Pathfinder 5

Chapter 3: First Contact

David was at the controls of Sparrow I in his flight suit, it was an enclosed white space suit just in case the ship ever got a hole in the hull and all the atmosphere started to leave. The holographic controls were being manipulated by his hands as he piloted the vessel down into the planet’s atmosphere. Unlike the Pathfinder that had gravity because of the large spinning section the Sparrows didn’t have that luxury.

So piloting from zero-gravity into gravity always felt weird to him, the gradual shift as his body gained weight and the pressure on him as he entered was something he never got used to, no matter how many times it happened. He grunted as the force hit him, even with the suit on it took a moment. He read the gauges as he followed the flight path down.

Unlike Sparrow II and III, this one was a lot easier to pilot in atmosphere since its design was slim and sleek, a long neck with wings and twin ion engines powering it. The white and silver looking ship could fly like a bird as he slowly descended down to the planet. The heat of the entry was being taken of by the outer plates as he checked them, they were good so far. Every time he got back from a planet he had to check the hull since this was the trickiest part of any exploration.

This part always seemed to take forever for him as he checked and rechecked everything on the way down. Finally after what seemed like an eternity he leveled out and he released a breath he forgot he was holding.

“Damn, never get used to that part,” He sighed as he could finally fly through the air a bit more relaxed. “Okay then, now where is that landing area?”

The HUD showed a clear path as green outlines from the ship’s scanner told him where the ground was and anything solid given that it was night it helped him to pilot by sight. He hoped that the flight wouldn’t wake anyone up, the Sparrows weren’t exactly stealth craft after all.

As he tried to keep some distance from the village the cry of the spacecraft carried on the air like a phantom in the night. To most it wouldn’t have woken from the distance but not everyone was sleeping through the noise.

In her bed in her cloud home Rainbow Dash had been having a great dream of flying with the Wonderbolts when this shrieking sound startled her awake.

“Huh? Wha?” She groggily looked around her dark room, there was Tank on the foot of her bed as usual fast asleep as she wondered what woke her up. Her mind still a bit groggy from being suddenly woken up, it took her a moment to notice the sound.

“What the hay is that?” She asked out loud getting off her nice comfy cloud bed and walking towards the window. She looked out over the night as her eyes caught something in the distance, even with her great eyesight she nearly missed it in the dark of the night. The moonlight gave her just enough to catch a glint of something moving fast in the distance.

Her ears swung around as she tried to pick up the sound and it was definitely coming from whatever that was. There was a slight glow behind it she noticed and it looked to be heading towards the Everfree Forest past Sweet Apple Acres. Rainbow wasn’t sure what that was but something inside of her curiosity was quickly waking her up.

She spread out her wings flapping a few times to get them loosened up, “I don’t know what that is but I’m going to find out. Tank look after the house,” she took off as her sleeping tortoise just lie there still asleep.

On Sweet Apple Acers the Apple family were not much of heavy sleepers, when you had to rise with the rooster’s cry you didn’t get to be a light sleeper. AJ awoke with a start looking around her room at what woke her up. The sound was the first thing she noticed, it was unlike anything she had ever heard before. It sent a chill down her spine as she noticed a light in her window. Looking out she noticed something fly by.

“What in all of Equestria...” she trailed off not sure what she was seeing.

“Sis?”

AJ turned to see a sleepy Apple Bloom at her door leaning on Big Mac.

“Hey y’all.”

“What’s goin’ on?” Her brother asked as they were all woken up by the same sound.

“Not sure, there’s somethin’ out there.” AJ turned to the window again.

“Hey AJ!”

“AHH!” AJ leapt back as she was now face to face with Rainbow Dash who was right in front of her window. “Dang it Rainbow, ya scared me half out of my wits!”

“Oh sorry, but did you see what that thing was?” Dash asked her. She had passed by AJ’s home just in case something happened and caught movement in AJ’s window. So she zipped out to it as quick as possible.

“Ah saw...somethin’...” AJ wasn’t sure what she saw, it was just a light and a sound but she had no idea what either were.

“It’s heading to the Everfree, I’m going to chase it down.”

“Now hold on there!” AJ stopped her. “We can’t just go off like that, we don’t know what it is and if it’s headin’ to the Everfree maybe we should give it a little space.”

“Oh come on AJ,” Dash said back not happy about this. “We should find out what it is.”

“And then what?” the farmer replied. “Look we will look into this but ah say in the mornin’ we ask Twilight if she knows anythin’. If any pony might it’s her and then we can deal with it from there.”

