Applejack goes to spaaaace!
The sun rises on Equestria. This is an important piece of background information that needs to be repeated in a firm tone, capable of strongly hinting to you, dear reader, that you need to take notice of what is said, word by word.
The sun rises on Equestria.
It is not done by the usual, mundane cycle of celestial bodies orbiting a nuclear heart in an alignment of such delicate balance that could make even a god bow his head and weep. No, in Equestria the sun rises above the planet. On command.
Perhaps now you are getting the point?
It sounds exciting, and it is. A single mare, an alicorn, a being of experiences and wisdom that can be counted in the millenia, grips the majestic proto-god in her attuned magic and sets the cycle in motion, day after newborn day. Her name is Princess Celestia, and she is borderline considered a goddess in her realm with good reason.
It is outstanding and all, but to be honest, to the discerning eye the dance of gravity, velocity, and planetoids -some of them infected with the stubborn life infection-, has an unmatched elegant beauty. It also doesn’t misalign when a particular pony, for the Princess is a pony, decides to snooze.
Clockmakers in Equestria are greatly admired for their patience and saintly hold on sanity.
The sun, the plaything of the bright white alicorn, rises at six o’clock in the morning sharp -with a slight deviation of three to seven minutes- during the spring and summer. During the autumn and winter it rises at about six and a half o’clock -the deviation in timing increases by a factor of three.
Many theories have been crafted by Princess Celestia’s beloved ponies as to the reasons of this particular phenomenon. They range from the hard science theory that magic has an upper speed limit, and the increased distance between the planet and the stellar heater requires more time for the Princess’ guiding tether to form, to theological discussions about how the nature of winter itself opposes the divine warmth of Celestia.
Surprisingly, the theologians are a little closer to the truth this once. It always takes some time for Celestia to gather the courage to step out of her warm bed and to the cold of her balcony. On a similar subject, this is why Princess Luna, the alicorn in control of the moon, keeps the raising and lowering of her pet rock a private affair. She doesn’t want her ponies to see her walking around covered in blankets.
Or in her power ponies pajamas.
As you can plainly see, having the celestial rolex in the hooves of two immortal individuals who act so very, very mortal presents an interesting conundrum in the keeping of time, a sacred and very important aspect in the lives of mortals who feel the need to establish a semblance of order in their surroundings. A thousand thousand tiny minds go a little crazy each time they glance at the clock on the wall of their class only to see the big hand has to be moved twenty minutes back because their Princess overdid the pepper on her snack.
There are some individuals who can still thrive despite the terror of this apocalyptic hellhole where time has no true meaning that they were birthed into. Ponies who have an intrinsic understanding of the tiny motions of the sun. Ponies who can subconsciously think just enough like their Princess. Ponies who might have the slightest magical link to give them a hint of what time the alicorns decide it is.
Of course, it could just be like periods and they bloody well synchronized with their Princess on a global scale. Stranger things have happened. Not many, but they have.
Did you see what I did there?
On a certain farm, located just outside Ponyville which is itself located just a bit south of Canterlot, where the Princesses currently squat, there lives an orange earth pony mare. She can tell when the sun is about to rise, and always rises with it unless she has work to do, in which case she rises before it. Her name is Applejack. She is a farmer. She is honest. She is hardworking. She has been a hero, and she has seen more things than she ever thought she would.
She is not a clockmaker however. That means that her hold on sanity has never been truly tested.
In the blackness of space, high above her, a large shiny vessel comes to fill the tiniest sliver of the vastness of nothing. The attention of the mysterious beings aboard has been attracted to this little planet, pulled as they were by their insatiable need to solve one of the greatest mysteries they had seen in the cosmos.
“Whoo-whee! Another brand new day at the Sweet Apple Acres farm,” Applejack yelled excitedly as she pulled open the curtains to let the morning sun shine in her room. Dust motes danced on the very first rays of the sun, a delicate, random jig that revealed the mare’s lack of sweeping habits.
Let’s all strike our tongues against the top of our mouths in a unified sign of contempt.
There was no alarm set to wake her today, even though that was always a simple formality, just like pants were for ponykind in general. Applejack had never known the feeling of waking up to an already risen sun in the morning, not since she was old enough to help at the farm.
Today was a special day for Applejack. It was one of the rare days when she gave herself a day off. Applejack was the boss and employee of one single mare, and she did no favors to her overseer, slash, slave. Once in a little while however the fiendish overlord would let the reins go a little lax.
