Author's Note

Yes I'm not dead and neither is the story, sorry about that. Things came up, Christmas and other such things. But I managed to get this out before the new year. I really hope I never takes me this long to update again.

Chapter 21: An Alien Teacher?

Pathfinder 5

Chapter 21: An Alien Teacher?

David woke up inside of Sparrow I like usual, nothing out of the norm for him. He got up, stretched out a bit, had AVI put on some music as he got into his daily routine. Shower, shave although looking at the mirror he could use a haircut soon. Too bad the auto-barber was back on board Pathfinder 5. He had breakfast and changed into his usual work clothing. He sighed looking at the small hamper. He was going to have to do the laundry soon.

That was something you never thought about with space travel. You never see in sci-fi shows of people just doing mundane stuff like that. There was a small combination washer/dryer on board the small ship in case he needed it. There was no telling what could happen to you after all, he had fallen into, had creature spit unknown substances and had some things he really didn’t want to think about fall unto him.

After all was said and done he was ready to start another new day on alien pony world. He was looking over some information when he walked into the cockpit.

“Eeep!”

David paused and looked up sharply hearing a muted yelp of some kind and he thought he caught some movement in the corner of his eye. Stepping forward he moved toward the window and looked out. He could see the group outside the ship was larger again. Just then a face popped down in front of him from above the view.

“Eeeep!” said voice said again as he wasn’t sure but it looked like a Pegasus was on the roof of the ship. He could hear the hard hoofs walking around.

“Okay this is getting fucking ridiculous.” David could stand being looked at, he could stand the circus out there but walking around his ship was too far. He was personally responsible for this and if they messed something up and he didn’t know about it when he left the planet that could be bad.

He hit a button as the window turned into a darker color, now they wouldn’t be able to see in but he could still see out. He also hit the intercom to the outside.

“Attention this ship is property of the GSC and is foreign soil,” He honestly wasn’t sure about the legality of that last part but it made sense to him. “Any damage to this vessel will also be charged to anyone that damages it. Keep in mind this ship costs one million bits.”

Again he had no idea what the actual value would be of his ship in their currency but he just picked an insanely large amount that would make even the most die hard fanatic a second thought of having to pay for damages.

He heard a few sounds from above and saw a few pegasi fly off.

“AVI are there anymore life forms on the ship?”

“Not at this time.”

“Good, AVI if they try it again, polarize the hull plating to the minimum effect that is usually set for light animals.”

“Acknowledged.”

Although they didn’t have energy shield technology human ships could add an electromagnetic field around the hull. It helped to deal with small items slamming into the ship, sure they had thick hulls but even they could get damaged by something the size of a gulf ball hitting it at speeds that were like being shot out of a railgun.

Plus David had used this often enough to discouraged animals from messing with the Sparrows while on missions. The last thing you needed was some large animals trying to hump your spaceship (yes that did happen but thankfully that was another Pathfinder and not him).

So now if one of the locals tried to step on his ship again they would get a small shock, like getting hit with a static shock really.

Yes it might be a bit much but this was a state of the art ship and if anything was damaged and he missed it that could be very dangerous. The last thing he needed was when he tried to return to Pathfinder 5 and something that had been damaged caused him to lose control or worst blow up. Okay sure that last one was a worst-case scenario but it was still a valid fear.

David looked out the window and sighed. How in the world was he going to get through that crowd?

While David was trying to figure that out Twilight was at her library going through some of her most recent notes. She was currently looking at her translations of the [human] language into her own. It was pretty fascinating stuff and the moment she got a good hold of it she couldn’t wait to start tackling their literature. Her eyes just lit up at the idea of reading books that no pony else on their world had ever seen before.

All that knowledge, all the new stories, histories, science, it all just made her feel giddy at the prospect of it. She hadn’t felt this way since she first got access to the Canterlot Library.

“Hey Twilight,” Spike’s voice called out from below. “You got a visitor.”

“Coming,” Twilight placed carefully made sure her papers were in order before leaving them.

She went down from her room and into the main library that was public to everyone to see Spike with Cheerilee waiting for her. This wasn’t exactly a surprise as the teacher usually came for certain book to help with teaching the kids.

“Cheerilee, what can I do for you?” Twilight asked.

