Our Days are Numbered

Rainbow Dash

I was really scared, and that was something I was going to have to get use to. Why was I scared? Their was robots everywhere looking for survivor to kill, the only reason I made it was because of the rubble left from Carousel Boutique burying me almost completely. Saying that, I definitely felt blood running from my wings a back left hoof, but I couldn’t stay here. I waited for the giant mechanical death machines to leave before I started to unbury myself. This process did cause a few scrapes and bruises but nothing I couldn’t handle.

I finally managed to unbury my body and looked to see if any of those things were still around. They were not equestrian, that's for sure. I would have thought about it longer if I hadn’t forgotten about Rarity. I limped my way over to where she was, losing a bit of blood in the process. When I finally got over there, my eyes were wide in horror at what I saw. The machine had slit her right in the stomach.

I fell backwards and crawled away. Even for me this was to much to handle, and I have had a lot of nasty crashes. I heard something coming and quickly hid out of sight once again. This time, two of those death machines came to examine the work they had committed. I was to worried about the blood I was losing to hear what they said. When I turned around, they were carrying Rarities limp body out of sight.

I needed to find someone and fast. I took some napkins and some tape and used that as a temporary bandage for my leg and wings. With that taken care of I peaked out of cover to see if any of those things were their and ran down the street to find the others.

Pilot

As we sat in the waiting transport that arrived to take us to Haven station (a giant Space city made by humans before we joined the galactic alliance). A place that brought back lots of memories for us. It was the place I spent most of my childhood in after the unknown death of my parents. Willard Ren was a old friend friend and companion of mine when an A.I. named Ultima went rogue and sought to destroy humanity entirely. It was us, Team Fallen that had destroyed Ultima after a desperate attempt to chase us while we made our way back to Haven. We destroyed its so called ‘Ultimate body’ and left it in the very ship that it had been placed, now very much destroyed. At least that’s the short version of the story. Trust me you would be here for days if I told you everything that happened so consider it lucky.

“I see it guys” Asa yelled as cheerfully as ever “Look. Right there. The giant space ship with the-”

Ellith shut her up before she continued by simple give her an annoyed glance. Being one of two who survived the first Ultima attack Ellith and Asa were the first two friendly faces I meet when we got out. Asa and me have basically become a thing and Ellith was one of intimidating people you would ever meet. Not who she looks, being very pretty with her incredibly smooth skin and brown hair. She is intimidating in that she talks like she will crumble you into dust and can very much take a rocket in mid flight and aim it back. No joke, she actually did that.

“Not in a good mood huh?” I asked seeing the annoyance in her voice.

Ellith walked over to me and sat down so she could respond without someone here. “Hearing Asa acting immature is just another reminder that my body is not the one it use to be,” She looked at her hands, face steaming with anger. “Sure I may have more power than a normal human, but it is in no way like the body I use to have,”

I give her a strange look, wondering what she is talking to me about. I was going to respond when I heard our pilot speak to us. “We will be arriving at the Haven docks in ten minutes, I suggest you get ready to depart”

Asa

As we finally touched the metal ground of New Haven I happily jump for joy. I was home, well my home was a few systems away but this is where Pilot was so this is where I go. I looked back at the others to see Pilot happily smiling, Haydn chatting with Reiss about who cares what, and Ellith just facepalmed at my happy attitude. I hadn’t stopped running while I looked at the others and found that I had knocked into someone without knowing. Looking at the blue hair girl in front of me, I quickly jumped up to wrapped them in a hug, only to be denied by a hand.

“I thought we established a no hugging policy Asa” She replied reminding me of the time I had fire essence active while trying to hug her. Embarrassment and worry quickly formed in my head as I realized what I was doing.

“Sorry Skyler, please forgive me” I apologized in response. Skyler, the earlier mentioned blue hair girl quickly chuckled and looked down at me with a smile.

“It’s okay, just try to remember next time, alright?” I nodded my head to her request. Pilot walked up to the two of use, happy to see his best friend. “It’s been too long Pilot”

Pilot nodded in agreement as we walked start to walk again out of the drop off area and entered the main area of New Haven station. While the walls and floors were completely made of metal, something that degraded the look of the station, the place was filled with races of all kinds. I would tell you them all but it would have taken up two hour that you rather would probably rather not want to hear. Shops and doors to residential areas lined the sides of the space station while other events went on around the station. It wasn’t an A+ but it was still a suitable place to live, considering it was one of the only places humanity had for a while, after the sun started expanding and devoured an entire planet.