“That sounds so boring though.”

“Maybe but it’s the sensible thing to do, besides it’s gone now.” Applejack smirked pointing behind Rainbow.

She turned around and it was gone from sight, Rainbow turned around to face AJ not too pleased. “You were playing me.”

“Maybe, now I suggest we get to bed and get to Twilight’s in the mornin’.”

“Fine,” Rainbow grumbled she might have been able to catch up to it but with the light and sound gone she would have to search the Everfree for it. Now she would admit to herself that at times she could be a bit impulsive but even she knew that searching that forest could be dangerous in the morning. At night that would be a lot more dangerous.

So she decided to fly on home, she was still a bit tired but now after being so wired from what just happened it would take her an hour to get to sleep at this rate.

-Morning-

David was gearing up at the moment, he had a few hours of sleep after landing in a nice open patch of the forest. He was thankful that the Sparrows could land and take off vertically as well as the normal horizontal it made landing here so much easier. He stifled a yawn, the day hadn’t broken just yet as he wanted to get out of the forest as dawn. He was also trying to get into a normal sleep cycle, it was the one major annoyance he had to do while surveying a world, each world had its own length of day and night to get used to.

Although this world seemed to have a twenty-four hour day and night like on Earth, he was used to the Zulu time that the Pathfinder kept.

Currently he was wearing a grey suit that hugged his body as it looked to be made up of tiny hexagons. The wrist held a gauntlet like device where a personal computer was located along with patches of metal on the chest, back and thighs.

“AVI check the status of the suit.” He told the computer as he linked up with the ship running through the diagnostics. The suit felt a bit warm as it booted up as he flexed a bit as it always seemed stiff whenever he first puts the thing on to him.

“System ready.”

David looked to the white hull of the ship and placed a hand on it as his hand turned the same white up to the wrist. He pulled it back as it returned to normal. “Got to love chameleon suits, alright first supplies and then armaments.”

He took a plasma pistol as it connected to the thigh part of the suit with a magnetic click. The backpack was a slim design that he double checked the contents. He had some water, some meal rations and energy bars, first aid kit. He wasn’t planning on going out for long so he wasn’t going to pack up a lot of stuff. Next on the belt he wore was placed a few cylinders, these were small smoke grenades and a couple of stun grenades.

He decided on these because if he was found and things went nasty he didn’t want to be known as the killer alien creature. He figured if he just stunned or he just escaped with no one harmed things might be salvageable. The last thing he took was the mask part of the suit, it covered up his entire head and only had a visor device built into it over his eyes.

“Okay then, time to go, wish me luck.” David said to AVI as he left the ship.

David found himself in the forest and although there was some light from the ship this place looked like some kind of haunted forest from a child’s story. He walked towards where the HUD in the visor showed him. As he walked through the forest the small sensor unit in the suit picked up small life forms here and there but thankfully they were keeping away from him.

He couldn’t shake how this place was giving him the creeps. “Okay now I think I see why the natives don’t go into this place. This has officially gotten into my top five creepy forests in the galaxy list...maybe top three...”

The visor amplified the light so he could see where he was going pretty well and by the time the sun was rising he just got to the edge of the forest. He felt relief at being out of there, he knew he was going to hate getting back to the ship at night and made plans to get back before nightfall. He paused by a tree kneeling down as his suit took on the colors of the tree and grass making him blend in to anyone that might be looking.

“Well...this is a sight,” He was currently looking at a little cottage and again he was reminded of stories his mother used to read to him when he was a little kid. “I swear if a little girl in a red hood comes looking for her grandmother, I’m done.”

It looked like he had timed things well as the front door opened up and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had seen creatures with wings flying about and hadn’t gotten a good look at them but now he could as the visor zoomed in from the commands of his implant.

“No fucking way...” He whispered out.

At first he thought he was seeing things but looking again here it was, a small little winged horse with yellow coat and of all things pink hair. At first he thought that maybe it was a pet but it was opening the gate to a fenced off pen and carrying a small bucket. Taking a closer look he noticed that although it was horse-like there were oddities. The head was all wrong, it was round with a muzzle and huge expressive eyes there large enough to be in the front and a bit on the side unlike an actual horse with small eyes on the side of a long face.

All that he couldn’t get over the fact he was looking at what looked like something out of Greek legends, he was looking at a damn Pegasus.