She smiled gleefully at the sun, waving at it with the grace of a long standing champion. Her chores were complete*, the harvest was done, and her siblings had been given a worklist that would keep them occupied long enough for her to reach an appropriate distance from the farm** before they had a chance to rope her back in. She breathed in the brisk, cold morning air. Bane of alicorns it may be, but Applejack loved it. Consensually.
*what Applejack considered a small list of chores was usually enough to bring a team of earth ponies to tears at the harshness of this seemingly gentle world.
**oh, if she only knew...
The wooden gate creaked as it closed behind Applejack. The grinning free pony made a mental note to lubricate the hinges when she got back -or tell her brother to do so instead. Later. Way later. For now, the only thing in her mind was lubricating her own throat with the grand chieftain of all smoothies and a breakfast fit for royalty in Sugarcube Corner. She was treating herself today!
Applejack trotted down the dirt road heading for Ponyville. She was smiling absently as she made and rejected plans for her day. Most of them involved her friends, but she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she should instead spend most of her day lying under the shade of a tree, lazing off Rainbow Dash style, with a basket of apple fritters and a small barrel of cider.
She reached over her head to re-position her old hat, chuckling absently as she thought of the possibilities. The dusty, old thing had lifted itself up. She reached as high as she could with her hoof. Way higher than she normally would have reason to do so.
Applejack looked up to see her stetson levitating over her, drifting slowly upwards. She didn’t question what was happening, not until she got her hat back first in an unsurprising reveal of skewed priorities. She swam upwards and grabbed it, forcing it down her head tightly. Only then did she allow herself to consider the fact that she was swimming in the air. She looked down. The sweet, sweet ground was slowly getting further and further away. It had become an all too common occurrence to see it from far away, but usually it was coming closer, not getting further away.
“Twilight Sparkle, if Rainbow Dash roped ya in one of her malarky pranks you’d better quit it now,” she shouted. No voice answered back, and she didn’t even hear a betraying titter of laughter.
“Gosh darnit, let me down now or ah’ll buck ya bloody* when ah get down, y’all hear me now?”
*buck is a word whose etymology in Equestria is usually derived from context. The Apple family is one of the few who uses it almost exclusively in its meaning as “kick”. With most of them being in the apple farming business it is warranted as a survival tactic rule from immature ponies pointing and laughing at them when discussing their work schedule. In the cases where the taunters in question don’t understand the Apples' preference in this matter, the “jokers” of the equation will find themselves thoroughly bucked**.
**not in the context of being kicked. Every rule has its exception.
She had reached an impressive height, usually only attainable by pegasi or Pinkie Pie. It had to be a joke, that’s what the helpless farmer thought. Only problem was, she wasn’t noticing any of the magic glow she normally saw when Twilight hovered stuff around. There was no purple witchery at work here.
“Discord, if that’s you, ah’ll tell Fluttershy on you!”
The greatest of threats failed her. The endless blue swallowed her.
The sky was often called endless. It seemed so vast, so infinite. But it wasn’t, not really. It was basically a sphere, and it did have an end a few kilometers over the planet’s surface. That’s where the sky ended and true infinity started.
It was black with a hint of purple. Kind of like a bruise.
Unseen, only a small distance away Lyra was watching expressionless as Applejack floated up in the sky and got swallowed by a haze. For a second, it was like something massive was hiding in a ripple behind the wide blue.
The mint colored unicorn walked to where Applejack had vanished, not hurrying in the least. She looked up and saw nothing. She looked down and saw a small purse filled with bits.
She carefully thought about her options.
Her stomach growled. Sugarcube Corner it is.
Applejack’s treat.
Applejack awakened in a metal room. No, there weren’t any band posters on the walls, nor were any musical organs and amps laid around. The walls themselves were simply made of metal, painted in white and shining silver. The bed she was laying on was simple yet comfortable beyond imagining. It was also big enough for Princess Celestia to stretch on.
She didn’t like the implications of that. Either she was supposed to have company to share with, or whoever normally used it was a tad of a big fellow.
“‘Ello?” she shouted. Her voice reverberated slightly around her. “Anypony here?”
“The subject is awake.” The voice that answered her was impassioned and callous, devoid of any emotional affections. Applejack’s head whipped around, looking for the source. A small circular indentation was on one of the walls, covered by a metal grill. She trotted over.
