Our Days are Numbered

Pilot

Asa stood up from her position over Sweetie Belle and Applebloom and looked at me before speaking. “I’ll do it,” She said with determination and ferocity that I don’t usually see from her.

“Are you sure about this,” I replied back. I knew Asa was powerful, but she was the first person we usually would go to for this kind of stuff. My only reply was a rare look of seriousness from her and a nod of the head. I sighed before giving permission “Just be careful, please?”

“Whats going on. What do you mean were being taken somewhere?” Applebloom asked. It was going to be hard to explain to them what happened.

I decided the simplest thing to say was “It's not safe here right now. So we have to get you to some place that is safe,” Luckily, they seemed to understand. They nodded and they started to head off with Asa behind them to make sure nothing snuck up on them on the trip home. We watched them head out the front door of the building and hoped that they would be safe.

Before they disappeared they gave us a request “Could you please find some people for us?”

I nodded and quickly asked who they were, each of them giving me one name.

“Applejack,”

“Rainbow Dash”

“and Rarity”

Rainbow Dash

I walked out of Sugarcube Corner with another sigh as I once again walked out to find one of my friends taken. I didn’t know if they were or alive not which just filled me with even more fear at what they could have done. So far Twilight, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie were missing and probably taken as well. I took a deep breath to trying and calm down my worried mind and tried to figure out who might still be around. Fluttershy! Sure, she isn’t as brave as most ponies, but seeing how these robotic killing machines only go for things in sight (or at least that's how I hope I survived this) Fluttershy is probably hiding under her bed hoping she isn’t see.

I walked down the streets best I could. The homemade bandage wasn’t doing much help in keeping the blood from running down my fur and staining it. If I didn’t find anyone soon, I would probably die of blood lost, and that isn’t the way I was going to go. I made my way farther down the street until I saw a group of those mechanical monsters again. They seemed to be talking to something or someone, but I could understand it at all.

I hid behind a nearby wall as they turned around. Thankfully, they were too caught up in what they were talking about to come check. Most of what I heard was gibberish to me, but I was able to hear one voice that was understandable.

“I see, so this planet is pretty an essence gold mine in other word” A mechanical voice said. What was this essence they were talking about, I have never heard of it before, and why did they want it? After a few more weird noises from the other machines, it once again responded “What? and you didn’t tell me they arrived sooner. Stop them before they evacuate any resources” Resources? What kind of resources were they talking about. Their isn’t anything war worthy (at least I think it was war purposes) here in ponyville. What could possibly be worth taking as a resou-.

I cover my mouth with my hoof when I realized what they meant. They didn’t mean gold or diamonds or anything like that, they were talking about ponies, unicorns, and pegasi! We’re this essence they were talking about. That why I haven’t seen any pony around here, these thing were using them for something, and I didn’t want to find out. They talked for a little while longer before heading in different directions.

Once they were gone, I headed out in a big hurry to get to Fluttershy and warn her about this. It was painful, however, to run with a broken leg and it really tired me out. After a short time, I had no choice but to take a break. I sat down to rest for a bit, and took a look at how my body was doing. It was painful to see that my makeshift bandage was useless at stopping the bleeding. At least I didn't have to look at the actual injury. While I was looking however, I saw something walk up to me and heard a shout soon after.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY”

Pilot

So far, everything seemed to be going smoothly. We haven’t even been here an hour and we have saved three souls from this carnage. It made me glad that some of them seemed to have gotten out of here alright. We had three more though that we needed to find, the names the “Cutie Mark Crusaders” (They told us that before we separated) had mentioned. We hoped that we could find these other ponies before it was too late.

As we headed down the road, we got to a part of the town that seemed to have stayed together very well. Many of the houses were still standing, but were completely silent otherwise. This wasn’t the creepiest thing though, as we also found a few spots of dried blood with no owner.

“Where’s all the blood coming from?” Ellith said, speaking what was on the minds of everyone here.