There was no other thing he could use to describe it, the mic picked up sounds coming from it and he wasn’t sure but was it humming? He was recording everything from the visor as he watched the creature and the more he watched it the more it didn’t seem like some kind of animal. It moved with a purpose that you wouldn’t see in any animal, it was hard to put into words but when you watched an animal and a person there was a difference in how they would act.

Also the hair (or was it mane?) well at any rate it was styled, there was no way that it grew out like that naturally, it was styled and brushed showing that these beings had some kind of sense of style. Just when he thought he couldn’t get shocked enough the animals started showing up and David was too shocked for words.

Chickens came out of the coop along with an assortment of birds and he actually knew some of the species. These were animals that he had seen on Earth, he noticed ducks, squirrels and a few other animals.

This just wasn’t possible!

In all the worlds he had been on he had found animals that might have been similar to some found on Earth but there was no way there could be exact matches. It defied everything science said on evolution and the odds that two worlds would have similar life forms were bad enough, throw in exact matches...he didn’t the number to express how low that was, was invented yet.

“AVI please cross reference the animals I’m recording to that of Earth.” He whispered to the comlink in the mask.

There was a pause as the computer did its work. “Match to known animals on Earth 99%.”

“Wait what’s with 1% off?”

“Animals do not act with known parameters and slight alterations in physical appearance, can not specify if internal organs match from outward scan only.”

“That’s still too close,” He muttered to himself. This planet just kept having one mystery pile on top of another. He needed to see more there had to be more to explain something on what was going on here. David slowly moved off not trying to be seen, he found a small hill and staying low got to the top of it.

Lying down he allowed the suit to take the colors of the grass to blend in as he took a look at the town. With the visor he could pick up a lot from this far away and it wouldn’t give his position away as it was non-reflective. Looking down he could see the entire village was slowly waking up as many of the creatures starting coming out.

Taking a moment he looked around, the village seemed pretty low tech. Wooden homes that looked like they would be at home on Earth a few centuries back, which was odd as he had seen more modern cities elsewhere. Looking around he also noticed that castle and the city by the mountain well turns out it was built on the damn mountain. He thought it was at the foot from the aerial images not actually on the side of the mountain.

“Seriously?” He asked himself. “Who the hell builds something like that on the side of a mountain? On the top sure, at the foot okay but on the side!? How is it not falling down with all that weight?”

There had to be a lot of engineering that went into something like that, maybe they had large support pillars that went deep into the mountain as a base and built on top of those? Well another thing to look into that he would add to the ever growing list of things to look into.

Looking back at the villagers he noticed that the horse like aliens were the locals of this world. He paused when he saw what could only be described as a unicorn.

“You...got...to...be...shitting me.” He blinked a few times but no there it was, in fact he started to notice a few others. A unicorn was the only word that fit, little horses with horns on their heads. He was starting to wish that the Pathfinders carried alcohol because he felt like he needed a drink at that moment. If he wasn’t taking evidence of this they would lock him up it he funny farm if he came back talking about little colored Pegasi and Unicorns.

Finally he found some more ‘normal’ looking little horses, sure they were colored like they were out of a child’s coloring book with mane styles that looked like something you could find on Earth but at least they didn’t have wings or horns. He noticed something else, they all had these odd little marks on. Was it a fashion thing? A clan or family crest? Or something else entirely?

They weren’t tattoos given you couldn’t tattoo fur and you couldn’t see them if they were on the skin. As he watched them he couldn’t help but notice that they acted very much like people back home. David watched as they slowly set up a market place as they came and went, some buying various things and talking with each other. He was too far to pick up any sounds but from the looks of things it was a nice little place, very friendly judging by the body and facial expressions.

He saw little ones rushing off as he followed them, he heard a bell ringing and saw them all going to this one building. It took him a moment to realize that it was a school, kind of like the old time ones you’d see in pictures from the late 19th or early 20th century maybe. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of it all, it was all so normal when you got past their looks.

David spent a good amount of time on that little hill just watching and recording everything. It was fascination really watching a society that was so similar and yet little differences. His stomach rumbled as he pulled some water and a ration bar out of his backpack.

Up in the sky Rainbow Dash was not happy, she and AJ had gone over to Twilight’s very early on but turns out that she had no idea what they were talking about. She was going to try and research whatever it was but Rainbow felt like she should have gone after whatever that had been. She also was a little cranky because of the lack of sleep, it had taken her nearly two hours to fall back asleep and then she only got two more hours of sleep before she had to get up.