“Hello? Mah name’s Applejack. Y’all can hear me in there? Where the hay am I?” she shouted as loud as she could into the grill. A sharp whistling sound was heard somewhere in the distance beyond the walls of her room.
The grill made a series of crackling sounds before the voice came back. “Would you mind lowering your volume a little? You almost blew out my eardrums with all that feedback. Just speak normally,” the voice said in a normal tone.
“Where are ya? Why can’t I see ya? Can you breathe in there?”
The voice reclaimed its previous clinical coldness. “I’m afraid we can’t allow you to make visual contact with us for your own protection. It is very possible that the sight could have severe mental impact on you.”
“Yeah, we’re eldritch abominations from beyond your wacky solar system,” a second voice, much happier sounding, chimed in. You could almost see the grin on the unknown face.
“Another one?” Applejack asked, mostly rhetorical. She tried to peek through the tiny grill holes. “Just how many of ya are in there?” she asked, not so rhetorically.
“Hey there! I’m Mark,” the happy voice answered.
“Mark, how the hell did you hack into this connection? Have you been tampering with your intercom again? The Captain’s gonna kill you if Wade doesn’t do it first for making him run after you, fixing whatever you broke again!”
“Mark? Cutie Mark?” Applejack asked, focusing on the more important things in life.
“...She called me a cutie.” You could hear the blush forming.
“No, she didn’t! Will you get off the comms and let me do the preliminary interview?”
“Interview? Ok, will somepony please tell me where I am? Did I accidentally apply for something again? If this is about the paper Rose had me sign, ah don’t even read the darn things. It’s just the fastest way to get her to leave ya alone. Ah guess ah should stop doing that, then ah wouldn’t have to explain to Twilight why ah signed a petition to kick her out of Ponyville*...”
*The only ones who had signed were Rose, Applejack, and Princess Luna who felt it was about time she had a new roommate at the castle.
The first voice adopted a chilly tone again. “We’re too far from your home-”
“We’re in space. In a spaceship. You know, hovering in orbit over your planet.”
“Ok, that’s it,” the first voice, filled with anger. “I’m coming down there and choking the life out of you, you miserable parody of a-”
“Ah’m… ah’m in space?” Applejack said with awe. “So, that means ah’m the first- second pony in space ever? Hold up, ah’m the first earth pony in space! Where’s a window? Ah gotta look outside!”
“Earth pony?”
“Second?”
“Rainbow Dash, eat yer heart out.” Applejack said with tears of joy glistening at the end of her eyelashes. “Let’s see ya beat this!”
A stunned silence overtook the owners of the voices as the realization of their “eldritch abomination” stupidity overtook them. A third stern voice, restraining its very real anger, entered the comm channel.
“Doctor Chen, could you please explain to me why there is a message flashing on my console, notifying me that a xeno organism has been let loose on my ship?”
“Hello Captain,” Mark greeted, making his presence known.
“I- I was too excited of the opportunities offered to us here, and- and- and I-” the doctor stuttered.
“I don’t have all day doctor.” The captain was smoldering.
“He forgot to close the door!” Mark tattled with glee.
Space. The final frontier. The dark realm of endless possibilities. How many times have the stars gazed down on the sapients that looked up to them, and wished for the unlimited freedom they offered? How many pointed out the sheer majesty of the cosmic tapestry while surreptitiously slipping their arms over female shoulders or trying to cop a feel? Who hasn’t stopped his night travelling to look up and wonder; What is out there? Are we alone in the universe? Did that bat just poop on me? Is it called poop or guano when it comes from a bat? Is it normally this runny or was it sick?
Questions that have always beckoned for answers.
Applejack had discovered the observation lounge of the mighty starship that apparently lacked a dependable method of remotely locking its doors. She laid on a couch, and watched infinity roll across her view.
“It sure is pretty and all, but it does get kinda boring after a while,” said the mare who would daily stand and admire the same field of apple trees for hours.
She got up and flicked her hat back over her head. “What ah need is a couple souvenirs. Nopony will like it if ah went up to space and didn’t bring them something.” There was a strange poster on the wall that seemed to emit light of its own. Applejack reared herself on her hind legs so she could try and make sense of the alien characters up close.
