sits under a large sphere, a holographic model of their once, beloved home planet. Surrounding the hologram were a few screens talking about said planet and how they built the interstellar ship. But the most popular and respected item they had in show was “The Wall of Memories”. Basically, a large slab of white, hard stone standing obelisk, filled with at least a dozen names of people whom passed onto the afterlife while on the ship.
The location brought various people to see the surrounding area, in a middle of a cross section, the elderly adults showing the kids on the sphere where they once lived on their home planet and telling them stories of their home and life. The sphere, however, never showed where the woman must have lived on the planet. All it shows was a slowly spinning planet.
She wore a full body suite, much thicker and advanced then anyone had in the ship; reaching down to the tips of her toes in a comfortable fit, and ended just under her jawline and the back of her lower head, where a circular, neural port is located, the hair around it shaved off permanently. Her fellow Peace Keepers wore the same suite as her, but her left arm was bare, not that she had a flesh and blood arm. To replace that was mechanical one, ‘much more useful than a normal one’, she always amused. But getting it was a painful experience; she hopped to never go through it ever again or wish upon it to her enemies, if she ever had any. Like the rest of Peace Keepers in the ship, she had to go through augmentation to set up her body to do their tasks needed. They had their muscles strengthen to make them strong, fast and agile, their bones reinforced to withstand stronger pressure and impacts, and their minds and senses doubled so they would be two steps ahead than their opponents. Basically, they were superheroes to the young ones’ eyes. But the first week, her and her fellow brothers and sisters had to stay on hospital beds to be monitored closely, not that she complained, she actually embraced it, as her whole body at the time felt like she went through a hail storm with nothing on, aching every fiber of muscles and bone, as well as her mind. It took a good month for all of them to get used to their new bodies as well and had to train their minds and bodies as well, which too two months.
She had her tools out and adjusting her other, ‘lucky’ arm on her lap. It wasn’t exactly ‘new’ anymore, more of an antique now, but she couldn’t let it go, after everything she went through to get to her position.
She looks down to her right and sees her own reflection on the dark, shinning floor. Her skin was tanned from staying out so many times to do her duty and who she was related to. She was also what you could call, ‘a red head’ as it showed her red, ginger hair put into a short ponytail to keep it from getting in the way to do her job, which was patrolling the streets and halls for any danger, guarding secure areas and investigating possible dangerous areas. And paper work, so many paper work. On her graduation day, she got the top marks, thus became one of the leaders of the Peace Keepers.
She smiles at her own reflection as her own green eyes smiles back at her, before she continues to work on the mechanical arm before she hears a voice.
“Kelly?” her ear piece calls to her.
“Yes, Captain?” he answers as she starts to put her tools away in a small, black tool box and closes it with a twisting crank of a nub.
“I have a job for you. Meet me in my office.” He orders.
“Will be there in a jiffy, sir. Over.” He replies, bent her lucky arm close with an audible ‘click!’, picks up her small tool box and starts walking to the nearest hatch door. It opens up for her, walks down a set of stairs and into a large corridor filled with pods to transport people from one place to another, small over-head bridges going from one waiting area to another. She takes her place in a small six-man pod closest to her. She goes in with a couple other people, sits down and the chair wraps a belt around her waist. She tucks her things under her arms just before the pod rockets off to the direction of the ships’ bow.
After a few moments of greeting a few familiar faces with each stop, she then hops off the transporter at the end of the ride and quickly walks towards the office of their leader.
A short walk later, she knocks on the hatch and was quickly followed by a call from inside.
“Come in!”
The hatch slides open and she steps in. She moves her tool box over to her other mechanical hand and salutes with her free hand, “Reporting for duty, sir!” she calls out and stands at attention with one of the best poker faces the ship ever seen.
The chair spins around as the captain happily grins at her arrival, “Good to see you too, Kelly.” He says back cheerfully and leans towards his desk, “At ease.” She relaxes and looks directly at him in the eyes, “I’m sorry to call you in on your few break times, but I have an important mission for you.”
“Of course, sir. What is my objective?”
“I need you to go down with someone and investigate what have happened to the local alien life down on the planet.” He presses a spot on his desk, activating a screen to show up in the middle of the air. The images showed broken buildings and streets in some sort of alien city. This was news to her, all she saw was the planet on a screen right after her lunch break. There were few scorch marks and what looks like to her, potholes from explosions. “If we’re going to make a home on this planet, we might as well make peace first with the local natives. I need you and your charge to go and see if they’re still there and search the area with caution. We must see if they’re willing to make diplomatic relations with us, and maybe help them with whatever they need.”
“Of course, sir. Do I need to bring any weapons for this mission?” she asks.
“Might as well, Kelly. We don’t want one of our best to be defenseless on an alien planet.” He answers and turns the screen off.
“Okay, sir. When shall I go?”
“Sooner, the better.” He sits back, “Now go and get ready, I’ll meet you at Docking Bay One with your charge.” He waves her off with a smile.
She salutes one more time before she spins around on one heel and went off as instructed.
Finaly… something different to do , she thinks with a tiny smile.
Author's Note
The first chapter now has been updated, rewritten and edited. What do you think about the few changes for this story? Is it better? Worse? Meh? Also, if you can, point out any errors if you so wish. I'll continue rewriting or editing the rest of the chapters.
So till next time, have a nice day/night, comment if you like and good reading, everyone.