“Thunderlane, I need you and Flitter to get more clouds to the south.” Dash told the dark furred Pegasus next to the female one.

“You got it,” He said as the two flew off to get more clouds rounded up.

Dash looked to Flitter’s twin sister Cloudchaser. “So how many rain clouds do we have left? There’s supposed to be rain in three days.”

Cloudcasher thought about it, “I think we got enough for a decent shower.”

“Can you double check and get back to me? I want to be sure.”

“Sure thing,” She flew off leaving Dash alone for a moment.

The rainbow maned Pegasus signed as she finally had a moment of peace. It was a busy day and she had a headache from all the work and little sleep. Sometimes being the one in charge of the weather was a lot of work keeping on top of everything despite how she liked to goof off from time to time. When the work demanded it, she was on top of everything but she knew how to relax.

When it was simple weather and nothing too major she could get the work done half way through the day and then give everypony the rest of the day off. It was one of the reasons ponies liked working the weather here because when everypony worked hard they got to play hard as well.

Now she just wanting a nice little nap, maybe she could skip lunch and spend that hour on a nice cloud somewhere. Her thoughts were broken when her eyes caught something on the ground. There was a shinny reflecting from something that caught her attention. Looking more closely it looked to be some kind of...wrapper?

There was a bottle of some kind next to it and for a moment she thought she saw the ground move next to it.

“Okay that’s weird.” She thought that maybe her eyes were just playing tricks on her after all she wasn’t at her best. Well time to take a closer look at any rate and maybe if it was some trash that got left behind.

David wasn’t sure what to think anymore, this world was just crazy and yet so familiar it was kind of scary. He saw a flower shop and from here he thought that he could recognize a few of the flowers as the same species found on Earth. Nothing made sense and he really wanted to take a few samples back to the Sparrow and have some tests run on them. Maybe he could find some growing around the village and pick those up for study.

He noticed a very pink one that was actually hopping along looking as happy as anything could be when it suddenly stopped. David thought that it was going into some kind of seizure as everyone around it starting looking its way out of some kind of concern by the looks of it. Then the pink one suddenly stopped whatever it was doing looked around quickly. It was saying something but he couldn’t pick it up from this far away.

Everyone else just seemed to go back to whatever they were doing as the pink one raced away somewhere. David was wondering just what that had all been about when he noticed the next thing. One of the unicorns horn was glowing? He was about to try and get a better view when something happened to break his train of thought.

Thump-Thump

The sound made David freeze as his eyes widened behind the visor, something had landed right behind him. It could be one of those flying types he’d been seeing and one of them must have seen him. He wasn’t sure how but at the moment it was too late.

“Tae saccu bis?” The alien language had a slight raspy tone to it but it wasn’t harsh at least not to his ears.

Slowly he turned his head to face a blue creature with rainbow colored hair suddenly looking right at him. It’s eyes widened as the pupils shrank down as it cried out and jumped back, it cause David to yell out as he scrambled to a sitting position.

“W-What the heck are you!?” Rainbow asked the creature in front of her. She hadn’t really seen it, she had seen some kind of lump on the ground but when it moved she saw it was some kind of creature. The skin changed color as it moved and now the upper half was more visible. She had never seen anything like this before.

“Well? Out with it!” She gathered her courage tensing her body to either lunch herself at it or take to the air.

“Gradda ga hurk,” It said slowly moving its forelegs up they ended in some kind of flat things with five thing little tentacle things on each one. Kind of like the legs of a spider which was kind of a creepy thought to Rainbow.

“Uh...come again?” She tilted her head not sure what she just heard. She noticed it was speaking gently and going to something at its waist. It pulled some kind of metal cylinder and was showing it to her. “Huh, what’s that?”

It did something to it and dropped it, the next thing Rainbow knew there was a loud hissing sound as smoke suddenly shot out covering the entire area. “Hey, what’s the big idea!” she yelled out she couldn’t see anything. She unfolded her wings and shot straight up into the air as she looked down at the smoke.

“Okay where are you?” She was a little pissed now, that was a dirty trick as she looked in the smoke cloud but as it slowly faded the only thing she saw was a strange bottle and wrapper on the ground. She quickly realized it had used the smoke as cover to get away and quickly scanned the area. It had to be using the weird ability to look like the ground again making it hard to see.