“This darn thing must be a map,” she speculated. Words were flashing on the bottom and running away to the left of the poster. There was a single room flashing red, so Applejack presumed this must be where she currently was. She let her eyes roam around, taking in the icons and characters, looking for something that would make sense to her.
There was a small icon with the silhouette of a flower over a very large room.
“Must be where these aliens store their food.” She looked around the room, checking the doors leading out. She wondered where all of them were. Maybe she should have pulled that grill off so they could get out.
Applejack’s stomach growled, resetting her list of objectives. “Well, ah’m feelin' a bit peckish. Let’s see what space chow is all about then.”
The captain was the kind of person who liked running a neat ship. It was what made him one of the best. Order was the secret to his success. He had not gone above reprimanding a crewmember over leaving breadcrumbs on one of the mess hall’s tables in the duration of his long career. He was a tyrant, but one that would see you through every mission safe and sound. He was a pillar of strength, a bastion of fortitude, a city wall of resolve.
Then he ended up being ordered to come this side of nowhere with this bunch of quacks under his orders.
The pillar had shattered, the bastion had fallen, and the city wall had crumbled long before they even arrived here. He lay disheveled on his chair, his back no longer straight, with a thick stubble growing wild on his face.
As eldritch abominations go, he looked like the one that lorded over despair and surrender.
“So she entered hydroponics? What exactly did she do in there?” he asked, covering his eyes with a really un-eldritch trembling appendage.
Doctor Chen had been chosen by the merit of several pairs of angry eyes staring at him to deliver the news. “Well Captain, first of all she took her time in selecting and eating a wide variety of our fresh food stores. I’m afraid we will have to resort to a pill and calorie tube diet for quite a while.”
“How much could she possibly eat? She’s tiny!”
“Plenty, but that’s not the issue. Everything’s been contaminated. Protocol says that-”
“I know what the protocol says,” the captain said with a tired sigh. “Ok, everything goes out the airlock. It won’t take long for new crops to replace what we lost hopefully.”
“Uh…”
The captain closed his eyes in anticipation. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
The ship’s doctor continued. “After she had her fill she decided to, uh… help with what she saw as amateurish gardening. She threw away what she believed was sludge-”
“Which in reality was?”
“The growth solutions. She threw it all down the drain and replaced it with water from our fresh water stores.”
“And this means that-”
“We will have to recycle our own waste for a few weeks. Wade will cobble up a filter system we can use,” the doctor reported with a wince.
“Why can’t we use the ship’s systems?” the captain asked.
“She didn’t just throw the botanic solutions in the drain, clogging up the filters there. She also used the bathroom. Due to this further contamination, the-”
The captain waved his arm, beckoning the ship’s doctor to shut the hell up. “Protocol, I know. Does the protocol allow for me to go and shoot her?”
The first officer protested immediately. “Sir, you can’t do that. She’s completely innocent. We brought her here, she didn’t come here on her own. Also, she’s too adorable to shoot.” He paused for a bit. “And no, the protocols don’t allow it.”
“Yeah, and let’s not forget that she called you a cutie,” the lead engineer reminded everyone.
“Always a plus. Although I can’t help but ask why the hell do we even worry about contamination. She’s clean, and even if she wasn’t she’s already gone through half the ship.”
“Protocols,” the captain said, “haven’t been updated in a while, but we still need to obey them to the letter or we’re done for. The bureaucrats will have our hide.” The crew shivered at the mention of the beasts that waited for their return so they could nitpick over their every move and drown them in forms that lacked an auto-fill function. “ So, we need to capture her without harming her, allowing her to see us, or allowing her to “contaminate” us.”
“Maybe we should shoot her,” Wade said. “Thanks to her we are going to be eating paste and drinking our piss for weeks.”
“Man, it’s gonna feel like I’m back home with my wife cooking.”
“Your wife cooks?”
“No. That’s why I eat this crap even back home.”
“Why does every door let her through? They are supposed to open at the press of a button, not on approach. Will someone please tell me why they do that now?” Chen begged.
“You guys sabotaged my cryochamber, and I woke up six months too early. I had to do something to pass the time!” Mark complained.
“You did that on purpose?”
“Like there’s anyone who doesn’t love Star Trek doors,” Mark huffed, crossing his arms.
“The hell’s a star trek door?” Chen asked.
The ship’s first officer jumped on his chair and pointed accusingly at the doctor. “You are dead to me!”