“Well before school starts today I was hoping to see if I could get [David] to talk with the kids this afternoon.” She explained.

“Oh that’s a wonderful idea, do you mind if I sit in?” Twilight grinned at her.

“Just try and stop her,” Spike said under his breath with a grin as he went back to dusting the selves.

“I don’t mind at all,” Cheerilee said.

“Great, but why are you here, I’m pretty sure he would have said yes as he understands enough of our language to understand you.” Twilight said.

“I went to his ship but there are just a lot of ponies outside and I hadn’t seen him outside yet either. In fact I couldn’t get anywhere near the ship.”

Twilight was starting to get a bit worried hearing about this, she knew that ponies were coming to town but it sounded like things were starting to get a little too much. “I’ll go and see him myself and see if we can come later today.”

“Okay, thanks and I hope you two can make it and I’m sure it will be a big surprise for the kids.” The teacher smiled.

Twilight watched her leave as she looked to Spike. “Spike I think we need to see things for ourselves. We might need to send a letter to the Princess if things are getting too intense around his ship.”

“You think things will get crazy enough for her to get involved?” Spike asked as he put down the duster.

“I hope not but we should be prepared just in case,” Twilight told him as the two left.

As they walked through the town they could tell it was a bit busier than normal, the streets were a bit more filled and the early morning shops serving breakfast and other morning services were already getting packed. They saw the crowd before they saw the ship, Twilight couldn’t believe that it had gotten so big.

“Oh boy,” Spike said looking around.

“Yeah this is getting a bit much,” Twilight bit her lip as she looked around. There were ponies with camping sets and some with signs of various things written on them. Some were ponies begging to go with him to others denouncing him as an alien overlord.

“Spike hang on to me, we’re going the most direct route.” She told the young dragon as he hoped onto her back.

In a flash Twilight was gone and reappeared inside of the ship.

[Jesus Christ!] David jumped at the sudden intrusion and saw Twilight and Spike now in the cockpit with him. [Don’t do that! Give a guy a fucking heart attack why don’t you.]

“Sorry,” Twilight said although she didn’t get all of what he said but she got the gist of it. “Are you okay?”

David took a moment to get his mind into their language. “Okay although had to get rid of some of visitors on top of my ship.”

“Oh no they didn’t,” Twilight didn’t like the sound of this at all. She could understand the attraction but could ponies really be that inconsiderate?

“Yeah they did.”

Twilight felt a headache coming on as she sighed, “I’m sorry about that, I’ll have to talk to the mayor and the princess about all of this.”

“Thanks, but I guess you two are here for a reason?” David asked. “Not that I don’t mind of course.”

“Oh right!” Twilight suddenly remembered as she told him what Cheerilee had asked.

David thought about it for a moment, “I don’t see why not, it might be fun.”

“Great, I can take you to the library from here if you want.” She offered.

He figured it might be good to lay low for a bit until the afternoon maybe everyone outside the ship might calm down if it looked like he wasn’t coming out for the day. He suddenly got an idea, “Before we go I got to get a few things.”

“Sure thing we can wait here,” she told him as he went to gather something. She looked at Spike who had been kind of quiet lately and saw him looking around the place with wide eyes. She smirked seeing his reaction and she honestly couldn’t blame him. She got giddy every time she stepped hoof inside of this ship.

“Pretty amazing isn’t it Spike?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, this is so much better than any of my comics.” He replied looking around at everything. He had no idea what any of it did but it looked impressive to him. He could see a few buttons but mostly the controls looked to be those floating glowing images. He really wanted to touch one but for all he knew that might fire the weapons systems or something. Well he assumed the ship had weapons, all space ships seemed to have them after all.

David returned shortly with a backpack that had some stuff he planned to show the kids later on plus maybe a few other things. He checked the computer on the glove of his left hand, he was going to get some readings from this teleportation, something he had been meaning to try out for awhile now.

“Well I’m ready when you are,” David smirked. [Bream me up Scotty.]

“What?” Twilight asked.

“Cultural reference, maybe I’ll show you sometime.” He explained.

Twilight got next to him as she had to concentrate for this one, teleporting herself and Spike wasn’t too bad but doing that with David given his size and mass and going even further to the library. Well this was going to take a bit more power and concentration.