Her eyes darted all over the place taking in everything and then she saw it, not the creature but a shadow moving on the ground. Using that she was just able to make out a form running right to the Everfree Forest, she had let that strange thing last night get away but she wasn’t going to let this thing get away.

“Get back here!” She shot off after the creature.

David was having a strange sense of déjà vu at the moment, him running away from a local life form once again. He heard the small creature yelling something at him and he could tell that it was not happy with him. Not that he could blame the creature but hell he really needed some distance, he wasn’t sure if they were friendly or not and this was not how he wanted to open up dialogue if it was possible.

“Figures I’d screw something up,” he muttered to himself running as fast as he could.

“Gev, Gev tu lem!”

“I have no idea what you’re saying but it’s most likely ‘stop right there’ I think...or I’m going to eat you alive if I’m really unlucky.” He was nearly at the forest now but he could hear it coming for him. It sounded like it was right on top of him so he did the only thing he could think of, he rolled to the right hoping it would take the creature by surprise, it actually worked.

Rainbow Dash was nearly on top of the thing before it just got really small and rolled like a ball. She hadn’t expected something that large to be able to contort to something that small. She overshot her target and was heading right to a tree.

“Oh no.” Rainbow managed to say before impact.

David heard a loud crash and when he came out of the roll she was shocked to see that the little blue creature had slammed through a tree and was laid up against another one.

“Oh god please don’t be dead,” He immediately felt torn between escaping and checking to make sure it was okay. If it was hurt, it was his fault and that really would mess things up for any kind of peaceful contact. Plus he felt sorry for it as well as it had been chasing him after he spooked it, so with his mind made up he quickly ran over to the Pegasus creature. “Oh man this could be bad.”

He opened the palm of his left hand as various lights came off the small scanner there as he took a deep scan of it. “AVI please tell me how hurt this creature is.”

The data sent to AVI was quickly processed as she returned her report. “No broken bones, no internal bleeding detected, slight bruising only detected on unknown female species.”

“Wait, it’s female?” David asked.

“Subject has usual mammal reproductive organs for females.”

“Well okay then,” He looked at the tree it smashed through. “Jesus these things have to have tough bodies.”

He saw that it was groaning and coming too, maybe it was time to try a diplomatic approach? He dug out his spare water bottle hoping he could smooth things over with her.

“Ouch,” Rainbow rubbed her head that had hurt. She blinked a few times and tensed up seeing the thing towering over her. “W-what do you want?”

It was holding something out to her as she tilted her head not sure what it wanted. It said something as it opened some kind of top and spilt a little out, it was water. It again was holding it out to her again.

“You, want to give me this?” She slowly reached out and took it. She sniffed it and took a gulp, it was fresh water and it was nice. “Uh...thanks?”

It was looking at her and she wasn’t sure what it was thinking, she couldn’t see any kind of expression and it was a little unnerving.

“Rinbow?”

“Fluttershy?” Dash looked to her right seeing her long time friend gently flying over.

“Are you okay? I saw you crashing into the forest,” the yellow Pegasus got closer now.

“Yeah I was chasing this creature he-where did it go!?” She just looked to her left and it was gone again, it must have taken off when her attention was on Fluttershy.

“Creature?” Fluttershy landed next to Dash looking around she didn’t see anything.

“Dang it, the thing ditched me again!” Dash looked around but it could be anywhere at this point. “Tell me you saw it.”

Her friend shook her head, “Sorry but I didn’t see anything.” She looked around but noticed something next to Dash on the ground. “Oh what are these?”

They were prints of some kind but they weren’t like any animal prints she had ever read about or seen before. Dash looked at them and noticed that they were just as weird as the spidery things at the end of its forelegs.

“Hey Flutters I think we should talk to Twilight about all of this, I mean look at what it gave me.” She showed her the bottle it was metallic with a strange writing on it.

“What does it say?” Fluttershy asked squinting her eyes trying to see anything familiar to her but it was all gibberish to her.

“No idea, maybe water since it’s filled with it.” Rainbow had no idea of what the metallic bottle said but it was as good a guess as anything else. “Well come on, it left a few other things behind and I want to get them before somepony else picks them up.”

Next up Chapter 4: Strange Enounter

Author's Note

Well I felt a bit inspired from all the new favs the story has gotten so this came out a little easier. I hope you all enjoy it and I hope to see more comments and likes as well. If I'm off on any science that I use I would like to know. I just wish I could keep track of who has this faved.

Oh well I hope to get this one day on the front page even for a second but I'm not sure how that will work out. Here's hoping.