“Get down from that chair or you will be literally dead,” the captain said, barely paying attention to the antics of the pack of children he was surrounded with.
“Anyway, I think it’s pretty obvious how to get to her without going against our messy protocols,” Mark said.
Wade, the lead engineer was staring wide eyed at one of the screens. “Holy shit! You’d better make it quick. She’s down at the engine station.”
The captain let his forehead hit the table in front of him. “Is she doing something we should be worried about?”
“That depends. How upset would you be if I told you she’s hitting one of the engine generators with a wrench?”
“Willf- fhou- loofen- uf- already!” Applejack said through her clenched teeth as she pummeled the metal gripping her chosen gift for Twilight. She delivered a frustrated kick to the glowy container that under normal circumstances would be handled with the utmost care by a pair of shaking crewmembers of this ship.
“Ah, there we go,” she said satisfied. “This make a great night light for Twilight. Very futuristic.” Applejack threw the night light that contained enough radioactive fuel to turn all of Ponyville into an even larger night light for the next few centuries, in a duffel bag she found.
She started searching for the map thingies. She still needed to get something for Fluttershy, but she had no idea what. Maybe she should find one of the aliens and ask them if they had a pet they’d like to part with.
She frowned, wondering if perhaps she was supposed to be the pet.
Applejack froze. Something was approaching. She could hear heavy hoofsteps coming down her direction. The mysterious aliens were finally going to make their appearance. She reminded herself that she had to make a good first impression. She was an ambassador for all ponykind.
Now that she was going to be caught red hand-, forgive me, red-hoofed, the thought that she should have asked for permission first before hunting for souvenirs crossed her mind. She hoped they wouldn’t see that as stealing. A charge of abduction beats a charge of getting some small trinkets.
Right?
It appeared in front of her. It was huge, standing on two legs with two long arms reaching down to its waist, dressed in a metal armor of white and gold. There was no face upon it, only a black surface that mirrored everything in front of it like a distorted nightmare. It screeched rhythmically, long laborious hisses. Eldritch symbols and shapes glowed over its arms, casting a sinister blue light. It looked down at her and raised a long arm that ended in a black appendage ending in uncoiled tentacles. Or something like Spike’s claws.
Fight or flight. There was a maze of corridors behind Applejack, and she was pretty fast on her legs.
She turned around.
And kicked.
Doctor Chen had taken over the comms, hoping to return the situation back to a semblance of- ok, not normalcy, but perhaps a semblance of professionalism. He had been trying to instill a respect for the scientific work they were doing to his colleagues eversince they departed. He wouldn’t give up halfway, no matter how much of a clueless bunch of morons they were, only worthy of a quick drowning in a half filled tub, and a shallow-
“First Officer, what happened? Have you captured the subject?”
“...Not yet…” Doctor Chen scowled. Did that idiot mess with his suit’s comms too? The voice that answered back had its pitch way too high.
“What happened?” he asked again.
“Nut shotted… by Equine alien species… first ever, yay!” Mark finished with joy and agony mixed together like a bitter cocktail made by the bartender of life.
Wade shook his head. “That’s the second species he’s gotten that record with so far.”
“Ah’m so sorry! Ah didn’t mean to hurt ya that badly. Did ya break anything?”
“No… but if you keep squeezing there I might. Can you please get off me?”
Applejack did as the alien asked. It got up to its knees, clutching the area she kicked. “You alright now?” she asked in concern.
It lifted up an arm in a placating gesture. “Please. Let me have a moment of silence to mourn all the children I’ll never have,” it whispered. “Oh sweet reproduction, I wave goodbye, I wave goodbye…”
“Oh. Oh! So, that there area is yer, uh…”
“Baby butter churner.”
“Ah’m very sorry ma’am.”
“I’m a guy.” The alien bent at the waist, still clutching itself, until its reflective head touched the floor. “Barely.”
Applejack winced in sympathy. She approached the giant from beyond the stars, a traveller of realms and knowledge beyond anything anypony in her world could imagine, and patted him on the top of the head like a puppy.
“Ya need some help big fella? Any doctor around ah can get ya to?”
“Yes, yes, yesyesyes! Say yes, bane of my existence! I’ll be at the medbay. Bring her there!”