We didn’t have time to enjoy ourselves yet though, we had to see Rens as soon as we returned according to Omega. We went around the inner side of the ring shaped hallway before coming to a door guarded by two men in black armour that looked a lot like those Glactic Force people from that Metroid game Haydn showed me (Authors question: How many of you defeat Berserker Lord with using the internet) but more detailed. They stepped away to let us through and we entered a gondola shaped room with seats on the sides. We all stepped inside as Skyler (also part of Team Fallen) pressed a button that said ‘top floor’ and sat down. Reiss had decided not to join us and simply waved goodbye as the doors closed and we started our ascent to the giant tower in the middle of the station.

Pilot

After we arrived on the top floor, we quickly made our way to the room Omega told us Ren was waiting in. He turned around as we entered and let out a breath of relief. I stepped forward to shake his hand, his grin telling who happy it was to be here.

“Long time since I’ve seen you Pilot,” As we broke off the shake. “As much as I would like to catch up and have a friendly chat, though, I have something I would need to tell you” His earlier smile disappeared, replaced with a face that told me just how serious this was.

“What do you have for us.” I replied. He beckoned us over to the monitor in the center of the room.

“You remember the Space cruiser that had vanished vanished a week ago right?” Everyone nodded their head in response “Well, more and more have vanished since then. These ships all crossed a certain sector of the Milky Way that is seen as a very busy area used by both civilian and military class ships. Since that attack a week ago, more and more ships traveling that area had been destroyed. At first we suspected the space pirates where behind this as they also use that area for pillaging because of its traveling routes and figured that it would be easy to eliminate them if we sent a group over to investigate. I think you can figure out what happened next”

“You found something worse” Ellith said, clearly understand that this was no lowlife scum who take for their own needs.

“Correct,” Ren continued “At first everything seemed fine, no immediate attack from these thought-to-be pirates, as they usually would do on sight of a military class ship. We weren’t picking anything up on engine waves given by a ship in the area. ‘Maybe someone had already taken care of it’ we thought. We were really wrong” He pulled up a holographic image that we guessed was from the radar of the ship he sent. He brought up a holographic pad and sled it a little to reveal something suddenly come up behind the green ship that indicated an ally. “You can’t see it on the top down monitor because of the invisibility, but a ship unknown to us suddenly fired from above” He moved it again a little bit to see the green ship disappear and a red one suddenly show up before vanishing for real. A light speed drive, it was clear they knew that he sent a ship to investigate. “Whoever they are, destroyed half the ship with a clear blow. Then quickly destroyed the other before leaving,” He closed the holograms as Omega then spoke.

“This is also related to another attack on a planet in the same area classified as Equin. A ship bearing a similar style of attack quickly start sending mechanical troops down. This was also followed by a series of high power lasers that hit multiple points on the planet in what seemed like an attempt to destroy all life on the planet. I have calculated that of a planet once consisting of more than seven billion was quickly and drastically decreased to the low hundreds”

I was in completely shot to hear the beastly nature of this group. The amount of beings they killed could only be one thing “A planet wide genocide”

“That is what we believe to be the cause, but their is little to no detail on these attackers. They seem to leave as quickly as they kill. An average speed of 12 minutes and 32 seconds, rounded up of course”

“Impossible,” Haydn said shocked. “No way they could have erase so many unless-” He couldn’t say it, but we all knew what he was thinking.

“The strategy of the attacks are the same as the ones used during the war against Ultima,” Ren replied, finishing what Haydn was trying to say.

“While this seems connected, I have calculated that it is only a 5% probability it could be. The only ones who survived the Ultima A.I. test mission, the one he went rogue on, is Pilot Arma Rose, Skyler Elizebeth Schmit, and her sister Dusk Rebecca Schmit. All of which part of Team Fallen, stopped Ultima from trying to wipe humanity out, and destroyed the ship he was connected to. To further prove my point, Ultimas only sought to erase men, while these attackers are going after races of all kinds. The only way Ultima could have had anything to do with this is if his A.I. fragment was taken by a passing scavenger ship and was given connection to the ship itself, or if it had installed a backup component to convert itself to one another ship, the latter being the most likely” Omega finished. He was definitely right about the three of us not being involved in anyway. The entire reason Team Fallen exist is to take down high level threats of all kinds, whether it’s a killer trying to murder a powerful and well known family, or an A.I. who got corrupted during some stage of development and saw humanity as the universe's problem and wanted to eliminate us. Team Fallen was the one called upon when threats of this level showed up, and we never backed down knowing full well it could be the universe's end.

“We have sent small rescue ships to the area in order to save those who are still alive,” Ren continued. “but they still have some of their death machines on the planet looking for survivors and - while we have been handling these alright so far - think it would be good to have some more experienced soldiers to take on some of the areas that have been better guarded”

“I’m guessing that us,” I asked.