For David, he had the scanner on the small computer on his glove active as he waited. He saw her horn light up and then it happened. If he were to describe it, it was like feeling yourself being pulled but almost like you were being pulled in every direction and yet no direction at all. There was this bright flash and then when he looked around he was suddenly in the middle of the library.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting but he was kind of hoping for a bit more. With a shrug he looked at the device.

[What the fuck is this shit?] he glared at the small computer as the screen showed him something he really didn’t’ want to see.

-Error 320-

“Is something wrong?” Spike asked.

“Hold on,” David told him as he quickly brought up the manual for the device and look up what an ‘Error 320’ was. He quickly looked it up and found that it was the computer having a run time error because it was over worked with too much data.

[Well that’s disappointing,] David sighed and he looked at the two of them. “I was trying to record what happened but my device couldn’t handle it.”

“Oh really?” Twilight had been interested in his equipment especially that glove that he always wore with the controls on it. “Maybe we can work on that while we wait for the afternoon.”

Spike jumped off her back knowing where this was going, “Well I got some dusting to do, you two have fun with that stuff.”

-Ponyville School-

It was a normal day for the students in Cheerilee’s class, the morning classes seemed normal, recess was fun and they had just finished with lunch when Cheerilee had left the room. The students were talking amongst themselves about everything and anything that kids usually talked about. When their teacher walked in she had on a smile on her face as she got their attention.

“Okay everypony we have a special treat for all of you,” she told them as now all the students now had their full attention to her. “I have a special guest for you all.”

The children started talking amongst themselves quickly all of them guessing on who it was.

“Come on in,” she called out to the hallway.

First came in Twilight carrying a saddlebag with some papers and ink for today. Then right behind her David walked in. He just barely managed to get in under the doorframe as he saw the various reactions on the kids. Most seemed to look at him with wide eyes, he noticed a few did seem nervous but he noticed three little familiar faces.

[David!] Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo cried out happily seeing him.

“Hey girls,” he smiled at them.

“I asked him to come talk to you kids since I bet you all have questions to ask him.” Cheerilee said as Twilight went to the back of the class as she got out her papers and quills ready.

David had to stop himself from smirking at the sight, she looked so eager like a natural student. He bet she was the top of her class in school.

“Well I also brought something to help,” David had been carrying his backpack as he took it off and pulled out a device. “This is similar to what I brought to the party but better.”

He placed the device which looked like a sphere cut in half with a larger ring around it. He hit a couple of buttons as it powered on and he placed it on Cheerilee’s desk. Lifting up his ever-present glove he linked it up to the device.

David looked at all the kids, “Now what this is going to do is make an illusion that will help me give you an image of what I’m talking about. I always found it better to see something along with what I’m learning.”

There was a light that enveloped the room as David checked the read outs. “Okay everything seems good.”

“I don’t notice anything.” Cheerilee said looking around her classroom.

“It was just taking a look at the room and getting everything ready,” David explained as he decided to start out slow. “I think this class could use a new look.”

With a few key strokes the room suddenly changed, the walls now had new wallpaper and the floor had changed into tiles. There were a lot of voices as everyone was startled at the change to the room.

“Don’t worry it’s just an illusion,” David explained to them. He changed the room again to now looking like some kind of ballroom. “This is something we can use to redecorate homes. Not everyone uses it but it’s a simple way of doing it without all the work.”

A colt raised a hoof, “Does this mean if I use it something like this I don’t have to clean my room?”

David smirked, “Unfortunately no. You might put everything into a pile and hide it but it will still be there. Plus mothers would know, trust me on this one.”

“Awww,” He looked dejected at the thought of an easy fix. Not that David could blame him after all.

“Even though you can’t see your teacher’s desk,” David pointed to where the desk and device used to be which looked like an empty space now. “Trust me it’s still there.”

He moved to pick up the device and show them unfortunately he forgot to make a mental note of how close he was to the desk. As he took a few steps towards it he hit his shin right along the edge of the thick wooden desk.

[Oww! God fucking damn it!] he cursed rubbing his shin.

“Are y’all okay?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Yes, just give me a minute,” David said rubbing his shin. He just had to connect with the edge and it was against his shin bone too. The worst way he could have hit the desk and he just had to pull it off. At least he had been going at an easy pace but damn did that hurt.