“There’s one, but he’s a total hack.” The alien shivered intensely, and Applejack could swear she heard a strange buzzing sound come from the inside the glass dome. “On second thought, he’s good enough. If it’s death or him, I guess I’ll choose him on a good day.”
“Oh no,” Applejack said, feeling unbelievably guilty. “Then ah really hurt ya, didn’t I? Do you need help getting there?”
“Nah, I’m-”
“Here, climb on my back,” Applejack offered.
“...What?”
“Climb on my back. Ah’m strong enough to carry you, dontcha worry a bit,” Applejack repeated with an approving smile.
The alien froze and examined her back, judging by the movement of its head. Faster than Applejack could have expected, it jumped on her back, squealing with joy,
“Space pony ride yay!” it said, and then grunted painfully.
“You ok?” Applejack asked worried. “Ya didn’t hurt yerself again the way you climbed on?”
“I barfed a little inside my helmet, so if you can hurry this way…”
“Your friend of yours is who got hurt, not me,” Applejack protested, even as she made her way on the table the second alien pointed her towards.
“He’ll be fine, don’t worry about that idiot.”
“That’s not really the way to talk about your friends.” Applejack followed the movements of a strange, mechanical limb sprouting from the ceiling, that ended in a smooth, long pole. She shifted here and there, making sure she didn’t turn her back to it. “What’s this about? If ya say the word “probe” ah’m outta here.”
“You know, I always found it strange how that’s almost a galactic level kind of fear…”
“I only need to make a more thorough scanning of your physiology,” the newly introduced alien said as it pointed at the metal rod. “It’s doing this as we speak. Could you do me a favor and stand still for a minute?”
Applejack had a habit, gained years ago, that she considered one of the best aspects of her character. She was always quick to say yes when somepony asked for a favor. Befriending two certain unicorns however quickly taught her a valuable lesson about caution, lest she find herself in the role of a guinea pig, or worse, a ponyquin*.
*Given a choice, she’d always go for the guinea pig.
“Depends… What for?” She made another quick twirl around herself for good measure.
“So the machine can finish scanning you.” The alien doctor watched the orange pony blink at the sentence that told her nothing. “So that the magic stick up there can make sure you’re not sick.”
“Ok then. Nice of ya to be so concerned, but ya didn’t get me all the way up here to give me a check up, did you?”
The alien that Applejack knew as Mark sat next to the table with its long arms folded on the edge as a resting spot for its head while it examined Applejack’s hat. “Nah. We mostly want to get some info from you. You know, ask some questions. We can see almost everything from up here, but if you wanna talk...”
Applejack felt kind of proud. “Wow. Aliens travelled all this way just to talk to little old me.”
“Don’t be silly,” the alien doctor said while watching one of the glowing screens. “The only reason we got you instead of anyone else is that no one will believe you if you tell them about this.”
“Pardon me?”
“Yeah, see,” Mark explained, “it’s a neat idea. You get a farmer or someone alike that lives further away from others, and if they start talking about aliens abducting them, no one believes them. I mean, who would?”
The bearer of the Element of Honesty nodded in understanding. “So what’s exactly the reason y’all came here for?”
“We’re the ones asking the questions here,” the doctor said severely.
“Your sun is acting all wobbly. We want to find out why, and how the heck do you guys manage to survive that,” Mark said.
The doctor muttered a prayer to the gods of the void and faulty airlock wiring.
“Oh. You want to talk to Princess Celestia then.”
The doctor whirled back and pointed at Mark with a solitary tentacle. “You are not allowed to say “take us to your leader”. We don’t even have permission for an official contact event.”
“Awww.”
“If y’all wanna talk about the sun then it’s Princess Celestia you oughta be talking to,” Applejack insisted.
The doctor leaned disturbingly close to Applejack in an attempt to intimidate her. Her eyes locked upon the visor, as black as the corrupted heart of evil itself. “Why her? Has she been studying this phenomenon, or are you trying to weasel yourself to a position where you can call for help?”
Applejack’s mouth opened wide. She let out a slow breath, fogging the glass-like material in front of her. Her hoof rose up, and with a squeak she cleaned the smudge she had noticed on the alien’s helmet. It had been bothering her quite a lot.
“Nah. She’s the one who controls the sun. Who else could help ya?”
The doctor leaned back to his previous position, his shoulders stooped. “Ah. Religious manipulation. No thank you. We deal with facts.”
“Religious what?”