Haydn got down next to one of the spots of blood and we all saw him started to glow yellow. This is what essence was, while it can be thought of as a elemental power, it heightens one's abilities and allows them to see things people wouldn’t normally wouldn’t be able to. Only those with great talent could use essence in this way, so it's a open welcome invitation to Team Fallen whenever it happens to someone around us. Only a few of us could use essence in this way, Haydn is a master detective and can use essence to see past events that centered around what he touches. I can also use essence in a similar way. I’m one of the lead mechanical experts of New Havens military and essence allows me to see errors, flaws, and other mechanical related things to. Asa can also use essence in an interesting way, but I’ll talk about that later.

Anyway, it was only a few seconds before Haydn stood up and the visible essence around him faded away. He turned to us and his response was something that shocked us all. “They took the bodies, those damn death machines took the bodies” It wasn’t often you heard Haydn use a word like that, but still, taking the bodies! This was already messed up enough, I didn’t think it could get any worse. We would have talked about it if Skyler hadn’t noticed something in the distance.

She drew our attention with a load “HEY” and all looked to see her pointing at something close in the distance. After a little walking we could make out two shapes. One was a pony on sitting on the ground looking herself over, she seemed pretty beaten up by the looks of it. We gasped when we saw what the other figure was. It was one of those death machines Omega had described on the journey here. With urgent hurry we drew our weapons (Skyler has a sniper in case you were wondering) and rushed ahead. I called out to the pony in the distance, which we could now see was a cyan-like color fur that had been stained by blood and a rainbow mane.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY” I yelled out as the larger death machine started to close in on the pony. The pegasus limped over to us as quickly as she could when she saw the danger she was. I quickly activated Rhythmic Buster’s Rhythm boost (the special ability Ellith mention in the prologue) and quickly dodge a swinging saw like blade and easily landed a few hits before falling back.

I looked back to see Haydn just standing there without his bow and electric arrows. You gotta be kidding me, he forgot his weapons back on the ship AGAIN. I glad he didn’t volunteer for bring the Crusaders back then because he would have been no help at all.

Ellith quickly brought me back to reality when she blocked an incoming attack. “We should probably end this quickly” We all nodded and Skyler quickly stuned it with EMP round and Ellith quickly jabbed the claw part of her cannon into the center of the machine. We backed up a little as it fell to the ground.

Seeing that it wouldn’t be getting back up, we quickly ran to the badly injured pegasus to see her exhausted and badly bleeding. Ellith was the first to step right up to the pony and place her hand on its head. “This is going to sting a bit,” She warned as a green essence aura covered both of them. I looked to the side to see the bleeding wing and leg heal itself up and the light to fade.

The pegasus let out a sigh of relief “Thank you, I was too sure that it was safe and didn’t bother to get out of the way” She looked at us with a smile “Name's Rainbow Dash,” This time we sighed as we recognized the name.

“Hey Rainbow Dash,” I replied “We were sent to come find you by a pony named Scootaloo, sound familiar?”

Suddenly Rainbow Dash was in my face, flying, with her hooves on my shoulders. “Wait, Scootaloo, sent you? Is she okay?” I nodded and she land on the ground with another sigh of relief “Thank goodness, I was starting to worry I was the only one that had made it out. Do you mind telling me your names?”

I nodded again and introduced us to her. We explained the current situation to her, told her what we are doing here, and asked what happened down here. The last question seemed to be the one that hurt, as she had trouble telling us without breaking into tears. Her voice made her seem so confident, but yet she seemed to be having a major breakdown. We decided it would be best to change the question after seeing this and decided ask her something else.

“Do you happen to know where Applejack and Rarity live, we were also asked to find them?” Rainbow Dash shook her head in an attempt to get herself together and looked at us.

“Applejack live on a farm some way out of town, as for Rarity,” She shivered at the mention of the name. “They already got her, we were in the same building when it collapsed and one of those things-” We stopped her before she could say anything. She was obviously traumatized by the experience and we didn’t want to have a repeat of the earlier question.

“What about anyone else? Do you know anyone who may still be alive?” The rainbow-maned pegasus nodded her head. “What’s their name?”