“What does [god fucking damn it] mean?” One of the kids randomly asked.

David froze for a second seeing all those little and very impressionable faces looking at him. He also noticed Twilight and Cheerilee giving him very focused looks.

“Uh, well it has various meanings depending on the context, plus you said it wrong.” Davie flat out lied, he wasn’t going to be the one that taught the first alien children alien curse words after all. “The way you said it, translated means my feet stink.”

The kids giggled at that as David quickly went to bring something up to distract them. He noticed that Twilight and Cheerilee didn’t seem to be convinced by his ‘explanation’ of what he had said. In fact he was pretty sure Twilight had learned enough English to know he was flat out lying.

David quickly brought up some mission logs and decided to show the kids some of his own adventures in space. The room was suddenly a strange orange world with a thick gaseous atmosphere.

“This was one of the planets I found,” David explained to them. “In fact there I am.”

He pointed as the kids all looked from their seats to see David in his heavy duty environmental suit looking around the strange plants.

“Why are you wearing that suit?” Scootaloo asked.

“The air is different than here or my own world,” he started to explain but paused. He didn’t have the translations for certain scientific terms at the moment to trying to explain the makeup of the atmosphere was a bit of a problem. He mentally shrugged, they were kids so he might as well not get too complicated with them.

“The air is made up of stuff that neither of us can breathe so I wear the suit which is air tight and has its own air.”

“Now space is really cool but you should know it’s also a bit dangerous.” David told them.

“Why?” a young filly with glasses and a strange lisp asked next.

“Well there is no air at all in space so if there is a hole in the ship, well bad things happens.” David didn’t want to mentally scar them with what violent decompression or exposure to space can do to a living being. “Also on every world there are dangers there because you have no idea what to expect.”

“There can be dangerous creatures or like what you’re about to see…plants.”

They all looked to the image of David as he was looking at a pile of large yellow leaves when what looked like a tentacle shot out and wrapped around his arm. The kids gasped and jumped at the sight, thankfully there was no audio for this as David remembering curing up a storm when this had happened.

“The plant I found apparently shoots that out and wraps around its prey, it has small thorns that dig into the prey as well. Thankfully my suit was kept it from going all the way through.”

“How did you get out?” a blue colt asked quickly looking at the scene.

“Just watch,” David told them as the image of him pulled the plasma pistol and shoot off the appendage at the root. “Unfortunately, it still kept on my arm, I had to go all the way back to the ship in order to get the tools I needed to pry it off and then I had to fix my suit.”

“So as you can see space travel lets you see all kinds of things but you have to be careful, that’s why the program I’m a part of exist. To search the galaxy and explore, find worlds, find dangers, find safe paths for travel.” David finished.

The kids took all that in as David then smiled at them. “So...any questions?”

“What does your planet look like!”

“Is it true you live in space?”

“How fast is your ship?”

“Can we take a ride on your ship?”

“What’s the biggest alien creature you’ve seen?”

“Okay hold it,” David waved his hands at all the questions. “Oh boy where to start.”

He snapped his fingers as he brought up the controls as the entire classroom went dark as a light suddenly came overhead. He had brought up a scale image of the Sol system. “How about we start with this and move on?”

He brought it closer to the kids as some tried to reach up as their hooves would go through the holograms giggling at it.

“Here we have where my people come from, this is [Earth] or as it’s translated in your language, Earth.” Said planet enlarged as the kids could see it. He went into the basics of Earth, showing them things like the pyramids, some of the main cities, various locations that he thought the kids might like.

He then pulled back to have the entire solar system and had the kids ask him questions about what they could see. One kid pointed to Mars as he brought it up showing the red landscape with a huge dome with a city inside of it.

“This is Mars City, the first ever city built on another planet. The dome is to protect the city as we’re currently…uh…Twilight if I say [terraform] do you have an idea of what that means?”

Twilight thought about it but shook her head.

“Okay…well the planet’s air is bad like I showed you on that one world but we’re currently changing it.”

“Like how a Pegasus controls the weather?” one of the students asked.

“Maybe…well it’s a slow process and it will take us a hundred years to get it to the point where we might not need domes anymore.” David tried his best to explain.