“He doesn’t believe you,” Mark clarified. “You don’t really expect us to believe someone’s controlling the sun, right?”
“Huh. Well, ah can prove it to ya. You said you can see almost anything from up here, right?”
The two aliens nodded slowly and reluctantly.
“Great! It’s almost lunchtime, and it’s Spicy Tuesday at the castle today. Let’s take a peek.”
“Play it again,” the captain ordered.
“Captain, we watched it twenty times so far-”
“Again!”
The large screen’s display was halved. The left side showed a drone’s view of a large white denizen of the world below them decked in golden regalia, enjoying her lunch. The right side was a multitude of views of the local star. Numbers glowed around it, showing its relative distance from the planet, angle, current level of flare activity, and other statistics that no one really cares for. A time display at the bottom right of both halves showed that the views were synchronized.
The princess of their guest lifted a sandwich to her mouth in an amazing display of telekinesis that they had seen before but always astounded them. The sandwich never achieved its crunchy destiny. As soon as it got close enough, the white pony creature sneezed hard enough that the sandwich violently spread apart and flew everywhere.
On the other half of the screen the numbers changed as the sun hopped backwards at the exact same moment.
Down below, ponies groaned and got to setting their clocks to the proper time.
“Are we sure it wasn’t a coincidence?” the captain pleaded.
“It could be Captain, but she also hiccuped while you were watching that, and-”
“Ok, ok, I get it.”
“...so what do we do?”
The Captain considered his options. He considered what the protocols called for, and the situations they covered. He considered the abilities and merits of his crew. He considered what people back home would say when he went to them with this. He considered whether he wanted to deal with all this. He considered what little the xeno had shared with them about their world.
The answer was obvious.
“Delete all our archives and scrap every bit of data. We’re dropping our guest, we go into cryostasis, “wake up” somewhere far from here, and send a message back to HQ that our ship systems malfunctioned and will be forced to limp back. As far as everyone’s concerned, we never were here. Let someone else deal with this.”
“What about when they don’t see any damage on-”
“I’ll set the fire myself! Get that pony thing down, and let’s get the hell out of here!”
The Princess of the Moon made it late to lunch. She avoided the usual casualties of spicy cuisine and her sister’s sinuses, and took her own seat. Luna counted the obscene number of dishes laid on the trays.
“You seem to be strangely ravenous today sister,” she observed.
The Princess of the Sun swallowed serenely before answering. “These are not meant for me.”
“I’ll have you know that not all of us seek to achieve such grand cheeks for our cutie marks to rest on.”
Celestia scowled and put her sandwich back on the plate, suddenly feeling she had enough. “I thought we were going to have guests.”
“Oh? What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. For some reason they never come down.” She sighed and looked at the trays that she had her ponies prepare for no reason at all. “Oh well, maybe the next decade. Foodfight?”
“Here Twilight. This one’s for ya!”
Twilight Sparkle practically glowed as she received her gift from beyond the stars. “Thank you! This is unbelievable. Ehm, what is it?”
“It’s a nightlight.”
The purple unicorn blinked at her gift, examining it in excruciating detail. “Why does it look like a bipedal mouse wearing red trousers?”
“Ah don’t know,” Applejack said with a shrug. “Ah had found a better one, but Mark didn’t let me keep it.”
“Cutie Mark?” Rarity asked.
“Don’t know. Never saw his face.”
Rainbow Dash started shaking the orange mare, unwilling to wait any longer. “What about me, what did you get for me?”
“Well, let me check what’s in my bag of goodies for ya,” Applejack chuckled as she rummaged inside the sack. “I think Mark said this will help ya fly even faster. He called it amfeta-something… By the way, did anypony happen to find my bag of bits?”
“What’s this?” the Captain asked his supposed second in command,
“Applejack gave it to me sir. I thought it would be better if you took it instead though,” Mark explained.
“Maybe you could also tell me what is it?”
“It’s a make-your-own-clock kit. It might be good for you to spend some time on it. Get it? Spend some time on it?”
“Get out before I shoot you.”
The Captain managed to avoid looking at the box for almost fifteen minutes before pulling it closer with a sigh of exasperation. He did like making models, and this seemed to be a pretty good way to get rid of his frustrations.
Three hours later he was almost finished, and feeling quite at peace as he watched the hands tick while assembling the case around them.
Celestia sneezed.