“Well, Applejack may still be ok, and I was heading to Fluttershy’s house. I was hoping she would have the best chance of still being alive being that she is very shy and would likely hide on site of those things. I can show you the way there if you want?” Despite Rainbow Dash’s previous (and now non-existent) injuries being so grave, I was surprised to see her ask to help us. I wasn’t against her helping, but I needed to know what she could do that could help her in a fight.

“We would like some guidance, but I’m not so sure you can handle it. These machines are very advanced tech and probably wouldn’t be dented by a normal kick. Unless you got something I don’t know about I think it would be good if you just told us the directions to these places and have one of us help you get to a rescue ship we have prepared,” When I said this, I was expecting her to nod in knowing what we were up against. Instead she grew even more confident which, compared to how she acted with the earlier questions, was not something I expected out of her.

She quickly started straight to the sky as we simply watched, not knowing what she was doing. After a few moments she finally started coming down, and gaining speed greater than we had thought would have been possible for a living creature. A few second before she would have collided with the ground, she suddenly hit a clear 90 degrees angle and all we saw was a blur past by us with a rainbow shockwave appearing where she turned. We turned around as we saw Rainbow Dash come to a halt and put as much of a grin on her face as a pony could.

“If you think that’s something, I’d like to tell you that I’m the only one who has ever been able to pull off a Sonic Rainboom,” She said with a much different tone than earlier. “And what were you saying about me not being able to handle myself, because I pretty sure that amount of speed would have broken most of your bones if that had hit you,” She had a point, if that speed put as much of a punch as it looked then that would do much more than dent metal, no matter how hard it probably was. There was one question that was at the top of mind though.

“How did you learn to use essence like that?”

She looked at me confused “What do you mean essence? It’s just a talent. everypony has a special talent represented by their cutie mark,”

Ellith was shocked when she heard this “You mean all ponies, pegasus, and unicorns have talents like this represented in the same way?” Rainbow Dash nodded “And you have no idea what essence is?” She nodded again “This is not making sense, I can’t believe it but I think I have finally found a world that makes zero logical sense, even to me,”

We bursted out in laughter and amazement at this accomplishment. Rainbow Dash has just made the impossible possible in two ways. She was able to break the sound barrier without any injury, and has managed to easily confuse Ellith enough to declare that the planet make no sense. We would have laughed longer if we didn’t hear Asa call over the radio.

“Pilot, are you there?”

I picked up the radio as she repeated herself a few time before answering. “Hey Asa, are you at the rescue ship?”

“Yep, we got a little bruised up by some robots but nothing fatal,” This was a relief to here. It’s a little disappointing that she couldn’t get them out completely unharmed, but this was better than nothing. “I guessing I should wait here for you guys to come back?”

“Yes! we'll be back once we find to Applejack and someone named Fluttershy. Just stay there and keep those three safe”

“Got it, bye”

She got of the radio and I turned back to the others to say who's going where. “We can explain essence and stuff on the way back to New Haven. Right now lets just focus on finding these two ponies before whoever is attacking them get there first. I’ll go with Rainbow Dash. We’ll head to Fluttershy’s and tell her what's going on, it's best that only two go there since it seems she is easily scared. We don’t want her overwhelmed. The rest of you guys head to Applejack’s and retrieve her and anyone else in that area,” Everyone nodded in agreement and Rainbow Dash told them the directions to her place. We then started off to our destination and hoped that they would be alright. This is definitely worse than we first imagined, and we needed to make sure as many lives as possible are safe before we headed back.

We’re going to show these pieces of metal exactly what they’re up against.

(So... I think we can all tell chosing Haydn would have been a bad Idea. Thankfully, Asa was able to pull through with only few minor injuries and should be able to keep the CMC from danger until Pilot and the others get back. I haven’t thought of a plan for when I will post these but I hope to try and keep a somewhat steady pace with the upload and will give a heads up when a new chapter is coming. Also, if you guys can try to get this out there as much as possible it would be great. Put things you want to see happen and things you would like me to make a chapter for in the comments because I can’t think of these chapters and what they will be about forever. So with that, see you next chapter)