He decided it was time to get into something maybe a bit more fun as he started to bring up some human sports. A few were those made for zero or low gravity environments, racing done both on the surface of a planet or even in a few areas in space. He was showing them a basketball game when one of the kids had a question.

“How come that one is wearing metal on their leg?”

David looked at the image and it took him a second to realize what the kid had been looking at. “Oh that’s not on his leg, that is his leg. That [BJ Barlow], he lost his leg in an accident and had a metal replacement done.”

“You can make robot limbs?!” One of the kids gapped.

“Among organs too, in fact if you do lose something you can get this or…well I’m not sure what you call it but there is a way to make a copy of organic material.”

“Do you mean clone?” Twilight asked from the back taking a moment from her notes at this point.

David looked at the mini-computer on his glove and checked the dictionary there to be sure. From the definition, it did look like the correct word. “I believe so, yes that should be the word for it.”

“If you can make clone body parts why would you want something like that?” Twilight asked looking at the player with the white painted artificial limb.

“Well in his case he couldn’t wait,” David went on to explain. “You see it can take six months to a year to make a clone part, while a mechanical one takes much less time. As a player he wanted back as athletes have a limited time in their profession and making a new limb, and then getting used to it. Well he could have been out for over a year.”

“So can you make grown up clones?” a young colt asked.

“No,” David said sharply. “It’s illegal to make full body clones.”

“Why?” The kid asked innocently enough.

Now he was in a pinch, he really didn’t want to bring up the infamous Prometheus Corp who had been offering cloned parts only to have been exposed to growing fully and living human clones and then killing them and cutting them up for parts. It was the stuff of nightmares and then there was the other nail in the coffin for full clones. When some dictator got their hands on a few resources and tried to make a clone army.

It didn’t work out and when he was shut down and the clone army thing came to light, well the outcry was massive. After that full human cloning was banned with a full-on life sentence of ninety years. The problem was he really didn’t want to show them any of those images, they were too young and honestly, he didn’t want to show them some of the worse that humanity had done.

Yes he knew it would come out sooner or later but he wanted to make sure they saw the more positive side of his people first.

“It’s complicated but basically for time, bad people did some bad things and abused that technology. So it was banned for very good reasons. I could go into it but honestly it’s a long history as we would use up the rest of our time.”

They seemed satisfied with that, and he was grateful for it. He decided to try and switch topics to something a bit more safe.

They started to get into the other planets of the solar system by this point. He showed them Jupiter and its moon Europa where water was mined there for the space colonies and Mars terraforming project. They pointed to some of the space colonies as he went through what some of them but then one kid pointed to one particular station.

“How come that one looks a little different?” one kid pointed out.

“Oh that’s the Great Library.” David said.

“What?” Twilight’s eyes snapped up as she looked up from her notes she had been taking.

“Yeah this here was created a while ago,” David pulled up the image. It was a strange station that was nearly a sphere. “It holds pretty much all the knowledge of my people. Some people thought it best that in case something happened there would always be something that would hold the total knowledge of my people for all time. Kind of like a giant library and time capsule put together.”

“It holds copies of every book, every document, every public blueprint, pretty much everything you can think of and it’s constantly being updated. There are even living quarters, hotels, and homes for the people that work and live there.”

“So it’s like how Miss Twilight lives in the library?” one kid asked.

“Yeah like that only a few million times larger with a lot more people.” David nodded. “There are people there that live there for years as they work on research projects or researching a thesis. You can always find historians, scientists and archeologist there.”

David paused as he noticed something odd with Twilight. “Uh…Twilight, you okay?”

Twilight was standing still, everything she had been holding with her magic was now on the floor as she was just staring off into space.

“Twilight? Hey Twilight!” There was no reaction as both David and Cheerilee walked up to the unicorn.

Cheerilee waved her hoof in front of the mare’s face and then nudged her but there was no reaction.

“Oh no I think I broke her,” David wasn’t even sure the girl was blinking, it was actually getting a little creepy looking. He tried to think what could break her out of it.

“Oh no Twilight look, they’re burning all the books in your library!” He pointed out a window but the mare only had an eye twitch from it. “Well so much for that idea.”