“Correct,” Confirmed Ren, nodding his head as he responded “There's one area in particular that seems well guarded. A small town on the edge of a dark forest with a crystal tower in it. I want you to go in and see if you can find any survivors here and get them off of Equin to safety, we will discuss further plans after we rescue the planets civilians. Understood”

I nodded in responce “send us the coordinates of the planet and the town's location and we will be on our way” everyone else followed, knowing that this was just as important as finding the culprit. He sent the coordinates to both places immediately and we went on our way.

Ellith

As we began our descent onto the planet, we all had the thought that Ren might have sent the wrong coordinates to us. The planet looked like it hadn’t been scratched at all by anything of great devastation. Of course, we were still in space so we could really only tell once we got closer to the planet's surface. Rage was already burning in me for the completely monstrous behaviour that we were told these people had shown to the planet's inhabitants.

As we started to near the surface of the planet, we began to see the exact destruction that these things had caused. We all stood in shock at what we thought was once a peaceful town. Many of the buildings were reduced to rubble and smoke from fires could be seen. As we got closer, we finally got a look at the machines they had sent. They looked like the mechon from Xenoblade but deadlier, more intimidating, and many had the stains of blood on them from those they had killed.

“Oh my god,” Asa said, her normally cheerful attitude replaced by one of fear and sadness. She was the only one who could mutter a single word.

“Nearing landing site” Pilot yelled scared at what we were going to see when he got out. Ren had informed us on the way of the inhabitants of the planet. They were small ponies, unicorns, and pegasi of all different colors and special traits that were represented with a tatoo called a cutie mark on their flanks. This is what we were looking for.

The ship Pilot was flying landed and we got out to search for survivors. We followed the trail through the destroyed town and quickly saw bodies of the victims from the attack. They were just as described, and I was honestly shocked that anyone would want to do anything to something that looked so sweet. After a little bit more travel we came to a red house that was still standing in the middle of the destruction and thought it was the best place to start. We opened the door to see the house empty. After a little bit of search I heard a sound coming from a door leading to the basement and called the others over as I opened it up. Right there, was three small fillies (that’s what young horses are called... right?) huddled up down in the middle standing scared as they looked at us. One was a yellow pony with a reddish mane, another was a white unicorn with a purple and pink mane, and a pegasus with orange fur and what I was guess is a dark pink mane of some kind.

“P-please don’t hurt us,” the yellow one said as that covered their muzzles in fear. This was obviously the group's first encounter with our kind.

“It’s okay,” Asa said, trying to calm them down “We're here to help and get you out of danger” She started petting the yellow one who seemed to calm down when she heard the mention of help. “Do you mind telling us your names?”

The one with the white fur coat stepped forward to introduce herself and her friends “I’m Sweetie Bell,” She replied, pointing at herself with her hoof before turning and pointing at the two behind her. “This is Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, and you things are?”

“The names Asa, and these are my friend Pilot, Ellith, Skyla, and Haydn. We’re humans,” She replied with a little bit of a lie in what she said. Asa - as I mentioned before - is a Quillis, but being that she look almost exactly like the rest of us we did chime in to correct her. “We are… um,” She said hesitant before looking at us for an answer. I stepped forward to reply.

“We’re from space,” I pointed to the ceiling to trying and get my thought through. “If you can’t explain something as simple as that then we would look very unprofessional,” This was a little harsh, but it was necessary knowing that if we would end up doing this a lot then it would just make the rescued very confused.

The pegasus, who I believed was Scootaloo, rushed up to me flying with a look of excitement “You’re aliens?” Normally a question like this would be a big insult to a space traveling species, but seeing that their technology was less advance made it seem understandable to act in this way.

“Yes,”

Pilot brought our attention back with a forced cough, seeing that the talk was getting very unfocused. “Getting back on track, the job is to send one of us back with the refugees if it’s a small group and two if a bigger group. Seeing as there are only three of you I think it would be safe to send just one” We nodded our approval. “So, who would like to volunteer?”

(So now it’s time to make a choice, who will Pilot send back to the ship and who will stay with him to look for other survivors)

Choice #1: Send Asa back with the CMC

Choice #2: Send Haydn back with the CMC

Choice #3: Send Ellith back with the CMC

(So with that, both Team Fallen (once again made by me) and MLP (not owned by me) have collided and we also get a whole lot of in depth information on the how the universe has been formed. I hope I answered a few of your questions, but knowing the context I may have brought a few more questions into perspective also. Once again I will try to answer your questions and would like your input on what you would like to see happen in the future. So, I will see the responses in a week and see what you guys have chosen to let happen. Until then, see you guys later)