“Is she going to be okay?” One of the students asked.

“Okay I have one last idea, this is an ancient technique of my people.” David explained to them. “It might work but I’m not sure at this point.”

He placed a finger into his mouth getting it nice and wet and then proceeded to take it out and then put it into one of her ears only to swirl it around. That’s right, David Miller the first to find alien life had just given the first ever Wet Willy to another alien life form.

The reaction was immediate as Twilight’s eyes shrunk and then she jumped away from him.

“EWWWWW! Gross! Gross!” she yelled out over the laughter of the kids. She tried to rub the inside of her ear but her hoof was a bit too big. Looking around she quickly levitated a tissue box to help her clean out her ear.

“Sorry Twilight you were kind of gone on us and it was starting to get scary.” He explained and only got a dirty look in response.

“Okay…time to continue on.” David went back up to the front to avoid until she cooled off. And yeah maybe because he was a little scared of her, hey she had a long horn on her head that she could stab him with, hooves that he knew for a fact hurt and there was no telling what she could do with him with her ‘magic’ either. He’d have to make it up to her later he guessed.

Thankfully the rest of the afternoon with the kids went by quickly and when the bell rang they were actually disappointed that it was over.

“Don’t worry maybe we can do this again,” Cheerilee said and looked at David.

“Sure I don’t mind.” He was met with the cheers of kids as they all started to pack up and go do whatever kids did after school was let out. David was happy to see them off, it had been pretty fun all things considered. He noticed Twilight and Cheerilee talking with each other before Twilight left. He shrugged his shoulders not sure what they were talking about as he packed up his own equipment.

He just finished putting the holoprojector away when he turned to be facing the teacher.

“I have to thank you for this, the children loved it.”

“Aw it’s nothing, they were great kids and honestly I enjoyed it myself.”

She smiled up at him. “That’s great however as their teacher I do have a responsibility to not only them but in the trust of their parents.”

“O-kay,” David wasn’t sure where this was going but he got the feeling he wasn’t going to like it. Warning signs were starting to come up but he suddenly noticed that she had him almost pinned with her in front and her desk behind him.

“Now I may be only a teacher in a small town and I may not know much about the galaxy but I do know cursing when I hear it.” She said still smiling but her eyes didn’t hold the smile.

“Uh…okay sorry about that but can you blame me? I just know I’m going to bruise from that.”

“Yes but still as adults we have to set an example for the children,” she looked up at him still not moving and suddenly he had flash backs to several of his old teachers who had given him such looks in the past.

She continued on, “Now since you did this in my classroom it comes to me to find a way to deal with discipline and as a responsible adult can you agree that behavior like that can’t go unpunished correct?”

For a moment, he got an image of her with a riding crop and black leather as he quickly pushed that image out of his head. Personally, he blamed an old high school crush on this really hot teacher back then who always wore these leather boots as the source of that image when she said ‘punishment’.

“What did you have in mind?”

She walked over to the chalkboard and came back with a piece of chalk.

“You’re going to write something for me, on all the boards.”

“Uh…I can’t write in your language so,” he tried to bluff his way out.

“Oh don’t worry,” she said sweetly at him. “I’ll teach you.”

There was a pause as he looked down at this mini-horse alien. There was no way in hell this was happening to him, just no.

“Oh come on it was an accident.”

No change.

“I’m a representative of an alien race and you’re really going to make me do this?”

She just stared at him.

“There is no way you can make me do this you know.”

She only just smiled a bit more at him.

“I’m like twice your size.”

-An hour Later-

Twilight had finally come back, she had gone to make sure of a few things she wanted to surprise David with. She had thought about what to do about ponies messing with his ship while he had been in the library with her and she had gone out to do something about it. It had actually started before they had left the library as Twilight had gone to see the mayor and then her friends to help out.

She had gone to check on the progress and everything seemed ready. She walked back into the classroom and had to pause, on every blackboard were written the same thing over and over again. The letters were a bit crude but did seem to get a bit better as they went on.

There at the end was David making the last few lines with a very sour look on his face with Cheerilee sitting on her chair watching him with a smile on her face.

Every single line read the same thing in Equestrian: “I will not curse in front of children.”

Next up Chapter 22: Party in Canterlot